by Urban, Tony
“You better be sorry. I’d kick your ass if my legs worked.” Seth wore a Cheshire cat grin as he shifted his torso as if trying to make his immobilized legs move and his perverse sense of humor worked because Wyatt barked out a laugh.
“Hunting might have been a bust, but mom gave me this.”
Wyatt pulled the remainder of the jerky from his pocket. Seth’s emerald eyes widened at the sight.
“No shit? The old lady’s been holding out on us?” Seth swiveled his chair in her direction.
“It’s for his birthday, Seth.”
“Well mine’s in three months and my wish is for a whole damned cow.” Seth grabbed the jerky and stuffed it in his mouth. He closed his eyes and chewed, savoring the small piece of dried beef.
Barb shook her head. “Alright, Seth. You go ahead and wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.”
Seth laughed so hard he choked on the jerky which made Wyatt and Barbara almost convulse. And she realized their lives weren’t so bad after all.
Chapter Three
Wyatt slipped out the front door, careful not to make any noise. Even if his mother told him he was a man, she remained reluctant for him to go out at night. Maybe it was just being a typical, overprotective mother. Or maybe it was the fact that the nights now were so black. It wasn’t just the lack of streetlights. It was the lack of all light.
The days were bad, with their unrelentingly dreary, lead-colored skies, but at least you could see what was in front of your face. No chance of that at night unless you had a flashlight or lantern. Wyatt carried the latter.
He flicked on his lamp once off the porch and swung the beam in both directions. All clear. He aimed it at the front door of a brick ranch house which was two houses up and across the street from his own. A baseball bat propped open the door, and the sight never failed to make Wyatt grin. It was as if the inhabitant was not only inviting would-be intruders inside but also supplying them with a weapon. As well as Wyatt knew that home’s owner, it wouldn’t have shocked him if both were true.
He crossed the street and continued to the house, setting the bat aside as he opened the door.
“Trooper? You awake?”
The only response that came was a low, phlegmy rumble of a snore. That answered his question. Wyatt knew better than to go inside and startle him. Doing so wouldn’t just piss off the man who had become a stand-in father figure, but was also apt to get him shot. To avoid both, Wyatt knocked on the flimsy metal storm door, sending hollow thunderclaps throughout the surrounding area.
“Trooper!” Wyatt was louder now, having given up on subtlety.
The snoring came to a quick, choking halt. “That you, Wyatt?”
Wyatt heard a hard, heavy sound of Trooper setting his pistol on the ceramic tabletop inside the kitchen.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Inside, the legs of a chair scrabbled across the tile floor, noise then followed by footsteps. As they neared the door, the shape of the man came into view.
“Wyatt Morrill. How was your birthday, son?”
Wyatt considered the query. Aside from the bad start with the deer, it wasn’t too awful. “I guess I can’t complain.”
“That’s good. Cause I ain’t up for listening if you wanted too.”
The light hit Trooper’s weathered face, which despite the illumination was nearly as black as the night. Deep crevices criss crossed his sable skin and the only bright spots were his white hair, teeth, and eyes. Those eyes narrowed, and the man raised his hand and pushed the lantern to the side.
“Get that outta my face. Now I won’t be able to see right for half an hour you little basta’d.”
Trooper could be a cantankerous, old fart and his Downeast accent got even thicker when he’d been drinking or was angry and it never failed to make Wyatt smile. “Sorry.”
“Ayah. You sure are.” He glanced back into the house. “Hold up a second, I got something for ya.”
“You already gave me that journal.”
“Well, I gotcha something else.”
Wyatt watched Trooper disappear into the house, moving out of range of the lamp. With the man gone, Wyatt took the chance to be nosy and light up the dwelling. Trooper had been a constant in his life since even before the bombs went off, but the man had never allowed him inside his home.
What he saw was clutter. He wouldn’t call Trooper a major league hoarder, but he was clearly Double A. Stacks of canned goods five feet high lined two of the walls. Rifles, shotguns, and knives covered the couch. What looked like a hundred-gallon jugs of water-filled a corner. And there must have been twenty cases of toilet paper.
Wyatt wondered if the man had always been this well-prepared or if such preparations and precautions had come as an aftereffect of the attacks. He only recalled snippets about Trooper from before. In addition to being his neighbor, the man was a retired state police officer. One who often chased Wyatt and the other neighborhood kids off his lawn.
Trooper re-emerged from the recesses of the house and Wyatt spun away the light. Neither of them acknowledged the snooping.
The old man held two cans of beer in one hand. “Thought this was appropriate considering the occasion.”
He passed one to Wyatt, who accepted even though it shocked him. The thought of drinking the warm beer made him feel a little sick - or maybe that was the lingering buzz of the tequila - but he didn’t want to be rude so he popped the top. Trooper did the same and then raised his own beverage for a toast.
“To my friend, Wyatt. Happy birthday.”
Wyatt touched his can to Trooper’s. “You know I’m underage, right? I feel like this might be a sting.”
Trooper laughed, a joyful but raspy and unhealthy sound that didn’t put Wyatt in a celebratory mood. “I’m retired going on twenty years. Even if I wasn’t, I ain’t never busted a boy for something as petty as a beer, long as he wasn’t driving aft’ah.”
Trooper took a long drink, so long Wyatt suspected his can was empty, or damn close, by the time he finished. Wyatt didn’t want to be rude and took a sip of his own. It tasted like lukewarm piss and he fought not to grimace.
“I think everyone’s trying to get me drunk,” Wyatt said.
“What’s that?”
“My mom, she gave me some tequila earlier.”
Trooper limped toward a wicker chair on the porch then half-sat, half-fell into it. Wyatt heard joints pop and snap like someone stepping on rice cereal.
“Barbara squirreled away some tequila? She’s crafty, that one. Keeping secrets from me.” He flashed a wink, then tipped his square chin toward Wyatt’s beer. “Don’t got to ration that. I got plenty.”
“How’s that even possible? I’d have guessed you drank every beer from here to Bar Harbor by now.” Wyatt flopped on the cushion in the chair across from his old friend. A small puff of dust flew in the air as he did. “Do you have a microbrewery in your basement or something?”
“I got my sources.” Trooper chuckled. “You go hunting today? Have any luck at that spot I tipped you too?”
Wyatt considered lying outright, then thought better of it. Maybe it was Trooper’s training as a cop, but Wyatt couldn’t recall even a single time of getting one past him. But maybe half a lie would work. “I saw a buck. But he made me before I could get off a shot.”
He could feel Trooper examining him. And he knew Trooper had seen through the untruth.
“Well, betta luck next time. I suppose.”
“Yeah.” Wyatt knew there wouldn’t be a next time. After he’d descended the tree, he emptied his bladder onto the tree and surrounding brush, hoping the scent would send the buck and doe somewhere else. Somewhere away from people wanting to kill and eat them. Even though he believed, he knew, sparing them was the right thing to do, it also made him feel ashamed, and he needed to change the subject.
“I started writing in that journal you gave me.” He didn’t say it was only seven words.
Troope
r’s eyes lit up at the mention of the gift he’d given Wyatt three days earlier. “Did ya? That’s good. How did that go?”
“Well, that didn’t go so great either. I couldn’t decide what to write about. Me not getting any food again, or that today was my birthday, and I spent most of it up a tree. Both seemed boring.”
Trooper shook his head. “Journaling isn’t just about what’s happening outside.” He waved his hand in the air like he was conducting an invisible orchestra. “The sky was gray. The trees were bare. My belly was empty. Ain’t no one gives a happy crappy about any of that. It’s all superficial. It don’t matter a none of it.” He poked Wyatt in the chest with a finger gone askew from arthritis. “Journaling’s about what’s happening in here.”
Wyatt laughed. “Damn, Trooper, you’re turning my world upside down tonight. You’re the toughest guy I’ve ever known. You’re not supposed to be this deep.”
Trooper leaned forward in his chair, crinkling the empty beer can between his hands as he spoke. “Why? You think a strong man’s not allowed to have feelings? I’d expect that kind of attitude from Seth, but not you. Thought you were betta than that.”
Wyatt could see something akin to confused hurt in the man’s muddy brown eyes and wasn’t sure how to react. As he struggled to find the words to free him from the hole he’d dug, he wished he’d have stayed home. “I don’t know. It’s just... You’ve kil--” He stopped himself. No need to bring that up. “You always do what needs done. Even when it’s hard. And it never seemed like it bothered you.”
“I’ve done things to keep people safe. Don’t mean it’s easy.” Trooper set the crushed can on a small table beside him. “When it gets easy, when you stop feeling, that’s when it becomes a problem.”
Trooper fell silent, staring into the distance. Wyatt sat with him for a while, not minding the quiet. He asked no more questions because he wasn’t sure if he could handle the answers.
“If you ain’t gonna drink that beer hand it ova.”
Wyatt did.
Chapter Four
A cracking noise woke Seth from what had been an especially deep and restful sleep. Earlier Wyatt had given him half a shot of tequila and while it wasn’t the first alcohol he’d consumed in his fifteen years on the planet, he was still a featherweight As he sat upright in bed, his head felt on the verge of floating off his body and he wasn’t sure there’d even been a noise at all until there came another.
It was definitely a crack, not a creak. A creak would mean someone was being careful. Maybe Wyatt creeping to the bathroom and trying not to wake the others. A crack, especially one this loud, not only meant someone else was around, but that they didn’t give a shit if you knew. Hell, maybe they even wanted you to know.
Seth grabbed hold of his limp legs and pushed them over the side of the bed before reaching for his wheelchair and rolling it his way. With a grunt he lifted himself up and over, plopping down into the chair, a move that resulted in a second grunt. After he’d lost use of his legs, that move had taken him half a year to master and he thought, with a pang of sadness, that it now seemed as normal as taking a breath.
Once in his chair, he rotated it toward the bedroom door. Not that he could see it. It was beyond black and as he wheeled himself into the hallway, he had no idea what, or who, might lie ahead.
He hesitated, listening so carefully he would have heard a mosquito fart.
There was nothing. Maybe it was just the after-effects of a dream, coupled with the buzz from the booze. After all, if there’d actually been a crack, his mother and Wyatt would already be up and out of their rooms as they could move much quicker.
Even though he was well on his way to convincing himself this was a made-up danger, he’d gone to the trouble of getting into the chair and figured he may as well give the house a once over.
The front door was closed and the dead bolt still in place, no one had kicked it in. No broken glass littered the hardwood floor. He wheeled himself to the bay window that looked into the yard and saw more black and nothing.
“Note to self. Don’t tell Wyatt about this or he’ll make you stay sober for the rest of your life.” Seth chuckled, an embarrassed, soft sound that barely slipped free of his lips.
A cool breeze caressed the back of his neck and he shivered. It reminded him of the cold hand of an old person suffering from poor circulation. That visual made him shiver again. He didn’t fear ghosts - there was already so much to fear, who had the time for spirits - but at this hour, in this pitch blackness, the possibility was enough to raise goosebumps on his arms.
Time to return to bed and slip under the covers where he could warm up. Why did it have to get cold so damn fast now? It was only half way through August, which meant his near future held a good seven months of frigid temperatures. He wondered if he could spend the entire coming winter in bed and under blankets and figured it was worth a shot.
Another wisp of wind fluttered his hair. That’s when it registered with Seth that there shouldn’t be a breeze inside the house.
He slowly rotated his chair, not wanting to know what waited behind him. Like he was still a little kid and could make any potential bad shit go away by not looking. By not seeing. Because, if your eyes didn’t face the reality of the situation, you could live happily in a world of denial.
At least that was the logic back then. Now he knew better. Bad shit happened whether you saw it or not. But he could still hope it was nothing.
By the time Seth completed his 180-degree turn, that hope vanished. The kitchen door stood wide open. And beyond that he could see obsidian shadows skirting through the dark.
Those shadows were people.
Seth pumped his arms so fast he felt the muscles burn almost immediately as he wheeled himself through the living room and down the hallway which led to his mother and brother’s rooms. As he faced the empty corridor, he didn’t want to again look to the kitchen door, but he needed to. He needed to know if whoever he’d seen had abandoned the outdoors for his home. So he looked. And saw a man.
Then the man saw him.
They stared at each other for what seemed like an hour but was a second if that.
The man stepped forward and raised his hand. He was holding something that, by its size and the way the man gripped it, could only be a gun.
Seth screamed. “Wyatt!”
Chapter Five
Wyatt had been what his father called “a good sleeper” for most of his life. It was one of many traits he inherited from his mother. To the both of them, insomnia may as well have been an exotic, faraway foreign nation. It mattered not whether they’d downed caffeine-laden sodas or coffee or been wide awake ten minutes earlier. As soon as their heads hit the pillow, it was lights out and waking them was an almost Herculean task.
It changed a little after Seth ended up in the chair. As the older brother, Wyatt felt the need to be alert, to rush to Seth’s aide if he fell getting into his chair or transferring onto the toilet. That happened a lot the first few months, but in time, Seth got stronger and adapted to the reality of his new life and Wyatt felt less and less need to be on call all hours of the day and night. And once that happened, he was back to being Rip Van Winkle’s understudy.
It had been several years since Seth required his help, but a part of his brain remained tuned in 24/7 to the sound of his brother’s pleading cries. It was the only thing that could bring him around in an instant. And when he heard Seth screaming his name, he was awake and on his feet before his eyes had fully opened.
“Wyatt!” Seth screamed again.
His startled body moved in slow motion as he stumbled toward his bedroom door. “I’m coming.”
He fumbled with the knob, spinning it all the way on the second attempt and opening the door. Wyatt was wide awake now. The tone of Seth’s plea and his own adrenaline ended that. That tone wasn’t the sound of his brother slipping off the commode and cracking his face against the tub. It wasn’t the sound of him shitting his bed b
ecause he couldn’t move quick enough and not wanting their mother to find out. Wyatt knew those tones. This was different.
This was terror.
The cool air assaulted his bare chest when he stepped into the hallway and he fought back a full-body shiver. He dragged his fingertips across the wall as he moved through the dark, an old habit he’d picked up and never let go. He’d expected the blind trek to continue to the other side of the house, to Seth’s room, but his journey came to a fast halt once the kitchen came into shadowy view.
Seth rocked forward and back in his chair, playing a sort of tug-of-war with a man that loomed in front of him. Except, it wasn’t really tug-of-war. Seth had latched onto the man’s wrist and, as they struggled, Wyatt realized the man was clutching the carving knife that usually held residence in the kitchen’s butcher block.
“Wha--” Wyatt didn’t even get the word out.
“Help me, damn it!” Seth’s muscles strained as he tried to tilt the sharp end of the knife away from himself.
Still half in shock, Wyatt finally reacted. He’d never been in a fight that escalated beyond pushing and shoving and he wasn’t sure what to do. Grabbing a weapon of his own didn’t even cross his mind. Instead, he drove himself into the man’s side in a move that made him think about tackling the quarterback during his one year of junior high football. Their two skinny bodies collided, and they tumbled to the ground in a flailing heap.
Wyatt scrambled to get on top, to get leverage over the man who stank of sweat and smoke, but the man was faster or more desperate or both and he had his hands around Wyatt’s throat before he could react. His fingers dug into the flesh and Wyatt felt a sharp burst of pain and hot, oozing wetness as the man’s ragged fingernails pierced his skin.
The man’s thumbs found their way to Wyatt’s windpipe and pushed inward with suffocating force. Wyatt swung his arms, slapping at the man’s face and feeling his coarse beard. He grabbed onto that hair and yanked.