All Roads Lead To Terror: Coming of age in a post apocalyptic world (Dreadland Chronicles Book 1)

by Richard Schiver

  Maria was the exact opposite of the girls at the Bluff. Carrying herself as he imagined a woman should, like his mother, with a hint of regal dignity about her.

  Sensing his stare she stopped what she was doing and turned to face him. He quickly dropped his gaze to the disassembled rifle on the table before him.

  “Could you help me with something?” she said.

  He looked up, his eyes dropping against his will to the twin points on the front of her tee shirt, he dragged his gaze away, forcing himself to look her in the eyes. “Sure, what do you need?”

  “We have to bury her.” Maria said.

  “Who?”

  “My mom, we can’t leave her in the basement, could you help me please?”

  “No problem,” he said as he laid down the rifle bolt and pushed himself to his feet.

  As he stood in the shadowy basement, the flickering flame of a candle providing some illumination, something his father said came to him.

  “In this world, as in the past, there will always be the haves and the have-nots.” His father’s words droned in his mind as he remembered the day he had told him this. He had spent another boring day tracing wiring diagrams and was ready to escape the stuffy confines of his father’s workshop. The sun was shining outside, the weather had begun to turn warmer, and he wanted more than anything to get out there and enjoy it. But his father had insisted that he wait until he was done.

  “The power plant gives us electricity, it gives us running water, we are the haves. Beyond the fence live the have-nots. It doesn’t matter that maybe they didn’t plan properly, or respond as they should have to a changing world, or even that everything happened before they were ready. The fact remains that we have what they want, so we must always be careful about what we share with strangers.”

  Einstein watched as Maria knelt down and caressed her mother’s cheek. Long shadows danced against the wall in response to the flickering flame of the candle. Had they been in the Bluff all he would have had to do was flip a switch to fill the room with light.

  Was she a have not? The thought intruded and Einstein pushed it away. Since that day with his father he had viewed those beyond the fence as primitive savages living in the dark. Maria was the second survivor he’d met in as many days that had proven to be the exact opposite of what his father had told him. And if his dad had lied about that, what was to say he hadn’t lied to him about a person’s ability to leave.

  Decomposition had set in and Maria’s mother’s stomach had begun to swell from the gases within as a rank odor wafted up from her figure. After wrapping the body in several sheets stripped from her bed, they secured the sheets with rope. Einstein fashioned a harness, and together they pulled her mother’s wrapped body up the steps and into the kitchen.

  Nineteen

  At the edge of what had once been the backyard Einstein dug a shallow grave in the rocky soil. Next to it was the one Maria and her mother had interred her little brother, Jamie, after his death. The soil over his small grave had that sunken, abandoned look, the ground disturbed where his head would have been. Where he had dug his way out afterwards.

  “We didn’t know,” she said, “we thought when he died he would stay that way, but he didn’t,” she finished with a sniffle as she wiped away a tear.

  Einstein was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to protect Maria. She might have been a few years older than he, more mature by some standards, but at that moment she was like a little child lost. He returned to the task of digging the grave for her mother and in time had opened a respectable hole into which they lowered her wrapped body. After pushing the dirt back over her wrapped figure he stood up, dusting his hands off on his pants.

  “We should say something,” she said

  “I don’t know what to say.” Einstein said. Everyone had his or her own way of dealing with death. Having grown up in a protected environment this was the first time he had ever been this close to it, he had spent his entire life behind the fence at the Bluff, with no first hand knowledge of what had happened in the early days of the awakening.

  “My mom used to tell me the Lord’s prayer all the time, I’ve got it memorized,” he said.

  “That would be nice.”

  As he recited the passages the voice of the forest around them continued unabated, punctuating his words, a constant reminder that life went on. She slipped her hand into his and a spark shot the length of his arm, rebounded from the shoulder, before settling in the unlikeliest of places.

  “It’ll never be the same will it?” she said after he finished.

  “What?”

  “The world, like it used to be, my Dad used to always talk about the way it was. How safe it used to be. How convenient. If you wanted to go somewhere you just got in your car and drove. If you were hungry you stopped and got something to eat, if you were thirsty you got something to drink. We’ll never see that, will we?”

  Einstein shrugged, he’d heard the stories as well, not only from his parents but also from the other older people who lived at the Bluff.

  “There’s not much we can do about it.” Einstein said with a shrug.

  “Weren’t you ever curious about the time before?”

  “Of course, but what good is it to worry over what could have been?”

  “I’d just like to flush a toilet and take a hot shower,” she said.

  “Come back to the Bluff with us and you can.”

  “You have running water there?”

  “Of course, toilets, and showers, and sinks and drinking fountains. The drinking water we get from a natural spring. The water for the rest comes from the turbines at the power plant. It’s safe enough to drink but you probably wouldn’t want to.”

  “What else do you have there?”

  “We have electricity from the power plant, gardens, and we all raise rabbits. Everyone who lives at the Bluff has a job to do. We all pitch in to help one another. There’s a big fence with guard towers that keeps anything bad from getting in.” And those who want to leave from ever departing. He finished silently to himself.

  “Sounds like a prison.” Maria said.

  Einstein shrugged, he’d read about prisons at the Widow Winslow’s little library, and one story in particular stood out in his mind. It was by a writer who was most likely dead now, about an innocent man, a movie poster, and a corrupt warden. He couldn’t remember the title, but he liked that in the end the innocent man got his revenge.

  “I’m getting hungry, what about you?” Maria said.

  Einstein nodded and she led him by the hand back to the house.

  Twenty

  Throughout his short life he had been focused on one thing, and one thing only, learning as much as he could about the inner workings of the power plant at Bremo Bluff, driven by his father who had worked at the plant long before the awakening. While others his age were just learning to read at the Widow Winslow’s small library, he was poring over technical manuals that detailed the mysteries of turning motion into electricity. As his peers followed the amorous adventures of gumshoe detectives he traced complex circuit diagrams to isolate problems.

  “You have to know how things work in order to survive.” His father’s words drove him ever forward in his quest for knowledge.

  His childhood had been an endless period of taking things apart and putting them back together again. Learning the intricate secrets of the machines that once made modern man’s life one of leisure. Like the tinkers of the old west he and his father amassed a wealth of knowledge about fixing broken machinery. He understood how to build a machine that would perform multiple small tasks driven by a single electrical motor running in one direction.

  “Those who know how to make the machines work will be the ones who rebuild this world.” His father had always been fond of saying.

  But in all that time he’d failed to learn one very important lesson, how to interact with the people around him, especially the members of the opposite sex. As Maria fixed dinner he
watched silently, responding promptly to her requests, answering her questions as she chattered aimlessly while she went about the business of fixing them a quick meal. There was so much he wanted to say to her but he wasn’t sure how to even begin.

  After dinner, as the sun slowly sank behind the western horizon, she sat beside him on the back stoop, watching as the evening darkened to night. Stars twinkled in the sky above, the lack of light pollution revealing a glittering array of sparkling points of light that appeared to stretch beyond forever.

  He wasn’t sure what he should do so he ever so slowly reached out with his left arm and carefully placed it across her shoulders, his hand dangling over her shoulder. He waited to see what her reaction might be, surprised, and pleased when she leaned against his body and snuggled closer to his chest.

  “It so beautiful,” she said as she gazed up at the stars spread across the night sky like jewels scattered across a velvety cloth.

  “Yep,” he said, not sure what he should do next, his left hand hanging uselessly over her breast. He let his hand settle against the fabric of the shirt she wore, an electric shock of anticipation, lust, and a high giddiness all mingling together as it traveled the length of his arm and spread throughout his body. He felt her response, her nipple stiffening under the fabric and he gently squeezed as her hand fell to his thigh, a hot point against his chilled flesh.

  The purple-headed bastard stirred, trapped between the fabric of his pants and his inner thigh, it had nowhere else to go but along his thigh, toward her hand. As her fingers lightly caressed that throbbing flesh she looked up. Starlight glittered in her eyes, the cosmos above reflected in her gaze.

  Her breath was rancid, as was his, so it didn’t really matter. They kissed, long and deep, teeth clashing as their tongues probed one another. Then they were tearing at each other’s clothes, buttons popping, their breathing came in ragged gasps as they sought each other’s flesh.

  He kicked off his boots, each one clumping down the steps abandoned as she struggled with his belt, her young breasts jiggling in time with her movements, her nipples hard, softly illuminated by the full moon as it rode across the night sky. Together they stood up and stripped off their pants leaving them on the floor with the rest of their discarded clothing.

  Completely nude they wrapped their arms around one another, the hot points of her nipples pressing against his chest they kissed long and deep, hands probing each others bodies, his member trapped against her thigh. She reached down and slipped him between her legs and he felt her moistness.

  “If you catch me, you can have me,” she whispered in his ear, her hot breath tickling the flesh of his neck.

  She stepped back, turned, and ran down the steps to vanish into the forest that had once been the back yard. Einstein followed her as she weaved in and out of the trees, darting left and right, a faint smudge in the deep shadows. He caught up with her, or she let him, not that it really mattered. He wrapped his arms around her waist as she giggled and he lifted her from her feet. Carefully he lowered her to the moss covered ground.

  Twenty One

  He lay half asleep, drifting in that tranquil world between the harsh reality of full consciousness, and the comforting embrace of a dream world that existed solely in his thoughts. Rolling over on his side he reached out, expecting to find Maria beside him, his fingers coming into contact with the cold sheets they had wrapped about them after a night of pleasure. He remembered the first time, each of them filled with a driving need that pushed aside all other thoughts, their hormones raging out of control as they struggled to meld their bodies into one another.

  It had been over in a flash, that uncontrollable urge washing through him as he slipped into that moist secret place, the memory awakened a stirring in his loins as he searched the sheets beside him for Maria’s warmth.

  She was gone. The thought flashed through his mind and he sat up, blinking in response to the sunlight streaming through the windows of the back porch. Pushing himself up to his feet he quickly slipped on his pants and moved through the house in search of her. He found her in the living room, fully dressed, packing a bag.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, “where are you going?”

  “I can’t stay here anymore, I have to go, and I can’t believe what we did last night.”

  Einstein was bewildered by this sudden turn of events. He wanted to just grab her and shake some sense into her but he kept his distance. A change had overcome her and he no longer felt like he was a part of her life.

  She was frightened, fear pulsing in her eyes, but of what?

  “What is wrong?” he said.

  She stopped, letting the last of her things fall to the floor at her feet, from outside came the sound of the birds in the trees that surrounded the house. Confirmation that no matter what happened the world would continue on its predetermined course, that man for all his bravado, was not the Supreme Being he believed himself to be.

  “What if I’m pregnant?” she said.

  “So what if you are, you can come back to Bremo Bluff with us, it’s safe there.”

  “For how long? Aren’t we just kidding ourselves that everything is all right? That the world will continue to belong to us? And what kind of a world would we be bringing our child into? Is it fair to them to take their childhood away from them like that?”

  “Look, I don’t have the answers to everything,” Einstein said as he took another step closer, his hands held out in a questioning manner, “but I do know that if we give up it will all be lost. We have to keep fighting.”

  “What if I don’t want to.”

  “Who’s to say you’re even pregnant.” Einstein countered as he took another step closer. He was going to grab hold of her, tie her up if need be until she came to her senses. But for every step he took closer to her she took another away, keeping her distance.

  “I know I am, I just know it, it happened to my mom when she first met my dad. She told me not to ever do that, that I would get pregnant the first time and this was no world to raise a child in.”

  “Come on, Maria, let’s sit down and talk about this, just because it happened to your mom doesn’t mean it will happen to you.” Einstein said as he leaned forward, reaching out with his hand, wrapping his fingers around her elbow.

  “Don’t touch me,” she shouted as she yanked her arm away from his grasp. She snatched her bag from the couch and darted out the front door. Einstein followed, still not fully dressed, his feet getting wet in the dewy grass as he followed her around the side of the house and into the forest that had once been her back yard.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care, I just gotta get away.”

  “Let me come with you?”

  “No, stay away from me, I wish I would never have met any of you.” She turned and stalked into the forest depths. Einstein ran back to the house and finished dressing. Leaving his pack and his weapons, he ran into the forest to catch up with Maria.

  Branches slapped him across the face as he ran, and he struggled to keep Maria in view. Slipping and sliding over the blanket of dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor, tripping over errant roots that snatched at his feet at will. The heels of his palms were scraped and bleeding from catching himself several times, he was sweating profusely, and the smell of his unwashed body rising up from his clothes was enough to make his empty stomach perform several lazy somersaults. Thirst burned in his throat, his tongue was swollen and sticking to the roof of his mouth as he drew in one ragged breath after the next. He had become an automaton focused on one goal, catching up with Maria and making everything right. Around him the forest was teeming with life, that incessant chatter masking the sounds of what lay ahead.

  Reaching a tree line bordering a paved parking lot he stopped as a large building housing what had once been a grocery store loomed into view. Maria stood transfixed by the sheer size of the building. There were other buildings to the right of the grocery store, th
e gaping maws of their front windows, the glass long since broken by passing vandals, gazing out upon the debris-strewn parking lot.

  Several cars stood abandoned in their parking slots, their windows broken out, their once gleaming paint oxidized by the relentless sun, their tires flattened. In several the remains of the hapless occupants sat withered and decayed behind plastic steering wheels, trapped for eternity in a traffic jam of the dead.

  Voices came from the opposite side of the grocery store and as Einstein caught up with Maria, he tried to pull her back to the safety of the forest. With a shout of anger she yanked her arm from Einstein’s grasp. Her shout alerted those on the other side of the grocery store and Einstein watched in dismay as several older men ran around the corner of the building, carrying rifles at the ready, shouting for them to stay put.

  He reached for his revolver, filled with terror when he realized he had left it at the house along with his pack and rifle. He hadn’t expected any of this to happen and as the men approached he realized they were in a great deal of trouble.

  Twenty Two

  Awareness came to Einstein in stages, opening with the throbbing at the base of his skull and spreading outward from that point as pins and needles danced across his flesh. His cheek was pressed against a hard, cold, object with the cold penetrating into his jaw and teeth.

  He’d been trying to protect someone, and try as he might he couldn’t recall any of the details of what had happened before unconsciousness claimed him. Some bad men had been coming for them and he clearly remembered being concerned about someone other than himself, but the memories teased him fading in and out of his consciousness as the awareness of his body grew, taking on the aura of a dream forgotten almost immediately upon waking.

  He was lying on his stomach, his head turned to one side, and opening his eyes he discovered a dark world. He couldn’t see anything. He felt the floor beneath him, cold steel, and hesitantly he reached out with his hands to explore the world around him, afraid of what he might find. There was nothing around him, as far as he could reach, except that cold featureless surface.