The Gates_The Arrival

by Max Wyatt

  It would have been idyllic. Even bucolic, had it not been for the four men in assault gear and rifles who were currently aiming their rather impressive weapons at one Finn Lawrence.

  “Turn the engine off now and get out of the car!” one of them barked.

  The woman reading the book didn’t so much as look up.

  Finn turned off the motor and got out, his hands in the air. He looked at the man in front of him, past the black riot gear, past the face mask and realized it wasn’t a man at all. The piercing blue eyes that greeted him looked strangely familiar.

  “Jordan?” Finn asked, trying to ignore the way his heart pounded in his throat.

  She cocked the rifle and aimed for his heart.

  “Welcome home, Finn.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Erik

  Abby slipped the truck through the garage neatly. Something this size was a bitch to maneuver, but she seemed to be a natural at it. There was light traffic on the streets, a large change from last night when people were driving into each other and cursing as they vied to get through the stoplights.

  The lights were still flashing a four-way red and Erik spared a moment to wonder how long the lights would be running off the batteries or wherever it was that drew enough power to still flash on and off.

  “Light traffic today,” Abby said as though she were reading his mind. “A lot less than I thought there would be.”

  “Last night was pretty bad though.”

  She nodded. “Surprising; most people here ride the Metro, I would have guessed most of them didn’t even have cars.”

  “Those who did maybe got out early.” Erik shrugged. “But just to be sure, let’s see if we can find a back way to the freeway, something on surface streets where we’re not so likely to get stuck at a place…”

  He didn’t need to finish his sentence. They came to an intersection were there had been three vehicles involved in a collision. The cars had been dragged off the road and allowed to sit on the side of the curb for God knew how long. One of the cars was still in the center of the intersection. Apparently, traffic was able to circumvent that one, so there was no reason to move it. There should have been cops, Eric realized. No one would have gone away and just…left the cars like that.

  The other two cars had clear damage. Tire tracks through the debris indicated a vehicle the rough size of Abby’s truck had simply pushed its way through the gridlock and sent them on a sideways skid to the curb. At least there was no sign of injury or forgotten corpses littering the street. Erik shuddered at his own imagination.

  “Yeah,” Abby agreed. “At least this thing is big enough to press through some of the snarls if we have to.”

  Erik suppressed a shudder. It was too close to what he was thinking, only hearing it from the other side of things was…discordant. He didn’t like to think of himself as one of the bad guys.

  Are there ‘bad guys’ in this world? It was a question more for Finn, something he’d have to ask them when they met up. He’d positively reveled in that kind of discussion back in college.

  “What kind of gas mileage do you get on this, anyway?” Erik asked, looking at the dash as if he could find the answer somewhere written there.

  “Considering the size, it’s pretty good,” she said with a grin. “I can usually get a good nineteen or twenty miles per gallon out of it. It’s topped off now,” she checked the gauge. “How far is this place?”

  “It’s not too bad,” Erik said with a quick glance in her direction. “About ah…hundred twenty miles or so.”

  “Good!” She smiled, seeming relieved. “What gas we have now should be fine then. I have no idea where we’d get gas if we needed it.” The stations they were passing now were dark and empty. Broken glass littered the parking lot. She fell silent and he saw that she’d followed his gaze. Suddenly she seemed less cheerful, more uncertain. “I would still like to stop on the way if we find anything, it would be nice to be able to keep it topped off.”

  Her voice wavered a little. She was trying to stay cheerful, he realized, and admired her courage.

  Erik nodded and watched the houses go by as they left the main street and moved through a residential area. There was very little sign of life. A child played under a tree, a dog wandered the neighborhood sniffing the sidewalk, but there was no sign of people working or trimming the lawn. No joggers or people walking dogs or chatting with their neighbors. It was still and quiet and it felt like the whole place was quietly waiting, but Erik couldn’t figure out what everyone was waiting for.

  Normalcy. Like you told them to wait for back at the apartment building. You reassured them and told them everything would go back to normal soon.

  Erik swallowed hard, not liking this train of thought. But would honesty have been better? He couldn’t take every person in the world to Finn’s hideaway. Most of them would have been a hindrance to the survival of the rest.

  He hated himself for even thinking that word.

  “So…where are we heading?” Abby asked casually, darting a glance at him that held a hint of uneasiness.

  “Normally, I would say go up State 15 through Fredericksburg, but this ain’t exactly normal.” He smiled, trying to make a joke of it, but the words fell flat, though she tried to smile anyway.

  “No, it’s not.” Abby agreed. “So what would you abnormally suggest?”

  “Let’s get on 97,” Erik suggested. “That should get us most of the way.”

  “97 isn’t exactly a country road,” Abby reminded him.

  “No, but it doesn’t link large cities like an interstate and most of the towns there are populated with government workers and those who support government workers.”

  “So?” Abby looked at him with some concern.

  “So…” Erik bit his lip and looked down. “I really…”

  “Come on!” Abby chided him, and he could see from the way she was white-knuckling the steering wheel that while her tone was light, she really was scared. “What happened to all that talk about trust?”

  Erik turned to face her. “The government is being sent to secure locations. Senators, representatives, president, vice-president, the whole works. They’re all going underground.”

  “Shit!” Abby looked at him with wide eyes for so long that Erik feared they’d go off the road. She caught herself, grabbing at the steering wheel before they hit the curb and faced forward. “It’s that serious?”

  Erik shrugged. “I can only guess. I know that they’re going, I don’t know why or what the information behind it is.”

  “So when you told those people in our building…”

  “I told them to stay put because it’s probably the best thing they can do. Starting a panic would be more injuries and death than…than whatever else is happening.”

  Abby turned the truck onto a short ramp and then turned right. They were on 97. “If that’s the truth Erik, why didn’t you wait with them?”

  Erik fell silent, hating the censure in her voice, hating that it matched his own thoughts. He watched as she slipped into the flow of traffic. It was surprisingly light. Whoever wanted to run already had.

  They drove a while in silence, Erik’s mind on the people of his building, the ones who trusted him, believed in him. The ones he sent home to await the fate he wasn’t willing to share. Where would they go? Even the place Erik was going might or might not welcome him. How would they feel about a dozen more? Two dozen? A hundred? A thousand?

  No, he’d been right before. You can’t save the world.

  “You going to tell me where we’re going?” Abby asked out of the silence of an hour’s drive.

  “No,” Erik said shortly. He saw the lifted eyebrow and looked off to the side. “Yeah, I know, I’m a bastard. I get that. I told them to stay and I ran. But now, I’m in your truck and you’re driving and the only way I know I’m getting there is if I don’t tell you were it is until I get there.”

  “Really?” Abby said, and the chill in h
er voice outdid the air conditioning. “So much for trust.”

  “Yeah, well tell that to Sol and his wife.” Erik sounded petulant even to himself. The fact was, he was feeling guilty about the people he’d left behind. He watched the scene through the window until the traffic died down to the occasional car until finally they were the only ones left on the road.

  “I understand,” Abby said. It had been some time since they’d talked, but she picked up the conversation as if they’d never left off. “I know there are limits to what you can do. I know that I’m…I’m probably not going to be allowed in and that I’ll just end up…giving you a ride, but…” She stared straight ahead and clamped her jaw shut.

  “But?” Erik prompted.

  “But, the world got one hell of a lot scarier all of a sudden. I get that some people have nowhere to go. But…you were right. You were right in what you said to Sol and John and all the rest of them. There is no place. Where are they going to go? What would they do if they did go?” Abby shrugged. “Hell, there’s no place for me. Even if they let me in, what then? Where then? What do I do? I have no…” Abby’s voice broke and she swallowed. “I have no one to cling to, no one to vouch for me. Hell, I don’t even have anyone who would care if I wasn’t here tomorrow.”

  Erik opened his mouth to say something but she waved him off. “No, don’t say it, okay? I wasn’t fishing; you don’t need to lie and say it would matter to you. You don’t know me. You didn’t even remember me from the gym or the building. I’m one of those people that you forget about easily.”

  “That’s not true,” Erik protested. “You’re beautiful.”

  Abby laughed, though it sounded more like a pained bark. “Yeah? Thanks. I’ve heard that too, you know. People tell me I’m pretty and then can’t remember my name. Or I get some guy telling me how attractive I am and it all ends up in the shit when I don’t have sex with him right then and there because he thought I was pretty.”

  Abby smacked the steering wheel. “I have marksman level abilities,” she told the road, refusing to look over at Erik. “I can shoot a rifle, a handgun, a bow. I’ve won competitions in all three. I have a black belt and I can fix engines and I make a damn good strudel. And at the end of the day, I go home and pin a ribbon on the wall along with all the others and take myself out for a drink to celebrate.” She shook her head. “And here we are, folks, the end of the world, the cessation of all civilization and I end up in a pickup with a man who won’t even tell me where the hell we’re going, but it’s okay, because I’m beautiful. Well thank you!”

  “Carlisle,” Erik said.

  “What?” Abby looked at him as though he’d stopped speaking English.

  “Carlisle, Pennsylvania. That’s where we’re going.”

  “Thank you.” Abby sat back and drove in silence. “Ever been there?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know it’s safe?”

  “A friend of mine told me about it,” Erik said and prayed that it was.

  “The same friend with the super-secret job connections I couldn’t find out about?”

  Erik smiled. “One and the same.”

  “Hey look, he’s smiling!” Abby said, a small smile growing on her lips too. “It only took the end of civilization, but we got him to smile.”

  She drove in silence for a few more minutes. “So how does your friend know about it?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Erik said. There was a time when Finn moved out after college and vanished off the face of the earth. He never spoke about it, although snide quips about communes made a little more sense now. Erik really didn’t know what the connection was between Finn and this haven they hoped to find. With any luck, Finn was king and allowed in all his loyal minions.

  “So how do you know that this friend of yours is telling the truth?”

  Erik looked at her for a long moment. “He’s my friend,” he said simply.

  “You mean trust,” Abby said flatly, the truck jolting as they hit a pothole.

  “Yeah,” Erik turned his attention to the road again, noting that she’d made no apology for the jounce that had almost banged his head into the door. “Trust.”

  They wound through Brookville and eventually made it to Cooksville. The road took a left and Erik felt the pressure of the bottled water he’d drank. “Can we find a place to stop?” he asked her. “I need a bathroom.”

  Abby nodded and continued on for another ten minutes. A gas station appeared on the horizon, empty and deserted, and Erik breathed a sigh of relief. As she pulled to a pump he jumped out and found the men’s room door at the side of the old station. There were no lights, but it was clean and he relieved himself. He went to flush and found there was no water pressure to flush with. No water came from the sink either. He walked out and headed around the building, Abby was coming out of the women’s room rubbing her hands.

  “There’s no water,” Erik said, watching her wring her hands.

  “There’s no pressure,” she corrected. “Most likely, the pumps have lost power.” She handed him a small bottle of hand sanitizer. “If the pumps for the water are off-line, it’s a safe bet that there’s nothing powering the gas pumps either.”

  “Are we out?”

  “No.” Abby shook her head. “We’ve got enough to get to where you said, but we’ll be in trouble if we have to keep going. If they don’t let us in, we’ll need to find some pretty fast.”

  “Well, let’s go in and see if there’s someone inside somewhere. I at least need to apologize for using the bathroom without being able to flush. Maybe he has a back-up generator and we can get some gas after all?” Abby shrugged. “At least it’s worth a shot.” She headed for the building.

  “See if they have something to drink. I’d kill for a soda,” he called after her.

  She did a backwards wave without turning. Erik went to the truck and found the windshield squeegee in a bucket of water. The trip down had involved a great many insects, and there seemed to be an inordinate amount of flies swarming around. He’d just slathered greasy water over the windshield when he heard her scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Erik

  Abby shot out of the store and ran to the railing on the little porch that circled the front. She held to the rail and leaned over, spewing the contents of her belly on the ground. She was still retching when Erik caught up to her.

  Erik looked at her, and heart in his throat, walked into the store. The man behind the counter was named Ray. It said so on his shirt. The name tag was the sole part of the shirt that wasn’t soaked in blood. Someone had removed Ray’s head with a shotgun blast.

  Eric looked at the corpse behind the counter and thought of the men and women at his apartment building, the men and women in all those little houses they’d driven past. He thought of Harper and Tara and Finn who were, like him, trying to find a safe place all on his word.

  They’d all been absolute idiots.

  Swallowing hard, trying not to breathe, he walked back out and put an arm around Abby. “You okay?”

  She gave him a dirty look.

  “Okay, that was a stupid question. First time you ever see something like that?”

  She nodded miserably. “I work for the Marshals’ office,” she said, holding her stomach, “but I work in the office. I do paperwork and research. I don’t work in the field.” She looked at him, face pale, eyes haunted, “don’t tell me, you’re an old hand at this? You see the slaughtered corpses of men every day?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But a few years ago, I was at an intersection when a drunk plowed into a station wagon full of kids. I was there and tried to help. I saw that,” he gestured with a thumb to the office, “and worse. I had to testify, too. It all came up again…on the stand I mean.”

  Abby paused for a moment before what he said clicked. “You threw up in the court?”

  “No.” Erik smiled. “I threw up on the court. All over the judge and the lawyers and everything. They had to
postpone for the day to clear the smell.”

  Abby laughed and seemed to suddenly realize that she was being led away from the building. “We can’t get gas,” she said, darting a glance to the gas pumps.

  “Not here, no. But you said we didn’t need it.”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Then don’t worry about it. Try to think about something else, like the end of world and life and we know it. That should cheer you up.”

  Abby smiled and let him settle her in the truck. She settled behind the wheel with a grim determination that he couldn’t help but admire.

  “Be right back. Let me know if anyone comes; keep the engine running.”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. Hell, maybe he was.

  He didn’t want to do this next part. Going back in seemed wrong somehow. But if I don’t…someone else will. We might need the supplies. We don’t even know if they’re going to let us in. What if this is it, what we get here is what we have to live off of? It’s not just me now. There’s two of us. And those canned goods won’t last forever.

  He took a deep breath while still outside, then pushed open the door and went back in.

  The corpse leaned drunkenly off to one side. He didn’t want to look too hard at the guy, but he needed to. If this had just happened, they might still be in danger. He leaned over the corpse, saying a quick prayer as he felt a hand, and found it rigid and cold. The blood had dried, the flies…he should have noticed the flies when he’d come in the first time, were everywhere, lending a faint buzz to the room.

  The smell…his own stomach heaved. He swallowed hard, pulling his t-shirt up over his nose to block some of the stench. Not that it worked all that well.

  They’d taken the stuff by the register. Cigarettes cleaned out. Register empty. Those things didn’t matter. The candy…the jerky…those containers were empty, as were most of the shelves. But stuff still remained. Things jammed on the back of shelves. Bottles in the coolers. They hadn’t taken time to grab it all. They’d been sloppy.