by D. J. Molles
As Clyde walked, the tension and fear of being held at gunpoint began to abate. It was replaced with anger. Indignance. Almost a sense of shame. He refused to look directly at Haley, because he feared he would see in her eyes the same reproach and disappointment that he forced on himself. Like self-flagellation. For not being strong enough. For not being tough enough. For not being prepared to defend his wife.
The words just kept rattling around in his brain, getting sharper as time went by, like chipping at flint: My family is my responsibility. And your family is yours.
Like even as he had said it, the man was picturing them already dead.
Like Clyde’s failure was a foregone conclusion.
Clyde’s eyes kept wandering down, though, to see where he was stepping, and then he would see these poor people. He’d heard that the sick people would cannibalize in their delirious state. But for some reason when he saw the civilians and soldiers, saw the pieces and parts missing from them, he tried to come up with a different explanation.
Clyde stopped and put his hands on his knees, feeling like he might vomit again.
“Honey, you okay?” Haley asked.
He shook his head violently, then spit on the ground, still unable to take his eyes off the forms that were crumpled against the cars all around them. He looked for the pattern of digitally speckled grays and tans that would denote a military uniform in all that dark blood. He found one, leaning against a fender. The jacket had been stripped away and the shirt torn open. His chest and arms had been heavily masticated. His stomach had been opened, his guts piled up next to him. One arm still holding them, like he didn’t want them to get away. His mouth hung open, bloody and soundless.
Clyde retched, but nothing came up.
Haley made a gagging noise herself, but he couldn’t tell whether it was sympathetic from him or whether she could not handle the sight, either. She pushed at him, attempting to get him to leave this spot and go farther down the road. “Come on, Clyde! Let’s go!”
Clyde wiped saliva from his mouth and stood up fully so he could look back toward the school. It sat perhaps a tenth of a mile away, the SUV still sitting in the parking lot. But Clyde felt they were too distant to be keeping watch on him.
“No,” he croaked. “We need…We need…” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he moved closer to the dead soldier. He tried to see in the growing darkness, but not much was visible to him. He would be forced to find it by touch. He knelt down, his fingers touching the cement, feeling the grit but also the sticky viscosity of coagulated blood. And the stench of it. The metallic, butcher’s-shop smell. And the smell of loosened bowels.
He felt around. His fingers brushed cold meat. His stomach felt like it was curling into a ball inside of him, his throat like a gaping hole, widening as it prepared to purge itself again. He closed his eyes as he leaned closer to the dead man, unwilling to stare eye to eye with it.
“What the hell are you doing?” Haley hissed, quiet but urgent. “We need to get the fuck out of here!”
“We need a fucking gun!” he snapped.
Haley swore, bending down so she could not be seen between the cars and looking back over her shoulders at the school. Clyde could not see her, but he could hear her breathing. The rapid, shallow rhythm and the words that whispered out of her lips: “What are we doing here? What are we doing? What are we doing?”
It was not a question to him, he understood.
But he answered it anyway, silently.
We are surviving. This is how people survive.
They do what they do not want to do.
Someday when this is over, I will look back and say I did some things I’d rather not talk about, but I’m here. And Haley’s here. And we survived it.
Someday when this is over.
When he hefted it out of the darkness beneath the car, he felt proud. Validated. He looked at it, though he could barely discern it, black on black. He could feel it, though. Cold and metal. Lighter than he thought it would be.
Haley had gone silent and she looked at him. “You sure you remember how to shoot a pistol?”
He didn’t, but he refused to admit it. “Yeah. Of course.”
He had to be the man. His family was his responsibility. He would not pass the pistol over to her and tell her to defend them. And she might not make a big deal about it, but somehow the truth would get back to her father and her brothers. And they would never let him live it down. They would talk about how Clyde the pussy, silver-spoon motherfucker, had to have Haley defend him because he couldn’t figure out how to work a goddamned pistol.
How hard could it be? Just point and click, right?
“Alright,” he said. He held the pistol in his right hand and held onto Haley with his left, and they moved quietly and cautiously down the road. “We can probably make up most of the distance before dawn.”
“You sure it’s safe to travel at night?” she asked.
He felt annoyed by the question. “Of course it is.”
FOUR
They walked through the dark. Their eyes remained fixed on the woods and pastures and neighborhoods around them. Clyde couldn’t believe how black everything was. A few streetlights still glowed, so he knew that the power grid was not out, but there was not a single light on in any of the houses. Everything was stiff with silence, like someone holding a breath, and it made him uncomfortable and caused his eyes to dart around, little noises making him jump.
“Honey, I need to stop.” Haley put out a hand to stop him, the other clutching her stomach.
Her feet alternated on the pavement, one relieving the other for just a moment. He looked down at her feet and for the first time actually took notice of what she was wearing. A simple pair of flats. Canvas, with a floral pattern. They’d become dingy from the long walk and from hiding in the woods. She wore no socks, and Clyde could only imagine the blisters that had begun to form.
“Okay.” He nodded, then stopped. He looked around, forward and back in the roadway, seeking a place where they could rest, but it seemed like nothing but empty road in either direction. He focused his attention forward and peered through the darkness, as though he could light the way by squinting. Still, he thought he could see a small sign straight ahead. Perhaps a convenience store or a roadside diner or something.
“Can you keep going for a little bit?” he asked. “I think there’s a place ahead we might be able to stop.”
She balanced on one foot, propping the other on her knee and massaging it. She looked at him with narrowed eyes but didn’t respond to his question. It wasn’t quite a glare, but it wasn’t a friendly look, either.
“What?” He spread his arms, feeling the cool breeze wick the sweat from his armpits.
She shook her head. “What the fuck are we doing, Clyde?”
His teeth locked shut. What the hell does she want with me? “I told you,” he said flatly. “We’re going to the FEMA camp.”
Haley looked away from him. “What if it’s not there by the time we get there? What if they’ve closed it down, and we miss it?”
Clyde made a beleaguered noise. “Well, we’re never gonna find out if we keep standing around in the middle of the damn road.”
“Clyde, don’t be an asshole,” she snapped. “I’m asking you a serious question.”
Clyde rubbed his face. Exhaustion was suddenly springing up from the balls of his feet. He could feel it like a dull ache. Like he was walking on coals, but rather than burning him, they only imparted weariness.
She sniffed and he could hear the wetness.
He took a deep breath. “It’s not gonna be like that. It’s not. It can’t.” He thought of the man at the school, the calm confidence he had displayed. And the way his wife and child stood there, trusting him. Knowing he was capable. Not doubting him. Not questioning him.
Clyde tried to make his voice strong, like the man’s had been. “I’m not saying this isn’t bad right now, but it will get better. It always gets better.
”
Haley’s voice caught. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I do. Come on.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her on. They continued, but at a slower pace, and it took them almost five minutes to reach the sign that he’d seen in the distance. It was an old convenience store. A single stand of gas pumps sitting outside. Two for regular unleaded. Two for diesel. One for kerosene, off to the side.
It was dark, as Clyde had suspected. He assumed that it was still in the mandatory evacuation zone—or mandatory containment, he supposed—and that the owner and clerks were gone. Either bused off to the FEMA camp or scattered after the attack. And Clyde stood there in the middle of the parking lot of the convenience store, like he’d suddenly been struck dumb, and he thought about what had happened, what he’d witnessed, and he felt a feeling rising in him like the panic of knowing that you are wrong about something.
You are very, very wrong.
He shook it off. Stowed those memories into a little bin in his mind that he would save for later. He would procrastinate thinking about them, processing them, because to do so might be to give credence to the thought that this was not as temporary as he wanted to believe. The thought that maybe the survivalist psycho back at the school had spoken the truth.
Bullshit. Bullshit.
He rejected it.
Ahead of him, the windows of the convenience store were dark. In them hung advertisements and dark neon signs. The king of beers. The North Carolina lottery. Cheap prices for cartons of cigarettes. Ice cold Coca-Cola. All of that seemed normal. It seemed real. These were things that could not be killed. These were fixtures of modern life. They comforted him and told him, even in their darkened, slumbering state, that everything would be okay in the end. That just like everything bad that had ever happened, it too would come to an end, and soon he would be back at the store, purchasing Budweiser and lottery tickets like any damn freeborn American.
This too shall pass, he told himself, and he felt wise and levelheaded for thinking it.
At the window, he cupped his hands over the glass and peered through the window, trying to see inside. A single streetlight cast an odd glow over everything, not emanating from the parking lot where typically the overhead halogens would drown it out, but coming from a little farther down the road, so everything was cast in shadows of extreme angles, like time was frozen at sunset.
There were a few aisles that sat in deep shadow. A checkout counter over-cluttered by advertisements, lotto tickets, chewing gum, and loose cigarettes and cigars. For the most part, everything looked as pristine as you would expect a dingy convenience store to be. For some reason, Clyde had half expected it to be ransacked.
He tried the door and was not surprised to find it locked.
Haley let out a little moan. “Well, this was worth it.”
Clyde looked through the window again, then all around the parking lot. His tongue touched his lips and both were dry. Now he was looking into that convenience store, into coolers still filled with cold beverages, and wanting badly to get his hands on them.
“We could…” He trailed off, trying to find a less criminal way to say what he was thinking. “I’m sure we could open the door somehow.”
“You mean break in?”
He didn’t respond directly. Instead, he bent down and began looking at where the deadbolt was seated in the doorframe. Checking for weaknesses. “It’s not like we’re petty criminals, Haley. I’m sure everyone would understand that we needed someplace to sit and rest for a bit.”
“They’re just gonna call us looters!” she hissed. “What if one of those army units comes by and sees us? Aren’t they shooting looters?”
He looked at her with a quirked brow. “I don’t think so, hon. This isn’t North Korea.”
He could tell by her expression that she thought he was being difficult.
He raised a placating hand, a gesture that he knew she disliked but which he often used anyway. “Look, we’re just gonna slip in. We’re not touching the money in the till. We won’t take more than we need. Just a couple damn granola bars and a bottle of water. I’m sure everyone will understand.” He shook his head. “Besides, I don’t know if there are any police around here anyway. Everyone’s been evacuated. Or contained. Remember?”
Haley mulled it over while Clyde screwed around with the door, trying to figure out if there was a quiet, secret-agent method of getting it open. Eventually, Haley held her belly and winced at the pain in her own feet. She couldn’t keep going. And neither of them wanted to sleep out in the open.
“Fine,” she said quietly.
She stood there, staring out at the darkness of the street, as though keeping watch.
Clyde looked over his shoulder and could see her attention was elsewhere. He took the opportunity to pull the pistol from his belt, using his body as a shield to block her from seeing what he was doing. As quietly as he could, he looked the weapon over. Like a savage looking at alien technology.
He disliked how awkward it looked in his untrained hands. He was shamefully uncomfortable with it. Amazing how, despite all his education and his white-collar upbringing, he was no different than every other American male, who somehow expected himself to be an instinctive expert on firearms and was heartily disappointed when this was proven wrong. Like not knowing how to use a gun was essentially like finding out your prick was two sizes too small.
But, like most other American males, what he’d seen on TV and movies was his guide. He knew there was a button on the side that he could depress and make the magazine fall out of the gun. He fumbled around for this but eventually found it. He pressed it with his thumb and, like magic, the magazine fell down into his waiting hand.
He could see gold, or brass, or whatever it was that they used to make bullets. He could see at least two coming out of the top, but below that he couldn’t tell. He looked the magazine over quickly, found slots in the back, and he figured they were to show you how many rounds you had in there, though they were not numbered. He could see the glint of the cartridges through the first hole, but not the second or third. So what did that mean? He guesstimated, based on the size of the cartridge he was looking at, that the magazine held somewhere between ten and twenty rounds.
So maybe five in the magazine?
Possibly less.
He thought about taking them out to count, but he feared he wouldn’t be able to figure out how to get them back in. On the two occasions that Haley’s father had insisted Clyde come shooting with them, he’d never let Clyde load the magazines, saying that Clyde might do it wrong and “blow them up.” Clyde was pretty sure it was hyperbole, but it cast enough doubt that now he didn’t want to risk it.
He seated the magazine back into the pistol, pressing it in until he felt the click. Then he hefted the thing in his hands a few times, trying to make himself feel more comfortable with it, or at least look like less of an idiot.
“Babe, what are you doing?” Haley asked.
Clyde stuck the pistol back in his pants. “Nothing. I was just…just checking out the door to see if it had an alarm. I don’t think it does.”
“Thought you said that it doesn’t matter.”
He looked back at her. “It doesn’t.”
“Well, open it, then.”
“Okay.” He looked around on the ground. Found a chunk of loose asphalt near the worn-out-looking ice chests and wrangled it from the ground. It was about the size of his fist. He’d never used a rock to bash something in. Never actually broken a window before. And he wasn’t sure whether this would do the trick, but he didn’t see why not.
He thought about whether to throw it or use it as a club.
Decided to throw it.
The door was your typical convenience store or gas station door. Just a rectangular frame of metal, this one with a crossbar going across the middle of the door, dividing the glass into two equal sections on the top and bottom. Clyde aimed for the top section of glass
, near the doorframe.
It shattered nicely through, making a fist-sized hole just to the left of the locking mechanism. A well-placed shot that Clyde almost smiled about. They listened to the abruptly loud pop of the glass breaking, then the crystalline, trickling sound as all the shards and pieces skittered across the inside of the store. For a moment he stood, almost shocked with himself for committing this crime.
No alarm, he thought with some relief. Good.
Then Clyde stepped forward and reached carefully through the hole in the glass. He unlocked the door and pulled it open. He stood there like a doorman, holding it open and waiting for Haley to pass through, but she stood there and looked unsurely between Clyde and the dark interior of the convenience store.
“I don’t know,” she said. “This feels wrong.”
Clyde huffed. “Would you just get inside the damn door? Nobody is gonna arrest us.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s ridiculous!” That was Clyde’s only defense.
Haley pursed her lips and stepped through the door, shaking her head. Clyde took another glance around the parking lot and then followed her in. Inside, the temperature was slightly cooler, but it was stuffy and he could feel a bit of sweat break out across his head because there was no breeze to dry it. He swung the door closed behind them and locked it again.
“Do you have any cash on you?” Haley asked.
“Why?” He raised his brow.
“So we can leave them money for the things we take. And for the window.”
Clyde fought the desire to brush this off. Instead, he just said, “My wallet was in the backpack. In the side pocket.”
In the harsh angle of light from the single streetlight outside, Haley’s face was half in the light and half in the dark. The shadows were odd. Extreme. They added ten years to her face. He could see the glimmer of emotion hiding just below her skin, but she was trying hard not to show it. She was typically not an overly emotional person, but that had changed during pregnancy. Which he supposed was to be expected.
