The Last Warm Place

by Barry Napier

  The silence was broken five minutes later when the car was filled with the sound of abrupt static. It lasted two seconds, then stopped.

  Kendra and I both jumped. The baby made a fussy noise against Kendra’s breast, but then fell back asleep. We stared at one another and when I saw her eyes pleading for some sort of explanation, I became suddenly terrified.

  I’m supposed to protect her, I thought. What if I can’t?

  The thought didn’t have time to take root. Instead, the sound of static filled the car again.

  “What the hell?” Kendra said.

  The static continued this time and filled the car in a low consistent drone. It was very much like the horrific background static when one of those old local AM radio stations struggled to break through. Within a few seconds, the static was accompanied by a high pitched whining in the background. It was a sound I was not familiar with, but my mind seemed to associate it with warning messages and emergency broadcasts.

  But then there was the click, followed by silence.

  Then a voice filled the car, quiet, and almost robotic.

  “Is someone there? Did someone pick up the Eclipse?”

  For a moment, I was confused to the point of absurdity. Were we sharing some delusion or were we under some sort of attack that I didn’t understand? But as my nerves settled a bit, I started looking around for answers. It took only a handful of seconds before I noticed the black wire that ran along the carpeted runner of the console and the floorboard. It was thick enough so that I should have seen it from the start, before we even got into the car. But I had been so flabbergasted that the damned car had actually started, I had missed such a trivial thing.

  I saw this black wire snaking around to the rear of the console where all of the radio wiring was located. The other end wound beneath my seat. It had been hidden pretty well, again making me wonder if we had somehow stepped into some sort of trap.

  “I’m going to pull over,” I told Kendra.

  She nodded as the voice sounded out again. This time, I knew it for what it was. It was someone speaking to us through a CB radio.

  “Hello?” the male voice said. “Is someone there?”

  I pulled the car to the side of the road. A few yards ahead of us, I saw a road sign that advertised a nearby produce stand. I have no idea why but the idea of picking through strawberries and apples in that moment made me profoundly sad.

  I opened the car door and looked under the driver’s seat. Sure enough, there was an old CB radio hidden there. I pulled it out and looked at it with inquisitive eyes. I’d seen a few before, thanks to my father’s brief interest in deer hunting when I was a kid. Still, in my hands in that very moment, it felt like I had just unearthed a tool from some great and ancient civilization.

  “What was it doing under there?” Kendra asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I had never used a CB radio before but I’d seen my dad use one. Also, my reliance on movies told me what to do. I picked up the mic and pressed in the call button on the side.

  “Hello. Who am I speaking to?” Then, just because it felt right and I had never had the chance to do so before in my life, I added: “Over.”

  Kendra chuckled lightly at this. It diffused the situation only a slight bit.

  I let go of the button and the car was silent for a few seconds. There was a brief hiss of static and the man’s voice returned.

  “My name is Tom Vance,” came the reply. “I’m a member of the National Guard. We placed that CB under the seat of that Eclipse almost a month ago. How many are in your party? Over.”

  I looked to Kendra. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to divulge this information. Even if it was the National Guard on the other end, the whole set-up seemed odd.

  “Why did you place the CB under the seat?” I asked.

  “We are well aware that there are some still out there that might not need the car, but would find the CB valuable. So we hid it from plain sight. That way, only someone in need of the car would find the CB. We also hid a tracking device under the hood. Over.”

  It still didn’t make much sense to me, but I felt better about the situation.

  “Where are you located? Over.”

  “We’re in Athens,” the man responded. He sounded a little peeved at having to answer so many questions. “You should have enough gas to reach us. I repeat, how many are in your party?”

  Before pressing the call button again, I looked to Kendra.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “If he is with the National Guard, I think we’d be fools not to meet up with him and his people,” she answered. “We might not have to travel all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains to survive.”

  It was the same thought I’d had. But I also had another one. “What if it’s a hoax? What if it’s just some violent criminal, baiting people who wander on the road? What if we get to Athens and find a lone man that shoots us in the head just to take our supplies?”

  Kendra considered this for a moment and gave me a half-smile. “Then we have guns too, and he’d be in for a hell of a fight.”

  I looked from her to the baby. I weighed our options and knew in that instant that she was letting me make the decision. It was one of those unspoken marriage-like things that had developed between us in our six months together. It was comforting but also downright eerie.

  I pressed the call button again but didn’t speak right away. I looked ahead to the empty road and the sign that promised the best peaches in the state.

  “Three,” I answered finally. “Myself, a woman, and a baby. The baby is six months old. Over.”

  The man responded almost instantly. It was impossible to be sure because of the static and poor quality of the CB radio, but I thought he sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Okay. Then here’s what you do if you want to meet up with us. We have food, water, and some scattered supplies. We have medicine, too. Come to Athens, but you have to come in a very direct way. Over.”

  “Why is that? Over.”

  “It’s one of those damned Black Spots. There’s a pretty big one between Monroe and Athens. You’ll have to take an out-of-the-way route to get here. You have a map? I can give you directions. Over.”

  Kendra and I shared a confused glance as I pressed the call button again. “What is a Black Spot?” I asked.

  “You haven’t encountered one yet?” He seemed surprised—so surprised that he forgot the Over.

  “Apparently not. We’ve been staying in a house in Kempry until now. We haven’t been out on the road for several months.”

  “Count yourself blessed. Over.”

  “So what is a Black Spot? Over.”

  The silence was longer this time. For reasons I couldn’t identify, the car seemed to shrink a bit. My heart was beating heavily in my chest.

  “I’ll explain it to you when you get here. Just know that, for now, any area of road or open spaces you see that look like they’re being swallowed by the shadow of approaching storm clouds should be avoided at all costs. Over.”

  “What?”

  Kendra was now looking out of the windshield with wide eyes, gazing to the sky. I followed her eyes and saw nothing but that familiar shade of grey. The entire scenario seemed a little ridiculous to me.

  “Sir, you have only a little bit of gas. I suggest you come to Athens and we’ll fill you in. Over.”

  Kendra nodded at me. She was stroking the baby’s head in a way she did when she got nervous. “Let’s do it,” she said.

  I pressed the call button and said, “Okay. Give me directions. Over.”

  12

  Tom Vance gave very accurate directions. It actually helped to ease my mind a bit. He was so efficient with giving them that I couldn’t help but believe that he was part of the National Guard or some other branch of the military. If he was lying to us for some unknown reason, then he was exceptionally good at it.

  He gave very specific instructions to turn off of Highway 78
and to take a roundabout way that would lead us towards Lawrenceville. When we came to the intersection he had indicated, Kendra and I both looked forward. Vance had instructed me to turn left here; he’d said to drive straight ahead towards Athens would be very bad. He explained as best as he could what we’d run into, and I hadn’t really believed him.

  But as we sat there at the intersection and stared at it through the windshield, I began to trust Tom Vance even more.

  Straight ahead, no more than half a mile after the four way intersection, we saw the edges of what Vance had referred to as a Black Spot. The landscape simply started to grow black in all directions. His description had been perfect; it was like looking at the horizon as fat storm clouds rolled in, only these storm clouds were nearly touching the ground. There were dark shadows everywhere, but no clouds overhead to cast them. The further back I stared, the darker it seemed to get. I couldn’t get away from the metaphor of a storm cloud. It was almost as if I was looking directly into one, looking further back into its black guts.

  “What the hell is that” Kendra asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You think it’s some sort of chemical reaction or something? Something to do with the nukes?”

  I only shrugged. It was hard to look away from that blackness. Even as I watched, it seemed to grow by the moment. It wasn’t hard at all to believe that the darkness eventually became so great that the world simply faded away somewhere further down that stretch of Highway 78. Although it resembled the blackest of storm clouds, I had the eerie feeling that it was sentient—that it knew we were there and studying it.

  As I stared, the car dinged at me. I looked to the console and saw that the gas gauge had come on. The needle was sitting on the E. I had maybe twenty-five to thirty miles left. Looking into the darkness Vance had referred to as a Black Spot made this realization all the more terrifying.

  I managed to tear my eyes away from the Black Spot and turned left, as Vance had told me. I relaxed even further when I remembered the last thing he had told us after giving directions to their location in Athens. He had said that if we happened to run out of gas along the way, to radio them and someone would come out to meet us.

  Still, I’d rather not have that happen. I sped forward, giving that odd blackness on the horizon one last glance.

  “My God, what is it?” Kendra asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s not something I want to know, I don’t think.”

  With that, we headed further down the road, following Vance’s directions.

  The baby woke up shortly after that. Kendra nursed him and I could tell by the frustration on her face that her milk production wasn’t going as well as she’d like. Still, she let him stay there, pacifying himself.

  When I looked to the right five minutes later, I could see no sign of the Black Spot. It had dissipated at some point, allowing the colors of the real world to dominate again. Now I saw an open field and, further back, a few houses and a barn.

  It was almost as if the Black Spot had never been there. And, as Vance had also said, that was the most dangerous thing.

  13

  We managed to get to Athens without running out of gas, although I’m sure that by the time I killed the engine in the parking lot to Miller’s Tires, we were running on fumes. The baby had soiled itself, and Kendra changed him with cloth diapers she had made several months ago from old thermal pajamas we found in the Dunns’ bureau.

  Miller’s Tires sat in the center of a dilapidated block. A few other buildings along the street still stood, but most had been burned. I couldn’t tell if it was the result of nuclear fallout or riots.

  While Kendra changed the baby, I looked out of the window. Dusk would be creeping in soon, but Athens already seemed dark without it. Vance had told us to stay parked in the g lot and that he’d come out to meet us within five minutes.

  In that moment, waiting in the parking lot of Miller’s Tires, I was highly suspicious. The entire scenario seemed too good to be true. Then again, the concept behind covertly hiding the CB radio seemed to be something that someone with our safety in mind would do. If Vance and the people he was with were killers, why go through the trouble? Why not just kill us in Monroe?

  Because they’re afraid of the Black Spot, I thought.

  With that thought in my head, I heard an engine approaching to my right. It was a large, beastly type of sound that made me think of bulldozers. I looked in that direction and saw that I wasn’t too far off.

  A large green dump truck was turning the corner at the end of the street. It headed our way very slowly. There was a man standing on a platform of some kind behind the driver’s side door. He was smoking a cigarette and holding a machine gun.

  This whole idea suddenly seemed bad to me. What the hell had I been thinking?

  “Kendra...are you still okay with this?”

  “I think so,” she answered. She finished changing the baby and tossed the dirty cloth into the back seat. “I’m not sure we really have a choice right now, anyway.”

  I grabbed the AK that sat between us as the dump truck stopped on the side of the street.

  The driver’s side opened and a man wearing eyeglasses stepped out. He brought a small pistol with him and said something to the smoking man on the platform as he looked towards our car. This guy was small in stature and looked almost waifish. If he was National Guard material, he was probably the guy that everyone had harassed during basic training. He looked like the type that had been bullied in high school and sat in a corner during gym.

  This man approached our car, leaving the smoking man standing on the truck’s side platform. When he saw that I wasn’t quite ready to open my door, he took a step back and lifted his hands into the air.

  “I’m safe,” he said. “You have my word.”

  I glanced to Kendra and badly wanted to kiss her as a husband would kiss his wife before entering into some sort of dangerous conflict. Instead, I only nodded to her and opened the car door with the AK still in my hand.

  Neither of us said anything. The noise of the dump truck’s engine sounded like the growling of a nervous dog. A very large, nervous dog.

  “I assure you, you don’t need that,” the man in glasses said. “We truly do want to help.”

  “Are you Vance?” I asked, still clinging to the gun. I didn’t want to seem aggressive, but I also wanted to let him know that I had no intention of releasing the gun.

  “That’s me,” he said. “And the man standing on the truck behind me is Riley.”

  “Is he military, too?” I asked.

  “No. I’m the only military man in our group. The others are just people like you that managed to stay alive.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Six, myself included.”

  I thought about this and looked back to Kendra. She was watching us with wide eyes. I could tell that she was looking for any sort of ambush, perhaps from the depths of the back of the dump truck.

  “Look, I get your hesitation,” Vance said, “but there is no nice way to put this. You can come with us, get some rest, some food, whatever. You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you’d like. Or you can get in the car and leave. It’s no concern of mine, really. We’re just trying to help people that need it.”

  I don’t know why, but I didn’t trust Vance. It was something about his voice. His lanky and almost feminine appearance did nothing to set my mind at ease. His hair was slicked back in a way that almost reminded me of those 50s and 60s photos I had seen of guys that so badly wanted to be James Dean. And his eyes were darting back and forth. Wasn’t that supposed to indicate guilt? Hadn’t I read that somewhere? I couldn’t remember.

  Still, Kendra and the baby needed food—real food. And if Vance had it, I was willing to risk it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “You should hop on in the truck,” Vance said, smiling. “We try to keep a low profile. I don’t want a bunch of cars sitting a
round our base of operations. Too obvious. I don’t want to clue violent people in, you know?”

  I nodded and motioned for Kendra to get out of the car. She did so and I heard the baby making noises of complaint. He wasn’t crying, just fussy.

  Vance smiled as he watched them get out. “A cutie. A he or she?”

  “He.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I couldn’t help but grin, despite my unease. “Baby.”

  Vance let out a small barking laugh. Somehow, it fit his appearance perfectly. It was almost like a sound effect from a cartoon.

  Vance walked to the passenger side of the dump truck and we followed. The man named Riley stepped down from his perch and introduced himself. I liked him much better than Vance but couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was because I knew he wasn’t military and my mind instantly assumed that he was far less dangerous than Vance. Riley was an older guy, maybe a little shy of fifty. His head was shaved and what had started growing back was mostly grey. He helped us with our few belongings and carefully placed them in the back of the dump truck by standing on tip toes from his little platform.

  I climbed up into the truck and took the baby from Kendra. Vance helped her up into the front of the truck and when his hand braced the underside of her arm to give her support, my jaw clenched. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him touching her; it was simply that I was expecting him to pull her down, to beat her, to rape her, kill her. It may seem extreme, but the time we had spent on the road had trained me to expect these sorts of things. Knowing the tragedies she’d endured before we met made it even worse.

  When she was finally sitting next to me in the cab, Kendra grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. The baby calmed a bit, more relaxed now that he could feel both of us around him. I imagine the slight vibrations of the dump truck coming through Kendra’s body helped, too.

  As we waited for Vance to walk back to the driver’s side and take his seat, Kendra gave me a smile.

  Like the one I returned to her, it filled with uncertainty.