by Connor Mccoy
When Kurt did let someone know they had offended him, it wasn’t pleasant. Not at all.
Darber learned pretty quickly what to tell Kurt and what not to. Kurt never tolerated lying, but on the other hand, he didn’t appreciate bluntness. So, Darber made sure to massage his words as carefully as possible. He could tell him bad news, he just had to say it along with mentioning the possibility of a solution down the road. It worked this week. But it might not next.
So, once again, he would conserve his rations carefully, to make them last as long as they could. Fortunately, Darber understood how much the human body required to keep going. Water was essential. He would drink that in small doses throughout the upcoming week. He’d also be aware of dizzy spells. An empty stomach and too much work could cause an ill feeling that Darber would like to avoid. As he recently had turned fifty-four, he was more aware of his limitations than ever, and knew not to overwork himself.
The courier wheezed a little. Darber shook his head. The youngster was skinny, with his clothes hanging loose from his body. He seemed to wear the same oversized red shorts and dirty blue shirt, and more than once his shorts fell off him completely. The courier could be fresh out of high school. Darber wasn’t sure, for the doctor never asked him his age. Actually, Darber didn’t know much about him, except for his name. What was it again?
“Lance?” Darber asked as he pulled out a small paper cup from his kitchen cabinet. Then he poured some water from his bottle into the cup and offered the small portion to Lance. The young courier took the cup and downed it quickly. “I hope that’s the last haul for you this morning,” Darber added.
Lance coughed. “Thanks. I-I got to go. I get chewed out if I don’t get back before seven.”
“You’d think they give you a bicycle at least to ride around town,” Darber said.
“They say I got to earn it.” Lance coughed again. “They said I should be glad I get to sleep in the attic at Tony’s.”
Darber rolled his eyes. “How generous.”
Lance got up. Actually, he climbed up, using the armrests as leverage to pull his body to a standing position. He wobbled, but after a moment his body steadied itself. Darber winced when he noticed how sunken-in Lance’s eyes were. The kid clearly had lost a lot of weight quickly.
“Oh,” Lance said weakly, “Kurt says he’ll be by tomorrow. He wanted you to check his, uh, his…”
A chill ran down Darber’s back at the notion of Kurt coming by, but he pushed it aside. “Probably wants me to test his reflexes and pain responses. Did he say anything about the alcohol I requested?
Lance shook his head. “Naah. Not a word. I didn’t ask. You know I can’t.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right.” Darber’s face tightened. The mere act of asking for something was an almost sure way to get a smack in the face. Darber was amazed that he managed to broach such a subject with Kurt and not invite retribution. Kurt even seemed amused at the time.
I’m nothing more than a house pet to him, Darber thought.
Lance hurried for the door. “I’ll see ya tomorrow,” he said. He almost tripped twice, but made it out the door, across the porch, and onto the side street that stretched out into the neighborhood, without incident.
Darber strolled onto his porch. “Godspeed,” he muttered half-jokingly as Lance disappeared around a street corner. Even a short walk across a few blocks had become like an epic journey. If the people here received proper nourishment and medicine, the new world wouldn’t be such an ordeal. But when the wrong people are in charge, all of a sudden resources become tightly controlled. Now you owe your existence to someone else, and if you’re of no value, you’re expendable.
Ronald Darber was damn lucky he was a doctor. The new rulers in town prized his skills and gave him the provisions needed to survive. That was the only currency that mattered now. Paper money and coins were laughed at. If you had food and drink, you were a king. No, even a god to some people. People such as Kurt.
Darber plodded back into his small home, which doubled as his office. He might have lived in a Midwestern state with many farms, but he was no rancher or farmer. He understood the innards and operations of the human body, but couldn’t fathom how to successfully till a garden. Like so many others, he took modern conveniences for granted. He never dreamed one day they would not be available.
That’s why I’m stuck, Darber thought. Sure, he could leave town. He even kept a bicycle hidden away in a home closet. Unfortunately, he didn’t possess the food or supplies for a long journey, or even a short one. If he tried to gather supplies, he’d draw suspicion, and then any window of freedom he had would be gone. They’d always be looking in on him. They might even confine him to his house.
He turned his eye back to his kitchen. Better to enjoy the solitude while he had it. Kurt would come calling tomorrow.
PERCHED ON HIS BICYCLE, Conrad’s heart sank as he gazed upon the first few homes that made up what was going to be a lovely suburb. For well over a hundred years, Davies was a set of homesteads and dusty roads, a tiny dot on the map that few ever paid attention to. But time brought expansion of the towns to the north, all the way to the borders of Davies. And so, this tiny little backwater, over the past two decades, had been transforming into a suburb.
But now that expansion was stopped dead in its tracks. Houses that were under construction now were frozen in a state of partial completeness. Wooden frames formed skeletons of homes that would not be finished. Some workers had managed to put up drywall before the solar event hit. One or two homes possessed roofs, but the shingles had not been added.
A nice comfy suburb, with no farms or livestock in sight. God only knew what these people must have thought when the modern world shut down around them. Did they all flee to the countryside in the hope of finding food? Or did they hunker down here? If it was the latter, there must be a supply line to send them food. After all the time that passed since the EMP, there’s no way anyone could survive here without regular provisions.
One way Conrad could find out would be to ask a local. But for the past twenty minutes, he hadn’t found so much as a soul on these streets.
As the flock of new homes gave way to older, completed structures, he began noticing something else. The cars, trucks, any automobile he passed, whether in a driveway or stalled on a curb, had their gas tank covers opened. Conrad slowed down as he approached a small red car on the side of the road. The gasoline tank cover yawned open.
They’ve been taking fuel out of the cars, Conrad thought. It made sense. There might be a few generators in town that still were functional and could run off gasoline. Cannibalizing the gasoline from vehicles that wouldn’t start up anyway was a smart move. Even so, Conrad wished there was somebody around to ask.
Additionally, this town wasn’t as messed up as Conrad had expected. Sure, the lawns were overgrown, with nobody having tended to them in weeks. And, of course, vehicles lay around completely stalled, with no way to start them up. But the streets themselves were quite clean for a town whose regular garbage service abruptly had ceased. There were leaves, twigs, but little man-made trash.
There were also no dead bodies. In the event of a societal catastrophe where systems broke down, people could expire on the street due to hunger, thirst, disease, or attacks from feral animals. One of the great apocalyptic horrors of urban areas was the accumulation of corpses. But that wasn’t the case here.
Once you’ve secured provisions, one of the first orders of survival after a catastrophe is getting diseases and infections under control, Conrad thought. It was just like what happened in Redmond with Maggiano’s empire. Dead bodies and feces were magnets for viruses and bacteria. Maggiano wanted to rule that town, but there would be no point in ruling a town infested with disease. So, he enlisted survivors to haul away human and animal carcasses.
“So, who’s in charge here?” he asked the wind.
Conrad’s bike soon approached the intersection of the oldest part of town. Suddenly
, a pungent odor grabbed hold of his nostrils. Was that smoke? He inhaled more deeply. No, that was more like exhaust. Vehicle exhaust. It may have been over a month since he was in a world with working automobiles, but it was hard to forget such a smell.
Now Conrad was suspicious, more than usual. A working car or truck? Who around here possessed one?
He pedaled harder down the street. Sure enough, up ahead in the distance he spotted something turning. It was big, too big to be moved by human hands or to be pulled by horses. It looked like an automobile. It was too large to be a car. Maybe it was a van. No, Conrad had caught a glimpse of the rear window and the shape of the cab around it. There also seemed to be a truck bed just behind the window. All of the details added up to a large pickup truck.
But as fast as Conrad could pedal, he couldn’t reach the street corner in time. The vehicle had made its turn, and it was a good few minutes before Conrad had reached the intersection. By the time Conrad turned his bike onto the road, there was no truck present.
Conrad inhaled. There was definitely fresh exhaust in the air. His mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. Then he looked down to the asphalt. A few pieces of garbage—aluminum cans, mangled cardboard—all were flattened. Tire treads even were pressed onto an old fast food container.
Conrad pushed on his pedals again. He was determined to track down the mystery truck.
But a half an hour later, fatigue gripped him, and he had to stop on a curbside. He had been pedaling a lot today, with few breaks. Now his sudden mystery truck hunt had sapped even more of his energy.
“Dammit Conrad, you’re losing focus here.” He had come to Davies to find Doctor Darber, but instead he had latched on this enigma like a dog to a bone.
He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. A still-working vehicle shouldn’t be that unusual. An EMP blast would fry electronics installed in automobiles, but not every vehicle possessed such wiring and circuitry. Older vehicles could escape the assault of an electromagnetic pulse and still work, provided they had gas, oil and a working battery.
So maybe the gas around here isn’t being siphoned for a generator. It could be for that truck, Conrad thought.
After a few minutes, Conrad mounted his bicycle again. First thing’s first. Doctor Ronald Darber should be his top priority. Besides, Conrad could ask the doctor what’s going on.
LANCE CARRIED his latest load down the street, his long light brown hair dangling in front of his face. He had recovered enough of his strength to carry this box to his latest recipient, an auto worker named Juan. He just hoped he could make it to Juan’s auto repair shop before he collapsed again from exhaustion.
When are these guys going to up my food ration? Lance blew another lock of hair from his face. And how about a decent haircut? Or at least a pair of scissors?
As he passed a line of houses, a figure on a bicycle sped past, pedaling down the street. In an instant, Lance glimpsed the figure and was so startled he dropped his box onto the sidewalk.
No, not him!
Lance quaked. No, his eyes had to be playing a trick on him. Conrad Drake, the man who had chased him off his property with a freakin’ hand grenade! No, he couldn’t have just pedaled by on a bike.
Bad memories flooded into his mind with the force of water bursting from a dam. Phantom sounds of gunfire shook him down to his feet. He recalled the shots of the men around him, and the bullets spitting back at them from the ranch, some of which struck men down around him. Then, he and one other man had fled the property, with Conrad lobbing hand grenades behind them. Like the other men who had joined Derrick Wellinger, he was looking for a job in exchange for food and shelter. But in the end, Lance survived only to be left with nothing.
Then he wandered about the state roads, so hungry that at one point he was reduced to eating grass to survive. Before long, his travels took him to a nearby town, and then here to Davies, where the promise of food and shelter attracted him.
So, why the hell did that nightmare follow him all the way here?
Lance scooped up the box. He had to make this delivery to Juan. Hopefully, this was all a bad daydream, and he’d never see that man again, ever.
RONALD DARBER’S eyes snapped open. Who was that?
He looked down the road. The wind had brushed against the loose siding of a nearby store. Darber clutched his chest. He had fallen asleep again in his porch chair, once again at the mercy of the outdoor sounds.
He clutched the banister of his porch. He should get inside. If he wasn’t so haggard, he’d have thought to go back into his house earlier, before he took an unexpected nap. He had no business sleeping out here, where he was noticeable and vulnerable.
Damn, Darber thought as he rubbed his eyes. You overworked yourself again today.
The sun was starting to set. Darber’s legs twitched. Now he had even more reason to go inside. Kurt had brought a lot of order to Davies, but even so, it’s not like his men patrolled the streets at night like evening security guards or policemen.
But before he could turn back to his front door, a lone figure approached on a bicycle from the street that ran past his home. His heart quickened. For a moment he feared the worst, perhaps a messenger from Kurt with bad news, or even Kurt himself arriving early. Yet, as the man on the bike came closer, Darber noticed the rider’s disheveled white hair and beard. This was an older man, not anybody Darber recognized from around town.
Darber leaned over the banister. No, he knew that man. “Conrad!” he called out.
Conrad slowed his bike and soon stopped it short of the Darber home’s porch steps. Conrad then let out a long breath, followed by a cough. “Damn,” Conrad muttered, “the miles sure catch up with you.”
Darber quickly ran down the steps. “You look worse every time I see you,” Darber said with a chuckle.
Conrad looked down at his friend. Darber’s height was about a foot shorter than Conrad’s six-foot-tall frame. “Always knew your eyesight would go one day.”
Darber laughed. “I’m going to have to let you have that one.” He took Conrad by his right hand and shook it. “So, what brings you here, besides the end of the world?”
Conrad looked around thoughtfully. “As it turns out, I don’t know much about childbirth. Thought I’d consult an expert.”
Darber’s eyes widened. “Camilla? Conrad, good lord…”
Conrad laughed. “No, it’s not Camilla. Someone different. She’s my son’s girl, and she needs to be checked over. I need you to come back with me. I know it may be asking a lot, but I’d also like to have you there when she delivers.”
“That’s what I love about you, Conrad. You get right to the point.” Though Darber chuckled as he said it, he was grateful Conrad was spilling his story so quickly. Better yet, Conrad’s offer was a godsend. Still, Darber couldn’t let on how intensely he was interested in Conrad’s request.
Darber walked up the porch steps. Conrad followed. “Yeah, I wish I could do the whole ‘catch up on old times’ routine, but I’ve had some trouble at the homestead,” Conrad said. “Another homesteader thought he could grab my property by force. It was nasty. Fortunately, nobody in my care was killed, but there were some injuries. I wasn’t there for much of it, and I want to speed this up so I’m not away from home too long.”
Darber didn’t like the sound of Conrad’s story. “But it’s safe now, right?”
“I got some additional help to guard the home, including my ex. But there’s no immediate danger that I know of.”
That was good enough for Darber. “That’s great. I’m glad you didn’t lose anyone. It’s not everyone who can say that nowadays.”
“Yeah.” Conrad raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’ve heard of some trouble yourself. Anything going on in Davies?”
Darber’s skin burned. “Well, you hear all kinds of things. But enough about that. You say you need a doctor.”
“I do. I hate to pull you away from Davies. Are you in the middle of treating anyone? We can work ou
t something.”
“No, no!” Darber backed up against his living room’s rear wall. “No, actually, a lot of people have fled Davies, so my patient pool isn’t what it used to be. I’m open for whatever you need, even if you want a long stay.”
“You sure about that? I figured you’re still eating good, so I imagine your patients must be trading you food for service.”
“Yes, you could say that,” Darber replied.
“Well, you can count on a lot more at my ranch,” Conrad said. “I’ll give you food, water, and some other resources if you need them, metals, building wood. I’ve also grown some herbs on my ranch that are helpful for medicine.”
Darber smiled slightly. “Well, who can say no to that? Consider it a deal.” He turned to the hallway. “I’ll get packing immediately.”
Conrad watched Darber move about the house. The doctor pulled out an old, worn brown leather suitcase and flung it open. Darber packed up clothes and supplies with such speed that it seemed as though he was both exhilarated and scared out of his wits all at once.
“Ron, you okay?” Conrad finally asked, “You’re moving like your ass is on fire.”
Darber looked up from his case. “I suppose I’m just excited for you.” He smiled, a little unconvincingly. “I’d like to leave before sunset. You do have camping equipment on you, right?”
“Sure. Got a nice tent, can house us for the night, but why not bunk out here? I don’t wish to impose, but we’re not in an awful hurry.” Conrad almost laughed. He never thought he’d be the one to slow things down.
Darber exhaled softly. “I’d like to get started as soon as possible if you could. I think it would be a bit difficult to linger here longer than I have to.”
