In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel

by Edward M Wolfe

  She wiped Trey’s blood away with her arm, smearing it across her cheek. She looked at his body half in and half out of the RV. She was determined to bring him in the rest of the way so she could shut the door and let the heat start building up. She grabbed him beneath his armpits again and dragged him inward and toward the back of the RV. When his feet cleared the doorway, she set him down and closed the door.

  She collapsed on the seat in front of the dining table and rested. She was too exhausted and out of breath to cry so she forced herself to think of what she needed to do next. Ten minutes later she had him on the bed. She got a towel from the bathroom, folded it and put it on his head, then she lay down next to him to rest for a minute and wait for the warm air to reach them. She hurt everywhere.

  Twenty-two

  Carl had difficulty seeing with the slushy rain frequently smacking his face and sticking to the windshield. He couldn’t find a way to turn the wipers on so he had to look out the side window or up over the windshield, and every time he did that, he got more wet snow in his eyes. It was really starting to piss him off. He pulled over at the first place he saw.

  The row of diagonal parking spaces in front of the Mile High Tavern was empty. Carl pulled into the space closest to the door. It was a handicapped space, which Carl thought would never matter again.

  “Fuck a bunch of gimps,” he said as he got out of the car, eager to get inside and out of the damned snowy rain and wind.

  He pulled the door open and stepped into the dark interior that was weakly lit by two kerosene lanterns. A small, half-bald, skinny man with no chin was standing behind the bar taking money out of the cash register. He looked up at Carl and froze.

  Carl looked at him then quickly moved his eyes left and right, checking to see if there was anyone else inside. There wasn’t.

  “We’re… we’re closed!” the man stammered, blinking at Carl and not moving. He looked like a mannequin with cash in his trembling hands. He looked to Carl like someone he’d seen on Get Smart. Talked like the guy too – sounded like a girl.

  “You need to start a damned fire in this place. It’s freezing in here.” Carl didn’t care if the place was closed for business or not. No one was going to give him orders unless they were backed up by the barrel of a gun. He walked up to the bar and sat down on a stool.

  “I need a beer and I need it now. A tall draft.”

  The man behind the bar unfroze. He put the money he was holding in his pants pocket and looked around. He saw the draft beer spigots and then looked behind him and saw rows of glasses on the counter.

  “You ain’t even a bartender, are you?”

  “I’m… I’m the owner,” the man lied, his weird voice pitched high with fear.

  “Bullshit. Give me a fucking beer before I come back there and rip your head off.”

  The man swallowed and plucked a glass from the counter with shaking hands.

  “I said, tall!” Carl bellowed.

  The man saw his error and put the short glass down and grabbed a larger one. He walked over to the spigots and eyed the several handles with various names and logos. He looked at Carl, his eyes wide with fear and uncertainty.

  “Give me a Hef,” Carl said.

  The man looked again at the taps and saw one that said Hefeweizen and put the glass under the spigot and pulled the tap down. As the glass filled, foam rose rapidly to the top. When the foam threatened to overflow, he released the tap and brought the beer over to Carl. He set it down on the bar in front of him, sloshing foam and beer onto Carl’s hand.

  Carl backhanded the man, which spun him around. He grabbed hold of the counter behind him to keep from falling, knocking over a few glasses which fell to the floor and bounced on the grimy rubber mat.

  “Are you a fucking retard?” Carl growled at him.

  Carl saw a dirty bar towel folded into a neat rectangle sitting next to a Zippo lighter beside the cash register. He picked up the towel, shook it out and wiped the foam off his hand, then used it to dry his face. It smelled like old beer poured into an ashtray.

  The man behind the bar was staring at him, waiting to see what he would to do next. Carl threw the towel at his face. The man jerked, startled, and caught the towel as it fell.

  Carl got up and walked around the bar. The man started walking backwards, certain that Carl was going to assault him. But Carl grabbed a tall glass and went to the taps and poured himself a proper beer. Then he went back around to sit down on his stool.

  “Now get me some Marlboros from the vending machine,” he said as he sat down.

  The man quickly went to the register and grabbed all of the quarters, then rushed over to the vending machine on the far side of the bar below a sign that read Restrooms with an arrow pointing down a short, dark hall.

  He saw that the machine took dollar bills so he put the quarters in his pocket and pulled out the cash he had taken and tried to insert a dollar bill, but the machine wouldn’t pull it in like it was supposed to.

  “There ain’t no ‘lectricity, you dumbfuck.”

  “But, you’re the one who said to use the vending machine,” the man countered.

  Carl got up and started walking toward him. The man raised his hands in front of his face and blinked rapidly. Carl turned to the right, ignoring him, heading down the dark hall. He found a locked door, stepped back a bit, then kicked at it with the heel of his boot, aiming to the left of the doorknob. The thin door busted easily and flew inward. He disappeared through the doorway, then reappeared a minute later carrying a carton of cigarettes.

  “Sometimes you gotta use your brain,” he said, passing the man who was still cowering next to the vending machine.

  Carl sat down, ripped open the carton, removed a pack, unwrapped it and lit a cigarette with the Zippo lighter. He took a long drink of his beer and sighed, finally able to relax and enjoy himself. He was still in a really bad mood though and would’ve liked to have some music but he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  He looked at his dim reflection in the flickering light from the lanterns in the dingy mirror behind the bar. His face was swollen and bruised with two black eyes and his hair was wet and wild from having driven in the convertible. He looked like some kind of monster. He liked it. He could see why the little man was so scared of him.

  “Hey you! What’s your name?”

  “Jeffrey,” the man immediately replied. “Jeffrey Cordigan.”

  “I’m Carl. Why don’t you look behind the bar for something to snack on and get yourself a beer and be civil?”

  Jeffrey went behind the bar and found a bag of peanuts. He set them down on the bar and grabbed a small glass, then traded it for a tall glass like Carl’s and poured himself a beer. He tilted the glass the way he’d seen Carl do it but still ended up with a glass half full of foam. He came around the bar and took a stool a few seats away from Carl and sucked the foam off the top of his beer.

  “Nice to meet you, Carl.”

  Carl looked at him, squinting his eyes and shaking his head. “I know you came here for the cash. But did you see a gun behind the bar? Maybe a shotgun?”

  “No. But there’s a bat.”

  Carl poured peanuts onto the bar and began cracking them open and dropping the shells on the ground, alternately popping peanuts in his mouth and taking large swigs of his beer.

  “Whaddaya think yer gonna do with the money?”

  The man looked around nervously. He wasn’t comfortable with a casual discussion of his thievery. “I… I don’t know yet.”

  “You did see the bomb, right?”

  Jeffrey nodded vigorously.

  “Obviously, that’s why you came here. You know there ain’t no law to stop you.”

  More nodding from Jeffrey.

  “You don’t need money. The ‘conomy just took a big dump. Might makes right from now on. What you need is a gun.”

  “You know, Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Let us have faith that right makes might,’ and I think that he—“
>
  “I wasn’t kidding about the fire.”

  “What?”

  “Start a damn fire in the fireplace. I can see my fuckin’ breath in here.”

  Twenty-three

  Thunder cracked and rumbled and a torrent of rain pelted the roof of the motorhome, startling Monica out of her sleep. She had only meant to rest for a minute before tending to Trey’s wound. Now she worried that he may have bled to death while she napped right next to him. She looked at him and saw that he was still breathing. She went to remove the towel from his head but it was stuck. She put it back down, grimacing, hoping she hadn’t reopened the wound.

  She wanted to get the towel wet to see if she could carefully pull it away from the wound without pulling away the clotted blood with it. She went into the small bathroom and turned on the faucet. As she had feared, there was no water. She could hear plenty of water falling above her head though. She looked out the window and saw rainy snow blowing almost sideways in the fierce wind. She just needed a way to get some of it.

  She went in to the kitchen of the RV and found a plastic cup in a cabinet. She went outside and looked in both directions and saw water slowly pouring off of a rain spout attached to the gutter on the RV’s roof. She ran over to it and braced herself against the wind as she waited for the cup to fill.

  She slowly poured the water onto the towel and was able to unstick it from Trey’s head. She saw that the blood on his head was shiny in places, but it didn’t appear to be bleeding. She was glad that it stopped on its own. She was not good at dealing with blood and injuries. She assumed that the wound should probably be cleaned but she wasn’t up to the task. Her goals had been to get Trey out of the cold rain, and to stop the bleeding. Having done that, she felt that she had repaid him for helping her.

  She sat on the bed looking at him and remembered hearing some warning about people with head wounds. She wasn’t sure what she had heard. Then she remembered what it was: never let a person with a concussion go to sleep. No, that couldn’t be right. People had to sleep eventually. But she was sure that a person was supposed to be kept awake for some period of time after a concussion. She wondered if the same rule applied if the person had been knocked unconscious and remained unconscious for a few hours. To be safe, she decided she better wake him up.

  First she took off her soaking wet socks and put them in the bathroom sink. The skin on her toes felt funny, almost painful. She lifted a foot and saw that her toes were white and wrinkled. She felt dumb for falling asleep with wet socks on. She went back to Trey and wasn’t sure how to wake him. He might have other injuries that weren’t visible. What if she pushed on his chest and he had a broken rib? She assumed that since he had landed head first, his feet were probably uninjured so she grabbed one of his boots and started shaking it.

  “Trey. Wake up.”

  Trey groaned and rolled over onto his side, pulling his feet away from her and bending his knees into a fetal position. Monica looked at him for a second then walked to the side of the bed and slapped him on his ass.

  “What the hell?” Trey rolled over and was shocked to see Monica standing there looking at him and shaking her hand in pain.

  “I’m glad you could feel me spanking your wallet. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  “What happened? Where are we?” Trey sat up on the bed and winced in pain. He brought his hand to his head where the pain was and he felt something unexpected. He looked at his hand and saw spots of blood. He looked at Monica, confused.

  “You crashed my van into a telephone pole and went flying out the window and hit your head. You probably have a concussion and need to stay awake.”

  “Fuck. Really? Where are we? Sounds like an RV in a windstorm.”

  “It is. The RV is in the driveway right next to where we crashed. No one was home who could help us, but the keys were in the ignition, so…” She shrugged. “Here we are.”

  “How did I get in here? You couldn’t have carried me.”

  “You’re right. I dragged you. And it wasn’t easy. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I had to get you up into this thing after I dragged you to it. I’m kinda proud of myself. How does your head feel?”

  “It hurts like a bitch. I don’t suppose you have any aspirin, or something stronger maybe?”

  “I’ll see if I can find anything.”

  Monica left for a minute and came back carrying a small white plastic case. She set it on the bed and undid the hasp. Inside were paper packets of aspirin and acetaminophen, some gauze, a small pair of scissors and bandages of various sizes. She handed him the aspirin.

  “There’s some water in that cup over there, but it came from the roof, so it’s probably nasty.”

  Trey opened the packet and tossed the aspirin back in his mouth and worked his saliva around to swallow them without the water.

  “You look awful. I’m sorry about what happened to you. I didn’t know…” Trey turned away, unable to face her because of his part in the home invasion that led to her being raped.

  “Hey. You saved me. You stopped him, and you got me away from him. You don’t have to be sorry.”

  He looked back at her. “But before that, I helped him trick you into opening your door, and then afterwards, I wrecked your van. I’m no hero, lady.”

  “The minivan’s insured. As soon as I can get to a phone I’ll call the police and the insurance company.” Trey look startled. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell them you were with him. I don’t want to get you in trouble. If we can get a ride to my house, I’ll wait long enough for you to get away on your motorcycle before I call.” Trey continued to look at her like there was something wrong.

  “Oh shit,” he said, leaving his mouth hanging open.

  “I promise I won’t say anything. As far as I know, I owe you my life. I won’t do anything to get you in trouble.” She sat on the bed and put her hand on his leg. “I don’t blame you for what happened. I’m lucky you were there. If you hadn’t been…”

  “Monica, there ain’t no police to call. The phones are down, remember?”

  “They could be working by now. You said there was an explosion. How bad could it be?”

  “Really bad. It wasn’t just an explosion. I mean, it was just an explosion, but the thing is, it was nuclear.” Trey stared at her, waiting to see how she was going to take such terrible news after everything else she’d been through.

  “What blew up?”

  “Uh… Denver. Monica, it was a nuclear explosion.”

  “You’re not serious. You said the authorities wanted us to evacuate. They wouldn’t do that over a nuclear explosion. What really happened?”

  Trey looked down at the bed. How could he convince her? “We made up the part about helping the Sheriff’s deputies and needing to evacuate. Carl was looking for a house to raid because we saw the mushroom cloud over Denver and he knew that no one could call the cops. Most of them would’ve been killed when the bomb went off. And that’s why he did what he did to you.”

  Monica covered her mouth with one hand and froze, staring at Trey. Now she believed him. He saw tears start to flow from her eyes but she didn’t make a sound. He scooted over to her and put an arm around her. She leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him. He lay back on the bed and she went with him.

  Trey stayed awake as she cried herself to sleep. Her warmth and closeness gave him something to focus on which helped take his mind off the pain in his head. He stroked her hair from her head down to her lower back where it came to an end. After a while, he slept too.

  Twenty-four

  Carl continued drinking while Jeffrey built a fire. The more he drank, the less his head hurt. After a while, the tavern got warmer and started feeling less damp. Carl drank quickly out of boredom and because the beer was free. Eventually, he could barely keep himself upright on his stool.

  “I’m gonna lay down in the office. Wake me up when the rain stops. I need to find a gun somewhere and take care of som
e business.” He slid off his stool and grabbed the bar to steady himself, then walked toward the dark hall.

  “The forecast called for three days of rain,” Jeffrey said.

  Carl stopped.

  “Are you shittin’ me?”

  “I shit you not,” Jeffrey replied, suppressing an urge to giggle. He’d always found that expression to be very funny but he feared Carl would think he was indeed shitting him if he were to laugh.

  Carl turned around.

  “Three fuckin’ days?”

  “From what I heard, yes.” When Carl glared at him, the urge to laugh went away.

  “Aw, fuck! Don’t wake me up at all then.” Carl continued down the hall and disappeared into the hallway that just barely caught some of the flickering light from the fireplace so it wasn’t completely dark.

  A few minutes later, Jeffrey heard Carl snoring and he wondered if he should slip away from the tavern. He had only come for the money in the register and he had gotten that. He was surprised that Carl hadn’t taken it from him. He was a pretty bossy guy, and he was abusive too. Jeffrey admitted to himself that Carl scared him.

  He should leave while the big man was asleep, but he didn’t really have anywhere to go and he didn’t like the idea of walking back in the rain to his friend’s house where he had probably been over-extending his welcome on the couch. He could probably find a house whose owners were in Denver when the bomb went off and wouldn’t be coming back. That’s what he’d do. He just needed the rain and the wind to stop, then he’d find a car.

  But maybe he ought to stick with Carl for a little while. They might be able to help each other. Carl was looking for a gun. Jeffrey knew where they could find guns. Easy-peasy. Maybe if he helped Carl get a gun, Carl would help him get a car.

  Jeffrey walked over to the tavern door to see what Carl was driving. He pulled the door open and it swung inward, driven by the force of the wind. He got a quick glance at Carl’s ride and pushed the door shut, putting his shoulder into it, fighting against the wind that tried to push it open.