Generation One had been the chairs at the tailgate party some fifty years before when Mr and Mrs Mathers had first met; he drinking with his college teammates, she protesting the university’s lack of funding for women’s sports. They’d gone through a lot of chairs over the years. Treating them unkindly, roughly, knowing the sentiment was stored in the idea, not the metal and canvas. These were the last pair, bought but never used. Mrs Mathers had left them behind, taking the memories with her instead.
Olivia pulled one out from between the boxes, unfolded it, and sat down, wrapping the borrowed coat around her as she tried to stay warm, finally allowing herself to remember all that had happened over a long and horrific day.
Nicole was dead.
Quietly, Olivia cried.
Chapter 6 - By Dawn’s Glaring Light
Lilac Road, South Bend
She didn’t sleep. Slowly the sky brightened, then darkened again as clouds swept in from the north.
“Thirsty, stiff, cold,” she whispered. “But one of those can be fixed.”
Sufficient light crept through the broad kitchen window to see she’d been wrong: the kitchen wasn’t entirely empty. There was a letter on the counter addressed to Jenny, a nearly-next-door-neighbour who owned the corner house with the blue picket fence. A little younger than Mrs Mathers, Jenny had a sprawling tribe of children and grandchildren for whom working the carpet store stockroom during high-school vacations was as long-running a family tradition as the New Year’s Day movie.
Olivia had met Jenny a few times, and been to the New Year’s movie day once. An entire screen at the theatre had been booked, the cinema filled with the extended family, eating smuggled-in hot dogs, drinking home-brew cider. She smiled at the happy memory.
The envelope wasn’t sealed, so Olivia didn’t feel too guilty about opening it. Inside, she found a letter, and a second envelope. The second envelope was affixed with a stamp and inscribed with a very familiar address: her own. She read the letter addressed to Jenny first.
Dear Jenny,
As promised, the boxes in the den are for Malcolm. The contents belonged to Charlie, but they’re still in good condition. It would be a sin to bin them, but I don’t want to bring those particular memories with me to Florida.
Please could you mail the enclosed letter for me?
I look forward to seeing you in March, in the sunshine, and will speak to you before then.
Yours, as always,
Nora.
Hands trembling, she opened the letter addressed to her.
My dearest Olivia,
You know how much I hate breaking my word, but packing has brought up too many memories. Life has finally caught up with me, and I’m feeling my age. I’ve left early, and I am deeply sorry I didn’t tell you, but once I’d sold the house, I felt as if I was a stranger here with only Charlie’s ghost for company. I have to begin my new life, and let him enjoy his eternal rest.
When I sold the store, I told Ms Kempton you should manage it. I’m sorry that she didn’t give you the promotion. And I’m sorry that the sale makes your position somewhat precarious. No one knows what the future will bring, but everyone needs a place of their own, so I’m giving you the cabin. It’s not much, but like Mark Twain said, no one’s building land anymore. Go up there, take a look for yourself. If you think it’ll be too much to manage, too far from the city, the realtor who handled the sale of my home thinks she has a buyer. It won’t bring in much, but it should be enough to set you up in a new life in a new place, all of your own.
And if you do decide to leave, consider Florida. You’ll always be a welcome guest of mine, and a welcome neighbour.
With all my love,
Nora.
Olivia leaned heavily against the counter. She was a homeowner. Owner of a cabin and a few acres of woodland. Or, really, owner of a few thousand dollars with which she could start over. Mrs Mathers had read between the lines, filled in the gaps, and come up with a solution. A cabin, an asset, she could keep or sell, and an invitation down to Florida where there were plenty of care homes looking for an assistant manager. There it was, the invitation that Olivia had been too proud to ask for. A lifeline. A future. It wasn’t an answer to all her problems, since it didn’t resolve the issue of Pete, but it reframed the question. For the first time, she had a safety net. A secure fallback if her romantic, made-for-TV fantasy failed.
But the world had changed. Pete was in Hawaii, Nora was in Florida, and Nicole was dead.
“Despair solves nothing,” she said loudly, as she stared at the dark square on the wall where the cross-stitched motto had hung. “No, despair only distracts, though not from hunger.”
Water helped a little, as she drank one cupped handful after another. A cold-water wash with the dish-soap left beneath the sink helped a little more. She didn’t feel clean, but she felt awake. And hungry.
It took less than half an hour to confirm that the house truly was empty except for the boxes in the den. Among the jars of screws and bolts, the patched dungarees, and commemorative plates, she’d found an electric lantern, and the batteries to power it, but the glow it gave was softer than that of morning’s first light. A complete set of never-used Fighting Irish mugs gave her something to drink water from, but the only real find was the four boxes in the middle and bottom of the pile. Left behind by accident, they contained some of Mrs Mathers’s old clothes. The volcanic-orange calf-length skirt fit, though only after she’d used a screwdriver to punch a new hole in one of Mr Mathers’s heavy-duty belts. A ruffled blouse that had gone out of fashion before she was born, and probably before Mrs Mathers was married, was far warmer than the stained scrubs she’d worn from the hospital.
She sat on the chair, surveying the boxes.
“It’s not much, is it?” she said to herself. “But better than nothing.”
A comment which only reminded her of how little she’d eaten in the last day. She crossed to the window. She could see Jenny’s house, ringed by the blue picket fence. But there were no more signs of life now than there had been by dawn’s first light. Like with the other driveways in view, the cars were gone. Everyone was gone.
Her stomach growled, and she sighed. There was no option left but to return to the hospital. Memories of the previous night came back to her, accompanied by a pre-emptive wave of exhaustion at the coming day’s arduous labours. She’d return to the hospital soon. But there was no hurry. No reason to rush. She made a nest on the floor out of the unused clothes, curled up, and slept.
A few hours later, she woke, stiff and starving. She wasn’t sure of the time since she had no phone or watch, and the only clock among Mr Mathers’s hand-me-downs had no batteries. Water filled her stomach, but it didn’t trick her mind. There was no food in the house. No money, either. Nor a car. She had no phone. No way of knowing what was happening in the wider world. She had the cabin, sure, but there was no way of reaching it without driving.
It was a nice idea, escaping to the cabin. She and Pete had spent many happy afternoons thrashing out their post-apocalyptic plans, but not with any seriousness. Reality was different. If the police sergeant took her back to her apartment, and she got her keys, she could drive to the cabin. But then what? No. It was far more sensible to return to the hospital, where she’d be assured of something to eat, and probably somewhere more comfortable to sleep than the floor of this unheated room. Before she could change her mind, she left.
Keeping away from the kerb, she kept her head down, but her eyes up as vehicle after vehicle sped by. The sidewalk was as empty as first thing that morning, but the roads were busier as people drove north and south, east and west. The houses, however, were darker, emptier. Outside some properties, the half-full bags abandoned on the driveways were an obvious clue that the owners had spent the night packing, and left with dawn’s first light, but had overestimated how much their car could hold.
As she crossed the interstate, she toyed with the idea of breaking in. If the owners had gon
e, they’d have left some food behind. But when she came to a house where a pair of young men stood in the doorway, crowbars in hand, she changed her mind. Though she was hungry, it wasn’t just a single meal she sought. She kept her head down, and hurried on.
But with her head down, she didn’t see the car until it was almost too late. As she jumped sideways, the vehicle swerved across the road, narrowly missing her before clipping a streetlight, spinning ninety degrees, and coming to a ragged halt. She picked herself up, and took an uncertain step towards the car, but stopped as the passenger door opened and a blood-soaked man stepped out. It wasn’t the blood which made her pause, but the gun in his hand.
She backed up as he staggered on a few paces, turning to face her, raising the gun until a dog bounded over a fence, yapping and barking.
With the gunman distracted, she turned and ran, diving down a narrow alley. Another alley and two roads later, and she was heading south again, determined that the hospital was the right destination. Hearing a sound behind, she turned, expecting to see a person, but it was only a dog, a fawn-coloured Great Dane with a wet-looking coat and a tired look in his eyes.
“You’re the dog that just saved me,” she said. “Thanks.”
The dog gave a tilt of his head that almost seemed like a nod.
“You’re not called Betsy, are you?” she asked, remembering the man at the hospital who’d been bitten. The dog wagged his tail.
“No. Probably not. You should go home,” she said.
Dogs were like wolves, weren’t they? Descended from wolves, anyway. Had this one’s owners fled, leaving him behind? He didn’t seem dangerous, but nor did he seem to want to leave. Instead, he followed her south, falling into step at her side.
After a block, the dog finally stopped, sitting on the kerb. When she looked back, he was still there. When she looked ahead, she saw the smoke. She could smell it, too. Taste it. An acrid tang that had been growing in intensity. She’d been so focused on the dog, on the passing traffic, she’d not looked up. Ahead, a towering grey pillar tumbled skywards. With a sinking sense of inevitable dread, she kept going until she reached an intersection where a police car was skewed across the road, the engine partially buried beneath a four-ton truck. But she gave the vehicles barely a glance as she looked upward at the growing cloud of smoke. The hospital was on fire.
While she was still debating whether there was any sense in continuing, gunshots sounded from beyond the smoke-filled haze. As the rat-a-tat of automatic fire filled the silent streets, she ducked down, taking shelter behind the police car. A burst came again, longer, then silence. Another burst. This time shorter. Was it a gun battle, or just ammunition cooking in the blaze? Either way, it was an indication she should leave. She turned, about to run when she caught sight of the coat on the police car’s front passenger seat. The name read Wilgus. It belonged to the sergeant from the previous night. Cautiously, she tried the door handle. It was unlocked. There was no blood on the steering wheel, nor on the seat, suggesting no one had been inside the car when the truck had driven into it. She picked up the coat, checking the pocket, but the gun the sergeant had placed there was gone.
Another burst of unseen automatic rifle fire decide it. In a crouch, she ran, back the way she’d come, only slowing when she reached the kerb where the dog still sat. He tilted his head to one side as if in exasperation at the human who’d not taken his advice, then fell into step with her as she continued walking.
Where could she go? Hunger was an increasingly pressing problem. With no money, she couldn’t buy any food. Not that she’d seen any open stores. Her feet were taking her north, but there was no food at Nora’s, and there was none on the building site that used to be her place of work. She had no friends to visit. Leaving… where? Her apartment? Except that she didn’t know if the tactical unit would have been. If they hadn’t, Mack might still be inside. One of the properties with the possessions discarded on the drive? Maybe. She’d find food, but obviously no car. There was Pete’s place, of course. She had a key for his apartment on the same key ring as his truck’s key, which was in a drawer in her apartment. But his truck was in the garage beneath his building. She’d driven it there herself after he’d been suddenly whisked away to Hawaii. He had a spare set of keys in his apartment, inside a plastic Statue of Liberty. If she could get in, she could get the keys, and take his truck. His apartment door would be locked, of course, but it felt less like a crime than robbing some random stranger.
“Yes,” she said aloud. “Pete’s.”
The dog gave a soft yip.
“I don’t have any food,” she said. “And if you’re thinking of eating me, I’m going to put up a fight. Okay.” She stopped. “Seriously, are you called Betsy?” She bent and checked his collar. The name tag read Rufus, beneath was a phone number.
“Sorry, I can’t call your owner. No phone,” she said. “And I don’t think they work anymore. Did you get left behind?”
She found talking to the dog helped. If nothing else, it helped her feel less alone as, on the road, one overloaded vehicle after another barrelled by. Trucks, cars, even an ice-cream van, loaded down with possessions. Those she could see suggested the occupants prized what had been valuable last week over those more everyday items invaluable for survival. But where were they going? No one stopped, and she didn’t feel comfortable asking any of the people boarding up their shops and homes.
When she reached Mrs Mathers’s house, Olivia went inside, holding the door open, but Rufus sat on the porch.
“You’re an outdoors dog? Fair enough. I won’t be long.”
And she wasn’t. She knew what she was after. Among Mr Mathers’s boxes was a wide selection of tools. Some were nearly as old as the couple’s marriage, but they were meticulously clean. She took the hammer, screwdriver, and a small pry-bar. They went into a tasselled knit shoulder bag that must have belonged to Mrs Mathers. Before leaving, she filled one of the plastic bowls with water and took it outside with her, placing it in front of the dog.
Rufus yipped his thanks, and then began guzzling. She kept going, walking away from the house, briefly glancing back to see the dog happily lapping at the bowl.
“So you were only after a free drink?” she said. “I suppose I should be glad.”
But she felt a pang of regret that, once more, she walked the city alone.
Chapter 7 - Breaking the Law
South Bend
Breaking the law, and breaking into Pete’s apartment, was far easier than she’d expected. She slotted the pry-bar into the gap between door and lock. One tap with the hammer, one dull crack from the lock plate, and the door swung ajar.
She quickly stepped inside, glancing back along the dark, quiet corridor with its six other doors leading off it. But quiet wasn’t silence. Behind at least one of those doors, someone listened, watched, shuffling their feet, breathing softly. She pushed the door closed, and used the pry-bar to wedge it shut.
So far, so good.
Her first stop were the curtains, drawing them to let in a little light.
“Wow, Pete. You’re not the tidiest, are you?”
The efficiency apartment wasn’t dirty, but it was simply too small for Pete’s acquired junk. Barely giving the jungle of cables, forest of bank envelopes, and clutter of collectibles more than the briefest of curious glances, she entered the small galley-kitchen, revising it downwards into a kayak’s kitchenette. As she’d expected and hoped, the minuscule pantry was crammed with sugar-laden, unnaturally coloured, gloriously edible cereal. Twelve boxes in total, seven of which were unopened. In the still-humming fridge, she found two sealed gallon jugs of milk. Though Pete hadn’t expected to leave town the night he’d disappeared in the limo, it was typical he’d not considered scaling back his purchase of perishables before going away. The milk wasn’t sour. The cereal in the open packet was close to stale, but she didn’t notice until her third bowl.
Over her more thoughtful fourth bowl, she reassessed her act
ions, decisions, and options. The hospital had burned down. An emergency clinic would have opened somewhere, but was there any point in looking for it? What did she want? If she could find him, Sergeant Wilgus might escort her back to her apartment, but she couldn’t think of anything there she needed. Her car, her clothes, her food, weren’t needed while she was working at the hospital. Which, of course, she couldn’t now it had burned down. She wanted somewhere safe to sleep and a few square meals. The hospital had ticked those boxes, particularly safety. Or so she’d thought.
Finishing her bowl, she looked about the small living and sleeping room. Pete still had the flea-market chair. The small table was covered in some books, a few dollar store DVDs, and a dusty Statue of Liberty. Inside were the spare car keys and two hundred dollars. She smiled, impressed he’d been able to sequester so much, but unsurprised he kept it as cash rather than in a bank. Even if there was a typhoon on Hawaii, his rainy-day fund was of no use to him now. Pocketing the keys and cash, she turned her attention to what else she could use.
The miniature closet contained more shoes than clothes, and half of those were his old work uniform. The bathroom contained a one-gallon jug of shower gel, one toothbrush, a mammoth tube of toothpaste, a comb, a half-empty crate of deodorant, and a quarter empty pallet of toilet paper stuffed into the narrow cupboard beneath the small sink.
“You like shopping in bulk, don’t you?” she said. “Or you hate shopping. Which is it, Pete? I should know, shouldn’t I?” A wave of regret washed over her, followed by one of tiredness. She rested her hands on the cold ceramic sink and peered at the gaunt stranger in the mirror. She tried the faucet, intending to splash some on the back of her neck. A wondrously soothing cloud of steam rose as hot water gurgled down the plughole.
Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News Page 5
