by Brad Knight
The abandoned SUV was not a total loss. Inside Mack found a couple unopened bottles of water. But the biggest score was in the glove box. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette in years. Considering his circumstances, the smokes he found in the vehicle would absolutely be used. More immediate potential killers loomed, cancer wasn’t a fear anymore.
“It’s locked,” said Stephanie after trying to open the front door of the cabin.
“Is there a back door?” asked Simon.
Amber went around the rear of the cabin. There was no door back there. But she did spy an ax stuck into a tree stump, probably used to chop firewood. After some hard pulling, she managed retrieved it.
“No back door, but look what I found.” Amber held up her newly acquired ax. She walked over and handed it to Mack. “You’d probably be better with this.” He took it.
For a few seconds, Mack considered using the ax to chop through the door, or at least break it open. A little voice in the back of his head stopped him. If he broke the door then anything could get into the cabin. That was unacceptable since he wanted to stay here for the night. The group needed rest. He needed rest.
“Think you can climb through that window, girlie girl?” Mack pointed at the cabin’s broken window with the ax.
“Why don’t you just break the door down?” suggested Simon.
“No, we can’t do that,” answered Mack.
“Why not? It’s not like there’s anyone there. I doubt they’ll come back. So who gives a shit?”
This guy. “I give a shit. If we break down this door then anyone or anything can just stroll in.”
“Wait, we’re staying here?” asked Stephanie.
“Yeah… I figure we could all use some rest. And we can decide what to do inside, out of sight and out of danger.”
“I guess that’s a good idea.” Stephanie spoke, Simon mumbled to himself behind her.
While Mack, Stephanie and Simon talked, Amber climbed the piled up firewood under the broken window. She knocked away the jagged pieces of glass that remained. Then she turned to the rest of the group.
“It’s decided then,” said Amber before climbing through the broken window head first, and into the cabin. She had to twist her body while going through so that she didn’t fall on her noggin. After landing safely inside, she stood up and looked around.
The cabin was in good shape. Whoever once lived there kept the place clean. There was some dust but that was understandable. Amber walked over to the front door and opened it for Mack, Stephanie and Simon.
“Looks like whoever lived here loved the bottle.” Simon held up a couple bottles of whiskey. He and the other members of the group were searching the cabin.
“Great,” said Amber with a smile. Then she snatched one of the bottles out of Simon’s hand. She was about to run away with it before Mack stopped her.
“I don’t think so,” said Mack as he took the bottle out of her hand. “End of the world or not, you’re still too young.”
Stephanie was in the kitchen checking the cabinets for food. There wasn’t much there. A jar of peanut butter and a bag of rice were all that was left. She took them out and put them on the counter. Next up was the fridge.
The food inside the fridge had been in there for weeks. Over that time it all rotted and went sour. The rancid smell built up was just waiting patiently for some unlucky soul, and when Stephanie opened the fridge door, she started dry heaving and retching.
“You okay?” asked Simon, concerned for his twin sister. Whether or not that concern was genuine or just a polite gesture wasn’t clear.
Simon walked over to the refrigerator. He took a look inside and quickly moved away. “That’s awful.” As he backed up, he closed the fridge door with his foot.
“Any food?” asked Mack as he and Amber joined the twins in the kitchen.
“Just some rice and peanut butter,” answered Stephanie as she regained her composure.
“Great. Than all we need is a pot and we can eat.”
***
“Donna Winters,” laughed Simon. “That was her name. Jesus she was a mess.”
Simon, Stephanie, Mack and Amber all sat in the cabin’s living room. It was the early evening and they were relaxing. One of the many bottles of whiskey were already open and empty. Stephanie worked on opening another.
“Then why did you sleep with her?” asked Stephanie with a mocking smile.
“Because I have a dick and she wanted to.”
Mack actually found himself laughing. He quickly caught himself.
“Simon, she was almost three hundred pounds.”
“So?”
The whole group laughed.
“Who’s next?” asked Stephanie.
“How about Amber? Who’s the last person you slept with before all of this?” asked Simon.
“She’s fourteen asshole.” Even a little drunk, Simon rubbed Mack the wrong way.
“You think that matters? It isn’t 1954 old man, kids are hooking up at younger and younger ages nowadays.”
Amber couldn’t answer. She could barely sit up straight on the couch. Despite his earlier protests, Mack let her drink with them. As far as he knew the world was over. It couldn’t hurt to let her have some fun. Especially considering what happened to her back at the rodeo arena.
“Let’s move on. Mack, you’re up.” Stephanie took a swig of the whiskey before handing it to Mack.
“Thanks, I’m probably going to need this.” Mack took a swallow.
“So, what was her name?” asked Simon as Mack handed the liquor off to him.
“LeAnn Murray.”
“LeAnn huh? She sounds like a sweet southern belle,” said Simon with a grin.
Mack stared at the floor and smiled. He tried to remember her face. “She was.”
“So, who was she?”
“My fiancé.”
“You were engaged?” Stephanie was intrigued.
“Yeah, what she said,” Amber slurred her words as she talked.
“I was.”
“Did she, you know, pass away?” asked Stephanie. The tone in her voice was kind and caring.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Simon was as blunt as always. “She was your fiancé. How do you not know?”
“We separated seven years ago.” Mack’s eyes still didn’t leave the floor.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” consoled Stephanie.
“Wait, does that mean…? You haven’t had sex for seven years? How’s that even possible?”
“Simon…” Stephanie, as she often had to do, stepped in and tried to stop her brother.
“It’s simple. My day-to-day life before the world ended consisted of going to work, going home, eating, sleeping, and repeat. I’m too old to go looking for random women to ‘hook’ up with at the bars. Online dating wasn’t for me.”
“Well that’s just depressing man.” Simon wiped the whiskey off his mouth and handed the bottle back to his sister.
“Tell us about LeAnn,” said Stephanie.
“She was tall. Not as tall as me but still taller than most women. She kept her hair short. It always smelled a little bit like coconut. She had a thick Texan accent. Every time she talked I couldn’t help but smile. She was just one of those people. Her laughter was infectious.”
Mack ceased being in the cabin. His mind was transported to the restaurant where he met LeAnn. All the harsh realities of the meat puppets, hunters and mysterious SWAT guys disappeared.
Evangeline was a restaurant on the Gulf of Mexico. It was a nice place, casual and clean. Mack remembered the white Christmas lights that lined the pergola over the outside dining area. The smell of the establishment was an intoxicating mix of the ocean, seafood, barbeque and beer.
LeAnn was at the bar. Mack was at dinner with some work friends when he spotted her. She was alone sipping on a cocktail. He didn’t know why but he suddenly found himself walking over to her.
When he introduced himself, LeAn
n smiled. She had dimples at the corner of her mouth, and her eyes were bright and playful. He’d never seen a more engaging smile.
The little seafood restaurant on the Gulf dissipated. Once again, Mack was back in the moment, in the cabin. Stephanie and Simon were staring at him.
“You okay?” asked Stephanie.
“Kind of zoned out on us there buddy,” said Simon.
“I’m fine. I was just, let’s move on.” Mack took the bottle of whiskey from Stephanie and took a couple large gulps.
“Hold up. I wanna hear more man. What happened? Why aren’t you with her anymore?” As Simon spoke his twin sister shot him a disapproving glance.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“C’mon don’t be like that.”
Amber threw up on the living room rug. Her timing was perfect, saving Mack. But no one likes vomit. That immediately broke up the good time the group was having.
That’s what we get for letting her drink. “Shit,” Mack got up. He gently grabbed Amber by her arm.
“I don’t wanna.” Amber sounded like a drunk child. Mainly because she was.
“Too bad. Time for you to go to bed.” Mack guided Amber towards the cabin’s only bedroom.
“What about us? Where do we sleep?” asked Simon.
“I don’t care.”
With the sun falling, the cabin grew dark. Mack lit a kerosene lantern and put it on a nightstand in the bedroom. It didn’t light up the whole room, but some light was better than no light.
Mack laid Amber down on the only bed. He took off one of the pillows and threw it on the floor, along with a sheet. That was where he’d sleep. They both lay in silence. For a little while they had the bickering of the twins to keep them entertained. Eventually that stopped and they fell back into an uncomfortable quiet.
“I deserved it,” said Amber.
Mack sighed.
“After what I’ve done. I deserve all of this.”
Ask her what she’s done. Don’t wimp out this time. If you’re going to keep traveling with her and seeing to her safety, you need to know.
“They had it coming.” Amber started tearing up. Mack didn’t step in and stop her. He needed to hear what she had to say. He needed to hear her confession. “What he did… and she didn’t stop him.” The teenage girl broke into full blown drunk crying.
Shit. You’re going to have step in. But you need to be strong. Get the truth out of her.
Mack threw off his covers. He stood up and proceeded to sit on the edge of the bed next to her. The grown man wasn’t brave enough to look at his young charge. Instead, he looked around the room as he talked.
“Who had it coming?” Is this wrong? She’s drunk. I don’t know if she’d talk if she was sober. Is this why you let her have a couple drinks?
Amber didn’t answer. She sobbed. Mack, still too cowardly and uncomfortable to look at her, gently embraced one of her hands.
“Look kid, it’s clear that whatever you’re not telling me is bothering you. Tell me. Unburden. Take the weight off.”
“Please don’t think I’m a monster or something,” pleaded Amber. That was an ominous preface to her coming confession.
“Think about all we’ve been through. We had to do some terrible things in order to survive. That doesn’t make us monsters.”
“What I did… it wasn’t to survive. I was angry. So I killed them.”
“Who?”
Amber hesitated before answering. “My parents.”
What!? You killed your own fucking parents? Jesus Christ! Mack was more than a little rattled. Sure he knew Amber was hiding something dark and deep. But he instantly regretted trying to explore the recesses of the teenage girl’s secrets. With that said, the levy broke. There was no going back.
“I thought they were killed by meat puppets?” Mack dug deep into his memories to recall the sight of Amber’s parents dead on I-23. Gunshot wounds appeared on the image of their corpses. He didn’t notice them before.
“I…I shot them.”
Try to understand. Don’t overreact. There had to be a reason.
“Why?”
“My dad. He’d… he did things, bad things. Sometimes at night, after my mom drank herself to sleep, he’d come into my room. He told me that what he was doing was just another form of love. But it didn’t feel like love to me.” Amber was able to bury her tears as she explained what her father did to her habitually. The sadness before the confession turned to anger.
“I’m sorry. That’s… I’m sorry Amber. I had no idea. You don’t have to tell me anymore.” Mack suddenly felt awful for asking the questions he did.
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m not. When I shot him, it felt good. He deserved it. And my mom? She knew and did nothing. She was just as guilty as him.” Amber squeezed Mack’s hand. “Ever since I feel bad about it.” She stood up in bed. “If they deserved it, why do I feel guilty?”
Mack had no choice but to turn around and look Amber in her eyes. She needed him more than ever. He gently put his free hand over their entangled ones.
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you and say what you did was right. Killing a living person is never a good thing. But if you think about it, what you did was no different than what we’ve been doing. You were surviving.”
Mack put his hand on Amber’s cheek. He could feel wet tears on the space between his thumb and pointer finger. “Thank you for telling me. I know it wasn’t easy. And know that this doesn’t change the way I feel about you. Now get some sleep girlie girl. We’re probably going to have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Watching over Amber like a sentinel, Mack waited for her to fall asleep. Once he knew she was in a deep sleep, he got up, careful not to make much noise. He had to assume that the twins were asleep as well.
When Mack slowly opened the bedroom door, he could hear Simon snoring. That noise negated his need to tip toe through the living room to the front door. If the male twin’s sleep apnea didn’t wake his sister, neither will Mack’s footsteps.
“Where you going?” Mack heard Stephanie’s whispers as he tried to navigate the nearly pitch black space between the bedroom and cabin front door.
Damn. “To get some fresh air.” To get some fresh air? Very original.
“Can I join you?”
No. “Yeah, I guess.”
One of the many dark silhouettes in the cabin living room stood up. Stephanie slept on the only couch. Her snoring brother was asleep in the recliner chair.
Stephanie followed Mack out the front door and into the night. The woods around the cabin were alive with the sounds of wildlife and insects. Mack recognized the unmistakable call of owls. He heard crickets play their attached instruments creating a melody that held meaning only to them. There were even fireflies enjoying the last bits of summer before the fall.
Under any other circumstances, being with a comely woman in such a setting that Stephanie and Mack found themselves in would’ve been romantic. The latter had no such interests in the woman with him. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive. He just found little point to such a relationship in a world mired in violent chaos. At least that was what he told himself.
The truth of why Mack only allowed himself to be attached to Amber was simple. It became clear to him since the outbreak that emotional attachments were a liability. Sure he cared deeply about Amber, and felt responsible for her. But she was all he cared about. And he was determined to keep it that way.
Mack and Stephanie sat next to each other on the front steps of the cabin. The latter brought some whiskey outside with her. Who knows what her intent was? Did she just want to feel normal and share a drink and conversation with a handsome man? Or was her plan to get inebriated with him and indulge in base human instincts and needs?
“More whiskey?” asked Mack in semi disbelief.
“Why not?” Stephanie unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle.
“I don’t know. Anymore and I’ll wake up with a hang
over.”
Stephanie took a swig. “I think a hangover will be the least of our problems.” She handed the bottle to Mack. He accepted.
“I can’t argue with that logic.” Mack took his turn with the whiskey. When he was done he gave it back to Stephanie. The two of them went on like that till the bottle was almost empty.
“So what are we gonna do Mack?” asked Stephanie.
“I figure we can head west.”
“What’s out west?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So…why?”
Good question. Pity that you don’t have a good answer. Tell her the truth. “Look, I don’t have a plan. Before all this I never led anyone, ever. I’m playing all this by ear. All I know, what I’ve learned, is that if you want to survive, you need to keep moving. I’ve chosen to head west. You and your brother can come with but I can’t guarantee you anything will be better.”
Stephanie put one of her hands on Mack’s thigh. She looked him in the eyes. “You’ve saved us. We’re complete strangers and you took us with you. Most people would have left us to rot. Or worse. But you didn’t. You saved us from, excuse my French, that fucking rodeo. You saved us from that bear. It may sound a bit cheesy but…” Stephanie smiled and batted her eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion. “You’re my hero.”
Mack laughed. “Is that so?” She has no idea that I would’ve left them behind in a second. They were supposed to be cannon fodder.
“As a matter of fact it is.”
Mack and Stephanie kept the mood light on the front steps of the cabin. They laughed and talked for over an hour. It was a nice timeout from the nightmare that continuously unfolded all around them.
During a break in their conversation, Stephanie got up. She took Mack’s hand and led him towards the abandoned SUV outside the cabin. When they reached it, she opened the door to the backseat and got in. Her body language was unmistakable. Mack was going to get laid.
Why not? This may be my last time with a woman. Make it count.
