by Max Wyatt
“What is it you want with me?”
“Listen.” Abby walked closer and nodded at the way Erik was holding the gun. “You’re holding it like you found a rag at the bottom of a sewer,” She took the gun from him and slipped it back into her belt. Erik felt vaguely like he’d lost something. “I’ve been getting wind of something big coming for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t get any answers from anyone. I don’t know, maybe no one knew, or maybe I was getting stonewalled, either way…it got to me. I…” she looked away and sighed. “I started getting paranoid, thinking that if I had to run, where would I go? And then I remembered the guy in my building. The one that works for a senator.” She looked up at him, bright and warm brown eyes in a gorgeous face. “I figured you had to know someplace.”
Erik sighed and walked around her to the dumpster. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. There is nothing to be done, there is no place to go, it’s all just…”
“Temporary?” She finished for him, “is that what you were going to say? Funny, I noticed that in your bag was a lot of…shall we say perishable items?”
“The power has been off for a while, it’s going bad. You were in the lobby just now. You heard me tell them to clean out their own refrigerators. It’s summer. Things spoil. Why wait and eat something iffy?”
“You really think I’m going to buy that?” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Just be honest. I’m not telling anyone. You think I want a panic? The power isn’t coming back, is it?” Abby insisted and blocked his exit. “Listen to me. I tried to find out what’s been going on, and my superiors laughed at me. They dismissed me and sent me back to my cubicle. So, I asked questions. I was shut down, even threatened. And now, now when I am finally proven right, suddenly there is no one left at work at all to tell me anything, and the one person I had counted on tells me that I need to go sit in my room and wait?”
There was no getting around her. Erik threw up his hands, yelled at the sky. “Why me?”
“Because if there is anyone I know that has a place lined up, it would be the aide of a senator who happens to be best friends with a military contractor who is doing something so secretive, I can’t even find out what it is! Don’t look like that!” She waved him off. “Of course I checked you out. I would be lousy at my job if I hadn’t!”
“That’s an invasion of privacy!”
“That’s public information! I didn’t have to dig at all to find much. Your internet search engine knows more about you than that!”
“What else do you know?”
“Your sister and her best friend were seen leaving a riot.” Abby said, smiling when he opened his mouth to ask, though he should have known better to fall into her trap. He clamped his lips shut, not falling for it. Refusing to go there. “Other than the standard history about childhood and school, not a lot. Look.” She held up her hands in a surrender. “I can go on my own, I can run for the hills and pray I find some hole that I can defend for a while until I have to sleep, but I don’t want that. I want to find a place where there is still enough civilization to keep some order and I don’t have to live my life looking over my shoulder. I’m not asking for charity, I have a truck full of supplies. What I need is a destination.”
Erik closed his eyes, counted to ten and reopened them. She was still there. Damn if she wasn’t beautiful too. “Look,” he whispered, “I don’t even know if they will take me, let alone a…plus one. I’m going on the basis of a friend who thinks I will be welcomed on his say-so.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Abby said, eyes flashing.
What have I done? Not only had he just admitted there was such a place, but that he was going.
Are you really so upset to be going with her? Like company wouldn’t be welcome? Especially well-armed company?
Erik rubbed his face and debated.
“Think about this…” She was talking quickly. Gesturing a lot. Even her hands were beautiful. “There are already reports of looting, shooting, price gouging, all the best of humanity in a crisis. There are people out there with guns and attitudes. If you go without me, your chance of getting there at all just went down considerably.”
Erik nodded. She had a point. Someone with a fetish for guns during times of civilization might be someone to avoid, but in times of riot and chaos, she might be the perfect traveling companion.
“All right,” he said finally, “I have go get my bag. I left it in the apartment.”
“I have a truck in the parking garage.” She pulled the shirt down to cover the weapon in the small of her back. “It’s a white Dodge with a cover over the bed.”
“I’ve seen that,” Erik said nodding, “I was wondering whose that was.”
“Well, wonder no more, I’ll be there. And Erik.” She placed a hand on his chest and looked up at him with the most open look of need and desperation he’d ever seen. “Please don’t stand me up.”
Oddly enough it sounded more like a threat than a plea.
What did I just agree to?
Erik looked away from a beautiful woman, not something he normally did. Maybe she had guessed that he’d thought about slipping out and going his own way. Maybe not in his car. He might not get that past her but…
But it was all just a wild idea. The fact was, he did want to have her along. He’d tried and failed to reach his father. His sister was on the way. Finn wouldn’t be heard from until they all met… Erik realized that he’d come home last night because he was tired. What would happen on the road if he got tired? Who would watch his back then?
He nodded and walked past her. She let him go. He climbed back up the three flights of stairs; the people in the building had dispersed. He felt guilty that he was running after having urged them to stay put, but he tried to tell himself that it was safer. That all of this was still temporary. It was he who was panicking. He would be the one to look stupid when all of this was over.
So be it.
He lingered for a moment, saying goodbye to the apartment, to the life he’d known. Despite all his desire to make this move to the wilderness temporary, if senators and their families were being taken to some safe place, he was sure that whatever happened, the life he’d carved for himself here was officially over.
Finding the truck was easy. In a large metropolitan city, small, easily maneuverable cars were the rule. A large pickup truck, made to look even bigger with a camper shell on the bed, stuck out like a neon sign.
Besides, it was running.
He opened the door and tossed his bag in to the small back seat. There was barely room for it. There was a cooler and several bags shoved behind him. He closed the door and she looked at him.
“Wasn’t sure you were coming.”
“We’re traveling together,” Erik said simply, getting the seatbelt hooked together, “There has to be some trust between us now.”
She nodded but still didn’t start driving.
“What is it?”
She looked at him for a long moment. “Please, Erik,” she said softly, “I’m not trying to shove myself into something where I don’t belong, I just…I see where this is going, I see what’s happening and there’s no way to stop it. I just…I need to have someplace to go. Do you understand me?”
Erik nodded. “Yeah, I do. Like I said though, I don’t know anything about this place or these people. This whole thing is dependent on a friend getting there first…at all, for that matter. But if he’s not there telling them I should get in too, I can’t tell you if they’ll take me. Hell,” he said waving a hand in her direction, “with all your training and equipment, they’re most likely to take you and not me.”
Abby smiled. “Don’t worry. If that’s the case, I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Chapter Twenty
Finn
The stop at the gas station and talking with the old man had given him a second wind. Oddly enough, the simple act of petting the dog seemed to soothe his nerves and he crawled back into the car, deliberat
ely ignoring the round bullet holes that seemed to mock him from the back of the car, reminding him of the cost of making a mistake in this new world.
The old man hadn’t asked about them, but the way he was never far from his shotgun gave Finn the idea that he didn’t have to. He pulled through the pumps and turned around to go out the same way he’d come in. For a dog that supposedly turned traitor, Mike didn’t seem to be all that interested in the comings and goings of one Finn Lawrence. He didn’t so much as lift his shaggy head to mark his passage. In a sense it made him sad, to think he’d been so easily forgotten.
He headed back to the mouth of the driveway and out of habit looked both ways down an empty road. He put on his turn signal, not because it was needed, but because it was the last act he could think of as a defiance to the world as it was fast becoming.
Back on State Highway 74, he settled into the rhythm of driving. He drove with the window down, arm resting on the door, enjoying the feel of the wind against his bare skin. The sun was hot, but there was something about driving down an empty road with the windows down that reminded him of jaunts he’d taken as a teen. If I could just…relax my mind somehow, I could convince myself I’m camping. I got all the gear in the back. I used to drive back this way a million years ago. Is it so hard?
But bullet holes and chaos had left him wary. His eyes never left the road for long, but still managed to skitter to every shelter he passed, whether house, barn, or garden shed, and wonder what enemies lay just beyond those closed doors. Funny how in some areas the world looked so normal that it was painful – laundry hanging on a clothesline strung from back door to tree, the sheets snapping in the wind. Children playing in yards, endless games of tag and whatever end of the world game they’d dreamed up, where a stick could become a ray gun and a bath towel a superhero cape.
I wish it were that easy. The world needs heroes and all the capes in the world aren’t going to create them. We’re the ones that need to become the heroes now.
Only it was hard to feel like a hero when he was…what…going to hide out in the Pennsylvania woods? It felt stupid now by light of day, when the world looked so normal. But then he passed a car going the other way, piled high with belongings, a wild-eyed driver seeking sanctuary somewhere back the way Finn had come. He almost honked, to flag the man down, wanting to tell him he only traveled toward chaos, the world was no better back the way he’d come.
It made him wonder what things would be like out where he was going.
How well do I even know any of those people anymore? They’d been friends once back in college, and the world was so intense. They’d spent long nights sitting up and discussing philosophy and politics with all the assurance of people too young to understand the complexities of the world, but with enough passion to make up the discrepancy. They’d felt smart and sure when they’d pooled everything they had to organize the sanctuary. Jordan’s father had sold them the property for almost nothing and had probably laughed all the way to the bank, seeing it only as a useless tract of land too remote for anyone else to be interested. But the group had persevered, making elaborate plans. Some had gone out there to live, to build from the dreams of the rest. Finn had visited sporadically, but had kept up with the payments, the dues, and his portion of making the place work. For years, he’d sent money blindly out of friendship, and the thought that he might use the place someday for a vacation home.
Only vacationing in the woods of Pennsylvania wasn’t really the great attraction he’d thought it would be back when he was still in college. Still, he’d had the money – the military paid their contractors well – and his friends had needed somebody to help them out financially. He’d reasoned it was a fair trade. Today, he was getting a dividend on his investment.
He’d had a house built there, two bedrooms, a smallish sort of cabin. He’d locked it up and left it to the community to care for and threw money at it with the intent of coming back someday when he had more time for it. He barely remembered the place, but in his memories it seemed spacious and warm. Odd how such things faded after only a few short years.
Before he’d left, the village that had been the mutual dream was just beginning to take shape. Houses sprang up in the heavy forest, most of them built without taking down any trees, just slipped in between the boles like some modern day elven village. Yet the planners had talked about putting in community buildings as well. So while there was a strong Lord of the Rings influence going on among some of the group members, at this point he had no idea if he were going to find Rivendell or Mayberry when he showed up.
I wonder if the river was still there.
He’d like the river best. Little more than a creek, it had run through the center of town, the source a spring located in the area. Had they tamed the water supply or left it to roam? Too many questions waiting to be answered. He doubted he’d recognized the place today.
Don’t forget the wall…
When he’d left, the push for money was all about the wall.
He’d gotten reports on his donation. An eight-foot wall was constructed around the perimeter of the camp, for privacy, some of the flyers claimed. To keep out bears, another said. Jordan and her life partner Mitchel were die-hard survivalists, the kind who thought being naked in the woods with a knife was a fun weekend. With them behind this construction, Finn knew better. This was no privacy marker or protection against wildlife. The wall was there to keep out the end of the world. It was there to let the masses starve and die while the village continued on. Maybe that was cruel on the surface, but was it any different really than Noah and his ark? Protect what you can, how you can, and worry about recreating the world later.
With the current events, Finn was wondering if the fence would hold.
The next turning took him through a stretch of quiet hills. The farms had thinned out, the trees grew in thicker, tree branches stretching over the road in places, blocking out the sun. This was the point where the area started to look familiar to Finn. The terrain…the way the light hit the trees. In a strange way it was like coming home, though he could count on one hand the number of times he’d made this drive.
The city proper came up faster than he expected. Carlisle was a sleepy little town where the outside world hadn’t yet approached. Buildings had a shuttered, empty look as he drove through. Even the houses had that strange feel of hollowly watching as he passed. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
Somehow he hadn’t expected to find such desolation. Uneasy he turned onto Interstate 76, finding it lightly traveled, if at all. Carlisle was just too far from the beaten path to draw much in the way of refugee traffic.
He exited a short time later, taking the state highway back into the trees. This took him up into part of Tuscarora State Forest that was still privately owned. Jordan’s fathers…grandfather?... Finn couldn’t remember offhand, had bought a large chunk of the forest before the rest was taken as a BLM property. The Bureau of Land Management had made many attempts to annex that portion back, including several trips to court. Her family had successfully fought the annexation, and the land remained not only privately owned, but surrounded by protected forest.
The perfect place to hide.
He pulled through the twists and turns and the light from the mid-morning sun filtered through the leaves and highlighted the branches heavy with summer bloom. He rolled down the window and breathed the sweetness of the air, the mingled scents of pine and flowers of all kinds. He startled deer along the road and had to wait while they crossed. With the windows rolled down and the engine idling, he marveled at the absolute silence of the world around him. He might as well have been the last man in the entire world.
It should have felt like home, and in its own way it did. But the night life of the big city, the pull of DC, the sound of New York, even the thrum of his latest station in Fredericksburg was more home to him now. The silence unnerved him. It hadn’t been that long, a few years, but the life of concrete and steel seemed more natural
than nature and its unpredictability.
The road wasn’t marked. He hoped that the others would be able to find it; he’d done the best he could with the instructions. He might have to make regular pilgrimages to Carlisle to check for them. They might already be here. Wondering which it was, he pulled up to a large gate that was buried behind the trees. If he hadn’t been looking for it, he would have missed it completely.
Some of the overgrowth here had been deliberately planted to help conceal the area. The number keypad at the side of the road was covered in ivy and easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there.
He pulled up to the number pad and tried the one he once had. It was eight digits long, but he’d taken such pains to memorize it, it was as sure as his own name. He’d used the same code to secure his router at his apartment.
He punched the numbers in and the majestic gates shuddered, and a bell rang. The gates pulled away from each other, and Finn looked at a wall made of stone. He knew that there were steel reinforcements running though the mortar of those rocks, cross-welded and anchored to the ground six feet deep. He shuddered, wondering what it would be like to be trapped outside the confines of that wall.
We did the right thing. It’s for the best.
The reassurances fell flat. The bullet holes in the back of the car mocked him. He turned a sharp left and followed the maze. It was wide enough for a semi to drive through, but it turned and twisted on itself. There would be no high-speed assault on this gate like the one he’d plowed through in the construction site. No vehicle could get past twenty on this curve.
The maze emptied out after three hairpin changes into a large area that might have been a street in a normal town. Here it was just an exit to find a place to park.
More Mayberry than Rivendell, men and women were sitting in lawn chairs out in front of a house. A woman sprawled on the grass reading a book. Back a ways from the road, horses were lazily chewing the lawn behind a white fence and a dog was running around in a gleeful circles barking at whatever caught its fancy.
