by Connor Mccoy
The pair slowly strolled away from the school, but Criver hung back to look at the sunlight hitting Cheryl’s red hair. It seemed to shine in the rays. If the smoking school harkened to the madness of the world, the sight of his redheaded partner reminded him of the good that still existed. This woman had risked her life, and given her house and home to a man and a child she did not know. In two days, they had become something of a family.
When Jessica left, it had taken the light out of his life. Through their adventures together, this woman had brought it back for him.
Criver turned his gaze to the horizon, to the buildings and the city skyline just beyond. “He’s alive.” Criver said the words to reassure himself, or Cheryl, or both.
Cheryl looked up, her mouth forming an uneasy smile. “He is.”
Criver stretched his arms. “If they’ve got almost a day on us, we can’t waste time hanging around here. Looks like we’ll be going on that long trip out of town after all.” He turned to her. “So, what do you say? Feel like hunting?”
“You bet.”
The pair left the school grounds, a pair of hunters, a pair of wolverines – with The Coach as their prey.
Chapter Eleven
“Thomas Criver, tell me you’re not actually going to try.”
The tall man turned to the young woman who just had expressed her concerns about his handyman skills. “I’m telling you, a backyard porch will be amazing.”
The young lady, his wife Jessica, cradled a baby boy – his and hers – in her arms. “But Daddy,” she said in a squeaky voice, “I need money for my college so I can grow up and not sponge off you until I’m forty-five.”
Criver laughed. “My boy will not sound like that.” He strolled past the open back door in the kitchen. “I didn’t say I was going to get it right away.” He held out his arms, pointing to the grassy backyard. “If that offer from Roy Mintz comes through, paying for a porch won’t be a problem. But we’ll still kick the porch a year or two down the line.”
“I was more worried that you would try building it,” Jessica replied with a chuckle.
“Hey, that door frame in the kitchen still is standing.” Criver paced back to the door. He had tried a little home improvement project not too long ago, with so-so results. Thomas Criver may have been a skilled security guard, but a handyman, not so much.
Criver eyed his wife. With her hair in rollers and her body wrapped in a long white leisure gown, it was quite a change from the business suits she wore as part of the management team where she worked. And while Criver admitted to himself that he enjoyed the sight of Jessica’s legs in her pantyhose and business skirts, in her current get-up, she seemed more beautiful than ever, like an angel. The sight of her holding their newborn son, Michael Christian Criver, completed the picture.
“You got the mommy look down perfectly,” he said.
“Well, thank you very much.” She smiled.
Even so, Tom Criver felt a bit of guilt. Jessica had benched her corporate career to stay at home and care for Michael while he brought in the money as a security guard. She had made the switch with no visible regrets, but Tom still wondered if his wife harbored any ambitions to return after awhile.
He made a fist. “I was talking with Sullivan the other day. He mentioned they could use an at-home analyst, someday, perhaps.” Jessica turned. “Someday, when our little man is bigger?”
Criver nodded. “Hey, he didn’t say it had to be you.”
“Well, it’s very sweet of you to ask. But I don’t want to have my head anywhere but here. This is my life. This is what I want.”
“I just thought perhaps someday we might do a little…” Criver jiggled his hand. “…switch-up. It’s not like my line of work doesn’t have its risks. The only thing you ever had to worry about was tripping over the carpet.” His jaw clenched. “It only takes one psycho and one lucky shot to end it all for me.”
“I have a hard time imagining anything taking you out.” Jessica leaned close to him. “You’ve said before that almost nothing happens on your security details.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Criver eyed his son in Jessica’s arms. His eyes were closed in serene sleep. “And the pay is too damn good. Michael deserves to have the best life I can give him.”
“Him and his little brother or sister.” Jessica winked. “Someday.”
“Yeah.” Criver narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, you get to be home, watching the kids, telling Michael and his siblings to play nice, yelling at them to stop drawing on the walls, stop fighting, and stop screaming…” He let out a sigh.
“All while I’m at work in total peace and quiet.” He then flashed her a wicked smile. “Never mind, I like our current arrangement a lot better.”
“Oh, shut up.” Giggling, Jessica walked behind him and then slapped him hard on his rear. “You’re terrible.”
Criver turned and was headed for the kitchen, but he stopped to let Jessica through. His large, broad, muscular frame wouldn’t be enough to permit the young lady with the baby inside. “But ruggedly handsome,” he finished.
With Jessica inside, he followed. The kitchen was dark. Odd. He could have sworn light was pouring through the kitchen door a second ago. He flicked the light switch.
Nothing. The lights didn’t come on. Strange. He pushed it the other way. Still nothing. An eerie quietness took hold. None of the appliances were on, and all the clocks were out.
“Power’s out?” he asked himself. It wasn’t storming outside, so Mother Nature hadn’t knocked out the power. He turned around. Jessica was standing in the open back doorway with Michael.
“Guess I’m going to have to make a call to the power company,” Criver said. Jessica still was smiling, just as she was outside. She wasn’t reacting to the outage at all.
“What?” Criver asked.
“Tom, don’t you know that none of this is real?” Jessica asked in that same frozen, pleasant voice.
As soon as she spoke her last word, a ripple rushed from behind her, enveloping and changing everything as it passed. The light of the sun disappeared, replaced by the darkness of night. Jessica and Michael suddenly became like ghosts, their forms transparent.
“Jessica! Michael!” Criver rushed over to his family, but only grasped empty air. Their bodies just swam in the air as they faded more and more, until they were gone for good.
“No!” Criver spun around. There was no sign of them. They had been cruelly snatched from him. No, snatched again. He had come here before, thinking this was real, that he was still with his beautiful wife and son. And each time it was ripped from him.
He looked down. He was wearing dark khakis, boots, a green T-shirt and sported a belt with a revolver and a knife. The house around him dissolved, the walls collapsing, the ceiling disappearing, the dissolving reality dumping him in the middle of a concrete street in a ruined city.
Shadows then covered him on all sides. Forms appeared. An ebony-skinned man with a chain—The Tutor. A tall muscular man marked by a reddish beard and a baton—The Disciplinarian. A short, strong man with shaking wide eyes and a curved knife in each hand—The Principal. These were all guys he had run into. They had stolen someone from him, a boy named Amir. They were supposed to be dead, The Tutor by The Principal’s knife, The Disciplinarian by Cheryl, and The Principal by his own hand. Now they were back, as if even Hell itself could not contain them.
“You’ll never find them again,” The Principal said. “Your family is gone forever.”
“Amir.” Criver pieced together the events of his true life. “Where is he?”
The Tutor held up a chain. He was the one who had snatched Amir from his bed, bound him with his chain, and stolen him from the house Criver had been staying in. Amir was there, wrapped up by the metal links.
“No!” Criver charged for the boy.
But then a new, larger shadow suddenly cut between him and the child. A hand grabbed him by his throat and hoisted him up. Criver choked. He grabbed at the
behemoth’s hands, but couldn’t pry them off.
His attacker then stepped from the shadows. He was tall, with dead eyes and a mangled countenance. A savage burn ran down the right side of his face and neck, with his right ear completely gone, a piece of his left ear hanging loose, and no hair on his scalp. His boots made loud crunching noises on the cement. He was dressed in black boots, khaki pants and a black T-shirt.
The Coach. The worst of them all.
“Who are you that you think you can save the child?” The Coach asked.
“Damn…” Criver grunted. “Damn…you…”
“I have it all, and you have nothing,” The Coach said in a low, quiet, calm tone, as if Criver was a bug that the monster was humoring.
The Coach’s fingers clenched inwards. Criver screamed…
…and then he awoke.
Blinking his eyes, he inhaled deeply to assure himself The Coach’s hands were no longer pinching into his throat. No, he was safe, if “safe” was even a tangible concept in this world. Instead of the warm bed of a house, or even the shredded landscape of a city, he lay inside a green tent, situated out in the woods beyond civilization, or at least what was civilization before the EMP pulse came and wiped away their advanced technology.
The quiet breathing next to him belonged to his partner, his friend Cheryl Dennis, wrapped in her own sleeping bag. She lay deep in sleep, apparently undisturbed by bad dreams, or so Criver hoped. At times, he had watched his wife Jessica sleep next to him. Her face had been so still. He couldn’t read what she was dreaming about. But in those rare times when they slept together after they had lost their son, her face was more contorted, tightened, even in sleep. She was being tortured by her own demons. Those demons Criver couldn’t rescue her from, mostly because he couldn’t rescue himself from them. And in the end, it cost them their marriage, with Jessica fleeing their home. Criver never had learned of her fate and he doubted he ever would.
Cheryl’s face was serene, but that guaranteed nothing. She had told Criver some of her past, enough to know that she had faced challenges. Her father had died when she was young, and her mother remarried a man who didn’t think highly of Cheryl, or at least her femininity. Cheryl lived with her brother before enlisting in the army, picking up skills that helped her survive the hell of the EMP pulse.
It certainly gave her the stamina to handle the wilderness. Criver’s feet still were aching. He had been hiking with Cheryl for the past few days through the woods beyond the city, headed to their destination of Westown, where The Coach was keeping Amir.
He lay back inside his own sleeping bag, sweating from another nightmare, looking at the top of the tent. He was tired, but not willing to return to that state of unconsciousness where he would go back to his family, only to see them vanish again before his eyes. Sleep had become a cruel mistress lately.
Criver’s eyes fixed on the ocean of blackness above his head. He had been sitting out here just outside the tent, watching the night sky. Without an active timepiece to tell him what hour it was, he had no idea how close it was to daylight. For all he knew, it could be just an hour past midnight.
Something shuffled behind him. He turned. Cheryl was stepping out of the tent, still dressed in her green T-shirt and matching shorts. “Hey,” she said, a little sleepily. “Tent’s too cozy?”
“Are you kidding?” Criver attempted to muster up some good humor. “Everyone knows the tent is the original man cave. I just had to get some air.”
He turned back to the sky. “It’s strange. I’ve never seen so many stars before.” The sky also never looked this black before. Even at night, the sky was mostly a darkish blue with a smattering of lights. Now it was pitch black with many specks of light.
“Light pollution.”
Criver looked over his shoulder. Cheryl strolled up next to him. “There’s always tons of light in a city, a big town, almost anywhere. All those lights just wash out the night sky.” She looked to the stars. “When I was on tour, I’d always see skies like this. When you’re bunking out in the desert, this is all you see.”
They didn’t say anything for a few minutes. They just enjoyed the silence. Then, the blackness started changing to a light blue. A blade of light pierced the horizon. Turns out it was much closer to morning than they knew.
“We need to get ready to pack up, get some food in our stomachs, and then head out.” Cheryl approached the tent, but stopped before she got in. “Oh. Could you wait out here?” She blushed a little. “I just need a little privacy.”
“Sure.”
Cheryl disappeared into the tent and zipped it up. Criver scratched his neck. It’d be strange to say Criver forgot at times Cheryl was a woman, but for the most part they worked in complete harmony. Still, every now and then the awkwardness produced by their different genders popped up. On that first night at Cheryl’s house, Criver had a slight problem finding a place to sleep that wasn’t too close to Cheryl. He chose the garage, the “man cave” as he put it.
There was also the matter of their mutual—at least Criver hoped it was mutual—attraction to each other. It seemed the two had feelings for each other that might have boiled over back at her house, had they not decided to put them aside for the greater good of their mission. A mission that now extended out from their home city.
He looked away from the tent. He wondered if they ever would be able to explore their feelings for each other in this dark world.
Cheryl circled the small green spot on the map with her pen. It lay just slightly off the wiggly highway that bridged the city Criver and Cheryl just had left with the community of Westown. “It’s farther than I would like, but what can you do when you don’t have wheels, right?” She playfully slapped Criver on his right shoulder.
Criver studied the map. It was a topographical map, more detailed than the highway map you’d find at the local gas station. It laid out hills, forests, landmarks and, most importantly of all, flowing bodies of water. Cheryl insisted they follow a course that kept them near healthy bodies of water. Inevitably, they’d need a water source they could access.
“Still three days?”
“Could be four.” Cheryl briefly chewed on the pen. “Hopefully, it’s not going to rain. It’s not like we can check a weather app to see what the forecast is.” No kidding. It was strange no longer being able to tell what the weather was going to be. One of many conveniences that they no longer would enjoy.
Criver eyed the road ahead. “They should only be a day ahead of us.”
“Not unless they have an old car or truck.” Cheryl adjusted the green headband around her forehead. It had slid down a little. “No computer chips and wires that are insulated from the pulse. It still would run. They’d be in Westown in no time.”
If so, Criver hoped they’d stay put wherever they ended up. If they had a car, they could keep outdistancing them unless Criver and Cheryl found their own wheels, and so far, that wasn’t looking likely. The other possibility was Ami escaped, but was now lost in these woods.
Damn. Got to keep my imagination from running away with me. It’s already screwing up my sleep.
Chapter Twelve
Thomas Criver’s boots touched down on solid concrete, much as they had for many days after the EMP pulse wiped out hundreds of years of human advancement in technology. There were two importance differences. Before, he had walked the streets of a human city. Today, he was trekking along a street in the middle of a wooded area devoid of houses, buildings or sidewalks. Even the light poles had disappeared near the city limits.
The second oddity was that he was no longer alone. A companion, Sergeant Cheryl Dennis, formerly of the United States Armed Forces, now walked with him. For months, Tom Criver had been a loner, a wanderer trying to find his place in the world.
The strange thing is his own loss wasn’t due to the Darkness. On a night that would be burned into his memory for the rest of his life, his infant son, Michael Christian Criver, died due to SIDS. The tragedy of t
hat night sent Tom Criver’s marriage into a tailspin from which it never would recover. Jessica Criver finally left him, disappearing to a place unknown. After the EMP took down modern society, and thrust everyone hundreds of years back in human development and technology, Criver wondered if he had any purpose left at all. Only in trying to protect the innocent did he find any reason to keep going.
However, meeting Cheryl and Amir set his life spinning on a new course. He had spotted Amir Faruq, a boy of about eight, being chased by a gang under The Coach’s command. He went in, took out the thugs and rescued Amir, but then The Coach showed up and nearly did him in. But just as The Coach was about to finish off Criver, Cheryl showed up and injured the evil overlord with her baton, buying him and Amir the time to escape. The three of them took up shelter at Cheryl’s house where, for a time, they formed an odd family. But The Coach’s henchmen, led by The Principal, broke in and stole Amir away. Once again, Criver was helpless as a child was taken from him.
But at least Amir was alive. There was still a chance Criver could save him.
And so, he and Cheryl filled their packs with the needed supplies to handle a trek all the way to Westown. Before the pulse, going to Westown would have been a breeze, a quick jump into the car and about a day’s travel. Now they might as well have been in the Colonial period or the Old West. Travel would be on foot. They would camp out in a tent. Even in the city with homes that no longer were powered by electricity or running water, they still offered strong shelter from the outside. But now they would face the outside world head-on, braving the elements or whatever else Mother Nature had to dish out.
That first day out of the city had been uneventful. In fact, it was practically serene. Every now and then, Criver could hear gunfire in the distance, likely the result of rival factions trying to take over parts of the city in the wake of the Darkness. Criver later learned that the DIRJ, a band of anarchists who sought to keep society from restoring itself, had arisen and taken out The Providers, the largest faction that exerted rule over the area. Criver also frequently ran into dead bodies lying on the streets. Thanks to the breakdown of society, there was no public health service or morgue to come along and collect them. And finally, Criver would run into gatherings of survivors, clustered into camps where they could pool their resources and protect each other.
