by David Smith
She had a small fire built on the tile floor with a couch facing it and we sat down. There were a few other chairs encircling the fire, large recliners and a couple of wooden rocking chairs. This was more luxury that I had seen in all my 17 years and we sat for a moment, she staring at me and me staring at the fire. Her hair was very fine, blonde, pulled back into a small bun with a few thin wavy strands loose and falling in her eyes. They were bright blue and too big for her face, which was pale and perfect. She was beautiful and awkward and if I had to guess, about the same age as my sister, two years younger than myself.
"I’m Stephanie.” She said so suddenly and aggressively it almost gave me a start.
The conversation came out fumbling and awkward after that. I had never spoken to a woman who was not my Mother or sister and it was probably even worse for her. She hadn’t spoken to anyone, as far as I knew, in I didn’t know how long.
"How long have you been living here?” I asked.
"She looked into the fire as if trying to count up the years. “I don’t know. I turned twelve on my last birthday then my parents died that year and I stopped counting after that.”
"How did they die?” I almost blurted out that my father had just died. Maybe it was to show her that I identified with her but before I could speak it felt like it might sound as if I was trying to one-up her so I held back.
"Starved. We started running low on food so they ate less and less till…” She stopped and put one arm around me, laying her head on my chest. At the time, I didn’t know what to think but I knew how it felt. I had only known her less than an hour but I felt like I would do anything to protect her, to be with her forever. Looking back on it now, I know how foolish it was.
She was asleep in a few minutes, breathing peacefully. I was thinking of my Mom and sister, how I couldn’t wait for them to meet this girl and how we would all live together in the bunker and I would be the head of my own family, the way my Dad was of us. I felt a great deal of responsibility but it wasn’t like a weight or a burden, more like motivation. I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t wait for her to wake so I tried to scoot out from under her to start gathering supplies for the walk through the woods in the morning. As soon as I started to slide over, she woke up and clinched her arms around me tighter, looking up at me.
"Have you ever kissed a girl?” she asked.
My brain stopped doing everything it was supposed to do for a moment. Of course I hadn't, but I didn't really want to, not her anyway. She was pretty but she was too young. I felt protective over her and for her to ask that at her age made me feel more so.
"Okay." I thought of how to let her down easy. "It's not that I don't want to. I mean, you're pretty but... I don't think we should...I don't think you're old enough to be..."
"What?!" She interrupted. "You think I want to kiss you?" She sounded offended. "That was just a simple question. I wasn't asking you to kiss me, please!"
I was speechless at the sudden bombardment.
"If I wanted you to kiss me, you would be. Actually, when I want you to want to kiss me, you will want to!" She was almost screaming now and I had to just get away from her. I was embarrassed for myself but also for her and kind of pissed off at her overreaction. I needed to get away.
I stood and walked away and she didn't follow, just folded her arms and plopped down angrily on the couch, more dramatically than necessary. I tripped over a stack of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazines as I fled, knocking them over and sending them sliding across the floor.
After picking myself up off the floor and walking around the corner, my eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could see that all the shelves were empty and covered with dust like they had been for some time. It was no wonder she was so thin. That's when it occurred to me that three people couldn't have survived for eighteen years off what had been here but I figured that's why they hadn't.
As I walked closer to the back, I caught the strong smell of old milk and rotting vegetables. Why is there something about a foul smell that ignites a need to investigate? Anytime someone smells something and say, 'That's horrible!' We have to respond with, 'Really? Let me smell.' Like our opinion is so important. Nevertheless, I pursued the smell.
I found a row of glass doors, side by side each other, and pulled one open. This was definitely the place. It smell like rotten eggs and milk mostly, made my throat close up and my mouth start to water from the back. There was another underlying smell though, like meat. I had only smelled it that strongly two other times; once when Dad killed a cow and brought pieces of it home and it rotted before we could eat it all and another time, when Dad and I were trapped in that store. This smelled more like the second time. I felt my way through the darkness past the doors and there was a corner of a wall, a hallway turning to the left. I followed it and found a door handle. I was just about to pull it when a flashlight clicked on and Stephanie was standing right next to me. I threw my hands up and stumbled backwards, falling flat on my back, my head bouncing off the concrete floor. I didn't really feel the pain so much as a tingling in my legs and a momentary paralysis. I scrambled back to my feet as soon as I could move, ready to hit her but held back. I'd never hit a girl.
"Where are you going?” she asked.
"Was looking for supplies for in the morning.” I said, running my fingers over the knot on the back of my head.
"Supplies for what? It will all still be there when it’s light. We can get it whenever we need it.”
I realized then that she had no idea that we had to leave the security of the store. “There’s not enough food here to stay for long and…”
"There’s more outside though.” She interrupted. “You haven’t seen outside yet. There’s a fenced in area with gardens…”
"And…” I cut her off. “My Mother and Sister are in a bunker a few miles through the woods. It’s even more secure than here, not being in the middle of town. My Dad and I should have been back this afternoon and she’s got to be worried sick.” she got quiet and turned away, looking down at the dingy floor in the flashlight beam. “Hey, don’t worry. I wouldn’t leave you here.”
"It doesn’t matter. You can go if you need to.” She said and I instinctively knew that was the end of the conversation, that there was nothing I could say to reason with her. So I chose another, less diplomatic path.
"I’m leaving in the morning and you’re coming with me if I have to knock you out and carry you.” I said then reached for the door handle.
"Don't open that door!" she said forcefully and threw herself between me and it.
"Why not? What's in there?"
After a long pause I started to push her aside and she answered. "My parents are in there." She said and looked at the floor. "I didn't have a place to bury them so that's where I put them. That's why I can't go with you. I just want to stay here with them. This is my home, where I grew up and I don't want to leave it." I guess she could see my argumentative expression in the flashlight beam. "I have plenty of food here and the dead have never broken in or even tried to. Why don't you go get your Mom and sister and bring them here?"
“There are worse things out there than the dead.” I barked. “It wasn’t the dead who killed my father. There were men and they probably have friends somewhere who are gonna come looking for them. And when they find what's left of them it's not gonna be safe here."
Fear ran across her face for only a moment then she quickly hid it behind her prideful attitude. "I can take care of myself.”
"Sure you can.” I said sarcastically and yanked the flashlight away from her and walked away.
As I walked through the aisles of the store, past electronic devices and clothes and jewelry, I wondered if I was making the right decision. It didn't seem right to force her to leave if she didn't want to but I knew that in days or weeks, if she was lucky, she'd be dead. She had to know that too. She had watched her Mom and Dad starve to death and she had to know it wouldn't be long till she was next. Then it occurred to me, as
I saw the the shadows of fishing poles against the ceiling like a ghostly forest of dead trees, that neither myself nor her had any idea what they would do to her if they found her. If they found her here alone and realized I had been here there was the possibility they would use her to find me. That could mean torture and I didn't think they would even have to go that far to get her to point them in the right direction, she didn't seem to like me that much anyway.
We walked in the thin beam of the flashlight until we found the ammo case, dust covered, broken glass and empty cardboard ammo boxes covering the floor. The glass cracked under my feet as I stepped up to scavenge what was left, which, to my surprise, was quite a lot. I only found a couple boxes of ammo for the 700 but more than I could count in .22 magnum and 12 gauge buckshot, slugs and birdshot. One thing there wasn’t any of was 9mm.
"Do you have any bullets in that gun you’re toting?” I asked.
She looked down and scratched a piece of glass around with the toe of her white sneaker. "No.” she said slowly. “That was my last bullet.”
I chuckled under my breath and shook my head. "You’re one hell of a good bluff.” I said and walked toward the gun display. “Let’s find you something you can use.”
There were three weapons left out of two rotating displays that looked like would have held 10 or 11 all together. There was a lever action .45 like I had seen on the cover of a few westerns back home in the bunker, a pump action 12 gauge and a .22 caliber deer rifle with a pink hand guard, butt stock and a low powered scope; probably meant to be a starter gun for a child. She grabbed it.
"I like this one.”
"I’m sure you do. Problem is, not enough knock down power. Even if you shoot them in the head it might not take out enough to stop them. This is what you need.” I said and handed her the shotgun.
"It’s heavy.” She said, looking like she would tip over if she held it out too far.
"Kicks like a mule too with this buckshot but all you have to do is pull the trigger in their direction and they’ll go down. See if you can cock it." I cocked it once to show her then handed to her.
With one hand around the stock and the other on the for-end she strained and couldn't budge it. I took it from her and put the recoil pad against her hip. "Use both hands to pull it toward you." This way she was able. After I showed her how to load it, I emptied the shelves into the backpack as she held it up to her shoulder, pretending to shoot.
"Only thing I can’t figure out is, there’s so much ammo left but the guns have been all but picked clean.”
"Daddy said there was a law passed the year before. You could buy all the guns you wanted but you could only buy ammo one box at a time. I think it was one a week, or a month…something like that.”
"It still surprises me. So many places were looted once things hit the fan. This place looks untouched except for what your family used.”
"Dad said as soon as the looting started, Wal-Mart closed down and boarded up. They even hired the local police to protect it with the understanding that they could stay here. The people wouldn’t have it though. They stood in the parking lot for days, waiting to be let in then got tired of waiting. It was a massacre. Just when the people started banging at the doors, the dead came.” She kept telling her story, looking down the sights of the shotgun, never looking up. “The police opened fire from the roof and didn’t stop until everything was still, the living, the dead, everything. When the police went out to clean up the mess, the manager locked them out. He knew that the food wouldn’t last as long with so many mouths to feed.”
"Sounds like a real bastard. How did your family get to stay?”
"Daddy was the manager.” She said, and cocked the shotgun, loading one into the chamber.
The story she had told me only a few hours earlier didn't quite match but I was too tired to work out the details. I also didn't want to accuse her of lying so I decided to change the subject at that point. “From what I’ve read, the government was pretty useless near the end."
"Well, from what I’ve read…” she said as she walked into the darkness. “if you have a sleepover on the first date and don’t have sex it could be because your boyfriend is insecure about the size of his penis.”
It took me a minute to process it, my mind going through a train of thoughts a mile long and switching tracks two or three times. Did she think I was her boyfriend? Did I want to be? Despite her bone thin arms and legs and angular face she was movie actress pretty but, no way. She was too young and definitely too young to be talking that way, especially about someone she just met. But I do have to admit, her invitation did open in my mind to a range of possibilities. But no, too soon, too young, too vulnerable. I thought for a moment, on the other hand, that this might be my only chance. If she was so accessible, someone less scrupulous or with less self-control might take her up on the offer but then realized, it wasn't like I had to worry about losing her to another guy. There were no other guys. I did feel like such a suggestive statement deserved a response but I didn't want to give the wrong one. "What the hell have you been reading?” was what I went with.
#
I followed her into the darkness which was now breaking as the glow of morning was creeping down through the skylights. A few beams of light were glaring down to the floor through the leaves of vines and trees. Other beams were diffused by the skylights that weren’t broken, dimly and evenly lighting the interior of the store.
She led me past her campsite, through two huge, black, plastic doors and into a huge stockroom, which was completely dark except for one intense beam of light, less than an inch wide, cutting across the path at eye level. I went to its source, a small peephole in a steel roll-up door, meant for deliveries. Trying to look through, the morning sun was blinding. Once my eye adjusted, squinting hard, I could see just three of the dead shuffling aimlessly in different directions. I turned to her and whispered.
"This is our chance. There are only a few. We’ll raise the door just enough to slide under it, then run past them. Stay close behind me and don’t shoot. If you do they’ll all hear and come dragging up.” The half of her face I could see in the fine beam of light looked terrified. “You ready?”
"I don’t want to die a virgin.”
Although I felt the same, it frustrated me that she would think of that at a time like this. “Hey,” I whispered harshly. “Get your mind right! You need to focus right now!” I thought for a second how she must feel going out for the first time with such short notice, having no training or any idea what to expect. So I took her hand. "I won’t let that happen, okay?”
She nodded and I released it, awkwardly.
"You raise the door and I’ll keep them back till you get out.” I laid on my back on the floor in front of the door and gave her a nod and she started pulling the chain very slowly. As the door broke free from the floor, it had been shut so long that it left behind pieces of its rubber seal and rattled loudly. I knew it would draw them in. The light burst through and I flinched from it, squinting my eyes. As she went up a little further I could see three pairs of feet, one in dress shoes with the sides blown out and the other two, bare and rotting, bones scraping the pavement as they moved in on us. I slid under as quickly, as soon as I could and got to my feet. I kicked the first in the chest knocking it down and struck the next in the head with the buttstock of the .45, side-stepping it as it lunged, letting it fall to the ground. The third was a little further away and of no immediate threat. But where was Stephanie? I called out to her under the door as three that had been out of the view of the peephole started shuffling quickly toward me. I had a sudden and very real sinking feeling in my chest, immediately thinking that when I slid out something must have been hiding in the stockroom and taken her. Finally, she poked her hands out from under the door and I grabbed them and drug her out.
"Grab the stuff!” I whispered to her. She reached back under the door and drug out the back pack, handed it to me and we sprinted into the woods just befo
re all six of them had us trapped.
Our pace slowed quickly as she didn’t have enough strength to keep up. In the daylight, I realized just how close she was to starvation. She was wearing short sleeves and khaki shorts and her knees and elbows looked like knots in a rope. Only a few hundred yards into the woods and moving much slower than Dad and I had the day before, she was already spent. She was stumbling over every little root and vine and finally fell to the ground. I stopped and knelt down beside her.
"We gotta keep moving. Get up. Come on. Get up!” I helped her up then threw her over my shoulder. “You just watch behind us. Keep that shotgun ready and don’t let anything catch up.” I started walking. She was light but I wasn't very strong at that age either and was moving slower than we were before I was carrying her. It wasn’t long before they did catch up and she fired the shotgun, the buttstock recoiling into my back.
I dropped her pretty hard, pressing my hand to my ear to try to kill the sharp pain and ringing sound. As I turned I saw the six from the parking lot advancing quickly, up the trail, less than 50 feet away. I threw the .45 up and unloaded, aiming as quickly as I could afford to. I only took down the first three before I ran out, several shots missing a little wide or high. My head was swimming from the blow earlier that morning.
“Come on!” I yelled at her as I got to my feet. The moment of rest, with me carrying her, or the adrenaline gave her a second wind and she almost outran me down the trail. I knew the gunfire had probably already started drawing any that were further down the trail ahead back toward us, but as we started to slow again, the trail ahead was surprisingly clear as far as I could see through the thick underbrush.
“Get me some of those .45’s.” I said, squatting down. “Left, side pocket.” She handed me a box, gasping for breath, hands shaking.
"How much further?” she asked.
