Looking Back Through Ash

by Wade Ebeling

  “Sounds like Bobby is a complete idiot to me. Kinda like Troy always was. No offense, but if your Dad was coming for ya…” Jason laughed.

  “Why?” Daniel asked in a severe tone, “Why is Bob Donner after me?”

  Jason let out a grief-stricken sigh, polished off his drink and then poured three more fingers of vodka into the glass. He stared longingly at the pile of tobacco sitting next to his chair. He looked pensively at Daniel, who gave a ‘go ahead’ nod straight from his father’s repertoire, before carefully repeating the practiced process of rolling a cigarette. When half of the glass had been emptied and the entirety of the cigarette had gone into his careworn lungs, Jason collapsed further into the chair, resigned to tell Daniel everything he knew.

  “First, I will tell you what your father and I did in those first years. Then I will tell you what he did…we did…to make Bobby…well, not the greatest fan of your Dad’s and, I guess, of you. Now you have to understand, without all of the things that we did, none of those people, not even you or I, would be alive right now. You have to promise to keep that in mind while I’m talking. Despite the things I’m going to tell you, and trust me, I’m not real proud of some of it. You have to realize that you are only alive because of it! Okay?” Jason said seriously.

  “Fine,” Daniel spewed, sitting back to give Jason the right impression. Still, he had promised nothing; his tangled senses were far away, adrift on the waves of other pursuits. He could make no such promise about what his anger might do next; even Daniel could not predict that.

  Two large swallows finished Jason’s glass. To Daniel’s surprise, the frail man set the empty tumbler down without putting more into it. “Alright…Well, you remember those early years, right? Everything seemed easy back then. We raided empty homes and businesses at first, got a lot of stuff, too. Sure, we had to chase off a few smaller groups, but they usually just ran without much of a fight…Lets’ see…Once all the easy pickings were gone, things got…harder. Your Dad always seemed so much smarter than the rest of us. We would see a couple scavengers…Oh, I guess you won’t understand.” Jason refilled his glass.

  “You see, Allen had little groups of us hidden all over the place, just watching for people. If we didn’t see anyone, we would come back, rest up, and go out again. He always had us in groups of three…always. If we spotted someone, we would follow ‘em. You know, back to where they were holed up. One of the guys in the group would race back to tell your Dad, show him where they were, how to get there without being spotted…You know? That kind of stuff. When yer Dad and I got there, he would ask the guys all sorts of questions. How many people? Were there any guards? When did they change guards? Did they always take the same path in and out? That was always a dead giveaway for booby traps, mind you. That’s the kind of stuff he wanted to know first. Anyways, he would send the guys back to rest up. He was always good to the guys that went out…We had this guy Pete with us, your Dad and me I mean, he got killed…Then it was just us.” Jason drained half of the glass in one gulp.

  Daniel coughed to keep the drunk talking.

  “So, anyhow, we would watch ‘em for a few days, trying to get a measure…Their pattern was always easy to find out. It was the other stuff that your Dad wanted to see. How did they treat the women? Were there any kids? How did they treat them? You see? Allen never rushed in. He wouldn’t just get us all into a firefight without knowing all the advantages. Not like that fool Bobby…Sounds like, anyways. If they seemed like decent people, just trying to get along, he would ask them if they wanted to join us, and a lot of small groups did. I guess, what were their choices? When thirty guys surround you and Allen is standing there smiling at ‘cha?” Jason laughed at some fond memory and finished his drink.

  “If they said no, Allen made it seem like it was no big deal, and we all left. Of course, we would give ‘em a few days to calm down and then…well, we would come back. Can’t have ‘em fighting for the same stuff, in the same area, right? If they joined, it was all the better. Welcomed ‘em in like long lost relatives he did. Any groups out just out looking for women and drugs, hell, we just took them out.” Jason said this last part with pride, clinging onto whatever made the rest of the atrocities seem that much smaller. He rolled himself another before refilling his glass.

  “Well? What about Bob Donner?” Daniel asked gently. This man had fought off these memories for over a decade. Retelling them was obviously not that easy, but Daniel needed him to finish getting through it before the vodka ended his chances of hearing a complete story.

  “I’m not done,” Jason said, waving him off. “Now, let’s see, after a few years, people had either died off or left the area. Wait, you want to hear about this place?” Jason said, sounding like he was losing what was left of his voice.

  “Sure, why not?” Daniel said, slowly and playfully.

  “Fuck you,” Jason replied happily. “We were comin’ back to check more R.V.’s when…”

  “What is that? An R.V.?” Daniel asked, his curiosity overriding the good sense to just let the drunken man keep talking.

  “The campers over there? You didn’t see that big field of ‘em? You came from that way, right?” Jason asked, pointing a wobbling finger to the west.

  “Yeah, I saw them. I saw the people living in them, too. I just don’t know what R.V. stands for,” Daniel said, less playfully this time.

  “It stands for recreational vehicle. Oh…wait? There’s people living in ‘em? That’s not good. Not good at all. Glad I’m not burning a fire right now. Who are they? You know?” Jason stammered, fear showing on his face for the first time. His hand was shaking horribly as he tried to drink and smoke at the same time.

  “I don’t really know. I would guess that they are the people that the Police kicked out of the Warehouse. I didn’t see any guns, I really wouldn’t worry. Trust me, you can’t see this place unless you walk right in front of it. How did you even find it in the first place?” Daniel posed a question that would, hopefully, get Jason back on track.

  “Well, I was tryin’ ta tell ya that…We already went over there once, that day your…mom…We almost got blown to bits by the damn drones. Hell, I got gut-shot by one of the…people…who was trying to get out of the city. But we snuck back in later to see if anything survived. We got so much out of just a few of those campers, it seemed a waste to let the rest go to pot. That’s when we found this place. Your Dad said we should bring a little of everything we found here, just as a back-up. But once those fools on the Council started givin’ us grief about bringing in more people…Yeah, we knew…well, Allen did…that place was not gonna last for long. Like I was sayin’, when the pick’ins ‘came slim, your dad got real crafty. He wouldn’t let anyone go out searchin’ for a month. ‘Let the squirrels gather the nuts!’ he would always say. Give people, who were still kicking around, a chance to gather up a bunch of stuff for us, ya see, in peace like. Then we would just go take it from ‘em.” Jason started laughing again.

  Getting another drink, Jason seemed to be enjoying himself now. “I’m telling you, Danny, your old man was smart as a whip. For a while there, when things first started goin’ bad at the Warehouse, we just brought most of the stuff here. Oh, and Allen always took some back to his house…your house, I mean. For you, ya know? That was your Dad, back-ups to back-ups. I know you think he was never there for you, or me for that matter, and I’m sorry ‘bout that. But, really, it’s not true! All I had to do was ask him about you, if he was being all quiet-like, you know how he was, and Boom! Off he goes, bragging you up. About how you can snare your own meat and cook it…all sorts of stuff. He just didn’t know how to tell you. He was hard on you for a reason, just look at you. I can tell it toughened you right up.”

  “Whatever,” Daniel said indifferently, but his chest had swelled slightly. Those were the kindest words he had ever heard spoken about his father. He could not help but feel a little pride layering in over the contempt. “Okay, just tell me, Uncle Jason. Tell m
e why Bob Donner is so hell-bent on seeing me dead.”

  “Here,” Jason said, handing the remnants of the bottle to Daniel, “you should drink this.” Somehow, Jason had managed to sound both compassionate and sober as he said this.

  Jason made himself another cigarette, but left it unlit. He struggled to stand upright, his face warning Daniel to not ask him if he needed help, and then slowly shambled over to a shelf, hidden within increasing depths of darkness in the one room building, bringing back another bottle of vodka with him. He fell back into his chair with a pained groan. A brutal, wheezing and coughing fit followed, leaving Jason winded and spitting into the corner. It took him five full minutes to compose himself. He finally managed to open the fresh bottle, pouring some into the same dirty glass, cursing when he spilled a few drops.

  Jason did not even look up when he suddenly announced, “I’m dying. I keep thinking I just won’t wake up one day. But I always do!” he cackled. “Maybe I know why now…” He tipped his glass up to Daniel in mock salute right before draining it whole.

  “What makes you say that, Uncle Jason?”

  “Don’t mind me, boy…never mind that. I figure it’s time ya know the truth…”

  Jason proceeded to tell Daniel the horrid tale of Bob Donner and his family; sparing no detail. They sat in silence for a long time afterward, both drinking now. When Jason started to feel sentimental again, he asked Daniel, “Are you gonna stay with me?”

  Daniel replied, only after thinking for a few moments, “I have to do something first.”

  “What’s that, Danny?” Jason inquired, taking up his slur again.

  “I have to kill him,” Daniel answered, so coldly that Jason could only nod in response.

  Nothing Jason could say would change Daniel’s mind, ever. Those were his father’s eyes that he could see. Determination did not come close to covering what was behind that look.

  Daniel looked up, his eyes burning brighter than the candles, his anger clenching his jaw tight.

  “Uncle Jason?”

  “Wha’cha need Danny?”

  “Can you tell me…how would my Dad have raided a place like the Warehouse?”

  Chapter 23

  Saturday

  The soil around the concrete mounds and building was so hard-packed that it would not allow for a hole to be dug. Years of material-laden trucks rolling over the crushed stone made scratching at its surface a fool’s errand. Eventually, Daniel just dragged the wrapped-up body of his Uncle Jason over to the base of one of the mountainous piles of crushed concrete that surrounded him, dulling the sounds of the world at large.

  An hour of pulling stones loose from the pile, and kicking them downhill, entombed the body inside a crushing shrine. His fingers were rubbed raw from the effort and the healing gash over his left eye stung with the constant supply of salt running over it. A sweating and disheartened Daniel walked back inside the cool darkness of his new home, which made him feel as if he were trespassing inside an animal’s burrow.

  Daniel truly believed that Jason would die the first night that he slept here. Choking and gurgling, spitting and coughing, clutching his chest and struggling to draw thin breaths into his poisoned lungs, this was how Jason spent his nights. Somehow, Jason Clarke had lived for years like this, supplementing drinking and smoking for eating and cleaning. Daniel found it impossible to sleep, being just feet from the sounds of the diseased man’s nightly routine.

  When he awoke this morning, feeling as though he had slept straight through the night, Daniel assumed that he had managed to get used to the disconcerting noises filling the air, along with the unrelenting rank smells. That, somehow, he had found a way to sleep despite these things having kept him awake for the past four days. The complete lack of labored breathing within the squat space of the grungy building, however, quickly told Daniel that Jason Clarke had died sometime during the night.

  Daniel had still gained a great sense of appreciation for what Jason had done, despite the current state of the map’s prize. The man had fought off his demise, just long enough, to tell Daniel everything that he might need to know about keeping the building functional, and of how to get his revenge.

  Jason told him how to get the ram pump working to draw water from the unnaturally round pond, down the gentle grade that ended at a large cistern alongside the building. He showed him how to manually pump water into a large tub that sat on the roof for the shower (not the he ever used it). He explained how to pack the wood-stove efficiently, and where to find the stash of fire-starter logs, which were hidden away on one of the shelving units. Finally, and most importantly to Daniel at this particular moment, that there were two large sky-lights on the roof, covered over by heavy tarps and chunks of broken concrete. Jason had said that they tended to leak, even during the slightest of rainfalls, and even after Jason had haphazardly sloshed tar around them. A rust-orange metal ladder led to a roof access hatch in the far corner. Once he got out on the white rubber roof, Daniel pulled the weighted-down tarps aside and climbed back down the ladder, leaving the hatch open for additional light and ventilation.

  The dust-speckled streams of light did not help raise Daniel’s spirit. They only showed how completely disgusting the building’s interior actually was. Daniel stood looking over the filth for several minutes, watching dust motes circle lazily, not knowing where to start. He searched along the shelves for cleaning supplies, thinking it was pointless to attempt anything else first. It could have been worse; he at least found an unopened case of six bleach bottles and a stack of paper ‘yard waste’ bags. A never used, hard-bristled push broom and short-handled flat shovel, found behind the ladder, would help speed up his recovery efforts on the building.

  The worn, crusted, and stained chair that Jason lived and died in got pulled outside first. Daniel dragged it over to a pile of garbage, which used to be where Jason would dump his waste, until finally giving up on all attempts to keep his living area clean. Stacks of empty white pails, previously full of freeze-dried food, made up the bulk of the pile. The next, and most unwelcomed, task was to clean out Jason’s makeshift corner refuse bin. Four yard waste bags got shoveled full to brimming and tossed outside. The smell that came to life when he started plunging the shovel into the pile was unbearable. Daniel had to wrap a bleach-dampened t-shirt around his face to continue; effectively exchanging one eye-watering stench for another.

  The bulk of his day went to clearing off the shelves and dusting off any of the contents that appeared to be still salvageable. While Daniel went through the contents of the shelves, he kept muttering things like, “Oh, here are all of the can openers.”, “I never got any of these nice buckets full of ready-made meals.”, and “Wouldn’t want to make my life too easy, would you, Dad?” Just counting the pre-packaged meals, all in well-described white pails that had the amount of days’ worth of food printed right on them, Daniel could live for almost two years eating three meals a day. Looking over the consolidated food did not feel as comforting as it should have. There would be no way that Daniel would allow the fate that befell Jason to become his own.

  Once he swept the remaining debris into manageable piles and scooped them into bags, Daniel diluted some more bleach and dumped it all over the parts of the concrete floor that he had exposed. The building, with its lack of widows and the cooling effect of being surrounded on three sides by settled piles of concrete, gave the impression of being underground. It took him a full hour of racing out the door, into blasts of intense heat and sunshine, scrambling for breathable air, to finish the scrubbing of the floors and the bottom halves of the block walls.

  The lingering remnants of the bleach’s conquest clung to the insides of Daniel’s nose and burned his eyes. Inside the relatively clean building, grabbing his rifle and binoculars, Daniel decided to go look at what lay around this foreign, closed-in area. Sounds of life coming from outside the entombing concrete piles sometimes bounced and echoed their way in. A child screaming defiantly, or the bangin
g of a hammer, assured that life still went on. The true direction from which the reverberant noises came from could not be pin-pointed while inside the mountainous ring. That did not matter; there was only one place that they could have formed, and that was from the field of destroyed R.V.’s. The group that Daniel had seen living there, on his way in along the train tracks, was certain to be the sound’s headwaters.

  Daniel followed the scrub-filled, winding pathway back to the two towering piles that acted as the entrance pillars for the crushing plant. Not wanting to chance getting too close, he scurried up the backside of the left mound. The heat of the day was finally abating, and the sun lit the tops of the trees and taller weeds with blazing, translucent, shades of green.

  Peeking over the side of the mound, Daniel stared out across a great distance. The world and sky seemed endless and intimidating. There was no diffused wall of ash closing in the visible horizon, so he just marveled at the expanse before him, suddenly feeling very small. Perceptible breaths of wind carried across the unknown landscape. Daniel felt awestruck and frightened at the same time, and in equal proportions. His world had always felt so confined and restrained within the familiar dust. Studying maps had never put into the proper perspective what he was now looking over.

  Glimpses of flesh tones, flashing between the branches of the trees lining the far side of the railroad tracks, brought his world back down to a manageable size. Bringing the binoculars up to his eyes helped narrow it down even further. He struggled to follow the erratic movements of two young boys as they raced in and out of the strip of trees dividing the skeletons of camper trailers from the railroad tracks. They were not playing, Daniel decided, they were hunting, following a trap line.