by AJ Powers
The engine drew closer, the whirring turbo diesel becoming more pronounced by the second.
Aaran sprinted, quickly reaching the curb, but he still had another fifty yards of chunky ground ahead of him. Halfway across, his foot caught a rock, throwing him into the dirt. His coursing adrenaline masked the pain of the impact as he scrambled back to his feet.
A less than subtle throb in his right knee complicated each step, but he dug deep and powered through the remaining distance. When he swung open the trailer door, he stole a look over his shoulder. He could see the truck barreling down the winding road between the trees. It was seconds away from coming around the bend. Aaran dove inside the trailer and kicked the door shut behind him just as the box truck raced through the intersection. Lying face down on the trailer’s carpeted floor, Aaran wheezed for air as he tried to satisfy the unruly demand from his lungs.
Aaran remained motionless for several minutes, recovering from the close call. Just as his heart rate started to level off, the approach of another truck sent his heart back into arrhythmia. Pushing himself up from the floor, he crawled toward a window, wincing as his tender knee dragged across the carpet. He slowly raised his head above the bottom of the window frame and peeked through the cheap aluminum blinds right as an eighteen-wheeler flatbed came around the bend in the road. The semi’s load was chained to the back and shrouded beneath dark green tarps, piquing Aaran’s curiosity. His interest, however, faded along with the truck’s engine as it left the area.
The traffic carried on throughout the evening, reminding Aaran of the weeks immediately following the takeover. However, several months after the takeover, traffic had slowed and such a large convoy was uncommon. Aaran kept tabs on each one of the vehicles, making a mental note of what was coming through. He counted many box trucks, several tractor trailers and flatbeds, but most concerning were the Humvees and heavily armored MRAP troop transports.
Though he didn’t care for any activity buzzing around his “home”, the box trucks and semis weren’t terribly bothersome. They were usually driven by Webbers, and as far as he could tell on the many times he had observed them from afar, they were unarmed. The military vehicles, on the other hand, were filled with armed Sentinels, and that always made Aaran a bit edgy. He had not personally witnessed the Sentinels in action, but he had stumbled across the aftermath more than a few times—enough to know he needed to treat them like lepers. Of course, the same was true for Webbers.
The noises slowed down around 9:00 P.M. and things were back to the usual silence by 11:00 P.M. Feeling confident that he wasn’t going to be ambushed while eating dinner, Aaran sat down on the couch and opened one of the cans of chunky soup. He slurped on the cold stew straight out of the can, wondering if a homecooked meal would ever be a reality for him again.
Aaran grabbed a Styrofoam cup from the coffeemaker as he shook his Thermos to break up his ice. He poured some cubes from the canister into the cup before cracking the lid from his water bottle and adding its contents. Even though it was in the forties outside, he still preferred ice in his drinks.
He raised the cup. “Happy birthday, Aaran,” he said.
After guzzling down the water, he tossed the Styrofoam cup across the small room. It landed on a short stack of blueprints and other documents that no longer had any value—just like nearly everything else.
Aaran’s right knee had become stiff and swollen. As he tenderly flexed it, he noticed a splotch of blood staining his cargo pants and a small hole an inch or so away. He reached into his pack and fished out a nearly-empty bottle of ibuprofen, suspecting the pain and swelling would only worsen during the night. Dumping four pills into the palm of his hand, Aaran tossed them into his mouth and chased them down with a fresh bottle of water. He hoped the medicine would be effective enough to get him back on the road tomorrow. A construction trailer was not the ideal place for him to call home while his leg healed—he was not a fan of small spaces.
A heavy sigh escaped his lips as he struggled to find a comfortable position on the couch. His long legs dangled over the arm and he rested his hands behind his head. His mind began to wander through the nightly ritual of questions just before bed: What am I doing? he thought, followed by, Where am I going? And then finally, What’s the point?
Aaran was a sojourner. Every day he wandered around southwest Ohio, doing his best to safely make it from one bed to the next. Some days, he would travel as far as ten miles while others, he might not even go one. On occasion, he found a well-stocked, secluded, “offline” house that afforded him a week or two of rest before he moved on. It was always difficult to leave behind such an ideal location for the unknown, but staying in one place for too long often sparked terrible waves of anxiety. It wasn’t that he always wanted to be on the move, but the isolation was too much to handle after too long in one place. At least when he was on the move, there was a chance he’d run into another human being that he could carry on a conversation with. Though the last person he’d met was an old woman who already had one foot firmly planted at the Pearly Gates, the practically one-sided conversation that evening had been pleasant. It was nice to be in the presence of another person not programmed to kill you.
Ever since Aaran had made the decision to leave his home, his mind was constantly plagued over where he would go—a true final destination for him to look forward to. And as he lay on the couch inside a decaying trailer, he still hadn’t come up with one. Most of his extended family lived out on the west coast in California and Oregon, so he had no expectations of ever seeing them again. There were a few family friends up near Hamilton, and he figured he would eventually mosey on up that way to see if they were still alive, but he wasn’t optimistic.
With his family dead and no prospect of life ever returning to normal, Aaran found it difficult to keep pressing forward. Some days more than others. He wasn’t concerned that he didn’t have answers to the first two questions; he didn’t know what he was doing, and he certainly didn’t know where he was going. But the third question…It really bothered him not to have a real answer for that. Most of the time, he came up with some clichéd response that would have been a great bullet point in a motivational speaker’s guide to self-help. But on some of his darker days, he heard a more sinister voice chime in.
There is no point.
For the last ten months, he had convinced himself that just being alive was the point—that some mission or purpose he had yet to fulfill was the reason why he’d been spared during the purge. But with each mile he trekked, and each day that passed without someone to talk to—a hand to hold—Aaran started to believe it had been a mistake. That somehow Death had overlooked his name on the list and he should have died right beside his family on that fateful morning. Then again, maybe his life of lonely freedom was his condemnation for some unknown sin he had committed.
The troubling thoughts always brought him to the same devastating conclusion: a permanent fix to that mistake. And when his hand rested on the handle of his CZ Scorpion, the thought once again crossed his mind. But he knew that if his mom would’ve been irritated over him sneaking a beer before lunch, she would’ve been downright pissed if he decided to take his own life. And that was what kept him from venturing too terribly far down that line of thinking. For now.
So, he pressed on. And he would continue to press on until there was nowhere left for him to walk or until the Sentinels caught up to him. He suspected the latter to be a far more likely scenario, but at least his death would not be by his own hand. And that, he could live with—figuratively speaking.
His eyes were heavy, but he hated going to sleep with such dark thoughts on his mind. It made the already awful nightmares even worse, and lately, they had been dreadful enough. He didn’t need to throw gasoline onto that blaze.
Aaran reached into his backpack and found some reading material—comic books. He had only been vaguely familiar with the archaic form of childhood entertainment beforehand, but quickly got hooked when he�
��d found a box of them in a basement a few months back. He remembered his father talking about having a collection when he was younger, but since most children in recent times received the Neuroweb injection at three months old, there were far more impressive forms of entertainment than reading a silly illustrated book. And as such, comic books—at least the physical copies like the ones Aaran now possessed—had quickly gone extinct.
It was his sixth time reading through this volume, and while he appreciated the much-needed departure from reality, he made a mental note to be on the lookout for something new to keep him entertained. Despite being able to recite most of the pages from memory, reading them had accomplished his goals. Aaran was no longer thinking about the problems outside the aluminum walls but was instead enthralled by the issues his favorite foul-mouthed, metal-boned, mutant was facing.
Soon after, sleep came.
Chapter 3
The startling sounds of another diesel motor droning in the distance stirred Aaran from his slumber. By the time he woke up enough to consciously listen for the noise, it was gone. He laid on the couch wondering if it had just been a dream.
Whether it had been a dream or not, Aaran planned to be a little more judicious with his decision-making. Just from the little movements he’d made since waking up, he could tell his knee was going to give him trouble. Not enough to keep him from traveling, thankfully, but he wasn’t eager to test its strength trying to make another quick escape from angry trucks passing by.
Aaran groaned as he sat up on the couch, attempting to shake the cobwebs loose. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and worked through a few raspy coughs that rattled his chest. Coming down with a cold this time of year had become something of an annual tradition for him, but one he could not afford right now. Especially with the heightened activity around him.
After working through a ferocious yawn and a few stretches, Aaran reached up and pulled the flimsy blinds down to look outside. It was another gray, autumn day. The sun was playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds, some of which looked to be holding a bit of rain.
Aaran got up and grabbed another cup from the coffeemaker and filled it with ice. He cracked open a soda, willing it to have more fizz. He took a couple of small sips while he fished around in his backpack for some breakfast. It was a spaghetti and meatballs kind of morning. And for breakfast dessert, he had a couple of cookies. Because, why not? he thought.
After his cold, canned, pseudo-Italian breakfast, Aaran searched the construction trailer for any useful items. He was struck with a jolt of excitement when he discovered a full box of .357 hollow points in the foreman’s desk drawer, though the enthusiasm waned when further search efforts failed to recover the pistol associated with the caliber. Since Aaran did not have a .357, the bullets were useless to him. Still, he dropped them into his pack anyway.
Besides the revolver ammunition, Aaran found a bag of unopened venison jerky, a can of dip, and a couple of energy drinks. He grabbed the jerky and drinks, leaving behind the dip. In a perfect apocalypse, he would take the tobacco and barter it at the next trading post. But he wasn’t holding his breath that he’d come across one of those anytime soon, and he wasn’t about to waste the space in his pack, even for something so small.
Having run out of excuses to stay inside the relative warmth of the trailer, Aaran decided it was time to grab the first day of November by the horns. After lacing up his boots and throwing on his coat, he zipped up his pack, grabbed his carbine, and bid the trailer adieu. Not even thirty minutes into his journey, the rain started to fall. A series of curses and grumbles poured out of Aaran’s mouth when he felt the dampness start to saturate his clothing. He hated walking in the rain, and walking in the rain in forty-degree weather was on a significantly higher tier of misery.
November was off to a great start.
He walked for another twenty minutes, but the rain only intensified. Aaran could have sworn he heard a distant rumble of thunder. It was about the worst kind of weather to travel in, so he called it. It wasn’t even lunch time, but he needed to get somewhere warm—or at least, somewhere dry. I don’t imagine a case of hypothermia would do me much good fighting this cold, he thought as he made up his mind.
Across the road and past a few acres of trees, Aaran could barely make out the shape of several houses. He immediately cut across the road and headed for the trees. His boots stomped and slogged through mud and leaves while the rain continued to beat down on him. The thinning canopy above offered some protection from the precipitation, but not a lot. Aaran moved faster.
Despite his frosty motivation to quickly reach the other side, the wooded expanse took longer to cross than he had expected. After climbing a small hill—which was no easy feat in these conditions—he came out into a large neighborhood surrounded by more trees. The houses were older, if not a little rundown, and lacked many of the telltale signs that they were Nebula-connected, such as exterior routers and solar shingles. The neighborhood was secluded, virtually out of sight from the main road Aaran had just been walking on.
With the conditions worsening and the wind piercing through his layers, Aaran picked a house at random for shelter. Both the front and back doors were locked up tight, but fortunately, the kitchen window at the back of the house slid right open. He tossed his backpack through and it crashed to the floor with a soggy thud. He then grabbed onto the window frame and pulled himself inside. The effort was far noisier than he would have liked, and he managed to cut his face in the process. It wasn’t his smoothest entry into a home, but he was finally out of the awful November rain.
Raising his Scorpion, Aaran powered on the mounted flashlight and cleared the small, single-story house room by room. With the entire living room visible from the kitchen, and just two small bedrooms and a closet-sized bathroom down the hall, he deemed the house safe in record time.
A painful tremor rippled through his body as he shuffled his way back to the kitchen to retrieve his pack. His sopping wet clothes clung uncomfortably to his skin as he made his way over to the bathroom. Aaran grabbed an LED lantern out of his pack, flipped it on, and hung it from the shower rod above the bathtub. After peeling his wet clothes from his body, he grabbed two towels from the wall-mounted rack, wrapping one around his waist and draping the other over his shoulders. He was still combating the violent shivers, but at least he would be dry soon.
While his body slowly warmed up, Aaran walked over to the sink to investigate the injury to his face. He was looking worse for wear, and not just from the small gash beneath his left eye. A guy his age shouldn’t have dark rings around the eyes, hints of crow’s feet emerging from otherwise youthful skin, or rogue strands of silver popping through dark, brown locks. He was nineteen, not ninety. However, rapid aging was just another thing that had become par for the course in such an unforgiving world.
He rifled through the contents of his backpack again, found a small medical kit he had picked up a few weeks back, and set it on the sink. He searched for a small bandage and antiseptic ointment. Though the cut wasn’t all that deep, he had no clue what had cut him but doubted it was very clean. He dabbed the ointment on and around the wound before applying the bandage. It tugged at his skin every time he blinked, so he removed the bandage and flung it to the floor, deciding the ointment would be good enough.
Reaching back into his pack, Aaran pulled out two one-gallon-sized Ziploc bags. One held a t-shirt, the other a pair of fleece sweatpants and folded socks. This wasn’t his first time being caught up in the rain, and he had learned from his previous mistakes. Now, he kept spare clothes, ammunition, and sentimental keepsakes in sealable plastic bags inside his water-resistant backpack. He even folded his comic books to fit inside the plastic bags. He knew that folding comics was an unpardonable sin for collectors, but he didn’t care. He’d take a crease across the pages over mushy papier-mâché any day of the week.
Feeling halfway human again, Aaran returned to the living room. Muddy boot prints were stamped aro
und the already-stained carpet, and Aaran’s brand new, dry socks quickly became damp from the rain he had tracked inside. He walked over to the couch, doing his best to avoid the larger puddles along the way. Dropping his pack onto the floor, he collapsed onto an old futon. He could just barely see a plume of breath rush away from his mouth when he let out an exhaustive sigh. This was the common problem with “safe” houses: they almost never had power. Aaran had found a few places over the last year that still had had a bit of juice flowing from old solar panels mounted to the roof, but it was never enough to run a furnace or air conditioner. He did, however, capitalize off the small trickle of charge left in some battery banks to read under a lamp or, if he was really lucky, chill a few drinks in the refrigerator. That was particularly cherished in the hot, humid summer months. But his newest residence lacked even the littlest bit of a charge.
The heavy rainfall drumming on the roof quickly put Aaran into a trance-like state that had him on the verge of sleep. It was too early for that—way too early—so he forced himself off the futon and searched the house. He explored the kitchen first and found that the cabinets were virtually empty. “You sure picked a winner today,” he said sarcastically. The empty cabinets were a surprise but not catastrophic, since he still had plenty of food from his voyage through Indian Hill the previous day.
He moved to the first bedroom and poked around. There were boxes all over the place. Some of them sealed with packing tape, others empty, and a few were fully collapsed. Aaran couldn’t tell whether the person had been coming or going, but it appeared that the Nebula had disrupted their plans midway through. From the looks of the furniture, it was a woman’s room, giving him little hope that he would find anything terribly useful to him. When he rummaged through the woman’s belongings, both packed and unpacked, his theory was confirmed. All he got from the effort was a box of matches, a pack of bobby pins, and some paperclips. Not even remotely worth the time or energy, but it wasn’t like he had anything better to do with his day.
