by A. K. Meek
Everyone who found themselves outside of the safety of the wall could relocate into the safe zone. Conversely, if you wanted to take a chance on the outside, you were free to leave. No one would stop you.
Kurt had hoped the wall would be physical, and psychological, protection to the citizens. He knew feeling safe was just as important as being safe.
Unfortunately, he had no choice but to pretty much accept anyone with a gun and a willingness to help. It wasn’t ideal, but given the circumstances, he had no choice.
Earl was one of those. He came from a good family and all, but he seemed to take longer to grow out of his ‘stupid teenager’ moments. He hoped his early reservations about Earl were unfounded. “Come on, LaTonya. Grab a rifle and let’s see what’s going on.”
Outside, Calliope was lashed to a post. The rest were being used by his deputies to patrol the outskirts of Bartel. But she’d remained, set aside for the sheriff.
Kurt mounted his horse, helped LaTonya up, who’d up to today never wanted to ever touch one of the filthy beasts, then started off to Fifth and Colony. It didn’t take long for them to reach their destination.
One of Bartel’s scouting teams, five men armed with long guns and pistols, surrounded a group of eight.
Clive had taken over this particular patrol and was screaming at them, demanding to know who they were, what type of weapons they were carrying, and what they were doing here. All in one angry breath. Nearby, a dog barked shrilly in response.
Clive was typically high-strung, but since the bombing, he had been in overdrive. He was a good deputy, just passionate.
Kurt dismounted, walked to the newcomers, and studied them. In his first estimation, they looked like a family.
There was a man who had his arms wrapped around a woman, and she had her arms wrapped around two children, a boy and a girl, about Shiloh’s age. Three teenage girls clutched each other, and a twenty-something year-old man stood off to the side, his arms wrapped around himself.
All their eyes were sunken, like they hadn’t slept for days. Their clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed in six months. Matted hair and dirt streaked faces said personal hygiene was the last on their list of things to do. Several had large boils on their faces, horrible water blisters on the verge of popping.
Their heads turned from one rifle barrel to the next, wondering which one would kill them. You could taste their fear, but even more powerful, you could see they had resigned themselves to death.
They were anything but marauders. But in this day and age who could really tell? Kurt sure wasn’t going to take another chance. Not after last time.
“What’s going on?” he said in his best authoritative voice. The security breach had him concerned about who, or what else had made their way into the town undiscovered.
He flashed on the machine Kyle had seen. Like the one on TV. What else was out there?
The immediacy of securing the town and the loss of his son had consumed him, but as this new threat emerged, his mind went back to the larger narrative. What exactly happened to America? What were those machines?
He pushed aside the wandering thoughts. The task at hand, seeing who these people were, was more important.
“Answer the man!” Clive screamed as he gripped his pistol in renewed strength. He moved forward like the action could squeeze the answer from the interrogated.
“Please,” the man holding the woman said. He wore thin-framed glasses with one lens missing. His beard and stubble had streaks of grey and glistened wetly, probably from the sores that littered his hollow cheeks. Even from where Kurt stood, he could see the man trembling.
“We’ve been walking for days. My wife,” he tightened his grip on the woman, who appeared in worse shape than him. She kept her head bowed down, like she’d already given up on living and was waiting for her body to catch up. “my children, we’ve come a long way.”
“From where?” Clive screamed. He inched closer.
Kurt put his hand on his deputy’s shoulder, hoping he’d take the hint they stood only five feet apart, there was no need for yelling. “From where?” Kurt repeated, in a calm voice.
“North,” the young man standing by himself said. He was wiry thin, and looked in the best shape, which wasn’t saying much. “From Atlanta. We met,” he pointed to the others with a wraith-like finger. “On I-75, leaving town. A traffic jam kept us from moving. Then the flash…” his voice trailed off as he relived those moments in his head.
“We all met in the woods,” the husband picked up where the young man left off. “Headed away from the city. A bunch of us. About a hundred or so. Then we saw—” he stopped, debated with himself on whether he wanted to finish the story.
“What did you see?” Kurt pressed.
“We were walking along the interstate when this, this stuff—”
“Fog. It was a fog,” the young man interjected.
“An orange fog came from the ground,” the husband continued. “We thought it was kinda odd but didn’t think much else, until people started to walk into it.” He choked up. His eyes welled. “They dropped. They simply dropped.”
“They died,” the young man admonished the older one. “It took over half of us dying to figure that out. They were dropping dead once this Orange Angel of Death touched them.”
“Angel of death?” Kurt asked, not quite understanding.
“Yeah,” the young man nodded. “Reminded me of Genesis when God struck down Pharaoh’s firstborn in the last plague. I always pictured it like a fog creeping between the houses. The angel of death.”
They all stared at each other in silence for a minute.
One child, the boy, coughed. He sounded like he was ready to spit up an organ. The boy stirred in Kurt memories of his son, Shiloh. He pictured his son on the road, dirty and hungry. His chest shook and his throat constricted as images of his murdered son’s bleeding body came rushing back, despite his feeble attempts to block it from his mind. It’d been seared into him and every time he closed his eyes that was the first thing to greet him.
Cold-blooded killers walked into his town and shot up the place. Strangers. Marauders. Just like the eight strangers standing before him. It was his responsibility to protect Bartel. He had let the community down once. Not anymore.
The boy reminded him of Shiloh, but wasn’t Shiloh.
“You have to go,” Kurt said without emotion or expression.
The husband, desperation in his eyes, said, “Please, we’ve come so far. We’re tired, hungry, scared.”
Kurt had to turn away before his resolve withered. He faced Clive. “Take them back across the border, outside the city. If they try to cross again, shoot them.”
His deputy gave him a sideways glance and lifted his pistol with an air of uncertainty. “You don’t think we should lock them up? What if they’re spies?”
“They only got this far because you didn’t stop them at the border,” Kurt replied. “Now get them out of here.”
Clive motioned for his men to take the group back the way they came, back to Market Road 15, where the northeastern boundary of the town had been established.
Kurt and LaTonya watched the ragtag survivors of some devastating event near Atlanta dwindle into the distance. She wanted to ask if Kurt was all right. His behavior wasn’t typical. But before she did, a noise caught her attention.
It came from the house they stood in front of, an old craftsman. Head cocked to one side, she listened before crossing the tiny yard full of blooming red and white azaleas, stopping in front of an attached carport. She knelt.
“LaTonya!” Kurt followed her. “Where are you going?”
She reached under a white Mercedes. “Come here, girl,” she said in a higher pitch than her normal, almost-husky voice. “That’s a good girl, come on.”
“What are you doing?”
LaTonya stood, clutching a small silver and brown dog. She stroked its head as the frightened dog attempted to burrow under her ar
m. “Little Susie,” she said to the dog who had begun whimpering softly. “She’s Kev and Janelle’s terrier. I’d know her anywhere.”
“Put her down.” Kurt turned away. There were many more worries on his mind than someone’s annoying rat dog. “We need to get back to the office. It’s probably burned down by now.”
“I was here when Kev brought her home three years ago. This is their baby. They’d never leave her outside.”
“Everyone with a dog thinks the same thing. Let’s go.”
“No.” LaTonya’s voice deepened. Her nonverbals indicated she wasn’t going to move an inch. “I know Janelle. Kev bought Susie when they found out…” she paused as she considered whether she should finish divulging something she didn’t feel was her place. But given the end of the world, this small secret didn’t matter much now. “Janelle was upset when she found out she couldn’t have children. Kev surprised her with Susie. I’m telling you she’s like their baby.”
Kurt knew if LaTonya, who had the fortitude to cut off her own hand without batting an eyelash, was concerned, then he should be too. She wasn’t the kind to react emotionally, or on a whim.
“I have a bad feeling,” she said. Kurt nodded.
He moved to the front door of the house, opened the screen door and knocked.
No one answered.
He knocked again.
He tried the knob and found it unlocked. With pistol in hand, he eased the door open. Inside it was apparent something not good had happened. Lamps were shattered, chairs were overturned. Kurt’s hand tightened on his gun as his heart reacted to the adrenaline surge.
Slowly he moved from the living area to the open kitchen. There, a couple drawers had been ripped from the cabinets, their contents spilled across hardwood.
“Kurt,” LaTonya whispered. She pointed with the shotgun clutched in one hand while trying to keep a firm grip on Susie. On the hallway floor—quarter-sized splatters of blood. Kurt nodded to her again and as silently as he could, followed the gruesome red trail to the end of the hall.
After clearing the empty room, he returned to where LaTonya waited. He lowered his pistol but didn’t holster it yet. “All clear. No one’s here.” He imagined the crime spree he was worried was coming, given the current state. Any chance for man to devolve into mob. Now it looks like it had arrived. “This isn’t good.” He knew he was stating the obvious, but felt he needed to say it anyway. Maybe to remind himself the severity of it all. “Looks like someone broke in through the bedroom window. There was a struggle. Someone got cut.”
LaTonya didn’t say anything. She just gave Susie a soft kiss on her head, like she needed to reassure the dog her owners were all right.
“I’ll secure the house,” Kurt said. “We need to get back to the station and let others know what’s happened.”
As they left the abandoned craftsman house and headed back to the horse, Kurt repeated, “This isn’t good.” He believed this was probably the understatement of the year.
02.02
A KIDNAPPING
The unforgiving central Georgia heat gives the uncomfortable sensation of being cooked alive in a scalding oven. It isn’t a dry heat like Arizona can claim. If anything, you feel like you’re periodically getting basted with boiling water. A hefty sprinkling of mosquitoes and gnats are thrown in to make the misery complete.
Aubrey thought about this as she swatted another bug on her neck before it had the chance to sink its proboscis into her. She walked along Bartel’s main street, watching her town in action. The citizens were busy, continuing with building an infrastructure to support the new electric-less way of life. Peeling her sweat-soaked blouse from her chest, she flapped it in the vain hope of providing a cool breeze. It didn’t help.
To be honest, the mayor had expected far less from the town in helping with the transformation. Maybe the fear that stood with her night and day had also infected everyone. Now that she thought about it, she was sure the same fear that lived under the surface of her skin was under everyone else’s. It was just waiting for the right moment to come screaming out. On several occasions she’d been sure that was going to happen, especially after the gun battle in front of the courthouse. That had almost made her run away from her post.
But no, as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t run. Wouldn’t run. She had never run from anything in her whole life. Why start now? Now, when her town needed her the most.
She tried her best to project strength to her constituency, but false bravado can only go so far. In truth, all she wanted was to curl up in Donald’s arms and wish away the last few weeks of her life. A husband is there for his wife, a wife for her husband.
But there were things to be done. She needed to focus on the current situation, not dwell on what was. That was why she left her office after all, to help.
Raymond, a burly black man who had been struggling with out of control diabetes, leaned against the tailgate of an old pickup that had high-centered on a concrete curb. He threw his shoulder against the truck, along with three other men he dwarfed. A teenager sat behind the wheel, trying her best to steer the powerless truck’s wheels straight.
Aubrey remembered meeting him a couple months ago as she toured the local med stop clinic. He was one of those guys that once you met once you never forgot.
Even Raymond, whose red face looked like a balloon ready to pop, found it in himself to help. And he probably should’ve been the last person in town out here doing manual labor. She should be proud of her town instead of standing around mourning her own pitiful state.
She crossed to the truck and one of the men, a middle-aged skinny guy with short cropped hair, recognized her immediately. “Mayor,” he said with a thick Georgia accent. “What are you doing out here?”
“I want to help.”
For a second the crew paused and looked at each other like they were expecting a punchline. When she didn’t deliver, and after about ten uncomfortably quiet seconds, the skinny guy shrugged and slid over a foot, giving up some tailgate. Aubrey smiled and leaned into it and planted her stilettos in the soft dirt.
It’s not what you do, it’s how they perceive what you do.
She’d heard that in a management or leadership class at some point in her life. One of those hotel convention room seminars where an overpaid spokesperson with pearly, perfect teeth speaks in catchphrases and motivational quotes. But this one had stuck with her. She realized her slight frame wouldn’t contribute any more than what they already had in place, but who knows.
“All right, guys,” Raymond said, his voice thick well beyond tired, “let’s show the mayor how we get the job done.” He braced himself as did the others. “One, two, three!”
They groaned and screamed as they pushed against the resistant truck. Veins in their heads and necks swelled, and Aubrey thought any one of them could drop dead right there.
With a horrible grating, the truck inched forward. Then, like it had finally given up being difficult, it sprang forward, enough so the rear tires leaped over the curb. It came to a stop about twenty feet away, well clear of the obstacle. Now it could be repositioned by emergency management to serve as a roadblock.
They cheered. Raymond held his arms up like he was flexing for the crowd. “Yeah. Still got it!” he yelled as he blew each of his sagging arms a kiss.
Here Aubrey was in a post-apocalyptic world without power, everyone on the verge of panic, but still she couldn’t help but laugh. And it felt good. She clapped at their tiny victory over not only the truck, but over the new world.
A familiar clopping sound came from behind her, and she turned in time to see Kurt and LaTonya approaching on Calliope. Seeing the horse reminded Aubrey of the many times she’d visited Stu’s farm. She loved getting away from the city and going for a nice ride.
Kurt reined in the horse and she came to a slow, somewhat fickle stop.
“Mayor,” he said as he allowed LaTonya, still holding the small dog, to dismount. “We’ve got a pr
oblem.”
Aubrey wiped her face with her saturated sleeve. She couldn’t help but feel a girlish flutter at his presence. Just as quickly she put the stay thought away. “Kurt, you look like crap. Did you go home like I told you? I don’t need Marcia kicking in my door looking for you.”
“I’m fine,” he said, but she knew he was being evasive. One of the gifts that made her a good public official was the ability to read people quite well. And she’d known him long enough to know when he was being evasive, or when he didn’t want to tell her the truth. Right now, it seemed like both. “There’s a problem. The Smiths, they’re gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
As Kurt dismounted, LaTonya held Susie before her, like the pooch was all the proof needed to convince anyone. “Janelle and Kev’s baby here,” she said. “They left her. They wouldn’t leave her. Someone broke in their house and they’re gone.”
“Kidnapped?” Aubrey looked at the dog which regarded her with an uncertain eye.
Kurt nodded as he repositioned his hat to block the sun. “Looks that way. I thought it would be only a matter of time before some of our more ignoble citizens took advantage of the situation.”
After what she just participated in, Aubrey didn’t want to go down this road and start viewing everyone as potential criminals. It was too easy to fall into that trap of distrust. She wanted to think the people were better here than anywhere else.
“Let’s go for a walk.” Aubrey took the lead from Kurt and started down the street, praising Calliope, who bobbed her head in approval. Kurt fell in beside the mayor. “Earlier, Ernest stopped by. He was on the west side of town, surveying the roadblocks, and saw a couple of open doors on the old Belmont apartments. He checked them out and said they were empty, like they left in a hurry—”
“Or were possibly kidnapped?” Kurt finished her thought.
She nodded. When she first heard Ernest Miller, she figured he was just being dramatic. As Bartel’s emergency manager, his job was to be paranoid and envision the worst situations, and to plan a response. So, she’d thought this was one more of those instances. Maybe she’d been too quick to dismiss him. “Possibly,” she replied to Kurt. “I’ve been thinking what would happen if we were attacked again. For our safety I’m thinking of mandatory relocations.” As soon as the words left her mouth she regretted saying them.