by Sweet, Dell
“Well,” Johnny said, “if we're going to take side roads, we're going to have to get another map, and that means we're going to have to go into the next city to get one. I'm not thrilled about that, but we're also going to need to pick up more ammunition too. Either way, we have to at least follow the highway into the next town down the line. No way around it,” he almost seemed as though he were hoping that she would come up with some alternative as he spoke.
“No other way,” she said, “so... I guess we better get moving?” She allowed what she had meant to be a statement to rise at the end and turned it into more of a question.
“No,” Johnny said immediately. “No way. It'll be dark soon, and I really don't think that would be a smart move at all. No... I think we should wait it out here tonight, and get on the road early in the morning. We should be able to make the next town without a map. I don't even know what the next place is, but it can't be too far, can it?” he didn't wait for a response; he had asked more for himself than her. “No, I'm pretty sure it won't be far. We've been running into lots of small towns every twenty, thirty miles or so, and most of them at least have gas stations. We should be able to get a map fairly easily. After we do though, that's it. We get off the main road, and stay off it.”
As darkness closed in, they had both turned quiet. Lana had begun a small dinner over the coals in the fireplace, they had hastily thrown together earlier that morning when they had arrived, and Johnny had walked over to the truck and occupied himself with checking the mechanics, making sure that nothing had been damaged the night before as he had driven.
Several times he had driven over debris in the road, but in his haste to put miles between them, he had ignored it. He had also become convinced during the night as he drove, that they were being followed. He had kept glancing into the mirrors, sure that he would see glowing headlights closing in on them from behind. It had not happened though; the road behind them had remained empty all night as he had driven.
He had another thought as he stood looking over the truck. What if they had done something to this truck? He wondered. He knew it was irrational, there had to have been over a hundred trucks on that lot, and... How would they have known to choose this one? And if they had, wouldn't something already have happened?
In spite of how ridiculous it seemed, he checked the truck over anyway. There was one small gouge in the front passenger fenders paint, probably due to some debris flying up and hitting it, but other than that the truck seemed fine, and none the worse for the hurried trip. He pushed it from his mind as he walked away from the truck and back to the fire.
Lana was stirring a stew like mixture, to keep it from burning on the hot coals.
“I think it's ready,” she said as he approached the fire, and squatted down beside her. “Hungry?” she gave him a small spoonful to taste.
“Oh yeah,” he responded, and rubbed his stomach with one hand to show her it was true. He sat down close to the fire, and turned his thoughts away from the truck.
Johnny tried a tired smile on his face as he took a bowl of the stew. Lana sat down next to him, and they began to eat as the last traces of light seeped from the sky.
October 18th
Lana awoke a few hours before dawn and sat just outside the small tent, lost in thought.
They had spent the last few days driving, stopping only when they had to. As a result they had put a lot of miles between themselves and the bad memories.
She slowly became aware that the sky was beginning to color with the first rays of sunrise. The silent, night-black forest surrounding them began to color. A chatter of a multitude of squirrels who called the forest home came with the light. The croak of crickets, the light rustle of leaves in the faint, morning breeze. The bird song was absent, she thought. It made her wonder why, but the symphony created by the other forest inhabitants began to break apart her troubled thoughts as she listened, the black mood that had begun to descend upon her finally lifted as the first brilliant rays of sunlight began to stream down through the thick pines of the forest.
They were somewhere inside the borders of what had once been New York. They had done nothing but drive the last few miles, and the side roads they were following had been clear enough to make good time. They had found and raided the roadside ruins of a small Mom-and-Pop place. The maps on the counter were for the Southern Tier. A few maps for the Western New York city of Rochester. They had yet to see any town or city signs, but she suspected that once they left the safety of the wooded area they were in they would.
She rose slowly and began to re-kindle the fire. When Johnny awoke a few minutes later, she had coffee heating, and had already prepared a small breakfast from the left over dinner of the night before.
Lazy curls from the wood fire drifted slowly up through the trees into the morning air, the smoky scent hung in the air, and invoked nothing but good feelings in her. When Johnny crawled out of the tent, the black mood that had threatened to envelop her was completely gone, and had been replaced with a deep feeling of peace that calmed and soothed her soul. She knew they would have to be careful on their trek to the coast, but she was no longer overpowered by the sense of foreboding that had washed over her earlier.
“Morning,” Johnny said, as he sat down next to her and took the steaming cup of coffee she offered, “Sleep okay?”
She considered her answer only briefly, “No,” she replied, “I woke up a couple of hours ago and couldn't get back to sleep. I kept thinking about things, Johnny. Like what's ahead for us, and I couldn't shake the feeling that we have to be careful, but I shouldn't spend my time sweating this stuff,” she looked into his eyes as she finished speaking.
“I know how you feel. I feel the same way,” Johnny said, “I spent a long time thinking about it last night before I could finally get to sleep. I guess I just don't care anymore. We could drive ourselves crazy trying to reason it... whatever happened, happened, and we'll just face what we have to as we go,” he paused for a second. “I think truthfully that we'll be okay, I really do. If I didn't I would say so. We'll just keep going.”
Johnny finished speaking, and when he did he pulled Lana to him and held her.
“Are you afraid?” he asked her.
“No,” she replied, “not afraid of death anyhow, maybe just afraid of turning... I don't want that, Johnny, I really don't,” she began to cry as she finished, and Johnny held her, comforting her as best he could. I won't let that happen, he thought, not at all.
Aloud he said, “Lana?” he waited until she looked up at him. “I think that we just have to be careful so that doesn't happen, you know, like if we just went ahead with no thought to what we were doing, we could find ourselves in a bad situation, or we might not be able to think quickly enough if something happened. But I don't, and can't believe that we will. Not if we're careful, Lana, and that's probably what we're being made to see.” He was looking over the top of her head as he spoke. “I think,” he said, changing the subject, “that those stitches need to come out... Might hurt a little.”
She looked up at him from his arms. “Might?” She asked.
The surrounding symphony continued as the rays of sunlight fought their way deeper into the forest to awaken its inhabitants; they held each other and allowed the chatter and scolding of squirrel-talk to dispel their fears. Its calming effect soon overcame the fear and apprehension thinking of the trip had heaped upon them. Johnny worked with a pair of nail clippers, tweezers, and peroxide, pulling each piece of dental floss from her head.
“Put some iodine on it too,” Lana told him as he finished.
“That's gonna hurt like a bitch,” Johnny told her.
“Really? Like a bitch?” Lana asked.
“I didn't mean it exactly like that,” Johnny told her. He let the dropper suck up some iodine and then squeezed small drops on each small hole that the dental floss had slipped out of.
“Oh,” Lana said. “That does hurt like a bitch,” she gritted her tee
th as Johnny continued until each hole was done. A few minutes late he was done and Lana got up to walk it off. “The hard part is that I want to itch it,” she told him a few minutes later.
Johnny nodded his head and looked into the eyes of a small gray ground squirrel that sat watching them on a gnarled limb of an older nearby pine. Its tiny hand-like limbs were clasped together across its white belly, and to Johnny it seemed as though the squirrel were an old and wise man, sitting and watching them from his pine perch. The squirrel chattered briefly, adding its voice to the talk of the forest, and then scampered across the limb, into the upper reaches of the pine, out of sight.
SEVEN
We traveled on across the state for the next few days not seeing much of anything at all. I began to think we would see no one, and I'll be honest I was not looking forward to seeing anyone either. Seemed like everyone we saw was intent on putting us in the ground or had already come out of the ground. Either way, their intent was the same, making us dead... Hold on a minute.
I'm not alone here. As the night deepens the dead are coming out of the barn and testing the house, doors, windows. No, those bastards can't get in, but I am tempted to let them. Tempted... Won't they have us all eventually? Won't they?
I found a pack of cigarettes so old the tobacco is like dust. Considered smoking one anyway to take the edge off. Got them on the table with me, maybe I will...
So we went to traveling. The days just became a blur. We worked our way across the state and just outside the central New York city of Syracuse we picked up three people. Funny how we found them, but we did, and it changed a lot of what we were doing.
We had stopped in a strip mall, a gun shop that didn't look completely picked over, and like an idiot I had jumped right out of the truck like nothing was wrong with the world at all. It was Lana who spotted the man first...
Central New York
The sight of the man broke the paralysis that had held them, and they both quickly took cover behind an old truck parked in the lot. Johnny began to mentally berate himself for not hearing the sound of the running truck when he had gotten out of the Suburban. Stupid-Stupid-Stupid! He thought as he dropped to the ground and tried to crawl under the old truck.
He couldn't get all the way under it, but he did get under it far enough to be able to look into the open doorway of the sporting goods store. What he could see of it was empty, but he could not see far enough into the gloom of the interior to see whether there was just the man Lana had seen, or others waiting with him in the shadowy store.
“Hey!” a young sounding male voice called from within the store. “Don't shoot, okay? We don't want any trouble with you.”
The voice let Johnny and Lana know that there were at least two people in the store, and a few seconds later, they could hear the soft voice of a woman coming from the store as well.
“We don't want trouble either,” Johnny called back.
From under the car he could see a jeans-clad pair of legs separate from the shadows, and cautiously walk toward the open doorway. “What do you think, Lana,” Johnny whispered, “you believe 'em?”
“Only one way to find out,” she replied, as she backed out from under the car and stood slowly.
A young man was standing framed in the doorway, a shotgun resting in his hands. He saw her rise from behind the car, quickly followed by Johnny. His shotgun remained in his hands, but he did not turn it in their direction, instead he seemed to be purposely holding it away from them, and they could both see that he was frightened.
Johnny and Lana both kept their guns turned away, but still they were on guard, as Lana spoke into the silence.
“Look, we really don't want any trouble either. We only stopped because we saw the truck running,” she lied. She thought it probably wouldn't be a good idea to let them know they had stopped for ammunition. “We haven't seen any... many,” she corrected herself, “people. We'll leave if it’s what you want,” she finished.
The young man’s grip on the shotgun seemed to loosen as she had spoken, he seemed to be less fearful than he had been.
“We haven't seen any good people,” the young man said, “but we have seen a lot of bad ones.”
Lana and Johnny both relaxed a small amount, and Johnny spoke. “We've run into pretty some bad ones ourselves,” he said. He moved from behind the old truck and out into the open. “Can we talk?” he asked. He was careful to keep the machine gun pointed down as he had moved from behind the truck, and he forced himself to keep it pointed at the pavement as the young man seemed to consider what he had said.
The young man had lifted his shotgun from the pavement as Johnny had stepped from behind the old car, now he dropped it back toward the pavement, and answered. “Well, come on, I guess,” he replied. The other man they had seen initially and a young red haired woman stepped out of the shadowy interior as he finished speaking. They were both armed, but both kept their weapons pointed down at the pavement.
Johnny looked at Lana. “Well?” he asked. She nodded her head, and they walked slowly toward the front of the store. Once the two groups were facing each other, Lana spoke. “I'm Lana, and this is Johnny,” she said, pointing at Johnny.
“Scotty,” the older man said, stepping forward, “and this is Dave,” he said pointing at the dark haired young man, “and Amber.” He paused for a few seconds. “Might have over-reacted, but we haven't seen anything but bad the last few days. Thought you might be part of a group we ran into yesterday... It’s hard to tell who you can, or can't trust.” With that the man seemed to consider them briefly, and then set his rifle aside.
The man’s fear, that had been so evident once Lana and Johnny were standing face to face with him, seemed to melt away. Lana stuffed the machine pistol into her jeans, and Johnny slung the rifle over his shoulder before he stuck out his hand. “Good to meet you,” Johnny said, “I think we were beginning to think we wouldn't meet anyone at all who wouldn't try to kill us.” Lana stuck out her hand as Johnny finished speaking, and the young man and woman put their own weapons aside and stepped away from the sidewalk and shook the offered hands.
“You from here?” Scotty asked, as he also shook their hands.
“Los Angeles,” Lana replied, “heading east, how about you?”
“Texas,” Amber, the young woman said.
Her accent was slight, Johnny noticed. “We tried South... South is no good,” Johnny said. He looked at Lana who nodded before he continued. “We could all make the trip together,” he offered, “It might be a lot safer that way?” Lana echoed the invitation.
“See no reason not to,” Scotty said slowly, as he turned his eyes to the couple beside him. “Amber, Dave?”
“I'm for it,” Dave agreed. He had a slightly thicker accent, Lana noticed, well, maybe not an accent really, she told herself, he just talks somewhat slowly.
“Me too,” Amber said, and a smile lit up her face as she spoke. “No lie. I've been pretty scared, and it'll be good to have more of us, I think.”
“I lied,” Lana said, and then hastily continued, “We didn't stop because we saw you. We stopped because we need ammunition. We got ambushed, and... Well, we got out of it. I didn't mean to lie, I just wasn't sure we could trust you, and I didn't think it would be a good idea to tell you we were running low, not knowing if... you know...” she finished lamely.
“Don't give it a thought,” Scotty said, “can't say I blame you, in fact,” he said, as he reached for his shotgun, and opened the breech. “We did too, but there isn't any here. I hoped to scare you off, but the truth is that we're out of ammunition ourselves. If you had been bad, I guess we would've been screwed.” He finished by setting the empty shotgun against the door frame, resting butt down on the pavement.
“You mean,” Johnny said, “you're out completely?”
Dave said, “I've been out since yesterday, and whatever was in this shop is gone. Somebody cleaned it out.”
Johnny and Lana followed the others into the
small shop. It took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust to the sparse light inside, but once they did they could see that the shop had been ransacked. Two large glass display cases that had probably held, who knew how many handguns, Johnny thought, were empty. The glass fronts had been shattered into the cases. Racks that had once been likewise protected by lockable glass sliding doors had also been broken into, the thick glass that had once protected them lay inside, but the rifles they had protected were gone. Nothing had been left. The floors were strewn with empty boxes, wads of packing paper, and literature on several types of guns that had been discarded. The glass from the cases was everywhere, Johnny saw.
“Looks as though they didn't leave anything at all,” Johnny said.
“Told you,” Dave said, as he shook his head. “Somebody got here before us, and it looks as though they weren't about to leave anything behind,” he sighed.
“You have any ammo at all?” Lana asked.
“I do,” Amber answered, “I've got seven rounds for this 30.06, that's why... well, that's why I hung back when we saw you, you know. I could see you through the window, and... If I had too, I was going to shoot,” she seemed embarrassed as she spoke.
“She's the best shot between the three of us,” Scotty said.
Dave turned red, but nodded his head.
“Been anywhere else in this town?” Johnny asked, “Maybe there's another sporting goods store around.”
“Didn't have the time,” Scotty said, “we got here only ten minutes or so before you did.”
“Well,” Lana said, as she counted up what ammunition she had left for the machine pistol, “I've got one full clip of sixteen, and... Looks like two in this clip, and I'm done.”
Johnny had checked over what he had while she was speaking, “Looks like this one is down to ten in the clip, but I've got better than a hundred rounds for the Remington in the truck, that should help us a little. We need to find a place to get our hands on more, especially for that machine pistol,” he gestured at Lana's weapon, “and this one,” he said holding up the machine gun they had taken from the kid who had tried to shoot Lana, “this is a...” he held the machine gun up so he could read the writing on the side, “Hey, Lana, this say's it'll take nine millimeter bullets like yours, let me see one,” he waited until she handed him one that she took out of the full clip, and then compared them side by side. “Yeah, same thing,” he said, “this doesn't have a brand name on it though, just says what sort of bullet it takes, everything else has been ground off, see,” he held the side of the machine gun up so that Lana could see it.
