“Not my baby, not my duty,” I had said.
Honestly, I only refused because the idea of naming a child that not only did not belong to me, but was also the product of rape, seemed like an enormous responsibility. Kendra had not given him a name, either. I asked her once why she refused to name him and she got very upset. She railed on and on about how she hadn’t wanted him, hadn’t asked for him, and she’d be damned if she’d give a name to something that had been forced upon her. It would be like naming a stray dog, she’d said.
I hadn’t questioned it any further after that. So it was always just the baby or him. And despite the way she had spoken about him in that instance, it was evident that she loved him very much. I was very fond of him, too. Hell, I had delivered him in the shadows the Dunn’s living room in the early hours of the morning six months ago, with nothing to assist except a few dingy paper towels and bottled water.
He would always stare at me, as if in awe, whenever I gave him more than a second of my attention. It was like he knew what I had done for him and his mother. I hated that he didn’t have a name. I sometimes referred to him as Wet One or Squirt. He seemed to like Squirt.
“Why in God’s name would two men want a baby?” Kendra asked.
I had an idea but said nothing. The thought was too grisly, too immoral even for what had happened to the world. But I had seen evidence of it once before while walking the roads with Kendra, seen what I thought were bones picked clean at the charred remnants of an old campsite.
“If there had been three men and they stole our baby, they could have made a shitty movie,” I said, trying to ward the weight of the situation with humor.
“Funny.”
“They were probably just looking for food or weapons,” I said. “Gas, maybe.”
I also knew that two men on the road alone would have probably been very interested in Kendra’s company. I kept this to myself, too. Besides, given the nature of how she suffered before I met her, I’m sure she was thinking the same thing.
When dinner was done, we went into the bedroom. The house had four bedrooms, two baths, and a large room that was part-kitchen-part-den. Although Kendra and I had not slept together in the physical sense, there had never been any question about sharing a bed. I had nightmares on occasion, and according to her, she was terrified that she’d wake up one morning and I’d be gone. She claimed that she wanted to sleep next to me not only to talk me down from my nightmares, but also to feel the bed move if I got up to leave in the middle of the night.
The baby slept between us on the Dunn’s king sized bed. There was no electricity—that had been gone in most places around the country for nearly a year now—so we had never been able to clean the sheets. From time to time, I thought I smelled traces of Brian and Ellie Dunn. His was a musky male shampoo sort of smell and hers was a light fragrance from a fruity lotion.
By candlelight, Kendra read her paperback. I sat on the floor with the baby. He was crawling around and cooing, playing with my feet. I was re-counting the ammo we had from our new weapons and going through the clothes and other belongings I had taken from David Giuilano and his partner. As I looked at the cash in David’s wallet, I tried to remember a time when these stupid rectangles of paper had meant anything.
I looked at the picture of the girl I assumed was his daughter. I smelled the stagnant pack of gum, hoping to trigger some memory of a life of normalcy that existed before all of this.
I laid out the cargo pants I had taken from David and brushed them off with my hand. I looked them over carefully. One of the belt loops was torn and there was a small hole in the back pocket. As I checked the front pockets, I noticed something that I had somehow overlooked in my hasty search immediately following the shooting.
Something made a crinkling noise in the front left pocket. I reached inside and felt the corner of a folded piece of paper. I took it out and saw that it was a piece of white office paper that had been folded in quarters. It was torn at the edges and slightly discolored. Inside of it, something else had been folded as well.
I unfolded the paper slowly, relishing the discovery. When the paper was unfolded to half its full size, the other item fell out into my lap. The baby clumsily reached for it with his grasping fingers but I grabbed it first, trying to make a game out of it. He cackled at me and slapped at the floor in delight.
It was a black and white photo, printed on flimsy photo paper; it was the cheap kind of photo paper you could run through a computer at home. The picture was hard to decipher, as it had been taken at night and in poor light. From what I could tell, the picture showed some sort of large gate and, to its left, a stone pillar. There was writing engraved on the pillar but the picture was too blurry to read it.
I set the picture to the side and unfolded the paper all the way. I read it several times before revealing my find to Kendra. My heart dared to believe that the words typed on the paper were legitimate. But deep in my soul, I was almost certain it was some stupid hoax, fabricated by someone like me—someone that missed the old world just enough to insist that when the searching was done, we’d find it waiting for us around the next decimated corner.
The piece of paper read:
NORTH AMERICAN CONTENT SAFE ZONE, EAST US: VA / BLUE RIDGE
Confirmation of Residence #275A
C. Miller – Fort Worth, TX
DOB: 7/20/71
S/ID #749G-713A-11
A strange bar code rested in the bottom right corner of the page. I ran my hand over it and somewhere in the recesses of my head, I thought of standing in a line at the grocery store as the cashier rang up my cheese, milk, beer, and chips.
“Kendra,” I said, showing her the paper.
She set her book down and leaned across the bed. She was wearing a black tank top, part of the wardrobe we had found remaining at the Dunn’s house. Half of her breast was exposed when she leaned over and I made an effort not to look. It was difficult. Truth be told, more often than not, I didn’t look away.
She took it, and like me, read it several times before reacting.
“I remember hearing about these Safe Zones on the news before everything went to shit,” she said. “Do you think this is the real deal? I thought it was supposed to be a bunch of conspiracy crap.”
“It could be,” I said. “I never believed any of it. With the speed that everything went to hell, there’s no way the government would have had time to plan for anything, let alone safe habitats for the world’s elite to escape to.”
“What if, though?”
“What if what?” I asked. “Even if the Safe Zones are real, why would this guy have this ticket? His name was David Giuilano. This supposed confirmation of residence is for a C. Miller.”
“Who knows? Maybe David Giuilano ran across this C. Miller and killed him.”
I stayed quiet for a moment because I knew it was possible. The baby was playfully slapping at my calf now, wanting to be picked up. I lifted him up and cradled him to my chest as I sat on the bed.
“Blue Ridge,” Kendra said. “Where would that be in Virginia?”
“I’m guessing somewhere along the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
I hated that I was giving in to her wishful thinking, but it was entertaining. Figuring out the puzzle—if indeed there was one—to this document gave me something to busy my mind with. Even if it was fake (and I was almost certain this was the case), it was the first bit of new information of any kind we had gotten in six months or so.
“Would you go with me?” Kendra asked. “If we found out tomorrow that this Safe Zone really exists and that it’s somewhere on the east coast, would you go with me? Would you help me get there?”
The way she looked at me made me want to collapse. It made me want to grab her face and kiss her hard. The worst part of all was that she had no idea what she was doing. She had never intentionally lured me on.
“Yes,” I said. And I sincerely meant it.
She smiled and then took the baby from me
. She spoke softly to him and hummed a song that always seemed to soothe him. The baby softly batted her nose and giggled.
I looked at the new weapons on the bedroom floor and the cargo pants. My eyes were locked on that sheet of paper as my eyes grew heavy. I drifted off with Kendra humming the baby to sleep against my back.
5
I don’t remember having any dreams that night, or waking up with any sort of revelatory emotions dazzling my half-dozed head. Still, when I opened my eyes to that familiar rusty, yellow-white that had served as daylight after the last of the blasts and bestial roars, I was ready to pack our few meager belongings and hit the road. Maybe my rested mind was more willing to believe that the sheet of paper that I’d found in David Giuilano’s pants wasn’t part of a hoax. Maybe those safe zones existed.
I got dressed and went into the kitchen where I found Kendra and the baby eating oatmeal. The baby’s was a bit mushier than Kendra’s; there was a froth of it around his mouth as he babbled enthusiastically at my appearance in the doorway.
Here’s the thing about me and Kendra—well, actually, I think it might be a thing that any survivors of an apocalyptic event might share with one another after spending enough horrifying days together. But sometimesI like to think it’s something that was only ours. It’s this weird sort of telepathy that keeps us on the same wavelength. If I find myself thinking about how much I miss a Cook Out hot dog, she’ll start talking about how her dad used to grill the best cheeseburgers under the sun. Or if she’s starts thinking about TV shows she’d enjoyed, I’d start talking about a movie that I suddenly remembered.
Whatever might be behind that oddity was at work as she looked up at me. I gave her a sleepy nod as I took my seat at the table. There was no “good morning,” and no “how did you sleep?” She gave me a cute sort of frown and looked from my eyes down to her lumpy oatmeal.
“If we could find a car that still ran halfway, we could do it, you know,” she said. “That is, if all the gas hasn’t been stolen.”
“I don’t think it would be possible for all of the gas to be stolen,” I said. “Besides that, I’m not sure a car is the safest way to travel. The engine noise would attract the attention of anyone within earshot.”
She smiled at me. I could tell that she was simply pleased that I hadn’t shot her idea dead right away.
“To be honest,” I said, “if it wasn’t for Squirt, I’d go. I’d do it right now. But it’s too risky. Not just for him, but for us. What do we do if we’re trying to lay low and he starts crying?”
She nodded, as if she had thought of this, too. “Still, the chance to get him to a place where he won’t have to worry about starving to death before he turns two would be worth it. For me, anyway.”
I didn’t say anything. I got up and made my own little bowl of oatmeal. The expiration date on the lid was a few months gone, but I didn’t care; we had already sifted through it for any bugs, worms, or mold. I saw where Kendra had started a small fire in the sink to heat the water for their oatmeal. I used the same lighter I had used to burn the bodies yesterday to make a small fire for my breakfast.
As I waited for my small pan of water to warm up, I looked around the kitchen. This house—the place the Dunn family had once called home—had become our own home over the last few months. I’m sure we hadn’t loved it as much as the Dunns had, but we damn sure appreciated it just as much.
It would be hard to leave it behind.
But I was already beginning to understand that we couldn’t just ignore the paper we’d found last night. It went unspoken between us, but we both knew that to ignore the paper and what it might mean would be foolish.
There were two possible outcomes: first, the Safe Zones were real and meant that we would no longer have to live in fear and hunger on a daily basis; second, the Safe Zones were a hoax as we had been told, but the mere idea that they might exist would give us something to once again hope for.
Hope was a weird thing. When you were without it, it seemed like some foolish dream that children once had under summertime skies as they fantasized about the future. But when it reared its head and poked at your heart like an old scar, it was impossible to ignore. In many ways, it became your reason for living.
“I think we need to go,” Kendra said. “Yesterday, we had to kill two men that showed up out of nowhere on our porch. There were others before them. It’s no way to live. Especially not if there really are Safe Zones out there.”
“Well, it’s not like we’d have much to pack,” I said.
This was my way of giving in. I wasn’t necessarily letting her know that I was agreeing with her, but I wasn’t arguing either.
“So we’ll do it?” Kendra asked.
I took a moment to revel in the fact that she was waiting for my confirmation. This wasn’t a situation where she would take Squirt and leave on her own if I refused to go. She’d be mad for a few days if I didn’t go along with this, but she’d still be with me. She’d stay with me and eventually, respect my decision.
But she already knew that I was not going to fight her on this. As I took a mouthful of bland oatmeal, I knew that our time in the Dunn house was nearly over.
“Yes, let’s do it. But tomorrow. We need to spend today packing and coming up with some kind of a plan.”
The smile on her face was bright. The baby responded to it in kind, giggling and making clutching gestures at her.
We wolfed down our meager breakfasts and carried out the daily chores with excitement. While I was collecting the few scraps of clothes I had and placing them in old plastic grocery bags, she approached me slowly and gave me a hug. She was frail and thin but I could tell by just wrapping my arms around her that there was something at her center that was unbreakable.
“You’ll keep us safe, right?” she asked. “Me and the baby?”
No one had ever asked something so monumental of me. Even for the seven months or so Kendra and I had spent together, she’d never vocalized such a question. Hearing it made me feel slightly ill. I had never been athletic, never had one of those builds you see on the fronts of men’s health magazines. Before the world went to hell, I’d had the beginnings of a beer gut and a flare of carpal tunnel in my wrists from time to time.
“Yes,” I answered. “Of course.”
Things were different now. The version of myself that had spent eight hours a day behind a computer as a proposal editor was gone. He had taken with him the version of me that then went home to watch TV, maybe read some of the latest King or Crichton, then go to bed. That version of me had been replaced by a creature that killed when it was necessary and then burned the bodies behind a house that did not belong to him.
I felt Kendra against me and felt that familiar yet troublesome stirring beneath my waist. I wanted her. I had wanted her almost from the moment I had met her. But it was evident that she did not feel the same. I almost preferred that. Romance and sex would complicate things.
Besides, she was asking me to protect her now. That was a whole different kind of wanting, and I’d take whatever I could get.
6
All of our belongings fit into five plastic grocery bags, an old busted backpack, and an old diaper bag that we had been carrying with us before we had set up camp in the Dunn’s house. We set the bags by the front door when we were done packing. I looked at the backpack sadly; half of its content made up our food supply. It consisted mainly of canned fruit, a few cans of Spam and Vienna Sausages, and the rest of our oatmeal. While it was far from culinary greatness, it would feed us for about two weeks if we rationed it properly.
Kendra also had a fanny pack that she had clipped around her waist the moment we had started packing. It contained a peculiar assortment: the six additional rounds for David Giuilano’s pistol, two lighters, two pacifiers for the baby, and four AA batteries which, the last time we checked, worked.
In terms of weapons, we could have done a lot worse. I ventured to guess that most other poor souls wandering
the roads only wished to be armed as heavily as we were. There was our rifle and the AK 47 we acquired from the trespassers yesterday, propped up on the other side of the door. There was also the pistol that we took from David Giuilano.
I hated that my mind went there, but adding up the ammo we had on us did make us a deadly pair. It made me a bit more confident about heading out into a dangerous and lethal world that we no longer knew.
I thought of the ruined cities we’d seen, the smell of charred buildings and bodies. I recalled the thousands of bodies we’d seen scattered on the roads and throughout the husks of cities. It might not be as unsightly this time around (assuming the bodies had gone to rot, or had been picked over by whatever scavenging creatures still roamed the land), but the fact remained that it was still the sort of world that waited for us at the end of the Dunn’s long driveway.
Kendra held a large folded sheet of paper out to me. It was the map that we had yet to pack up. We’d need to look over it to figure out the best route. We’d want to stick to the back roads for sure, especially if we planned to find a car somewhere (which I still thought might not be the best idea).
“Any ideas yet?” she asked as I took the map from her.
“Back roads for sure. Although, if we get into a situation where we need more supplies, we may have to leave them.”
We set the map down on the kitchen table and plotted our course. The baby slept peacefully in the bedroom as we traced out the best route between Kempry, Georgia and where the Blue Ridge Mountains etched their way across Virginia. It would be a long trek, but it was certainly doable. We located a few small-to-medium sized towns to head into in search of supplies. These were towns that weren’t likely to have boasted large populations before the end of it all, and hopefully, had not attracted much attention afterwards.
We hunkered over the map for about an hour. Kendra for the most part, was a meticulous planner. She would have probably looked the map over even longer if the baby’s cries hadn’t interrupted us. I listened to her speaking to him from the bedroom as I looked at the path we had traced out on the map with a pencil. It was scary to know that the jagged line we’d drawn was essentially going to be the next few weeks of our lives.
Nests: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Page 2
