Jeannie was thrilled. She started to load up a bunch of food to take to the apartment and Jeff stopped her.
“We don’t want to leave anything in the apartment that we hope to see again,” he said.
“Good point,” she said, as she set most of it back down. She picked out what she needed for the next meal. “What about the smell of food cooking? Do you think it will bring anyone?”
“Hmmm. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I guess maybe some people will still be searching and ransacking the buildings. But I think by now most people have died or moved on.” He hoped he was right.
They read for a while, then Jeannie cooked a meal, which they debated whether it would be lunch or dinner. They tried to invent a word that meant lunch and dinner, like brunch for breakfast and lunch, but all they accomplished was some tongue-twisting and laughter.
It was great to be able to see what she was doing, and not work around the shadows of a flashlight. She was grateful the flashlights were there, for otherwise they would have had no light during their two weeks in the closet. But she was also grateful for the daylight now, too.
As they were about to head back to the closet they heard a voice. The door to the stairwell opened and they heard footsteps in the hall.
“There’s been nothing on any of the floors we’ve been through!” a voice complained. “Why are we doing this?”
“Be quiet, will you? The higher up we go, the more likely we are to find things. Other people probably gave up after a few floors,” another voice said.
“So why don’t we start on the top floor?” the first voice asked.
“Leroy, that’s the only smart thing I’ve ever heard you say,” said voice two. They turned back to the stairwell door.
Jeff breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been holding an umbrella, the only weapon at hand, after realizing he’d foolishly left the shotgun in the closet. He mentally berated himself for putting them in a position of such danger.
Jeannie was behind him, around the corner behind the lamp table. She stood up now, her hands shaking.
“Come on, let’s go back to the closet for a while,” he said, taking the pan from their meal out of her hands. He held her hand with his other hand as they listened, then left the apartment and returned to the closet. They laid on their blankets and quietly stared into the darkness until they fell asleep.
Jeannie had tormented dreams. She dreamt that she was running down a hallway that never ended, and shadowy “bad guys” were chasing her. She kept falling over dead people and it was horrible. Suddenly the hallway ended at an open staircase and she ran right off the end and was falling down the stairs.
She woke with a scream, and Jeff pulled her close and put a hand over her mouth. She realized he was tense from head to toe.
“Shhhh. Someone is in the hall,” he whispered in her ear. She froze and lay in his arms, frightened and still disoriented by the dream. She strained her ears. A couple times she heard a short word barked but couldn’t understand what was said.
The doorknob jiggled. It rattled. Then a thud, followed by a louder thud. Someone was kicking the door. Jeff eased his arms away from Jeannie and picked up the shotgun. He slid over in front of her and sat facing the door, feeling for the safety with his fingers.
He wondered what it would be like. He’d never fired a gun before. The movies he’d watched over the years of his life was all the knowledge he had of guns. He suddenly wished he’d joined the army or something when he was younger.
Minutes passed and there was no more rattling or thuds. Jeff still sat tense. He could feel his shoulders start to ache. Then his wrists and fingers started to ache. He began to imagine itches and twitches. Still he sat, until he wanted to just yell and start shooting. Finally he relaxed and lowered the shotgun. He left it laying across his lap as he flexed his arms and fingers.
“I think they left,” he whispered. He felt like she had nodded, and it struck him as odd that he thought he could feel her nod. Maybe they were becoming one person in this close-quarters life.
They didn’t leave the closet again until the next day, and the shotgun went with them when they did. Jeff left the apartment door ajar so they could hear into the hallway and admonished Jeannie to be as quiet as possible. She picked out a book and curled up to read. Jeff moved a chair over closer to the door and paged through a magazine. He was glad to be in the apartment and out of the closet, but he couldn’t focus on what was on the pages. Still, he didn’t have anything else, to do, so he kept turning pages.
Hours passed. Jeannie got up and stretched a few times, quietly, then sat back down. They went back to the closet to cook.
“We have to make a plan,” Jeannie said. “The food is going to run out after a while. We can’t stay here forever.”
“I know,” Jeff said. “I’ve been thinking of possibilities. I know what would probably work, once we GET there, but it’s the getting there I can’t figure out. It’s going to be dangerous getting out of the city.”
“What are you thinking? I mean, for a destination.” asked Jeannie.
“Someplace like where my grandparent’s used to live. In the country. They had a farm with all kinds of animals and a big garden, and there were animals in the woods, like deer, that they shot for meat,” Jeff said.
“But we don’t know anything about animals or gardens! And what would we do with a deer if you shot one!” Jeannie said in amazement. “I mean, it’s a good idea. A practical one. But I don’t see how we could do it. And I can’t think that people who already have that are going to want to let us move in with them! We’re strangers!”
“Yeah, that’s the hard part. I don’t know how we could convince any of them to give us a chance. To let us work and learn these things.” Jeff stood up and stretched. He paced a few feet each direction in the small room.
“It’s just that, I can’t think of anything else. We don’t know if there are any sort of camps or places for refugees, and those were always so horrible when we saw them on the news. I guess I can’t even believe we’ll live long enough to get out of the city, so instead I try to imagine that somewhere, there’s a nice farm with a nice family who will give us a chance,” he said. “It gives me hope.”
Jeannie stood up and leaned against the shelves. She thought about all the movies and TV shows she’d seen about life in the country. Funny images of people falling in pigpens and getting all dirty, and people getting chased by mad bulls, filled her mind. She pushed those aside in annoyance and pictured fields of…of what? Wheat? Corn? She hardly knew what they looked like in a field. She hardly knew what any of the food she ate looked like before she bought it. That had been one of the things she was going to find out on the internet before this all happened.
“Okay. We’ll go,” she finally said. “so, what’s the plan? When do we leave?”
He hadn’t realized it, but he’d been making lists in his head, and it poured out now. “We need to make something to use for backpacks, and we need blankets, food, the camp stove, a couple of these flashlights, and I was thinking one of these plastic drop clothes would work for a ground cover to sleep on. If one is big enough we could make a shelter, sort of like a tent. I’m not really sure how to do that. You don’t remember if anyone in the building went camping or backpacking, do you? We could raid their stuff!” he laughed.
Jeannie shoved his arm. “As a matter of fact, I DO know someone who went backpacking! I rode in the elevator with her a couple times. One time she had her backpack and was coming home from a trip she’d been on. Some place in Colorado. She flew there, rented a car, and went to some park and backpacked. She met a group of friends there or something. Anyway, she got off on the floor below ours, but I don’t know which apartment was hers.”
“That’s terrific, but I don’t know if we should go to other floors of the building. We’d be taking a big chance,” Jeff said. He finally decided it was worth the chance. Jeff carried the shotgun, and Jeannie had unscrewed a mop head and was ca
rrying the wooden handle. It wasn’t going to be worth much if they ran into trouble, but she felt better having something in her hands.
All went well going down the stairs. They cracked the door to the 7 floor and listened. Nothing. In the hallway they could see that nearly all the doors were open. They quietly entered the first one, looked around quickly, and worked their way down the hall, then back up the other side.
In the second apartment on the way back, Jeannie triumphantly held up a large backpack that was in a closet! Jeff gave her the thumbs up and grinned. She leaned back into the closet and pulled out two stuff bags and peered into them. They were rolled up and she wasn’t sure, but she thought it might be a tent and a sleeping bag.
They returned to their closet with their treasures and Jeff pulled the sleeping bag and tent from their bags. There was only one of everything, but they could share the tent, and they could carry blankets in addition to the sleeping bag. Having only one backpack was something of a problem.
He’d been mulling around in his head how to make a backpack out of one of their duffel bags, but nothing had seemed possible. Maybe one of them would have to just carry a duffel bag. He figured he should carry the backpack because he was stronger. Maybe they could put light stuff in the duffel bag. His had a shoulder strap as well. He told Jeannie his plan.
She thought it was as good as it was going to get, but that they should put the least important things in the duffel bag. “Just in case we have to ditch it in a hurry,” she said.
He remembered something he’d read in one of the stories in the forum. “We should put some trinkets in our pockets, maybe a couple of the candy bars. If someone confronts us and demands something, we could throw the candy bars off to the side and get away while they scramble after them. It’s kind of lame, but it’s one of the plans we could have in reserve.”
They started gathering the things they were going to take and packed them into the backpack and duffel bag. Jeannie insisted on bringing another, smaller duffel bag that she could sling over her back like a pack, and he relented. The more they could bring, without overloading themselves, the better.
He attached everything he could to the outside straps and pockets of the backpack, and she did the same with her bags. When they were done, he hefted them both. It was going to be a challenge, especially considering their lack of aerobic activity, but they’d have to do their best. There really weren’t any other options.
Next they picked out what they were going to wear. They planned on wearing layers of clothes that could be shed or put on as needed. They didn’t know how cold it was outside, but the few people they saw on the streets were wearing coats. So they each picked out a coat that seemed rugged enough and filled the pockets with odds and ends.
They made more forays into other apartments and gathered lighters, matches, a couple of candles, and a small flashlight with a bright beam. They found a package of new batteries in a drawer in their own apartment and packed those.
Finally Jeff said they were ready and would leave the next morning. Neither slept much, and Jeff checked his watch a dozen times. Finally he told Jeannie it was time. She was alert and got up right away. They left the closet and walked quickly and quietly to the stairwell. Down and down and around and around they went until they reached street level.
The smell in the lobby wasn’t so much of death as it was of urine and vomit. Three weeks had passed since the bombing, and the worst of the smell of decaying bodies was starting to fade. The doors of the building were broken, and glass and litter of all kinds covered the floor.
Jeannie glanced toward the coffee shop. It, too, had been destroyed. A body sat slumped in a booth, the hair gone and the mouth and nose covered in caked blood. She could see the remnants of a waitress uniform and hoped it wasn’t Gloria. Jeff pulled her toward the door to the street.
Outside the air was chilly and damp. A breeze rolled between the buildings, turned and rolled back the way it came. The smell was unpleasant but not readily identifiable as anything specific.
“Which way do we go?” Jeannie asked.
“We don’t have a map and I don’t know where to get one. I thought we’d just pick a direction and stick with it. Eventually we’ll get out of the city. That’s one thing about this watch of mine with all these useless features…it has a compass!” Jeff showed it to her. They were facing north at the moment.
“Okay. So, which direction do you want to go? Aren’t we kind of on the north end of downtown right here?” she asked.
“Yeah, and there are less suburbs that direction because of the airport and farm fields,” he said. They started walking. At the corner they turned and looked back at their building. With amazement they saw that the top two stories had collapsed and the far corner was buckled, with a twisted metal beam hanging down the side of the building. They looked at each other with widened eyes! Since their building had gas stoves and gas heat, it was a miracle it hadn’t burned.
They turned so they could head north. Block after block was covered in the debris of war and looting. Jeannie kept turning her face away from the dozens of bodies they passed. Some were charred and she wondered if they were people who had jumped from burning buildings.
“It’s possible,” Jeff said. “Or a fireball might have rolled through the streets. There would have been a wind from the blast wave. Two of them, if I remember right. One is just wind, one is hot.”
One street they came to was blocked with a mangle of twisted steel and bricks. They went over a block and continued north. A light rain began and it smelled vaguely of soot. They stopped to rest and have a snack under the canvas awning of a book store. The awning hung at a crazy angle, having been torn partly off the building.
“We should go in here and look for books that might help us,” Jeannie said, looking in the window. Surprisingly, the glass wasn’t broken, although the door was partway open.
“Yeah, and maybe a map,” Jeff added. “We can’t carry much more weight, but let’s step inside and see what we find.”
They pushed the door open and waited. Hearing nothing, they stepped inside. Nothing had been disturbed except the cash register. It was open and there was no money in it. Jeff wondered if the owner had left it open on purpose to show that it was empty, so no one would break into it.
Jeannie was over by a book section labeled “Sports and the outdoors”. She pulled out a few books and handed them to Jeff. There were books on camping, and another on hunting. On another shelf she found a book that identified edible plants. Near the front counter Jeff spotted maps and road atlases. He looked at a map of the nation to refresh his memory of geography, but left the atlas when he was done and took a map of their state. He folded it in half and put it in his coat pocket. Jeannie had been paging through the book on camping and hunting, and set the camping one back on the shelf.
“It’s too vague, and mostly talks about equipment we don’t have. I don’t think it’ll help. If we pass a sporting good store we might find some of the stuff that WOULD help, but for now, it’s not worth the weight to carry it,” she said. “The hunting book is pretty good. It has big animals like deer and elk, and small animals like rabbits and partridges, and it tells how to skin them and cut them up for eating. It has diagrams, and instructions for different ways to make traps”
“What about the plant book?” Jeff asked.
“Yes, it’s a good book. Good pictures, even pictures of the plants in different seasons, which will be helpful. I don’t know how much of this stuff grows here, but it’s still worth bringing,” she said. She handed the hunting book to Jeff and she shoved the plant book in the duffel bag. She had to work to get the zipper closed again, but Jeff was having the same problem as he shoved the hunting book into the backpack.
“We better get walking again. We need to get out of the city as fast as we can, and we’re going to need plenty of time to find a safe place to spend the night,” Jeff said as he headed for the door.
They walked until
Jeannie thought her body was numb and her mind was heading the same direction. Every now and then they saw a flash of movement, and a few times they got glimpses of people darting into buildings or around corners. Jeff had a creepy feeling that several people were watching them; maybe even following them. He kept his mind sharp and his hand ready on the shotgun.
When dusk started to fall he began looking for a place to stop for the night. The freeway was overhead about half a block away, and they were out of the office building district into what looked like warehouses or factories. He had no idea what would be safe. His mind ran wild, thinking about the zombie movies he’d seen, wondering what might come out at night. It had been pretty quiet over the day.
Finally he led Jeannie into an alley between two buildings. There were several dumpsters and piles of pallets. He found a break between the pallets and looked back in behind them. Looking up, he saw that an overhang of the roof extended out about 4’, which would give them a bit of shelter if it started raining again.
Prepper Fiction Collection: Four Books in One Page 6
