Pox

by P X Duke

  We arrived in the early afternoon to a wide open front door.

  —This isn’t right. I locked it before I left. I’m sure of it.

  My alarm bells started to ring. I suspected there were some things Caitrin hadn’t been honest about, and probably more she didn’t want me to know. I thought I knew why. I pushed it into the background and concentrated on right now.

  I went around the back of the house to the pool. Food, canned goods, chairs, tables - anything light - had been tossed in. It started to look like maybe a jealous boyfriend had wanted to send her a message.

  —If there’s anything you need in there, you’d better collect it. I won’t be bringing you back here. You’d be wise to keep away.

  She started to close the door.

  —Don’t do that. Whoever it was will know you returned.

  —You’re right. Let’s just go.

  She climbed on the back and we re-traced our route. At a safe distance from her house I stopped at a small park.

  —We need to talk.

  Caitrin fished through her backpack and pulled out sandwiches.

  —I’m not completely useless.

  Maybe not, but she was trying too hard.

  —I never thought that you would be.

  I took my time pouring coffee from the thermos. It was the last thing I could do to delay the inevitable.

  —Who was staying with you, Caitrin?

  She hesitated. Her eyes moved in every direction but mine. I had all the time in the world. She did too, until she didn’t.

  —My boyfriend.

  Her admission wasn’t a complete surprise. I wanted to know if he was an actual boyfriend, or someone she had only hooked up with for convenience - hers, not his.

  —For how long?

  —Since before the purges.

  So he was her boyfriend. That was good to finally know.

  —He’s been getting weirder and weirder in the last month. Maybe he found a cache of drugs. He wanted to move us back into the center of the city. Why, I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.

  It seemed more like the two of them had had a knock-down, drag-out fight, judging by what had been deposited into the pool. One, or both, had stomped off when they didn’t get their way.

  —So you two had a fight and you took off back to my place?

  —No. Not at all. When I left, the place was just as neat and tidy as it always was. I’d been alone there for a couple of days. And yes, we had a fight, but that was a week ago. Konnor took off and I thought I wouldn’t see him again. In fact, I was certain of it.

  She wasn’t so certain now. For all I knew, the poor chump could have his eyes on us and neither of us would be the wiser.

  —Well, we’re into it now. What do you want to do?

  If she was smart, she’d recognize that there was safety in numbers. And if she was real smart, she’d know I was definitely hooked by now. Hell, even I knew that, and I was one of the dumbest sons of bitches on the face of the earth when it came to women. Perhaps by now, I was the last one.

  —Will you take me back to your place? I feel safe there.

  There it was. The old, I feel safe with you routine.

  —Let’s get going.

  Who was I to question it?

  I let Caitrin help push the bike into the garage, and then I started talking.

  I re-hashed last night’s conversation. I reminded her about what we had decided. I explained that from now on, we’d need to be more careful about our safety if we were going to be a team. We’d need radios to stay in touch. We’d need to get vests and more guns. From there, we’d increase the number of safe houses we could relocate to if need be. We’d begin our search for the trucks we needed.

  I led her to the map pinned on the wall in one of the spare rooms. It covered a radius of a hundred miles. It had roads, rivers, railways, power lines, waterways and lakes, everything we needed to know, plainly marked. I showed Caitrin where we could move to next if we had to.

  She didn’t think it wise until we did a recon of each of the areas.

  She was right. I agreed.

  And that’s what we did over the next ten days. We found two trucks with good rubber and loaded them to the tailgates. We kept in touch with two-way radios. We did our recons. We locked suitable locations into the GPS and marked them on our paper maps.

  Through it all, we got to know each other better.

  It surprised both of us how easily we got along. At the end of the day, if we weren’t too exhausted, we’d watch a cache of old black and white movie DVDs we had found about the end of the world. We’d fall asleep on the sofa. One or the other would wake and we’d stumble off to bed to make frenzied love, or, more often, fall into exhausted sleep.

  After suffering through months of loneliness, it was a good feeling to finally have a sense of routine with someone other than myself. Perhaps it had come too easy, but even it had, I welcomed it. I enjoyed it.

  I wasn’t so sure about Caitrin. I was beginning to get a sense that she was becoming distant. I didn’t say anything through her long periods of silence. When I had a question, it seemed like it took her forever to come up with an answer.

  —Is there something I need to know? You’ve been getting more and more distant these past few days. What’s going on?

  —I want to go back to the house.

  —Your old place?

  —That’s the one.

  —We’ll saddle up first thing in the morning.

  —No, I’m going alone. There’s something I have to do.

  I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what was left for her there. I wanted to know why I couldn’t take her. I didn’t ask those questions, or the dozen more I had.

  —I won’t be long. I’ll leave first thing in the morning. I’ll be back before dark.

  I tried one last time to convince Caitrin to let me take her on the bike. She insisted on going alone, and she insisted on walking. In the end, I wasn’t surprised at her stubbornness. I hadn’t spent the last two weeks not learning that about her.

  —I’ll see you tonight.

  She allowed me to check her gear. When I was satisfied, I pulled the hoodie over her head and smacked her ass, hard. She turned back at the door and grinned, and rubbed her rear in the tight jeans.

  —I’ll get you for that.

  I closed the door behind her, locked it, and went to the window. I pulled up the curtain. She disappeared around a corner, just as she had done all those weeks before we met.

  I let the curtain drop and wondered what I could do to take my mind off of my concerns. I’d become attached to the woman in the short time we’d been together. She’d been reluctant to tell me much about her life before we hooked up. I didn’t have a problem with that. I wondered how long we’d last together, though. Even though we were alone, I knew she had the capability to take care of herself, even if she wouldn’t admit it.

  I went to the garage and readied the trailer with an empty drum and the pump. There was still plenty of gas to collect, and empty 45-gallon drums to fill. I checked the curtains and the doors and headed out to a new area I hadn’t yet been to.

  There weren’t a lot of vehicles, but they all had plenty of fuel. I had the drum filled by noon, and made for home. Just as I rolled into the garage, the battery died.

  I fired up the generator and used the forced break to make lunch.

  I didn’t stop worrying.

  EIGHT

  A team of two

  The key scraped in the lock. I bounded to the door like a puppy happy to see anyone. Waiting for her in the dark had me nearly at wit’s end.

  She didn’t say a word. Instead, she gestured for me to follow her into the kitchen. She pulled the Velcro back on her vest. She could barely lift it from her shoulders. When she dropped it on the table, it landed with a heavy thud.

  —Take a look.

  Gold. Her vest was filled with gold bars in different sizes and denominations.

  —Where the he
ll did you find that?

  —I’ve had the gold almost since the beginning. I stumbled on it months ago in a basement of one of the houses I raided.

  —You know what this means, right?

  —I have an idea. It should let us buy our way out of just about anything.

  Caitrin was right. And showing up with her gold meant that she had both of our interests at heart.

  We could begin our final preparations to leave the city behind.

  We headed north to the first level of high hills. At the half-way point, I stopped on the side of the road and waited for Caitrin to catch up. I took out a map and unfolded it on the hood.

  —Why are we stopping?

  —Check out our ground. We’ve been here before. Something is telling me to avoid where we’ve been. In any case, this is still pretty close to the city.

  —Do you think there could be others around here?

  —Yes. The question is, do we want to meet any of them? I think it’s still too early in the game for that. What do you think?

  She took a long time to answer. She walked to the edge of the road and looked down to what we had been in such a hurry to leave behind. I knew she was hesitant to move out of her comfort area. Hell, I was too.

  —I think we’ve been lucky so far, Caitrin. We haven’t crossed paths with anyone. We’ve scouted around quite a bit. If anything, that would have put us into the cross-hairs of anyone looking for trouble.

  Caitrin considered her reply.

  —That’s all too true. We would have looked pretty organized to anyone who had a yen to take it all.

  —I have to admit, we were pretty comfortable there. We both contributed a lot of work these past weeks.

  I let her know we could come back for our stockpiles. I hoped that would make it easier on her, knowing that we could always return. Our labors wouldn’t end up being abandoned.

  —You’re right. It will be a fresh start. Another one.

  I agreed, but I was starting to wonder.

  —I don’t think it’s going to be the last.

  I covered Caitrin’s hand with my own and tried to reassure her. I knew it would be difficult for both of us to start from scratch yet again. At the same time, I knew it was best to get out of the city.

  I opened her door and waited. For a split second, I thought she might turn back.

  —I’m with you, partner.

  With the sun low on the horizon, we crested a hill overlooking a valley. It was populated with tents everywhere. In all colors. Every outdoor store in the city must have been raided and this was where they ended up.

  Rainbow City stuck in my mind, and that’s what I named it.

  I had to slow for a sharp bend in the highway. A few hundred yards beyond it, I was forced to a complete stop by a series of cement barricades that had been moved into position across the roadway. To get past, I’d need to zig-zag my way through.

  I ended up waiting for Caitrin again. We got out to take a better look.

  The sight of so many tents meant so many people to go along with them. Lots of people. The thought made us both uncomfortable. We’d been alone and on our own for so long, our discomfort at having to interact with such a large community made us hesitate.

  —What do you think?

  Caitrin didn’t have to stop and think. Her response came immediately.

  —I think we should backtrack out of here. The sooner, the better.

  The barricade turned out to be the least of our worries. Before we could move the vehicles, trucks positioned themselves to block any chance we might have had to back up and turn around. We could neither advance nor retreat on the narrow highway.

  If I was worried before, now I was terrified about what might be headed our way.

  I didn’t see the armed men walking out from cover on the side of the road. Caitrin did. She moved closer to me and closed her shotgun.

  The weapons the men carried were slung by their sides. It was somewhat of a relief.

  —We’re into it now. This is going to take some talking.

  They appeared friendly enough. They weren’t threatening. Their weapons never pointed in our direction. They tried very hard to convince us to go in and take a look at the encampment.

  We made the only decision possible.

  We declined. It was for our own safety and security.

  During the process, we learned that there were at least another half-dozen communities that had sprung up in the hills in the wake of the purges. The residents remained camped out, waiting until they felt the time was right to take over the abandoned small towns scattered in the hills. With winter coming, that would have to be soon.

  The men pointed out the series of Rainbow Cities on our map. Finally, at a signal from one of the men, the trucks that had blocked our retreat moved off and we were allowed to turn around. We didn’t waste time getting away.

  I high-tailed it back into the city with Caitrin in tow. When we finally stopped, we were back at the home and the double garage in which we had become so familiar and comfortable. Even Caitrin didn’t balk at spending one more night so close to her former boyfriend.

  Our trip into the hills had us even more concerned for our well-being than before we left. Nervous and exhausted, we climbed into the bed we had shared and slept like the dead. Or the purged.

  NINE

  Still a team

  The gunshot ripped through the night and echoed off the houses in the cul-de-sac. I tore out of bed and ran to the living room. I flipped open a corner of the curtain. In the dark I couldn’t see a thing.

  I checked the locks on the front and back doors, collected some firearms and went back to bed. Caitrin was wide awake by then.

  —What’s going on? What’s happening?

  —I couldn’t see anything. I’m not venturing outside in the dark to find out. I’ll wait until daylight.

  We had a morning routine. We dressed together, each checking the other’s equipment to be sure we had everything we’d need if we crossed paths with anyone. I exited the house first. Caitrin followed. At the opening of the cul-de-sac, a body lay on the ground next to a shotgun.

  Caitrin gasped and fell against me. I wasn’t quick enough and she went all the way down.

  —Is that Konnor?

  —Yes.

  I pulled her up and almost had to drag her back to the house.

  —We’re leaving here as soon as we can get our gear together.

  —I should bury him.

  He shouldn’t even be here, but that was old news now.

  —I’ll do it while you get our gear together.

  —If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I’d have survived.

  —In that case, you have something good to remember about him, wouldn’t you say?

  Caitrin didn’t respond.

  I dragged her former boyfriend into one of the back yards and went for a shovel. Grave-digging was a new one on me. By the time I finished, I had quite a sweat going on.

  The best I could hope for was that I’d never end up as a grave-digger in a cemetery.

  While we found ourselves back in a familiar location following our excursion into the hills, it had just been made uninhabitable. This thanks to the suicide of Caitrin’s former boyfriend at our front door.

  There was no doubt that we were most familiar with the city. Caitrin was even a city girl, having grown up in it. I was the newcomer, but by now, even I had gotten to know a lot of the nooks and crannies that had allowed me to survive on my own.

  As a team, Caitrin and I were definitely becoming more secure. Why chance breaking it up by moving to somewhere unfamiliar? That would mean new challenges, many that wouldn’t be recognized right away. Back in those hills, with winter coming on, it would soon be snowing. Where would people find the food they needed if they became snowed in?

  I didn’t want to contemplate it. I definitely didn’t want to be a part of it.

  We had a narrow escape in the hills. We were lucky the group we encou
ntered was a friendly one. It could have worked out much worse. Back where we started from, we had nothing but time to make good with what we already had in place.

  Until Konnor, in his madness, screwed everything up.

  Caitrin had everything stowed away by the time I got back to the house. Breakfast was on the table. I ate fast, exhausted from my efforts at digging the hole in the ground.

  —Is it finished?

  —Yes.

  I didn’t have any more words to say.

  —Good. I want you to know that I can’t stay here now.

  —I know you can’t. I’m not unsympathetic, you know. We’ll leave as soon as we can.

  The map case was sitting on the table, and Caitrin had taken out one of the border with Mexico.

  —What’s with the maps? What are you thinking?

  She pointed to the Mexican border. I gave her a puzzled look.

  —And?

  —What if all that’s been going on is only happening in this country?

  I had to admit that I’d never even thought to turn on a radio the whole time I’d been living in the house. It had never occurred to me. Even in the truck I streamed recorded music.

  —I think we need to spend one last night here. We can talk about it this afternoon.

  I lit a fire. Its heat, combined with our own, caused us to forget all about what had happened. Caitrin’s warm body snuggled against mine and we forgot all about our troubles.

  I left Caitrin sleeping while I tip-toed out of the bedroom to search for an old analog radio I knew I had stashed somewhere. It was a fact that none of our own digital radio stations were transmitting. Mexico was only a few miles away. Perhaps their antiquated analog stations might still be broadcasting.

  The batteries checked out and I set the receiver on scan. I was right. Music. And chatter.