They’re waiting in silence for my answer. I even have Simeon’s attention now.
I bend down and grab my pack. “Shouldn’t we get going?”
Simeon, who was staring at me with narrow, questioning eyes, blinks. “Yes. It’s time to go.” I’ve never heard him speak so gently.
* * *
We’ve followed the road through the forest all day and now it’s late afternoon. The sun is beginning to get low enough that the light is being cut out by the trees, and it’s starting to get cold.
Like the day before, we’ve hardly said a word to each other as we’ve traveled. I have used the time to hatch a plan to get the magazine for my pistol and get away from them. It’s been nice to have some companionship, but so far there hasn’t been strength in numbers—we haven’t found any food. And ever since our conversation this morning, an uneasiness has been building inside me. I’ve been more than capable of surviving on my own, and that’s meant all I’ve had to do is move forward day after day. Now, with them, I’m starting to think about things I had tried to stop thinking about. My parents. How they died. Nate and why he left. It took a long time to move beyond the point where all that didn’t haunt me. Now it’s back like it only happened yesterday. Instead of my thoughts only being about one foot in front of the other, food, water, sleep and doing it all over again, I’m back living in the past I want to leave behind.
I need to move forward. I need to focus on what’s important. I need to find Nate, even though I don’t know where he went or where he is now.
The only thing that’s stopping me from leaving is waiting for an opportunity to search Simeon’s bag and grab my ammunition. Tonight, while they’re sleeping, I’ll try.
“How about down here?” Mathus pulls out his map and unfolds it. “Looks like there might be a house somewhere at the end of this track. Might be worth checking out.”
Simeon nods. “Fine.”
It’s a half-hour walk before we come across a log hunting cabin hidden among a forest of trees whose leaves are beginning to transition from their dark rich greens of summer to the oranges, yellows, and reds of autumn. Steps lead to a small porch, and the door is open. It looks like one of those cabins where your worst nightmare might lie inside—that part in a movie where you whisper urgently at the television screen, “Don’t go in there!”
Simeon pulls out his handgun from the back of his pants—one similar to mine. As we wait—half expectantly, half gripped by the unease of not knowing if someone’s inside—he goes in to take a look. When he appears again in the doorframe he doesn’t need to say a thing—there’s nothing in there worth finding.
“Least it’s clean.” Simeon turns his back on us and returns into the cabin.
We follow, and he’s right. It may have been ransacked at some stage—the kitchenette cupboards are all wide open and empty—but it’s not as bad as some of the houses I’ve been in. Often furniture is upended, in the bedrooms the wardrobes opened and clothes strewn everywhere, dresser drawers pulled out and thrown aside, mattresses cut open and the stuffing pulled out as though there was food to be found inside. Instead, everything looks like it’s where it should be. Even in the back two bedrooms—one with a queen, the other a bunk bed—the beds are made, with blankets neatly folded at the ends, as though someone knew we were coming to stay.
Simeon drops his pack to the floor and the rest of us do the same as he walks off toward the room with the queen bed. “Wake me the fuck up when there’s something worth living for.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard him sound defeated.
He slams the door behind him.
“Want me to keep watch?” Mathus asks Jonah.
I might be as hungry and defeated as they are, but I’ve been hungry before, and I always keep my mind sharp. “I’ll do it,” I say before Jonah can reply. “You two rest. I’ll wake you if I get tired.” If I can get them all to go to sleep, I can get my magazine from Simeon’s bag and be on my way.
Jonah tilts his head. “You sure?”
“I am.” I want to add even without a gun to protect me, but that might give them a hint of what I plan to do.
“Thanks,” Mathus mumbles and heads off to the room with the bunk.
“Yeah, thanks,” Jonah repeats, and he brings his hand to my shoulder and squeezes it.
In that moment I almost experience a second of regret that I intend to leave. Is it so bad being with them? Do I want to be alone again? Maybe not, but you need to be.
“Come get me any time.” He follows Mathus into the room and pulls the door half closed.
I wander outside and walk the length of the short porch, my boots clunking on the timber until Simeon yells, “Shut up out there!” So I walk down the stairs—making sure my footsteps are real heavy just to annoy Simeon—before I step onto the leaf-littered ground. Doing a lap of the cabin seems the best plan to become familiar with my surroundings. I turn left.
The cabin is tiny, so there’s not much circumference to navigate, but I do it slowly and take my time looking off into the darkening forest. In the distance a bird calls, but it’s not an alert cry, rather the bird merely saying goodnight.
Next moment the toe of my boot catches on something, and I trip and fall hard onto my hands and knees, pain shooting up my wounded arm from the jolt. The sound as I hit the ground is…weird. Metallic and kinda hollow. Even beneath my knees it doesn’t feel right. I brush my hands across the ground, clearing a thick layer of leaves, and beneath that I see steel. I keep scraping away the ground cover exposing more metal until I find a hinge. A hinge means a door, doesn’t it? I work in the opposite direction, until I expose the length of whatever is beneath me. Then I’m furiously scraping and scooping and removing everything until I’ve revealed the entirety of what I’ve found. A rectangular metal door lying on the ground. A hatch?
I get to my feet and yank upward on the edge opposite the two hinges. It pulls open. The air that comes from inside is stale, but it’s not putrid. There are steep stairs with a handrail that lead down into darkness. I want to go down there, see what’s inside, but I haven’t got any light, and going into dark holes by myself when I don’t have to would be dumb.
I run back and almost trip on the lip of the porch as I burst into the house. Jonah and Mathus are already out of their room, probably thinking I am being pursued by someone. The door of Simeon’s room flies open, banging against the wall. He’s holding a gun at me.
“No, no, no.” I wave my hands at him. “It’s okay. I’ve found something!”
“For fuck’s sake.” Simeon lowers his gun.
Jonah and Mathus let out a collective sigh.
“Seriously, it’s worth getting up for.” I’m as excited as a kid on Christmas morning, even though I don’t really know what I’ve found. “We need a light.”
“For what?” barks Simeon.
I don’t answer him and dash back outside. They follow. I’m hoping what I show them doesn’t lead to disappointment. When I reach the hatch, I do a “ta-da” gesture with my arms, and I can tell by the look on their faces all three are now as excited as I am.
“I haven’t been down, but it was hidden under all that stuff.” I gesture at the piled leaves and dirt I’ve pushed away. “So…maybe…just maybe…”
Simeon pulls a zippo out of his pocket and lights it. Gun in one hand and the wavering flame in the other, he doesn’t hesitate once he sees the stairs.
His steps are hollow sounds echoing from whatever is below.
Mathus’ legs jiggle a bit, and Jonah looks at me, his eyes full of optimism. I hold my breath.
Please let there be something good down there.
Simeon’s words are drawn out and choked. “Fucking hell.”
* * *
We’re all sitting bathed in yellow candlelight on the queen mattress we brought down earlier. Except Mathus. He’s lying on his back on a single mattress, rubbing his stomach. I kinda want to do the same because I’ve eaten too much. Around us a
re the remnants of our feast: open cans now empty, bottles of soft drinks half drunk, wrappers from chocolate bars including Hershey’s, the first of which I handed to Jonah because, I said to him, “I owe you one.” Then there’s the bottle of whiskey we’re now passing around, taking swigs from. We’re cheap drunks since none of us have had alcohol for a very long time.
Surrounding us are shelves stacked with food and drink. A prepper’s parlor of delights undiscovered over the years. I’d forgotten the diversity of tastes in the food we once had, the delight in sugar rushes, the comfort of a full belly, and the ache of one overstuffed.
“So, we’ll stay here for a while?” Mathus asks in a cautious tone. It sounds like they’ve found places like this before, but the others haven’t wanted to stay…or, at least, I’m guessing Simeon hasn’t.
“I don’t see why not. Hell, let’s stay until the food runs out.” Simeon has a lightness I’ve never seen or heard before, as though not being hungry has allowed him to be more of what he once was. But I know it’s more than that. It’s the prospect of not spending day after day trekking and always being on edge, wondering who’s around the next corner, where your next mouthful of food will come from or where you’ll next lay your head. Here, we can probably stay hidden for a while if we can find a way to disguise the hatch. Plenty of food. No stress. An opportunity to relax, recharge, maybe even become a little more human again.
“I’d like that,” I say without thinking. My plans to get my ammo and leave have obviously been thrown by the wayside. My alcohol-fogged brain isn’t interested in things like that right now.
Jonah reaches over and touches my leg. “I think we all would.”
We’re silent for a while until Mathus rolls onto his side. “You’re trying to find Nate, right?”
In any other circumstance I might snap that it’s none of his business, but our comradery through food and booze has also blunted that pain, even if it’s only for tonight.
“Yeah. I am.”
“How did you get split up?”
And suddenly I want to talk. They’ve probably shared their stories with each other, maybe more than once, but I’ve never shared mine. For so long I’ve tried hard to move past what happened, but it’s never really gone. It’s like a weight I drag around with me every step I take. Perhaps it will feel less if I unburden myself to them, even if I don’t tell everything.
I pull my legs up and place my chin on my knees. “We didn’t get split up. He left. Because he was angry with me.” Angry? Hate would be a better way to describe how he felt. “Once it started spreading, Mom, Dad, Nate, and I holed up at our small farm. We’d always grown our own vegetables, had fruit trees, hens, a few milking cows. And we were lucky. Before things got too bad, we stocked up on staples. So we were a lot better off than others.” I know I don’t need to explain to them what it was like for the people in the big cities and the living hell many found themselves in. “For a long time no one disturbed us, except for a few of our neighbors who we bartered with. Then, one day, some strangers came.” They’d walked down our road late one afternoon. “We could tell they were sick. We’d heard about the rage, but at that point they weren’t consumed by it. Just had the blood-red eyes and the fever. Dad went and got the shotgun, told them to move on. But they wouldn’t.” They were defenseless—no weapons—so what was my dad going to do? Shoot them? He wasn’t that type of man. “Eventually we offered them food. After they got that they left…or at least we thought they had.” We’d kept our distance, only Dad had gotten close to them and, even then, it wasn’t too close. That saying six feet of distance defines our existence was a bare minimum to my father. But they must have slept in the barn, or done something, contaminated something somehow. “Seven days later my dad got sick. And soon after, Mom. It was weeks before the rage took them.” For a while we kidded ourselves their fate wouldn’t be like all the others, but... “It was overnight. We woke to a sound…” They were no longer human. They were animals. “My dad….” And now I know I’m going to tell most of it. “My dad had taught me how to use a gun, the one I carry with me. And he had told me when…when…”
Simeon lets out a hiss.
I snatch a look at him. His eyes are glassy and he’s tracing a part of his scar with his index finger. “So you led them away and abandoned them?”
At first I can’t see how he’s made that connection, and I almost want to yell at him and ask if he’s stupid. Does he need me to spell out what I did? But that’s when I realize what he’s doing, that he’s giving me a gift, a way out of speaking the truth I don’t want to speak. Because he knows. Is that scar on his face a reminder of something he prefers to forget? What had he said? You don’t know what I’m capable of. Is it the same as what I did?
I hug my legs and close my eyes. My throat is choked, my chest heavy. “Nate…” The venom in those few words he spat to me echo in my mind: I’ll never forgive you. I can never forgive myself. “I woke up the next morning and he was gone. He’s only thirteen. He shouldn’t be on his own.”
I’m rocking back and forth. Normal people would cry after remembering all that, even though I’ve omitted details and been spared of speaking the ultimate truth, but I don’t because normal people don’t do what I did.
I still see my mother’s face…
An arm wraps around me. It’s big and firm. I know it’s Simeon before I open my eyes. He runs a hand through my hair, down the side of my cheek, and then a finger curls at the bottom of my chin. “It’s okay.” He lifts my head and searches my eyes with his. “It’s okay.” When he leans in and presses his lips against mine—once, twice, a third time—it’s like he’s trying to kiss all my pain away.
I feel a hand on my leg—Jonah, Mathus?—and whether it’s the erasure of inhibitions from the alcohol, or my sudden need to feel close to people after so many months of being alone, I don’t shirk away. Instead I kiss Simeon back and let him unbutton my shirt and peel it off. One of the others guides my legs away from their protective huddle against my chest. As Simeon unhooks my bra and lays me back still kissing me, I feel fingers at the button of my pants, and then hear the slide of the zipper. I lift my backside up so they can peel my jeans down and pull them from my legs. Simeon’s mouth leaves mine, and another replaces it. Jonah, his tongue hot and urgent. When lips come to my breasts brushing against my nipples, I know it’s Mathus. He’s cautious. Perhaps it’s his first time? His breath rushes hot out of his mouth before he sucks my nipple into his mouth and rolls it against his tongue. There are hands at the hem line of my panties. They’re yanked down and Simeon’s buries himself between my thighs before I have time to think twice. A moan escapes my mouth into Jonah’s as Simeon tastes me and groans.
In that moment, I feel young, carefree. Alive and not alone.
* * *
I am caught up in a tangle of arms and legs beneath a blanket, all three of them surround me protectively. The candles have gone out, but there’s a faint wedge of predawn light from the open hatch, illuminating the stairs.
The night before races back to me with a pang between my legs. I’m not sure why I don’t feel embarrassed. Three guys at once, all together? I smile to myself. The world really is a different place now, and this “place” is somewhere I want to be. Not only because it felt so good. Because I never thought I’d ever feel close to anyone again—physically, emotionally.
My bladder is full and I desperately need to pee. I pull myself away from the tangle slowly, trying not to wake them, but the moment I move Simeon opens his eyes.
“Gotta go use the bathroom,” I say. I wish I could see his expression in the darkness. I want to know what he thinks of what we all did last night. Does he have regrets? Was it something they did because they were drunk, and now that they’re sober we’re back to me being the spare wheel?
“Don’t take too long,” he replies with a smile in his voice, and that’s all I need.
I feel around, find a t-shirt that isn’t mine, pull it on, and
climb away from the three of them.
Barefoot, I walk up the stairs and come out into the cold morning air. The ground is damp with dew. I tippy toe across it, a little away from the hatch, squat, and let go.
When I’m done, despite the chill, I wander a bit farther away from the hatch and stare up at the patches of sky I can see through the tree branches. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. Am I happy? Do I have the right to feel like that?
There’s a crack of a branch beneath someone’s foot. I turn. “Is that you, Sim—”
I don’t have time to count the strangers standing behind me. All I see is one swinging something at my head.
* * *
Voices. So many voices.
My head is… God my head hurts.
And there’s a strong acrid stench coming from… Everywhere.
I try to open my eyes. They feel like they’re glued shut with mud. Through slits I can barely pry open, I see flickering light—a lot of it—and shapes moving, but my vision is blurred and I can’t make sense of it
Where am I?
I try to lift a hand to touch my head because it hurts so bad, it’s like someone has hit me hard with a baseball bat and split my skull open…so maybe this isn’t mud gluing my eyes. Maybe it’s blood. But that’s when I register something is biting sharply at my wrists and realize my hands are tied behind my back. Despite all the pain I try to orient myself. My face is flat against hard ground so I’m lying down. I move my legs and discover my ankles are also bound.
Where the hell am I?
I force my eyes open further. Whatever is gluing my eyelids shut tears at my eyelashes, and the pain in my head is trying to shatter all my other senses, but I’m determined to see.
Tales of the Apocalypse: A Dystopian Anthology Page 3
