Looking Back Through Ash

by Wade Ebeling

  Allen had gone to high school with Derek, and, over the years, they had drifted further and further apart. The distance had stretched to the point where they now might only talk a few times a year on the phone. John was Derek’s older brother by three years, and part of the reason for the separation. It wasn’t that Allen completely despised John, although, at times, he did find the older man insufferable, it was because John always had to come along with Derek, whether he had been invited or not. So Allen’s friendship with Derek had become a forced friendship with both of the Brown brothers. John carried just enough of a creep vibe that Maggie didn’t want him over, and she loathed the way he always tried to sound smarter than he really was.

  The two brothers looked almost identical, apart from their hair. Both were the lean six foot of avid outdoorsmen, and both had pinched faces with narrowed, beady, milky eyes. Derek had thinning, dark brown hair, deep swoops cutting into his hair line, and John had already bald-on-top, blonde hair. Neither man could grow a proper beard, but this did not stop them from always having patchy, scraggly attempts at facial hair. Adding to the similarities between the brothers was the clothes they wore. Anything printed in camouflage, they purchased and wore; shirts, shorts, pants, hats, and boots alike.

  When Allen learned that the brother’s parents were first cousins, this happening during one of Derek’s drunken tirades about the only girlfriend he had ever had, some ten years ago. After hearing that, a lot of the brother’s sociopathic tendencies made more sense to Allen. If they were not out killing anything and everything that moved within the state’s woods and rivers, they were planning their next trip to do so. Undersized, self-cleaned deer skulls hung on the walls, and a thick layer of rot-tinged grime clung to the kitchen and bath counters. Dirty dishes seemed to live in the sink and just opening the refrigerator to reach in for a beer made Allen want to go get booster shots. Truth be told, they could have been used as the poster boys as to why inbreeding was still illegal.

  The brother’s parents both had high-paying professional type jobs; one was an accountant and the other a tenured teacher, but Derek and John had never gone to college, and rarely held a job for more than a few months out of each year. So the brother’s parents paid their way through life, but it was not what you would call the high life. They did get new trucks leased for them every second year, but the house they lived in was tiny, in poor condition, and hadn’t had a decent cleaning since they moved in.

  Allen thought briefly about how sad it was that these two were the only choices he had for more help. All of his true friends, made during his time in the service, lived nowhere near this part of the country. Allen had only moved back to Michigan to be with his mother before her passing, and because he had a familiarity with the area, having been born and raised here. This was often the greatest point of contention between Allen and Maggie, as she had always planned to return to her family in Arizona after Allen decided not to reenlist.

  Taking another shortened breath, Allen yelled, “It’s me…Allen! Is that you, John?”

  “Yeah...What’re you doing here?” John asked, sounding like he really didn’t want Allen around.

  “I’m here to see Derek!” Allen replied, hoping that the unsaid “not you!” was not too apparent, or too hidden.

  Nothing happened for yet another awkward minute. Allen pulled the rifle tighter and flipped off the safety. He really wanted to shoot at something a couple of times to see where the point of aim was for the rifle. Standing in the open, feeling more than exposed, Allen started to get upset. He had allowed himself to be standing on unfamiliar ground, while holding an unproven gun in his hands. Those kinds of slips were what got people killed. Taking chances always had a way of jumping up to bite you in the ass when least expected.

  “Allen?” the slightly hoarse voice of Derek finally called out.

  Hearing him did not make Allen any happier. In fact, it made him question his own sanity; twisted memories of the two brothers came flooding back in. Sick of the long distance shouting match, and even sicker of the smell surrounding him, Allen charged around the corner heading diagonally across the street, straight at the Brown’s little, square bungalow.

  “Derek, don’t shoot my ass! I just want to talk to you!” Allen yelled, holding his right arm up passively while keeping the rifle pressed into his shoulder with help of the sling and his left hand. From this position he would be able to draw his right hand back down to the rifle’s pistol grip while at the same time leveling it off with his left arm. He could do all of this, managing to snap of the first shot, in about one second.

  “Come around to the side door!” Derek shouted in response.

  Allen walked the remaining fifty yards to the house, which looked straight out of a war zone. The ash was heavily disturbed, and numerous bullets had been fired at the dwelling, pot marking the outside. Low-powered projectiles had scraped long scars into the red brick exterior and gouged fresh wood from the peeling window jambs. Most of the windows had been shattered and haphazardly barricaded over. The big, front room window was completely gone, and Allen could make out what looked like a sand bag fortification inside it, except that he bags ran the gambit of colors. More bodies littered the street and yards surrounding the house. It was obvious that a prolonged battle had taken place here.

  Allen gave a quick count of corpses scattered about, and came to nearly twenty in total. Most of them had no obvious signs of trauma. There were splashes of blood on and around them, but they had not been stabbed or bludgeoned to death, or even hit with explosives; those were far more gruesome sights. These people had all been shot to death. Discolored streaks of oxidized blood tracked where some had fallen and tried to crawl away, the ash showing every scrape and hand fall. The stench squatting on the area only grew stronger as Allen stalked closer to the nearly destroyed house.

  Swarms of iridescent green blow flies buzzed happily around; the bounty for their offspring being put to good use. Great wriggling masses of pink-stained maggots gave a few of the bodies the illusion that they were still moving or breathing. Allen had to step around two bodies in the front yard that he guessed by their attire had both been young men. Something had been at their faces, hollowing out eye sockets and ripping off lips. The effect gave them a terrifying wide-eyed grin. It would be hard to shake such a sight.

  Allen came around the house slowly, heading for the aforementioned side door. The rear corner of the house was charred black. Looking up, all of the aluminum siding and overhangs on this side of the house had been warped and buckled by an intense heat. ‘Someone tried to burn them out into the open,’ he thought.

  Waiting by the door, scanning all around, Allen heard the sounds of lumber being moved, as a sheet of plywood was taken away from the inside. The way the door was hung meant that it opened inwards, sucking air inside with it. This ensured that Allen didn’t notice at first. Once the slight air differential equalized, an even more rancid odor escaped from the house, assaulting his already overloaded senses. It was too much, Allen vomited immediately.

  “What the fuck, man?” Derek asked crudely, before starting to laugh. It was a piercing sound that immediately got on the nerves.

  Allen spit the last scraps of biscuit out of his mouth, backing a few paces away from the door and chunky puddle. The scent of his own puke, acidly stinging at his nostrils, wasn’t the worst aroma that he had smelled in the past ten minutes. Allen continued to involuntarily dry-heave, fighting to regain control. “What in the hell is that stench?” he finally managed to cough out.

  “Oh…our power has been off for…like more than a week? And freakin’ numb nuts back there opened our freezer full of rotting venison yesterday,” Derek replied, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to indicate that he meant his brother. He was tightly holding a scoped, Remington model 700 bolt action hunting rifle and kept looking around nervously, being very careful not to stick his head out too far.

  Allen’s face had already curled up with the coming question.
“What happened here? Who are all these dead people?”

  “All these crazy moullies were storming through the neighborhood, looting everything, and shooting anybody they saw. They all came up from the city, we guess. John and I started knocking ‘em down before they got too close. A bunch of ‘em surrounded us and ‘ave been trying to kill us for the last three days. Fuck, man, they even started throwing Molotov cocktails at us the other night,” Derek said, using wild animated arm swings to make his case.

  Allen noticed Derek’s sunken, sleep-deprived eyes, adding credence to the timeframe. Like most things that Derek said, the story had an air of half-truth about it. Allen had seen no other bodies in the neighborhood, other than those collecting flies around this very small area. Even though Derek had not said it happened that way, and he would probably never admit to it, Allen knew that the brothers had taken the first opportunity they got to kill some black people.

  “Are you guys holding up alright? You two should get the hell out of here, and come with us,” Allen said calmly, despite the warning creeping up his spine, gripping the base of his scull in a tingling grip, urging him to turn and run.

  “Who’s us? You didn’t bring Maggie here, did you?” Derek sounded embarrassed, his eyes still darting around nervously. “We was tryin’ to leave, just before all this shit happened. We had no choice but to come back here. Went over to John’s work, but they wouldn’t let us in ‘less we traded with ‘em. That’s when John got shot,” He rattled off. “Did I tell you that already?”

  “Um…no. Who shot him? The people he works with?” Allen asked.

  “No. No. Just some guys that set up a dumb-ass blockade. We just jumped the curb and went around it on the sidewalk…they started shooting at us,” Derek answered. He gave a strange look that put Allen even further on edge before he whispered, “Where did you get that rifle?”

  “You tell him I got shot?” John piped in from somewhere inside.

  “Listen, I got Jason in my truck,” Allen shot, getting Derek’s full attention again. “It’s just around the corner over there. He’s the one that gave me this.” He flipped the rifle over in his hands, so Derek could get a better look at it. “You guys should get out of here before whoever you pissed off comes back. The four of us can set up shop at the apartments,” Allen said quickly. It was always a struggle to get back into the conversation around Derek and John.

  “You got food? We are frickin’ starving. That’s why we went over to the BULKCO center where John works. His boss has gone absolutely nuts. I’m serious, man. He’s got a bunch of people holed up in the place, all armed to the teeth. He told John to bring back some girls, and then he might let us in. You believe that shit? Guys sitting on a ton of food and stuff and he is acting like some kind of king or something...” Derek rambled on.

  “Hey, we got plenty of food,” Allen interrupted. “Where’s John’s truck? You guys need t…”

  “It broke down after those assholes shot at us,” Derek interjected, cutting Allen off. “They must have hit somethin’ electrical. That’s what I think, anyway. John figures….never mind. We had to walk back with dipshit whining the whole way about a bullet graze on his calf…”

  A second wave of putrid meat smell wafted towards Allen, making him suddenly uncaring about whether the brothers came or not; he just wanted to leave. “Derek, listen,” Allen sighed, holding up his hands in exasperation. “If you guys want to come, you need to go get packed. I’m not staying here. I’ll go get Jason and pull my truck over here, so’s we can cover you guys while you load up. If…you want to go.” Allen gave him a stern look to force an answer.

  “Cool, man. We didn’t know what to do. All I’ve eaten today was some stale chips and half a can of corn,” Derek laughed at himself. “Let me go tell John to get ready, and…”

  “Okay, cool. I’ll go get Jason,” Allen said, already walking away.

  Allen heard the argumentative tones, which served as the brother’s normal style of conversation, as he passed by the open front window. He took a closer look at the sand bags and found that they were pillow cases, shirts, and pants of various sizes and colors that had all been stuffed with soil. He thought of laughing about the mismatched fortification, but realized that it was actually quite ingenious.

  Jogging to his truck, trying to get back through the dense fog of stench and flies as quickly as possible, he found Jason outside the truck smoking a cigarette.

  “Man, it fucking reeks around here,” Jason said, wrinkling his nose.

  “You don’t know the half of it…You should smell what those two whackos are living in. It’s fucking unbelievable,” Allen informed him, reaching into the back of the cab to get a bottle of water out of his day pack. Several swishes and spits later he told Jason, “Get in the truck. There is supposedly a bunch of folks still around trying to kill them. I guess that’s what happens when you start randomly shooting people…”

  “Wha’cha mean by that?”

  “Never mind…We are going to go watch their backs while they load up. You better just keep an eye out.”

  Allen and Jason clambered back into the truck at the same time. “Give me a smoke, will ya?” Allen asked of him.

  “You don’t smoke…” Jason pondered. Still, he grabbed his pack out and handed Allen a cigarette and lighter.

  “I’ve got to get this taste out of my mouth,” he lit the smoke “and this smell out of my nose,” Allen replied, with a sour look stretching his face. He tossed the lighter back to Jason without looking.

  After starting the truck, for the briefest of moments, Allen contemplated pulling a U-turn and leaving without the Brown brothers. Instead, he tried his best to avoid driving over the corpses as he pulled forward. Try as he might, a few of the bodies still jostled the truck like fleshy speed bumps. He pulled into a body-free driveway, just short of the brother’s house, to turn around and wait.

  Jason and Allen both got out of the truck to keep an over watch for Derek and the heavily limping John. After their camping gear, extra rifles, and shotguns were loaded, two flat tires were then changed on Derek’s silver base-model truck, slashed by the supposed invading horde. After the garbage bags full of the brother’s camouflage clothing had been loaded, Allen walked a little closer.

  “Okay, you guys all set to go?” Allen called out.

  “I guess so,” John answered from the closer passenger seat. “Are we goin’ to the apartments now? I’m hungry as hell.”

  “Hold on…” Allen said, walking back to his truck for the day pack again. He pulled out two protein bars and a bottle of water for the brothers to share. He took the food over to John while he tried and failed to hold his breath.

  “That should hold you guys for a bit. C’mon we’ve some work to do,” Allen said, snickering at the look they gave him.

  “Wait? What?” John and Derek asked almost simultaneously.

  Wearing a Cheshire cat grin as he walked away, Allen yelled, “Just follow me!”

  Chapter 14

  Allen used bolt-cutters, increasing leverage by using lengths of pipe on the handles, to snip the chain-drive on the dormant electrical gate. The unbound fence gate then easily slid open on its rollers. The gate once garnered access to the Northside RV storage lot by entering a numerical sequence into a keypad. The 38 acre facility contained around 1100 recreational vehicles ranging from pop-ups to modern buses with all the bells and whistles. Some of the RV’s were gone, taken by their owners during the rush to leave the area. Most, however, remained where they had been left during happier, easier, less ash and radiation filled times.

  Jason was nodding approvingly as Allen climbed back into the truck. “Right on! Now I see what you were saying. There should be tons of propane in here,” Jason said cheerfully, sitting up in his seat, looking at all of the choices for breaking and entering.

  “We will probably get a bunch of food, flashlights, and other stuff, too,” Allen added wisely.

  Allen pulled his truck half way down a
center aisle that held a lot of higher end fifth-wheels and buses before shutting off the engine. Allen and Jason got out and went around to the bed of the truck to start grabbing burglary tools. The smiles of idea recognition adorned the Brown brother’s faces as they got out of their truck, twenty yards behind.

  Once Derek and the hobbling John had approached, Allen opened his arms out wide, saying, “Okay, here we are. Everybody take a dust mask. I want to get all the full thirty pound and twenty pound LP tanks that we can carry. John…you are looking fairly useless right now…”

  “Screw you!” John exclaimed, with a laugh and one finger extended.

  Everyone was grinning as Allen continued, “Alright, alright. I’m just saying we could use you to pack all of the stuff we find. We should get a bunch of towels and blankets to wrap around the tanks so they don’t bang around. We’ll put all the propane in my truck and anything else we find in yours. Look for anything you think we can use. Food, solar lights, tools, binoculars, little grills, pots, pans, soap, and anything else that strikes your fancy.”

  “Booze…” Jason thought aloud, eyes shifting from rig to dusty rig.

  “Yeah, now you’re talkin’! Let’s go see what we can find,” Derek said happily to Jason. The pair grabbed pry bars and started straight for the closest soot-streaked fifth-wheel.

  “Hold on…You can get whatever you want, after we get a bunch of propane loaded up,” Allen admonished. “John, we will bring you a bunch of towels and things so you can start packing the tanks we bring to you.”

  “Well, hurry the hell up. My leg is killing me. And someone find something I can eat…” John said, wincing as he sat on Allen’s tailgate.

  “Yeah, I need food, too. What do you think there are in these?” Derek asked meekly, his previous quest for alcohol all but forgotten.

  “Won’t know ‘till we start looking. But I would guess lots of canned and dehydrated stuff. Let’s get some work done first, alright? We can stop in a little while and cook whatever we find in one of the kitchens,” Allen said firmly. He was already regretting having the brothers around. It was like being burdened with two emotionally stunted children, who just might shoot him in the back at any moment.