The Dark Roads

by Lemmons, Wayne

  He wanted to shout for them, knowing that they would all come running, but didn't dare. If there was someone in the store, if there was more than one of them, alerting them to his position would be akin to suicide. He couldn't let that happen anymore than he could let someone be taken.

  Faster. He moved faster, the corridors almost a blur as he moved from one side of the store to the other. He hadn't seen anyone, friend or foe, at the back wall, so he turned to the side when he came to a corner. He was sweating more now, becoming scared and worried. The darkness, though not complete, was stifling.

  They're all dead because you didn't pay good enough attention, Richie.

  More walls made of portable shelving hid him from everything and everything from him. Richie ducked in and out of the rows, now, searching every inch of the place from end to end. His eyes were drying out. He was afraid to blink, thinking he'd miss something, a person or a sign that someone had been there. He listened, but heard no one. Also, he noticed that it was getting hotter in the store. He checked his watch only to see that he was minutes from sunrise.

  What could he do? He only had two choices. He could keep searching the rows until the sunlight flooded the place and burnt him to a crisp, or he could trust that everyone was in the panic shelter, waiting for him.

  Maybe that was it. Maybe he was searching the store for ghosts. All of his friends were probably sitting on their cots, waiting for him to show up.

  Nobody will be there. They're all dead because of you!

  He ran, not caring about the noise he was making, until he was at the storage room door. He shoved through it, noticing in an instant that the pile of stuff he'd left was gone. He dismissed it and ran for the open shelf passage that would take him below.

  He nearly dove for it, sliding down the ladder, the curve in his boots slipping along the vertical rails, his hands gripping loosely until his feet hit the floor.

  He turned to see the lantern glow in the shelter. Buddy, Elvis, and Amanda were sitting there, looking at him as if he'd worn white after labor day.

  "Got your stuff," Elvis said, holding up one of the locks that he'd already cut out of the casing, "Want to lock the door?"

  Richie swallowed with an audible click and smiled, sweat still soaking his face, and climbed the ladder to close the door. The stretch his mind had just gone through seemed to shrink back to a normal shape. He'd overreacted, surely, but what if things had been different? What would he have done.

  "Closing the door!" he shouted as he pulled a barrier between his group and the day.

  ***

  "So, why didn't you just check here first?" Amanda asked Richie after he'd told them why he'd been so excited.

  "I lost it a little," he admitted, "I didn't even think of checking the shelter."

  "He's a little slow," Elvis told her, smiling at his joke as he picked at the strings on his guitar.

  "Well, whether he's slow or not isn't really in question," Buddy said, adjusting his glasses, "The real question is what do we do about the flesh eating Canadians outside?"

  "Nothing for a week," Amanda answered.

  "I kind of have to agree," Richie added, "As long as we have supplies to last us, we don't have to leave this room."

  "True," Buddy admitted, "But we might want to come up with something before the week ends. If they decide to camp out and wait on us, it might be a little hard to sneak out once we're done here."

  "Yeah," Elvis agreed, "I don't want nobody eatin' me."

  "At least it's a Canadian group of Cannibals," Buddy pointed out.

  Everyone but Richie furrowed their brows at him.

  "They're bound to be polite."

  "Still don't want nobody eatin' me," Elvis said as they all snickered.

  They were in agreement on that point. Cannibals were a frightening concept, but an even more frightening reality. Richie, Buddy, and Elvis had run into a group of them in the States and had been able to get past without incident, but Amanda was hit closer to home by the situation.

  Her husband had been shot and eventually killed by one of these feeders. Richie wondered what she would do if she came face to face with one of them.

  After seeing what she had done to rectify the Bail situation, Richie doubted that their girl would just curl up and surrender. He had a deep respect for the woman's toughness.

  All of them were tired from the night of activity so they laid down to sleep, secured by the well locked secret entrance to their room.

  Each person lay on their backs at first, staring at the ceiling and listening to one another's breathing, but soon Elvis was snoring and Buddy had turned on his side and fallen to sleep. Amanda was the next to go, her breath slowing until it was relaxed and deep.

  Richie lay awake for a long time, scolding himself for the mistake of falling into a routine of working, of losing the focus he'd always prided himself on. He should have noticed that they were one dead man short from the moment he'd gone to move them. It was a slip that could easily have gotten one or all of them killed and he swore that he wouldn't repeat it.

  The day wore on, but he slept little, no matter what comfort he'd been blessed with. At some point in the night, he woke to see Amanda propped on one elbow staring at him. She looked concerned.

  "You were having a nightmare," she told him, "Are you okay? Need to talk about it?"

  Richie shook his head and laid back again. He couldn't remember dreaming at all and talking about nothing would be a waste of time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her head fall back to the pillow.

  Soon, he dozed off again, but he continued to move in and out of waking. Rebuking himself would accomplish nothing, but he continued out of a masochistic need for self-punishment.

  They're all going to die and it will be your fault, Richie.

  Fuck you.

  Yeah, fuck me.

  ***

  They lived like rock stars for four days. They ate when they wanted to, as much as they wanted to. They took lengthy naps during the night time and slept completely through the days. Richie had grown fond of drifting off to the sound of Elvis' guitar. They were truly clean for the first time since any of them could remember, taking daily showers under the outdoor rig that Richie had found.

  Buddy read books as if he'd never read again, devouring whole novels in a sitting. Elvis played guitar until the strings made deep impressions in his fingertips. Amanda paged through old magazines they'd found by the stack and told them stories about magnificent shopping trips she would have gone on if she'd known that the world would go to shit so soon. Richie enjoyed reading well enough, but chose to draw instead.

  Once upon a time, in a place no one would likely ever see again, Richie was a slave to the business world. He made it to work early, five days a week, and left long after his shifts should've ended. He dressed well and performed well, and surely would've been able to climb the fabled ladder that led, not necessarily to the top, but somewhere high in the middle. He was the type of employee that most companies searched for and never found.

  In the evenings and on weekends, though, Richie loved nothing more than to sit in his most comfortable easy chair, facing a horizon filled with pollution and partially built condominiums, and draw the world into beauty.

  He'd sketch the buildings as if they'd been long finished and the sky as if it were clear of contaminants in a sunset that was remarkable only to him. He would dig further into the pictures outside of his windows, finding an empty patio upon which he would add furniture and elegantly dressed party goers. He would find the beauty in a woman walking along the sidewalk in the rain, her umbrella broken in spots, and change the beauty of imperfection into the refinement it deserved. Richie loved to change the way the world looked with nothing more than a graphite pencil and recycled paper.

  He did this often in his old life, most nights in fact, but he'd not drawn so much as a doodle in the time that he, Buddy, and Elvis had been on the road. This time they'd been given, this time they'd stolen from
the hands of maniacs, gave him the chance to feel the way he'd always loved to feel and he was taking advantage. He drew everything and more in those four days, allowing the others to look at what he'd made from time to time. He only let them see when asked, but he hid back one drawing adamantly.

  Elvis had been sitting cross-legged on his cot, the blanket he'd been using neatly folded at the foot of it, with his guitar. He was watching the fingers of his left hand as they traveled up and down the neck of the instrument with a quiet smile on his face.

  His hair was gone, but Richie saw things as they could be, better than they were, so he drew a few strands falling across his brow. Richie let his pen change all of the qualities that were wrong, let it mark in details that could've never existed.

  His eyes would glance at Elvis once in a while, more to see if he knew that he was being drawn than anything else. He'd never done this before, drawn the perfection inside one of his friends, and it hurt a little to look at the thing once he'd finished.

  Richie made Elvis beautiful, as he'd always seen him, and it broke his heart. Some might have thought that making Elvis beautiful meant taking away the facial features forced upon him by the Down’s Syndrome he'd been born with, but that wasn't the truth of it at all.

  This picture of Elvis was much more lovely than what he would be if Richie had drawn him to look like everyone else in the world. It was his friend, sketched on the thirty-fifth page of the pad, looking exactly like he had on their last easy day in Miami. There were no cuts on his face or abrasions on his knuckles. His hair was a bit longer in real life on that day than what Richie had drawn, but it was really him. He was beautiful.

  At the beginning of the fifth day they decided to leave the place upon waking. Everyone knew that it was time, but no one had to say what they were all thinking. They would miss this short break from the world outside.

  ***

  Calgary, AB

  April 8, 2021

  9:12 PM 94*F

  In the western region of Canada, the sun had set and night swallowed the earth along with everything that lay upon it. All was silent, most of the people and almost all of the animals being long dead, and few sounds would be made until dawn returned to burn things that were nearly beyond burning.

  A fire had been started two nights before at a department store where much death had been brought. The concrete shell of the place, though singed by the heat of a blaze that had burned through all of the night before, remained intact.

  A door opened on the ground, dragging the remains of an aluminum skeleton slowly along it's track, and a person climbed to the surface of the place. The person seemed shocked for a moment, said something to those following him, and stood waiting.

  The surprise left him, almost before it could register, and he went about the task of helping his companions out of the hole in the ground. Each of them took the time to look at the damage that had been caused as they hid, their ignorance of the goings on evident in their postures and the looks that they gave to each other. Soon, though, they joined the first to come out and left the shell. There was nothing they could do about this ruined place.

  Three men and a woman walked north and west along a seldom marked highway. Sometimes they walked in a cluster, seeming to draw strength from one another. Other times they walked in a single file to be isolated within themselves.

  When they spoke to each other, it was quiet and careful. They were in sync in some internal way that told them what they needed to do and when they needed to articulate.

  To an outsider of the group it would be considered odd, possibly even eerie. Few beings learned how to be with people void of the complications that come with most relationships. The common goal they shared, survival for their group at any cost, set them apart from the rest. Even the newest addition to their circle had caught on quickly and become one of them without knowing it.

  One of the men led them naturally without ever having been elected to do so. The other two would surely die for their leader as he would die for them. The woman was becoming a sort of glue that would hold them together in a way they hadn't been before. Without her to reinforce the union they'd already created, it was possible for their foundation to crack. With the addition of her presence, the foundation had been made stronger than ever before.

  They walked until they found the next place to be. They walked until someone tried to stop them. They walked.

  Chapter 4

  Edmonton, AB

  April 19, 2021

  2:10 AM 86*F

  Elvis was humming softly as he used Richie's battered pocket knife to whittle a small chunk of wood away to nothing. He'd gotten in the habit of doing this, recently, and showed no signs of stopping his exercise in destruction.

  Amanda watched him do this as they walked, wondering how he could do such a thing while moving. Elvis didn't notice her curiosity, so she didn't bring attention to it. They were in a quiet time, right now, and she had no urge to change that.

  Richie and Buddy were walking side-by-side, Richie holding this coach at the ready. This was Richie's new habit, one he'd started just after they'd left the panic shelter, and though Buddy understood his reasoning, it made him nervous. He said nothing to Richie about it. Certain things put people on edge. Being anxious was a part of life these days. It could only be accepted and lived with.

  "Time?" Amanda asked, breaking the silence.

  Richie looked at his watch, blinked twice to get a better focus on the darkened face, and told her that it was just after two in the morning. Amanda thanked him. They kept moving along the road, their steps making muffled taps on the surface.

  The silence returned. The night seemed thicker, somehow, but Richie knew that was his imagination. The temperature was dropping as they moved north. It was down to eighty-six on the surface at night, which was a major improvement on their situation with every mile they traveled. The days were still lethal, but the nights were definitely getting better.

  Elvis, Buddy, and Richie had learned to doze while walking. It was an easy way to move through the night without thinking too much about it. Richie had been going in and out since their first hour on the road.

  It wasn't like sleeping, not really, but more like a liquid daydream where everything took on a fuzzy aura. His eyelids fell, but didn't quite close. Amanda, who hadn't quite gotten the hang of their version of sleep walking, noticed the time pass while the others did not. There were moments, like this one, where she cursed herself for not finding her own watch at some point.

  Amanda asked the time again. Richie was patient, didn't mind looking at his watch a hundred times in a night if it put someone at ease, and did so without paying much attention. It wasn't a big deal. He didn't even have to wake up much.

  "It's two-ten," he told her from his blanket of walking slumber and yawned.

  Amanda stopped, frozen in her tracks. This made the others take note and stop also, but with less fear in their eyes. Richie looked at her expectantly.

  "What's wrong?" Elvis asked her, voicing everyone's question.

  "How long ago did I ask you what time it was?" she asked, her voice trembling.

  "I don't know," he answered, watching Elvis wipe the sweat off of his face with a red bandana.

  That's odd, Richie thought, He hasn't been doing that lately.

  "It's been a while, right?" she asked, "Tell me I'm not crazy here."

  "It has been a little while," Buddy said, "What time was it the last time?"

  "He said that it was a little after two," Amanda answered him, fear growing inside of her, "And it's getting hotter."

  "Shit!" Richie said, looking at his watch, the thin hand that ticked away the seconds holding at three after the hour, "It stopped!"

  They all stood there for a minute, though it felt like a year. It was close to dawn and they hadn't realized it.

  They were less than sixty days from their destination. They'd survived for more than three hundred days by paying attention to everything around t
hem, but the most important thing to know was the simplest thing. It was the thing that would've definitely killed them if not for Amanda's need to know what time it was. It could still kill them if they didn't get moving. When would the sun rise?

  "Run!" Buddy shouted, "We gotta fucking run!"

  They ran, though not as quickly as they might have been able to do a year before. They searched the sides of the road, praying for a house or gas station to enter their vision. They didn't say anything, too busy using the energy to run.

  All of them felt the bundles on their backs gaining weightt, shuffling back and forth with their strides. The sound of the contents of their rucks served as a cadence.

  They looked from side to side, not knowing how long they had to make it underground. They felt the temperature increasing, but didn't know if it was due to the exertion, or if it was the day closing in on them.

  More speed. They needed more, just to make it to where ever they were going. The fear helped, dumping adrenaline into their blood streams as they went.

  Richie cursed himself. How could he have slipped like this after so long? He cursed the watch for letting him down, cursed it for doing what everything does sooner or later. He didn't have time to hate himself, just now. He had to run, had to find a place for them.

  They're all going to die! It's your fault, Richie! If you're lucky, you'll die with them!

  Shut up!

  "The right!" Elvis shouted, pointing out a squat structure against the side of the road.

  Richie judged the place to be about a mile away. It would likely have shelter, as all of the buildings they'd found in the area so far were built over basements or shelters of some sort. He picked up speed, hoping to get there first, in case something was amiss. He pulled ahead of Buddy, really starting to feel the effects of the running. Please God, he thought as he started the last half mile.

  The heat was becoming unbearable. They'd taken too long to get this far. If Richie had realized the time, they'd have picked up the pace. It was his fault if anyone got hurt or died. It would be on him to make this right.