Desolation

by David Lucin

  She couldn’t feel the bodies on her anymore. She exhaled and inspected her surroundings. She saw two cars: one, a black Ford SUV, rested on a lift, and the other, a red two-door electric, sat on the concrete floor. On the walls hung shelves with tools, tires, cans, and the like. The whole place stunk like oil and metal shavings.

  Thirty people had found their way into the shop, maybe more; Jenn couldn’t count them all. But it wasn’t crowded. She could breathe and no strangers touched or pushed her anymore.

  “Close that fucking door!” a woman yelled. Jenn couldn’t see her.

  Sam let go of Jenn’s hand. “There’s tons of room in here!” he shouted back.

  She followed him as he slipped into the waiting room. She hesitated for a second, remembering the feeling of being forced in like toothpaste through the tube, but she stepped inside. Three men wearing blue coveralls braced the front door while a woman bent down behind the desk. Jenn judged her as mid- or late forties. She wore blue jeans and a white tank top and had a cream-colored blouse tied around her waist. A loose ponytail contained her straight brown hair.

  “You find anything?” one of the men yelled.

  “Not yet,” the woman said. “Keep holding them off!”

  Outside the door, a crowd as large as the one at the Flagstaff Realty office barreled down on Minute Tire. A few banged on the windows, their faces as white as bedsheets and their eyes wide. Fear drove their every move.

  “Let them in!” Sam yelled. “There’s room for all of us in here!”

  The woman at the desk popped up. “Are you out of your fucking mind? If we let them in, we’ll end up with the whole fucking town in here. No way. We need to keep them out or we’re dead.”

  Jenn knew how this ended. The mob outside Flagstaff Realty wanted in so badly it broke the window. It’d do the same here. As Jenn saw it, the men in coveralls had two options: they could either let the mob in and hope no one else came by or they could abandon the waiting room, retreat inside the shop, and try to stand their ground from in there. The people from outside would break into the shop, too, if they tried hard enough.

  “Let them in,” Jenn said. Sam raised an eyebrow at her but offered a nod of thanks.

  “Heads up!” one of the men at the door yelled.

  A rock or brick flew over the heads of the crowd outside and rebounded off the window. It didn’t break, but the men at the door withdrew for a moment, then leaned into it again.

  “They’ll break the window,” Jenn said to the woman at the desk. “At the real estate office up the street. It happened there. There’s only a few of them. Let them in. There’s lots of room.”

  The men holding the door looked at the woman, who put her hands on her hips. “Do it,” she commanded.

  “What?” one of the men yelled.

  “You heard me,” she said. “Let them in here and then lock up. I’ll go find a brace in the shop.”

  She stormed past Jenn without making eye contact. Who was this woman? The boss? Did she own this place? Whoever she was, the men in the coveralls listened to her, and Jenn didn’t blame them. She sensed this woman was teetering on angry, and Jenn didn’t want to see her cross that line.

  The door flung open as the three men wearing coveralls stepped aside to let the crowd in. Jenn jumped away and let them pass. Sam stood straight with his back against the wall as people poured into the shop like water through a cracked dam. Once everyone was in, the men shut the door, locked it, and drew the shades.

  8

  “What time is it?” Sam asked Jenn.

  She lifted her right butt cheek off the concrete floor and reached for her phone but hesitated. “Why don’t you check your phone?”

  “It’s dead, remember?” He handed it to her. “See?”

  Jenn tapped the screen, but it stayed black. “If it’s dead, why’d you take it with you?”

  “Old habits die hard, I guess.” Sam tucked the phone into his pocket. “So?”

  Jenn took out hers and let it scan her face. It flicked on, and she cringed when she saw the battery at fifteen percent. She doubted she’d have service, but she checked anyway. Still nothing.

  “Just after one,” she said.

  She put the phone to sleep to preserve as much battery as possible. If it died, she’d have no way to charge it and no way to contact her parents, even if cell service returned.

  Leaning into him and laying her head on his shoulder, Jenn scanned the room. Light beamed through the windows at the top of each of the two bay doors, coloring the shop a dull orange and reflecting off particles of floating dust. Jenn guessed forty people had found their way into the tire shop. Like her and Sam, most claimed spots around the walls. Some found chairs, and a few others, big guys from the looks of it, camped out on the hood of the red two-door. Jenn couldn’t believe they hadn’t crushed the poor thing.

  A cough echoed through the room, temporarily drowning out the sound of a baby. It had started crying a half hour after Jenn and Sam came in and hadn’t stopped for more than a few minutes at a time. The father had done probably fifteen laps of the shop already to try and calm it down.

  “Hey,” Jenn heard a woman say.

  She lifted her head off Sam’s shoulder. Someone stood in front of them, the windows in the bay doors silhouetting the figure. Jenn squinted and let her pupils adjust. Then she noticed the blouse tied to the woman's waist.

  “Hi,” Jenn said.

  “Thanks for letting us in,” Sam said. “This is your shop?”

  “Sure is. My husband and me. Not much to look at, but we do all right, I guess.”

  Jenn couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She considered complimenting the shop but expected it would come across as sarcastic or condescending at this point. She went in a different direction. “Is your husband here?”

  “At home today,” she said. “Waiting for me to get there.”

  “Aren’t you worried about him?”

  The woman snorted. “He’s fine. Trust me.” She rubbed the base of her neck and shifted her weight. “Anyway, listen, I wanted to say thanks for what you did back there. Both of you.”

  Sam furrowed his brow. “What did we do?”

  “Talked some sense into me.” She crouched down to Jenn and Sam’s eye level. “I had every intention of leaving those people out there.”

  “You wouldn’t have done that,” Sam said.

  The wrinkles around the corners of her mouth twitched but she didn’t smile. She’d pulled her hair out of the ponytail and it hung past her shoulders. Jenn envied her striking cheekbones but lamented the smell of real cigarette smoke coming from her clothes. “You’re right,” the woman said, nodding to Jenn. “They probably would have busted in, anyway.”

  “I just had a feeling,” Jenn said. “The mob up the street was pretty desperate.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. They almost broke my window. Anyway . . .”

  She put her hands on her knees and went to push herself up, but Sam interrupted. “I’m Sam. This is Jenn.”

  “Sophie.”

  “Any idea how long we should stay in here?” Sam asked. “I mean, it seems like you had a plan.”

  “A plan? No, not really,” Sophie said, staying crouched and glancing over her shoulder. “I just knew what kind of shit we were in.”

  “How?” Jenn asked. “From those videos?”

  Sophie cracked a real smile this time, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Let’s just say I’ve been expecting this for a while. I was on my way outta here before that fucking mob showed up at my front door. News travels fast when people are shitting their pants in fear, I guess.”

  Jenn stopped herself from rolling her eyes. She knew the type: doomsdayers. The war germinated their theories about the end of the world, coaxing them out and multiplying their numbers. A few lived in the city, but there were far more in Flagstaff. Some, the ones who protested on campus, said the war was God’s punishment and that it’d end in Armageddon. Others simply st
ocked their houses full of canned goods and firearms and bought property outside of town. Jenn pegged Sophie as the latter. She might have mocked doomsdayers before, but they’d prepared for this scenario, so she gave Sophie the benefit of the doubt and decided to listen.

  “So why the cars?” Sam prodded. “Why won’t they work?”

  Sophie shuffled closer. “I have my theories.”

  “And?” Jenn said.

  “And I don’t want you yapping off and telling everyone here. They’ve calmed down a bit. I can’t have them losing their shit anymore.”

  “We won’t say anything,” Sam said before Sophie had finished speaking. “We don’t want that, either.”

  Sophie cracked her knuckles and bounced on her toes. “Fine. But keep quiet.”

  Jenn and Sam nodded.

  “I think those fucking Chinese—” She stopped herself and examined Jenn. “No offense.”

  Jenn could have corrected her, but for all she knew, Sophie was right and Jenn was Chinese, not Vietnamese like Sam thought. Either way, it didn’t matter and she didn’t want to debate the issue, so she played along and spoke to keep Sam from jumping in and defending her. If he did, Sophie might wind up less inclined to share her theories. “No worries,” Jenn said. “No offense taken.”

  “Anyway,” Sophie continued. “I think they hit us with an EMP.”

  “A what now?” Sam said.

  Sophie sighed. “EMP,” she whispered. “Electromagnetic pulse.” She pronounced the words slowly, like Jenn and Sam were children or foreign or both.

  Jenn piped in. “The bombs did that?”

  “No,” Sophie said. “I think there was a preemptive attack to soften us up, a high-altitude burst. Like in space. One of those would kill the power grid for hundreds, maybe thousands of miles in every direction.”

  “Thousands of miles?” Jenn blurted out. “When will it come back on?”

  “Keep it down!” Sophie commanded, putting a finger to her lips. “I don’t know. Days. Weeks. Maybe more. Transformers will be totally blown and need replacing. Solar probably survived but the batteries will be fried if they’re hooked into the grid. Fixing all that shit’s a lot of work. Who knows how long it’ll take.”

  Jenn couldn’t fathom weeks without power. The longest she’d gone was two days in Phoenix after a string of five or six record-hot days in August. Most of her family’s food spoiled and they’d heard talk of the city organizing water rations if the water towers ran out. Stores shut down and reports of looting were widespread. This all happened before the war, though, before a pound of bacon cost a week’s salary. How would Phoenix react to a long-term blackout now? Jenn hoped her parents had jumped in the truck and left already.

  “That’s what killed the cars?” Sam asked. “The EMP?”

  “Had to be. Those nukes wouldn’t have done it. Too far away.”

  “But why some cars and not others? And why my phone?” Sam handed it to Sophie.

  “Military tech, it’s hardened to protect against EMPs, but civvie stuff isn’t. They’ll fuck up a car if it’s running.” Sophie tapped the screen on Sam’s phone. “Was this plugged in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’ll do it,” she said, handing him the phone. “Power surge. Overloads anything with a circuit board hooked into the grid. Phones, TVs, Powerwalls, cars, whatever.” She pointed to the red two-door. “That one was plugged in. It won’t start anymore. But the Ford’s fine. Shit, I’m surprised any cars or phones are working at all.”

  Jenn could see Sam trying to make sense of everything. She slapped the finger from his mouth as he gnawed at a fingernail. “And the fallout?” she asked Sophie. “How long do we have to stay inside?”

  Sophie stood and tightened the blouse around her waist. “No idea. I haven’t thought that far ahead. All I know is that we can’t go outside. Not until it’s safe.”

  “And when will that be?” Sam said.

  “Does it look like I have all the answers?” Sophie leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “Look, we’re keeping an eye on things. Sit tight, have a glass of water from the bathroom, take a nap, whatever. Just don’t go running your fat mouth. And don’t think about leaving. I’m not letting anyone open that door until I make the call.”

  She walked off, adjusting the blouse to expose the pistol tucked into her pants. Subtle.

  “Shit,” Jenn cursed.

  “What?”

  “That doesn’t help us much.”

  “At least we have something to go on now.”

  Sophie had a theory, sure, but the details didn’t interest Jenn as much as they interested Sam. She was thinking about Gary and Maria, hoping they’d buckled down at home. But she also thought about her parents. If fallout had come all the way to Flagstaff, living in the suburbs might not save them. Maybe they hid inside and decided to wait out the radiation before coming to find Jenn. But was that enough? Not like many houses in Arizona had basements. Were they at least home when it happened? If not, they might have ended up stuck in a store like Jenn and Sam. She tried picturing them safe at home—her mother on the couch with her phone and her father cooking something in the kitchen—if only to keep herself from imagining the alternative.

  She didn’t want to sit here in Minute Tire. She wanted to be at Gary’s, but she understood the risk of going outside if radiation had fallen on Flagstaff. She’d seen enough of those safety videos to realize that she couldn’t help Gary and Maria if her skin started bubbling off and she spent all her time vomiting.

  She checked the time again: 1:31 p.m. And no service. “In one hour,” she told Sam, “we’ll go talk to Sophie.”

  9

  The air in Minute Tire tasted stuffy, and sweat soaked Jenn’s shirt where her back rested against the wall. The stench of body odor had overtaken the smell of metal and oil. She swore everyone was getting closer to her. Why didn’t they spread out? They had the whole shop. Why’d they have to crowd her like this?

  The baby wailed. How had it not fallen asleep yet? It’d cried for seven straight hours. How much longer could it possibly go? And why hadn’t the father shut it up? What was he doing away from home with a baby during a blackout, anyway?

  Jenn wiped sweat from her forehead and shifted her butt. She could hardly feel it anymore. Sam’s hand touched her knee, but she jerked it away.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  The last thing Jenn wanted to do was discuss her feelings. Sam always prodded when she was quiet or when she didn’t smile. He’d ask her if she was grumpy or what was wrong. When she’d tell him she was fine, he’d keep asking. If he asked Jenn now, she might knock his teeth in. “Fine,” she said.

  “You don’t seem fine.”

  She breathed deep. It didn’t help. Her chest and stomach tightened and she clenched her hands into fists. She opened her mouth to respond but closed it instead. Maybe Sam would catch on.

  He went quiet for a moment but unfortunately spoke again. “It’s not ideal,” he said, “and I know you want to get home, but Sophie won’t let us leave. I’m surprised you guys didn’t come to blows when you talked to her for the third time a couple hours ago.”

  Jenn pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. She tried to keep her frustration in check, but it boiled over. “If you want a fight, I promise there’ll be one next time I see her.”

  Sam shifted his legs and turned his body toward Jenn. He sat cross-legged. No grown man should sit like that. It made Jenn want to hit him.

  “I understand,” he started. “You’re worried for Gary and Maria.”

  Sam was doing it again: reassuring her. She didn’t need reassurance. She needed to get the fuck out of here. He should have known that, since he’d made Jenn feel guilty about wanting to leave and go into Phoenix without saying goodbye to Gary and Maria. Besides, if he’d listened to Jenn, they’d have made it to Gary’s and hid there instead of in this roasting-hot tire shop. No way the fallout would have killed them in the ten minutes it took to run there.<
br />
  “I’m sure they’re fine,” he continued, even though she hadn’t said anything. Was it so obvious that she was worried about them?

  “How do you know that?” Jenn snapped. “Do you have some weird telepathic power you’ve never bothered mentioning?”

  He bit his fingernail. Jenn didn’t stop him this time.

  “So?” She stood. “You told me we needed to help Gary and Maria, and now you’re happy sitting here, waiting for the radiation to pass by?” She noticed heads turning and looking at her as she raised her voice. Sam shuffled in his seat. Soon, Sophie would come over and shut Jenn up, but she didn’t care. “We have no idea when it’ll be safe out there. It could be days. What if it’s not even safe in here? Then what? What did your precious safety videos say? Sophie doesn’t know. Nobody knows. We’re stuck in this shitty shop and can’t do anything.”

  Sam chewed his nail and refused to make eye contact. Jenn stared at him, challenging him to retaliate, but he never did. Whenever Jenn spoke her mind, Sam refused to engage her. It made Jenn want to pull her hair out.

  She locked her fingers behind her head as the onlookers returned to their own concerns. An exhale and a blow of her cheeks drew Sam’s attention. He looked up at her, his eyes a mix of worry and embarrassment.

  “Fuck this,” she said, turning away.

  “What? You can’t just leave,” Jenn heard him say, but she was already storming toward the two bay doors at the front of the shop.

  She felt eyes following her as she passed the red car and evaded the three who’d annexed it. Where had Sophie hidden? Was she watching?

  Jenn reached the bay doors, but the windows were at least a foot above her. She jumped up and tried to look out but only saw a blur. Readjusting her sweaty tank top, she checked the door leading from the shop to the waiting room. Two of Sophie’s henchmen stood guard. Both wore their blue coveralls, but one had unzipped his and let the top hang off his waist, revealing a sweat-drenched gray T-shirt. He held a long piece of pipe or metal. She didn’t see a weapon on the other, but she assumed he had a pistol.