The Gates_The Arrival

by Max Wyatt

  Erik leaned over the counter to grab a bag, careful not to disturb Ray, wincing a little as the first from the stack came away bloodstained and he had to grab again and again until he found ones that were clean. Leaving the plastic bags scattered like so much snow over the counter, he went around the store. Grabbing sugar. Grabbing anything. Candy bars with names he’d never heard from the bottom shelves of the displays. Packs of gum, though he had no idea what possible use they might be. They would need sugar. Protein too, if he could find it.

  A quick thought had him looking behind the counter, by Ray’s feet. He scored a couple of unopened boxes of jerky from the storage cabinet, then crept out, feeling sick for taking from a dead man.

  “I’m sorry, Ray. I’m sorry for whoever did this to you. But you don’t need it any more and we do.”

  The words helped.

  He took a second and a third bag and filled them too.

  He opened the refrigerated case, but the smell was overpowering. There hadn’t been power for one night and most of the day, but already things were beginning to turn. He looked at the items through the glass wondering what would still be good. Overwhelmed, he turned away.

  A display of magazines caught his eye. He grabbed one of each. He couldn’t have said why, just the last vestige of total useless inanity that was the civilization he knew. Now it didn’t matter if some actress was carrying an alien’s baby or if the president was a direct clone of JFK. But the desperate desire to cling to yesterday when those things did matter drove him to hold on to whatever he could keep from his old world.

  He came out and dropped his stash into the back of the truck and ran back inside. Abby called to him, asked what he was doing, but he couldn’t have answered her, he didn’t know himself what he was doing. What’s necessary, he should have said. What we have to.

  With every trip he had to face Ray. Every time he walked into the store he made out another grisly detail he’d missed before. Ray’s head wasn’t missing, it decorated the far wall in a thin coat. He held something in his hand, but Erik didn’t want to know what it was. On the third trip he realized it was a pipe, the kind you smoked.

  Every trip brought the image sharper in focus and despite what he’d told to Abby, having seen an accident was one thing, it was tragic and a little bit of hell, but it was an accident. This was done in hate and greed and complete callousness. It made a difference.

  He returned to the cooler. The food might be rotten, but the bottles were still good. He raided the water first, taking as many water bottles as he could manage. A few dropped on the way out and Abby was growing more and more frantic with each trip. After the water, the sports drinks. The minerals and electrolytes in those would come in handy.

  He’d cleaned out the water section and deliberated on the soda. Caffeine would only dehydrate and the root beers and non-cola drinks seemed…uninteresting. He grabbed a couple anyway. Granola bars, protein bars, the sort of thing that would boost energy short-term and help balance…the shelves held only a few. He stopped and pondered, then with great care stepped past Ray to the storeroom behind him. He should have started here. He found boxes of protein bars and took as many as he could carry.

  Abby honked frantically. Erik looked through the glass and saw that she was gesturing wildly behind her. Another car was on the horizon. He ran from the station. The top box was open; bars jolted out as he ran, raining down on the pavement behind him, hitting against his shins as jumped into the cab. Abby, face pale, expression grim, pealed out from the pumps, fishtailing as she hit the road.

  She burned rubber getting on the tar and Erik thought about how it looked, two people roaring out of a gas station, a dead attendant behind the counter. They were Bonnie and Clyde. Only that didn’t turn out too well for them.

  Erik stared at the boxes of protein bars in his arms. So I’m a thief now. Stealing candy from a corpse. He tried not to let the nervous laughter get the better of him. He was also a liar. But he was no killer. No one was going to pin a murder rap on him.

  He tried to not think about Sol and his wife. If they didn’t survive, then what? What about the others?

  That was different.

  But was it really?

  He stared out the window, not seeing the scenery flying past. Abby was driving too fast. Would it burn their gas faster? He didn’t know. He really didn’t know anything at all.

  Two days ago he’d been a staffer in the Senate, watching as great men made decisions that affected the entire country. He’d envied them their power.

  Every decision he’d made recently had turned out badly for every person that came anywhere near him. He turned his head, watching Abby drive. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Damn.

  If this was power, he wanted nothing to do with it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Harper

  “So this is it? All I see are trees. We’re in the middle of a State Forest, Tara. People don’t live in State Forests.”

  Tara’s head rested on the steering wheel. Shoulder’s slumped, she stared blindly at Harper. “I don’t know. I just don’t. I wrote down what Erik said. It wasn’t like he had a lot of time to talk. But I did everything he told us to.”

  Harper took the proffered piece of paper that had become their guide for the last hour. The instructions were a set of numbers, only that, written on the back of the receipt. Highway numbers. Distances. She sank back against her own seat and sighed. The car felt hot with the engine off. The windows were down but the air wasn’t moving at all. She sighed. “Okay, we followed the directions. Are you sure you wrote this correctly? I mean that could be a seven, couldn’t it? You make your ones with that funny hook at the top—”

  Tara’s head snapped up. “I know damn well what I wrote. That’s a seven. And the number before that was a four. I put it down exactly as he said it. Maybe your precious brother screwed up.”

  “My brother might be a lot of things, but he’s not a screw-up!”

  “I wouldn’t make that assumption. After all, he’s got a sister like you.”

  They stared at each other. Harper felt the blood leave her face. Suddenly she couldn’t stand sitting in the car another minute. She reached for the door handle and scrambled out onto the tarmac. The road was so hot she felt it burning through the thin soles of her sneakers. She should have worn her new hiking boots after all.

  Tara lunged after her, catching at her sleeves, fingers tangling in the fabric. There was a tearing sound as Harper pulled away.

  “Harper, I didn’t mean…”

  “I think you meant exactly what you said, Tara. I know you’re perfect. You always have been. The rest of us aren’t so lucky as you. We actually have to work to get things right. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to go find the facilities and maybe then I’m going to take a walk. That dirt track we just passed looked like it went uphill. Maybe I can see something from there. Maybe if we weren’t so damned dependent on technology we’d have some idea how to find our way without it.”

  With that she gave a disparaging look at the GPS mounted on the dash that had been so much dead weight for the majority of the trip, and then stomped off into the underbrush.

  It felt good to be out of the car and moving around. After living in a state of near terror for the past twenty-four hours, just walking out under the trees, where the only sound was birdsong and the rush of water from somewhere nearby was soothing. With a quick detour behind a bush, she stepped back out onto the road, surprised to see Tara standing next to the SUV, apparently waiting for her.

  “I thought we should stay together.”

  It wasn’t really an apology. Harper shrugged and led the way back to the access road they’d bypassed, Tara arguing that Erik hadn’t said anything about a dirt road. Besides, a chain with a ‘do not enter’ sign hung across the opening, padlocked. Tara hesitated as she read the sign, her eyes growing troubled. “We’re not supposed to go back there…”

  “You really
think anyone cares about that right now?” Harper asked, ducking under the chain and stumbling over hidden ruts in the long grass. Cursing her own stupidity for not having the proper gear on, Harper set her jaw and stomped forward. There was no way in hell she was going back just to change her shoes. After a minute, she heard Tara coming along behind her.

  Under better circumstances, she would have enjoyed the hike. The slope wasn’t particularly steep, but then none of the hills out here were. After having been hiking in the Rockies, anything on the east coast felt…softer maybe. The curves of the mountains were gentler and easier than she remembered. The undergrowth would have made this harder, she realized. If she’d just fought through the trees it would have taken her an hour to penetrate this far into the forest. She stared at the heavy ferns, the thick greenery of vines curving around trees. Overhead their way was sheltered from the sun by intertwined branches, reminding her of the road they’d driven in on. Dappled sunlight freckled her skin as she swatted at bugs, and realized that some kind of repellent should have been on that shopping list as well, but she simply hadn’t been thinking.

  But then, it was hard to think in a riot.

  I’ve never truly liked the city, she realized as she walked. She used to hike all the time. She remembered camping with her brother and her father at the cabin. A day spent behind a camera, sitting perfectly still for hours, just to get a shot of a mother fox leaving her den, her kits tumbling out into the world behind her. There had been a time when photography had been a delightful challenge.

  Working with models at a fashion magazine…was stifling. Like wearing button down blouses and business suits. When had working at AIRS become something permanent and not just a stop until she could figure out how to make a career out of traveling around the world and taking pictures of things that mattered?

  When had she given up photography altogether?

  There was a camera in her bag somewhere. She’d grabbed the digital one she’d started taking on adventures during college breaks. It would run on batteries, but what would happen to the pictures if there was no power for laptop, no printer to develop the pictures? She missed suddenly the rolls of film she’d learned to develop back in high school. It had been a hobby then, something archaic and vintage to learn. She’d loved the darkroom, the challenge of the different chemical baths. She wondered if anyone had thought to bring film into this apocalypse. Who would record the end of the world if the power was off?

  Tara was breathing heavily behind her, but stolid in her determination to not say a word. Harper knew this. Tara would drop dead before she’d open her mouth and admit that she couldn’t do something. Harper cleared her throat, started to speak, when she saw the open sky ahead of her. The top of the hill was in sight. So too was a building off to the right. Some kind of storage shed for the forestry service. Harper skidded to a halt sending rocks and pebbles skittering back down the trail behind her, and reached out to grab Tara, before she could plow on past. A hand come out to clap over her mouth, silencing whatever protests she might have had.

  “Shed!” Harper whispered into Tara’s ear, pulling her off the trail under the shelter of the trees.

  Wide-eyed, Tara nodded, following her silently.

  “We need a weapon…” Harper murmured as they faded into the underbrush. Tara started to shrug, then held up one hand while the other dug into the pocket of her jeans and came up with a tiny container of pepper spray.

  Harper took it, shaking her head. Of course she would be prepared. Even out here.

  Motioning for Tara to stay back under cover, Harper moved carefully, using the dense brush for cover as she snuck up on the shed. Here was an area where she outshone Tara. Years of stalking wildlife for that perfect photo opportunity had left her able to move making barely a sound. She found herself testing the air, trying to determine if she was upwind or downwind of the shed, then scolded herself for being too cautious. Granted she needed a shower, but anything human wasn’t going to pick up her scent that easily and anything animal was something she wasn’t worried about.

  She should have been.

  She startled a large dog, feral from the look of it. He was laying on the grass, eating a rabbit, worrying at the carcass and growling. She could count every rib on the dirty animal’s side. He looked up as she approached, ears flattening, lips drawing back in a snarl.

  Harper froze. The can of pepper spray in her hand felt useless, stupid now. “Nice doggy…”

  There was obviously no one around, though there had been not long ago. The grass surrounding the shed was freshly mown, but the door was shut and padlocked, like the fence. It was only a shed as she’d thought. A place to store supplies. A pyramid of empty garbage containers where stacked along one wall. A couple broken picnic tables in various stages of repair just beyond those.

  Very carefully Harper eased toward those, being the closest thing to her. Getting something heavy and wooden between her and the dog suddenly seemed like the best idea in the whole world.

  “Harper?”

  Tara had followed her, had probably heard her cry.

  “Stay back, Tara! It’s okay. Just a dog…a very feral…possibly rabid…dog.”

  She’d reached the first bench. The dog had followed her, stiff legged, hackles raised, still growling. The rabbit forgotten. Harper felt the pepper spray digging into her hand.

  A rock came out of nowhere, thunking to the ground between her and the dog. Harper shot Tara a look. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”

  Another rock, that ricocheted off something hidden in the grass and narrowly missed Harper’s head.

  “Hey!”

  The dog was no longer interested in Harper. In fact, he seemed extremely interested in what Tara was doing. His head came around, ears forward, still growling a little uncertainly. Harper’s eyes focused on the muzzle still dripping blood. This was no family pet. This was a monster of a beast, something with a varied lineage that included some shepherd, maybe Great Dane. A dog that could run either of them down, the way it had the rabbit.

  Now it was Tara who stood frozen, standing just under the trees. Her eyes met Harper’s wide and terrified, as she raised her hand.

  “Tara! Don’t!”

  The next rock didn’t miss. The next rock hit the dog on the flank.

  Harper could feel the dog’s bark all the way down to her bones, the sound was so deep and terrifying. She was in motion before she even realized she was, before she’d even consciously seen that the dog had launched himself at Tara who turned to run.

  Screaming, waving her arms wildly, trying to appear as big as she possibly could, Harper intercepted the dog. She jumped. She spun. She somehow even managed to spray the pepper spray, then almost got it in her own eyes had she not tripped and fallen in there somewhere. By then the dog had turned tail, and run, pausing only to grab his rabbit before disappearing into the underbrush.

  Harper lay on the ground, half stunned, hearing Tara’s laughter, growing madder by the minute.

  “You do realize,” she said, staggering to her feet. “That you were about to die.”

  “My God, Harper, that was the funniest thing I ever saw in my life.”

  Harper looked at her, Tara with her hair having fallen down around her face, so that she could barely see, a twig sticking out over her left ear. She was covered in leaves and dirt from her crawl through the brush to try to see what was going on. She was the most beautiful, funniest thing Harper had seen in a long time. Suddenly she found herself laughing too, howling with it as she stumbled forward, and took Tara in her arms, first shaking her hard, then hugging her as so hard that she worried Tara might break. Somewhere in there, laughter turned to tears.

  When they finally parted they were both soggy messes.

  Harper wiped her running nose on the hem of her shirt, deciding that her clothes were a dead loss after today anyway. “Okay, let’s not do that again. In fact…” She stomped back under a tree and came out with a heavy stick. “We
travel armed.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” Tara said, fetching her own stick. Her face was wet with tears and sweat, but the pallor had disappeared and she looked more alive than she had all day. Harper looked at her, and nodded, approving the weapon of choice.

  “To the summit!” she said finally and with her stick raised in the air like the baton carried by a drum major, she led the way to the clearing that had been the whole purpose of this whole expedition.

  And saw nothing in the valley below except trees. Trees, trees, and more trees, as far as the eye could see.

  She lowered her stick, forlorn. “How much gas do we have left?” she asked finally.

  “Maybe enough to get back to Carlisle.”

  Harper shuddered. Carlisle had spooked her with its empty buildings.

  They stared a long time, staring out over the valley. How many miles was it from one end to the other? There could be a hundred camps hidden in there, and you’d never find a one if they didn’t want to be found.

  “We may as well go back to the car.” Tara’s voice was whisper soft. Tired. Defeated.

  Tara kicked at a stone, sending it over the cliff. She heard it fall, and waited for the final thunk.

  And instead heard an engine. A car.

  Her head swiveled to the left. Back the way they would have gone if they’d continued. “Tara…wait.”

  The sound was gone, but Harper knew where to look now. She grabbed at Tara’s hand, pointing with her other hand, there, through the trees.

  “Tell me, is that a building down there? And a clearing of some kind…a field?”

  It was hard to see between the trees. Almost invisible.

  Almost.

  But there were roofs. Painted green. Buildings. Now that she had seen the first, the rest were easy.

  “It was a seven…” Tara said in soft wonder. “We hadn’t gone far enough. It’s just around that mountain and down…we follow the road. We should be able to find it now.”

  “He said the gate would be hidden,” Harper said doubtfully, staring into the distance.