by Max Wyatt
“Teach me what?”
“How to kill. I have plenty of guns and ammo, we’ll start there.”
“Why?” Finn asked, getting another glimpse into a new world he didn’t much like. “I mean, I’m grateful, but why me?”
“Because I need to sleep once in a while,” she said as though it were obvious. “And when I do, I need someone I can trust to watch me and mine.”
She took the dishes into the kitchen and came back, standing at the space between the rooms. “I’m just so happy you’re back!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Erik
“I’m willing to drive if you just want to pull over and try to catch your breath.” Erik called over to Abby. She clutched the wheel harder and her knuckles turned white with the effort. “Or…” Erik said, “I can stay the hell on my side and not bother you. Whichever way you would prefer…”
“He was dead.” Abby said, her voice flat and emotionless, “And whoever did that…they’re out there, somewhere…”
“Yes.” Erik agreed. “They are. But they’re out there somewhere, they’re not here, they’re not behind us…”
“How do you know?” Abby snapped and whipped her head around to look at him. “How do you know? I told you there was a car coming, how do you know that wasn’t them again?”
Erik had no answer to that. Of course it could have been them. It was even likely, but there had been no one behind them for miles now and the coast was clear. “They - whoever ‘they’ are, they’re not behind us anymore. No one is chasing us, no one is following…”
“They don’t have to be!” Abby yelled. “They’re in front of us, they’re beside us, they’re all around us. We’re surrounded by ‘them’ and we’re outnumbered. Ray had been there for some time, did you catch that? No one called it in. No one came to close the store, to take statements, to…do something with the body. Where were the police? Where were the authorities? There’s no one left except us and a few animals!”
Erik was taken aback by the volume of her cry. She was upset, badly upset and visibly shaking. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and Erik began to wonder if bringing her was a good idea. Not that it was the first or last bad choice he was going to make. But this was a woman he knew next to nothing about. And she was quickly unbalancing, when he needed her to be calm, cool, and collected.
The problem was he’d been seeing her as someone who seemed like she’d stepped out of a female action movie, with the guns and training and jeans and all the typical action movie set up. But the first dead body she saw turned her into this? The sad fact was, there were going to be more dead bodies – a lot more, and she might even have to create a few dead bodies herself before this was all over. He couldn’t afford to waste time trying to help her hold it together. But somewhere along the way, this woman had gotten into her head that being able to shoot a paper target made her able to defend the Western World from the fall of civilization. The problem was, the bad guys weren’t made out of cardboard. And they were going to be firing back.
Then there was the fact that he didn’t remember her, though she looked familiar. He might not have known her, despite her reassurances. He might be taking her with him as a complete stranger. Into a “safe” haven where he might not be allowed, let alone him and a guest. This wasn’t a ‘plus one’ situation. And if she was unstable…then what would that do to his own status within the community? What was he risking by bringing her this far?
“You’ve got a lot of guns, you said,” he turned to her, studying her face as she drove. “You’ve never used one?”
She shrugged. “I’ve gone hunting. Deer, quail, ducks. But not people.”
“Maybe I’ll take you up on your offer,” he said carefully. “About the gun you wanted to give to me.”
To his complete shock, she shook her head. “No.” She smiled ruefully. “Not after the way you held that one in the parking lot. You don’t get a gun until you’ve had some training and some practice.”
“What? Are you…”
“Why? Because I’m horrified and disgusted by what I just saw, you think you’re suddenly more qualified than I am to handle a gun? If you’re not horrified and disgusted, you don’t have any business with a weapon.”
“Of course I was horrified.” Erik shot back, angry now. “But I’ve seen it before.”
“So you said. So now you’re jaded? Nothing can affect you? You’re such a hardened bad ass that Ray had no effect on you?”
Erik rode in silence for a long time. “I had some training as a paramedic. Not a lot, I wasn’t ever in the medical field, like you weren’t a Marshal. But I had some. I was the first person on the scene. I was all full of myself because I suddenly felt like I could do…anything. I could step in and save them all.”
He stared through the windshield for a while, Abby glancing at him from time to time. He barely noticed. He was no longer there. He was standing on a street amidst debris from what used to be a car. Carnage from what used to be human. “I actually ran to the first body I saw, laying on the street. In my excitement and enthusiasm, I hadn’t noticed how small the body was. From the first, I was made painfully aware how useless and inadequate my skills were. Then there were others. Most had died on impact. One died in my arms. Or she would have if I had moved her, but you don’t move accident victims, you wait. And wait. And wait. It took twenty minutes for an ambulance to arrive. She died after ten.”
Erik let the silence drag out. “I was sitting in the middle of the road, surrounded by blood and tissue, even some body parts I wasn’t even able to identify. I couldn’t leave, or she would have died alone. Sitting still in the middle of an abattoir doesn’t make you badass, or jaded. It makes you put away your own concerns and focus on someone else.”
Abby swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
He wiped at his eyes, knowing it wasn’t manly to cry, but unable to stop the tearing up anyway. “I try to not think of it. I still see it all in remarkably clear color, though. I had to…shift some things around, to make room for me to sit in among the pieces. But I shielded her from seeing any of it. I was there, I held her hand. There was nothing else for me to do. So I did what I could.”
He turned to look at her, his expression hard. “I’ll be waking up in the middle of the night seeing Ray. If I choose to sleep again. But we needed supplies. He had them and he wasn’t going to need them. I’m not trying to be Rambo – but, I will put aside what I feel to protect myself and those with me. I will do what I have to do to make sure that you are not hurt, that I am not hurt and that my friends and my sister if we ever catch up with them are not hurt. Is that clear?”
Erik could have barked that last, could have made it sound like an ultimatum, but he said it just the same way he said the rest of his speech, flat and without emotion. Maybe he’d had too many hours already of too much emotion. There was simply none left.
Abby stared at the road, but her head tilted, as though the added strain of Erik’s story was too much to hold it upright. “Glovebox,” she said.
Erik reached over and popped the glovebox open. There was a tiny gun in the compartment. He dug it out, making sure the safety was on. “What’s this?” He placed it in his palm. “I feel like I could break this.”
“It’s a snub-nose .38,” Abby said, darting a glance at him that hinted of pride…and a certain fear.
He shifted it in his hands, examining the gun from all angles. It looked ridiculous in his palm. “No, I want the adult version you gave me last time.”
“That one’s mine. I was only using it for an example.”
“You said you had two.”
“I do!”
“So?”
“So, they’re both mine. That one’s yours.”
“But… This is like…small!” Erik waved to the gun in his palm. It seemed to shrink as he was watching it.
“It’s built that way on purpose,” Abby said. He didn’t miss the eye roll.
“Why?”
Her purse. Yeah. That. Figured.
“Ah…” Erik put the gun back into the glove box and closed it.
“You don’t like it?”
“Doesn’t go with my shoes,” he told the passing landscape, slumped in his seat, arms crossed in front of him.
“Oh, don’t sulk. Besides, look over here,” She pointed to a sign that proclaimed Carlisle was eight miles away.
“Great,” Erik shifted and looked ahead as if he could see the town from there. “Now all we have to do is find the place.”
“You don’t know where it is?”
“I’ve never been there,” he admitted, sitting up. “But I have general directions Finn gave me.” He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a crumpled and torn piece of paper. He unfolded it carefully and looked up again. “There should be a turn off just before the city line. Hang a left there and head into the state forest.”
“It’s in a state forest?”
Erik shrugged. “I don’t know, that’s just what his directions say.”
They wound through the edge of the forest and continued on, Abby looking concerned. “We’re either going to need to find this place or hope that there’s somewhere to get gas out here. We’re running on fumes.”
Erik said nothing, he was counting in his head and referring to the slip of paper. “Here, slow down a moment.” He rolled down the window and the fresh overwhelming smell of pine filled his lungs. He asked Abby to stop, and got out to walk alongside the road, looking through the forest. Only though luck did he spot a tall shadow behind the trees. It had to have been the wall. He followed it with his eyes then got back in and pointed it out to her. “Keep going that way for a little bit, but slowly. If we can follow the wall, we should find an entrance.”
“You think this is the place?” she asked, eyeing the wall dubiously.
Erik shrugged. “It must be, I can’t think of any other reason for that structure to be in the middle of the forest.”
Abby sat and stared, making no move to put the truck back into drive.
“What’s wrong?” Erik asked. “Let’s find the entrance.”
“What if…I mean, you were invited, what if they don’t take me?”
“Then we go find gas.” Erik said.
She turned to him, her mouth forming a round ‘o’ of surprise. “We?”
He nodded, not entirely sure when he’d made the decision, but knowing that this at least was the right thing to do. “We. I know I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but if you’re with me and I vouch for you, then that’s on my head. If they won’t take someone under my say-so, then I have no desire to subject myself to that.”
Abby started the truck. “That’s…very considerate of you,” she said. Erik could hear the catch in her throat.
“Hey, listen, with all the weapons and food you’re carrying, they’re more likely to take you and refuse to let me come in.”
Abby put the truck in gear. “I can live with that,” she said and smiled at him.
Erik flipped her off and watched the tree line.
It was hard to find, but there was an ivy covered post at the edge of a short dirt road and on the top of the post was a metal box. He had Abby pull in there and she looked at the keypad and turned to him. “Any idea what the code is?”
Erik shook his head. “Is there an intercom?”
“I don’t know if there’s power here for one…” she pressed a button.
“Name,” said a very curt voice.
“Finn Lawrence.” Erik called out. Abby looked at him speculatively.
“Wait.” The voice clicked off and they sat under the hot sun. Abby turned off the truck and they listened to the pings and clicks of the cooling engine. It was a long wait, made even more uncomfortable when Abby spoke from the corner of her mouth. “Three o’clock, rifle barrel through the wall behind the flowers.”
“I have another one on my side,” Erik said woodenly, “under the big leaves next to the big tree with the ivy.”
“I see it.”
“What worries me are the ones…”
“We can’t see.” She glanced at him, uneasy.
The wall in front of them shifted and began to move. It rolled off to one side and behind it was an open clearing, still bright in the afternoon sunlight. It opened on small buildings, horses, the lowing of cattle carried over from some unseen place.
In the middle of the open gate stood Finn. He was grinning from ear to ear, though it faded somewhat when he saw that Erik wasn’t alone. He walked to the passenger side and looked in. His grin was gone, replaced with a wary curiosity.
“Finn, this is Abby. Abby, Finn.”
“Hello,” Abby’s fingers tapped the steering wheel in a sharp tattoo. She’d done it while driving too, when she’d been scared. Or stressed. He shot a glance a Finn, to see if he noticed. Finn though was looking back the way he’d come, his eyes troubled.
“Welcome to the Gates,” Finn said, not quite meeting his eyes. It wasn’t the most auspicious of greetings. He then turned, signaling them to follow behind him. He pointed them to an empty area where several cars were gathered in a haphazard parking arrangement and told them to put the truck there.
The gate behind them shuddered and began to close with a finality Erik could feel through his bones.
This was the brave new world.
They’d made it.
Now what?
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