by E S Richards
“Ah, yeah,” Harrison straightened up and moved his hand away from the door handle. “We might as well. I doubt anyone will come down this road, but then again, we just did so I guess we can’t be too careful.”
“No problem,” Len dropped his rucksack to the ground once more. “I’ll just wheel them around the back. You guys go in and get settled.”
“Thanks, Len,” Harrison smiled, finally pushing open the door to the farmhouse and holding it open for Amy, Maggie, and James to walk through first. Len watched them enter before walking over to the first bike—Harrison’s—and started pushing it around the side of the farmhouse so it was out of view from the road.
Though Harrison was probably right about it being very unlikely that anyone would see them, Len believed it was better to be safe than sorry. The bikes were already a massive advantage for them; it would be foolish to throw that away. All his time spent with Harrison appeared to be rubbing off on Len, the former businessman now the one to think of survival factors while Harrison seemed to forget.
Len couldn’t be too harsh on Harrison though. He could see the old man was growing more and more tired with each passing day. They had traveled many miles by now and were constantly having to deal with new inconveniences, a lot of them caused inadvertently by Len or his family. He understood how desperate Harrison was to reach his own daughter and every mishap they encountered was just making the prepper’s wait even longer.
Once all three bikes were around the back of the house, Len put his hands on his hips and took in the view. Countryside seemed to stretch for miles in every direction, despite Harrison saying there was a city nearby and Detroit not too far along the horizon. An old combine harvester lay rusting under the veranda on one side of the farmhouse, the machinery looking like it hadn’t been switched on for many years. The roughly defined garden that backed off the main house was overgrown and wild, the grass merging with that of the field behind it. There was a freestanding swing set amongst it all , the metal just barely looking like it could still support a child’s weight.
Whoever this farmhouse had belonged to had to be long gone, the place forgotten about and left to deteriorate on the side of the road. When Len finally made his way inside, he discovered that the interior wasn’t much better. All the fabric was moth-eaten and torn, the table in the dining room collapsed and resting on only three legs. But there was a roof over their heads and a safe place they could spend the night. All in all, it was more than Len could’ve asked for, considering some of the places he’d been since leaving Chicago.
“This isn’t too bad,” Len remarked as he entered the kitchen where everyone else was to be found. “James, have you seen the swing set in the garden?”
“No,” James shook his head and pushed himself up from the floor where he’d been sitting. His open water canteen rested just to the side. “Where is it?”
“Out the back,” Len smiled and walked toward his son, taking his hand and leading him to the kitchen door that opened into the garden. “Wanna give it a try?”
“Yeah,” James nodded enthusiastically at the prospect. Len was pleased he was able to find something for James to do that was appropriate for a boy of his age. He had already had to encounter and deal with matters far beyond his years; James deserved a few moments of childlike play.
“Out you go then,” Len laughed as he tugged open the back door, letting James run outside and wade through the tall grass towards the swing set. Watching from the doorway Len was pleased to see the old thing did support James’s weight, the chain hinges at the top of the set a little rusty but working nonetheless. Within minutes James was swinging back and forth, a youthful smile stretched across his face.
“I think I’ll head out the back and get a fire started,” Harrison suggested as he returned into the kitchen, Len unaware of where his friend had just been. “The rest of this place is mostly the same. A couple of decent-sized bedrooms upstairs that the ladies can have and some adequate couches for us down here, Len.”
“Thank you,” Maggie addressed Harrison. “Not just for this, but for everything you did back at the camp as well. You saved my life.”
“Oh, don’t mention it,” Harrison smiled. “All in a day’s work.”
“Still,” Maggie returned his smile, “I can’t really thank you enough. Do you need any help? With the fire or anything?”
“Sure,” Harrison shrugged, “you can help with that.”
Len watched as Maggie kept her eyes fixed on Harrison, following the prepper out of the back door and into the garden where James was still swinging. The two of them set to work pretty quickly preparing a fire, digging holes into the ground as Len and Harrison had done many times in the past. Silence filled the kitchen where Len found himself now alone with Amy, his ex-wife perched on a low bench that ran along one of the walls.
“Are you okay?” Len asked sympathetically, walking over to Amy and sitting down on the same bench, though he left plenty of room between them. “Do you…do you want to talk about what happened?”
“Not really,” Amy mumbled, her face angled down at the kitchen floor. “I’m fine though, really. Nothing that bad happened in there.”
“Will you at least let me look at your face?” Len asked, the bruising on Amy’s skin developing more and more as time went on. Her fight with Maggie had left nothing to chance, the pair of them both sporting a large array of war wounds. “Does it hurt?”
“A little,” Amy replied after a short pause, slowly lifting her head up and turning to face Len. “It didn’t really when we were on the bikes, but it’s more tender now.”
“I can understand that,” Len nodded, shuffling a little closer to his ex-wife along the bench. “Your lip and eyebrow are both split open, and you’ve got a lovely black eye coming in.” Len offered Amy a slight smile as he spoke, trying to ease the tension between them and cheer her up somewhat. As gently as he could, he ran his thumb over Amy’s face, down from her eyebrow and over the bruising on her cheek. “You’re still as beautiful as ever though. You always have been to me.”
Len’s hand still cupped the side of Amy’s face; his eyes locked on to hers as they both let the words linger in the air between them. Even with her injuries, she was just as attractive to Len as she had been the first day he saw her. Holding her now, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he had ever let her go. It had, without a doubt, been the stupidest thing he’d ever done in his life.
“Len,” Amy whispered after a few seconds, struggling to find the words to complete the sentence.
A small smile crept onto Len’s face as Amy whispered his name, just the sound of her voice making him feel happy. He reminded himself not to push things too far though. He didn’t know how she felt and he didn’t want to make things awkward between them. Removing his hand from her face, he looked down at the floor for a second, taking a deep breath and squashing his desires.
“Let me go and see if we have any gauze,” Len replied, making to stand up from the bench. “The cut on your eyebrow could probably use it.”
“Wait!” Now it was Amy’s turn to reach out and touch Len, grabbing his hand before he could stand up. “I—,” she started to speak, but then a look of worry crossed Amy’s face, her mind struggling to find the right words. “Thank you, Len,” was what she eventually came out with. “Thank you for coming back for me. And for taking care of James. Thank you for keeping us both safe.”
“That’s my job, Amy,” Len breathed softly. “I know I might not have been very good at it in the past, but that’s changed now. You and James are my family and I’ll do everything in my power to keep you both safe. From now on until my last day on this wretched planet.”
Amy didn’t have any words to say in reply to Len, her eyes slowly starting to fill with liquid as she looked at him. Not wanting to make her cry, Len gave Amy’s hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it and standing up. “Let’s see about that gauze, shall we?” he spoke over his shoulder as he started to mov
e towards his rucksack. “I’m sure there’s some in here somewhere.”
Chapter 6
Waking up the next morning, Len wasn’t surprised to see that Harrison had already vacated the couch where he’d slept and was nowhere to be seen. Stretching underneath the old blanket he had used as a cover, Len let the relative comfort of the old couch envelop him one last time before pushing himself to his feet. The farmhouse had been a good stopover for them, but Len knew they wouldn’t be staying long. Especially with the advantage the motorcycles gave them, Harrison would want to get back on the road and cover more ground between them and Toronto.
The house was still quiet as Len padded to the kitchen, in search of where he’d left his water canteen the night before. Through the windows he could see Harrison getting the fire started again outside, making sure it was ready to cook breakfast as soon as everyone else was awake. It couldn’t have been more than six in the morning by the height of the sun in the sky, though Len had to admit he wasn’t the best judge of it.
Picking up his canteen from the table, Len stuffed his feet into his shoes and walked outside to greet Harrison, his friend yet to notice him in the kitchen.
“Morning,” Len opened cheerfully. “Sleep well?”
“Aye,” Harrison nodded, looking up at Len from the fire pit, “you?”
“Yeah,” Len replied. “I think everyone else is still sleeping. Do you want me to get them up for breakfast?”
“Give them another few minutes,” Harrison answered as he stood up, the fire now starting to get going. “I’m going to go and wash up quickly, can you keep an eye on this for me?”
“Sure, no problem,” Len smiled, stepping to the side so Harrison could move past him and go indoors. Pulling out a rickety wooden chair from the garden table, Len sat down precariously, testing whether the old thing would support his weight. It did now, though thinking about it Len wasn’t sure if it would’ve a month ago. For all the terrible things the solar crash had done, it had at least sparked Len into getting back in shape. He was leaner and fitter than he had been for the past twenty years, his pants almost falling down were it not for the aid of his belt.
Watching the fire, Len let himself start to daydream about the old times. He thought back to the days just after his divorce and the horrible spiral he had gotten himself into. His life at that point was nothing but half-hearted work and full-hearted drinking. Hours lost in O’Riley’s pub that he would never get back. In reality, the time after his divorce hadn’t been too dissimilar to the months leading up to it. He had grown distant from Amy long before the papers were served, losing himself in an attempt to win a promotion that would never happen.
It all seemed so stupid to him now. Why had he gone to work five days a week, putting in the extra hours hunched over a computer or crunching numbers he didn’t care about? The countless evenings he’d spent schmoozing people he didn’t even like, all to get ahead in a company that only saw him as a hamster running on a wheel. He knew why: money. That was why everyone did everything before the crash. At some level, it was necessary. He needed to put a roof over his head and there needed to be food on the table, but beyond that Len had truly gotten lost trying to climb the corporate ladder.
Work had been the be-all and end-all for him, far more important that his relationship with his wife and son. Of all the mistakes he had ever made, Len knew that was the worst one. He could be a businessman and a father, too. Be an employee as well as a husband. It wasn’t the job itself that had ruined his marriage, but his decision to bring work home with him and to be so consumed by it all, even after the clock hit five and he left the office building.
Thankfully, that office building was long gone now. Len had hidden in the parking lot below it as a gas line ruptured and fire consumed half of Chicago. The building was completely destroyed by the time he saw it again, nothing but rubble and dirt in its place. There was nothing for him to go back to and that was a fact that made Len very pleased.
“Morning,” Maggie’s voice pulled Len away from his daydreams, the pictures of his old life drifting away like the fire’s smoke in the wind. “No one else up yet?”
“Good morning. Harrison is just cleaning up,” Len replied with a smile, poking the fire a little with a stick he held to make sure it was still burning properly. “I’ve not seen Amy or James.”
“Ah, okay,” Maggie nodded, standing awkwardly in the doorway. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Not at all,” Len said, pushing himself up from the wooden chair where he sat. “Here, take my seat. I’ll get another.”
“Thank you,” Maggie accepted the gesture from Len, moving around the small fire to take his place. “Have you been out here long?”
Casual conversion quickly picked up between the two of them, Len finding Maggie a friendly companion and an almost completely different woman from the one they first met two days ago. She wasn’t held down by the shackles of the labor camp, both literally in that her wrists weren’t tied, and on an emotional level, too.
Len avoided the topic of the camp even still, knowing how uncomfortable it had made Amy and certain Maggie wouldn’t want to talk about it. Instead they discussed their plans for the day, where they would be traveling and how far they hoped to get. By the time Harrison returned, followed shortly by Amy and James, everyone was ready to get back out on the road and continue their journey. The constant allure of safety was always floating temptingly just around the next corner.
“How’s breakfast?”
“Good,” Len nodded in response to Harrison, stirring the pot of oatmeal he’d placed over the fire during his conversation with Maggie. “It’s about ready if someone can get some bowls?”
“Sure,” Harrison replied, “I reckon we eat and then get back on the road, if that’s all right with everybody?”
Murmurs of agreement echoed around the group as Harrison made his way back inside the farmhouse to find some bowls. Within minutes the five of them were eating silently, each preoccupied by their own thoughts of the day ahead. No matter what it threw at them, they all believed it couldn’t be any worse than what they had experienced. They’d put so much distance between them and the labor camp by now that it would be impossible for any of the men to track them down, but that didn’t stop it featuring heavily in their memories.
Just under an hour later, they were ready to hit the open road once more. Len was silently hoping the riders would be mixed up, but kept his mouth shut as Maggie and Amy walked out together, making their way toward one particular bike. He thought momentarily about riding with James, but didn’t want to put him in any unnecessary danger. While he had definitely built up his confidence riding a motorcycle the day before, Harrison was still by far the most experienced driver.
“Where do you think we’ll get to today?” Len asked as he straddled his motorcycle, waiting until everyone was in position before he started the engine.
“I’m hoping we can make it past Detroit,” Harrison replied optimistically, “and then, with any luck, maybe across the border as well. Though I’m not sure what condition it’ll be in.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve seen everywhere I have so far,” Harrison shrugged. “It’s hard to predict how different parts of the country will have reacted to everything. Detroit will be dangerous, I’m sure of that, but we’re going to drive a large arc around it, providing the roads are okay. Canada, though? I have absolutely no idea what that’ll be like.”
“Only one way to find out,” Maggie chirped up from behind Len, she and Amy now seated on their motorcycle.
“Exactly,” Harrison grinned at the woman, a little sparkle visible in his eyes as he spoke. “Let’s go.”
Gripping his handlebars, Len followed Harrison’s command and tugged on the accelerator, revving the engine of his bike. The machine roared to life underneath him, forcing a smile onto his face as he felt himself regain control of the powerful vehicle. He couldn’t deny it: it felt great. It al
most made Len regret not buying a motorcycle many years ago, he could see himself now, riding around the streets of Chicago in black leathers and biker boots.
The image he cut as he pulled out onto the main road was somewhat different, however. His large rucksack was once again hanging from his shoulders, accompanied by the bow and arrows that he wore so proudly now. Following first Harrison and James, then Amy and Maggie out of the driveway, Len looked momentarily back at the old farmhouse. It had been a good pit stop for the night, but that was all it truly was. Now the five of them had to keep moving forward, searching for a place that they could eventually call home.
It only took about an hour of driving for Len to lose all feeling in his behind again. The open road was long and boring, nothing but dirt fields and the occasional abandoned car on the side of the road to look at. Dust kicked up from the asphalt and assaulted his eyes, making him wish for a pair of glasses or a visor of some sort. He was so preoccupied with squinting and maintaining control of his bike, Len almost didn’t notice that Harrison had pulled over ahead of him. Braking fast, Len managed to quickly bring his bike to a halt, pulling up with a skid beside the rest of his group.