I had to agree – while it was natural of me to be protective, with a hundred million years of evolution on my back telling me to defend my pack, Helen hadn’t been brought up in a household that had mollycoddled and catered to her. She had a coldly intellectual mother and an absent father, and her only companion had been the unconditional love of a golden retriever. She was similar to myself in that sense – it was probably the reason that we got along so well.
I agreed, trying not to be reluctant about it.
Chapter Four
Houseguest
We were still in the midst of the heatwave, but the front porch of the house offered plenty of shade. Even so, the exhaustion I was experiencing combined with this sweltering heat that seemed to seep into every orifice that it could like a noxious fume had me on edge and frustrated.
In the haze of the late morning I thought back to when I was a kid – well before any of this craziness had been hinted at by my father. I remembered being in kindergarten on an exceedingly warm day. You know how kids are – they can’t stop fidgeting and becoming irritable when the temperature jumps. My teacher, Mrs Parker, eventually told us all to stay exactly still for a few minutes – staying still brought your temperature down, she said. Well, it worked, but four year-olds have more energy than they know what to do with, so it didn’t last too long.
I didn’t need telling twice to stay still considering how tired I was, but I was caught in a conflict between remaining dormant and not falling asleep. My father’s rifle was still propped up on the bench next to me, and there was no way that I was going to fall asleep next to a loaded weapon even if the safety was on, but that was the kind of thing that a well-rested man would say. I thought about using the new handgun, but I hadn’t yet practiced with it.
With exhaustion comes delirium, though. Whilst I was still in the company of the gun, I was also still in the company of the letter. I pulled it from my pocket and looked down at it, the words blurring in the dampness of my eyes.
‘For fuck’s sake, Dad…’ I muttered to myself indiscernibly, pressing my palms against my eyes and choking back the stuttering cries that were trying to break out… No. I didn’t cry. I took a few gasps and quickly got a hold of myself, wiping away any trace that I had lost control even the briefest of moments.
I ran my hands through my hair and set the letter down on the bench next to me.
I was my father, crying in private over somebody he had lost.
I looked through the open front door in the still day, the line of sight to Luke and Helen clear as they slept in the living room, flat-out unconscious.
No one was looking in on me, though. I was all alone.
It was impossible how still the day was. Even in somewhere as remote as Redwood – which in comparison to the city it was – it was routine to see at least a few cars going by every two or three minutes. Now, though, there was nothing. We were a few hundred yards from the first houses on the edge of town, and as of yet there was no sign of life from them.
Seeing no threat, I took up the gun and headed down from the porch, looking about the yard and the edges of the fields. I turned left and headed to the back paddock, passing the barn, the presence of the grenade weighing on my mind. Military surplus… I knew that my dad was a patriot, but this was something else.
The back yard was open and idyllic, giving onto the acres of open fields behind the house. Corn was in season, acres and acres of it, and we still had some provisions left behind… It was just a question of what would happen when people became hungry and started looking for the food. I wasn’t against sharing it – it would go rotten long before we had a chance to eat even one percent of it – but I was mistaken if I assumed people who would form an orderly queue and take their fair share of it.
After seeing what humanity had turned into in the city, I had little doubt that if somebody wanted our food, our possessions, or really anything at all, they would be perfectly content to come into the house and stab us to death while we were sleeping.
That back yard was a haven, blocked on three sides by fields of crops, and on one side by the back wall of the house. It was its own separate world, safe from the reality of what was happening out there.
But I couldn’t stay there long.
I arched around the right side of the house, back to the front, and seated myself back on the porch. I looked down the driveway again, waiting for movement but hoping that none would appear.
I managed to stay awake for the full stretch of my shift, feeling like I was back at work. Finally I dragged myself into the living room and woke Luke. He usually wasn’t one to get on with such duties, but in this instance he was on his feet in a matter of moments. We hadn’t covered shooting 101 yet, so I gave him a brief crash course (‘so just point it at the thing you want to murder?’) and left him to it.
I retired to the living room where Helen was fast asleep. I slumped down beside her, propping my head up on a pillow from the couch and even with the anxiety of what may have lurked beyond the edges of the property I fell into unconsciousness.
‘This asshole again,’ the ringleader shouted, that insane laugh bubbling up. ‘The fuck are you gonna do with that? I’ll cave your fucking head in too. Maybe I’ll even head upstairs and see that buddy of yours. See if this headless fuck has a lady, too-’
I raised the gun and pointed the barrel at him, this nameless figure. His name didn’t matter, of course – only the act that he had committed.
I pulled the trigger.
My heart had never been calmer.
I raised the gun again, pointed it at his face, and fired.
Another small explosion lit up the oblivion that became of his head, a splatter of blood smearing over the tarmac. The sound of the shot echoed as I remained stood there, still pointing the gun at its target, waiting.
No sirens, no shouts, no gunshots at the ready to end me. The city’s chaotic noises proceeded on as they had done since the plane came down at the start of the night. Now I was a part of it – the hellish noises of the end of civilisation. I was somebody else’s background noise.
I lowered the gun, taking a long, drawn breath.
I had taken a life, and nobody was coming to get me.
‘Wake up…’
My eyes slammed open, but I didn’t move. Helen stood a little way from me, as Luke shifted on the couch.
‘What is it?’ I asked quickly, sitting up in, desperately trying to shed the grogginess that I was embroiled in.
‘It’s dragging closer and closer to the evening. You can take another shift if you want but we might as well sort ourselves out seeing as we’ve all had some sleep.’
Despite having just awoken with tired eyes, I agreed, and so did Luke.
Sorting ourselves out was a fluid concept, but the world had ended less than 24 hours ago and we had to get some semblance of order together.
We scoured the house, exploring it as if we were FBI agents performing a reckless search on a property – albeit with a little more care considering it was my childhood home. Every can of food, every item of value or use, we hoarded and lugged it to the basement in a neat arrangement surrounding the footlocker in the centre. I considered putting together an inventory, but that could wait – as long as I knew that anything important to us was locked away and secure, that was enough for me right now.
I kept all of the weapons close to me, unloaded but with ammo close to hand.
After locking the basement door and taking a few of the more perishable items with us, the three of us found ourselves sat outside on the lawn chairs in the back yard.
The safe haven.
It should have been illegal how peaceful it was out there, as we sat eating fruit and sipping from the water bottles that we had brought in the early evening din. In the distance the sun could be seen low in the sky, peaking over the tops of the corn rows.
‘This place is beautiful, Sam,’ Luke said, looking about himself. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never brought me
up here.’
‘He’s only brought me once,’ Helen said, before I could comment. ‘And that was only because we were stopping by during a road trip.’
‘I’ve got nothing against it,’ I said, ‘And I don’t wanna come across like that. I guess… I don’t know. I think once you’re away from somewhere for a long enough period of time it stops being home. The first time I came back to see my Dad after I left for the city I almost checked myself on the front porch to make sure I was at the right house. Things become unfamiliar. But I love this place, really. It’s so much quieter than anywhere I know.’
‘It’s gorgeous…’ Luke agreed. ‘And so is this water. I’ve never been so grateful for a drink. Speaking of which… We’re gonna have to come to an agreement soon about rationing it. The taps aren’t working, and in this heat we’re gonna be dehydrated quickly. We need to come up with a plan.’
‘The containers in the basement will last us some time… If worst comes to worst then we can use the river. It’s a few miles out but if we’re dying of thirst then there’s always that option…’
‘My boyfriend, the optimist,’ Helen smiled, shaking her head and chewing down a piece of melon from the tin in front of her.
‘I don’t blame you, Sam,’ Luke said. ‘I’m already getting internet withdrawal. Usually I would be at home right now watching TV and scrolling through Reddit. Feels like my attention span has been hit by a two by four.’
‘And yet here we are,’ I said, laughing lightly even though the occasion didn’t really call for it, ‘Safe in this back yard while the world burns.’
We sat in silence for a brief moment, basking in the peace of the evening. Peace was something that had never come to me easily – there was always something else waiting just in the wings to worry about. Little did I know that it was about to present itself, but it had nothing to do with water.
‘Guys…’ Helen said. ‘I need to talk to you about something… I’ve been rolling it over in my mind since it happened but I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t know if I was going crazy or not. I think… I think that I heard something when I was on lookout.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, ‘Like people shouting or something?’
‘No, nothing like that… I mean I think that I heard an engine. And not one that was coming from a car or a truck. I think that I heard a plane.’
‘A plane?’ Luke said, eyeing her. ‘Are you sure you weren’t just dreaming?’
‘Well, this is the thing,’ she continued. ‘I was half-asleep when it happened anyway, which is why I’m doubting myself. I went out into the yard to see if there was any sign in the sky. It’s cloudy, but I’m pretty confident that I could see a vapour trail overhead. It could have just been a weird cloud formation, but… What if it wasn’t?’
‘I might have heard something too,’ Luke said. ‘I just thought that I was going crazy. How can there be jets flying over?’
‘D’you remember what Moody said?’ I asked. ‘About the military? What if they’re still completely mobile, they’re just not being deployed? What if this really is some huge conspiracy to force the country to eat itself from the inside? To… Lower the population, provide an excuse for turning the place into a totalitarian state... I don’t know.’
‘So what are they doing flying overhead like that?’ Helen questioned.
‘Performing recon? What if they’re checking up on the states of cities?’
‘You’d think they’d be a little more organised if they were, wouldn’t you? Surely they’d have inside men giving reports…’
‘That’s the one thing I’m wondering about. The one reason that I never tend to sway towards conspiracies is because I refuse to believe how all of the people involved – and it must be a lot because I can’t even begin to imagine the organisation and resources it would take to set something up like this – could keep it quiet. One of them would say something, wouldn’t they?’
‘They’d probably be assassinated before they even thought about it,’ Luke said. ‘It’s an open secret that the Russian government does it whenever they feel like it. If somebody’s young and may prove a potential threat they’ll give them a car crash, or if they’re old they’ll give them a heart attack.’
‘What do you mean giving them a heart attack?’
‘They’ll poison you and put you into a cardiac arrest. Russian technology isn’t that far behind the US, in some areas it’s probably ahead. I mean, in 1962 the US government developed a weapon that fired a projectile which would give you a heart attack if it hit you. It was immediately disallowed for field use, but just think about that for a second. That was 1962. Imagine what they have now hidden behind the scenes that they’re not telling people about.’
‘Shut up,’ Helen muttered.
‘No, I’m being serious-’
‘No, be quiet.’ She held up a hand and tilted her head to the side. ‘Can you hear that?’
We all fell silent and listened carefully. I didn’t have time to ask what I was listening for, but thinking quickly I instinctively went for jet engines.
But it wasn’t that. Past the sound of my heart pounding in my chest I discerned the sound of steps on the gravel drive on the other side of the house, and the low sounds of voices, the identities indistinguishable.
I grabbed the hunting rifle and went to hand the others to my friends, but they were already up from their seats and taking them in their hands before I even had a chance to hatch a plan.
Chapter Five
Dolores
‘What the fuck do we do?’
‘Take the side of the house – over the fence and into the corn if you can,’ I whispered frantically. ‘I’ll head back through the house. If they’re armed I’ll draw the grief. You can hit them from the sides if it comes to that.’
Maybe we would have carried on planning, but there was no time for that. I crossed to the back door of the house, opening it as quietly as I could but with plenty of haste. Ducking inside I crossed through the kitchen and into the living room, seeing a flicker of movement in the yard behind the drawn curtains. I stayed to the left, unable to get a clear view, almost walking along the couch in an effort to stay out of their line of sight – whoever they were.
Heading into the hallway I glanced quickly through the window of the front door. The pouring adrenaline only allowed me to register what I was seeing – there was no identity to these people beyond their appearance and whether they posed a threat.
A woman, older, around my dad’s age, stood with a rucksack on, clad in walking gear. The hint of a baseball bat peaked out of the top of the bag, over her head. To her side was a much younger man, who I hesitate to even refer to as a man. He was a boy, no older than eighteen, with messy blonde hair and a similar outfit to the woman he accompanied.
He wasn’t holding a weapon.
They were walking slowly across the front yard, a clear direction in their heads but reluctant to get there for some reason.
I wasn’t going to wait.
I opened the door, bringing my hand immediately back to the gun as it opened, and stepped out onto the porch.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked, looking between them both and being very emphatic about the fact that I was holding a weapon.
They both pulled to a stop and glared over at me.
I glanced over at the edge of the house, scanning the cornfield. I could see neither Luke nor Helen.
‘Who are you?’ The woman asked, sound completely entitled to the answer. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You really have a right to ask me that question? This is my house. Who I am is none of your concern.’
‘No, this is Gerry’s house,’ she said confidently. ‘I hope that you’re here as a houseguest.’
‘… How do you know my… How do you know Gerry?’
She smiled back at me – I knew in an instant that she had caught my slip-up.
‘So you’re Sam,’ she said. ‘He talks about you a lot.
Where is he?’
‘First tell me who you are,’ I said, realising I was beat and that the best move I could make was to withhold information.
‘I’m Dolores,’ she said smoothly. ‘This is Rubin. I’m friends with your father. We have a little club that we go to on Thursdays.’
‘It a popular club?’
‘It’s just me and him, actually. We’re probably the only two people in this town prepared for a situation like this.’
‘Like this? So you know what this is?’
‘I know exactly what this is. Can’t say the same for everybody in town of course. It’s a mess back there.’
‘Why? Wh-’
‘Look,’ Dolores broke through, holding a hand up, ‘We can’t talk like we’re caught in a Mexican stand-off or we can have a conversation like normal people without any loaded weapons… And without any snipers or lookouts lurking in the shadows. Why don’t you get her friends to join us?’
I didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or impressed.
‘Guys… if you’re back there then you can come out.’
Within a couple of seconds they appeared, Helen from the side of the house and Luke emerging from the corn field like it had just given birth to him. He jumped the fence and I headed down the steps, and now we were two sides brought face to face.
Meeting new people in the midst of the end times – or any dangerous situation, give or take – is never easy. Somehow, though, we exchanged names.
Shaking hands was still a bit too much at this point.
‘My nephew,’ Dolores said, gesturing to the boy next to her.
‘He doesn’t say a whole lot,’ Luke said, scoffing.
‘I talk when I need to,’ the boy suddenly said, looking carefully between us.
‘He’s the only one in the family who listened to my prepping ‘nonsense’. Now his parents are the ones looking like idiots.’
The Solar Pulse (Book 2): Escape the Pulse Page 3
