The Barbarous Road_A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survivor Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  I turn and look at Marcus and he shakes his head, like he gets it, like he knows it’s time.

  “Yeah,” he says to me.

  “I’ll go first, check it out,” I say.

  Bailey sneaks her hand into mine under the water, gives it a quick pump then looks at me with that look in her eye. The look that says be careful. The look that says she wants me to be okay, to live. My blue lips curl into a smile. I like her and she knows this. She likes me, too. What in God’s name did I get myself into with her?

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, then drop down and swim out into the bay, relishing the open space once more. It’s still a gut wrenching sight. There’s so much smoke! So much so that it’s still a little difficult to see with the polluted air burning your eyes.

  I duck back under the dock and say to Marcus, “It’s really bad out here, but I think it’s clear.”

  “What’s the likelihood that it’s not?” he asks.

  “Fifty-fifty. Maybe more. I can’t really see too far, but nothing’s blown up for awhile and I don’t hear anything beyond a few burning boats.” He starts to speak, but I cut him off because he needs to know. “There’s also this oily looking slick on the surface of the water I don’t want to be in or around. I’m not sure if it can catch on fire or what.”

  “What kind of slick? An oily slick you said?”

  “Gas maybe? Oil? I can’t really tell. It’s too hard to see out there and I’m not really good about that kind of thing anyway.”

  The six of us leave the safety of the dock and swim out under the cover of sick, dusty skies. We follow Marcus to the shore, him putting his hand up to keep us from following him. He heads up the shore and a few minutes later, he returns and says, “We’re good. Let’s go.”

  One by one, we pile out of the water, follow Marcus through the streets, marveling at the destruction a few flyby’s left behind. Not everything is destroyed. Some homes are only half burnt, some are still on fire and some are now catching others on fire since these homes are nearly shoulder to shoulder with each other.

  “This is crazy,” Amber says taking it all in. Abigail walks beside her mother, holding her hand and weeping. When we get to the house we were staying at, we’re grateful to see it’s still standing and not in any immediate danger. By the look of it, Amber’s home survived, too.

  “Do you think they’ll be back?” Amber asks.

  “Not likely,” I say, “but we can’t really be sure.”

  “You should stay with us,” Bailey says, forgetting or ignoring the fact that there are six of us and three rooms and I’m not anxious to sleep on a couch when we can all have beds.

  “That’s okay,” Amber says. “We can stay in our own home.”

  “Then you should at least come to dinner and we can talk about getting off the island. That is, if we can still use your boat. How many bedrooms does it have?”

  “Three,” she says, still looking a little lost and frazzled.

  I’m doing the math, thinking if Marcus sleeps on deck, Bailey and I can share a room, Corrine can have her own room and Amber and Abigail can have their room.

  Yeah, this could work.

  “If my father comes back and sees the boat gone, if he doesn’t know where to find me, I’m not sure what that’ll do to him.”

  “How do you know he’s coming back?” Corrine asks, deadpan.

  Amber wipes her eyes and says, “I don’t know that he’s coming back.”

  “I get it,” she says.

  “Do you?”

  “My dad was killed in front of me. When I left with Marcus, at least I knew he wouldn’t be looking for me. At least I know he’d want me safe.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She left us.”

  I take a deep, involuntary breath thinking of this poor girl. She loses her mother to neglect, loses her father to a gang, gets indoctrinated into the seedy underworld of child trafficking all before she’s old enough to go to college.

  No one really says anything because it’s hitting all of us hard, even Marcus, who almost never shows emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” Amber says. “We’ll join you for dinner. What time?”

  “Maybe an hour before sunset?” Bailey answers. “Unless something else happens…”

  “What if it does?”

  “Then we’ll make our way toward each other,” Marcus says. “Same as we just did.”

  Amber and Abigail return that evening with a bottle of wine and fresh clothes. They still aren’t put together that well because there’s no water or electricity, so being clean and doing your makeup isn’t going to be as high a priority as say digging bits of fiberglass out of your skin. Not that I care. People are not their looks and anyone who says otherwise is bound to have a reality check in days like these.

  Dinner is a little quiet, the wine takes some of the edge off us and in the end we all enjoy what we can of the evening before the important conversation takes place.

  What to do about the boat…

  “I think you should take it,” Amber says. “Abigail and I don’t really have anywhere to go, but we don’t want to leave either. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my father is probably dead and that I don’t want to leave the only thing I have left, which is this house.”

  “We’ve all left the things and people who are most important to us,” Bailey reasons.

  “I have my home, though. And aren’t you all trying to get back to yours?”

  Looking at Marcus, who looks down and away at this, I say, “Not all of us.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because we’re better in numbers,” Marcus says under his breath.

  “What Marcus is not saying is that if it’s as bad as we’re fearing, then we’re going to need each other.”

  “We’ll be okay,” Amber says, chin up slightly, her mind already made up.

  “Do you have enough food?” I ask.

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll go to the truck with you, and you can get some from our supply. We have enough. Plus we’re probably not going to need all of it on the boat anyway, so you taking a few things means we have less stuff to move.”

  “Where are we going?” Corrine asks.

  “We are on our way to Sacramento, but now that we can travel by water, I’m thinking we head up the coast, cruise into San Francisco in the yacht,” Marcus answers. “After that, we can grab a car and head east to Sacramento.”

  Bailey starts to object, and I know why, but then Corrine asks, “What about us?”

  I catch the concern in Corrine’s voice, but Bailey’s apprehension is clear as day. I think she wants to formally cut the ties with her fiancée before heading to San Francisco with me. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

  “We’ll figure it out as we go,” he says, his voice resolute, his answer leaving no room for further questions.

  I look at Bailey and she’s not looking happy, but she’s not the kind of woman to throw a fit it seems, so she holds her tongue.

  “I think I have an old flashlight,” Amber says. “I can see what you guys have, if you’re still okay with me maybe getting a few things to tide us over.”

  “You have a gun?” Marcus asks.

  “We don’t keep guns in the house,” she says.

  “Well it’s time. We’ve got a really good supply. C’mon, let’s get you set up.”

  “I don’t want to have a gun—”

  Marcus stops cold, turns around and faces her. “If you don’t want a gun, then you and Abigail are coming with us. I’m not leaving you here without one, and not because of you, but because of her,” he says, looking down at Abby.

  “He’s right,” I say.

  “You have no idea the people who are out there using this situation to their advantage,” Corrine says in a small, certain voice. Looking peaked at the memories of her own ordeal, she says, “You’ll have to trust me on this one.”

  “You’re taking a gun,” I say. I’m one
thousand percent with Marcus on this one.

  “I…I don’t…I don’t know how to use one.”

  “Well in that case, we’ve got a couple of shotguns that’ll work just fine,” Marcus says. “They’re easy to use and they’re perfect for home defense.”

  She swallows hard then says, “Will you show me how to use one?”

  He nods his head, then says, “C’mon before it gets too late.”

  When Marcus, Amber and Abigail leave, Bailey clears her throat then says, “I used to be a late owl, but with no light and nothing to do, I think I’m more than ready for bed.” Looking at me, she asks, “Are you coming?”

  “Are you guys going to have sex?” Corrine asks, straight-faced.

  I always forget how forthright today’s teens have become. It takes me off guard with Indigo. With Corrine, it does it even more so.

  “No,” I say. “No one has sex in conditions like these.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” she says as she turns and heads back to her room. “Good night.”

  “Night,” both Bailey and I say at the same time.

  Lying in bed next to Bailey, our bodies almost touching, I listen to her breathing and I listen for Marcus to come home. He does and that’s when I allow myself to finally relax.

  I’m feeling myself drifting off when Bailey’s body scoots next to mine. Her hand comes up on my chest as she turns on her side. She slides her calf across my shin and I have to say, this is comfortable. “When you said no one has sex under these conditions, did you mean it?”

  “You have a fiancée.”

  “We don’t know that,” she says.

  “That’s a morbid thing to say about someone you once loved.”

  “I wasn’t cracking a joke or trying to be cute. He could be dead. And even if he’s not, our relationship died a long time ago.”

  “You said as much,” I reply.

  “Why do you think I’m really going back home?” she asks.

  “You would’ve gone home even if you didn’t meet me,” I say, closing the matter. “So whatever your reasons, they’re yours and yours alone.”

  “I wish we weren’t going to San Francisco first,” Bailey says.

  I think she’s mulling over the logistics of it. We were never going to Frisco first. It was always Sacramento so she could end things clean. The fact that Bailey had a conscience about this was something. But maybe she just needs to see if he’s still alive. I can’t imagine being in her situation and just writing your insignificant other off no matter how bad things were. I mean, for whatever reason, I still wonder about Margot. Did she survive? Part of me hopes she did. Okay, all of me hopes she survived. But I wouldn’t do for her what Bailey’s doing for him.

  Because we’re talking about her fiancée again, I consider easing her leg off mine so we can straighten this out. Then again, the last time I had a woman nestled up against me was Margot and now she’s with someone else. I don’t like the idea of being with another man’s woman, but no man ever truly owns a woman. A woman is only a man’s if she decides that. And Bailey decided she’s no longer his. This is subject to change, though. From what I’ve learned living with two women, everything is always subject to change. So for now, she’s free to give herself to me, and by implied suggestion, she’ll stay with me, but it’s up to me to keep her and I won’t do that shoving her leg off me again.

  “If you would have never met me, and none of this would have happened, would you have married him?”

  “Not after that text from that girl,” she says. “I can’t feel this lonely and know he’s doing…whatever it was he was doing...with some skank on the side. So no, I would not have married him.”

  “When you see him though—”

  “I know exactly what he looks like,” she says.

  “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “If you think I’ll see him and all these old feelings and emotions will come rushing back, that I’ll regret what I’ve done with you and choose to be with him, this isn’t a movie, Nick. This isn’t one of my books. I’m grounded enough with myself to understand I carried on neglected by him entirely too long, and that’s only highlighted by the feelings I’m almost letting myself have with you.”

  The thing about men who take their women for granted is that when they’re ready to leave, when women like Margot and Bailey decide they’re done, there’s no turning back. That ship has sailed. But the thing about men with women like Bailey is that once the woman decides to leave, these same men realize they don’t want them gone, so they promise them the world on bended knee and with tears in their eyes, hoping they don’t get left. Sadly, this works a lot the first, second and third times. And sometimes it doesn’t work at all.

  The proof is in the fact that if Margot wanted me back, I’d probably take her.

  “How many times have you tried to leave him?” I ask, still holding back on my own willingness to wade into these uncharted waters.

  “There will be only once.”

  “He’ll beg and cry for you to stay. He’ll tell you what you want to hear in the hopes that you’ll give him one more chance.”

  “He’s had a thousand chances.”

  “But you’ll give him one more, and that’s all he needs.”

  “You are a good man, Nick. He’s not. He’s just pretty, and he has money he doesn’t mind sharing, and once upon a time he knew how to charm the panties off a lady. You don’t seem to want anything from me, or even me at all now that you’ve learned I’m technically with someone else, and for some stupid reason that makes me want you more.”

  “It’s not a game with me,” I say. “It’s not just me.”

  “It isn’t a game with me either.”

  I don’t know what to say other than I like how she feels against me. I like her breath on my ear, her hands on my chest, this close proximity I feel with her. All I need to do is just let go once more. Let her in. Turning into her, I lean forward and kiss her gently on the lips.

  She kisses me back, but then pulls away and says, “Is this a one time thing or are you all the way in? Because I can’t take this back and forth business with you.”

  “When you say all the way in…”

  “I mean no more wishy-washy crap about me and the guy I’m going home to leave.”

  “If you turn out to be a pain in the ass, that’s a deal breaker, too,” I say, grinning. She now slides her body fully over mine and the next thing I know, we’re pulling at each other’s clothes and acting like a pair of love-drunk teens.

  Marcus is on the couch, not quite asleep, but not fully awake as he listens to Bailey and Nick go at it. On nights like these, he wished his senses were not so attuned to every little sound. He wished he could turn on a TV. Plug in some headphones. Go for a walk. Then, just as he was lying there with his thoughts turning to his father, Corrine walked out into the living room wearing only a long T-shirt she must’ve found somewhere in the house.

  “Marcus,” she whispered.

  “I’m awake.”

  “Are you going to sleep out here all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m scared,” she said, quietly.

  “You don’t want to be alone?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You can take the couch if you want,” he offered. “I can do the floor.”

  “I don’t want you to have to do that.”

  “You can’t imagine the places I’ve slept before. Trust me when I tell you the floor is just fine. You’ll need to bring your bedding though because I want mine.”

  She returned a few minutes later with a quilt and her pillow. She made herself a bed on the couch, then laid there for a long time. Marcus was waiting for her to say something, but somewhere along the way she fell asleep. An hour later, he heard a light moan followed by a whimper. She starting saying the word “no,” over and over again, frantic, and then she began to beg, saying “no” and “no, please, please don’t.”

  He kn
ew what this was. Rather he assumed it had something to do with what she survived. What he couldn’t tell was whether someone was trying to kill her father or whether they were moving in on her.

  Finally she started to cry and he almost woke her, but he didn’t. He’d never dealt with something like this before. Finally she yelped out, jolting herself awake. For a long time, she just laid there, crying. Finally she got off the couch, found her way to the bathroom (and a toilet which still didn’t flush), then returned a few minutes later. Instead of going back to the couch, she pulled her blanket and pillow down to the floor and made a bed next to Marcus.

  She didn’t seem to know he was still awake, that he had nightmares like hers and had since conditioned himself to sleep very little while operating at full capacity on limited reserves.

  For a second, he was very uncomfortable.

  He didn’t like the close proximity with people, not unless it was a life threatening situation. He liked it even less that she was young, without a family and fresh out of…what she survived. He felt her hand reach for his. He froze, letting her take it.

  “I’m awake,” he said. She didn’t let go of his hand. In fact, when he started to take his out of hers, she tightened her grip just enough to let him know he should stay.

  “I know.”

  “What are you doing, Corrine?” he asked, his heart hammering in his chest, so much uncertainty in their physical connection.

  “I miss my father.”

  “I know.”

  “I miss my mother, too,” she said, sad.

  He didn’t say anything because it made him think too much about how beaten down at life his own mother had been. He’d left her all alone with his old man, the miserable son of a—

  “Do you have anyone?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I’m too old for you, Corrine, too damaged…”

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Thirty-one.”

  “That’s not too old, if that’s what I wanted, but that’s not what I want, Marcus. I just want to be near someone who reminds me of my father. I just need to forget this is happening. If only for a few minutes.”