by Sean Little
“I agree,” said Renata. She picked up her shotgun. “I declare the Patriots enemies of the State, and refuse to acknowledge their sovereignty. As my first official act of office, I declare that Washington D.C. is no longer the capitol of America.” She started heading for the door.
“Really? Where’s the new capitol?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, yet. Somewhere in the South.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “C’mon, Twist. Let’s go find a home.”
CHAPTER TEN
Long Empty Roads
We left Washington and went south toward Richmond, Virginia. The sun fell low in the sky near Fredericksburg. I pulled off the highway and found a gas station near some woods where we could set up a decent campsite well away from the gas pumps. I started to erect camp, and it quickly became apparent that Renata’s camp skills were almost nil. She’d been purely scavenging, living day to day since the Flu. She knew how to light a fire off of newspaper, and only had wood because she’d used an axe to hack up furniture. I had to show her how to hunt down firewood and simple comfort items like camp chairs, which were always available from someone’s front porch nearby. I had to show her how to unload the necessary gear from the RV. She was a quick learner, though. She watched me with fascination as I moved around setting up wood in a pyramid shape and starting the fire with dry pine needles as tinder. Instead of a match, I used a magnifying lens that I found in the gas station. It only took a few seconds of concentrating the sun through the lens and angling it to the needles before a few embers sparked and quickly caught flame. I was showing off, I admit.
“That’s some real Boy Scout shit right there,” she said. “Amazing.”
“How’d you survive the past year if you didn’t know how to do this?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I made it somehow. Sheer force of will. You look like you really know what you’re doing, though.”
“I’m no outdoorsman by nature. I learned over the past year. Real trial by fire. It’s not too difficult once you get the hang of it, but to maintain, it’s really time consuming. I don’t know how people used to do it. Like the pioneers, the pilgrims—how did they survive? We might have been thrown for a bit of a loop here, but at least we still have a lot of modern advancements.” The fire bit into the wood and climbed to a nice little flame in moments. White smoke streamed upward.
Ren inhaled the wood smoke deeply. “This is like real camping.” She sat back in the lawn chair I unfolded for her and put her feet toward the fire. After a few seconds, she kicked off her shoes and peeled her socks. She wriggled her toes gleefully in the heat of the flames. “I could get used to this.”
“I don’t think you have much of a choice in the matter,” I told her. “This is how it is now whether we like it or not.”
I showed Ren how to pump gas for the RV. She watched me pump for ten minutes, and then I gave her a chance to help out. After five minutes, she was looking at me like I was insane. “And this is how you have to do it every time? My shoulders already hurt.”
“Every single time. Takes about a half hour of solid pumping to fill the tank.”
“No wonder you look so ripped.”
I never once in my life had been told I looked ripped. I was a little doughy until the Flu struck (thanks, job at McDonald’s…), and then I had to start working harder for my daily existence. I guess not eating a Big Mac a day and being forced to work constantly just to continue to live had made positive changes in at least one aspect of my life. I know I blushed when she said it. I wanted to issue a smart comeback, but I was tongue-tied at that moment. I didn’t say anything. I guess I was a lot more “ripped” than I used to be. Figures, though: best shape of my life and only one person to see it. If society ever magically rebuilds itself, I will write a book and call it The Post-Apocalypse Pioneer Diet Plan: One Year of Starvation and Daily Struggle to a New You.
For dinner, I made ramen with canned chicken. I found some green onions in the window box planter of a house near the gas station so I cut them and threw them in for color and flavor. After dinner, I showed Ren how I washed dishes and silverware. I showed her how I repacked the gear for the next day’s travel. Then, that was it. We each sat in a canvas-covered and steel-framed lawn chair staring at the fire and sipping on warm root beer.
These journals I am writing are for the future, a hopeful future where the American people have rebuilt society and my little stories provide a record of how we lived in the early days of the Flu until rebuilding was possible. If you’re reading this far in the future, let me recommend the activity of staring at a campfire to you if you’ve never tried it. Flames are hypnotic. If you have never spent time seriously watching them, you should. Don’t become an arsonist or something, but sit back and learn to appreciate the beauty of flames. There is something supernatural about them. They dance and weave, they swell and dive. One moment it shivers like a dancer, and the next a tongue of flame can crack like a whip. Fire can be destructive, but when it’s controlled and contained, it soothes. Flames have always made me feel myriad emotions. It feels like they tap into something ancient, something primal. I can be swelled by comfort, and then destroyed by melancholy in a matter of seconds. When I sit before flames and clear my mind, I feel at peace with the Universe, like I’m where I’m supposed to be in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I never was. But, those flames erased doubts and fears. I was able to take a vacation from the world every night for a few minutes. Looking back on those many, many nights of sitting in front of the hearth in the library, or sitting in front of small bonfires outside, those nights might have been the only thing that truly kept me from losing it out there.
Or maybe I’m just full of myself.
“What do you miss most?” Ren’s voice roused me from my flame hypnosis.
“What?”
Ren sat up in her chair and leaned forward to poke the ashes on the edge of the fire with a long, thin stick. “What do you miss most?”
I thought for a second. “My parents, I guess.”
Ren rolled her eyes. “Not who. What. What thing or things?”
“I don’t really know.” I thought for a bit. A year ago, I would have said TV, the Internet, movies, football games, taking everything for granted. I closed my eyes and sorted through everything I’d done without for the past year. I finally came up with something. “Pizza.”
“Hell, yeah.” Ren held out a hand for a high-five. I slapped it. “New York had great pizza. I could go for a big floppy slice right now in the worst way. What was your favorite kind?”
“Brand, or toppings?”
“Toppings, man. Of course.”
“I’d eat anything you put in front of me, but I really loved any sort of bacon cheeseburger pizza. Extra cheese, of course.”
“Wisconsin and cheese, right? What’s up with that?” The tip of Ren’s branch caught on fire and she held it up in the air. The little flame held its own in the still night, but eventually snuffed to ember and smoke.
“Cheese is religion in Wisconsin. Honestly, I’m surprised churches don’t top the Communion wafers with a little disk of Monterrey Jack.”
Ren smiled. “You know what I miss most?”
“Tell me.”
“Subway.”
“The sandwich place or the method of mass transit?”
Ren smacked me in the shoulder playfully. “The sandwich place, doofus. A thousand cool, unique little sandwich shops in my neck of Brooklyn, each with their pretentious artisanal bread and locally-sourced ingredients, and for some reason, I just loved Subway. I could go there, get my Cold Cut Combo with lettuce, pickles, extra onions, mustard and mayo and it was always the same, always wonderful. I used to eat at least one of those a week. If I got the same stuff to make one at home, it never tasted the same. How did restaurants do that, by the way? I could make anything at home that I could get in a restaurant, but it never tastes the same. That’s some sorcery right there.”
“Weren�
�t you a vegetarian or a vegan or whatever?”
Ren laughed. She shook her head. “I wasn’t a very good vegan, truth be told. And that was really only during college. I don’t think my mother would have let me live at home if I’d tried to be a vegetarian during high school. I always tried to mentally justify Cold Cut Combos by telling myself that bologna wasn’t really meat.”
“I miss going to the movies, too.”
“I never went to a lot of movies. We weren’t poor, really. We just were your average lower-middle class family. We weren’t starving, but we weren’t rolling in extra income, you know? Movies in New York are hella expensive. It’s like a ticket, a small popcorn, and a small drink run you thirty bucks! At that price, my parents just waited until the movie came out on DVD and bought the DVD for seventeen or eighteen bucks. Then, my brother and sister and I could watch it as many times as we wanted. We had a good DVD collection.”
“I never went to night shows,” I said, “only matinees, because I was cheap. In Wisco, a matinee would only be five or six bucks. Popcorn and a drink would usually cost about ten or twelve. Plus, it gave me a reason to not be home for two or three hours.”
“That’s not too bad. I should have told my dad to move to the Midwest. What’s your favorite movie?”
Before I could respond, an animal roar broke the stillness. Not a howl or a scream, but an honest-to-goodness roar, a deep, throaty declaration of presence and territorial acquisition from a large, male lion. I froze in my chair, but Ren leapt to her feet so hard and so far, I thought she was going to stumble forward into the fire. Her chair shot backward and clattered to the ground on its side. “What the hell was that?” She ran to the RV and grabbed her shotgun from where it stood leaning against the passenger door.
“A lion, I think,” I said. I stood and peered into the darkness toward where the roar came from, for whatever good staring into darkness will do.
“Is there a zoo near here?”
“Any zoo animals still caged would likely be dead now. Starvation. Lack of care.” I told her about seeing the elephants in Ohio. “Other zoos must have released their animals, too. It was the only humane thing to do. Either let them go or put them down. I guess if they let them go, it at least gave the poor things a fighting chance to survive.”
Ren backed into the RV. She stood in the doorway, ready to slam it shut in an instant, should the need arise. “I spent a year in New York and didn’t ever see no damn lions. Are you kidding me?”
The lion roared again. A lion’s roar is impressive. It can be heard for miles under the right conditions. It is an unmistakable sound, one of those things where there’s no wondering what it was—you know instantly that it’s a lion, even if you have never heard a lion roar. It sends chills up your spine.
I’d read fiction novels about African safaris where the heroes built a big fire because it would keep the lions and other predators at bay. I have no idea if that was true or not, and I didn’t feel like experimenting to find out.
“I guess we turn in, then. If it comes around here, it won’t get into the RV. We’ll be safe enough,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Ren’s eyes were wide and scared.
“I’m positive. A lion isn’t going to open the door to the RV. A Bigfoot might, though.” Ren gave a little laugh. She thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. I think. Bigfoot has fingers and an opposable thumb.
I poured water over the fire until it was doused. Steam rose from the ashes. “We’d better go to the bathroom quickly.”
“Bathroom? What about—” Ren pointed at the little lavatory closet in the RV.
“It’s not hooked up. It’s just easier to pee outside.”
Ren’s eyes were still wide. “What if…you want to do other things?”
“Like…” I held up two fingers. She nodded. I said, “Well, what did you do in New York?”
“I carted a couple of gallons of river water to my toilet every day. As long as I filled it up, it flushed. If the sewer had stopped working, I never noticed, and it never bothered me.”
I looked toward the gas station a hundred yards to the left. “There are bathrooms in there. You can just go—”
Ren shook her head. “With a lion out there? You’re nuts. You have to come with me.”
“The lion is at least a mile that way, maybe more.” I pointed to the right. “The bathrooms are a hundred yards that way.” I pointed to the left. “Unless that lion has super powers, he isn’t going to be a problem. It’s not like he’s going to sprint here and be waiting for you.”
“Regardless. Just…come with me.” Ren was starting to shift uncomfortably. She picked up my MagLite.
“Fine. Let’s go.” I started to walk away, but rethought it. I went back and picked up my shotgun. It never hurts to be safe. Just in case.
When we’d first gotten to the gas station that afternoon, we’d found the doors unlocked. The little station was ransacked, like so many gas stations. Most of the cigarettes and booze were gone. The aisle with the chips and candy was picked over, as well. A few odds and ends were scattered about, but that’s all. The two cash registers were emptied, too. The world was dying, and still some people thought about money. I guess that is human nature. However, at the moment, a million dollars cash was worth zilch unless you were desperate for toilet paper.
“Stay by the doors,” said Ren. “I’ll be as fast as I can.” She ran to the women’s room in the rear of the store, lighting the way with the flashlight.
I stood by the doors listening to the night. The lion didn’t roar again, but the night still felt different than usual, charged somehow. And stupid me, I started to wonder what it would be like to watch a Bigfoot fight a lion. I bet it would be awesome. If TV still existed, I would put that fight on pay-per-view. It would put the UFC or heavyweight boxing to shame. And screw watching the Superbowl—if you’re trying to tell me you wouldn’t pay all the money in your bank account this second to watch a Sasquatch get loose on a fully-grown lion, you are either a liar or you’re deluding yourself.
While I waited for Ren, I stared out into the night. The gas station sat on the side of a main road, four lanes. The road led to a small commerce district. Fast food restaurants and a Walmart lay just down the road. I stared at the McDonald’s. I’d worked at a McDonald’s for almost a year before the Flu. I didn’t miss working there. My brain drifted back to those days. The McDonald’s wasn’t an overly busy one, and there was a lot of goofing off after the dinner rush. My buddy, the late, great Hunter Winslow, and I used to waste time making monster sandwiches. The Chicken McFishNugget Mac was my favorite. Enough carbs in that thing to choke a camel. I was so deep in the haze of remembering my McDonald’s stupidity, that I almost didn’t notice the light in the distance. When I did notice it, all my thoughts about screwing around at work instantly shut down. I slipped into a vigilant, hyper-aware mode of being. There might be someone alive. There was an actual light of some kind down the road. It was a small dot of light only slightly bigger than pinpoint, not very bright, and unmoving.
I waited until Ren emerged from the bathroom, and then I pointed out the light to her. “What is it?” she asked.
“Let’s drive down there and find out.”
“What if it’s another person?”
“Then, we hope they’re nice.”
Ren’s fingers tightened around her shotgun. “What if they’re not?”
I shrugged. “Then we put out that fire when we have to.”
The light got bigger as we neared. It was a glowing plastic or glass orb hanging in the window of a flower shop. I pulled the RV to the side of the road. Through the window, I couldn’t tell what was glowing, but it was definitely a light.
“Solar.” Ren cracked the door and slipped out into the night. “It’s a solar ‘Closed’ sign, I think.”
I killed the engine to the RV and followed her. The light was a small globe, smaller than a volleyball. It did look like there was once the word “Closed” on it,
however sun and age had bleached the word to almost nothing. The solar panel that powered it was still pointed at the window, though. Every day, it gathered power. Every night, it glowed.
“That’s the future, right there,” said Ren. “Solar. You know anything about solar panels?”
“Not a thing,” I said. “However, I imagine we will have to learn, won’t we? Libraries have books. We can figure it out.”
“You handy with tools and science like that? You think you can make solar panels work to generate power?”
I had no idea. My first thought was to tell her the truth, that I was absolutely winging everything every step of the way, but that did not really impart any sense of confidence. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Ren pressed her face to the glass of the shop, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Jesus!” she leapt backward. “Something moved in there.”
“What? Where?” I pressed my face to the glass.
“In the back.”
I squinted into the darkness. The solar globe helped illuminate the shop, but it gave the dim interior a shadowy look. The shop had a counter in the center, and several display tables filled with wilted, dried flowers in vases. Refrigerator cases lined the store on either side of the shop. The main area had a door to the rear marked “Employees Only.” There was a gap between the central counter to the work area at the rear of the store. I stared into the back and saw a shadow dart past the gap. Something big. Not human big, but big enough. “Animal,” I said.
“A lion?”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. “No. I’m fairly certain if it was a lion, there would be no question about it. Maybe a cat.”
“Never seen a cat that big.”
“Maine Coons are that big,” I said. I walked to the clear glass door of the shop, but it was locked. I used the butt of my shotgun to smash the glass and clear it out of the frame. I heard something scrabble in the back of the shop. Sounded like something with four legs. I slipped under the push bar and stepped into the shop. The air smelled musty and wet. “Pass me a flashlight, please.”
