The After War

by Brandon Zenner

  “Thank you. I mean, really, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now put it away; let’s get out of here. My allergies go crazy down here.” Simon’s allergies were getting bad too, but he hadn’t noticed until his father brought it up.

  Simon picked a rifle and began loading a duffel bag with ammunition from the floor-to-ceiling shelving. When he was done, his dad took two more duffel bags from a shelf and went over to the first safe. He counted several stacks of cash and put them inside. “Give this to the guard at the border. He’ll be expecting you. His name is Stephen Parks.” He handed Simon the two duffel bags. “The other one’s for you. It’s more than enough to cover any expenses you may encounter. Buy more ammunition when you get out west. That won’t be enough.” He pointed to the duffel bag strapped over Simon’s shoulder, then turned to close and lock the safes.

  They moved toward the staircase.

  “There’s one more thing I want to show you.” He grabbed a flashlight and brought Simon to a wall on the side of the room where a space was clear of shelving. The beam of light cast upon it. “See that?”

  Simon squinted. There was something scratched into the wall. “Is that … does it say … is that a name?”

  “It says Sue. And next to it are carvings, as crude as they are.” Simon looked at the images scraped into the wall by a rock or a piece of sharp metal. They looked like the hand of a child had carved them. The name Sue was clear, and the wavy outline of two people standing, holding hands. There were more scratches, but they were undecipherable. Another name, incomplete, with only the letter M legible.

  “They were carved by the slaves who hid down here,” his father said. “It’s remarkable.”

  Simon stared, transfixed. “Yes … it is.”

  ***

  Simon woke up before dawn and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen. Emma was nowhere to be seen, and Simon was glad. He wanted his departure to be as pain-free as possible. The lights were still off in the kitchen as he entered, and when he flipped them on, he was startled to see his mother sitting at the far table. The smell of coffee was thick.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Mom, I didn’t know you were awake.”

  “It’s nice to watch the sunrise over the river.” She turned toward the window behind the kitchen table, which looked out over the backyard and the river beyond. The sun was starting to produce a gentle red glow on the horizon.

  With a barely audible sigh, she said, “Sit. I made you coffee.”

  “Thanks.” He sat, and they quietly sipped their coffee. She stroked the top of his hand and smiled, and then she said, “I’m so proud of you.”

  And Simon almost lost it.

  She continued, “We never meant to be so hard on you; we only wanted what was best for your future. And although we don’t always show it, we’re both very proud of the man you’ve become. I know how good you’ve been doing at the classes. I’ve talked to Marcus Warden several times, and he’s assured me of your abilities in the wild. The best in class, he said, and he meant it.” Simon wanted to ask her when she had talked to Mr. Warden, but he didn’t.

  She leaned around the table and hugged him, and his face sank deep into the softness of her robe. She smelled of sleep and a slight hint of lavender and lilacs, very faint. Something in that smell registered deep within him, beyond remembrance, to the infantile stores of childhood memories, when his mother woke up in the middle of the night to cradle him. He buried his face on her shoulder and felt the wetness of her tears as she hushed him gently, brushing back his hair.

  This was why he’d woken up early—to avoid this, for everyone. He had written notes, ready to be left on the counter. One for his parents, and one for Emma.

  He heard the faint squeak of the front door opening, as far off as it was, and they parted. “Wh-who’s that?” Simon looked toward the entryway.

  “That’s your father. He went to get the van ready. Come, let’s get going.”

  His father was also wearing a robe and slippers with a white V-neck T-shirt and pajama bottoms underneath. They met at the door and moved outside, his mother taking a seat on the steps of the porch, hugging her legs to her chest against the cold morning air, the cup of coffee placed beside her producing thick plumes of steam. His dad walked Simon to the van.

  “It’s all ready,” he said. “Just letting the defrosters melt the dew.”

  The sun was turning the sky pale blue, and the ice would all be melted soon enough. “I had to make some extra room in the back,” his dad said.

  “For what?”

  “Dog food. Winston’s going with you. I packed a few bags, but you’ll have to pick up more on your way. Get as much as you can—and then get more.”

  Simon looked at the passenger side window and tapped his fingernail against it. Winston’s head sprung up, panting against the frosty window, ecstatic to see him. Simon smiled, and after a moment Winston lay back down.

  They were quiet. Then his dad spoke, but his voice cracked, high-pitched and awkward. “That’s it,” he said, palms open, and then they hugged. His mother came over and hugged him again, her tears hot against his cheek. His father’s face was red and swollen, and his hair was matted with sleep. He said, “Let Simon go, honey. He has to go.”

  “I’ll be back,” Simon said. “I’ll meet you guys here, I promise.”

  His mother nodded, her eyes glassy. His father said, “I know you will, son.”

  Simon got in the van. He ruffled Winston’s head and let the dog barrage him with licks until he settled down. The frozen dew was mostly evaporated from the windshield and clearing fast.

  He put the van in drive.

  Simon turned around the fountain and started down the long driveway. He watched his parents in the rearview mirror. His father was pulling his mother in tight, and her hands were covering her face as she cried into her palms. He watched them grow smaller as his mother now buried her face in his father’s shoulder, and his father reached out to wave. As he drove around a bend, they disappeared from view. At the end of the driveway, the gate swung open and Simon turned right. Half a block later, tears were streaming down his face, hot as firewater.

  Chapter 11

  Odyssey

  The clamor in the valley echoed loud.

  Steven said, “What’s that—” but Brian hushed him. A rumbling noise was now unmistakable, growing louder … and then something else. Steven’s eyes grew wide, staring at Brian. There were muffled voices in the distance—many voices, some laughing, others obscure.

  Brian stood and motioned forward. They sprinted to the waist-high fence in front of the house, swung the gate back, and ran to the door. They paused. Brian held the handle and took a deep breath.

  They exchanged glances, nodded, and then stormed into the house. Brian led, crouching lower than Steven, who swept his rifle to the left and right. They entered the living room and could see straight back into the small kitchen. Many of the cabinets and drawers had been left open and cleared of anything other than mouse droppings. The counters and side tables held little ceramic knickknacks and family pictures, all placed on top of yellowed doilies. Everything was covered with dust. Some pictures had fallen to the ground with the broken glass scattered about.

  An ashtray sat on the coffee table, overflowing with cigarette butts, several of which had been extinguished on the table itself. Beside the ashtray were two half-bottles of brown liquor. Brian and Steven swept the bottom floor and proceeded to the stairway, passing a pile of garbage—empty soup cans, crumpled cigarette packs, broken bottles.

  The stair treads groaned with each step as they went upstairs. The hallway at the top led to bedrooms at both ends and a bathroom directly across from the staircase. The bathroom was empty, and they proceeded to the far bedroom. The simple room had a bed in the center, a TV on a dresser, and two nightstands on either side of the bed. The windows were open and the wind billowed the once white curtains. A four-poster bed occupied the bulk of the room,
and under a soiled knit blanket lay the form of a person.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Steven said.

  They approached the body. Brian was shaking and sweating, his finger vibrating over the trigger of his rifle. He stepped close and extended his hand to move the blanket away, but Steven reached forward and grabbed his wrist. Brian looked at him; he was shaking his head and was as white as paper. Brian looked back at the body. The form was small and shallow, and the bedding around the body was stained yellow. Bones.

  They left the bedroom and ran to the room at the other end of the hallway, which faced the direction of the valley. The room had been in the process of being painted before the owner perished, and all the furniture was draped with canvas cloths. Paint cans and rollers were set on plastic sheets, dry and brittle.

  They crouched behind the double window and Brian found his binoculars under his poncho. His fingers trembled on the focusing wheel.

  “Dear mother of God …”

  A procession was heading down the main street of town. Two columns of savages marched in near unison. But these men were no soldiers. They were ragged and filthy, and carried with them a wide assortment of weaponry—rifles, machine guns, pistols. Many held sledgehammers, machetes, various swords, and large and small pry-bars, some the size of walking sticks. These improvised weapons were scoured at the ends to reveal the steel of which they were made, gleaming like silver, and were muddied with earth and gore. The men looked as if they had marched out of some dismal pit of hell that had vomited them forth, seeming to defile the earth of which they trod. They wore a vast array of military clothing of no particular origin and had adorned themselves and their weapons with torn pieces of red cloth, like flags, along with garnished trophies of war—what looked like dried, brown human ears and tanned hides. They cast about them a red and brown hue, as if they wore these shades as part of a collective uniform.

  Pickup trucks rumbled along with the procession, their flatbeds full and covered with sheets. Long ropes trailed from the bumpers, extending to latch around the necks of several pink, naked human beings, both male and female, all with their hands and wrists bound. A body dragged along the ground, bumping over the pavement, lifeless and ground raw. The naked humans who were still alive were prodded forward by whips and crudely made spears with strips of red material tied under the points, so that they blew in the wind like macabre flags of the damned.

  Brian removed his hunting rifle from his backpack, unsnapped the covers on the scope, and leaned it on the windowsill.

  At the head of the cavalcade rode a man on horseback. His face was too distant to see clearly, yet he loomed large over his pale stallion. The sidewalks on either side of the horrid procession were lined with corpses. Bodies hung from the streetlights and electric poles, some by their necks, others by one or both feet. Others were impaled on fence posts. Some were burned to blackened crisps, and others had been crucified. Some were so badly decomposed that only a torso or limb remained attached to the implements of their demise.

  Then Brian heard laughter. Close. Not from the procession in the street.

  The two men ducked below the window. The front door creaked open and then shut, and they heard muffled voices of two people talking downstairs. Brian’s heart was thumping so loud that he was afraid whoever was downstairs would hear it.

  Chapter 12

  The Gas Station

  “D-don’t m-m-move, mister!”

  Simon did not move.

  He stared down at the manhole cover, his vision bright and pulsing with his heartbeat. Droplets of blood emerged from between his clenched fingers and trailed down his injured hand.

  The rifle was on the ground next to him. His pistol was in its holster.

  “Don’t reach for that gun,” the voice said. “P-put your ha-hands on top of your head.” The voice was squeaky, and Simon could detect shakiness in the stutter. Slowly, he looked up. It was only a boy, maybe ten. His blond hair was wild, knotted, and plastered to his forehead with filth. The clothes he wore were made for an adult. The boy’s military jacket went almost to his knees, and the cuffs around his ankles and wrists were baggy and loose.

  “Don’t t-t-try nothing. I-I’ll shoot!”

  “Okay,” Simon said, putting his hands in the air, letting the blood flow from the open wound to trickle down his forearm. “Okay. My hands are up. Let’s take it easy.” These were the first words Simon had spoken to another human being in over two years.

  In the wild, he’d often worried that it would be difficult to communicate effectively with other people after being alone for so long. He often spoke to Winston in a plethora of random noises and sounds, clicks, and whistles. But now, he spoke without realizing it. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  The comic books, you idiot. The gasoline, the blankets … the chocolate on the wrapper was still wet …

  “S-s-stop talking!” The boy shouted. Simon scanned behind the kid, back to the garage, but couldn’t see anyone else around.

  The boy balanced the rifle in his tiny hands, yet he held it firm, despite the rifle being nearly as long as he was tall. It was a wood grain, bolt-action hunting rifle without a scope. The boy fidgeted from one foot to the other, and his eyes were huge and glassy. Even from this distance, Simon could see the vividness in his gaze.

  “Hey,” Simon said. “You hungry? I bet you’re hungry. I’m hungry, too. Why don’t I make us both some—”

  “I said, I said shut the hell up!” the boy yelled. “I k-k-know what m-men like you do to kids like me. I ain’t stupid. My momma told me all about you.”

  “I don’t want to do anything to you. I swear it. What do you think … where’s your mother?”

  The boy was shouting. “She t-told me you—”

  A thunderous crack cut off the boy’s words as the rifle bucked in his hands.

  Simon’s body jerked, and he bit his lip so hard that he tasted blood. The bullet hit the dust out of sight.

  The boy jumped back, almost dropping the rifle. The look on his face changed from surprise to panic.

  “Jesus!” Simon roared.

  They stared at each other in wide-eyed silence.

  Whether the boy had meant to fire the gun or not made no difference now, because the bullet-fire put the kid in a panic, and he began fumbling with the bolt to re-chamber a round.

  “Wa-wait! Just wait a second!” Simon shouted.

  The chamber sprung open, and the shell casing spiraled to the dirt. The boy made a sobbing sound, as if his own life and death hung in the balance.

  “Don’t-don’t do that! Hey, kid! Hey! Stop what you’re—”

  The boy chambered a round, slammed the bolt shut. Someone had taught this kid how to handle a firearm.

  “Damn it, boy!”

  The kid shouldered the gun and eyed down the barrel. Simon dove to his side, grabbed the wooden stock of his M1A rifle from the ground and swung it up. In one fluid motion, Simon aimed and fired, and at the same moment, the boy pulled the trigger of his own rifle. The gun buckled in Simon’s hand, and the events transpired in a blur of speed, and yet felt so slow that each millisecond was frozen in time.

  The boy’s bullet made a plunk sound on the manhole cover by Simon’s knee, ricocheting off somewhere unseen. Simon saw the boy fly backward. The rifle he was holding flew out of his hands, and a puff of red mist and stuffing from his jacket lingered in the air. The kid hit the ground and blood began pooling around him. He gurgled once, and then stopped moving.

  For a moment that might have been an eternity, nothing happened. Then Simon jumped to his feet, grabbed his scout backpack, and ran to the edge of the gas station. He ran to where the van was parked in the woods, and stopped short in his tracks.

  The driver side door of the van was open, like he’d left it. However, the door to the trunk was also open. And he had not left it that way.

  “Shit,” he muttered through clenched teeth, and swung behind a tree. “Winston!” he shouted, and instantly the dog s
printed to him from the front seat of the van, his ears pinned back, frightened from the sound of the gunshots. “Winston, Winston!” he kept shouting, until the trembling dog was behind him.

  From where Simon stood, he could see the side of the van. He leveled the rifle, leaning against a tree to help balance his shaking hands, and aimed at the back door.

  He yelled, “Who the fuck is there!”

  There was no reply, but he saw a glimpse of movement, a tiny sway of the door, and heard feet scamper off into the woods behind the van.

  There was a moment of silence, and Simon tried to regain his composure, focus, and the awareness that he could usually tap into. But his mind was reeling.

  He breathed. In and out, and in and out …

  Some clarity returned and he listened for the faintest sound, watched for the slightest disturbance in the woods.

  Then a shot rang out. A wild shot, but Simon flinched all the same. He saw the ruffle of leaves from a bush beside an elm tree. Simon steadied his aim, breathed, and fired a round into the thick side of the elm. Bark and splinters erupted in an outward explosion. Simon paused, breathed again, and squeezed off another round—slightly to the left, closer to the bush. He paused, breathed, steadied his aim, and then …

  “Don’t shoot, mister,” a young voice squealed, crying. A girl’s voice. “Please.”

  There was another voice. “P-put down your gun!” Another boy.

  Simon answered, “I don’t think so.”

  There was no reply, only the sound of tears from both the girl and the boy.

  “You … you kill Billy?” the girl asked.

  “I … was that Billy at the pumps?”

  There was no answer, but Simon knew that it was. “I … he’s probably … he might be dead. I don’t know. Where are your parents? Where’s an adult?”

  The girl was sobbing. “Mitch, Billy’s dead … Billy’s dead!”

  “Shut up!” The boy’s voice was wavy.

  Tears were welling up in Simon’s eyes, but he remained vigilant. These children—these wild children—had shot at him, three times now, and would kill him without a moment’s hesitation.