The Borrowed World (Book 3): Legion of Despair

by Franklin Horton

  She passed the bowling alley where she’d once had a birthday party for her son. When she and her husband first met, they went on several dates there. A few minutes later, she caught sight of a cinderblock video store where she’d once worked part-time renting VHS movies. She tried to recall some of the movies that had been new releases when she’d worked there, and couldn’t recall a single one. She did remember that the best part of the job was that she could take home a movie or two every night for free if she wanted. That was a big deal to her then. People always wanted to hang out at her apartment because of the free movies.

  Ten minutes later there was another building that had once been a gun store but now sat empty. Then a pawn shop, an ice cream shop, a camper store. She kept the challenge going in her head for as long as she could, but for the last two miles there were just cattle pastures on both sides of the road – no landmarks, no buildings, no associated memories. The only houses were set far back from the road. It was dark enough now that she could only see shapes. The road was easy enough to follow, its surface catching a little moonlight, so she walked without using her light. She carried it in her left hand, ready for use. In her right she carried the pistol and it was ready too.

  Before she came to her office complex, she passed a large church. There was a steel building that the church used as a gym. People were gathered there in the parking lot. There was a fire going in a steel drum and several Coleman lanterns hanging around the entrance to the building. It looked like they were operating a shelter of some sort. Although she knew several folks who attended that church, she was by this point so alienated from the company of strangers that she could not see herself approaching them, even for a hot meal or a cot. Without her light, no one saw her and she passed in welcome obscurity.

  Past the church, she turned left onto a street that ran between her office complex and the local community college. Beyond the college, there was also a National Guard armory. At the armory, she could see some outdoor fires going, with the vague shape of men standing around them. A dull glow came from the high windows of the armory building and she wondered if it might also be some sort of shelter. Again, she did not trust people enough to seek their company or assistance. She would go to her own building and see what she could find.

  She first passed the darkened clinic buildings, their one-story profiles easily recognizable. From the way that reflecting firelight from the armory varied from window to window, she could tell that these buildings had been broken into and vandalized. She stopped and listened very carefully. In the distance, she could hear the voices of the armory men telling stories and laughing around the fire. From her buildings, she heard nothing.

  Her office was in a two-story building. The upper stories were not accessible except by access controlled steel doors or an elevator. With no power, the elevator should have kept folks out of the upper stories. Once the power went out, the steel doors to the second floor would go into fail-secure mode and lock down and could only be opened at that point by using a key.

  Alice passed her blue Honda Accord in the parking lot. It was less than two years old and was one of the nicer cars she’d ever owned. It was one of the few cars in the parking lot and she could guess by the reek of fuel that someone had either siphoned the gas from it or punctured the gas tank. She walked around the car and found the windows intact. It almost surprised her. She sadly noted that it did rest on four flat tires.

  From the landscaping around the parking lot, she picked up a retaining wall stone about the size of a large brick. With both hands, she threw it through the driver’s window of her Honda. Concerned now that the noise might draw the wrong kind of attention, she used her flashlight and quickly located the large ring of keys in the center console. Because Human Resources sometimes required more than eight hours of work a day, she was often in the building late at night. She kept a key to every door she used because she’d been there during a power failure one night and had worried that she might become trapped in the building. The maintenance staff had assured her that she could not be, but she felt better having the keys anyway.

  She figured that she might as well use the light now because the noise of the breaking car window would certainly have gotten the attention of anyone in the vicinity anyway. Shining it discreetly at her feet, Alice walked around the front of the building. Once there, she was shocked to see the destruction that awaited her. The glass entry doors had been shattered. Shining her light through them, she saw piles of furniture, scattered papers, and knew that the office had been trashed.

  “Please let the upper floors be safe,” she whispered. “I can’t go any further tonight.”

  She’d been in the building many times at night and it had never bothered her. In this wrecked state it felt different. The building felt like the scene of violence. It made her feel as if there were people in there waiting to spring on her and do violence to her, just as they’d done to the building. She found herself panicking.

  Settle down, she thought. Get control of yourself.

  She picked up her pace and walked through the hallways to the battered steel door that led to the stairwell. She pushed on it and found it solid. Battered or not, it had appeared to hold. She hoped the lock had not been beaten to the point that her key would not open it. She flipped through her chain of keys until she found the right one and slipped it inside. She turned it and her heart surged when the door unlocked.

  Thank God.

  She played her light around inside the stairwell and saw nothing out of the ordinary, stepped inside quickly, and the steel door locked behind her. Holding both the gun and light, she took the steps. She could see nothing that indicated anyone had been up this way since the building closed on the last day of business.

  When the steps took a right turn, she shined her light around anxiously, heart racing. Still, she could see nothing alarming. In a moment she was at the top of the steps and facing another steel door just like the one she’d entered in the downstairs hallway. Since the fire code did not allow stairwell doors to lock from the inside, Alice did not need a key to exit the stairwell on the second floor. She felt a great apprehension, wondering if people could be up there waiting on her, ready to kill her for entering space they’d claimed as their own.

  She turned the lock gently, hearing the click that sounded way too loud in the silence of the building. She pulled the door open slowly, her heart wrenching when the hinges groaned. She’d never noticed before that they made so much noise. She played the light into the hallway, hoping that no one would be standing there waiting on her like in some slasher movie. She knew that her heart would stop instantly. Thankfully, there was no one there, but what she saw made her freeze in her tracks.

  On the wall directly across from her, someone had used a permanent marker to leave a message: JIM, RANDI, AND GARY MADE IT THIS FAR. THERE’S FOOD AND WATER IN OFFICE 17.

  Alice’s knees weakened from relief and the onrush of emotions. She sagged against the wall, her head resting on the flat white paint. Not only had the others made it back, but there was food and water. She also had to think that, as much as she and Jim fought sometimes, he’d left this message for her, hoping she’d make it back.

  Still not convinced she was alone, Alice made a complete circuit of the upper floor of the building, checking every office, every closet, every restroom, and every other place she could imagine someone fitting into. There was no one there. Except for the minor indications that someone had been here – most likely Jim, Randi, and Gary – things were as tidy as they always were.

  Alice ended her search at Office 17. She opened the door and shined her light inside. On the desk were several unopened bottles of water, some crackers, and a few plastic lunch-sized tubs of Campbell’s soup. In a desk chair, a couple of fleece blankets were folded and stacked. On the desk blotter was a large scented candle in a jar. Beside it was a cigarette lighter and a note written on a sheet of copy paper.

  GUESS YOU MISSED A CANDLE IN YOUR FI
RE INSPECTIONS, ALICE. GOOD THING YOU DID.

  She laughed for the first time in a long time. She closed the office door, locked it behind her, and propped her flashlight on the desk. She lit the candle and it threw a warm glow in the windowless office. She collapsed in the desk chair and felt like she could cry. The relief of simply being back in familiar territory was overwhelming. She thought of going to her own office, but it was on an outside wall and she did not want the glow of the candle drawing attention to her office window. She would stay here. She would eat and drink all that her exhaustion would allow her, then she could prop her feet up and sleep.

  She would have a long walk tomorrow, but she hoped it would take her home to her family.

  Chapter 11

  Gary’s House

  Richlands, VA

  Gary loaded the car with his backpack and his radio. He had several AR and M4 variations that he’d bought over the years. He grabbed a Bushmaster from the gun safe.

  “I’ve never seen that one before,” Will commented.

  “It’s special,” Gary said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

  He had a half-dozen spare mags, a headlamp, and a few other pieces of gear, all of it concealed in his pack. The rifle itself would be hidden beneath a blanket in the passenger seat of the car, easily accessible if things went to shit. On his belt, carried open and accessible, Gary had his Glock with two spare mags. He had two more full magazines in a pouch on the outside of his pack.

  His first stop was the home of Wesley Molloy, the young man he’d apprehended on his property the night before. It seemed a little farfetched, but he wanted to see if the punk still had his generator. He wasn’t sure if he would actually kill someone to get it back, but he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t. It wasn’t like he could go out and buy another one.

  The subdivision the Molloys lived in was one of the largest in the area. If you were a coal executive or a physician, but not rich enough to own an estate, this was where you lived. It was also where you lived if you had aspirations of wealth, just so you could claim you lived there. The neighborhood certainly had the largest homes in the little coal town. It wasn’t too far from Gary’s home and he reached the entrance after less than five minutes of driving. It was uneventful except for having to dodge a downed tree and a few abandoned vehicles that hadn’t been pulled from the roadway. With few cars moving, the Department of Transportation had no plans to keep the road clear.

  Gary was surprised he was able to drive right into the subdivision. There was no guard, no blocked entrance, nothing. Had he lived here, he would have made some type of effort at trying to restrict entry into the neighborhood. Even a rudimentary gate made from a downed tree would send a message that people who didn’t belong there should keep moving. It said a lot about these people that they weren’t working together. Maybe all these people had left and abandoned their houses just like he was planning on doing with his.

  Will had been able to tell him exactly where to find the house he was looking for. It was a house he’d noticed before, both due to its size and pretension, but he never knew who lived there. There were no other cars moving in the subdivision. Unlike when he visited town yesterday, he didn’t even feel like he was being watched here. Were they all gone? Dead? Or just apathetic and resigned to some dire fate? No children played and no one worked outside. He would not have been surprised to see a tumbleweed blow past. The place had that kind of feel.

  The farther he got off the main road, the more expensive the houses appeared to be. They were larger, with more of the architectural features and high end materials that drove the price up. The vehicles in the driveways were more expensive too. In the end, however, a Hummer or Cadillac Escalade with no gas was no more useful than a Dodge Neon with no gas. A dead car was a dead car.

  Gary turned into what he thought was the Molloys’ driveway and parked behind a half-dozen vehicles. There was a Mercedes SUV, a Mini Cooper, and a Lexus. There was a BMW with all kinds of knick-knacks hanging from the rearview mirror. One of them was a graduation tassel. There was a customized Honda with low-profile tires on expensive wheels and an aftermarket exhaust. Gary assumed this belonged to the boy he’d dealt with last night. It seemed like just the kind of vehicle he would drive.

  Past the vehicles, Gary approached the four-car garage. The house was an enormous brick monstrosity devoid of style. It was built for size more than anything else. One look at the sealed black asphalt of the driveway told Gary that several dirt bikes and ATVs with muddy tires had been using this garage. To his right was a sidewalk that led to a covered entry. Gary followed the sidewalk beneath several windows but saw no movement in those windows. He walked between two brick columns with iron horse heads upon them, climbed six cast limestone steps, and paused on the porch.

  He listened carefully, hearing no steps, no voices, not even a shotgun racking a shell into the chamber. That he could hear nothing inside the house was not entirely surprising. A newer brick house with proper insulation could mask a lot of noise, including that of cocking weapons. He thought it best to maintain vigilance. He took a step and stopped in front of the door. It had looked like wood from a distance but he could now see that it was fiberglass. He knocked on the door, then stepped to the side. He hoped that someone firing through the door would not be able to hit him this way.

  No one came. No one fired.

  He knocked again and put his ear to the door. It made him nervous to do that, but he was determined to find his generator. Still, he could hear nothing inside the house. To one side of the door was a sidelight, a tall, narrow pane of glass that allowed natural light into the entry of the home. Gary approached the sidelight, boldly pressed his face against it, and cupped his eyes. With the design of the house, he could see straight through it to the backyard. There was a foyer, and beyond that a great room with an enormous glass wall that looked out onto a wide deck.

  Gary knocked again, conscious that he didn’t belong in this neighborhood and his knocking could be drawing attention. There were several houses that had a clear of line of fire to his position. Someone could shoot at him thinking he was a thief or a looter. Someone could attack him for his car or the fuel in the tank.

  He went back to the sidelight and stared through again. It almost looked like there were people sitting on the couch in the great room watching television, but Gary couldn’t tell for sure. It was always hard to look from a sunny location into the darkened interior of a house, even with your eyes shaded. He could just as easily been looking at a stack of puffy sofa pillows.

  Wondering if he might be able to see better with binoculars, Gary went back to his vehicle and retrieved a cheap set from his pack. Back at the door, Gary knocked one more time before moving back to the sidelight and pressing the binoculars against the glass. The field of view was so narrow that only a small section of the room was visible through the lenses. He had to angle them in different directions all over the room before orienting himself and finding the shapes on the sofa. When he did, he jerked violently backward and gasped as his view was filled with the bloated face of a dead woman, her head misshapen and nearly obscured by a cloud of flies.

  Recovering from the shock, Gary put the binoculars back to his eyes and saw that she was sitting beside another corpse, that of a man, presumably her husband. The man’s face was also deformed both through bloating and through the possible gunshot wound that took a chunk of his forehead out. His face was also crusted with a thick mass of flies. In his lap, Gary could see a large revolver, the trigger finger still loosely threaded through the trigger guard, where it had likely fallen after the fatal shot.

  They had killed themselves. At least the man had killed himself. Maybe he had killed his wife or maybe she had killed herself too. He wondered why. One thing about the current situation of the world was that it shook up the social strata. People who had valuable skills in the old world might not find themselves so valuable when the rules changed. Perhaps they couldn’t stand the idea that they
were just going to be like everyone else, struggling for food, fuel, and resources just to stay alive.

  Gary decided that he had no interest in going inside. He wasn’t sure that his generator was even in there, and if it was, they could have it. He had better things to do than risk his life in that stinking house.

  *

  Gary lived eight miles from his office and it normally took him ten to fifteen minutes to get there, as long as he didn’t get behind a school bus. The first half of the trip was on a winding two-lane mountain road. The last half was on a four-lane highway. The two-lane road didn’t have any shoulders for vehicles to pull off on if they ran out of fuel, so drivers had coasted as far as they could get, then abandoned their vehicles where they sat. In some places, it created traffic jams that had been difficult to get around. One had been impassible until Gary released the emergency brakes on several vehicles, put them in neutral, and let them roll over an embankment. The only houses in sight had shown no signs of life so Gary hoped that he didn’t draw any undue attention from his actions. In better times, vehicles crashing over hillsides drew a crowd.

  The truck he hoped to return in was bigger than the Nissan he was driving now. If he didn’t create a return lane of sufficient size, he had no hope of getting back. It was still early in the day and he hoped that there wouldn’t be many people out walking or stirring about. He didn’t want to have any confrontations or have to turn down any hitchhikers needing rides. He just wanted a smooth day for a change. He couldn’t remember the last one he’d had. That was kind of funny when he thought about it. Most of his life had been fairly uneventful, even boring at times. Now, he’d give anything for a boring day.

  When he reached the four-lane road, he was pleased to find it clear. There were vehicles on the side of the road that appeared to have run out of fuel and many of them showed signs of impact. He knew that both the state police and the National Guard had vehicles capable of clearing highways under these circumstances. It looked like such a vehicle, or a piece of heavy construction equipment, had been used to clear the road.