Looking Back Through Ash

by Wade Ebeling

  When his mentor suddenly died of a major stroke, Daniel jumped right into his place and started drawing up the plans for the city. He endeared himself to quite a few by making separate housing units for families, along with ingenious communal areas for cooking and cleaning at the Warehouse. One of the reasons for the building being chosen was because of its geothermal heating and cooling system, which he incorporated wherever possible. Daniel added large, raised cisterns for washing and waste disposal inside the communal area and he organized the controlled chaos of the bazaar with long rows of plentiful individual stalls for anyone trying to hawk their wares.

  Cobblers, tailors, and bee keepers with their honey, wax, and skin products became favorites of the locals. The gunsmiths and ammunition re-loaders catered mainly to the Police, but plenty of locals still living outside the compound frequented them too. Using plans that Daniel had found in a book, a stone forge was built for the gunsmiths close to the public garage on the north side of the Warehouse. The garage sat near the last in a row of shipping containers holding everything from auto store inventories to chemistry materials.

  Using this forge, the gunsmith’s smelted copper piping and wiring down to cast new solid bullets. Scavengers provided everything needed, including the boxes of primers and sacks of random spent shell casings; for a price, of course. Daniel had also built two large wood-fired ovens on the south side near a smoke house and the sand-filled walls of the dog kennels. These allowed for another section in the bazaar to hold baked and smoked goods that ranged all the way from bread and puffed rice for cereals to whole smoked rabbits. If you could afford the trade price that the Shultz family set on milk and butter, it was available three days a week when they travelled down from the north.

  It was completely obvious to anyone who met Daniel during this period of growth that was suited to being on his own, and it came as no surprise when he turned down one of the smaller housing units, offered to him by the Council as a reward for designing the City Hall. These plans included a large expansion, jutting out from the existing loading dock, which would contain the garage for the Fire Department and the Police vehicles, and a smaller extension on the northwest corner would accommodate the “Bank”. The rest of the narrow building was to be used for school and daycare rooms, while the top floor was given exclusively to the Council’s use.

  The D.o.C. was trying to curtail the amount of dwindling fuel resources being used by the controlled communities sprinkled around the country. They backed the city’s money with the only tangible that it still controlled and could refine more of; fuel. The city was required to pay its employees and citizens, for services rendered, with these stipends. They could also be used to pay the city for using the metered water, or for renting bazaar stalls and housing units. Once the city gained back possession of the stipends, they could then use its face value for fuel in their generators and vehicles. This directive massively reduced the amount of fuel used by citizens, and it extended the time frame with which cities went through the supply.

  It was during this tenuous time that Corinne and Daniel grew very close. Corinne often followed Susan over to work at the still under construction City Hall. And what time she didn’t spend learning how to use and fix some of the only functioning computers in the state, she spent flirting with Daniel. It was also during this time that Susan tried to squash the budding love by telling Corinne all the horrible stories that she knew about Allen Moore.

  This was not enough to dissuade her love-struck daughter, however. Even sadder from her perspective, was that it only sped Corinne into moving in with Daniel, where she grew to love the quiet time spent in the house, alone with her fiancée. Around the time of their daughter’s birth, the mandatory “dark” days were put into place; the Department of Continuance was once again trying to prolong the death knell of its petroleum supply.

  What was once filled with delightful quiet time before the baby was born became tiring stretches of tedium for Corinne. She desperately wanted more help raising their child. Rebecca was placed in the community day care center during the days both her and Daniel worked, but this was not nearly enough. This problem was compounded when Susan refused to leave the safety of the fenced and patrolled Warehouse to come visit; her petty way of showing disdain for her daughter’s choice in husband.

  Once the City Council found that its growth had been curbed, and they no longer needed Daniel or the scores of others stretching their resources, massive cuts were made. This made Corinne feel justified in her, now standard, routine of going to work and doing little or nothing else once she got home. She would sit for hours on the couch, reading her romance novels, lost in a world that revolved around her.

  Sitting in the silence and dark, Corinne listened to the groans of the house from the basement, thinking about all of the stories that her mother had shared with her about Allen Moore. Rebecca, mercifully, had fallen back asleep just as Corinne heard someone quietly walking around upstairs. She started to hate the hollow feeling of being scared, which endlessly churned her insides. More than the fear itself, she was angry. Corinne did not see how she could live like this, or how she could watch Rebecca grow up like this. Corinne knew she would have to stomach her new fear of Daniel, if only for a short while. She needed his help.

  Corinne had only fired a couple of guns before, and it was always after someone else had loaded it and handed it to her “ready-to-go” during the compulsory training days. She now realized that she needed to know how to use Daniel’s shotgun to accomplish her forming plan. Corinne’s father had owned a beautiful, glossy, wooden shotgun before dying. Daniel’s shotgun was ugly when compared to her father’s; drab green and plastic.

  Daniel had shown Corinne his father’s hidey-hole when she first moved in. Stashed with the other mean-looking gun was the ugly shotgun. Daniel had made a big show of it when he opened the wall panel, taking everything off the wall hooks and removing two screws above the seam that ran along the middle of the wall. The opening held the guns in the left baffle and ammunition, sealed in bags, was stacked up in the right.

  Corinne knew she could get to the shotgun, but just getting to it was not good enough. She wanted to know how to intimately use it. She wanted to never be afraid again. She never wanted to see her daughter this afraid again, either. Daniel may not understand the situation yet, but she did.

  ……..

  Daniel, now lucid after his anger induced stupor, walked carefully back into the house. He felt oddly guiltier about seeing the aqua colored drapes and rod on the floor than, what he assumed was, the father and two sons that he had just killed. Assisted by the flashlight, he walked down the hall to the bathroom, his feet sticking slightly with each step. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, he wrenched his feet into view to clean and bandage them with a comprehensive first-aid kit open beside him.

  Turning into his bedroom, Daniel donned the oldest, threadbare clothes and shoes that he could find for his next grisly task. He grabbed the spare magazine for the pistol from the top shelf of the closet and returned to the living room to retrieve the battle-tested gun. Daniel stuffed the freshly loaded pistol in the right front pocket of his old work jeans, and the spent magazine into the left.

  Daniel painfully hobbled over to the top of the stairs and stopped cold. Instead of going down them, he called hoarsely, “Everything is okay, Babe. I’m alright. I…uh…have to take care of a few things. I’ll be back down in a little bit…You guys alright?”

  A pause ensued, which lasted longer than Daniel was comfortable with. Finally, Corinne could just be seen walking slowly to the bottom of the stairs. She stopped where it was just possible to see up enough of the stairwell to ensure that it was, in fact, Daniel. “Rebecca is sleeping again,” she whispered. “Are you sure you are alright?”

  Daniel knew that it was not concern in Corinne’s overriding timbre, but he figured the stress of the situation warranted her some slack. Daniel, of all people, could understand the anger in her voice. As compassi
onately as his coarse throat could manage, Daniel croaked, “I’m fine, Core. I just wanted to check on you guys.” He fought the urge to rush down and hug his wife. Knowing that if she saw or smelled the bits of flesh clinging to him it would most certainly make her recoil and get even more upset, Daniel resisted. He calmly continued after catching his suddenly missing breath, “I…I need to find a way to board up our back door…They busted it in. Ahh…and…a couple of other things…”

  “Did you shoot someone?” Corinne asked, her tone warning him not to lie.

  “Yes. They tried to ambush me.” Daniel’s fury reminded him what that had gotten the father and his sons, his shame screamed out to not vocalize it. “They would have killed me and…found…you guys,” he said at last in self-compromise.

  Corinne remained mute in her understanding of what “found” meant. “You said ‘they’. How many of them were there?” Corinne asked quickly, her voice a little louder, but somehow softer despite it.

  “Three,” Daniel said, holding up fingers for a brief and unnecessary visual aide.

  “Did they have guns?” Corinne inquired, empathy for her husband slowly returning.

  Daniel slouched his shoulders slightly, a posture filled with shame. “One of them did…the others…the others had bats,” he hissed.

  ‘Baseball bats’ his mind interjected with the oddly timed information.

  “What are you going to do? Are they dead? Did they run off?” Corinne asked, foot creeping closer to the bottom stair, worried that there might still be a threat looming somewhere outside in the dark.

  “I killed them all. I wouldn’t leave them alive,” Daniel replied, a little too angrily, and far too sincerely.

  Corinne’s fear bubbled up again. Not wanting to push any further, she tried to soothe him instead. “We will be alright for a little while. Do…do what you have to. Just be safe,” she cooed, shooting him a quick smile before slinking further back into the murky depths of the basement.

  He called back down to her, “I’ll try to hurry. I love you.”

  She did not respond.

  Unsure of whether she had heard him or not, Daniel hurried out into the garage. He unlocked the rolling door, raised it up about four feet and stared out into the night. After a few seconds, he was fairly certain that there were no further dangers present within the impenetrable shadows. He pulled his daughter’s green and yellow plastic wagon around to the back of the house, and struggled rolling the dead weight of the bearded father into a position that his appendages would not drag along on the ground. He gave a cursory pat-down of the cooling body, which yielded sixteen .22 caliber bullets and an almost rusted-shut buck knife. A small sweep with the flashlight found a small revolver tucked up against the tree. Daniel shoved all of these items tightly together in his back right pocket.

  He was half expecting the police patrols to start showing up as he struggled to pull the burdened wagon along the roller-coaster of the concrete pathway. The D.o.C. had installed two acoustic sensor arrays atop City Hall when the work was nearly finished. This system could locate the origin of a gunshot anywhere within a mile or more of the arrays. The Police’s response teams could rush out when a system alert happened, getting to any place inside of the safe zone within minutes. Those patrols should have been here already, though, and Daniel now knew they would never come.

  Heading down the driveway, he carefully pulled the wagon between the car and truck before making it to the street. Daniel scanned up and down the desolate road. He saw no lights in any of the houses, and he heard no sirens or engines running. No one had even seemed to notice Daniel’s gunfight, or his screaming fit afterwards.

  Daniel pulled his burden down the road about fifty yards from the driveway. Not knowing of any occupied houses nearby, or if there were even any left at all, he unceremoniously dumped the body along the curb; downstream in the flow of the rain gutters. As he completed this unwelcomed task two more times with the son’s bodies, Daniel decided that unless someone showed up to investigate the atrocious racket soon, he would burn the three exposed cadavers tomorrow night.

  Daniel nailed two thin sheets of Masonite over the door-wall frames, then, by using screw-in hooks, stretched pieces of safety netting from a trampoline overtop. Someone would have a tough time getting through both layers quickly. Covering both the shattered and whole panes of glass limited the doors functionality; it would only open about fourteen inches now, and it killed the last of the ambient light inside the house. It was a temporary fix at best.

  Daniel fought the urge to vomit the entire time he scrubbed the congealed blood and curdled brain matter soiling the patio and wagon. When Daniel stripped off his wet, stained clothes, he had planned on stopping at his underwear until, that is, he saw the pinkish blotches all over them. Daniel scanned the area one more time and pulled those off, too. He put all of the hard-earned items, and his unwanted clothes, into the drying wagon and wheeled it back into the garage.

  Keeping his pistol in his right hand, he walked, wearing nothing but shredded bandages on his feet, down to the shadowy forms heaped in the gutter. Daniel added the bundle of ruined clothes to the pile, tucking it under a splayed-out leg. He gingerly walked back to the house and ducked back into the garage. Looking one last time into the emptiness outside, he pushed down the garage door and locked it.

  Daniel learned that the new shower did not wash away anything beyond the blood and grime.

  Afterwards, Daniel’s stark form was again sitting on the edge of the bathtub, bandaging his feet a bit more permanently. He resolved within his core, the fact that he would not let any harm come to his family. This was, by far, the easy part. He removed the flashlight from his mouth, as the conflict over the best course of action to attain this goal grew heavier.

  ‘Should I make the home look abandoned and empty? Should I set early warning systems around the perimeter of the yard? Maybe out as far as several homes away? What else could warn against future intruders?’ Daniel pondered, while pouring hydrogen peroxide on his foot.

  The only thing that he could make a decision on was that he was far too tired to come up with a conclusive decision. He had two last tasks to accomplish tonight before returning to his bed and family, and he shifted his focus back onto those.

  Daniel limped down the stairs to where he could see his wife and daughter sleeping, or, at least, pretending to. He opened the door to the storeroom and closed it quietly behind after entering. A lantern was lit and sat on an old folding table. He grabbed a screwdriver and spun to face the opposite wall. Removing the small step ladder, extension cords, and clamps from their respective hooks allowed access to the bare drywall. Daniel rotated the two drywall screws that secured his father’s hidden compartment. A firm tug made the hook and loop strips undo as he swung open the panel to reveal the guns, ammunition, and accessories.

  First, he removed his father’s AR-15. It had a flat top receiver, collapsible battle sights, and a dual-illuminated scope, which used ambient light gathered by a fiber-optic system to produce a red aiming dot during the day, while tritium glowed at night. The load bearing vest, which hung above the rifle, came out next. He loaded nine of the polymer thirty round magazines, putting eight of them in the carriers on the vest and one in the rifle, without chambering a cartridge. After securing the panel back in place and replacing the removed items back on their hooks, he went to take care of his last task for the night.

  He placed the rifle and the now brimming vest beside the bed where it would give easy access if needed later. Daniel finished out his night by putting on clean underpants and a pair of maize and blue sweat pants. Then a pair of his hallowed new socks went on, mainly to hold the bandages on his feet firmly in place.

  His mind went strangely blank as he laid his head back down on the pillow, like a familiar emotional protector had suddenly been called back into service. He was spent, emotionally and physically; sleep arrived mercifully fast.

  Chapter 8

  Even from th
e basement, Daniel could hear the heavy rain drumming on the roof. His watch hands said 7:30 in an eerie, wavering glow. He had slept very deeply and without dreams. Corinne and Rebecca remained slumbering as he got out of bed. Once he gathered up the rifle, vest, boots, and a pair of pants, all sitting next to the bed on the floor, he shuffled into the pantry. He shut the door behind him to keep the soon to be lit lantern from accosting the girls sleep.

  Now in a light bright enough that it took almost a full minute of blinking to adjust himself to it, Daniel stepped out of the sweat pants. He pulled on a well-worn pair of tan cargo pants, which had black tape across the knees covering the constellations of small holes found there. Very carefully, he laced up his black leather work boots, the ones with holes worn into the leather that exposed the steel-toed caps. The steady pressure of the boots instantly made his cut feet feel much better.

  He swam his arms into the load bearing vest, adjusting the straps to keep its weight from slapping against him when he jumped in place. He poked his right arm and head through the rifle sling, so the barrel pointed down along his back. Immediately, Daniel felt that carrying the weight of this combination was going to take some getting used to, but he never wanted to be caught unprepared again, or with his pants down, for that matter.

  Daniel crossed the pantry, heading for the walk-through closet door. The closet was about six feet across and eighteen feet long. Rows of handmade shelves bristled with cooking oils, first aid gear, hygiene products, lantern oil, jugs of filtered water, and dried meats, fruits, and vegetables. After he had drank from a large jug of cool water, Daniel mixed up some powdered milk in a 2-quart container for Rebecca. He found that pre-mixing the milk helped to temper its sharp taste.