Survivors of the Sun

by Kingslie, Mia

  She rapped once. Unexpectedly there was no response. She frowned. They had heard someone hadn’t they? So she knocked again, this time calling out, ‘hello is anyone in there?’

  There was a sudden crashing, as though a barstool had fallen over and a man’s voice boomed out to them, ‘who’s there?’

  Before Georgia could identify herself, the disembodied voice continued. ‘Don’t you come in here, I’ve got a gun, and I’ve rigged the place with explosives, you touch that door and you will blow to kingdom come!’

  Georgia’s eyes widened, she was certain she recognized that voice. Yes she did. ‘Dave?’ Georgia said. ‘Dave is that you?’

  There was the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door, and then the voice said, ‘Georgia?’

  She let out a breath, realizing that she had been holding it, feeling her tensed up muscles relax.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said, as she glanced around at the others.

  ‘Who’s Dave?’ Lola mouthed.

  ‘A friend of Nathan’s, he used to be one of the bartenders here,’ she whispered back, though she was not quite sure why she was whispering.

  The door was pulled open and the familiar bear like figure was standing there. His beard, always thick and bushy was now even more of a jungle and his hair looked wild and uncombed.

  ‘Well I’ll be jitterbugged,’ he said staring at her, ‘I don’t believe it, never thought I’d see you again, see anyone again,’ he added, his voice dropping nearly to a whisper.

  Then he looked past her. ‘Is Nathan with you?’

  She shook her head. ‘No he’s not. He was away from home when…,’ her words petered out.

  ‘Oh!’ he said, his shoulders seeming to droop.

  Suddenly a tiny white bundle of fur came flying out of the shadows and launched itself at Ant. It was all on, Millie stepped back, wobbling precariously, as Jamie neatly stepped in Badgers way, preventing her from joining in.

  ‘Stop it,’ Georgia hissed, as she bent down, separating the two snarling bristling dogs. Ant had Pepe by the cheek, and Pepe was hanging onto an ear for dear life, both of them doing their best to shake the other.

  Avoiding a myriad of sharp teeth she pulled Pepe free. Ant was not giving up that easily, she leapt up, teeth clacking as she narrowly missed one of Pepe’s paws.

  ‘I’ll take him,’ Dave said, ‘he belongs with me now.’

  Having handed over the still snarling Pepe, she bent down and scooped Ant up, not sure what to say. That did not bode well for Auntie Darlene. There was no way that Darlene would have willingly left Pepe behind.

  ‘And who is this lovely lady?’ Dave asked, as he held out his free hand to Lola.

  ‘This is Lola, we met….’ But Georgia could see he wasn’t really listening.

  ‘Oh my stars,’ Lola breathed, as she took his hand, ‘you sure are one tall drink of iced tea.’

  Behind her Deedee snorted back a laugh, and Georgia shot her a warning look.

  ‘So you’re a southern girl.’ It was a statement.

  ‘Sure am,’ Lola simpered, ‘southern born and southern bred, southern girl till I’m dead.’

  ‘Here we go again.’ Georgia thought, as she gently pushed Josh forwards. ‘And this is Josh, and that’s Ruby, sitting over on the Adirondack.’

  He nodded in Ruby’s direction, receiving an imperious wave in return.

  ‘That’s our grandma,’ Deedee said, ‘and I’m Deedee and I don’t think you look like a glass of ice tea at all, you look more like a mountain man.’

  Dave raised a quizzical eyebrow, then chuckled. ‘You do huh, well I reckon you’re not far wrong.’

  ‘Deedee is Maggie’s step daughter,’ Georgia said by way of explanation. ‘You remember Maggie don’t you? Nathan’s sister.’

  ‘Oh right, Nathan’s sister, don’t remember her so well, she went away to college as I recall, but she must have married awfully young.’

  ‘No,’ Georgia smiled, ‘Maggie is in her late thirties now.’

  ‘Really? Damn, time flies! As long as that?’

  ‘We met up with Lola, Ruby and Josh, during various stages of our journey down from Kansas City.’

  ‘Nice to meet you all,’ Dave said, first shaking hands with Josh, and then Deedee. ‘So you ah, were up there, when it happened?’

  Georgia nodded. ‘It’s been a bit of a hike. And this is Rebecca, you might remember…,’

  Dave gave a laugh and swept Rebecca off the ground. ‘Of course I remember little Becky.’

  ‘Little Becky,’ Deedee whispered gleefully, as Rebecca glowered. But Dave oblivious, burbled on not noticing. ‘You have certainly grown. Why you were only knee high to a grasshopper last time I saw you. And you must be Jamie,’ he said, setting Rebecca back on her feet, and pulling a startled Jamie into his arms. ‘Nathan’s boy, and you look just like him.’ Jamie flushed with pleasure as the big man crushed him in a bear hug.

  ‘Well you better all come in,’ he said as he released hold of Jamie. ‘The dogs better come in as well. I’ll keep Pepe on my lap, he will just go to sleep.’

  ‘What about the explosives?’ Lola asked, standing back nervously, as the others began to file indoors.

  ‘The explosives?’ Dave looked puzzled, then laughed, a deep booming sound. ‘Oh that. There aren’t any, just made that up.’ He bent down to right the fallen stool. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘can I get you a drink, there’s plenty here.’

  ‘Let me get them,’ Georgia said, making her way round to the back of the bar and setting out the glasses in a line. ‘I guess everything is pretty much where it always was.’

  ‘Yeah, not a lot has changed since you were last helping out down here.’

  As she opened up several bottles of Dr Pepper, warm and sticky, she glanced around the room. The tables had been pushed up into one corner. A makeshift bed made up next to the now obsolete juke box. It looked as though Dave had been living here.

  Dave and Josh dragged one of the tables back into the middle of the room, while the girls placed chairs around it. Georgia set the drinks onto a tray, adding a bottle of Coors light. She remembered Dave’s partiality for that brand of beer. She left it unopened, placing a bottle opener next to it. He might be sick of it by now.

  As she had been checking out the cool room (though sweaty hot room was probably a better name for it now), she had noticed that beer wise, it was still well stocked, in spite of the trash bag being full to overflowing with empty cans and bottles.

  As Ruby sat down, Georgia called over to her, ‘what can I get you?’

  ‘Seeing as this is a special occasion, I think I will have a Shandy.’

  ‘A Shandy?’ Lola questioned.

  ‘Also known as Lemon Beer,’ Dave explained.’

  Georgia popped the tops of a can of beer and a Sprite. ‘One Shandy coming up.’

  ‘So,’ Georgia said, as she sat down and the Bostons settled down under her chair. ‘What happened to everyone?’

  There was a momentary silence as Dave took a long sip from his beer and set the bottle back on the table.

  ‘That was a bad business,’ he said.

  ‘The nuclear bomb that went off in St Louis didn’t rightly affect us too badly. We lost our power and phones, but…,’

  ‘Nuclear bomb?’ Josh asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Dave said, ‘at least that’s what we heard, that there was a mighty big bang up there in the city and it was so God damn big that it knocked one of those satee light things right out of the sky.’

  It took a moment for Georgia to realize that he meant satellite.

  He paused and looked at them. ‘Isn’t that what happened?’

  ‘Not really, we heard that some of the nuclear power stations went into melt down after the power failure because there was no fail safe plan in place, but that was caused by a magnetic pulse from the sun and…,’

  ‘A what now?’

  Georgia hesitated, trying to remember how Tom had put it, he had explained it so
succinctly.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Lola said somewhat impatiently, ‘let the man get on with his story,’ Then softening her tone, smiled over at Dave, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Oh yeah, right,’ Dave said. ‘I reckon it doesn’t rightly matter what caused it. It’s done and done. Anyways as I was saying, we were managing really quite well. Living a ways out here, most of us had plenty of food stores and we all had our vegetable gardens, and there were chickens and cows.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Georgia and Lola said at the same time.

  ‘We pretty much just carried on as usual. Of course with the coolers being out, the frozen goods went bad, so we would go out hunting, sharing the game when we got back. That’s what I was doing when…’

  He paused and took a sip of his beer, smacking his lips together as he put the can down. ‘I was out up past the bluffs, checking my traps when a damn snake spooked my horse. Horse reared up, sent me flying and took off for home, probably saved my life. I didn’t get back till nearly ten o’clock at night. Did my ankle in with the fall, and had to make a temporary crutch of sorts. Pain was real bad. All the way back I was thinking of the ribbing I was going to be getting from the guys. Gardening club at four, and all that.’

  Lola looked confused. ‘Gardening club?’

  Dave smiled at her, but it was a sad smile, and then he looked over at Georgia. ‘You tell her.’

  ‘It is code,’ Georgia said, ‘the guys all came to drink at the bar, and the wives hated it. So the farmers round here, formed a gardening club, ostentatiously to discuss crops and harvesting and that kind of thing. Of course being a tiny village there was really only one place they could meet, and well if they had a drink or two while they were at it….’

  ‘Oh,’ Lola exclaimed, ‘what a good idea, I expect you learnt a lot from that.’

  ‘Er, no,’ Dave said, his laughter seeming to come from deep in his belly. ‘We never discussed anything to do with gardening.’

  Lola looked even more confused. ‘Huh?’

  Deedee rolled her eyes. ‘It was just an excuse for them to get drunk, they already knew about gardening. She flicked back her hands for emphasis. ‘Hello? They were farmers.’

  ‘Oh right,’ Lola said, understanding dawning on her face. Then she grinned. ‘That’s funny.’

  The rest of them laughed as well, and then Dave continued with his story.

  ‘So anyways, I get back to the village and come over to the bar, it was near on closing time, but I thought I might catch some of the guys, get someone to drive me to Chester Memorial hospital. I was surprised to find the bar empty, doors open, but no one here. I knew something bad had happened, because Bob and Nancy would never have left the place unlocked. Especially as they had us rationed to two drinks a night, just till things came right.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Josh asked

  ‘Well I didn’t rightly know then. I hobbled my way round to look for someone who might have known what was going on. I went to a lot of folk’s homes, but they were all gone. Then I found Harry, down near the turn off to your Uncle and Aunt’s place. Damn near fell over him in the dark. You remember Harry?’ Dave asked Georgia.

  Georgia nodded. ‘Certainly do.’

  ‘Course you do, he was the one that got drunk and did wheelies on your lawn for half an hour till the Sheriff turned up and threatened to tell his mother if he didn’t go off home and make smart about it. Even though he was near on forty then, he headed off home, meek as a lamb.’

  Georgia smiled at the memory. ‘Well he did come back and fix the damage, got to give him that. So is he here too?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said, slowly shaking his head. ‘He’s dead. He wasn’t dead when I found him, but he had been shot and then bludgeoned by the looks of him. I reckon they left him for dead.’

  The laughter died on her lips, as she felt the color drained from her face.

  ‘Good God almighty, that’s terrible,’ Lola exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, that it is,’ Dave said, ‘I sat with him, I couldn’t move him as he was pretty badly hurt and with my ankle busted and all swoll up, there wasn’t much I could do. He seemed to be rambling a bit, but some of it made sense. He talked about an army coming and rounding everyone up, shackling them together with heavy chains, even the little ones.’

  Georgia gasped as he said this. She turned, grasping Lola’s arm, ‘The slavers we saw from the Jenkins Place.’

  Lola went pale. ‘Do you think…,’ her voice trailed off, but they all knew what she had been going to say.

  Dave took in a sharp intake of breathe. ‘You saw them?’ His voice had a strangled edge to it.

  ‘I don’t know if that was the same group,’ Georgia said, speaking softly, ‘it would have been a week or so ago, that we saw them, we were still up in the Ozarks.’

  He was clenching his beer bottle so tightly that Georgia was worried he would shatter it.

  ‘Not them then, this only happened two, maybe three weeks ago, kind of lost track of the days. Anyhow, seems that’s how he got shot, he tried to stop them taking his girlfriend. He kept saying they weren’t no real army. Then he went very still for a long time. I was just thinking that maybe he had died when he opened his eyes and said, ‘got to stop them taking the corn from the silos, stop the wagons.’ By then his voice was real weak and I had to lean in, to properly hear him. I asked him what he meant, but he died, right there in my arms.’

  He drew in a deep breath, gently stroking Pepe’s head, then shook his head as though trying to rid himself of the memory. Lola lay a comforting hand on his arm and Georgia felt tears pricking her eyes. The others sat wide eyed, absorbing every word.

  Dave went on. ‘I buried him the next day, out back of the church. I don’t know who those people were but they took everyone, even the children. I found Pepe a day or two later, locked up in Darlene’s bedroom and we have been together ever since.’

  Ruby, leaned forward, her eyes a little glassy. ‘So tell me young man, where, did you read that?’ Her voice was ever so slightly slurred.

  ‘Huh?’ Now it was Dave’s turn to look confused, and Deedee, out of Ruby’s line of sight, rolled her eyes to the ceiling and made the universal loopy sign next to her head.

  Lola sighed deeply. ‘She’s three sheets to the wind.’

  ‘Just on one Lemon Beer?’ Dave asked.

  ‘More than likely, I’m guessing it’s been a while since she’s had a tipple,’ Georgia said, as she leaned forward.

  ‘Would you like a little fresh air Ruby? Perhaps Rebecca wouldn’t mind going for a walk with you.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go for a walk,’ Rebecca complained, ‘I want to hear the rest of Dave’s story.’

  Ruby only hiccupped in response, and rested her head on her arms.

  ‘Perhaps she should lie down,’ Dave suggested, ‘she can use my bed.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Georgia agreed.

  Once Ruby had been settled, Georgia topped up everyone’s glasses with a little more warm Dr Pepper and sat down once more.

  ‘Did they kill anyone else,’ Jamie asked after a moment’s silence.

  ‘Yeah, they sure did. They shot poor Lana right outside here, didn’t find her till the next day, but she must have died straight away. No doubt about that, and they also killed Kenny Weber, Zac Fischer and the other Dave, Dave Andrews, he’d only just moved here a year back. I buried them as well.’

  Georgia didn’t know him, but she knew the others, she had drunk beers with Kenny and Zac, and Lana had often been her server. It was her blue Toyota out in the car park.

  She sipped at her warm coke, trying to get her emotions under control. For a moment she could visualize Kenny and Zac, still in their work clothes, long blue overalls and heavy leather boots sitting over at the bar; a Budweiser in Kenny’s hand, a glass of Miller High Life in Zac’s. Zac’s massive behind, overflowing the stool. A small pile of pull tabs on the counter before him, his way of keeping tally of how many drinks he had consumed. And Lana. Lana leaning f
orward, showing ample cleavage, that cheeky smile on her face as she wiped the bar top down. Lana would have been what? Twenty two, or twenty three. Georgia suddenly realized that Dave was talking again.

  ‘Anyhow, I moved in here, figured anyone returning to Bethel and finding the place deserted would come here sooner or later. And I was right,’ he said, ‘you guys are here.’ He screwed up his face and for a moment Georgia thought he was going to cry.

  Then he stood up suddenly. ‘Be right back, nature calls,’ he said, as with Pepe tucked under one arm, he went outside.

  ‘Wow,’ Lola said as soon as the door closed behind him. ‘He’s been here on his own, after going through all that. At least we had each other.’

  ‘It’s not so hard for a guy,’ Rebecca said, trying to sound grown up, and failing.

  ‘You’re wrong there,’ Jamie said quietly, ‘it makes no difference, and I can’t imagine being alone after what he has witnessed.’

  Josh took a long sip of his drink, wrinkling up his nose. ‘Damn this stuff is sweet.’ Then he looked over at Rebecca, ‘I agree with Jamie, and I should know, and don’t forget that poor man had to bury his friends.’

  ‘I guess,’ she said finally.

  ‘Well, he’s got us now,’ Deedee said.

  The door opened and Dave fetched another beer from the bar, popping the top as he settled back into his chair. ‘So,’ he said stroking Pepe’s ears, ‘that was my story, tell me what’s been happening in your lives.’

  Chapter Seventy Seven

  It was nearly one o’clock when they came to the end of the telling of their journey over the last eight weeks. Some parts they left out, some were slightly edited. No one wanted to dredge up any bad memories for Ruby, but they did talk of the weeks of hunger, and laughed over Rebecca losing her glasses. The two dead men they had left in Shady Oasis, Lola’s broken nose and Badgers injuries and the Apaches skill with the bow. The stormy day they had stumbled into that dreadful hut, the one filled with the stench of death and cholera.