He brought a hand to his face and felt the sticky blood drying on his skin. He carefully felt around his head and found three different large bumps.
“That mother-fucker.”
A slow burning rage was building inside of Carl.
He got up carefully. He looked around the room and saw that Trey must’ve taken the woman for himself. That’s alright, he thought. He’d get her back. Carl found his clothes and dressed slowly. His head was killing him and every movement made it worse.
He decided he needed rest. He dropped the boot he was about to put on and slowly lay back down on the bed. He didn’t have to rush out right now in god-awful pain to go get his revenge on Trey and re-claim his woman. He had time. He was sure he’d have no problem finding him. There was really only one place he could be headed.
Trey’s parents had a cabin not too far from here. It would be empty and the most obvious place for the dumbass to go. Carl closed his eyes and thought about what he’d do to Trey when he found him. Trey was going to regret what he’d done. He had a hell of a lesson comin’ to him.
Carl would not tolerate being disrespected like this.
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
Part 3
Comin’ Down Fast
Chapter Eighteen
Trey knew he had hurt Carl but he didn’t know how badly, so he wanted to get away from Monica’s house as fast as possible. At the intersection where Monica’s street reached the highway, he turned hard to the right causing the van to slide around the corner. With adrenaline feeding his body and brain, he expertly corrected and rapidly accelerated.
Monica stared straight ahead, seemingly unconcerned by the vehicle sliding on every sharp curve of the snow-slicked road. Trey knew he was driving too fast, but he didn’t feel he had a choice. He just needed to be careful and get to a safe place. His eyes frequently left the road as he searched for a place to pull over to see if he could get Monica into some clothes. He was fairly certain they wouldn’t run into any law enforcement, but if they did, he didn’t want to be in a position of having to explain why he was traveling with a nude woman in shock with a bloody and bruised face.
No, I didn’t beat her and rape her, officer – a friend of mine did that.
His mind focused on three priorities, in order: Get away from Carl, get Monica dressed, and get to safety. The snowfall began to increase and Trey looked at the unfamiliar controls on the steering column. He grabbed the one on the left and turned it like he was accelerating a motorcycle in reverse. The windshield wipers came on at full speed. The rapid swiping motion made him feel nervous, as if the car was panicking and causing him to feel panicky too. He rotated the control back toward himself and the wipers slowed to a less frantic pace.
The sky was a large expanse of blended grey and white. A car passed by going the opposite direction, flashing its high beams once. Trey looked at the dash. His high beams were off. Maybe the guy was just saying hi. He looked up and spotted a small black stream of wispy smoke flowing upward from a house somewhere up ahead and off to the right. Someone had just started a fire, or had just let one go out in their fireplace or woodstove. Maybe they would help.
A minute later he saw where the smoke was coming from. The turnoff toward the house was coming up immediately on his right. He braked too hard as he made the turn. The van lost its traction, sliding forward at an angle until the front end slammed into a utility pole, breaking the windshield and bringing the van to a complete stop, which catapulted Trey through the windshield. He flew through the air and hit a stone retaining wall that bordered a large front yard.
Monica jerked forward from the impact but was restrained by her seatbelt. She clawed at the airbag covering her face in a panic. She coughed from the cornstarch dust that was released during the deployment. The driver side airbag was draped over the van’s short hood, flapping in the breeze. After the loud crunching sound of the collision, and the airbags deploying, there was silence except for a hissing sound from under the hood.
Monica’s eyes were more alert and active now than they had been since Carl knocked her unconscious. She brought her trembling hands to her face and cried. Freezing cold air blew into the van and she became fully aware that she wasn’t wearing anything. She looked down at the blanket wrapped around her as if she didn’t remember how or why that was all she had covering her flesh. She desperately wanted something to wear and to get warm somehow.
She looked over at the empty driver’s seat. She knew the van had been in a collision but didn’t remember Trey getting out. Her mind was only beginning to work regularly as she came out of shock so she dismissed the mystery of where Trey had gone and resolved to get dressed somehow. She turned in her seat to look around and try to figure out where she was. She saw one of her suitcases in the cargo area. She looked out the window to her right at the empty and silent street, then dropped the blanket and quickly squeezed herself between the bucket seats, then scrambled over the second row of seats and released the hasps on her suitcase.
She didn’t know who had packed her clothes or why they were packed so badly, but she was glad to have them. As she got dressed, she noticed bruises on her arms and legs. An image flashed into her mind of a large and violent psychopath. She immediately pushed the thought away. She did not want to think about what had happened to her. Not now; maybe not ever.
Now that she was dressed, she looked around for shoes and didn’t see any. Apparently, whoever had packed her case didn’t think she’d be going outside. She needed to go… she almost thought the word “home,” but stopped herself. She didn’t want to think about home. She needed to go somewhere. She couldn’t sit here freezing to death in her wrecked minivan.
Nineteen
Carl awoke the next morning feeling like someone had dropped a load of bricks on his head. This angered him because he was certain that if he had gotten enough sleep he’d wake up feeling better. But instead he felt worse. He raised one arm and carefully checked the bumps on his head. They were no smaller than before he had slept. He clenched his teeth thinking of Trey and the payback he had coming to him.
He slowly got out of Monica’s bed and looked in her closet. Nothing but women’s clothes. Alright then, where did her damned husband sleep? Were things not going so well between the army boy and his pretty little lady? Separate rooms? Carl wasn’t surprised. She was a hellcat. Probably didn’t know her place with her old man either.
He left the room to check the one across the hall. Here was the safe that Trey had tried and failed to break into. Carl yearned to open the safe. He imagined it being filled with shiny, new weapons. Trey had taken the Glock and left him with nothing. He wished he had some dynamite. He’d blow the thing wide open, right there in the damn bedroom.
Further down the hall he found one more door. He opened it and saw the inside of a two car garage. He flipped on the light switch next to the doorway and nothing happened. He’d have to rely on the grey light coming through the windows. He looked around. Aha! A stack of clothes on a workbench, all wrapped in dry cleaning bags. Carl walked over to the stack of clothing and cycled through each item, extracting the few things that he found least objectionable.
Along with the dress pants, dress shirts and military uniforms were also khakis and flannel shirts. Finally, on the bottom of the stack he found the sole pair of Levi’s and added them to his small collection.
“What kinda man dry-cleans his Levi’s?” Carl grumbled, shaking his head. He went back inside, found the bathroom, and showered, carefully washing the blood from his face and head, trying to not re-open the wounds. After toweling off, he put on the Levi’s which just barely fit. They were uncomfortable but would have to do for now. There was no deodorant or men’s shaving cream; not even a man’s razor among all of the women’s stuff in the cabinet above the bathroom sink.
“Fuck it,” Carl said to himself. Real men didn’t need any of t
hat shit anyway. It was fine with him if he looked and smelled like a man. Besides, he’d like to see the man or woman with the balls to say anything. He went to the bedroom and as he was putting on his dirty socks and his boots, hunger suddenly struck him like a freight train slamming into his stomach. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and doubled over from the sudden pain. He hadn’t eaten since the day before yesterday.
“God damn!” he said, straightening up. “I gotta eat somethin’.”
He went to the kitchen and scowled at how nice and pretty everything was with perfect little curtains that decorated a window next to the dining table with a view to the backyard. Placemats in four places at the table with some kind of wheat pattern on them. A white tablecloth with fall leaves scattered about sparsely. Carl kicked the edge of the table, sending it sliding into the corner.
He turned and walked the few steps to the refrigerator. He opened the door and couldn’t believe the lack of food that he found on the shelves. Some Coors Light and a couple of yogurt containers on the top shelf next to some almond milk.
“How the fuck do you get milk out of an almond for Christ’s sake?”
In the door there were two rows of eggs. Carl took one out on the chance that they might be hard-boiled. He threw it into the sink hoping for a dull thud but it splattered yolk all over. He turned back and opened a drawer labeled Meat and found a package of Uncured Bacon. He didn’t know what that meant, but bacon was bacon as far as he was concerned. He’d even eat some of that fake-ass turkey bacon if that was all he could find.
After a breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs with almond milk, (and no bread anywhere) Carl felt a lot better, but still hungry. He decided he’d had enough from this kitchen though. He’d get some real food like a big-ass steak somewhere else. The diner down the mountain should be a goldmine of food, and everything would be free.
He found his jacket and his gloves and went back to Monica’s room to get the stuff out of his pants pockets. Now that he had bathed and eaten, he was aware of the stench coming from his grimy Levi’s. He almost wanted to wash his hands after touching them.
He went outside and started up his bike. He looked at Trey’s bike and thought about setting it on fire but remembered it was actually his. He had given it to the back--stabbing bastard. He’d figure out a way to come back for it later. He looked at the driveway while he let his engine warm up. He saw a large rectangular area in the center of the driveway with less snow than the surrounding area. There were no tire tracks visible from when the van had driven away. That was okay. He knew where to find them.
He brushed his left foot back to raise the kickstand and he revved the engine a few times. He started off slowly, releasing the clutch and giving the bike only a little gas but he still laid it down as he turned out of the driveway and onto the snowy gravel.
He got up cursing and kicking at his bike. He strained to lift it and got it upright. He put the kickstand back down and looked around. He needed four wheels in this shit. The snow was probably sticking to the highway now. He didn’t know how to hot-wire, so he needed keys. That meant he needed to find a car where the owner was home. He looked at the house across the street. He couldn’t tell if anyone was home or not. The porch light was off of course, and there was no car in the driveway, but that meant nothing since most folks would have their cars inside their garages when it snowed.
The wind picked up and blew snow around as Carl walked across the street. He went up to the door quickly. The wind was blowing right through his clothes. He pounded on the door urgently. An old man with wispy white hair decorating his mostly bald head came to the door wearing a thick green robe. The man pushed a small curtain aside from the window in the door and looked at Carl with interest.
“Yes?” he asked loudly, without opening the door.
Carl was wearing normal clean clothes, but his face was bruised and unshaved so he knew he didn’t look like the nicest of strangers to be appearing at someone’s door. He thought quickly.
“Excuse me, sir. I’m trying to get home to Edwards and my little girl don’t think she can hold it that long. Could you be so kind to let her use your bathroom real quick? Her momma died last week in a car crash we were in and I just hate making her suffer more than she already is. She cried all night.”
The old man had concern in his eyes as he listened to Carl’s plea. He unlocked the door and as soon as he started to open it Carl kicked it with the bottom of his boot, putting all of his lower-body strength in to it. The old man was flung inward with the door and slammed into the wall. He crumpled to the ground, his body pushing the door slowly back toward Carl who stuck his arm out to stop it, then let himself inside.
“Anybody home?” he yelled. Probably no one else there except for maybe an old woman, but he wanted to make sure. No one responded so Carl cautiously made his way further into the house. The place sounded empty, he thought, but someone could be sleeping. He went down the hall and looked in the bedrooms. The floor plan was the same as the house he’d just left. The master bedroom had an empty unmade bed. The second room looked like an office with a leather couch and lots of bookshelves filled with more books than Carl had ever seen outside of a library. He shook his head at the absurdity of one person having so many books. What was the point? He opened the last door that he knew would lead to the garage.
“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” he said, as he a 1932 Ford Roadster gleaming on the clean concrete floor like it had just rolled off the production line. The deep red paint was so glossy it looked wet. The top was off and Carl walked over and looked inside to see if the keys were in it. They weren’t.
He went back into the house. He was excited about the car. If he could score a firearm or two, he’d leave here in style, ready to take on the world. If only his head wasn’t still throbbing. He found a keychain on a hook in the dining room but he did not find any guns other than a civil war musket hanging on the wall above the fireplace.
He grabbed a banana from a fruit bowl on the table and went to the garage. He tried to open the garage door from inside, but it was locked. The key to the padlock was on the keychain. He entered the garage from the driveway and got into the roadster. Now he just needed this thing to start. He hoped to hell that it wasn’t just a museum piece. He turned the key and the sound of the engine revving to life made him smile. He backed out into the street then shifted into Drive.
He wanted to see what the V8 under the hood could do, so he floored the gas, expecting to peel out, thinking of how cool he’d look burning rubber in a fancy hot rod, but the wheels just spun on the wet rocks, sending gravel flying up into the under-carriage and the street behind him. Disappointed, he let up on the gas and drove slowly to the end of the street, turning left onto the paved road which was coated with a layer of slushy snow.
As he drove down the mountain, he wondered if he should go back and look for the convertible top, but he decided to stick with his forward momentum and just keep going. The wind was cold and wet snow blew around him and stuck to the windshield, but he was too excited to care. It even seemed like his head hurt less – at first.
Twenty
Angela hated the windows being boarded up so she wanted to get out of the lodge and go sit in one of the cabins. Things were bad enough with the possible nuclear war, her friends dying, being stuck on the mountain, worrying about her family, and now, sitting around in a boarded up building with hardly any sunlight – it was just too much. She was trying to stay as positive as she could under the most negative of circumstances, but it was hard. And now the dreary darkness of the lodge just made it feel impossible.
After Terry explained why he’d boarded up the windows and they talked about staying together to survive as a group if they couldn’t resume their normal lives, she left the men to sort through the loot from their last scavenging run, saying, “I’ll be back later,” and started walking toward the door. “Oh, could somebody cook something for tonight? I’m really tired and just wan
t to rest a while.”
“Sure. I will,” Terry replied.
Both men watched Angela leave, then Terry looked at Jim.
“Is she okay? She seems sort of depressed.”
Jim shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be the whole nuclear bomb thing, plus watching Hailey and Josh die…”
Terry shook his head and resumed sorting supplies from the big pile.
“You do care about her, don’t you?”
Jim looked at Terry and bit the inside of his cheek. He reached for a knife and dropped it alongside several others off to the side. Then he examined the pile to see what he could sort next. He started on medical supplies. After he gathered them into a separate pile, he stood up and stretched. Terry was picking up ammo boxes and sorting them by caliber.
“I’m gonna grab some empty boxes,” Jim said, walking toward the front door.
Terry thought that was a bad lie since the empty boxes were in the back by the pantry, but he didn’t say anything.
Jim stepped outside and stood still after taking a few steps away from the door. He looked over at the cabins and saw flickering light coming from Angela’s. Her curtains were closed. A cold wind blew through his shirt but he didn’t button his jacket. He just stood there, staring at the one cabin with a dimly lit window. He put his hands in his jacket pockets, tilted his head down and walked past the cars toward the lighted cabin adjacent to the far end of the lot.
When he reached her door, he tapped it with the side of his shoe three times. A few seconds later, the door opened and he could see Angela’s breath inside the room as easily as he could see his outside. It was cold and stunk of kerosene.
“You’re gonna freeze in there. You should come back to the lodge.”
In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel Page 8
