Britt and Bethany didn’t have much with them. I take what they did bring and toss it onto the pile of Walter’s stuff that Caroline has made.
Caroline puts the photos back into the box and puts the box in her pack. These don’t go on the pile.
“What’s the plan for all of this stuff?”
“Burn it,” Caroline says. “All of it. Tonight.”
I nod. It’s a good idea.
ELEVEN
Now that there are only a couple of us, the fires we build are small. If we are going to burn up all of this stuff, we’ll need something roaring. A small fire is either going to be smothered by anything we throw on it, or it’s going to take so long for anything to catch that it will take all night.
I don’t want that. I want a fire that will be seen for miles. One with flames that punch up into the sky 30 and 40 feet. A fire that will scare anything, even a wailer, into staying away. I want a fire to get so big that it almost has a personality, then I want to laugh in its face.
That kind of fire needs fuel, so I’m headed back to my storage shed to see what kind of accelerants I can find. I don’t want gas. I want something that burns easy but is less combustible.
I dig around the shed, and realize that it’s probably been picked over already. Walter was resourceful. I’m sure he found anything that could start a fire the first day or two. But there is equipment here, equipment that has engines and gas.
I find a hose still coiled over in a corner and large bucket. I use a knife that’s also laying around to cut off a bit of hose as long as my arm and start siphoning the gas from those engines into the bucket. They drain quickly, and by the time I’ve hit them all the bucket is about half full. It’s not a bad amount of gas. It should make tonight’s task easier.
The fumes from the gas are overpowering, and by the time I get to camp I’m feeling a bit light headed. Caroline is reading, something I haven’t seen her do in days, and it’s comforting. It feels like she’s coming back. I put the bucket down far from us, up near the drums where we’ve been building our fires.
I say hi to Caroline. She gives me a slight wave but never pulls herself from her page.
I go to the area that’s become mine, and I start to go through everything. If I’m going to walk to Oklahoma—and I am—then I can’t do it with everything that I’ve got around me now. I’ve created a comfortable space that feels like mine. I thought this was home. Or, at leat, home for a while. Now, if I’m essentially becoming a nomad until I can walk the few hundred miles to this church then I’ve got to cull. I need to reassess everything I’ve brought here.
I take my pack and dump it out in front of me. Gear tumbles out and rolls away from me. There’s matches in a stay-dry container. There’s a couple of knives. But mostly what’s in the pack are clothes.
Then there’s the gas mask. It’s the exact kind of thing that I should leave behind. It’s impractical. It’s old. Then I remember just a few days before and Caroline’s magic moment. How if I hadn’t had this mask then I wouldn’t be here to make these decisions. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to decide to go to Oklahoma
I put the mask in the pile of things that are coming with me. It’s a pile that’s still too big, but I stop trying to make tough decisions and pile everything that I’m not keeping into a somewhat organized stack near the barrels where we’ll later make big fire.
“What are you doing?” Caroline asks.
“Lightening my load.”
“Why?”
“Too much to carry.”
“Yeah, makes sense. But you’re going to burn it all?”
“Don’t know what else to do with it. Plus I want to see a big, big fire. I kind of feel like I need to.”
“OK, Pyro.” Caroline walks to her pile of stuff and drags a mat that she’d been laying on—not her bed, a spare mat that she’d found somewhere—and drags it over to the pile and throws it on top.
She looks at me and says “Kindling.”
We each spend the next hour sorting our stuff into the things we’ll keep and the things we’ll burn. Some of the decisions are tough. There is stuff that’s going into the burn pile that I’ve had for years. It’s stuff that I always thought of as essential. That’s why it made it here. I didn’t see a way to leave it back at my apartment. But this new situation, this very long walk that I’m facing, is forcing some very tough decisions.
But after the mental back and forth, I’ve got everything down to a few changes of clothes and must-have gear for eating, sleeping and survival. Plus my mask. It’s all in my pack, along with a bit of extra space so I’ll have a place to put up anything I pick up on the way.
It’s beginning to get dark and Caroline comes over. “When are we going to light this candle?”
I stand. “We should probably get started.”
I take my stack of burning items over near the barrels in a pair of shifts.
“One or two?” I ask.
“One or two what?”
“We want to do one or two fires? One would be more spectacular, but two gets us done quicker.”
“Two,” Caroline says. “I want to get this over with.” She grabs an armful of items from her stack of burnable things and carries them to the second barrel that’s about 20 feet away. She starts cramming things inside of the barrel.
“Not too tight,” I warn her. “You want some air to be able to get in there.”
She crams with less enthusiasm then comes to me when she’s finished. I’ve just poured some of the gas on the items in my barrel and hand her the bucket.
“Don’t use it all, but get your stuff good and wet.”
She does then brings the bucket back to me. I take it from her and move it around so the gas inside can slosh. “Just in case,” I say. “We may have to start these again if we’ve got a bunch of stuff that’s fire resistant.”
She nods. I pull my waterproof container of matches from my pocket. I take on out and go to light it.
“Wait,” she says and takes the container from me. “Same time.”
She runs over to the other bucket and puts the match on the rough underside of the container. I bend down to scratch mine on the ground, and she starts to count. She gets to three and we both light our matches and toss them onto our barrels.
Flames erupt, and we can feel the air rushing in to feed them. Camp is suddenly hot and bright. I take quick steps back until I get to a point where the intensity of the flames is tolerable.
Caroline joins me.
“Happy now, Mr. Fireman?”
Yes. Yes, I am.
TWELVE
The fires have burned for hours. Caroline fed her barrel the last of her items a while ago, but there’s still a pile in front of mine. Walter had a lot of stuff.
The flames aren’t punching up a dozen feet like they were earlier, but they are still impressive. Caroline is sitting in my chair. I was going to burn it, but I can’t bring myself to tear it down into parts that will fit in the barrel, so I’ll leave it. Plus, there’s no reason that two of us should have to sit on a plastic milk crate tonight.
We haven’t said much, just watched the fires burn.
“I love this.”
“What?” she asks.
I point at the flames jumping from the barrels.
“The fires. I love watching them.”
“You sure you don’t have a problem?”
“I don’t have a problem,” I say. “But watching the flames dance, play in and out of each other, is mesmerizing.”
“I guess.” She shifts onto her side, nearly laying in the seat.
“I used to do this for hours when I was traveling and writing. You’re in the back part of some mountain town and can’t speak the language so you wind up around a fire with someone who’s befriended you. And since you can’t really say anything to each other you just watch the flames.”
We sit in silence again for a moment.
“Tell me more about Europe,” Caroline says. “Sin
ce I’ll probably never get to go.”
I tell her how everything is old in all the best ways. Not old like things get old in the United States. Not old and degraded, but old and elegant. And how it’s just normal for everyone there. We go and we marvel at how everything looks so classic, so storybook. But for them, that’s life. It’s just how the world is. Not true of all of Europe of course. I tell her about the glassy and shiny parts of places like London and how when in the right space and with the right people you can feel like you’re living in tomorrow.
Then I tell her about New York City and the crackle of life that seems to exist there all the time. It can be the middle of the night, and there’s an energy to the city that keeps you awake and spurs you on.
She’s smiling.
“You’ll see,” I tell her as I finish. “You’ll go to all those places and experience them for yourself.”
“No, Mac. I won’t. Those places don’t exist anymore.”
“They’re still there. You can still go.”
“A place is its people as much as its locations. Even if every building were still standing, the people are different now. We all are.”
“Maybe. For now. But we’ll come back.”
I have to believe that. Otherwise, what’s the point of going to Oklahoma? If I’ve given up and can’t find the hope then I might as well stay here and wait for the wailers to overwhelm me.
“Plus,” I say. “I don’t think you believe that.”
“What? That we’re all irreparably broken? I absolutely do.”
“No, you don’t. You’re hurting, and it’s fine. Take as much time as you need to recover. No one can rush that. But when you do recover, you’re coming back to the girl I first met who was all smiles and rainbows.”
She shakes her head. “Gag.”
I smile because she doesn’t even realize that she’s already started her journey back.
“You can watch these fires,” she says. “But I’m going to sleep. I want to be up early and on the road north. If you’re coming with me you better be up.”
“Yes, mom.”
She punches me on the shoulder as she passes.
I stay up for a bit longer and continue to feed Walter’s stuff into the barrel. The flames are warm, and it’s nice. It’s like a blanket. I take over my chair and lean it far back. I try to drink in how good this feels—the soft leather, the overstuffed cushions, the warm air that’s swallowed me up. I know that this is the last time that I’ll get this feeling. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. Tomorrow I’m going to have to fight for anything even close to this, so I let myself drift off to a satisfying sleep.
+++++
The fires have died, and it’s the chill that wakes me. The sun is coming up to my right and it’s throwing a glow on what’s left of downtown. It’s a beautiful destruction that I’m going to miss. I’m excited and getting the anxious butterflies that I used to get before I set out on another month away from home. New faces. New places. The thrill of the unknown.
I know that where we’re headed isn’t new. It’s far from unknown. But, we haven’t seen it since everything fell apart.
I wake Caroline with a shake to her shoulder, and she rolls to her back.
“Morning already?”
“It is. And you’re getting up late.”
“You have us any breakfast?”
“I whipped up something over the last of the fires.”
Caroline’s face lights up for a moment. “Really?”
“No. Not really. But that was too easy.”
“I hate you.”
“Get your gear. Let’s get out of here.”
I’d spent the last hour or so getting my stuff in order, balancing everything in my pack so it sits comfortable on my back.
“Gear’s been ready since yesterday. Just give me a few minutes.” She points a thumb over her shoulder toward our little graveyard.
“Take all the time …”
She turns before I can finish. I sit back in my chair and give her whatever time she needs. I’m making a mental map in my head, laying out my route north. I’m following Caroline to McKinney. That much is for sure. I am assuming that we’ll take Central Expressway. It’s a straight shot that will also take me into Oklahoma.
The roadway should be mostly clear. My only concern is what we do at night. They sunk the highway years ago for reasons that I don’t understand. But that makes us sitting ducks once the sun goes down, in a narrow cavern with high walls on either side. So we’ll need to climb out early enough to make sure we have light to find a place to camp for the evening.
That feels like a good enough plan for now, and I look back to see Caroline approaching. Her eyes are red. Her cheeks are wet. She pulls her pack up and slips it over her shoulders in one smooth motion.
“Let’s go,” she says as she passes. “I’m ready to get out of here.”
I follow her, taking a few quick steps to catch up.
We pass the barrels. They are still warm.
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OTHER BOOKS BY JARRETT RUSH
The New Eden Series
Chasing Filthy Lucre
Finding Faded Light
Digi City
The Freak Police Series
Reunion
Scouts
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Rubble and Ruin (Book 1): Welcome to the End Page 8