by Bryan Smith
Noah shook his head. “Dad, you’re sort of starting to scare me. You sound like a crazy man.”
Noah’s father took his hand from his son’s shoulder and rubbed at red-rimmed eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Only then did it hit Noah how tired the man looked. “Good, you should be scared,” he said, taking the hand from his face. “And the only reason I sound crazy is because you’ve been too wrapped up in your own problems to grasp the seriousness of what’s happening. But this is real, Noah. The goddamn world is ending. We’ve got a small window of time to get things squared away before that happens. I’ll be back around noon tomorrow. The rest of you need to be packed and ready to go.”
“What? Go where?”
His father grimaced, his patience clearly wearing thin. “To the mountains, son. Jesus Christ, I’m counting on you to keep your mother and sister safe. Pull your head out of your ass and try to focus on what I’m telling you. Load that weapon and be ready to use it. In my absence, you’re the protector of this family. Please don’t let me down.”
Noah sighed. “I’ll do my best.”
His father nodded. “I know you will. And I know you didn’t ask for this. But it’s time for you to step up and do what needs doing, no matter how tough it is. You’ve never managed to do it before, but you have to now. Are you ready?”
Noah didn’t know about that, not really, but some previously dormant reserve of strength within him was awake and responding to his father’s words. His grip tightened around the stock of the rifle. “Yeah. I think so.”
His father clapped him on the shoulder one more time. “I know you are. This is a world of fools, Noah. Time has grown short and it’s later than anyone thinks. But I believe in you. You’re stronger than you know.”
And that was the end of the man’s speechifying.
He got in the SUV and drove away. Noah watched it go until it disappeared from sight. Then he sat on the porch outside the house he’d grown up in, opened the box of shells, and loaded his weapon.
51.
Noah arrived in Ventura two weeks and a few days after the strange campfire conversation with a thing that might have been the ghost of Luke Garraty. He remained unsure of what the thing actually was, but he had become convinced it wasn’t some illusory externalization of something in his subconscious. It might not have been a ghost he’d talked to that night, but something had been there. Whether that thing was a ghost, demon, or shapeshifter able to assume a human guise was impossible to say.
There had been no more encounters with ghosts or other strange creatures since that night, unless you counted happening across the occasional ambulatory dead thing. But Noah remained unnerved by his apparent experience with the otherworldly. He had the nagging sense the thing had been shadowing him a long time.
And yet he was sure it was gone now. He had no actual evidence to support this feeling, but he believed it. The thing had attached itself to him a long while ago, maybe somewhere back there in Tennessee, but now it had fled, its purpose in tagging along somehow fulfilled. That campfire talk had been the ultimate culmination of whatever it was trying to do. Sensing this, however, didn’t prevent him from being spooked by strange sounds in the night.
Despite his uneasiness, he did not hurry along to his destination. In fact, the pace of his progress slowed considerably as he made his way across California. This was a deliberate thing. Noah had felt stronger with each passing day early on, more like his old self, but a look at himself in the mirror of a putrid gas station bathroom three days after his last drink told a different story. He looked hollow-eyed and gaunt, his skin a sickly shade of yellow that indicated either disease or malnutrition. He needed more time to get better, thus the leisurely pace, which eventually paid off. By the time he reached Ventura, his health and appearance had improved significantly.
Breaking into a convenience store was one of the first things he did after arriving in Ventura. Unlike so many of the stores he’d encountered along the way, this one was still locked up tight. Some of the usual detritus was scattered about the parking lot, but the store itself looked pristine. A look inside revealed a clean floor and orderly rows of merchandise. Positioned in a corner by the beer coolers was a duplicate of the bikini model cutout Noah had lashed to his now-abandoned shopping cart so long ago.
He almost regretted having to shoot out the plate glass entrance doors. The store’s interior was a perfectly preserved glimpse into the past and it seemed a shame to spoil that. Under other circumstances, he might have walked on down the road in search of a store that didn’t exist as a kind of accidental museum. But there was something in the store he needed. A wire rack by the checkout counter was stocked with foldout paper maps of the area. He’d lost the atlas he’d set out with long ago. A map would be necessary to locate the address scrawled on the ancient scrap of envelope in his pocket.
Shooting out the door required two shots from the .357 Magnum. Before entering the store, he filled the empty chambers with spare rounds from his pocket, taking a glance around the vicinity to see whether the noise had attracted any attention. He spotted a solitary dead thing a few blocks down the street. It was scrawny and moved at a slow lurch. Deciding it wasn’t a serious threat, he entered the store, plucked a map from the rack, and spread it open on the counter. Locating the address he wanted took a few minutes, but he eventually found it and determined that it was about six miles from his current location.
He folded up the map and stuffed it in a rear pocket. The dead thing he’d spotted earlier was gone when he exited the store. Getting to the place where Lisa had lived with her parents before the end of the world required heading in the direction where he’d last seen the thing. He wasn’t interested in heading straight there anyway. Not because he feared the thing—he didn’t—but because he feared what he would find—or not find—when he got there.
Ventura was a coastal city. There were surf shops and palm trees. He wanted to see the ocean again before facing whatever was waiting for him at the end of the road. With that goal in mind, he set off in search of the beach. For this, he didn’t need to consult the map. There were prominent signs to guide the way. He got there maybe an hour later.
The wind was picking up when he walked out onto the beach. He stood there a long time, feeling hypnotized by the gorgeous horizon and the gently lapping waves that endlessly rolled up on the sand and receded. A feeling so alien he scarcely recognized it came to him while he was there. It was a kind of perfect calmness. He’d experienced it before, but that had been many years ago, when he was still a kid, long before any of the bad things happened.
The thing he was feeling was peace. The ocean was eternal. It was utterly unaffected by the human tragedy that had engulfed the planet. The planet was eternal. It would move on and endure as it always had.
After a while, he shrugged off his pack and sat in the sand. He had a brief pang of regret at having gotten rid of his weed. A nice, natural ganja buzz would have added a perfect enhancement to all this beauty.
But the feeling passed.
He’d made a vow. He hadn’t kept many of the vows he’d made in his life—hardly any of them, in fact—but this one was different. It was almost sacred.
About an hour later, he got to his feet with a sigh, picked up his pack, and turned away from the ocean.
It was time to go to his destiny.
52.
The house at the end of Sierra Avenue was an old California bungalow. It was a small, modest-looking home with a gabled roof. Unlike most of the other houses in the sprawling residential area, the front yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence. There were palm trees in the yard. He spotted solar panels on the roof. An electric light was on in at least one of the interior rooms.
Noah was shocked.
Someone was living in the house. He’d spent a lot of time preparing himself for a forlorn, abandoned wreck of a place, a description that applied to so many of the houses he’d encountered since leaving the mountain. Out of all t
he millions of empty, decaying homes scattered across this dead nation, there had been no good reason to think the one he sought would be an exception to the rule.
Yet it was impossible to deny what he was seeing. The place looked well-kept, with a tidy lawn. The fence surrounding it was fortified with barbwire. Metal spikes jutted between the coils of wire at regular intervals. He suspected whoever lived here had personally installed and modified the fence to keep out dead things. A chain with a padlock was wrapped around the gate latch, but the padlock was hanging open. There would have been no need to click it shut, what with zombies lacking the dexterity to remove the chain and open the gate.
His breath came in short, nervous gasps as he approached the gate. He told himself not to get too excited. Someone living here didn’t mean the miracle he’d been hoping for had occurred. A lot of years had passed since the last time Lisa had verifiably resided here. Someone else entirely might have commandeered this house for their own use once the worst of the apocalyptic upheavals had subsided. But these self-admonitions did little to calm him.
He had a hand on the padlock when the front door opened and a middle-aged woman with long, gray hair stepped out on the porch with a shotgun. She racked a shell into the chamber and aimed the shotgun at Noah, whose .357 remained in its holster. He had no wish to draw it, knowing he’d never be able to get it out in time to protect himself anyway.
“You best move along now,” the woman called out in the hoarse rasp of a longtime smoker. “There’s nothing for you here.”
Noah guessed she was somewhere near fifty. Deep lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth suggested a life of struggle and strain. But what really compelled his attention was the woman’s unmistakable resemblance to Lisa. It was visible in the bright blue of her eyes and the shape of her face. She looked the way Noah imagined Lisa might look after decades of hard labor in an outdoor environment.
Keeping the shotgun aimed at him, the woman came down from the porch and advanced about halfway down the center strip of sidewalk that led to the gate. “Are you deaf? I told you to move along. If you’re not gone in the next five seconds, I will shoot you where you stand.”
Noah let out a breath. “Are you Cynthia Thomas?”
The woman lowered the shotgun a little, frowning at him. “How do you know my name?”
Well, at least that mystery had been solved. Lisa’s parents hadn’t died in a tragic accident, after all. Not that Noah had ever truly believed otherwise. He reached into his pocket and took out the scrap of envelope. “I tore this off an envelope from a package you sent to your daughter when she was in college.”
The woman lowered the shotgun and approached the gate. She reached over it and snatched the scrap of paper from Noah’s hand, examining it for a long moment before lifting her eyes to study his face.
“I’ll be damned. It’s you. That goddamned boy.”
Noah flinched, surprised by the venom in her voice. “I’m Noah, if that’s what you mean.”
Cynthia Thomas shook her head. “Christ. What are you doing here after all this time? Don’t you live on the other side of the goddamned country?”
“I did, yes.” Noah clenched his hands tight to still tremors of anxiety. This woman seemed volatile. He needed to come across as calm and unthreatening. “And I stayed out there for years after the end of the world, living on a mountain all alone. But I got tired of being alone and decided to see if I could find Lisa.”
Cynthia snorted, a corner of her mouth rising in open disdain. “Long way to come based on nothing but a whim and a wish, with no guarantee of finding what you were looking for at the end of it. Fucking foolish, if you ask me.”
Noah ignored this and forced himself to ask the only question that really mattered. “Is she still alive?”
Cynthia grunted. “Yeah, she’s alive. Open the gate and come on in. I’ll take you to her.”
After unwinding the chain from around the latch, Noah carefully opened the gate and, mindful of the coils of barbed wire, eased his way through it, pushing it shut behind him. Lisa’s mother turned her back on him as she led him back up the sidewalk. He was glad she did, because he didn’t want her to see the moisture shining in his eyes or the giddy smile that kept trying to pull at the edges of his mouth. In his wildest hopes, he’d never truly believed this would be the outcome of his long journey. A happy resolution flew in the face of everything he knew about the way the post-apocalypse world worked. There was no more compelling proof of this than the fact that everyone else in his family was dead.
Including Aubrey.
That truth nearly staggered him as it came back now, no longer hidden behind the impenetrable mental wall he’d erected. He knew it because he’d been there when she died. But he pushed the terrible memories away, unwilling to confront them even now. The wall slid back into place, never to be pushed back again. He’d come through all that darkness to a place of light. For once, fate was taking a brighter turn.
They climbed the porch steps and entered the house, the interior of which reminded him of the convenience store he’d broken into earlier in the day. It was a perfectly preserved piece of the past. Everything looked immaculate, the floor and surfaces clean and sparkling. The furniture looked almost new. There were many framed family photographs hanging from walls and propped up on end tables and other surfaces. He saw Lisa’s smiling face in many of them, often posed with a much younger-looking Cynthia Thomas and a man Noah assumed was Lisa’s father.
Cynthia caught him studying the photos and guessed what he was thinking. “That’s Lisa’s daddy in the pictures. He’s been gone a long time.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “We’re all sorry about something, aren’t we? Look, I’ll be blunt. Since you came all this way just to see my baby girl, I guess you can be trusted. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. I wouldn’t mind having a man around the house again and it’d be a relief to have someone helping me with Lisa.”
Noah’s brow creased. “Help you with her? What do you mean?”
Cynthia headed for a hallway on the other side of the living room. “Come see for yourself.”
The joy he’d felt moments ago slipped away, replaced by a dread that deepened with each step he took down the hallway. Cynthia opened a door at the end of it and Noah followed her into a bedroom. His face crumpled and his knees almost gave out when he saw the shape lying beneath the blankets on a twin bed wedged into a corner of the small room.
He could tell from the contours of the woman’s face that she was Lisa, but she was not the Lisa he remembered. She was heavy and her bloated features were dotted with pimples. Her formerly gorgeous flowing blonde locks were gone, her hair now cut in a short, choppy way. She was awake and her head turned in their direction as they approached the bed. Her gaze went first to her mother, but then drifted over to Noah and settled there for a long, uncomprehending moment. Then a tired smile touched the corners of her mouth, which opened as she tried to say something. Words came out, but he did not understand them. She gave a little laugh and repeated them.
Her meaning belatedly registered.
Noah? Is it really you?
Cynthia Thomas smiled and went to the bed. She sat on its edge and brushed her daughter’s lank hair from her forehead. “It’s really Noah, baby. He came a long way just for you. Isn’t that nice?”
Lisa’s eyes were shiny with tears as she struggled to form more words.
I love you, Noah.
Noah felt like the world was about to fall out from under him. He had been wrong about the universe finally granting him a moment of grace. Over the course of his journey, he’d tried to prepare himself for all eventualities, envisioning an array of dreadful scenarios. He believed that by doing this he would be ready for anything, that nothing could surprise him. But of all the many terrible things he’d imagined, none had been as bad as this.
Noah didn’t consider himself anything like a shallow person. Lisa’s former beauty was
something he’d appreciated, but there were many pretty girls in the world. It was something about the inner Lisa that had transformed attraction into obsession. He would have been okay with her looks not being what they once were. Hell, he wasn’t much to look at these days. But this went well beyond any aesthetic concerns. Lisa had been damaged in some devastating way.
Noah let out a shuddery breath and said the only acceptable thing. “I love you, too, Lisa.”
Cynthia stood and addressed her daughter again. “You get some rest, baby. Noah and I have some things to talk about. You can catch up later.”
Lisa muttered something in reply and her eyes fluttered shut.
Cynthia glanced at Noah. “We’ll talk in the kitchen.” She stepped through the doorway. “Close the door behind you.”
Noah’s gaze lingered on Lisa a moment longer. He wiped tears from his eyes. He wanted to scream but stifled the urge, forcing himself to hold back his anguish and grief a while longer. He needed to hear what Lisa’s mother had to say before he could let that happen.
In the kitchen, Cynthia took a bottle of whiskey and two glasses down from a cupboard and set them on a table. She pulled out a chair and sat down, gesturing for Noah to do the same.
He sat across from her and said, “What happened to her?”
Cynthia splashed whiskey into both glasses and pushed one across the table. “An accident a few months before the plague outbreak. Driver’s side airbag failed and she went through the windshield. She should have died, really, but God wasn’t merciful that day. She suffered severe brain damage.”
Noah grimaced and shook his head. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“It’s your fault, you know.”
Noah frowned. “Come again?”