Pavement Ends: The Exodus

by Kurt Gepner

  "How long was I out?" Hank yawned as he spoke.

  "I don’t have a clock," Marissa wryly answered. "But my guess would be about four hours."

  Hank sucked air through a toothy grimace. "That really throws my plans out of whack." His fingers tugged frantically on his beard.

  Casually Marissa stirred the boiling pot of elbow macaroni. "What exactly did you have planned?"

  "I got here right when I expected," Hank said absently. His mind tumbled through all of the possibilities and contingencies as he talked about his plan to spend the night along State Route Fourteen.

  "Well, Hank," said Marissa, once she had absorbed all of his thoughts on the matter, "you are not in any condition to do all of that. Not without a good night’s sleep. You’re dehydrated," she pointed to the three bottles of water that he had just emptied. "You’re exhausted, and I don’t mean this to be cruel, but you are very overweight." Hank’s mouth clamped shut as he received her criticism. Marissa pressed on. "If you don’t give your body a chance to recuperate from all this stress, you could have a heart attack and just die in the middle of the road. Tell me, what good you would do us then?"

  Hanging his head, Hank drew in a deep breath and let it fall from his mouth in a whoosh. "You’re right," he conceded. Undaunted by the very real limits that his sister-in-law had pointed out, Hank asked, "Aside from what you’ve got packed in the trailer, what do we have in the garage?"

  Many of the things that had found a home on the storage shelves of the garage were antiques. Marissa was a great collector of oddities - such as a six-foot tall, revolving Christmas tree - and made a hobby of restoring them. The garage had been a sort of odds-n-ends closet, with the covered patio between it and the house serving as her workshop.

  In list form, Marissa itemized the contents of the garage, which included lamps, toasters, a portable writing desk with ink well, loom, spinning wheel, silver tea set, articulating coin banks, a pair of adult’s and children’s bicycles, a mish-mash of tools and an assortment of lumber.

  As he listened to his sister-in-law, Hank made his way to the front of the trailer. He tested its weight and pushed it back and forth. It was heavy and cumbersome. In order to keep it close to level, Hank had to stoop and exert himself. The trailer wasn’t large, by vehicular standards. It had two-foot sides and was four feet wide by six feet long. But it was designed to be pulled behind a car, or small pick-up, not by people. For a motorized vehicle it was no trouble to haul an extra thousand pounds from a hitch. It was, on the other hand, a daunting proposal for the two of them.

  Marissa called in the children for dinner. They came running in, full of giggles and cheerful anticipation of food.

  "I’m soooo hungry!" Ella exclaimed.

  "Me too!" Steven declared.

  The children stood in a blur of excitement while their mother served them. Marissa loaded the first enameled camp-plate and handed it to her son. Steven’s face fell when saw the pile of casserole before his eyes. He brought the plate up to his nose and drew in a large snort of the aroma. His fallen expression warped to one of pure disgust. "What is this?" He demanded of his mother.

  "It’s dinner, Steven. And were it another time," she said through a thin veil of patience, "I would give you the option of not eating. From now on, however, you must eat what is served to you. Every bite of it," she said with particular emphasis. Steven was cowed and took his plate of food to a box that he used as a chair.

  "Thank you, Mommy," Ella said politely. Marissa didn’t fall for her daughter’s attempt to highlight a contrast in behavior.

  "You’re welcome," she answered, "But you still have to eat what’s on your plate, too." Ella took her plate to a different box and sat down as crestfallen as her brother.

  When everyone had been served and given a bottle of water, Marissa granted her children permission to eat. She looked at Hank with a pale smile and said, "Just because it’s the end of the world as we know it, doesn’t mean that it has to be the end of good manners as we know it."

  Hank gave her a sideways smile and said, "You didn’t see me starting before anyone else, did you?"

  "Mommy," Ella beckoned for attention.

  Marissa looked over and acknowledged her daughter. "Yes, Ella?"

  "May I have another plate of food?" Ella asked.

  Marissa looked at the untouched food on her daughter’s plate and furrowed her brow. "You haven’t eaten what you got, why would you want another helping?"

  Ella smiled brightly and said, "I told the lady out there that I would bring her some food when you finished…."

  Hank was on his feet and crossing to the door before Ella quit speaking. He simultaneously dropped his plate on the back of the trailer and pulled Whisper from its holster. As he passed the threshold, Marissa was vehemently berating her children. "I told you: If you see anybody, anybody, you were to immediately run to the garage! What were you thinking? Don’t you understand how…." The scolding went on as the children began to bawl.

  Hank tuned all of his senses toward the perimeter. "Quiet!" He barked. Marissa shushed her children and within moments only a few sniffles drifted from the garage.

  In his first visual skim of the surrounding streets, Hank saw no sign of another person. In the near distance, perhaps within six or eight blocks, a motorcycle roared to life, followed by a group cheer. The deep "potato potato potato" rumble of a Harley Davidson echoed through the streets, following a few revs of the motor, then silence. Farther on, he heard a baby’s cry. At the edge of his hearing several gunshots sounded and then wails of anguish rose up to meet a momentary vacuum of sound. The air was still and the sun blazed low on its trajectory across the sky. He scanned as far up and down the road as his view was unobstructed, taking his time to examine every contour and shadow.

  When he was satisfied that no threat existed, surmising that the woman had got nervous and gone away, Hank turn to go back to the garage. A motion tickled the edge of his peripheral vision. It came from behind a monolithic fir tree that towered over the corner of the lot. He froze and turned his head to focus directly on that area, which was about thirty yards away.

  Nothing moved. No sounds came from the area. Hank waited and watched. He ignored a slight rustle from the doorway and only waved her back when Marissa said his name in a hushed voice. A squirrel skittered down the trunk of the tree, zigzagging in its edgy, herky-jerky fashion before scampering back into the higher limbs. Beyond the furtive wanderings of one lone rodent, however, there was nothing. Then he saw it.

  A face darted out from behind the tree and vanished in less than a heartbeat. Without hesitation, Hank barreled toward the fence, directly toward the tree. Anyone skulking around like that, he figured, could not have good intentions.

  The fence was old and a few years past needing repair. The posts in that section were rotten. Most of the lumber in the garage was intended for that project, this summer. Since Marissa had chained the gates and Hank was too large and unfit to hurdle the six-foot barrier, his only hope of gaining his target would be to crash through. He hoped he was right about the fence. At the last moment before impact, he rolled his body to the left and lunged with the back of his shoulder.

  With a crunch the enclosure buckled under his driving mass. As he hit the ground, Hank managed an ungainly summersault that dropped him to his belly in the soft grass under the tree. Quick sounding footfalls pounded a soft-shoed rhythm down the street. Hank gathered his wits and his feet, and tore after the girl who was fleeing from him.

  She wore fat black and white sneakers with stockings that had pink and orange stripes on one leg and green and blue checkers on the other. A plaid, schoolgirl’s skirt covered her from mid-thigh to bare midriff and a long-sleeved denim and leather half-jacket clothed her top. To match her ensemble, the center of her head was shaven from the nape of her neck to her forehead and her scalp was heavily pierced with silver chains linked between hoops. The hair on both sides of her head was matted into dreads with silk ribbons
tied so that it stood out sideways from her head. She was what the media had dubbed a Hyper Gang Girl. Most people just called them by the hybridized name: Gangrils.

  The girl had covered half a block before Hank made it to the pavement. He ran as fast as he could pump his legs. She crossed Glisan. She was vastly outpacing him and he could see that he had no hope of catching her. Recalling the news of how gangs were claiming territory and harassing people, he feared that her escape would call a fresh disaster upon his family. If she informed her people about the garage and food, they would be swarmed, as if by ants at a picnic. Hank had to stop her.

  In a moment his opportunity to do anything about it would be gone. He brought Whisper to bear and pulled the trigger. His aim, as he managed a cumbersome sprint, was low and left. The girl stumbled and screamed with rage as she dropped, skidding like a runner sliding for home. At least one pellet from the buckshot had hit her leg.

  As Hank closed the distance, the girl twisted around and pitched a homemade throwing star at his head. In the split second between her release and the impact, his left arm shot up, shielding his face. Adrenaline kept him from feeling pain when one of the spikes sunk into the bone of his forearm. Instantly he was on her.

  Whisper shook as he showed the girl its business end. His chest heaved with the labor of his breathing. "Don’t…" he wheezed, "move!" Her eyes were partially obscured by thin, silver chains strung from piercings across her eyebrows down to piercings across the bottom ridge of her sunken eye sockets. Through that garish mutilation, he saw venom in her gaze. No fear, just a predatory malice. She said nothing. Hank leaned over, supporting himself with his left hand upon his knee, trying to catch his breath. "Why are you… in such a hurry?" He asked between huffs and puffs.

  The girl ignored him. Instead she sat up and examined her bloodied knees and the back of her left calf. She adopted a vulgar position to get a look at her calf. Her knees spread wide apart and her skirt rode up to her hips, exposing her uncovered and heavily pierced vulva. Hank turned his head and the girl sniggered contemptuously at his prudishness.

  "Why don’t you cover yourself up?" He asked, instead focusing his sight on the weapon that was deeply planted in his forearm.

  "Why don’t you suck my ass?" The girl asked with the same intonation.

  Ignoring her provocations, Hank tucked Whisper firmly under his left arm and gave the throwing star an experimental tug. The spike, one of six sharpened sixteen-penny nails, was lodged quite firmly in his bone. At this point, he felt no more than a pinching sensation, but he knew that it would smart, once the adrenaline wore off. Of course, that was beside the point. Right now, he couldn’t remove the weapon without having both hands free for full motion and leverage. Once more, he pointed Whisper in the girl’s direction, but now with a more steady hand.

  Hank decided to disregard the throwing star for the present and ask some questions instead. "Why were you sneaking around our place?"

  The girl was uncooperative. "I was afraid, if you saw me, that you would chase me down and shoot me," she said snidely.

  "Are you in a gang?" Hank asked, knowing full well that she was.

  "Do I look like I’m in a gang?" She asked with faux innocence.

  It was apparent to Hank that he was not making any progress. He looked at the throwing star that stuck out of his arm. It was not causing him pain, but was annoying him.

  "Do you have any more surprises for me?" He asked with a wave of his gun.

  "Oh…" she chuckled. "You better believe it."

  Hank sighed. He was become agitated with the girl. His worry over standing in the street was escalating and he was uncertain of what to do with her. Looking around, he saw a person watching him from a park that was three blocks farther up the road. When the person realized that he had been seen, he quickly walked away. Nobody else was in view.

  "Come on," Hank nudged her with Whisper’s barrel. "Let’s get out of the road."

  "Hey, Asshole," she spewed, "I can’t walk! Remember? You shot me?"

  "Then crawl," Hank growled at her. "I don’t give a damn! Just move!"

  She raised her eyebrows, which stretched taut the chains in front of her eyes. "You worried about gettin’ runned over?" She spoke patronizingly and looked around, purposefully. "’Cause there’s so much traffic. Huh?"

  Her sarcasm was wearing on Hank’s nerves. "Move!" He shouted and jabbed her shoulder. The girl precariously stood up and hobbled to the sidewalk. "Now," Hank commanded, "lie down on your stomach, spread eagle."

  "Ooh," she said with a sultry lilt, "that sounds…"

  "Shut up!" Hank’s patience had expired. The girl looked at her captor with pouting lips. "Move!" Hank shoved her. She lowered herself, serpent like, until she was prone on the sidewalk with her feet spread far apart. As she drew her hands from her thighs, along her body, her fingertips hooked the bottom of her skirt and pulled it up past her waist. The girl was lewdly exposed and Hank discovered that he was staring at her with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. He sighed and stepped up next to her head, so he wouldn’t have to look directly at her groin.

  "I want you to hold still for a minute. Don’t move a muscle," Hank said.

  "I’ve got an itch," she said as she curled her right index finger toward her head. "Right there. Can I scratch it first and then hold still?"

  Hank hissed out an aggravated breath. "Fine," he said. The girl slowly arced her hand toward her head and began scratching vigorously. Hank furtively scanned his surroundings. The house directly adjacent to them had white painted, cedar shake siding. Around the broken out windows it was charred, like nearly every other building. Two unkempt yew trees grew up past the roofline on either side of its tiny front porch. In the street beside them, an age weary Ford Focus still radiated heat in distorting waves from the afternoon sun. A squirrel, carrying a nut, made its way from a tree limb to a power line. Perfectly balanced, it scampered along the line and to a pole, where it disappeared around the opposite side.

  When the girl had finished scratching her prodigious itch, she stretched her arm out and asked, "Is this good for you?"

  "That’s fine," Hank said. "Now, don’t move."

  Hank holstered his weapon and carefully took hold of the homemade spiked disk with his right hand. Making a fist with his left, he yanked in opposite directions and was rewarded with a pop as the bone of his forearm released the spike. He curled his left hand up along his jaw so he could see the blood welling down his arm. In that moment, the girl at his feet twisted her body around and something flashed silver in her hand.

  Instinctually, Hank stepped back, but not in time to avoid the slash of a straight razor across his right shin. Deftly and with swift agility, the girl kicked her feet around and launched an attack at his throat. He brought his bleeding arm down and struck her wrist with such force that the straight razor flew from her grasp; a hollow, wet crunch told the tale of her broken bones. The girl’s momentum carried her into Hank and her shoulder collided with his solar plexus.

  As he slammed the ground, Hank lost the air from his lungs in a whoosh. He was dazed. A part of his mind detached itself from his dilemma and noted that twice today he had landed on his back. The majority of his mind, however, was focused upon one thought only: Air. He tossed the girl to the sidewalk and scrambled to his knees, trying to breathe. He couldn’t seem to draw in any air.

  The girl swiftly found her feet as Hank gasped for breath. She cradled her right arm, but her face showed no pain, only a contortion of anger. "You stupid fucker!" Fury squelched her voice as she buried a devastating kick into Hank’s gut. "You broke my fucking wrist, you shit-sucking old man!" Hank’s head snapped back when she planted her shoelaces across his gasping mouth. The power of her kick sent his glasses spinning off his head. He fell to his left side, shielding his head with his arms and blindly swept out with his right leg.

  The steel encased tip of his boot crashed into the girl’s ankle, shattering bone and knocking her off her feet. She met
the ground with a thud and Hank frantically kicked at her. Again and again he kicked, not chancing the moment it would take to gain his feet. The first blow to her head may have been the last one she felt, but he did not quit until she was utterly silent and he was certain of her fate.

  Hank lay still, numb to the world, only conscious of the air he was raggedly drawing into his lungs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Some time passed before Hank regained his senses. He took stock of his situation. Profuse bleeding from a cut across his shin occupied his immediate attention. Were it not for his quick reaction and high logger boots, the straight razor would have probably severed tendons and muscle down to the bone. Even so, the worst of his wound looked very deep and about two inches long. The laces were sliced apart and the tongue was split from the top down, about four inches. Between the parted leather, the slash continued as a thin red line.

  As his breathing returned to normal, Hank applied pressure to his wound and held it for several minutes. The bleeding finally slowed. In the grass next to him, he noticed the straight razor and picked it up. The handle was made of some sort of antler and on one side there was a relief carving:GREAT DAD It was a nice razor, if a bit dirty. Hank used it to cut off the slashed pant leg, which was almost completely saturated with blood just below his knee. With the strips he was able to salvage from it, he tied a pressure bandage over his wound.

  After giving himself some rudimentary first aid, Hank scrounged around for his glasses. They were under the Ford Focus and he had to lie prone, stretching out to reach them. A vertical scratch crossed the center of the left lens. They were safety glasses, made of polycarbonate, but they weren’t immune to very rough treatment. Hank set them on his nose and was simultaneously relieved at being able to see clearly and angered over the long scratch that hovered upon his vision.