Desolation

by David Lucin

  With the waiting room door not an option, Jenn searched for something to stand on so she could see out the windows. She spotted a metal chair in the corner of the shop, then walked over, snatched it by the backrest, and dragged it to the bay doors. The sound of metal legs scraping along the concrete filled the shop and made Jenn cringe and grit her teeth. Now she was certain people were watching her.

  Jenn dropped the chair under the window. Sam sat along their wall, watching her every move but not coming to help.

  She hopped onto the chair. Standing on her tiptoes, she leaned her palms against the metal bay doors and peered outside. The sun hung low in the sky and cast long shadows over Milton Road. Across the street, the boarded-up fast food place, silhouetted by the sun behind, stood there like nothing had happened. Jenn twisted her neck and pressed her right cheek against the glass to see farther down the road. No flames engulfed the office buildings and no glowing green ash coated their pink exteriors. They looked exactly as they had seven hours ago.

  No signs of life, though.

  Jenn heard stirring: chatter, commotion, bodies shuffling. Had Sam finally come to help? She peeled her face off the glass, then caught movement outside. Sam could wait. She turned and saw them: three figures across the street and far to her left. No, there were four of them. They all wore black—a stupid decision considering the heat today. Jenn squinted and waited for them to come closer. She imagined they’d have gas masks or rubber suits on, but they didn’t. One was a woman, her blonde hair in a tight ponytail. She had a heavy-looking belt hanging on her hips. They all did.

  Jenn’s vision went foggy. She rubbed the condensation off the glass with her fist, then peered out again.

  Police.

  Butterflies took flight in her stomach. None of them rushed. They strolled down the street, arms waving and heads bobbing. No gas masks, no radiation suits, nothing. Did they know about the fallout?

  Or was there no fallout to begin with?

  Jenn glimpsed a semicircle of onlookers forming behind her chair. Still no Sam, from what she could tell. She considered running to the waiting room, opening the door, and yelling at the police across the street. Then she remembered Sophie’s thugs. No way they’d let her pass. What if she tried explaining?

  The police walked, two by two, right past the tire shop. They must have thought it was empty. Jenn needed to grab their attention. If they didn’t know about the fallout, she needed to let them in. If there wasn’t any fallout, they were the proof she needed to convince Sophie to let her outside.

  Jenn made two fists and banged them against the bay door. It rumbled but not loudly. She tried and tried but the police kept walking. She needed to be louder. She raised her right foot and drove her heel into the metal. The door shook. She tried two more times, then checked the window. The police continued walking. They’d almost passed.

  Jenn hopped off the chair and onto the floor. Most of the shop watched her now, but she didn’t see Sam.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sophie yelled over the din of chatter. She pushed her way to the head of the crowd. The blouse was gone and Jenn didn’t see the pistol, but she never doubted it was there, tucked into Sophie’s pants. “I thought I told you to take it easy,” she said.

  “Outside,” Jenn started. “There’s people. Police.”

  More chatter as Sophie stepped closer. “Bullshit,” she said.

  Jenn’s heart raced and her breathing quickened. “There is. See for yourself.” She pointed to the chair and stepped back.

  Sophie climbed up, one hand resting on the handle of her pistol. Bracing herself against the door with her left arm, Sophie pressed her face to the window and checked right, then left. “There’s nobody there,” she said, coming down from the chair. “Look, if you need water, we have plenty. I understand it’s hard being in here for hours on end, but if you’re starting to see things or get cabin fever, we can—”

  “No!” Jenn interrupted. She jumped on the chair and checked outside again. The police had gone.

  “See?” Sophie said.

  Jenn had seen them. She must have. No way her mind would invent police officers outside. She wasn’t dehydrated. She’d taken a walk to the shop’s washroom every half hour to stretch her legs and have a drink. No, those cops were there. Jenn only needed to draw their attention.

  She scanned the crowd. All eyes fell upon Jenn as the whole of Minute Tire waited for her answer to Sophie. Kicking the door wasn’t loud enough.

  She stepped off the chair, bent down, and gripped it by the backrest.

  “Hey, wait a sec—”

  Bang!

  The vibrations from metal on metal shot into Jenn’s hands and ran up her arms like she’d hit a softball off the end of the bat.

  She tried again, throwing her hips into it like she was swinging for the fences.

  Bang!

  Another shot of vibrations.

  Bang!

  She went to swing the chair a fourth time but felt resistance. She stumbled as she shifted her weight forward, then let go and it fell to the ground. “Will you take it easy?” Sophie said, her voice firm. “Don’t make me tie you up.”

  Jenn stood straight and faced her. Where was Sam? She started to think he’d given up on her. “We need to let them in,” she said.

  “Fuck that,” Sophie countered. “Even if there was someone there—which there isn’t—they aren’t coming in here until it’s safe to open those doors. We don’t need another stampede.”

  “She’s right,” a man’s voice said from the crowd. “Maybe it’s safe.”

  “No way,” a second voice answered.

  “Yeah!” a woman yelled. “I’m not letting in radiation because there might be people outside!”

  More voices shouted their support or opposition, but Jenn couldn’t tell them apart anymore. Over it all, she heard the renewed wails of the baby.

  Two of Sophie’s thugs appeared from the crowd and stood beside her. That meant the door to the waiting room had one guard at most, maybe none. Jenn searched for Sam one last time but couldn’t find him. On her right, a space between the crowd and the bay doors beckoned. If she could squeeze through, she could reach the waiting room.

  Jenn let her chin fall to her chest and she dropped her shoulders, hoping Sophie and her henchmen would read it as a sign of submission. Two breaths later, she darted for the gap.

  After three steps, a weight crashed into Jenn’s side and knocked her to the floor. She tried to brace herself, but her elbow hit concrete, followed by her shoulder and head. Arms wrapped around her stomach. She gasped for air as she struggled to free herself.

  Kicking and writhing, she managed to roll onto her back. One of Sophie’s men, the one with the coveralls hanging from his waist, hovered over her. He raised his metal bar, preparing to crack it over Jenn’s skull. She brought her arms up to shield the blow, but then he toppled over. As he hit the ground beside her, the arms around her waist loosened and she broke free.

  Sam? He stood, then delivered a kick to the man’s side. The figure who’d tackled her, not the one in the blue coveralls but a heavy-set man wearing a red plaid shirt, stood. Sam turned, but the man in the plaid shirt struck him across the jaw with a hard right. Sam staggered and fell backward.

  Jenn scrambled to her feet as chaos engulfed the shop. Pushing, shoving, and fighting erupted everywhere, and the crowd closed in on Jenn like a mosh pit. Bodies came between her and Sam, blocking her sight of him.

  “Move!” she barked, grabbing someone’s shirt with one hand and trying to push away someone else with the other. A swarm of torsos closed in and swallowed her whole.

  Then a crash, like shattering glass, came from the waiting room, followed by a whistle, high-pitched and loud enough to make even Gary cover his ears.

  Then, her ears ringing, she heard the whistle again, closer this time.

  “Break it up!” someone yelled. It sounded like a man, but Jenn wasn’t sure.

 
“Get off of him!” a woman’s voice commanded.

  The room opened up as the bodies dispersed. A woman pushed Jenn backward. She wore all black and had her hair in a ponytail. One of the officers from outside.

  Jenn threw her hands in the air to signal surrender. Others nearby did the same. Most backed up, forming a new semicircle with the ponytailed officer and the other three troopers at its center.

  A hand brushed Jenn’s hip. Fists clenched, she spun on her heel but saw Sam. A line of blood ran from his lip to his chin. He drew her in close. The crowd was thick and the police had their guns drawn, but Jenn felt safe. All she heard were whispers, the shuffling of feet on concrete, and Sam’s breathing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Conrad! Get those doors open!” ordered the female officer.

  “Just wait a second!” someone yelled. Jenn couldn’t see past the bodies, but she knew the voice as Sophie’s. “Nobody’s opening those doors. You’ve already fucked us by coming in here, not to mention breaking my window.”

  “Ma’am,” the ponytailed officer said in a firm but patient voice, “we need you to cooperate. Back up and get in line with the others.”

  Sophie probably hadn’t drawn her gun. Otherwise, the police might have taken her down. Either way, she didn’t object to their orders. Maybe she recognized the police as the authority here. Maybe she was afraid. They all were.

  A rumbling erupted from Jenn’s right—the garage doors opening. Orange light rushed into the shop as cool air tickled Jenn’s damp skin. The whispers turned to shouts as everyone scattered from the opening bay doors.

  “It’s okay, folks!” the officer yelled. “There’s no radiation. Look!”

  Above the heads in front of her, Jenn saw a raised hand holding what looked like a phone.

  “This is a Geiger counter. Readings are normal. It’s safe. There’s no fallout.”

  10

  “Hold that light steady,” Maria instructed.

  “Shit, sorry.” Jenn readjusted the grip on the flashlight and focused the beam on Sam’s face.

  The sun had set while she and Sam walked back from Minute Tire, and now the Ruiz house was dark. Gary and Maria had set up several candles on the dining room table, but Jenn still struggled to see, so Gary brought in his old camping gear from the shed. In it were three LED flashlights. The batteries worked, so Maria tasked Jenn with holding a light on Sam’s face while she dabbed the blood from his lip and put ice on his jaw. Better use it while they could, Maria had said, because it’d melt if the power didn’t come on soon.

  Sophie might have been wrong about the fallout, but Jenn believed the story about the EMP. The cars, the phones, everything else—Sophie’s theory fit, and it made Jenn feel sick. Her phone died on their way back from Minute Tire. Even though she hadn’t had a signal all day, only now, that old comfort finally stripped away for good, did she feel truly cut off from her parents. She hadn’t found them waiting at Gary’s when she got back. No red hybrid pickup parked in Gary’s driveway. No bear hugs from her father and no annoying kisses on the cheek from her mother. None of that. Just a dark house and a boyfriend with a swollen lip.

  “There you go,” Maria told Sam, letting him hold the ice-filled plastic bag. “How’s it feel?”

  “Much better,” Sam said, jerking his jaw to loosen it. “Bit of a headache, but I’ll live.”

  “We’re just glad you’re back,” Maria said. “We were so worried. And then Gary went out but couldn’t find you guys and—”

  Jenn rested a hand on Maria’s shoulder, eliciting a smile and a deep breath as the oxygen hissed. “It’s okay,” Jenn assured her. “We made it.”

  Maria, her eyes tearing up, patted Jenn’s hand with her own. She sniffled and pushed up her glasses. “Sam,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’ll find you a couple aspirin.”

  Gary shot up from his seat at the table. “You okay, dear? I can get them for you.”

  “No, no.” Maria grabbed her cart with the oxygen tank. “You sit. It’s no problem.”

  Gary lowered himself into his seat and rested his elbows on the table.

  Jenn leaned in close to Sam, keeping the flashlight on his face. She wanted to tell him again that she was sorry for lashing out at Minute Tire. Sam only wanted to help. Jenn forgot it sometimes, but he always put her first. After she barked at him and left him behind, then stirred the crowd and instigated anarchy in the shop, he came for her when she needed him most. She didn’t deserve that.

  She rested a hand on his cheek and pressed her lips to his.

  Gary cleared his throat, and she pulled back. The flames on the candles danced, flickering light and casting shadows across Gary’s face. “So the officer said there was no radiation?” he asked, continuing the conversation from before Maria brought Sam the ice.

  “Pretty much,” Jenn said, looking forward to having Sam to herself later tonight. “She had a Geiger counter and everything.”

  Sam put the ice back on his jaw. “Yeah, she said the chances of radiation here were slim to none.”

  “That’s what I was hoping,” Gary said. “Did they say why?”

  “Nope.”

  Gary bowed his head and interlaced his fingers on the table. “So it was an air burst.”

  “Come again?” Jenn asked.

  “An air burst,” Gary said. “It means the bombs exploded in the air, like at Hiroshima. Makes sense, I guess. If the bombs hit the ground, we might be in trouble, but if I’m right, they didn’t and there won’t be any fallout. Not from Phoenix, anyway.”

  Gary’s library of World War Two books had finally accomplished more than taking up space.

  “What do you mean ‘from Phoenix’?” Jenn asked.

  Gary arched an eyebrow and his mustache twitched.

  “You don’t mean . . .” She trailed off. Why would the Chinese or Russians attack Phoenix of all places? Maybe the Brazilians had done it in retaliation for American troops retaking Panama. But that happened months ago. And even so, why Phoenix? Los Angeles or Washington or New York or even Seattle seemed like more valuable targets. If they’d bombed Phoenix, that meant those other places might have been hit, too.

  “I have a few aspirin,” Maria announced, holding out her palm to Sam as her oxygen cart rumbled on the hardwood floor.

  He tossed them into his mouth and thanked her before swallowing.

  “I was going to offer you some water,” Maria teased, “but I guess you’re okay without it.”

  She took a seat beside Sam and continued inspecting his face. Jenn could tell it annoyed him, but he’d never let Maria see that. She only wanted to help. Housebound for much of the time and reliant on Gary to do most of the work around the home, she relished the opportunity to be useful again. Jenn always did things for herself and tried not to burden Maria, but tonight, right here at her table, was someone who needed her. Her daughter, Camila, not Sam, might as well have been in that chair.

  Gary stirred in his seat. How much had he told Maria about what he knew? Maria could handle it, but Gary seemed to avoid troubling her if possible. He’d need to tell her eventually, if he hadn’t already. Jenn didn’t want to be the one who broke the news.

  “You’re welcome to stay here tonight, Sam,” he said. “No point in you heading home this late.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Ruiz. I appreciate it.”

  Jenn cringed at Sam calling Gary “Mr. Ruiz.” He always did that. He called Maria “Maria,” but for whatever reason, he always gave Gary a title. Maybe he meant it ironically. Maybe he did it because Gary was an ex-cop. Despite their wildly different views on the war and politics in general, if nothing else, Sam seemed to respect Gary.

  A knock at the front door drew Jenn’s attention away.

  Gary shot up from his seat. “Who could that be?”

  Jenn, her heart thumping, watched as Gary fetched his Glock from the kitchen counter and made his way into the living room. Fingers gripped around the handle, he popped open the fr
ont door.

  Jenn rested a hand on Maria’s. She felt it shaking.

  “Who is it?” Gary asked.

  A muffled reply came from behind the door, but Jenn couldn’t make it out. A man’s voice—that was all she knew.

  Gary tucked the Glock into his pants and opened the door. A man dressed in black and wearing a clunky belt stepped inside.

  Liam.

  His short, neatly cut hair showed signs of gray in the temples, and his arms and chest threatened to burst through his uniform. His strong jawline and sharp features reminded Jenn of Sam. He walked with a slight limp, reminding Jenn he lost a leg during a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine before the war. He worked hard for his job on the force, something Gary admired. Jenn did, too.

  “Liam!” Maria said.

  “Hi, everyone,” Liam said, letting Gary shut the door behind him. “Sorry for coming by so late. I just wanted to check in and see how you’re holding up.”

  Maria pushed herself up again. “Here. Have a seat while I get you a glass of water. Your leg must be killing you.”

  “No, thank you,” he said politely, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn. “I shouldn’t stay long. I need to get back out there. Erin told me Gary stopped by a couple times today, so I wanted to come say thanks.”

  “It’s no problem,” Gary said. “You’d do the same for us. Sit down for a bit. Please. Erin said you’ve been on patrol for a week straight.”

  “That’s right.” Liam smiled. “On second thought, I’d love a glass of water. Thanks, Maria.”

  She scooted into the kitchen as Liam collapsed into Maria’s seat beside Jenn. Rubbing his knee, he turned and eyed Sam. “Liam,” he said, reaching out a hand.

  Sam took it and they shook. “I’m Sam.”

  Liam didn’t ask about the ice. Too polite, Jenn guessed. Or maybe he’d seen worse today.

  “So,” Gary started, “how are things out there? Jenn had quite the run-in at Minute Tire.”

  Liam groaned. “I can imagine. Most of the town’s worried about fallout, but we won’t see any.”