by Hunt, James
The crowd dispersed, mumbling, after Kate collected the apartment numbers, but she noticed the air of hopefulness in their words. She even saw a smile crack over the blond girl’s face at something the old man had said.
“I need to go back to my apartment,” Rodney said. “I’m willing to bet not everyone will have a suitable pack to carry their supplies. I know I’ve got at least one spare I can loan out.”
“We’re apartment 3563,” Kate said. “Come up when you’re done, and we’ll start working our way down. We’ll try and pack quickly.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
And with that, Rodney left, leaving Kate and Mark alone in the rec room. Mark kept his gaze on the tips of his shoes, shuffling his feet like a kid in trouble. “Don’t be mad.”
“Be mad about what?” Kate asked, shrugging exaggeratedly. “Over the fact that you don’t seem to mind going to whatever lengths are necessary?”
“To keep us alive,” Mark answered, finally tilting his face up toward hers. He pointed toward her clothes and her face and her hair. “Look at you! Look at what happened on your way here! People just left you to die!” He spun in a half circle and paced away, shaking his head. “If it comes down to picking between strangers or my family, then I pick family every time.”
“And you think I wouldn’t?” Kate asked. “Mark, I would do anything for you and Holly and Luke. But if we walk out there thinking that everyone we see is out to get us, then we’re not going to make it down the block!” Her voice thundered in the room, and Mark flinched. “How long until we turn on each other? How long until we sacrifice somebody we know to save ourselves? I saw people do that on the way here, and I know you think you can use that as an excuse to do that in return, but that doesn’t make it right.” The tension in her body slackened, and she leaned back against the table that had been set up in the front of the room. The manager had set out bottled water for people to drink. Not a single person had taken a bottle when they left. She grabbed one and gave it a squeeze. “They really don’t know how bad it’s going to get.”
“What?” Mark asked. “Honey, I can’t hear you.”
Kate walked to her husband and ran her hands through his hair. “I wouldn’t have made it here without help, and we need to remember that. I don’t want us to get lost out there. Right now there are too many people that are.”
Mark kissed her lips. When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against hers, both their eyes still closed. “We won’t. I promise.”
It took Rodney five seconds to find the extra pack that he kept in his closet, but he found himself returning to the window where he’d watched the city descend into chaos. The snow hadn’t let up, and the weather blocked his view of the ground below. He remembered the last weather forecast he had heard before the power went out. He checked it every morning for both the city and upstate New York.
A blizzard was on its way down from the northwest. It’d arrive in two days, and it brought with it a projected snowfall of ten to twelve feet. It would make roads impassable and bury anything that was caught in it. He had to get to the cabin before that happened. But with the number of people now hitched to his wagon, it would slow him down.
Kate’s words lingered in his mind. In a perfect world, he knew that she was right, but what had descended on them was anything but a perfect world. It was cold, and vicious, and it would take without asking from them, so why should they grant any leniency in return?
Rodney kicked the leg of his sofa and grunted. He should have just left when he had the chance. For him, the meeting had been nothing but a showing of weakness. And he wasn’t sure if it was worth it. The woman was clever, sure, and he could always use the added muscle of manpower. Except for the old man, there were now four added men in their group, all of whom looked healthy.
There was still a chance for him to leave. He could dart down the staircase before anyone was the wiser. After all, they were waiting on him. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t get the boat together by himself. He’d already run through this drill a hundred times.
But every time he got close to leaving, every time he was on the verge of forsaking the people in their moment of need, he stopped. A well-worn line had formed in the carpet as he paced nervously.
The spare backpack slouched lazily by the front door. Rodney stared at it then looked back out the window. Nothing but a sheet of white and grey outside now. The buildings next door were barely visible. If he was going to lead these people through the city, then that meant he was responsible for their well-being. That weighed on him more than anything else. If they died, then their blood was on his hands.
And could he wash it off after it had been spilled? Could he handle that heavy a burden? Doubt crept into his mind. It nagged at him, pulling him toward the door. Leave, it whispered. You don’t need these people. They’re only going to slow you down. And you need to move fast.
“But they’ll die if they don’t get out of the city,” Rodney said, not even noticing he was speaking aloud.
And what about the supplies at the cabin? You have enough to last years, but only by yourself. The more people show up, the more they’ll consume. If everyone survives the journey, you won’t last a year. And do you really think that all of this is going to get sorted out in a year?
“No.” Rodney rubbed his eyes, a hot swell of panic rising inside him. The conflict pulled him harshly in both directions. The whispers grew louder, more violent, more panicked.
Just go! Run! Leave them! You want to live? Then go, go, go!
“AHH!” Rodney slammed his fist against the wall, which rattled and knocked a picture frame to the hardwood, face down. A harsh crack sounded as it made contact, and Rodney muttered a curse as he shook his hand in fatigue.
When he turned the picture over, bits of glass lingered on the floor. Rodney carefully brushed away the glass and then removed the picture from inside.
It was the only photo in the entire apartment, and looking at it now, he felt guilty that he hadn’t even considered bringing it with him.
The picture consisted of an eight-year-old Rodney and his father. Both were decked out in fishing gear, covered in matching rubber suspenders used for fly fishing, compliments of his mother.
The little boy in the picture smiled from ear to ear, struggling to hold the trout with both hands. It was his first fish, and his father gave a big thumbs up, laughing. Whenever he thought of his dad, he could never picture him not laughing. He was a big man with a big heart.
But sometimes it was too big.
His father had owned a construction company, and while he did good work, he was too lenient with his accounts receivable. People brought their sob stories to him, and he would cut them slack every time. That pattern had bankrupted his company and nearly put his family on the streets.
At the time, Rodney was too little to really understand what was happening. His mother told him the details years later but said never to mention it to his father. He was ashamed of what had happened, well, more embarrassed than ashamed.
A few years ago, Rodney had finally racked up the courage to ask. He and his father were on one of their fishing trips, and they’d returned to the cabin with a string of trout. It was a quiet evening, and the sunset had painted the sky a magnificent array of blues and oranges. Mountains and treetops greeted the sky on the horizon, and a cool breeze offered enough chill in the air to make it cold.
“You never told me we were almost homeless.” Rodney had blurted it out, just like that, and his father froze in mid-scaling of one of his trout.
“It’s not something I like to talk about, son.” He kept his head down, concentrating on his fish, finished it, then picked up another one.
“You’re always telling me that there are ways to learn from failure,” Rodney said, doing his best not to try and sound like he was mocking his father. He noticed the muscle around his father’s jaw twitching from annoyance. “So what happened?”
His father laughed, flicking off a sp
ray of scales that speckled the front porch. “What happened was people didn’t do what they said they were going to do.” He worked the fish more vigorously. “People will say anything to get off the hook. The parasites will suck you dry if you let them.” He turned, pointing the knife toward his son. “You hear me?” His voice thundered, and Rodney flinched, recoiling into his seat.
“Yeah, Dad,” Rodney answered.
His father’s anger was something Rodney had seen only a handful of times over the course of his life. Most of them were reserved for when Rodney had done something bad. But after a minute, his father’s expression softened, and he dropped the knife and the fish back into the bucket. He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head.
“The older you get, the less you can see the world in black and white.” His father looked out toward the forest as he spoke. “For a long time, I thought that doing the right thing meant doing the right thing for everybody. But if you do that, it’ll drain you, and you’ll have nothing left for the stuff that really matters.” He turned to Rodney. “Like family.”
“You’re a good dad,” Rodney said. “Best one I’ve ever had.” He grinned, and his father belted out one of his boisterous chuckles.
The smile lingered, though his voice didn’t match his expression. “There’s nothing wrong with helping people, Rodney. In fact, it can be one of the best feelings in the world. But you should get to a point where you can recognize the difference between someone who really needs help and someone who’s using you.” The smile was gone now. “It was something I never learned how to do.”
They were words Rodney had remembered well, and it was a lesson he took to heart. But after a long pause, his father added more.
“You have to take care of yourself first. Because if you can’t do that, then you sure as hell can’t take care of anyone else. And once you have a family, you take care of them next, and then you widen that circle to friends, and then strangers.” He rubbed together hands that had grown knobby with arthritis, though at the time there was another invisible enemy attacking his father from the inside. “But don’t be cynical. I lost a lot of money, but most of the people that I helped really did need it, and one of them even helped me find a job after it was over. Keep the faith, Rodney. Don’t lose hope.”
A tear splattered on the trout in the picture, and Rodney wiped at his eyes before another fell. He collapsed back onto his couch and sobbed silently. Six weeks later, his father had been gone. Cancer. It had gotten into his blood marrow and spread like wildfire. It was quick enough that he didn’t feel much pain at the end but not so quick that he escaped all of it.
His father had always been a big man, but by the time he passed, he’d lost nearly one hundred pounds. Nothing but bones and skin and sullen, sunken eyes. Six months later, his mom passed. Heart failure. Both of them wanted to be cremated, and Rodney spread their ashes at the cabin.
With no siblings and no other real family to speak of (Rodney’s dad had a brother who had some children over in Colorado, but he’d met them only twice), Rodney was left on his own. He’d sold his parents’ house but kept the cabin and then used the money that they’d left him to live comfortably on his own in New York. But now people needed help. He was prepared with more than he needed.
Rodney folded the photo and shoved it into his pocket, where he felt the cool of a metal. He tugged a chain, the silver retreating from his pocket in a thin line until it removed a pocket watch. It had belonged to his father.
The front of the watch had an engraving. Be better.
It was his father’s creed. He used it to challenge himself, to challenge the people around him, and to challenge his son. Rodney pocketed the watch, and then checked his face in the mirror and waited until his eyes were no longer red then grabbed the spare backpack as he shut the door on his way out.
Mark was busy helping Holly pack while Kate sifted through the cupboards. They didn’t have much in the way of canned goods, but she found some trail mix and protein bars that she added to their food pile. Hopefully it was enough to keep them fed until they got to… well, wherever the hell they were going.
Kate had thought about that a lot since the meeting. They had a way to cross the river, but after that, then what? If this was as widespread as Rodney believed it was, then how was she supposed to get in contact with Luke?
“All right,” Mark said, stepping out of Holly’s bedroom. “I think I’ve packed up everything she needs, so I’m going to put a bag together for us. You think we should try and take the rolling luggage?”
Kate picked up one of the protein bars and then dropped it. “I don’t know.” She leaned against the counter, staring at the food. “What are we going to do when we cross?” She looked up. “What if it really is the whole country?”
“I think Rodney is just exaggerating,” Mark answered. “There’s no way these people could have done this to everyone, right?” He walked toward her and kissed her. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“Yeah,” Kate replied, exhaling. “You’re right.”
“And I’m sure that Luke is fine.” Mark rubbed her arms. “I know that you’re worried about him. But he’s a smart kid.”
“Yeah.” Kate pulled back, biting her lower lip. “First thing we do when we cross the river is find a working phone.”
A knock at the door made them both jump, and Mark answered it. Rodney stepped inside, his pack already strapped to his back and the extra bag in his hand.
“You guys ready?” he asked. “The weather’s getting worse by the minute, and it’s going to be hard getting the boat across in this.”
“Just finishing up.” Mark disappeared into the room, and Kate rummaged through the rest of the cabinets.
“Everything I found I put on the counter,” Kate said, her back to Rodney as she pushed aside a bag of rice. “Anything you’d recommend bringing?” He didn’t answer, and she turned around, finding him at the counter, staring at her. She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Rodney answered. “Something that I held back when I was talking to the group.”
Kate crossed her arms. “What is it?”
“After we cross the river, I’m not staying anywhere near the city.” Rodney spoke slowly. “I have a cabin in upstate New York. I’ve outfitted it with enough supplies to last me years on my own. I have access to fresh water and good hunting and fishing. I also have medical supplies and enough space to fit six others.”
Kate shook her head slightly in disbelief. “What are you saying? You’re going up there to hide?”
“I’m going up there to survive. And anyone who is interested in doing that is more than welcome.”
“You’re acting like the world is ending.”
“That’s because it is,” Rodney said. “It could take years for the country to rebuild.”
“Why are you assuming the worst?”
“Why are you not?” Rodney stepped around the counter. “You saw what’s out there. You’ve seen what people are like when they panic, and the panic isn’t over. Highly populated areas are going to be the worst. Look, we don’t have to stay at the cabin forever, but for at least a month until things settle down. Then we poke our heads out and see what’s happening.”
Kate’s stomach soured, and she felt a warm sensation crawl up her throat. “This can’t be happening.” Before, it had all been just talk, but now somehow it felt more real, more violent, deadlier. “You really think it will be that bad?”
“Not will be, Kate,” Rodney said. “Is.”
The young man had seemed to age a decade in the time that had passed since their last conversation. Mark reappeared from their room with his rolling luggage, and when Kate looked at him, he let go of the handle.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked.
Rodney looked down to the roller in his hands and tossed him the spare pack. “Use that instead.” He paused. “You’ll want to have your hands free.”
9
>
Kate kept close to Mark and Holly on their descent. Every few floors, they stopped and collected the rest of their group. Rodney checked their supplies, scanned their rooms, and they moved on. It was quick, efficient, calculated.
One personal item, that was all anyone was able to take. Whatever held the most value and could be stashed away in their pack. The rest was food, water, and medicine. The advice was met with groans, eye rolls, and pleading, but in the end, everyone listened. Partly because Kate had backed him up.
Kate’s experience on the street, combined with her career as a pilot, had given her clout with the group. Leadership had been thrust upon Rodney and Kate equally, and nothing passed without their approval. Whenever Rodney suggested something, everyone looked to Kate to confirm and vice versa.
Once the group was collected and all the gear and supplies were sorted out, they descended to the first floor. Beyond the walls of the building, the winter winds howled with a ferocity that sent a shiver down everyone’s back.
A ball of anxiety grew in Kate’s belly. It rumbled and protested with every step down, but she pushed past it.
Rodney stopped at the door at the bottom of the stairwell and then turned to the huffing and puffing crowd behind him. “All right. You keep your eyes on me.” He reached into his pack and handed out the rope that they’d all be tied to. It was a method that mountain climbers used to keep each other safe and accounted for. “And you keep at my pace. You move where I move. You run when I run. And you stop when I stop. You’re my shadows, got it?”
Everyone nodded, the group scattered in a broken line. Glen, the old man with liver spots on his head, and Laura, the girl with the blond pixie haircut, were directly behind Rodney, followed by Barry, the Eastern Europe man. Then it was an older couple from the tenth floor, Stephen and Jen, followed by a young married couple from the nineteenth, Kit and Sarah. And then Holly, Mark, and Kate brought up the caboose.
“I have a few alternate routes in case we run into trouble,” Rodney continued. “It’ll take us longer, but it’ll keep us safe.” He held up the rope once everyone was secure. “I cannot stress this enough: do not deviate from the group. You try and pull us one way when I’m going another, and we fall. And if we fall out there, we might not get back up.”
