“What about smallpox?” Alden said. “I don’t see a whole lot of Indians around.”
When had he gotten so old? “Well, the government’s not going to just let everyone die. Who would they have left to tax?”
The news grew more manic by the day. People were advised to stay indoors. Nonessential government functions were suspended. Tristan concocted a plan to fly somewhere remote—an island, Hawaii or Tahiti or St. Kitts—but when she went online, she found all the flights had been grounded. Hospitals closed, overfilled; the attorney general announced it was safer to remain home and wait for the fever to break on its own.
Alden continued to teach Tristan kung fu. She got down the basics of punches, chops, blocks, kicks, and footwork, but her technique was poor. She had to think about every little movement. Often, she panicked at his incoming practice punch, slow as it was, and flailed at it, which never failed to make him smirk. She began to practice by herself, watching her motions in the mirror inside her parents’ closet doors. She did so more for the good of her own mental health—every second she spent fighting the air was one second she didn’t feel like crying or screaming—than out of some delusion she’d suddenly become the female Bruce Lee, capable of protecting herself against whatever the fuck was going on out there.
Other than the news, she simply didn’t know. She hadn’t been outside the house in nearly two weeks. Not since the trip to the grocery store and the Walgreens. She hadn’t spoken to her mother. A couple of her friends had called the week before, but no one had tried to reach her in days. With this realization, her guts sank—her friends were probably sick. Possibly dead. Definitely too consumed by the fresh chaos of their own lives to keep up with anyone else’s.
When they ran out of vegetables, she took Alden to go back to the Safeway and discovered they had missed the apocalypse.
Their front lawn had grown long. No children played in the yards of the McMansions down the block. Tristan turned onto the main street and found she had it to herself. She drove slowly, making a wide curve around three burnt-out cars wrecked and abandoned in the intersection. A body lay in the sidewalk, face-down, its arm stretched across the white stripe of the crosswalk as if salvation waited on the far corner. It was too bloated and greasy to tell if it had been a man or a woman.
“That’s a dead person,” Alden said.
“Don’t look.”
“That isn’t going to make it go away.”
She pulled past it. “And looking won’t do any good.”
A black lab trotted down the sidewalk, glancing guiltily at their car. The streets were nearly vacant, with no pedestrians and few cars parked along the curb, but for the same reason she wouldn’t run through the Parthenon, she felt compelled to drive as slowly as if they were in a school zone.
A cop car waited in the Safeway parking lot. Hope rose from a deep part of her stomach. She swung beside it, rolling down her window. A blast of decay hit her in the face. Two cops lay on the asphalt. Black blood curdled beneath them. Fat green flies winked on their hands and faces. Shiny brass shells scattered the lot.
She goosed the car past them. The Safeway’s front windows had been smashed. Glass glittered on the black pavement. Behind the store, green mountains judged in silence. The car idled.
“I think everyone’s dead,” Alden said.
“Quiet.” The store’s windows were dark. She hadn’t brought the gun. So stupid. The world had changed while she lounged in a marble kitchen and a black chenille couch.
“So why don’t we just go inside?”
She didn’t say: because I have to make sure nothing happens to you. Instead, she watched the gaping windows. From the gloom, light glinted on metal.
“Oh fuck.” She reversed, stomped the gas. A boom rattled the parking lot.
“What’s happening?” Alden yelled.
She spun the car around the police cruiser. A second shot shattered the sky. Tristan roared for the exit. She turned hard from the lot, seatbelt gripping her waist and shoulder, the car’s right wheel banging down from the curb. A third shot whumped into the back of their car.
Tristan squealed down the center of the empty road. “Are we being followed?”
“No!”
“Are you sure?”
“Not unless you’re scared of those crows. Was someone shooting at us?”
Her instinct was to lie to him. But the world had changed. Protecting her brother meant teaching him to protect himself. “Yes. Someone was shooting at us. I’m guessing they’ve taken over the store and they don’t want to share.”
Alden twisted in his seat, staring out the back window. “Didn’t they ever go to kindergarten?”
Tristan snorted, surprising herself. “They can have their Safeway. It always cost too much anyway.”
She didn’t slow until she was back among the overgrown yards of the subdivision. She pulled to the curb, idling, and waited a minute to ensure no one was tailing them. She pulled into the garage and double-checked the locks.
“I’m going to go out tonight,” she told him. “When I do, I want you to stay here and stay awake.”
“Where are you going now?”
She pulled the drapes over the front windows. “The hotel.”
He fell silent for several seconds. “Is Mom still there?”
“Truthfully? I don’t know.” She met his eyes. “I haven’t heard from her in a long time.”
Alden looked away sharply. He nodded, then walked from the room. Tristan didn’t go after him. She went upstairs and spent a long time staring over the back fence. Automated sprinklers rinsed the neighbor’s garden. She set an alarm for midnight, but couldn’t get herself to nap. At 1 AM, she took the gun from the safe. She had no idea how to check if it were loaded. She asked the internet, learning how to unlatch the magazine, to thumb the safety. She should have at least taken it out to test once. But she’d had no idea things had slid so far, and now that they had, the last thing she wanted to do was announce her presence to all the world just so she could fire a few rounds at a target. Really, how hard could it be?
She found her black button-up coat, put the pistol and a spare magazine in her pockets, and told Alden she was leaving. She contemplated walking: it would be far less conspicuous, but it would also take much longer, extending her risk of exposure, and if she were seen, she would have nothing to save her except her own two feet and very shaky aim.
She drove instead, cruising down the highway at 40 MPH to give her time to respond to any hazards or traps. Twice she had to swerve around abandoned vehicles, but she exited without incident. Three blocks from the hotel, she shut off her lights and swung onto a side street that curved illogically between small businesses and storage sheds. She waited a minute before getting out.
A handful of lights sprinkled the hotel windows. More than should be on at this hour. The lobby appeared to be open, but Tristan crept to the staff door around back, shoes stirring the scent of dewy grass. She used her dad’s keys to get inside. The thick stink of death plugged up the halls. She gagged, pulled her shirt over her nose. It didn’t help.
She took the stairwell to the sixth floor, easing the door closed behind her. Something clunked down the well-lit hall. Her heart jarred. The familiar noise of ice rattled down the machine. Her mom’s room was empty. Not just of her mom, but of the sheets, the mattress, the curtains. Blood stained the carpet in brown blotches. The faint smell of chemical disinfectant fought the scent of death.
She descended to the basement storage, taking everything that wouldn’t easily spoil: flour, sugar, coffee, commercial-size cans of clam chowder and tomato bisque. The smell of rotten shrimp gagged her. She lugged the food to the car and drove away.
At the house, Alden poked his head from the kitchen. “Did you see Mom?”
“She was gone.”
“Did she..?”
“I mean she was literally gone.” Tristan pressed her palms to her eyes. “I’m going to tell you the truth. Last time I saw he
r she looked pretty bad. I don’t think she made it.”
Alden broke then, slumping to the floor and sobbing. Tristan crouched down and hugged him and cried with him. The gun dug into her hip. When they were through, she went to the garage and stocked the food in the pantry.
They continued to wait. She had no plan. But she had food, heat, running water, a house that had so far remained safe. Every day, she expected the whirr of helicopters, the groan of tanks, the army marching in to retake control and bring them somewhere safe. But all she heard was the laughter of crows, the sigh of the wind in the pines, the rap of faraway shots.
She knew she should do something. Their food would only last a few months longer. The power could drop at any time. But where could she go that would be safer than her house?
So she locked the doors. Practiced kung fu with Alden. Baked cookies and bread to make use of the flour. Filled all the jugs she could find with water. Tended her dead neighbor’s garden. And waited to be saved.
The knock came at night two weeks later. Frantic, pounding. Tristan saw nothing through the peephole. She opened the door. Laura sprawled on the front step, panting, blood dripping from her face and chest.
“I’m so sorry,” Laura said. Tears smeared the blood on her cheeks. “Lock the doors. Hide away. They’re coming.”
9
“Here’s what we do first,” Shawn said. He spit on the moonlit ground, stirred needles over it with his toes. “You drop and give me twenty.”
“Huh?”
“Get down on the ground—dropping’s the fastest way to get there—and give me twenty pushups.”
Ness laughed through his nose. “You starting your own militia?”
“That’s right. I’m General Shawn now. So drop. Twenty. Now.”
“I’m not doing any stupid pushups.”
“Really?” Shawn rubbed his goatee. He still shaved every other morning. Ness’ face was sharp with stubble. “Then I’m not giving you any more food.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re not sharing my tent.”
Anger flashed through Ness’ skull. “You can’t just order me around! You’re being a total asshole.”
“You want my help? My stuff? Then you do what I say.”
Ness folded his arms. Shawn shrugged, bent through the tent flap, and zipped it behind him.
“Fine!” Ness said. He got down in the dirt, pine needles prickling his palms, and started counting pushups. By ten, his triceps burned. By fourteen, he could no longer push himself back up. He rested on the ground, breath steaming.
“That’s why you’re doing this,” Shawn said. “‘Cause right now, you’re a liability.”
“Like it’s so goddamn important I look like a model.” Ness pushed himself up. “Fifteen.”
“It’s so goddamn important you can pull your own weight. Mom’s too tired tonight, but I’m going back for her in the morning. Something happens to her because you’re too weak to run for two minutes without losing your wind, I will shoot you in the head and chuck you off this mountain.” He shoved Ness’ ribs with his boot. “Five more, faggot.”
Ness didn’t dare let the sting in his eyes progress to tears. He rose again, arms shaking. Blood pulsed in his ears. He lowered himself to the forest floor and forced himself back up. His second-to-last, he pushed against the ground with all he had left, straining like a four-cylinder trying to get a start up a hill. He had to rest for nearly a minute before the burning in his arms receded enough to finish number twenty.
He rolled on his back, chest heaving. “Happy?”
“Sublimely,” Shawn said. “I’ll take mercy on you. No sprints until daylight.”
He wasn’t joking. At dawn, Shawn kicked him in the side and forced him to run circles around the camp before he’d be allowed breakfast. After five minutes of sliding through the needles, Ness pulled up, a stitch in his side.
“I’m going to barf,” he said.
“That’s the sign this is working. Mush, doggy!”
Ness straightened and ran on. A minute later, he took sour pleasure in vomiting bile on Shawn’s boots.
Shawn grabbed his collar and pulled him upright. “You got the entire forest to yark in and you aim straight at my boots? Well, now you get to scrub them.”
Ness retched again and spit into the brush, acid thick in his throat. “Fuck you.”
Shawn grabbed the back of his head and forced it toward his reeking boots. “Clean them up or I do it with your face.”
“Stop it!” Ness grabbed at Shawn’s shin with one hand. The stench of his own vomit gagged him. “I’m doing it!”
“Then take them off me. I’m not touching that shit.”
Ness tugged at the slimy laces. “I thought you were going to get Mom.”
“And you just set me back twenty minutes. Now get scrubbing before I lose my temper.”
Ness held the boots at arm’s length, grabbing a jug of water. He carried them out of sight of camp and sloshed water over the boots, rinsing away the chunks, but had nothing to scrub with. He grabbed a pinecone and went to work. Finished, he sniffed them. The sour tang was still there, but faint enough Shawn might not notice.
He came back and handed them to his brother, who held them at eye level and turned them in the cold sunlight. “What’d you use to clean ‘em?”
Ness stiffened, bracing himself to be struck. “A pinecone.”
“A pinecone! Not bad.” Shawn sat on his folding camp chair and laced up. “Well, come on. Need you to watch my back at the house.”
“What about breakfast?”
“That can wait. I want to get Mom up here before any cops haul themselves out of bed. Put it this way—what d’you think will hurt worse? Missing out on your corn flakes? Or taking a 9mm to the belly?”
Ness went to the packs hanging from the tree and dug out two granola bars. “Ready when you are, Ranger Rick.”
“Then where’s your shotgun?”
He fetched it from the tent. Shawn started downhill, pistol on his hip, eyes sweeping the path ahead. They reached where the trees thinned in front of the long field down to the trailer and Shawn knelt and lifted his binoculars.
“Looks clear.” He passed the binoculars to Ness. “You know which end of these to look through? Or do I need to write you instructions?”
Ness grabbed them away. “It’s like a quarter mile to the house. How am I supposed to watch your back with a shotgun? Fire it into the air and pray I shoot a plane down on top of them?”
“Just yell.” Shawn stood, knees popping. “Not like you’d be better off with a rifle. You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if you were standing inside it.”
Ness crouched beside a tree and spied on the trailer. At the base of the hill to the park, a car sat running, belching gray clouds into the morning cold. A pheasant bobbed in the grass a hundred yards up from their mom’s home, its long tail straight as an arrow. Otherwise, the grounds were still. Shawn socked him on the shoulder, banging the binoculars into Ness’ eyebrows, and started downhill.
Shawn walked with his head down, pistol tucked under his coat. He didn’t seem hurried. No SWAT teams leapt from the bushes. Shawn simply walked to the trailer, unlocked it, and disappeared inside.
Everything was so dramatic with Shawn. Lookouts. Guns. His little boot camp. He was the child, off playing commando in the mountains. Ness’ one consolation was that once this was all over, Shawn would look like every other end-of-days jackass, as wrongheaded and moronic as those reverends with their Rapture. The recession had turned everyone stupid. Willing to believe the USS Civilization could crash with one wrong turn.
Totally illogical. Any cataclysm significant enough to force humanity back into some hunter-gatherer, off-the-grid, survivalist BS would be so strong it would extinct us in the process. Anything less than that—eco-terrorists eliminating the gasoline supply with petroleum-eating bacteria, solar radiation EMPing every piece of electronics on the planet—well, it just wouldn’t be eno
ugh. Simple technology would continue to exist, as would knowledge of advanced technology. It might be a few decades before someone was manufacturing new iPads, but even an idiot like Shawn could rig up a windmill and patch it into a power grid.
Still, some part of Ness understood why they got sucked into the fantasy. He believed in personal responsibility, too. Real liberty. The freedom to make your own choices and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. Over the last few decades, that America of old had been stolen, snatched up by nanny state, soft-headed do-gooders on the left and wealth-obsessed sociopaths on the right who clearly believed their money meant they belonged to a superior species. They’d leveraged that money to make the laws reflect their first-class status.
Normal people just didn’t have a way anymore. They had to spend their whole lives earning jet fuel for the plutocrats, and in the meantime, they couldn’t enjoy what little life-hours they had to spare for themselves, thanks to horrified, oatmeal-eating, Prius-driving parents who knew what was best for the safety, well-being, and health of every other person on the planet. Best to wipe it all out. Start over. See how well the plutocrats and Prius-drivers handled it when their lives depended on catching their meals for themselves. That’s what Shawn thought, anyway, or something like it. If there really were a plague going around, it kind of made a lot of sense.
A figure emerged from the trailer. Ness lifted the binoculars. Far down the hill, Shawn looked both ways, then beckoned their mom out from the home. He carried a backpack over each shoulder. She carried a lot of weight and a left knee that didn’t work too well. Shawn slowed to a pace he would’ve kicked Ness for keeping. All the way up the grassy hill, Shawn glanced from one shoulder to the other, but absolutely nothing happened on their ascent to the trees.
“Ness!” His mom wrapped him up, crushing him into her potpourri perfume. He hugged back with one arm. She dropped back a step and looked him up and down. “You’re just going to run away without telling anyone? I ought to pound you into the ground like a stake.”
“I got a mallet up at the camp,” Shawn said. “Let’s get moving.”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 114