by Ryan Schow
This big Dee-troit fiend jolts forward, picking up speed in a tire-smoking, rancorous howl. Seconds later my front end smashes into the Tesla’s weak ass trunk, driving it all the way into the back seat in a thunderous, cataclysmic uproar. The Cutlass’s hood is barely tented, its engine sitting at a steady rumble. I roll down the window as Tad comes flying out of his house and down the stairs. I point the gun at him from across the street and say nothing.
He pulls up short, looking at me like he hasn’t looked at anyone before. He looks…frightened. Whether it was because I shot through his door or wrecked his car, I can’t be sure. One thing’s for sure, he won’t be commenting on my sexuality anymore.
“Was that necessary?” he barks, breathless with rage.
“No more necessary than calling me a titless she-boy, Tad.”
He runs his hand through his hair like he’s all but going to pieces. His eyes are jiggling in their sockets and it’s clear his brain isn’t making sense of what I’ve just done to his car.
“I think the rims and brake calipers are okay, but the back end is a tad bit damaged, wouldn’t you say?”
Staring daggers at me, glowering at me like he’d like to eat my soul, like he’d like to gobble it all the way up, he says nothing. I see the gears working, though. He’s looking at the gun and measuring the distance between us and wondering if I’m really going to shoot him.
Finally he turns and storms inside.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It’s been three days. The daytime bombing hasn’t stopped, but for some reason everything stops at night. It makes no sense. It’s not like the machines have a hard time seeing in the dark. And they can’t be tired. Maybe there’s no explanation. Maybe there will never be an explanation. Maybe no one will ever tell me anything and I’ll never understand any of this.
Can I live with that? Do I even have a choice in the matter?
Guh.
Making matters worse, I haven’t heard from my mom or my dad or even that daft weakling (Tad), so now I’ve gone from being worried to going numb to existing in that vacuum of fear that seems enormous the way you think of deep space as enormous.
The phone service has been sporadic at best, but now it seems that all circuits are down, permanently. If I can’t get anywhere near downtown because of these killer drones, then it makes sense that the phone company won’t risk summary destruction trying to fix failed power lines, or blown transformers, or whatever. That would be ridiculous.
At night I climb on the flat roof of my garage overlooking Dirt Alley and watch the city with binoculars. I take hot chocolate out there, my pistol and my bow and arrows. It wasn’t like that at first. First it was only the hot chocolate, but then I saw them: the group of loudmouths wandering the streets stirring up trouble. These are the knuckleheads throwing rocks at cars and homes and peeing indiscriminately in the streets. The same social lepers who smoke and cuss and look in people’s backyards and shoot at cats. Of all the things they could do to piss me off, it’s the shooting of innocent animals that has me thinking I’m way too nice to survive in this landscape.
The fact that they’ve been through our neighborhood a few times now is disturbing at best. It’s now dusk and I hear them walking the neighborhood again. This time they’re coming up Dirt Alley. Grabbing the Glock, I slink off my lawn chair, lower myself to my belly and try not to make a sound.
As they’re passing by, they don’t look up and they don’t see me. Then again, I’m barely breathing at this point.
“Whoever’s light’s on, mark that home as occupied. Any lights don’t come on, those are the ones we hit,” the voice says. “Are you writing this down?”
“Yeah, man,” a second voice says.
“That one,” he says. “And that one there. It’s gonna be easy-picking in the blue collar neighborhoods. Half these pendejos are probably dead already.”
They keep walking and talking. All five of them.
Across the way, a few houses up from where they’re at, an upstairs light flicks on illuminating the window. It’s my neighbor across the way. I’ve seen her a few times since all this went down, but she’s sort of anti-social, so we haven’t introduced ourselves and we haven’t spoken. I think I was born anti-social and just got worse. Perhaps she’s the same as me. But whatever. The point is, I see her moving behind the curtains, and so do they.
“What have we got here?” one of them asks, lifting himself up on the weak-looking wooden fence dividing her backyard from Dirt Alley. As he’s climbing over, two of the slats break and he falls backwards into the dirt, landing on his backside with an oof! The others break into fits of laughter, calling him names, telling him he’s stupid and athletically challenged.
Upstairs, my neighbor approaches the curtained window. She pulls the drapes aside, spots the ruckus below, then quickly closes them and ducks down. A second later the light goes off. By now these five idiots are between me and her.
I sit up, lift my binoculars, get a good look at them. They’re dressed like typical thugs. I know it’s not polite to stereotype people, but the is the apocalypse, so the idea of being politically correct can suck it. These guys are shaved heads or slicked back black hair. They’re wife beaters and tons of ink. They’re gray or black or tan slacks belted in place and pulled a little too high on the waist.
If I’m going to think of these guys, I’m going to think of them as gang bangers.
In situations like these—and I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s unfolding here—it appears only the riffraff come outside to play. All the law abiding citizens seem to hide inside their homes (like that cretin, Tad) waiting for the internet to come back up, the news to return and phones to be able to make actual calls to actual people. It’s almost like they’re expecting their loved ones to walk through the front door like it’s no big thing and say something cute and tragic like, “Yeah, I’ve been gone awhile, but I’m okay now.”
No. Even I’m not that dense. The truth is the good people aren’t okay. In fact, we’re so not okay right now I feel myself pushing through the walls of morality and civility in an attempt to grab hold of that harder, more ferocious edge. The same sharp edge that will protect me from a civilization on the cusp of abandoning those societal norms that keep us from stealing and raping and killing one another.
But civilization is no longer a norm or a destination. Civility is fast becoming that thing we once had, that thing we’re no longer moving toward. Law and order is swiftly eroding.
Watching these guys, I can’t help thinking the criminals and machines are unknowingly working in concert to tear holes in the fabric of civility, the same fabric barely holding back the tides of violence. As sad as this is to say, I feel us as a species turning back the evolutionary clock—cascading into something selfish and cold, something deeply sadistic, something profane and viciously territorial—and it scares the absolute crap out of me.
These are not good times. They’re desperate times.
Right now I’m thinking that if I don’t make that long slide down the evolutionary scale, I’ll end up dead. To survive in this world, I need to devolve. Stop thinking kind and gentle thoughts. If I want to outlast guys like this, then I’ve got to become something brutal, something unforgiving, something without a conscience or an ounce of remorse. I’m ready for the transition. It needs to happen. Still, I wonder if when it’s all over, if I can last, I wonder if my soul will even survive the journey.
When the gang bangers are gone, I head back inside thinking about the last thing my father said to me. He said to protect myself at all costs. To me, this could mean so many things. “At all costs” can cover a lot of ground when your life is on the line.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thinking about the looming threat to me and the blonde—to our neighborhood—has me forming plans of my own. If these creeps are going to rob the empty homes in our neighborhood taking everything good and valuable in them, then everything is about to go to hell anyway.
That’s why I decided to hit the houses first.
Somehow, beyond all logic and reason, I manage to convince myself this is a brilliant plan. Maybe it is. Or maybe I’m slowly becoming one of them.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is I’m now becoming the hunter.
Crowbar, Glock, big Glad bag, all black clothes, black hoodie. Am I really going to do this? Yes. I have to. I tell myself this isn’t stealing as much as it’s me gathering my nuts for the winter. Funny how desperate times makes liars of us all.
By the time midnight rolls around, I’m scared out of my mind but determined. I sneak out the front door, quietly make my way through the neighborhood, moving from house to house, scouting out viable properties. My God, my heart is kicking like a million miles an hour!
“Quit being such a wuss,” I tell myself. I find a house. The perfect house. The right-now house. Here we go...
The crowbar shimmies in the door jam by the lock. I put my full weight into the curved end of the bar hoping it’s enough leverage. Taking three big breaths, trying not to wet myself (again), I lean into the crowbar and slowly twist it back and forth until the wood breaks with a sharp crack!
So yeah, I gotta say I stink at this.
After that parade of unprofessional noise, I scurry back into the darkest corner of the backyard and wait for a barking dog or a neighbor to come running. My gun is out. Finger is on the trigger. Would I really shoot someone again? Probably not. I think if someone came out I’d make a run for it long before I’d decide their life is worth less than whatever crap it is they have in their home. Thirty minutes later—with no barking dogs, no turned-on lights and no nosey neighbors to dissuade me—I tell myself it’s time to move this rookie B&E forward.
Groovy.
Mustering up the courage to slink into the house, my life now at risk, I move with a new level of stealth, meaning I hit all the creaky floorboards on the first floor before heading up the stairs and hitting a few more on the second level. Did I tell you I’d make a terrible thief? No? Well let me start now.
By the time I’ve cleared the house, I’m blowing out an exasperated sigh. No one’s home. In fact, no one’s been here since the first bombs dropped. And to think I spent the last half hour freezing my tits off over an empty home!
The first thing I do is check for weapons. The closest thing to a gun I find is this lady’s toy drawer. What I find rhymes with smildo and it’s a pleasure toy, not a weapon. Talk about buzz kill! Honestly, at this point, I’m not really sure I want to be going through anyone’s personal stuff anymore. A foot long penis with squishy, lifelike balls is enough to scare a virgin like me into minding her own business.
Downstairs, there’s some food in the refrigerator: a one pound package of meat, orange juice, peanut butter and jelly, and a bunch of other things here and there that aren’t terribly healthy but will fill an empty belly. I rifle through the freezer, gathering up all the packaged meals.
My expandable black Glad garbage bag is getting heavy, so I go for the non-perishables, cleaning out all the heavier, canned goods until I can barely lift the bag. After that it’s everything light: sunflower seeds, potato chips, bagged popcorn, packaged spaghetti noodles, a bunch of little snacks I won’t mind eating if I run out of everything else.
I leave the crowbar behind, shut the door as best I can, then nearly break my back hauling all this stuff home. By the time I unload, it’s close to three a.m. and I’m so tired I can’t stand it. I gather up another bag and return to the crime scene (i.e. the house) for round two.
In the garage, I find hunting gear, much of which I won’t use. But there’s a tent, a couple of sleeping bags and two big boxes of ammo. Bingo! Inside one of the boxes are a few hundred 9mm rounds. The other box holds .45 caliber rounds. My Glock takes 9’s, so score. But if there’s this much ammo, then logic would have it there are also a couple of guns around here somewhere to go with it.
I discover the gun safe behind a bunch of clothes in a large walk-in closet. Naturally, it’s locked. So…back to the food and supplies.
I clean out the rest of the pantry, which isn’t much, then I wrap the box of ammo and the crowbar in one of the sleeping bags so they don’t tear through the plastic. Basically it’s a huge load that won’t be easy to move, but whatever. If I have one night to loot before the thugs from the alley raid our neighborhood and loot it first, I might as well get what I can.
When I finally get home, I crash on the couch and wake up around one in the afternoon feeling refreshed. Bombs are going off in the distance, and though the continued attacks are disheartening to be sure, at least I dreamt PG-13 dreams, none of which involved sadistic machines, power-tripping gang bangers, or latex love toys.
I check my cell phone. No missed calls. I check the home phone’s call log. Nothing there either. I try my mom. Nothing. I try my dad.
Freaking nothing.
It’s only starting to dawn on me that they may never come home. My insides tunnel, leaving me sad and vulnerable. Is this what a broken heart feels like? My father’s face comes to mind and everything feels like a salted wound. Turning over on the couch, curling into a ball, I close my eyes and try not to cry. But the idea of never seeing him again, of never seeing my absentee mother again, has me melting into tears. How did this happen?
Why is this happening?
Outside I hear gunshots and I don’t even move. I can’t. Outside I hear cars smoking their tires and there’s cursing and shouting but I’m too numb to care. People are dying outside, but are the two most important people in my life already dead?
Am I dead?
An hour later, I’ve cried myself back to sleep. When I wake up it’s dark outside and my stomach is growling. I listen and it’s deathly quiet, except for my empty tummy. Trying my best to ignore what feels like a fist clenching my heart, I drag myself off the couch and head into the kitchen where I grab a yogurt and a green drink. I do all this with the lights off.
Who knows who’s out there? Better to be safe than sorry.
After awhile, I dress for the cold and head outside. With my bow and arrows and my Glock, I walk the neighborhood, sticking to the shadows, working on making no noise at all.
An hour after that I’m breaking into another house, grabbing all the loot, finding a few weapons and no sex toys and feeling pretty good about it, though the feeling doesn’t last. I’m still thinking of my father. Still trying to imagine only me in this life. Throwing a tube of toothpaste and a two pack of floss into my black bag, I’m thinking about my father’s terrible timing. Why did he have to go to San Diego now?
On my way back downstairs I pull to a stop because there’s a man standing in the doorway, his body barely silhouetted by the dim light of the moon. My heart thunders in my chest, but my body is frozen still. Paralyzed, my face is looking at his shadowed face looking back at mine.
“You have to be better than this,” the man finally says.
I try to swallow but can’t.
He steps inside and shuts the door and suddenly we’re both in the dark, each listening for the other to move.
“I have a gun,” I manage to say.
“Yes, and bows and arrows, too. But you’re also loud and sloppy, and if you’re going to survive…whatever this is we’re all trying to survive…you’re going to have to be better than this. Certainly quieter than this.”
He’s saying all this in the dark, which I find incredibly unsettling.
“So what do you suggest?” I ask, everything in me still piano-wire tight, still ready to shoot, still ready to run and hide.
“I suggest we head into a room without windows, turn on a light and have a conversation like adults. This in-the-dark business isn’t exactly my style.”
“Are you armed?” I ask.
“You’d have to be a fool not to be,” he replies with a trace of laughter in his voice.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
“No, but if these were my in
tentions, I’d tell you the same thing. Or I’d just shoot you.”
“Fine,” I concede. “You pick a bedroom, turn on the light and I’ll join you if you don’t look like Mr. Creepy McCreepster.”
I don’t hear him move, but from the other side of the house, a light turns on and it startles me.
“Ready when you are,” he says.
The way he got from here to there has my head spinning. Does this guy float? Because he didn’t even make a sound! I slink down the steps, trying to be quiet like him. After I set down my bag of loot, I knock an end table with my hip, then scorn myself for being so loud.
God, I’m such a novice right now!
Moving toward his position (but staying in the shadows), there’s a large bathroom casting out a long light. He’s in there. This guy who can float and not make noise. I take my gun out of the back of my jeans, hold it by my side.
He’s got his guns out, too. One in each hand. He’s got his arms out and his palms up, and both guns are hanging loose. Basically, he’s showing me he’s armed but not a threat. The way he moves, however, tells me he’s definitely a threat.
My first thought is that he’s a tall man. Maybe six feet tall. With an athletic build, silver hair and old guy muscles, he’s halfway handsome. The problem is his eyes. You can see how he’s got more than a few miles on his soul. How there’s nothing in life left to surprise or delight him. I wonder how he feels about the apocalypse. I wonder if he feels anything at all.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“To lay a few ground rules. Let you know what’s what so you don’t end up like the other girls I’ve seen.”
“What other girls?”
“The dead ones. The raped ones. The enslaved ones.”
“Can I call you Dr. Buzzkill? Because you’re not doing anything to put me at ease with you. In fact, you’re sort of scaring me right now.”
“First off,” he says, not really caring that I haven’t stepped into the light, “you did good with the shadows, but you have to do better about the B&E. And being quiet. Also, you need to learn to see in the dark because I can see the lights in your home from the street. You’re going from room to room to room to the point where I can all but tell where you are from the next block over. I don’t think I need to tell you how dangerous that is.”
