Kevin was getting a bit antsy outside, complaining that there was too much going on for a ghost town. Several shadows moved on account of a cool wind that had picked up from the north, pushing its way through the lifeless trees that lined the perimeter of the lot.
“Are you almost done in there?” he called. “I really think we ought to go.”
“Chill out, buddy,” Earl chided him gently. “We’ve got another couple loads to bring out. Stay sharp!”
I approached with my car keys, not trusting Kevin to stay calm for much longer. “Kev, do me favour and start up the Caddy.”
“Sure, Joel!” Relieved, Kevin hopped into the driver’s side and turned the engine on. Behind the wheel, he visibly relaxed. He sat there, scanning the environment, until we finished loading up. Then he yielded the driver’s seat to me and joined Earl in the back.
As we passed a bank on the way home, Earl commented, “Hey, we should rob it.”
“What would be the point?” replied Kevin. What indeed?
It was then we first saw the flag, a symbol that would again change the way we lived, the way we viewed our existence in this sad new world. It went up like a rocket in the distance, beyond a blackened gas station. A chant arose, so loudly that we could hear it over the hum of my motor. None of us could make out what they were chanting, but we recognized the flag emblem, and it scared the shit out of us.
Drawing closer, we saw that they’d blocked the road. We stared at each other, breathing heavily, the sweat of fear dotting our faces. Then I slammed my foot down on the pedal and sped past them, scattering them and destroying their piece-of-shit barricade. If this was supposed to be an ambush, then it was a pathetic attempt.
“What the hell was that!?” shouted Kevin.
“I don’t know.” My eyes were locked on the road ahead. “But I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to ask.”
“Those were people, man!” Earl exclaimed. “People!”
“What do you want to do… go back and introduce ourselves?” I asked. “Didn’t you hear them and see that flag? You want to mix up with that?”
“No, but…. I don’t know... all I know is that those were people! Shit! Just when I was starting to think that we were it! Man, people.” He fell silent, but you could see a thousand different emotions playing themselves out in his mind, each attached to a thousand different scenarios.
It took the remainder of the trip for the colour to return to my face. I felt a little embarrassed, but damn! That was a shot of adrenaline. Nothing more was said. Our thoughts were our own, each of us experiencing his own brand of possibilities. I wondered when we’d encounter this cult again. The scenarios that played themselves out in my mind weren’t good.
Chapter Sixteen
Back at the house, we told the group what had happened, and Kevin drew the flag on the addition wall. Its wheel-shaped emblem was yellow and black, stark colour against a cruel, ruinous background.
I wondered what priorities the flag-bearers set above ours, and what rules, if any, they lived by. Could they possibly be friends who mistook us for enemies? Or was it better to simply view them as the enemy and deal with them accordingly? What would we do if they were to show up on the property? Would we let them get that far? We had as yet believed in violence as the failure to communicate. At least that was my stand. Earl saw things a little differently, but he would follow my lead should things escalate to an actual encounter. Adrenaline had taken over in town, and diplomacy might have been lost on them given the circumstances they had presented us with. But should we believe that they would always be hostile, or should we still assume that people are inherently good and give them the benefit of the doubt? “Give them that and we lose our opportunity. We lose surprise,” Earl would say. And he was right. That was reality, but that was cruel wasn’t it? Shouldn’t they be offered a chance to move on, to live? Maybe they were prepared to kill us that day. Maybe we shouldn’t allow them a second chance. They would not have given one to us. We could not hesitate for a moment: this was war.
“Joel!” Connor called from outside at the generator, breaking my train of thought. “We’ve got a problem!”
“What’s the problem?” I asked, knowing full well what it had to be. When I arrived, he shifted aside, allowing me to view the meter.
“You see that? Shit’s not going to last much longer.”
“Looks like we’ll have to make another trip,” I said. “We knew this was coming.” Dad had designed the house with a huge underground tank, but in spite of our efforts to conserve the fuel, it was nearly dry. “The generator at the farm is running on empty too, right?”
“Right. That’s why I came to check the house supply. We can’t really afford to pull any from here though.” Connor closed the gate on the generator shed and walked with me down to the garbage pit.
The facts were the facts. We needed fuel or in the next week we’d be completely out. The comfortable lifestyle we’d become accustomed to would disappear. With the generator, battery cells, pump, and septic tank working, this house was a bio-bubble, but without large quantities of fossil fuels it was a dead fish, good for nothing more then keeping the elements out. Oil was no problem, but we hadn’t had any use for the furnace. The septic seeped into the soil as well as into the tank and only needed to be pumped once every five years or so. The pump and electricity worked off the generator and the generator worked off gasoline. Therefore we needed fuel.
I’d had the attendant at ‘Joe’s Gas and Snacks’ fill our tank with the black gold before the lake weekend and it had just about run its course. Next I’d have to find a station that hadn’t been devastated by the fallout, and where on earth would that be? North, I thought, it would be north.
“We’ll have to go north,” I decided.
Connor agreed. “There are a couple stations just northeast of us that should have something left to offer. I don’t think we ought to go back to, well, you know.”
“I hear that. I don’t want us running into those people again unless it’s on our terms. Anyhow, we may not need to head there or north… we should try Joe’s first.”
We loaded empty canisters into the Caddy, got in, and rolled out of the garage, catching Sonny on his way into the house. He climbed into the back seat and we were on our way.
The ride into town was uneventful. We pulled into Joe’s and managed to fill the Caddy’s tank, but feared that we had asked our last favour of ‘Joe’s Gas and Snacks’.
“I guess there were a few more gallons in here after all. But we are gonna need to head north. This pump is running dry, and we’re gonna need a good stash for the generator.” Connor struggled with the hose as he replaced the nozzle.
The lights on the Caddy fluttered as we raced down the 33. My heart skipped at the thought that the lights could stop working. The roads were in bad shape here too, full of vehicles and various debris. Suddenly a small dark shadow bolted in front of us and I swerved to avoid it. In doing so, I misread the angle of a truck that jutted out onto the road and had to veer so sharply that I lost control of the Caddy. Skidding past the truck, we slammed into a fence that guarded a small shack. The fencing stood little chance against the Cadillac and splintered into a million pieces as we passed through it. We jerked left, and the car stopped. Connor ended up on my lap, and Sonny could be heard cursing from the back.
“Christ! Sorry guys, you okay?” I asked, shoving Connor off me. “Did you see that truck?”
“Did you?!” Sonny retorted. “Jesus, I should check my shorts!”
Connor looked back at the truck that had sent us flying, and froze. “Guys, look at that- it’s a fucking GAS truck.”
At the sound of the magic ‘G’ word, we all got out and hurried to the silent vehicle.
“How do we know it’s full?” Connor was excited.
Sonny slammed a fist against the hull. The resulting sound was a dull thud, not a clang. “It’s full,” he confirmed as a smile worked its way across his broad face
. “It’s full!”
It was an absurd stroke of luck. Gas with wheels: it was ridiculous. We knew it was, but I also knew never to look a gift horse in the mouth, and that’s exactly what this was.
“Let’s check the cab,” I suggested. “Maybe this rig’s got some life in her.”
Connor circled around to the passenger side while Sonny peered through the driver’s window. He tried the door and, finding it unlocked, opened it and disappeared into the cab. Then I heard the door on the passenger side open and something fall out, hitting the ground with a thump. I went a little white.
“That wasn’t what you thought it was.” Sonny stuck his head out of the window, smiling. “Just a nasty old duffle bag. Get in, I’m gonna try startin’ this bitch up!”
I clambered into the cab. Connor and I watched as Sonny turned the key. We heard the familiar click of a vehicle that says ‘no more’ about a dozen times before the payoff. A few violent thrusts of the stick and stomps on the clutch, and Sonny got it running!
“So you do know trucks!” Eyeing the gears and pedals, I certainly hoped he knew.
“You’re the fucking truck whisperer man!” declared Connor, slapping the dashboard.
“Sure, I drove a thousand miles once with my dad back in the day.” Sonny was proud; this was his shining moment.
“Yeah, but have you been in the driver’s seat before? I think that’s the pertinent question here.” Sonny blew him off and threw it in gear. Off we went with a jerk and a stop, jerk and stop.
“Whoa! Wait a second!” I shouted. “We can’t leave the Caddy behind!” I struggled with the door as Sonny slowed the rig to a crawl, and jumped out. Connor stuck his head out the window.
“I’ll follow you guys there!” I shouted. Connor offered a thumbs-up as I hustled back to the Cadillac. The Caddy turned over on the first try. What a gem. I navigated it over the shattered fence, through the ditch and back onto route 33. Sonny was just a few yards ahead, still a bit jerky on the clutch but we were on our way. Things were looking up. The tanker’s cargo meant power for a lot longer than two months. This would be a major morale boost for the house.
****
“Are you kidding me?!” was Earl’s response to the massive tanker.
“I know,” I replied. “Can you believe it?”
His head shook back and forth, a smile reaching both ears.
Everyone wanted to know how we located such a treasure, and we told them the story.
The celebration went deep into the night as the barbeque was pulled out of retirement and the last of our meat products cooked. We drank our alcohol and smoked our premium marijuana. Our future would be written one day at a time, and one day, someone theorized, our present would resemble our past.
Chapter Seventeen
We woke up the next morning with a start. Sidney’s voice rang through the house with news that rocked our foundation, a foundation we’d worked so hard to build.
Our south gate had been compromised. A parade of cars, trucks and motor homes drove slowly through our property, ignoring our barrier. Sidney had spotted them while on duty in Skylab with Sonny and Sara, pulling the four to eight a.m. shift. The entire house now assembled in the addition, peering through the windows.
“Joel, what’s our next move?” Earl asked.
“Just everyone sit tight.” I paused, conscious of what weight my next few words would carry. “You all have your weapons, yes? Alright then, we wait. If just one of these cars stops, we assume the position, but until then we do nothing.” Earl sent me such a disparaging look that I repeated firmly, “We wait.”
The next few seconds felt like a lifetime. The silence in the addition was palpable, our heartbeats now audible, the tension building to a crescendo. But the cars did not stop: they passed on, moving off into the distance. We could breathe again.
“Shit, that was unreal.” Seth pressed both palms hard against his eyes. Then Kevin spoke up.
“Great gates, Earl. Solid!”
He rolled his eyes. Earl punched him in the shoulder, lightly, as laughter diffused the anxiety that had permeated Skylab. People, regular people, maybe hundreds of them just drove right past us on a mass exodus north, like so many before them. Maybe we should too, I thought. The moment passed, and reality set in. This road hadn’t seen that kind of traffic since the highway to the west of us flooded some years back.
“What do you figure: thirty, forty vehicles?” I asked Sidney.
“Maybe more!”
These people were either running from something, or to something. North- where were all these people getting the idea to go north? Or if they were running from a threat, then what could it be, what could frighten a group that large? These were the questions brought up at the group meeting held in the addition immediately after the sighting. Surely the black rain we had only encountered upon our return to ‘civilization’ had reached the north by now, and the pristine conditions of our former campsite had long since vanished. We sat in the dark for some time, discussing the turn of events, popping our heads above the window line once in a while. The reminder that other people were out there, groups of survivors like us, was intoxicating- until you realized that not everyone was following the maxim of live and let live. To know we were not alone was a gift, but a curse as well.
During a break in the conversation, Caroline peered out one of the large windows that overlooked the back yard and forest. Her chest began to heave and her hands pushed unconsciously against the glass.
“People,” she whispered. Then again, louder: “People... forest...THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THE FOREST!”
She shrieked.
We sprang off the floor in unison and stood at the west windows. Squinting into the darkness, we saw several armed figures glide through the woods on approach to the pool. In Skylab, guns slid out of holsters and off shoulders. Windows were opened and barrels thrust through them.
“Earl, get to my parents’ room!” I shouted. He’d have a prime shot there, as it had a large window overlooking the back yard. “Connor, go downstairs: Sonny, Kevin, Seth go with him! Sara, come with me.” I took her by the arm and led her to my room, where we knelt on the couch that backed against the window and looked out. The horde was almost upon us.
“Sonny, hit the light!” I yelled.
The spotlight snapped on and illuminated the whole yard. There they were, stopped like deer in headlights. I counted them quickly. Six... seven... ten. Looked like around ten or eleven. I slid the window open and began my ‘first contact’ speech while they were temporarily stunned by the artificial sunlight.
“Identify yourselves!” I yelled.
No answer.
“You’re in no position to...”
BANG! A gunshot cut me off. I couldn’t tell you who shot first, us or them, but it took roughly two minutes to end the confrontation. I heard Earl shout, “They’re trying to shoot out the spotlight.” I aimed at a ragged stranger who was pointing his rifle at the light, and fired. He fell, and his companions looked around wildly. I was on the higher ground, and shrouded in darkness. They could not see me.
When the shooting began Sara shrank away from the window, curling up next to me and hugging my arm. I tried to shake her, as her hold was interfering with my marksmanship, but she held on, terrified. Her rifle came in handy when my cartridge was spent. A shot broke through my window, screaming past my ear: it would have killed Sara had she been actively involved in the shootout.
I saw figures fall one after another. The scene was surreal. I dropped another one myself. Then the firing stopped.
Earl stumbled into my room seconds after the silence. “No more movement,” he assured me. “I think we won.”
Shit, he sounded like we’d just finished a paintball game. “Earl, we just killed maybe ten people! Jesus, you see this hole in my window? My head was two inches from here.” I knew I was too hard on him but my emotions got the better of me. Why hadn’t he broken yet? What was his secret? “This isn’t a game! We
are not pretending!”
His grin sank and his head followed. He knew I was right.
Sara was still clinging to my arm as the others gathered at my door. “Everyone’s okay. No casualties on our end,” reported Connor.
I asked the guys to go outside and perform a perimeter search to double-check our status. “Be careful. Check the bodies first. Take whatever weapons they may have. We’ll bury them later.”
Connor, Sonny, John, Kevin, Seth and Jake filed out. Freddy and Sidney sat with Caroline and Julia on the couch, trying to control their post-battle trembling. “Cover their backs,” I told them, meaning our team outside. “We don’t know who else may be out there.” Then I hurried to throw up in the bathroom.
The scouts came back an hour later. They had collected some nice new guns and ammo, three crossbows, a spear, and a pair of Japanese swords. With bated breath I waited to hear whether the dreaded flag was included in the bounty. Upon receiving a negative response, I exhaled loudly. The idea of a flag-toting clan of murderers being out there upset me to no end. But for now, they weren’t here. Our enemies were strangers.
*****
Our next task was to bury the dead.
We decided to simply dump them into the garbage pit out back and cover them with the wet muck from the forest floor. The deed was gruesome but necessary. On closer inspection we noticed that most of the corpses were covered with red burns and welts. Sara called them radiation burns.
“They’re like flash burns. I wouldn’t wish these upon anybody. They must have been in constant pain.” She studied one man’s abrasions, trying to ignore the bullet wound in his face.
The job done, we returned to the house and washed up in the basement bathroom. As we retired to Skylab, our minds wandered, thinking about the fight, the killing. Kevin, Sara and Seth stood guard at the windows while the rest of us sat in the remaining chairs and opened the floor for some healing deliberation on the subject.
Emotions ran high and tears were shed. Buried in the forest, not a hundred feet away, were the remains of eleven people, people we’d killed. In order to appease our fragile consciences, we would reiterate to each other that we killed in self-defence. Some couldn’t seem to bear the weight of their actions and swore never to take up arms again.
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