by Lopez, Rob
Rick scowled. “He was never my boss.”
“Whatever. Were you involved in any of those things Scott was talking about? The drugs and the prostitution?”
“I never served in the Philippines.”
“The drugs, then.”
“No.”
“So what’s going on?”
“Nothing. We just never got along.”
“You have a habit of biting your lip when you’re lying. Like now.”
“I don’t see why this is important.”
Lauren opened her mouth in surprise. “Are you kidding me? You tell me the truth now, or I’ll go and get it from Scott.”
“There’s nothing to tell, okay? Me and Connors never saw eye to eye, and that’s all there is to it. It’s in the past and it doesn’t matter now, so let it drop. I need to focus on tomorrow.”
Rebuffed, Lauren brooded for a moment. “We’re not moving just because of the radiation, are we?” she said.
“That’s reason enough. Get to sleep. We’re going to need it. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
4
Next morning, they got ready to leave, only to find out Packy had gone.
“Where is he?” said Rick, standing in the parking lot. The Blazer was missing.
“He said he’ll meet us at the Nascar Hall of Fame,” stated Scott, who’d taken the last watch.
“What for?”
“I don’t know. He’s just weird.”
“I don’t need this right now,” said Rick. “We have to get moving.”
The supplies were loaded into the two remaining vehicles, including the surplus guns they’d acquired after the raider attack: a motley variety of various calibers that included a machine gun with no ammunition. The ferocity of the battle meant there was less ammunition overall than Rick would have liked. Food supplies were also slim. There were twelve mouths to feed, not including baby Jacob who, thankfully, was still being breastfed. Scavenging food in the city had been hard enough. Rick wondered what it would be like outside, where they might have to compete with other survivors. He’d have preferred a thorough reconnaissance of likely locations to exfil to, but the need for haste nagged at him. The clubhouse, he felt, was no longer a safe location. Not with Connors out there.
Lauren’s questions bugged him, and he didn’t like to withhold information from her, but he felt it was better she didn’t know. Anything that took her mind off the matter in hand was an unnecessary distraction.
Maybe there’d be a time in the future to fully have that conversation. But not now.
The thought of it only clouded his own judgment. He’d been surprised to see Connors after all this time, and even more surprised to see Leon, Taft and Fick riding with him. Together they were the four horsemen and they rode together, just as they had in Afghanistan. He had unfinished business with those three, and the mere thought of them made him grind his teeth. If he had his way, he’d find a way to conclude that business.
But it was better to focus on getting his family somewhere safe. In the big scheme of things, some of his impulses were better suppressed. Now wasn’t the time to open old wounds.
After push-starting the heavy Suburban, the vehicle was backed up to the Humvee and a tow rope attached. Being an automatic, the Humvee couldn’t be push-started. As Rick watched Scott and Harvey trying to tow-start it, he mused that maybe the Humvee wasn’t such an ideal vehicle to have. They needed to find a way to re-wind the burned-out starter motors in the vehicles. On the other hand, seeing as the quality of the remaining fuel supplies would deteriorate with time, it probably wouldn’t be long before they were unable to use vehicles at all. Maybe another year at the most. After that they would be reduced to pedal-power, which was another reason to get settled someplace soon. The two bikes they had were tied to the back of the Suburban, and on the roof were the tents they’d scavenged from a sports store. It made the vehicle look like it was ready for a vacation.
Some vacation.
Lizzy came out of the clubhouse carrying an oil lantern and a small backpack. She was clad in walking boots and outdoor clothing. Rick remembered a time when she’d emerge with an armful of cuddly toys, wearing cheap plastic sunglasses and dragging a bag with clothes and even more toys, plus a satchel with her artist pad and pencils. That was way back when they set out to vacation in Corolla, a quiet place with wild horses on the beach, where Rick got the chance to wind down after a long deployment. It was almost too quiet for him because he was still prepped for Iraq. He’d kept glancing behind all the time to see if he was being followed, scanning horizons for hidden snipers and getting spooked at night by random noises. It took a while to settle down and remember he was in a safe place, and after that the vacation was good. He remembered riding the zip-lines at the adventure park with Josh – one of the few happy times they shared together before the deployments wore him down and caused him to withdraw from his family.
Josh came out behind Lizzy, his .22 rifle slung on his shoulder and carrying the two air rifles that successfully kept them fed over the winter with small game. He was wearing camos, as were all the adults in the group. Scott had joked that they should call themselves the Clubhouse Militia. Josh certainly looked like some of the young Kurdish militia members Rick remembered from Syria. Tall and lean, he was a far cry from the boy he’d been in the adventure park. Now that they were in a real adventure, the fun had given way to seriousness, and Josh had that look of a young man who’d quit childhood early and didn’t think it worth looking back. It was like one of those photos from the Depression-era, where the boys dressed like their fathers and stood in hard-eyed poses, working on the farm or looking to get whatever job they could find to help support their families. The concept of the teenager didn’t exist then, and it certainly didn’t now. Josh had killed a man, and the transformation was likely permanent.
Lauren came out of the building last. “Okay, everything’s checked,” she said to Rick. “We’re ready to go.”
“Don’t forget to lock up,” remarked Rick.
Lauren smiled, catching the sarcasm. She seemed to have forgotten the previous night’s conversation. “I’ll leave a note with the neighbors to collect our mail and feed the goldfish. We could be away for a while. You going to miss the place?”
“No.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “And there was me thinking you were starting to lighten up.”
“I’ll be as radiant as you want when we get to where we’re going.”
“And where’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
The only compromise he’d reached with Scott was that they should initially head west. Beyond that, he’d let circumstance decide.
Chuck came around from the other side of the building. He’d tended his wife’s grave and said a few last words. When he saw Rick and Lauren, he wiped away the traces of a tear from his eye.
“You okay, Chuck?” said Lauren.
Chuck nodded solemnly, turning to gaze up at the clubhouse facade. “I guess so. It’s too grand a place really for her to rest in. She’d have preferred somewhere more homey.” He turned to Rick. “What are the chances of coming back here one day?”
Rick wasn’t planning on coming back, but he didn’t let it show on his face. “I don’t know.”
“No, I guess not. At least Bella’s with her. That’ll do until I can arrange something better.”
The others waited by the vehicles. The Humvee was now running, and it was decided that Scott would drive it, with Rick riding shotgun, while Harvey drove the Suburban, with Lauren providing the firepower from the right seat. The rest would cram in where they could, the children sitting on laps until they could transfer to Packy’s vehicle.
If he turned out to be at the Nascar building, that is. Rick wouldn’t have been surprised if they didn’t see him again – he was that unpredictable. With a last look at the clubhouse, he got into the Humvee and habitually waved to the rear vehicle to follow him, the vehicles pulling out of the lot like a patrol lea
ving the Green Zone in Iraq, weapons locked and loaded.
*
The convoy traveled slow, Rick wanting to keep the revs down. In the post-storm silence, a running engine was an alien sound, and could well be a dinner bell to hungry ears. He didn’t want to attract more attention than was strictly necessary.
Uptown Charlotte was bleaker now after the winter than it had been before. The cracks in the pavement had been widened by the snow and ice. Leaves and garbage piled up in front of the storm drains, and puddles from the recent rains stretched out to the center lanes, tidemarks of debris forming curved lines. The median and curb strips were overgrown, and weeds flourished on the sidewalks. Fire-blackened towers loomed over the empty streets, and pigeons nested in the shattered windows, leaving white streaks of droppings on the charred frameworks. Crows circled on the updrafts from the sun-warmed concrete, and dogs hung around the alleyways, watching warily as the convoy passed. Bodies left on the sidewalks were just bundles of clothing stretched over bones. Shopping carts abandoned by looters lay forlorn among abandoned vehicles streaked with grime.
Packy’s Blazer was parked outside the burned Nascar headquarters, next to the modernist Hall of Fame building. Scott pulled up alongside, keeping his engine running, and Rick got out, stepping over broken glass to enter the building.
Inside, it was dark and cool. Rick waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom and entered the Glory Road hall. This was a large space where a mock track had been built on a raised platform, circling the hall. Racing cars spanning six decades were displayed on the track, frozen in time in a perpetual race. Packy stood solemnly by a black Chevy Monte Carlo bearing a white number three.
“Dale Earnhardt’s car,” said Packy when he heard Rick coming in.
Rick wondered at the significance. Unlike Chuck, Packy hadn’t made a last visit to his parents’ graves behind the clubhouse. Instead, he was here, honoring a car.
“Nascar wasn’t the same after he died,” continued Packy. “My uncle Jess used to tell me about the rivalry between him and Geoff Bodine. Knights of the track, they were. The way Jess told it, I wish I’d been there. The sound of the thunder on the circuit, the smell of gas and burned rubber. He used to tell me so many stories. He lived and breathed automobiles. Wanted to take me to the track one day, but my dad wouldn’t allow it. He and Jess didn’t get along. Kind of miss him now.”
It was the most heartfelt thing Rick had ever heard Packy say, and he looked at him in a new light.
“Do you know where he is?” asked Rick.
“He’s dead. I like to think he died on the road, but the truth is, I don’t know.” Packy turned to Rick. “I was young and Dad thought he was a bad influence on me, so he cut off all contact with his brother. Wouldn’t let me go to the funeral or nothing. So I came here. This is how I remember him.” Packy paused for a moment. “I don’t even have a photo of him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. He would have been useful, right now. He could get anything running. Do you know, he nearly got his hands on the Bullitt Mustang? Found the cop in New Jersey who owned it, but he was a day late. It got sold to some guy who refused all Jess’s offers, and the car disappeared into the midwest. Can you imagine if he managed to get that car? I’d have run away from home for just one ride in that Mustang. It’d still be running now.”
“Wait, you mean Steve McQueen’s Mustang from the movie?”
“That’s right. You know it?”
“I loved that movie.”
It was Packy’s turn to see Rick in a new light. “You mean you actually enjoyed something?”
Rick gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I’m not as miserable as people think.”
Packy gazed back at the black Monte Carlo. “And Nascar racing?”
“Never got into that.”
Packy sighed. “For just a brief moment, there was a spark there. Dude, you’re about as miserable as it’s possible to be. Nascar? Really? Look at it. Look at that glory.”
“Steve McQueen wasn’t into Nascar either. He preferred Le Mans.”
Packy rolled his eyes. “If my ears could weep, I’d be, like, the weirdest looking fountain you ever saw.”
“You’re weird enough. Let’s go.”
Packy followed Rick out, muttering, “McQueen was into bike racing. Can you trust that man’s judgment? And the Le Mans movie sucked.”
Rick muttered back, “Not as much as Tom Cruise’s Days of Thunder.”
Packy tutted. “Philistine.”
5
Leaving Charlotte, the convoy passed by the airport. The white tail fins of the grounded jetliners looked pristine in the sunlight, although one plane on the taxiway was a blackened hulk. The airport parking lots were full of vehicles, their owners never coming back. Except for Lauren. She knew her car was still in there. She was tempted to pay it one more visit, but she’d lost the keys since, and as far as she could recall, she only had some tissues in the glovebox. She still remembered the day she’d driven in haste to catch her flight to Newark and wished again that some sixth sense had caused her to pause and reconsider whether to go or not. Had she done so, her parents might still be alive.
But she had reconsidered. Something had nagged at her on the way to that flight and she’d still gone anyway. That recollection had come to her when she’d said her last goodbye by her parents’ graves in the back yard of their home. Her childhood home. She’d drifted through the rooms, trying not to think of the violence that occurred there. The familiarity of the furniture, the pictures on the walls, and the chair on the porch all triggered her heart more than the graves had. She even thought she caught the smell of cookies in the kitchen. The real memories were there, not at the graveside, and she wept at the power of them. It was a different world now, yet the old world lingered in the shadows, exerting a terrible grip and threatening to suck her down into a vortex of despair.
It was dangerous to think like that now, and Lauren returned her attention to the slow moving landscape, her M16 poking through the open passenger window. In spite of her determination to quit daydreaming, however, she couldn’t help but wonder about one other thing: the man she had shot dead yesterday.
She’d warned the guy explicitly that she was about to shoot, but he kept reaching for his back pocket with that gloating smile on his face, like it was him that had the real power. He was so certain she had no choice but to surrender that he appeared shocked when she opened fire. Shock turned to outrage as he dropped to the ground, then he was dead.
That gloating look troubled her, like he knew something she didn’t. She took it for condescension, which only made it easier to pull the trigger, but she wondered afterwards whether he was simply insane. He argued with her the way he might have argued with a city hall official. She doubted he was regressing to old structures of power, however, as he didn’t look the civic type. No, he really thought he had something on her.
Maybe it was just that he’d always been an arrogant dick.
He certainly assumed he was entitled to something. She thought that the privations of the previous winter had driven that attitude out of everyone, but then she assumed that people were rational, which maybe wasn’t the case. Perhaps he was one of those people who reveled in the leveling of class structures, in which case the current state of affairs would be viewed as utopia. His absolute certainty, though, was downright creepy. It was almost like he’d been pumped with expectation.
And what, or who, had given him that expectation?
Lauren’s thoughts turned to the strange Major Connors, and Rick’s equally strange reaction to him. It was as if Rick was genuinely afraid of him, and she’d never seen her husband afraid of anyone.
Well, maybe afraid was too strong a word, but Lauren could definitely sense an unease, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She’d quizzed Scott, exactly as she’d threatened to, but it was like he was bound by a code of silence, and he remained offhand and vague, leaving the assumption that there was nothing really t
o worry about. And Lauren wasn’t sure how worried she should be. Apart from the rumors – and the army was full of rumors – there wasn’t much to indicate Connors was any kind of real threat to them, even with his henchmen. After fighting off a large band of raiders, it didn’t make sense to worry about four guys, no matter how well trained they were. Clearly there was something beyond the martial aspect that led her husband to seek a retreat.
Because they were retreating, there was no doubt about that, running into unknown territory without proper reconnaissance. They had no idea how the rest of the country had fared, nor what they would find.
She made a mental note to one day press her husband on the issue when he was in a better mood. If ever.
Beyond the airport they came to the first obstacle in their path: the Catawba River. Flowing as it did out of Lake Norman, where the nuclear power plant had been, its waters were now highly radioactive, and were likely to remain so for the rest of their lifetimes, and then some. The nearest crossing was a railroad bridge. As Lauren knew from her own experience, it was a likely ambush point for any bandits seeking to rob them.
Bandits. That was a strange term to comprehend in this day and age. At least in America. It conjured up images of outlaws holding up stagecoaches. Right now, this convoy was the wagon train, and the weapons available to modern day bandits would make short work of it. Rick halted the convoy while it was still in the shade of the trees that flanked the railroad track and got out, preparing to walk the bridge alone. Lauren got out too, propping her rifle on the door to cover her husband. Across the brown river were some factory buildings that marked the edge of the town of Belmont. Lauren scanned the site for movement, but there was nothing and Rick made it across to the other side without incident. He disappeared for a few minutes, checking the place out, then reappeared to wave them across.
They followed the line through the center of town, the tires seeking purchase on the gravel by the tracks, until they reached the railroad crossing on Main Street. The sidewalks and stores looked much the same as they had on the other side of the river, and the silence was broken only by their idling engines. Apart from the looted buildings, there was no indication that anyone had stayed here over the winter. Once the power plant blew – and they would have seen the ominous cloud in the distance quite clearly from here – the town would have been evacuated quickly. The only question was: where to?