The Quell

by E S Richards

  “I don’t think so,” Len shook his head. “Let’s all just start walking now.”

  “We’re going to leave the bike?” Amy interjected, Harrison’s suggestion clearly not missed by her. “Don’t you think we should use it, if we can?”

  “What if there isn’t enough fuel, though?” Len spoke his mind, trying to make Amy see sense. “It could run out at any moment. I think we’re all safer if we stay together.”

  “You’re right,” Amy conceded after a short moment, remembering everything she had said to herself the night before in the tent. Harrison was the best form of protection they had. She wanted to keep James by his side for however long as possible.

  “Are you sure?” the prepper argued back, one of his hands still resting on the handlebars of the bike Len sat on. “It seems stupid to leave the bike behind.”

  “We’re sure,” Len answered for everyone else, nudging Harrison away so he could dismount. “Let’s get our stuff and start moving. It’s probably not safe to loiter around here for very long.”

  Scowling slightly, Harrison did as he was told for once. It felt strange not being the one whose orders were followed, but as he recalled the two mistakes he had already made that day, he realized it probably made sense. He was his own worst critic and it took a great deal for him to admit he was wrong. That was probably one of the main reasons why his relationship with his daughter remained as it was. If he had just been the bigger person in the first place and accepted his shortcomings, their bond could’ve been salvaged many years ago. But instead Harrison chose to live underground in his bunker, hiding away from the many mistakes he had made over the years.

  As they started to walk, Harrison couldn’t help but replay all those moments over and over again in his head. The times that Nina had reached out to him and he had closed the door in her face, mostly metaphorically, but once in a literal sense as well. She had tried to rebuild their relationship on several occasions. She would come home to visit and cook dinner, attempting to bring her father back up into the house rather than where he lived in the ground. She would send him cards and ring him to share updates on her life, but when the phone was never answered and she once came home to find the letters unopened they soon stopped.

  Thinking back through it all Harrison knew there had been perhaps fifty moments when Nina had offered him a lifeline and a chance to have a daughter again. Each one he had turned away, choosing to find a sadistic comfort in the pain of his dead wife and the dark cobwebs that hung over his bed instead. It was all his fault. The farther they walked from the abandoned motorcycles, the more Harrison forged a dislike for himself. He doubted every thought that popped into his head, questioning whether he had the ability to lead the group anymore and even more so, questioning whether he was doing the right thing in taking them to Toronto.

  He saw each of them freeze and shudder as the sound of gunshots echoed through the air toward them. They were coming from Detroit, that much was obvious, but Harrison simply couldn’t find it within himself to care any further. His self-esteem had hit rock bottom so suddenly and he felt like all the energy had been taken from him. The urge to give up hit him hard for the first time ever since he and Len had left Chicago. It wallowed in his stomach like an animal in mud, covering every inch of him with its filthy temperament.

  “What do we do?” Len asked, his hand clutching the Beretta he usually wore at his waist. Harrison’s Glock still remained in its holster, the prepper not springing into action like he normally did.

  “Keep going,” Harrison exhaled. “Nothing we can do unless they come any closer.”

  Len stared at his friend with a puzzled expression on his face, noticing once again the change in demeanor that he carried. It worried Len. He needed Harrison to be at his best, especially with Amy and James around. He could’ve dealt with this when it was just the two of them, but there was no time for whatever was happening with Harrison right now.

  “You heard him,” Len said to Amy and James. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Unfortunately, there really wasn’t much else that the group of them could do. Gunfire continued to echo from deeper inside the city, pinging off at random intervals that gave away little about whatever was happening inside. Everyone knew Detroit was overrun with gangs and so that was the easy explanation for it all. They all just silently hoped the gang members stuck to their territories, leaving the four of them to navigate and escape the city alone.

  Len continued to be concerned by Harrison though. The prepper walked with his head down, his feet scuffing the road and kicking up dust, and his hands free of any weapon. It was completely opposite of the man Len had come to know and trust. Harrison always had a weapon in his hand; his eyes were always darting around their surroundings, picking out alleyways that could be used to hide down or places that might be hiding an enemy. All that vigilance had vanished from the old man, and for once, he looked out of place.

  “Are you okay?” Len spoke in a low voice to the prepper, walking closer to him so Amy couldn’t overhear the conversation. “Is something on your mind?”

  Harrison looked up at his friend for a second, opening his mouth but then closing it again, unable to find any words. Instead he just offered Len a forlorn look, scolding himself inside once more for not being able to open up and talk about what he was feeling.

  “Harrison?” Len pressed on, his determination to keep everyone safe not allowing him to leave the man alone. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “What if she’s not there?”

  The sad whisper that Harrison eventually expelled was not at all what Len had been expecting. His friend didn’t sound anything like he had a day ago. His confidence and swagger had disappeared, his voice defeated rather than full of hope, as it should be.

  “Nina?” Len questioned, though it was obvious that Harrison was referring to his daughter. Len understood exactly how he was feeling. Before he had found James and Amy again, he imagined what it would be like to never find them again. It was a horrible, soul-destroying feeling, one that a father should never have to experience. It had kept Len awake at night or tortured him in his nightmares; even his waking hours were filled with visions of them, always just out of his reach. “We’ll find her, Harrison,” Len offered, touching his friend lightly on the shoulder. “I know we will.”

  “But even then,” Harrison sighed in response. “What if we find her and she doesn’t want anything to do with me? I’ve not been any kind of a father to her over the past ten years. I’ve not tried to be in her life. Why should she accept me back into hers just because that’s how I want it to be now?”

  Len was stunned. That wasn’t what he had expected from Harrison and it broke his heart to hear his friend saying such words. He had no idea that Harrison was so troubled by what would happen when he reunited with his daughter again; it wasn’t something that he had ever really considered. To Len, finding his family had been everything, but to Harrison, not only did he have to find Nina, but he had to be accepted back into her life.

  “You’re her father,” was all Len could think to say. “She won’t turn you away.”

  “I hope not,” Harrison shrugged. “If she does, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  Chapter 16

  Over the next couple of hours, Len worried about Harrison’s wellbeing. None of them spoke much more as they navigated away from the city of Detroit and closer to the Canadian border. Despite the lack of words, they all still managed to communicate on some level. Len offered Harrison supportive nods and reassuring smiles everywhere he could, trying to bring the prepper’s usual confidence back to him and make Harrison see how important he was. With Amy, the two parents shared looks over the wellbeing of James; the walking was starting to take its toll on the young boy again already, they could both see that clearly.

  Thankfully, they had already passed a couple of signs for the border crossing. After the weeks of walking, Len had figured out roughly how long it took to walk a c
ertain number of miles, and he knew they would reach Canada within the hour. They’d already struggled through the heat of the midday sun, which meant the temperature was getting slightly cooler and the walking slightly easier. If they were comfortably inside Canada by nightfall, that would be good enough for Len.

  Of course, then there were still several miles for them to cover before they reached Toronto. That would likely be another day of walking unless they could find a means of transport. Their group had gotten pretty lucky so far, first fixing up the Dodge Fargo with Justin and Max, and then stealing the motorcycles from the female labor camp. Finding a third vehicle might be a stretch, but Len was still holding out hope.

  He stared at the large number of cars they passed as they drew closer to the border. Even if one or a couple of them were in working order, they wouldn’t be of any use to them. It was obvious what had happened here: as soon as the power started going out and things started getting bad in America, hundreds had flooded to the border in search of asylum. It was a common escape mechanism; fight or flight would have kicked in for everyone across the country, and a large percentage had tried to flee to a hopefully safer place.

  Len knew, though, that Canada was not any safer than anywhere they had traveled through so far. He knew it not just from the stories that they had heard at Camp Flint about the destruction of Toronto, or the state of the vehicles lining the road. His main explanation for the destructed state of Canada was his common sense. After everything he had already experienced, Len knew the devastation would be worldwide. Such a phenomenon couldn’t only be limited to the United States; the whole world would have suffered through the solar crash in harmony. The whole world would have been brought to its knees.

  With such negative thoughts spinning through his mind, Len started to find it more and more difficult to filter out what he was seeing in his peripheral vision. He’d trained himself not to see the dead bodies lying on the side of the road after weeks of walking, but with his thoughts so distracted, it became near impossible to do.

  In the hundreds of cars queued up for the border—the roads so gridlocked the four of them had to weave between the metal frames—lay equally as many rotting corpses. Most of the bodies had been picked apart by animals, vultures circling ahead in the vast blue expanse of the sky. Sadly, that only made the scene more horrific—flaps of skin hanging from people’s faces or severed limbs lying discarded in the road. Len suspected this was the work of more than just vultures, but he didn’t want to question what other animals were appearing in this area after dark.

  Harrison, Amy, and James all saw it too. Amy let out several gasps and wrapped an arm around James, trying to shield his body from the horror. It was impossible to do so though, as almost every car contained at least one body. In many cases, the people were trapped inside as vehicles drove so close to each other that doors were blocked and unable to open.

  Len shook his head in awe of the whole situation. It must have been truly horrible to experience. He remembered how hot the temperature inside his SUV had reached while he waited in traffic in Chicago just before everything happened. He had felt like he was boiling alive in that metal furnace, a feeling the vast majority of the dead people surrounding him must have also felt. He shuddered at the thought, so thankful he had escaped and entered O’Riley’s pub to find out what was going on before it was all too late.

  “I can see the border up ahead,” Len remarked loudly to try and distract everyone from the sight before them. “We should be there in about twenty minutes if we can keep this pace up.”

  “Gladly,” Amy called back, pushing James forward slightly to hurry them along. “I just hope the other side is in a better state than this,” she then muttered under her breath, just quiet enough for no one else to hear.

  Amy was not enjoying this section of the walk. There was some part of her that had held out hope that Canada would mean salvation. That the neighboring country would have clean water, food, and electricity; that they hadn’t been affected by the solar crash the same way that America had been. Now that they were so close, she knew that was wrong. It had been a hopeful and foolish thought, but like many others she carried, one she hadn’t been willing to give up on until she was absolutely proven wrong. Now that that had been the case, her faith for what lay on the other side of the border diminished with every step she took.

  At least they could see it up ahead though. It looked like the fences had been torn down by people desperate to get in. Squinting in the sunlight, Amy noticed hundreds more bodies lying dead on the ground at the crossing. While she continued to try and protect James from all the traumatic sights, she knew it wasn’t possible anymore.

  As they drew closer, Amy realized what had happened. In an attempt to protect their borders, the Canadian officials had started shooting. She guessed it was due to the hundreds of people who had been so determined to get into Canada; they had forsaken the laws and tried to climb the fences or make their way in by force. As anyone would, the border patrol guards had protected their post by any means necessary, meaning anyone who had tried to enter the country without authorization had been shot.

  “Is there even a way through?” Amy spoke barely louder than a whisper as the four of them stood only a hundred meters or so away from the official crossing. Bodies lined the ground everywhere they looked, any clear path hidden beneath them.

  “We’ll find a way,” Harrison replied with determination thick in his voice. “Follow me.”

  Leading the group once more, Harrison—unlike Len, Amy, and James—forced himself to look at every dead body they passed. Since his conversation with Len outside Detroit, he had spiraled through his mind several times as he tried to reassure himself that everything would be all right in Toronto. He knew it was wishful thinking, but he forced himself to believe it as best he could. He knew the depressive mindset that was threatening to take him over wasn’t any good for him or anyone else. He needed to carry hope; it was the only thing strong enough to keep pushing him forward.

  But with that hope, Harrison maintained his realism. That was why he looked at every body, checking each of them to make sure he didn’t recognize a face or see a familiarity in someone’s eyes. Now that they were so close, he understood that Nina could be anywhere. He held out hope that she was in Toronto, but knew very well that she could have been out of the country briefly and might have become caught in the panic of people trying to get into Canada. The chance was slim, but it was still a chance, and so it wasn’t something Harrison was going to rule out.

  The task was still haunting, though. With each face that Harrison looked at, he saw another family torn apart by the solar crash. The natural disaster hadn’t been selective in its victims: men and women, young and old, tall and short all lay in the dust on the ground. People from all walks of life had been brought together in death, the rich and the poor lying face down in the dirt beside one another, their fortune or their livelihood nothing more than a distant memory for the rare surviving descendant.

  It was humbling in some respects, but in another, Harrison knew it was just life. He had prepared for something like this to happen, he had been ready. It just so happened that the larger percentage of people hadn’t. If everyone had shared the same knowledge he carried about this sort of thing, the state of the country would likely be very different at the moment. But that wasn’t the case. Harrison was lucky. He knew what needed to be done, and as a result, he needed to make the most of that luck. He needed to use it to find his family, to protect his loved ones and to make it through to the other side.

  “Over there!” Len exclaimed from just behind Harrison, the prepper turning to see his friend pointing to one of the small patrol huts. “Do you think we can get through?”

  “My plan exactly,” Harrison replied with a smile, his path already leading the group over in that direction. “Just watch your footing through here, it’s getting more difficult the closer we get.”

  What Harrison was referring to was
the density of the bodies on the ground. Everyone in this area had been brought down by gunfire, the borders now all equipped with fairly heavy machine gun artillery following the terrorist attacks at them a couple of years ago. That had perhaps been the only time in history that the United States had nearly fallen to an enemy on its own soil, and since the combined attacks the president had taken the protection of his country very seriously. As a result, it made sense that Canada and Mexico had stepped up their security as well, the false friendship between the neighboring nations waning more seriously as each year passed.

  So, Harrison picked their path carefully, stepping over countless bodies and completely avoiding the more gruesome sights altogether. He remained very aware that James was still only a child and he wanted to protect the young boy as best he could. If it weren’t for James, Harrison would likely still be in his bunker in Chicago, and while he was certain he would have remained safe there, he was glad that wasn’t the case.

  Finally reaching the open door of the first patrol hut, Harrison stepped over a guard who lay dead in the entrance and walked inside. The air was musty and smelled of decay from the other bodies within it, but there was an exit door as Harrison had suspected—their pathway into the country where his daughter was.