by Joshua Gayou
Realizing I’d been played like a fiddle, I went back to my philosophical musings as I resumed my walk to the truck.
Perhaps miraculously, we finished constructing the sheet that evening. Once completed, it consisted of a three quarter sheet of plywood, a double layer of fiberglass cloth, a layer of large tiles, another double layer of fiberglass cloth, followed by a layer of the small tiles, then (you guessed it) more fiberglass cloth, and finally a few layers of sheet metal and another three quarter sheet of plywood. Each layer was completely smeared in big, sweeping gobs of epoxy before the following layer was applied and, when it was all finally assembled, we clamped the whole thing down by stacking bag after bag of concrete on top of it and just left the thing out overnight to cure.
On the following morning, which was the fourth day, we returned as the sun came up and began to remove the concrete bags. What we saw after the bags were removed was essentially a giant shit sandwich of construction materials with frozen strands of epoxy squeeze-out pooling around the edges. Oscar reached out and tapped one of the squeeze-out puddles with the end of his pocket knife, which resulted in an audible clicking noise.
“That looks pretty good,” he said.
“Great. How the hell are you going to get that up on the trailer?” Edgar asked.
“I think we’ll have to lower the gate of the trailer and just slide this over it,” said Jake. “We can secure it in place while it’s still down and then lift it all up together to lock it into position.”
I crouched down, worked my fingers under a corner of the sheet, and lifted. It moved a few inches and then completely stopped. “Jesus…” I muttered before bracing myself and pulling harder. It came up a little bit more before my lower back began to send signals to my brain that said, “Hey, asshole, what the fuck are you doing? Stop it. Stop it!”
“I may have miscalculated severely,” I said, looking up at the others.
“Heavy, huh?” Fred asked.
“We’re gonna need everyone under fifty to take an edge on this thing when we try to lift it up. Either that or we run the risk of someone projectile-shitting a kidney across the valley. I’m not even exaggerating; this thing is a prolapse begging to happen.”
We did eventually get the thing lifted into place and, as predicted, it did take just about every able-bodied back that we had to safely lift the son of a bitch up into a vertical position. It became pretty easy once we got the gate past a certain angle; maybe seventy degrees. Before that, though, I felt like we were more likely to push the planet away than we were to get the gate up. As soon as we had it at ninety degrees, Ben jumped into the back of the trailer, set the gate’s arm braces into the side rails wrapping around the trailer’s length, and locked it all in place.
We all let go and stepped back gingerly, afraid it might come crashing back down. Without warning, Jake came up from the side and slammed his open palm into the gate, then grabbed the frame with both hands to jolt it violently in all sorts of directions. He shoved and pulled at it so hard that the trailer itself wobbled around on its tires and the whole thing rattled angrily at its mistreatment. When nothing happened, he let go and dusted his hands off. “I think it’ll hold. Don’t lay it back down again to load it; you’ll never get the gate back up again.”
“Oh, gee, do you think?” asked an annoyed Wang.
“Do you think we should make the sides higher?” Jake wondered.
“No, damn it! It’s good!” I barked.
“Very well,” said Jake. His face was completely expressionless but I swear to Christ I could see a smile behind those eyes. Asshole.
We soon realized that after the trailer’s rear gate was shielded there wasn’t much left to do but load up the truck and be on our way. Everyone came out to see us off that morning; Barbara had wanted to make us a big breakfast before we left but I think we all agreed that we just wanted to get out on the road. We instead loaded the Ford’s cab up with food that would travel well and be easy to eat on the road without stopping, so basically a lot of stuff that we could choke down cold. We had some crackers and such as well, along with enough water to get us through a week in case we were delayed for any reason.
We stood out by the truck; two groups already feeling separated, with me, Wang, Davidson, and Greg on one side and all of the rest of our people on the other. I stood by my friends looking across at the rest, people that I believe I was beginning to think of as family by that point (I certainly think of them so now) and considered what we had ahead of us. It was a melancholy feeling, looking at them all across that perceived gulf. I felt like we’d already left; like we were out on the road and I was just looking at some sort of afterimage. I saw hope and good wishes in their eyes. Knowing that their survival depended on our success, I sucked in a deep breath and mastered my doubts.
“We’d better get rolling,” I said to no one specific.
Jake stepped towards me and extended his hand, which I took. “I like this truck,” he said. “Try to bring it back in one piece, huh?”
I laughed and said, “We’ll see what we can do.”
His face went deathly serious. Well, his expression was as flat as ever but there was real fire just behind his eyes. The skin around his eyebrows had gone tight and his shoulders were all balled up like he was carrying some vast, invisible weight.
“You bring yourselves back in one piece,” he commanded.
He nodded to the others in my team and stepped back to rejoin the group. Amanda came next. I extended my hand to her as I had to Jake, which she batted aside before throwing her arms around me. I hadn’t expected this from her at all and stood frozen with my hands at my side for a brief moment before returning the hug. As we stood there, she lifted up onto her toes, straining to put her mouth next to my ear, and whispered, “If you see anyone out there on the side of the road, keep driving. Understand? I don’t care if it’s a woman screaming for help or anything else. You keep driving. Got me?”
I looked at Jake, who appeared oblivious to the whole exchange, and wondered if he knew what she was whispering to me. I gave a tight nod to let her know I understood, determining that I would use my own best judgement should such a situation present itself, regardless of whatever the hell anyone said.
Rebecca and Alish approached next, the former wrapping herself around Davidson, which made me smile, and the latter wrapping her arms around Greg and holding on for a few beats longer than would have seemed reasonable, which made me curious.
Finally, Fred Moses approached Wang but stopped just shy of closing the total distance. He held up a bottle of tequila and said, “This is supposed to be the good stuff. I guess it used to go for several hundred a bottle when money was a thing. Never been opened. You and I are gonna crack this baby when you come back, okay?”
Wang smiled happily at him, all past transgressions either forgiven or forgotten, and said, “Are you sure you can deal with a skinny kid half your size drinking you under the table?”
Fred erupted into booming laughter and said, “Deal with it? Hell, I want to see it!”
“You keep safe, Wang,” Monica said, pulling Rose tighter into her side. “I want to see that skinny behind of yours back here in three days. Any more than that and we’re gonna have words.”
“I mean, you don’t have to wait three days to see it if it’s that important to you…” said Wang. He waved awkwardly and climbed into the passenger side of the truck, barking out a “Shotgun!” to anyone that happened to give a shit.
“Come on, guys, we’d better hit it,” I said, and walked around to the driver’s side. Greg and Davidson piled into the rear seat as I fired up the engine. Waving to our assembled group of friends, I pulled a wide U-turn and began the long drive out of the valley.
“How’s it feel,” asked Wang. “Is it handling funny with all that weight on the back?”
I pumped the gas a little just to dig the tires in and push us forward a bit. “Honestly, I can’t even tell. The torque on this thing is ridiculous
.”
“Nice,” he said.
“Hey, let me ask you something. Were you flirting with Monica back there?”
“Oh, shit! Wang’s goin’ for some of that dark chocolate!” laughed Greg from the back seat.
“Dark chocolate? Good God, I can’t decide if I should be offended or just embarrassed,” said Wang in mild disgust.
“What,” asked Greg. “Is that offensive? I wasn’t trying to be, man.”
“You might as well say ‘Yellow Fever’, dude,” Wang replied.
I saw Greg screw his face up in the rearview mirror. “Aw, shit, man. Well, I didn’t mean that at all. Sorry.”
“Being fair,” I said, “she does have really lovely skin. Then again, I’ve always had a hell of a weakness for the black girls…”
“Good lord…” Wang muttered.
26 – Interloper
Amanda
It was either two or three days after Gibs and the boys left for Utah that we learned about Jeff; I’m not totally sure anymore after all the time that’s gone by. Jake, Lizzy, and I have been here around two years now and this all came about relatively soon after Gibs’s people came to live with us. Jake sometimes refers to them as “the first wave”.
Jeff Durand: quiet and unassuming, always helpful, not much for fighting but always there to pitch in on housekeeping. Jeff, who was so good with the kids.
It was Rose that finally told us what he’d been up to.
Or, at any rate, Rose told her mother, Monica, owing to the fact that Rose was fourteen and knew better than to keep quiet about such things. I think the other children (Ben, Maria, and Lizzy) were young enough that the fear of what might happen if they told would somehow be worse than the reality of what was happening. After it was all over, I had been near to shouting at Elizabeth for not coming to me to say anything; it was Jake who had kept me under control, and thank God for him, honestly. I would have been wrong. I had to remember that to my little girl, the forces pulling at her to tell would have been at war with Maria begging her to stay quiet. Elizabeth was only eight at the time. She’s such a smart kid that I forget her age sometimes.
I wasn’t present for what happened initially. We all compared notes a day later and pieced things together. After Rose told her mother, Monica went directly to Oscar, which I honestly can’t say was the right or wrong thing to do. After everything we’d all been through, either on our own or together; the Flare, all of the millions of people we lost to it, the Plague, and the presumed billions of people it took…well, this was just something that never would have occurred to any of us in a hundred years. I don’t know if there was any perfect way to handle it.
I became involved just as Oscar was preparing to finish Jeff. I had been out on one of my walks, just trying to get a little space between myself and everything else. It’s probably the only thing that saved Jeff, too; I’d been sporadic about wearing my sidearm around the immediate area but still carried religiously when I went for my walks, especially since those walks had been pushing further and further out.
I returned to echoed shouting, a cascade of garbled words and moving bodies. I pulled my Glock reflexively before I saw Oscar dragging Jeff across the common ground by the neck towards the site of my future cabin, where many of the tools were located at the time. Several of our people were trailing behind them, some of them shouting while others walked silently. Without knowing exactly what was going on, I could tell things were serious and broke into a run.
As I closed the distance, I watched in horror as Oscar pinned Jeff back against a log and lifted a hammer up into the air. George hobbled towards them and called out to me, saying, “You’d better hurry!” The children were out there, too, separated from the murder that was about to happen by a small ring of adults, including Rebecca and Samantha, who held them back. They were sobbing, with the exception of Ben and Rose, who only looked terrified.
Oscar was spitting a long, unbroken string of obscenities in Spanish, of which I understood only a small portion, and the hand holding the hammer trembled in the air. I was running up from behind him; as I came closer, I could see that Jeff’s face was a pulped and bloody mess. I put the barrel of my pistol into the base of Oscar’s skull where it joined the neck, and he froze instantly. A few voices from behind me called out either in anger or shock, I’m not sure which.
“Oscar, I need you to put that hammer down and let him go. Right now,” I said. I was secretly relieved when my voice didn’t shake.
Rather than arguing or trying to plead his case, he complied immediately and backed away a few steps, leaving a panting, sobbing Jeff in a heap up against the small stack of logs that we’d managed to collect for my cabin so far. I lowered my pistol as soon as he moved back but did not holster it; his eyes were drawn to it in my hand and he understood.
“Ain’t like you think, Amanda,” Fred rumbled in a cold voice.
“Just hang on, please, Fred. Oscar, I need you to tell me what the hell is going on.”
He jerked his chin at Jeff, who only lay there on his side panting heavily, face pointed down at the dirt. “Ask Jeff. Have him tell you what this is all about.”
“I will, Oscar. I will. But I’m asking you first right now.”
His face screwed up and, amazingly, I saw his lower lip quiver as he said in a breaking voice, “He been putting hands on Maria.”
Something like an icicle formed in the pit of my stomach and spread out rapidly through my body. I looked down at Jeff for several seconds, trying to comprehend what Oscar had just told me. I looked over my shoulder at the group of children and locked eyes on Elizabeth. Briefly, I heard what sounded like rushing water, which then muted as though I was moved away from a fast moving stream at impossible speed; the sound tightened down to a high frequency whine stabbing through my ear, into the base of my neck, and down my spine.
“Rebecca…Samantha,” I said, “please take the kids away. Stay with them.”
“Come on, you guys,” Rebecca urged immediately, enfolding her arms around them all like a mother swan collecting her nestlings to her breast, and moved them as a whole towards Oscar’s home. Samantha looked back at me as they walked away, mouth working. I turned away.
I looked from face to face, trying to determine what should happen next.
…putting hands on Maria…
In my head, I saw Elizabeth’s hand closing around the king on a chess board. A small, soft hand with perfect, even nails.
A hand reached out to me and I heard George say, “Amanda…we can’t just…” He either said no more or I didn’t hear him.
I realized I had my finger on the trigger of my Glock; a thing I was never to do unless I was ready to use it, according to Gibs. I didn’t remember putting it there. I removed it and, making a point to not look at Jeff, I approached Oscar and asked, “Did you see?”
“What?” he asked in a surprised voice.
“Did…you…see?”
“I…no.”
“Rose told me,” Monica offered.
“And you told Oscar?” I asked, taking great care to keep any possible hint of accusation from my voice.
“Yes, that’s right.”
I nodded. “Come here, please, Monica.”
As she approached, I held my pistol out to her, which she slowly took in both hands.
“Where’s Jake?” I asked.
“I was just with him an hour or so ago,” Barbara offered. “He should still be in the house, as far as I know.”
“Why the hell didn’t he come out?” blurted Fred. “There was enough shouting to pull people from a mile off.”
Ignoring the question, I said to Monica, “Nothing happens until I get back. Everyone needs to be involved in this.” She nodded her understanding and I left to get Jake.
Inside the cabin, I stood a moment in the entryway and listened to see if I could hear Jake moving around anywhere while also struggling to bring my racing mind under control. Seemingly on its own, my brain was playing scenario
after scenario in my head, each ending in a grisly, broken state. An irrational part of me scrambled to figure out some way to get back to how things were only a short while ago, though such a thing was now impossible. I realized that I didn’t want to deal with the situation; also that I didn’t want to deal with the very strong desire to take Jeff to some hidden place and solve the problem.
I put the thought out of my mind, or at least tried, deciding that it was best to be sure. Could it be a misunderstanding? Probably not; things wouldn’t have gotten as far as they had if this had been a simple miscommunication. What, then? Rose was lying…or Maria? Could Maria accuse Jeff of such a horrible thing out of some desire to gain attention? My head went around in circles, chasing its own tail, as I struggled to find some way to know the truth.
Jake was almost always in the Library if he was in the house during the day, so I went back there first. I called his name as I approached down the hallway to avoid startling him when I entered. Moving quickly, I stopped just long enough to poke my head around the doorjamb to scan the room and confirm his absence. I pulled back and returned to the front of the house, trotting now, as I continued to call for him, and searched the rest of the common areas. He was nowhere to be seen on the bottom floor. Could he be sleeping? I knew he got headaches from reading sometimes and couldn’t get rid of them without laying down in the dark for a few hours.
I ran upstairs to his bedroom and tapped on the door before opening it. The room was dark, with the wooden shutters pulled tight. It smelled of Jake, whose scent tended to change occasionally based on whatever soap we happened to find or, when there was no soap to be had and bathing happened only with water, might deepen into a combined musk of old leather, denim, and some underlying, indescribable thing that always made me think of cedar.
The bed was empty.
“Fuck me,” I moaned, backing out of the room. I stood at the door a moment, trying to decide where he might be. I could feel the opposing door of my old bedroom behind me like a physical presence, pressing into my back, and wondered. I didn’t think he’d be in there; he’d never gone in there without me being there as well. I turned to open it, hand stopping short of touching the knob. No, he wouldn’t be in there. I turned away.