After the Day

by Matthew Gilman

  Isabel had taken a keen interest in some of the activities around the camp that she normally had not partaken in before. When the guys got together to practice hand to hand combat she started to show up and got involved in the one on one practice. When the shooters practiced in the field with the air rifles she was there learning how to shoot. They used air rifles instead of real guns to save the little ammo they had left. They had searched for reloading tools but everything disappeared years ago. The Lord’s Army was not turning out to be the answer that everybody had hoped for. Poorly run and poorly managed it was turning out to be a disappointment like the system that had collapsed before. The more that the Reverend used the answer of God for everything the more people were disenfranchised.

  One of the expedition groups came back with a tale not of John but something else that could either be an end all or savor to their group. Five men were sent to the south to look for traces of John. Instead they came across a neighborhood that was turned into a fortress.

  No longer having gas to use the group hiked out on foot and searched for any sign of John. They met a few people and they started to get warnings about heading south.

  “You don’t want to go there. My friend was blown up by a land mine.” One man said.

  “Who the hell has land mines?” One of the men replied.

  “Someone does down that way. You take this road two miles south and you won’t be coming back.”

  “We will see about that.” The men walked south thinking this was the big break they had been looking for. This sounded like something John would have set up for protection.

  After a mile and a half they started seeing signs posted: No Trespassing, Violators will be Shot, Protected by .357 Magnum. They were hard to take seriously, pre-made items that would have been sold at mall stores and gun shops as a novelty gift. They came across an old crater in the street, blown out from underneath. A corpse lay a few feet away with legs and parts of the arm missing. The body had decomposed to the point of visible bone and some skin still attached but baked and dried in the sun.

  “Ok everybody spread out.” The leader of the group was Marco. A former gang member and football player he finally found god after the collapse and believed surviving the flu was a second chance given by God.

  He looked around. The area was a residential neighborhood. He even recognized it from before the collapse. It was now over grown and dilapidated but he could make out the houses and the street signs were still up.

  The group split into two sub groups. Three men on one side of the road and two men on the other. They talked by hand signals and they slowly moved down the street looking for signs of booby traps.

  Chapter 21: Three years after the Day

  Turning the dark brown soil in the garden with a hoe, Bruce noticed how well the kale and other greens were doing after the first frost. Norah had told him that they would not fully die during the winter and yet he was surprised to see it for himself. Weeding was no longer an issue and yet he found himself going through the motions as a form of meditation every day. Aurora played a few rows over looking at some of the praying mantis’s that had survived the frost. Bruce wondered when he would start finding headless mantis corpses from their mating.

  Norah was in the house baking bread and the smell blew over the field at times when the wind was just right. The smell made him hungry. Aurora would smell it once in a while and Bruce would hear, “Mmmmm.”

  “I know what you mean. There is nothing like a fresh loaf of bread.” Bruce finished with the last row and decided that it was break time.

  “Daddy, this garden looks really pretty.” Aurora ran around and played hide and seek from Bruce as he walked back. He pretended not to see her and she would pop out from behind broccoli plants and fennel.

  “She’s right. This garden is pretty.” Bruce heard a voice from behind him.

  He turned around a saw a middle aged man wearing a camouflage hat and matching clothes. The man had a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “You look like you are doing pretty well for yourselves.” The man with the camouflage hat said walking towards them.

  “Aurora go to the house.” Bruce said.

  Aurora ran at full speed. She had learned long ago that when Bruce spoke in a certain voice you don’t question it but react immediately.

  “Now that wasn’t nice. I was only saying hello.”

  Bruce recognized the man as one of the people that he had watched a few months back. The cannibals that he almost introduced himself to. The image of this man cutting people’s throats open flashed in his mind and Bruce wished he had the shotgun from the fireplace.

  “What do you want?” Bruce said.

  “Now that is not very hospitable. Here I am complimenting your garden and you think I want something?” The man with the camouflage hat said.

  “I know who you are.” Bruce said.

  “Oh, so you know what we are after. Ok. Cutting to the real issue I see. I will give you the option then since you are out here and the other two are not. You give me the old woman or the girl and the other two get to live. How is that?” The man with the camouflage hat said.

  “You think I’m going to give you someone, so you can eat them?” Bruce said.

  “It’s either them or you.” The man said.

  “Fuck you and get off my farm.” Bruce said.

  “Ohhhh, we have a live one here. Fine, I guess we will take you and call it good. That’s fine since you don’t want to cooperate. We will come back later and take the other two. How do you like that?” The man with the camouflage hat whistled and more people came out from the tree line.

  Bruce felt the urge to run back to the house but knew he wouldn’t make it. He wondered if he could somehow fight them off. Options ran through his head and yet nothing was the right answer. He was a dead man.

  A blast ran through the air. One of the men screamed and dropped to the ground. A second blast rang out and a second man dropped dead as half of his face blew behind his body. Norah emerged from one of the rows in the field and reloaded the double barrel.

  “The way I see it is that you people are trespassing. For every minute you are on my property I will blast two more of you back to hell. Now get the hell off my property and take these two sacks of shit back with you.” Norah finished her piece then ducked back behind the row of sorghum.

  Bruce backed away from the man with the camouflage hat.

  “It’s ok. We will be back one day.” The man said. “Grab these two and let’s get out of here. It looks like we still have dinner tonight.”

  “No, NO! It’s not that bad! It’s not!” One of the men screamed while holding his crotch.

  “She blew your man parts off. You still want to live?” The man with the camouflage hat said.

  “It’s not that bad.” The man screamed.

  The man with the camouflage hat pulled his gun out and put a bullet into the head of the bleeding man.

  “It was that bad and I didn’t want to see it.” The man with the camouflage hat said. “Get these two out of here.”

  The man turned back to Bruce and winked at him.

  “We’ll be back,” he said.

  Bruce ran back to the house and rushed in through the door to find Aurora sitting at the table. He hugged her and started crying.

  “Good girl Aurora, good girl.”

  “Daddy, those were bad men?” She asked.

  “Yes they were. Very bad.” He said.

  “Ok.”

  Norah walked back in the house and placed the shotgun next to the door.

  “Well those guys won’t be back for a while. Once you kill a few they give up because they have something to eat. Gross bastards, pardon my French dear.”

  Aurora didn’t pay any attention to Norah.

  “Will they be back?” Bruce asked.

  “I don’t know, never shot one of their peckers off before. Might make them think twice.”

  Chapter 22: Three years after the Da
y

  Inside his two story Dutch style house, reading For Whom The Bell Tolls, Mark sat up to the alarm sound from his computer monitor. The dinging noise interrupted the 1812 Overture that was playing. He placed the book mark into the crease of the book and gently closed it shut and placed it on the coffee table. Sitting at the computer desk he looked at the small screens on the monitor that showed the various streets that surrounded his house. It took him a year to place all the cameras and wire them back to the cabin. He had a two block buffer zone around his house. A former IT tech and weekend survivalist he had designed the neighborhood to look like an uninhabited area but also gave the ghost like impression that it was dangerous. The old sight of a land mine should have sent others back the way they came but for some reason these guys were now working their way to his place. Had they heard about the stock pile of supplies he had around the neighborhood? One house already blew up after a door was improperly opened. Another time he was able to snipe the intruders from a hundred yards away. He killed one of the three men and that was enough to send them packing.

  Watching the five man team that appeared to have training he wondered how challenging this could get. He pulled out his scoped M1 Garand and loaded the 30-06 magazine. He grabbed a bandolier filled with ammo, a coat and headed out the door. He was sure to place a piece of tape on the door and the frame to make sure he came back with no surprises waiting for him.

  The men were coming from the north and he walked in that direction. He knew where they were and what they were in store for. He had several traps set up on the perimeter that would slow them down. At the end of the street was an old church with a bell tower that he would go to first. From there he could wait and watch and finish off what his traps didn’t.

  Casually walking to the large double doors of the church he slid his knife between the doors unhooking the lock and trap that he had set. Only one door was able to be opened and if both here pulled open then they blew out into the street. He had become accustomed to unsetting his traps with the ease of any other day to day activity. The trick was to simply remember they were there.

  Walking in, the musky smell of damp wood assaulted his face. He wondered how many years he would get out of this place. Re-latching the doors behind him he took the three flights of stairs to the bell tower and looked down at the street. The men looked like dots, roaches running around. He smiled and counted the seconds before they came across their first obstacle.

  Taking the caps off his scope he looked down and watched. Along the road he had set up plastic trash bins as if they had been forgotten and left by the previous owners. Some to them still had their place of residence to themselves as their own personal tomb. Years before he had decided to leave the bodies where they were and take what he needed. No sense in wasting energy on putting them in the ground when nature would take its course.

  As they approached the first trash can he flicked the safety off his rifle and waited to see what would happen.

  Marco scanned the area with his AK47 trying to take in all the open spaces and corners at the same time. He never thought he would be using an assault rifle in his life. Always having a small pistol for his years of dealing drugs this was something that cartels would have but not a petty corner dealer like him.

  Moving along the sides of the houses he saw the group to his left stop. They were looking down and Marco put his fist up in the air signaling for the two men behind him to stop. Looking down he saw the thin wire line that ran over the street.

  “Holy shit,” he said under his breath.

  Signaling for the two men to stay where they were he moved across the street to talk to the others.

  “You see this shit?” One of the men said pointing to the line that came out of a plastic trash bin.

  “This is something John might do.” Marco said.

  “Fuck that. I say we get the fuck out of here and report it back to camp.” The man said.

  Marco thought about it for a few seconds.

  “Let’s at least confirm that it’s him. We could at least to that.” Marco answered.

  “I’m not getting blown up because he fucked the boss’s daughter.” The man replied.

  “I’m with him on that.” The second man added.

  Marco was losing his temper. He never had to deal with people back talking him in the gang. He earned his rank and nobody questioned that. Now it was a bunch of unfamiliar disrespectful motherfuckers that showed no respect.

  “Look motherfuckers…”

  Mark watched as the men stopped at his trip wire. On the side of the trash can facing the bell tower he had put a bulls eye that showed how to detonate the explosives inside with his rifle. Not only was it filled with dynamite but also thermite. He set the crosshairs on the bull’s eye and pulled the trigger.

  The plastic trash bin exploded with the shrapnel inside flying out in a fraction of a second. The three men disappeared in the explosion and the two men still on the opposite side of the street flew back and lay on the ground. Mark flicked the safety back on and watched as the smoke cleared. The three men that were standing next to the trash bin were dead. He didn’t have to confirm it with the damage to their bodies. Limbs were gone and the amount of damage they took, even if they survived the initial blast, there was no hospital to take them to. They were dead even if they made it. The two other men stayed on the ground and crawled back down the road. They moved north, away from his house, away from Mark’s home.

  He smiled and went back down the stairs. He went into the basement of the church and grabbed a bag of beef jerky that he had stashed away as part of his supplies. Stuffing it in his pocket he went back upstairs and unlatched the door. He looked at the wire running to the layer of plastic explosives mounted on the door. He felt pity for the poor bastard that would one day open that door. Walking out, he re-latched the door with his knife, and opened the pack of jerky.

  Looking at the tape on the top of the door he knew that nobody had snuck in while he was gone. Placing his rifle back in the corner and hanging the bandolier, he sat on the couch and grabbed For Whom The Bell Tolls. This was the fifty-third book this year and it was only May. He was slowly making his way through the library of classics he had put together. Hemingway was doing his job of keeping him occupied. Mark wondered what Hemingway would have thought about the world and how it turned out. Would he really be surprised? Maybe that was what finally made him put a shotgun in his mouth. A self- destructive man living in a self-destructive world. Maybe the truth of how the world really worked was too much for him to bear. Mark read on and waited to see how the story turned out.

  Chapter 23: Three years after the Day

  John and Fatima took their time exploring the houses they came across until they found the one. They had agreed to what it would need. A few things really. Close water source, wood burning stove for winter and cooking, fertile soil, and protection. John preferred to find a real log cabin. Unfortunately those were hard to come by these days. New cheap materials and look a likes were all too common the past few decades. Using real long lasting materials doesn’t create a replacement economy.

  They explored a dozen houses. Walking through the woods and trying to stay close to the river they finally found one that might have everything. They walked along the banks of the river and John cut away the bushes and brush that impeded their way. After his last swing he saw it. Up on a hill over- looking the river was the cabin, real logs, stone chimney and a wood shingle roof. It was still morning.

  The nights had been getting colder. Winter was approaching faster every day. If they weren’t sharing the same sleeping bags for warmth he didn’t know if sleeping outdoors anymore would be a good idea.

  Fatima pushed through the brush to see John pointing to the hill with an excited look on his face.

  “Tell me you see it,” he said.

  “I see it…” Fatima said.

  John stood in place looking at it.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”
r />   They raced each other to the top of the hill. They were in shape from the hiking and constant travel but sprinting up the hill still left them out of breath and pausing at the top. John looked at the cabin. A porch on the back that over looked the river. On the front was another porch, a stack of old dried out logs sat waiting for them to use. Leaves covered the roof and porches. The house had not been used in years. An area was cleared in front of the cabin for parking, a small field stretched out for about a hundred yards. John pictured placing his seeds in the soil in the spring. A shed sat on the far side of the cabin. He figured it was filled with tools but didn’t want to get too hopeful.

  Fatima caught her breath first and ran to the front door. As a joke she knocked on the door. She looked at John and shrugged her shoulders. He smiled at her and ran toward the door. She turned the knob and pushed the door open. It was dark inside, curtains closed and the smell of dust and mildew in the air. A couch and table sat in the middle facing the fireplace. A bed was found on the opposite side, a book shelf placed between the spaces to create the illusion of privacy. A deer head sat over the fireplace. It was a hunting cabin of luxury, now their home.

  Fatima unsnapped her pack and let it drop to the floor. John stood behind her and looked around. He sat the gun next to the door and closed it behind him. He dropped his pack. He walked up behind Fatima and slid his hands around her waist. She exhaled and felt her skin tingle. His breathing became heavy. She turned around and locked her lips to his. He wrapped his arms around her and moved her to the bed. She pulled his shirt over his head and started unbuckling his pants. He did the same as they continued to kiss.

  John ripped the top sheet off the bed and she fell back on it. Kicking his pants off Fatima removed her shirt and bra. He pulled her panties off in one swift motion and quickly crawled onto the bed.