by Unknown
“I agree,” Conner said. “I’ll talk to Katie.
“And I’ll talk to Jan, but we already talked.”
“So did we,” Conner agreed. They both laughed.
James angled the big truck around a final piece of asphalt and into a cracked and buckled parking lot. The two other vehicles sat silent, waiting for them.
As they left the truck Conner noticed that the store hadn’t seemed to incur any more damage since the last time that he had been there. The roof was bowed inward; it had been before, but there were plenty of upright pillars that still supported the roof and they all appeared intact. At least the ones he could easily see. The supports were spaced about every sixteen or so feet.
“Safe?” Jake asked.
“Looks the same as it did the last time,” Conner allowed. Katie and James looked at him, and he shrugged. “I’d say so. It looks the same as it did the last time I was here. It doesn’t even look as though anyone has been here.”
The scattered, powdered snow seemed undisturbed around the shattered doorway that lead into the building. Conner snapped his flashlight on and led the way inside.
The inside of the store told a different story. Someone had been there during the time Conner had last been there. Several of the glass display cases that held the weapons had been damaged. They were locked, whoever had made the attempt had made it halfheartedly. The glass was safety glass of some sort. It had cracked and spider webbed, but it had not broken and caved in.
“Guess someone tried to get in,” James offered.
Jake held up a discarded crow bar. Even in the weak light they could see the streaks of scarlet on one end. Jake let it fall to the floor. The clatter was loud enough to make Lydia draw in a quick breath in the broken silence that followed.
“Jesus, Jake,” She sputtered. Jake only grinned.
“Why does someone go through all of that when they could’ve taken a simple screw driver and just popped the locks?” Katie asked.
“Well,” Jake started.
Katie had walked behind the counter, taken a screw driver from her pocket and began to jimmy the lock mechanism. It was a cheap sliding set and easily bent to one side far enough to slide the glass door open. Katie smiled.
“Learn that up in the big city, Miss?” Conner asked with a smile.
Katie smiled back, reached inside the case, careful of the glass that had sprayed in small slivers from the spider webs in the top, and withdrew pistol after pistol, setting them on a wooden topped case next to the cash register.
“Forty five caliber, Nine millimeter, a cheap one though. Three eighty, kind of nice, though small. Here’s a much nicer Nine Millimeter.” She set several more guns on the wooden top, looked up with a crooked grin and asked, “Well, gentlemen, lady, what’ll it be?”
“You really know about this kind of shit,” Lydia asked in an awed voice.
“Obviously well enough to know what’s what,” Jake said.
“That’s right. Obviously well enough,” Katie agreed. She gave no further explanation.
“What do you think, Katie?” Jan asked.
“Yeah, what would be the best?” Conner asked.
Katie shrugged. “It depends on what you like. I like a three eighty myself. It’s small, not as heavy as a Nine millimeter.” She pulled her own Nine Millimeter. “This was my Dad's. A good gun, but I liked the three eighty I had. A three eighty won’t really knock somebody down, not like you see in the movies, but a nine millimeter won’t always do that either. It’ll just make a bigger hole. If you want to knock somebody down, you need this.” She held up the bigger forty five caliber pistol. She held the mostly black pistol easily in one hand. “This will knock somebody down and kill them. And on the off chance that your aim was bad and you didn’t immediately kill them, believe me, they are not going to feel like getting back up.” She grinned. “It’s still not like the movies, you know, where you see them flying backwards through the air, but it will knock them down and keep them there.”
“Jesus, girl, I’m, like, in awe,” Lydia said.
“Katie,” Katie said, “and thank you.”
“So how do you know all that? Like for real, how do you know all that shit?”
“My dad was a cop, not in Syracuse, before we moved there. He had a thing for guns. I just caught it. When he knew I was going to be like him when it came to guns, he sent me for training, safety stuff mostly, but I liked it so much I started buying my own weapons. I took the test for the P.D. eventually I would’ve had my foot in the door in Syracuse. That’s a good department. I would’ve been in already if not for the economy.“ She paused for a few beats and hefted the gun in her hand, switching it back and forth between hands, feeling the weight of it.
“The thing is, I love to shoot. I’m good too,” she sighed. “So… What’ll it be?” She let the smile return to her face, reached over and began to jimmy another of the locks on the sliding glass doors.
They spent the good part of two hours in the store. Camping gear, rifles, pistols and ammunition, Conner began to feel like they were equipping their own private army before they were done. By the time they left everyone was carrying at least one pistol, and several rifles and boxes of ammunition had found their way into the back of the trucks. Katie, Conner noticed, had added a matte black forty five caliber pistol to the Nine Millimeter. She wore them in webbed holsters on a wide leather belt.
“I thought you preferred a three eighty,” Conner said half jokingly as he replaced the Nine Millimeter he had decided on into the side holster he had chosen.
“I do,” she said, “For shooting, but like I said, a three eighty won't always knock somebody down.” Her eyes met his.
“Yeah… There is that,” Conner agreed quietly.
They spent a short amount of time looking through a small convenience store in the same parking lot. There was very little left. Most likely cleaned out, James voiced, by the same folks who had tried to take the guns. This was evidenced by smears of maroon on the counter tops. Even so, they managed to find boxes of stuff in the storage area. They finished filling the backs of the trucks with basic First Aid stuff and several boxes full of candy bars and junk food.
The sun had been standing overhead for what seemed like hours. James spoke. “Hotter,” He said. “You can feel the heat. And,” He motioned with his hands, “the snow is melting faster as well.”
“Got a theory on that?” Conner asked.
James shook his head.
“Maybe the whole process takes time,” Katie said.
“Maybe,” Jake agreed. “Maybe it’s not so easy to start something spinning in the other direction. And we don’t know if it really stopped or not. The sun’s coming up in the north, or it was, but that seems to be changing too. I don’t think it stopped all the way. I think it’s just got a different spin now, and maybe a different path.”
James nodded, as did Conner. “I guess we’ll leave it for the scientists... long as we don’t fall off the Earth.” He chuckled a little.
“Call it a day?” Conner asked.
“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “We still have to unload all of this.”
There were a few halfhearted complaints, but everyone piled into the trucks and they made their way slowly back towards the heart of the city and the factory that lay behind the Public Square.
THIRTEEN
March 15th
In The Desert: Billy and Beth
It was late afternoon when Billy awoke. Somewhere in the day Beth had wound up beside him, two spoons in a drawer. He lay still unwilling to let her go, his hand was curled protectively around her. Beth moved and he felt the sleep leave her body. One moment all soft and willing, the next a live wire.
“You didn't cop a feel did you?” Beth asked in a mumbled half sleepy voice.
“Beth, can't you ever just say something like, I don't know, good morning?”
She twisted her head around and smiled. The secret smile she rarely ever gave out. The one that had st
arted him falling in the first place. “Good late afternoon,” she said and the smile slipped away. There was still something there, but it wasn't that secret, vulnerable glimpse into her heart that it was usually. She stretched, yawned, and her feet came up against the door. “Next vehicle we get is an SUV so we have some place to sleep too.”
“I don't know, I kind of liked this,” Billy said before he could shut his mouth down.
Beth laughed and it was the unguarded Beth once more. “As long as you know what the deal is.” She twisted her head once more, and then her entire body so she was looking directly in his eyes.
“I... I know the deal,” Billy said. The press of her body was maddening.
“We really don't need to talk it out?”
“You know how I feel, Beth.”
“I do,” she nodded and her eyes became sad. “Let me just say these few things.” She took a deep breath and then began to speak. “I am attracted to you. I considered sleeping with you before you became my friend, before... Before I knew it couldn't work between us. I even considered it after... Maybe ten minutes ago too, but it would cost me a friend because it wouldn't mean to me what it would mean to you.” She held his eyes as if willing him to understand.
“It's like you see me as this fragile little princess, and I am so far from that, Billy, so far. You have been on the bad side of me and so I can't see why you still try to see me that way.” She laughed. “It's a thing men do. Like... Like that is love, you see? Instead of love just being about all the other stuff... The things I admire about you, you about me. The things in common, the things that we share, the parts of you and me that are real that end up in the mix, but no, I'm a princess, unattainable beauty, something to worship, and it has nothing to do with what I really am at all. I have lived that way, tried to live up to that. It's not possible... The man I need is out there, I hope. Just someone that looks at me as me.” She watched his eyes.
“I think I can do that,” Billy told her.
Beth laughed.
“No, really. I think I can separate those things... I'm pretty sure.”
“Yeah? I think you like the idea of me... I think you want to fuck me... I think it might even hold together in a situation like this... At least for a while. And I think you could talk me into that comfort we could give each other, and I think you would feel completely different about me once that happened. You would think it meant that we were together, and it wouldn't mean that at all. It would mean we were scared and we took some comfort in each other... Because the attraction was there, and because it can just be about that sometimes.” She drew a breath. “But I think then I would go from princess to whore, because that's the way this world works, princess to whore in sixty seconds. I've seen it... I've felt it... And then I lose my friend, and I also hurt my fiend because he doesn't want to see it, I mean really see it for what it is.” She reached one hand up and pushed Billy's dirty blonde hair away from his eyes. That hair, and the way it hung across his eyes was one of the things that had nearly made her give in. He looked like a little boy, vulnerable, maybe he would love her forever, never hurt her, never treat her badly, never leave, but he would be reacting to something in her that didn't really exist. Something only he saw. That little boy, awestruck, in love, but not the kind of love she needed him to feel, to be in with her... She sighed again. She could see the hurt in his eyes.
“We probably should get going,” Billy said. A smile played across his lips. Tentative, but there.
“Okay,” she laid her head against his chest. “I need a toothbrush... That little bastard made me lose my toothbrush.”
Billy laughed. “I got extras.”
She lifted her face up, “Really?”
“Really.”
She bent and kissed his forehead and then rose from the seat and looked around at the scrub brush and sand before she rose all the way up and sat on the edge of the seat while Billy straightened his long frame out and sat on the drivers side of the seat.
“That felt sort of, I don't know, brotherly... That kiss.”
“I hated my brother,” Beth said. She levered the handle and stepped down to the ground.
“Hey?” Billy said. “I'll work at it... I mean,” he looked at a loss. “I don't want to lose our friendship.”
Beth smiled. “Thanks... I mean it. Now get out here and get me a toothbrush, Billy Jingo.” She laughed as she finished.
~
“So, look.” Billy jabbed his finger at the map and Beth leaned across and looked at his finger. “Teddy Roosevelt Lake... Tonto National forest... Connected to Gila National forest... Cibola National forest. Pretty isolated.”
Beth turned her eyes back to the desert. There was little to see, but twice she had hit bushes that popped up out of what seemed like nowhere. They had passed under the truck, but there were cactus out here too in places, and she was pretty sure a cactus wouldn't just pass under the truck.
“So... Why there?” Beth asked as she turned her attention back to driving.
“Just a place to get our shit together. Breath for a few moments, really look the map over and pick a destination.”
“Isn't that taking us closer to Yellowstone, or whatever is causing the problems to the north?” Beth asked.
“It is, but,” Billy checked the scale and did some quick measurements. “Still close to a thousand miles away from there.” He looked up. “I think it is Yellowstone. I heard something just before the shit hit the fan, something about the park in Yellowstone.”
“What was it?” Beth asked.
“I don't know,” Billy answered. He shrugged. “I wasn't paying attention... Wish I had been... Something like everyone in the park went off line... Like they couldn't reach any of the stations, rangers, whatever you call them... Something like that. And seismic activity, like an earthquake centered there.” He shrugged once more and shook his head.
“So it's a good place to stay away from,” Beth said.
“Yeah... I would say so, but we'll be a thousand miles away.” Billy shrugged once more.
“So?”
“So, head north... We'll have to cross a few highways... Just keep out from the cities... I mean Phoenix turns to suburbs that spread out a long way, at least that's what the map looks like. Like it just kept spreading and so they just kept adding names.”
Off to their left the city was easy to spot. There were fires all through it. In some places huge sections were on fire, in others it was scattered fires. There were no areas that didn't seem to be affected, and with the fires it was easy to track the edge of the cities as they drove.
Beth laughed. “So they just added names. Well, couldn't the same be said about New York? About any large city as it grows? Isn't that the way it works?”
“I guess... I hadn't thought it out, I guess.
“Going to have to cut through part of the city,” Beth said a few moments later.
Billy looked up from the map as the truck rolled to a stop. “A river.”
“Probably a canal...” Beth said. “Either way we can't drive over it... Does it break anywhere?” She turned the truck and began to run along the side of the canal heading for the city once more. In the distance several fires burned, but the fires seemed to be a few miles distance, nothing close. “Like a housing development or something,” Beth said a few minutes later as the truck bumped up onto a road that was paralleled by a brick wall. The wide concrete gutter was bone dry, the pavement smooth after so much time in the desert
“Not on the map...” He shrugged. “I just don't know, Beth.”
Beth had stopped on the edge of the housing development. It was dark, lit only by the headlights of the truck. Cars and trucks sat neatly in driveways. The streets were empty. Heavy dust seemed to blanket the whole scene. Little trails cut from place to place.
“Fucking spooky,” Billy said. “Volcanic ash?”
“Maybe... Probably... Might also be ash from all the fires,” she considered. “What do you think the trai
ls are?”
Billy frowned. “Animals?”
“Could be small animals raiding house to house... No garbage any more so they have to get into those houses and get what they can or starve.”
“Great... Had me worried,” Billy said as he tried to look everywhere at once.
Beth eased the truck into a driveway. “I guess we can forage if they can forage.” She rolled down her window to look around and Billy followed suit.
“Looks good to...” Beth started.
Something hit the truck hard and it rocked on its springs. A wolf head appeared in Beth's window, teeth bared, and lunged for her face. The truck spun hard to the left as Beth mashed her foot down on the accelerator. Her gun came up at nearly the same time and the wolf's head disappeared in a spray of mangy fur and blood as the truck lurched. Time seemed to slow as a second wolf made a run for the truck, hit the door and wedged itself half way into the trucks' interior. Beth screamed as she lost the steering wheel. Billy leaned forward and shoved the gun into the Wolf's mouth pulling the trigger at the same time.
It seemed slow motion at first, the wolf's head exploded as it fell away toward the back of the pickup, Beth drew a deep breath and tried to grab the wheel, but it was too late. Everything sped up to real time, the truck roared forward and slammed into the side of a house, continuing into it. Her foot had slammed down on the brake and the truck finally skidded to a stop several feet into the house.
Billy hit the dashboard hard, rebounded, and slid under the dash as the truck plunged into the house. Seconds later he scrambled out from under the dash, the smell of gasoline was strong, the smell of the hot motor equally strong. He looked over at Beth, but she seemed dazed, her eyes unfocused, trickles of blood running down her face, mumbling softly under her breath. Billy levered his door open with a little help from his foot, it screeched as it opened. The screech of metal was very loud in the silence of the house. The headlights were still on, illuminating what looked to be a kitchen.
“Jesus, Beth. Jesus. We got to go,” Billy said loudly. He reached down, gabbed Beth's rifle where it had fallen to the floorboard, and then shoved his gun into his holster. He was surprised he had the presence of mind to actually pull the strap over the hammer and snap it in place to hold the gun in. He reached over and pulled Beth to him, she came willingly. A second later he was outside the ruined truck, and staring out the hole it had punched through into the house. He saw no wolves, but he could hear them whining outside, snarling in the shadows. He debated only briefly, and then ran for the hole and the moonlit night outside.