by Lopez, Rob
She stepped in and was immediately bounced back by a blow to the chest. Gasping in surprise, she looked down and saw a knife embedded between her breasts. The knife was tied to the end of a long pole. Following the pole back into the garage, Daisy saw the rough hands that grasped it, and the shadow of the man hiding by the door.
She tried to shout, tried to bring the revolver up, but the excruciating pain in her chest drained away her energy, and she couldn’t breathe.
*
Josh heard the faint sucking noise of the knife going in, but wasn’t aware of what happened until his grandma came staggering out, pushed by what appeared to be a pole. As soon as he saw the man pushing it, he froze, recognizing the face as the man who’d confronted him after finding Skye’s dead body. The same man he’d seen coming down his street.
Grandma fell, and the man pulled out his improvised spear and stabbed her again.
“Get me some food,” he bellowed at the children.
In spite of being dehydrated, Josh urinated involuntarily in his pants.
The man reached down to pluck the revolver from Grandma’s limp grip. “You know where it is,” he snarled. “Show me.”
Josh stared at his grandmother, traumatized. Mouth open, she gazed sightless at the sky.
The man pointed the revolver at Josh, the barrel looking large and ominous. “Get some,” said the man. The gun trembled in his hand, and he looked crazy. When Josh, rooted to the ground, failed to move, the man turned the wavering gun to Lizzy. “Get me some food or I’ll shoot the little girl.”
For a moment, Josh didn’t know what to do. Then he grabbed Lizzy’s hand. “Run,” he shouted, pulling her along.
The gun boomed, and a clod of earth jumped up nearby. Josh ran straight to the fence and threw himself over, his hand arrested when Lizzy stopped dead. She couldn’t get over the fence by herself.
Josh reached over and grabbed her, dragging her over, and the gun boomed again, taking a chunk out of the fence. Stumbling over on the neighbor’s lawn, Josh pulled Lizzy with him behind a bush and toward the path at the side of the building that led to the road. Risking a glance behind, Josh saw the man running, spear in one hand, gun in the other. The man clumsily hurdled the fence, tripped over, landed flat on his face, then got up again to continue the pursuit.
Out on the road, Josh picked up the pace, but his sister dragged behind, barely able to keep up. He wasn’t going to be able to outrun the man this way. Deviating right, he dashed past a house and into a garden, jumping over flower beds. At the fence, he lifted his sister over and clambered after her, grabbing her hand and running again. The man ran into the garden after them, panting heavily, and Josh led his sister across more flower beds, past a pool and out onto another street. Turning left, he dragged his sister along then turned left again, back into the houses, running through a gap into another garden. He couldn’t see the man behind him, so he scrambled over a fence again, across a yard and back onto his own street. In this way, he zigzagged through the neighborhood until, certain he’d shaken his pursuer, he dodged into another garden and behind a pair of wheeled trash cans.
Trembling and heaving for breath, he listened for any sign that the man might be close, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Lizzy curled up against him, sobbing uncontrollably.
*
“Come on, dammit!”
Lauren pushed hard against the pickup, trying to get it to roll.
The yard behind the mill was small, and the pickup had been parked at one end of it. Lauren assumed that, with a good push, there was enough room to push-start the vehicle. That was how the men must have done it. The track that led out to the road was too bumpy.
Loading all the supplies they could find into the back of the pickup, April got into the cab and put it into gear, depressing the clutch. On her own, however, Lauren struggled to move the vehicle. Straining until she thought her veins would pop, she got it rolling, but it was moving too slow. Running out of yard, April released the clutch to see if they had enough momentum to start the engine.
They didn’t. The vehicle juddered to an abrupt halt. Lauren slapped her hand on the truck in annoyance.
“There’s got to be an easier way to do this,” said April, leaning out of the cab.
Lauren, sweating, tightened the hunting rifle strap and walked around to the front, putting her hands on the bull bar. Birds twittered in the woods and the sun beat down. “Backwards now,” she said. “Put it in reverse.”
April rolled her eyes. She’d lost count of how many attempts they’d made. “Okay, have it your way.”
Engaging the right gear, she pushed on the clutch and signaled. Taking a deep breath, Lauren pushed against the truck until her face was puce.
*
The Cessna’s engine ran beautifully as they crossed the Davis Straits. With clear skies and good visibility, Rick took a turn at the controls. Gleaming icebergs sailed serenely below them in the blue waters. In spite of the positive view, Rick was impatient to get home, and he wanted to open the throttle.
Kowalski wouldn’t let him touch it, however. He was running the engine lean to max out the range. Flying at ten thousand feet, it felt like they were barely moving at all. When the Canadian coastline crept into view, Rick’s angst grew.
He felt so close, and yet so far.
41
As a young boy, Josh liked to imagine himself as a soldier in Vietnam, hiding in the foliage amid the tropical heat. He played with toy soldiers in his bedroom and watched war movies. It wasn’t that he ever imagined becoming a soldier himself, and he never played at soldiers with the kids in the neighborhood – though they were never interested anyway, and he often felt excluded from the groups.
He played by himself because it was his one connection with his dad, his only way of mentally being with him. His dad’s homecomings were a chance to curl up with him and watch movies, and he’d accompany his dad to the PX in Fort Bragg, surrounded by Humvees and marching recruits. Outside the base, his dad didn’t bother with military trappings. Josh never saw him in uniform, and even his friends from the unit, when they came to visit the house, could have been guys from the bowling club. None had regulation hair cuts. Josh got the impression sometimes that his dad hated the army – the rules and the pomp – and acted like his own unit didn’t belong to the army at all. He didn’t talk about his work and he never flew a flag on his lawn.
As Josh got older, the homecomings would be more muted. His father always seemed tired, and Josh didn’t curl up with him anymore. They did less together, and his dad watched movies alone while Mom worked longer hours. The purpose of his father’s absences somehow got lost in all that. It was like he was now an oil rig worker or engineer, away on long jobs. When most of the troops came home after 2011, other soldiers in the neighborhood got rotated less, and the subject of war faded from the news. His father, however, continued to go out, disappearing for months. Playing with toy soldiers carried less meaning for Josh. Once he reached secondary school, he observed what was cool and what was not, and hung around the edges of new fashions and the obsession with personal appearance and fitting in with one subculture or other. But it all seemed transient and pointless. None of it moved him in the same way as playing with soldiers had.
Because once upon a time, that actually meant something. And his dad felt like his dad, and not just some visiting stranger.
Sitting now in the foliage of a bush, Josh remembered what it was like to be younger, sitting in the dark in his own garden with Mom calling for him to come in, then searching for him with threats of no supper.
He felt a pang for those lost days. Parched with thirst and weak from hunger, he tried to bring them back, recalling the feelings of certainty and security, when it was safe to imagine being somewhere more dangerous. And just pretend.
No such luck, now. With the crazy guy still on the loose, Josh and Lizzy had relocated, moving away from whatever noise they heard in th
e distance as objects were thrown and windows broken. The cloudy sky blocked out the stars and brought a darkness so total, Josh thought his eyes were permanently shut. Thunder rolled in the distance, and the air was humid and thick.
Lizzy slept fitfully, waking in starts and putting her arm out to check her brother was still there. He was all she had now. One by one, people had been taken out of their lives, and the loneliness of responsibility weighed heavily on Josh.
It was down to him now, and he didn’t really know what to do. The night dragged on, but ideas – productive ideas – failed to come.
Rain drops started to patter on the leaves above his head. Pessimistically, he thought this was the last thing they needed, stuck outdoors as they were. It was only when the rain came down harder that he realized the opportunity. Shaking Lizzy awake, he slid out from the bush and lay down on his back, his mouth open as he tried to collect as much moisture as he could.
The deluge drenched his face and he held his hands out, catching the water and splashing it into his mouth. Soaked through, he pulled Lizzy out from the bush and cupped his hands, refreshing her dry lips.
It was all he could do to keep from laughing.
*
When the morning came, the sun emerged and steamed the moisture off the grass. Josh woke, damp and cramped. Shaking the bush, he licked at the last drops that came down. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw what else he was shaking.
Cucumbers. They’d sheltered the night in someone’s cucumber patch, and hidden under the large leaves were young, two-inch long cucumbers.
Like most kids, Josh had never been into salad, but he didn’t hesitate to pick this new-found bounty before his eyes. Crunching into one, he savored the tart, juicy taste. Within seconds, he and Lizzy devoured the meager pickings. But there was more. Attached to the fence was a tomato vine. Most of the large fruit had been picked, presumably by the owners before they evacuated. Small green tomatoes, however, had budded since and, while not ripe, they tasted like heaven to the two starving children. Josh scoured the garden for more, then realized other gardens might contain the same.
Galvanized, he dragged Lizzy over the fences, searching. Most folks, it seemed, didn’t bother growing their own food, but he did find an apple tree. Most of the lower offerings had been taken but, telling Lizzy to keep watch at the foot of the tree, he began to climb. Tucking his hoodie into his pants, he filled it with crisp, red apples and climbed carefully down, cautious not to crush them as he grasped the branches. Sitting in the shade of the tree, they gorged themselves until their stomachs ached and they felt lethargic and sleepy.
The house the garden belonged to was a two story new-build. Josh gazed at it thoughtfully. Urging his sister to follow him, he walked to the back door and peered in.
“What are you doing?” whispered Lizzy.
“There could be more food in there,” said Josh. He picked up a stone garden ornament.
“Josh, don’t,” said Lizzy when she saw what he was about to do.
Josh stood back and heaved the ornament through the pane of the door, smashing it. Leaning forward, he sniffed the warm air that escaped through the hole he’d made. It was musty but it didn’t smell bad.
Hopefully it meant there were no dead bodies inside. Reaching inside, he unlocked the catch and opened the door, beckoning to Lizzy.
“I don’t want to go in,” she said. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“It’s empty,” said Josh. “They’re all empty.”
“It’s against the law,” said Lizzy seriously.
Josh looked sadly at her. “There are no laws any more. We have to survive, Liz. That means doing things like this. Come on, it’s safe.”
Taking her by the hand, he entered a hallway. Lizzy stopped, refusing to go any farther. “I’m scared,” she said.
“Wait here, then.”
Josh searched the kitchen and pantry. Unsurprisingly, he found nothing, and didn’t expect to find anything anyway. He wasn’t really looking for food.
He was searching for weapons.
From a wooden block, he drew a chef’s knife. It felt sharp, with a reassuring weight in his hand, but he couldn’t see himself entering into hand-to-hand combat with it. Not against that creep who’d murdered his grandma and hurt Skye.
He needed something more substantial.
The man had never been far from Josh’s thoughts. Last night, desperate and weak, he only wanted to get away from him. Now, on a full stomach, he wanted more. The memory of what the man had done, burned. Running away meant leaving the area, and if his mom was really going to return, he had to be sure she could find them.
He also didn’t want her to arrive at the house with that creep inside, waiting like he had for Grandma.
No. One way or another, he had to go.
He searched the rest of the ground floor. By the fake fireplace, he found an ornamental poker, but it didn’t impress him. In the back room there was a full sized pool table with a rack of pool cues. He hefted one, liking the weight and the swing. It was okay, but he would have preferred a baseball bat.
Back out in the hall, he took Lizzy’s hand and walked to the stairs. Seeing the knife he was carrying, she balked, but he persuaded her to follow him. Upstairs, he searched the dressers and closets. He was looking for a gun cabinet. It was a long shot, considering that the evacuees would have taken any guns with them, but maybe the people hadn’t been at home when the storm struck. They were pretty wealthy, so maybe they were away on a business trip like Mom. Or perhaps they had another home somewhere. He tapped the walls for any hidden compartments or safes, but came up empty handed. He’d seen an advertisement once for hiding a rifle in a drop-down panel beneath a shelf, and searched those as well, but didn’t find anything so exotic. A whip and handcuffs hanging at the back of a closet showed what was more to the owners’ tastes, but it wasn’t really to Josh’s.
He was considering how to get into the attic space when he heard a creak on the stairs. He looked around and saw Lizzy wasn’t with him anymore. He’d left her in one of the other rooms and he guessed she was trying to sneak back downstairs.
“Lizzy,” he called, going out onto the landing.
He froze when he saw the man on the stairs, pointing Grandma’s pistol at him. The man gave him a nasty grin, holding up a freshly eaten apple core.
“I knew I’d find you in the end,” he said.
42
Before dawn, the Cessna was already crossing the U.S. border. Rick had overridden Kowalski’s objections to taking off while it was still dark. Passing over the Hudson River, the little plane flew by the blackened skyscrapers of New York, multiple empty window frames staring bleakly at them. Taking his turn at the controls, Rick opened the throttle and Kowalski, apart from looking at him, said nothing.
Below them, the New Jersey turnpike stretched south, and Rick thought about Lauren. Container trucks and trailers lay with debris in a wide circle around, like a giant fist had squashed each one, scattering its goods. Empty packaging blew across the highway, and groups of either looters or refugees moved about, looking like ants.
He hoped she wasn’t down there.
*
Lauren was furious at having lost so much time. Frustrated at being unable to start the truck in the mill yard, they’d been forced to push it along the rutted track to the road, struggling to move it every time the wheel sank into a hole. It took them hours. When they finally got the truck started on the smooth highway, they’d lost most of the day and had to stop at nightfall, having traveled only a few miles. The truck had no working lights and they were too exhausted to go farther. As soon as they had enough light to move in the morning, Lauren took the wheel and put her foot down.
Barreling down a road, they approached a town and saw a barricade across the highway, manned by armed men.
Lauren wasn’t willing to negotiate passage.
“Get down,” she told April.
Seeing what she was about to do, Ap
ril grabbed Daniel and sank down off the seat, eyes wide.
Lauren lowered herself behind the steering wheel, weaving the vehicle erratically.
The barricade guards lifted their weapons hesitantly, unsure if this was a bluff. When the vehicle’s momentum indicated it wasn’t, they took aim and fired. The windscreen shattered, showering Lauren in glass, but she kept her foot on the gas, aiming for a weak spot in the barricade. The guards scattered and the pickup smashed its way through, bumping over the debris. Lauren fought with the wheel to keep the vehicle straight and powered through the center of the town, the engine roaring as bullets pocked the bodywork.
43
Holding a terrified Lizzy at gunpoint, the man forced Josh to climb back up the apple tree. “Get me as many as you can,” he said.
Swaying on the thin upper branches, Josh reached for an apple, certain he was going to fall. After dropping one apple down, however, the man ordered him to get more. Wobbling precariously, Josh edged out for another. He knew that if he fell, the man would only send him up again, and the look on Lizzy’s face compelled him to keep trying. He wanted to throw the apples down at the man’s head, but knew it would do nothing. Worse, he feared the retaliation. Or what the man would do to his sister. Angry at himself for having been caught so easily, Josh leaned out farther than he would normally have dared.
The man ate the apples voraciously, the barrel of the revolver pressed firmly against Lizzy’s skull. When he judged Josh had gotten enough, he ordered him down.
“You’re pretty useful,” he said. “Let’s see if you can do something else. Walk on ahead, and if you run, I’m just going to shoot the girl. Don’t think that I won’t.”
Walking out onto the street, the man pointed to another house. “That one, there,” he said.
It was the house that Josh had seen the chairman outside of. The one with the bodies in.
“The stink was too much for me,” said the man. “But you can go in. Check out the kitchen, and don’t try anything funny.”