Carl sniffed the air. The wafting smoke and odors from the city had dissipated hours ago. He even needed to pull his shirt closed to keep a little warmer. Most of the city’s fires must have burned out during the night and early morning, or the wind had taken the stench elsewhere. It also could be, Carl hoped, they had trekked far enough away from the carnage that they couldn’t smell it any longer.
The Earhart overpass lay to their right, but it now was very distant, appearing almost the size of a child’s toy from their position. However, that meant the crowd of survivors on Earhart near the overpass was just as far away. Carl hoped the group had decided to move on. The anarchists had been too close to them for comfort. What if they decided to go outside the city looking for prey?
Carl tried not to think about it. As much as he wished to reach those people, to help protect them, he did not possess the armament or the backup needed to fend off an unruly mob. It would be all he could do to save these three souls he had gathered since this calamity started.
He ran his hand down the strap of the shoulder bag. They had taken great care to keep it secure throughout the flight from the dogs. It contained a few extra items from the restaurant—clean washcloths, two rolls of toilet paper, a few forks, spoons and knives from the restaurant’s utensil drawer, and whatever veggies they found still wrapped in plastic. It should keep them going until they breached the metro area of this city and made it to the wilderness.
His train of thought was interrupted by a loud crunch. Carl thought someone had stepped on something, until he looked ahead. Tara was crunching on a graham cracker.
“Where’d you find that?” Preston asked.
Tara licked her lips. “The restaurant manager’s drawer. Guess he had a thing for graham crackers. He had a whole pack in there.” She reached into her bag and pulled out another two crackers, wrapped in plastic. “Want some?”
“Yeah.” Preston took them. He narrowed his eyes and smiled mischievously. “Guess you finally appreciate the value of handouts, right?”
Tara smirked at him. “Oh come on. This isn’t like government welfare at all.”
“It’s the principle of sharing what you have for the good of others.” Preston bit down on the cracker. “A very liberal, very progressive principle and I’m glad you understand it. That manager would have been very happy to have shared his food with you.”
“Conservatives are not against sharing!” Tara laughed. “We just think you shouldn’t pass out freebies when people can work for them. Now, this situation is a little different because the market’s not working right now.”
“Ah-ha!” Preston pointed his half-eaten cracker at her. “See? You have just proven my point that capitalism does have its limits, especially in disasters! That’s when you need progressive values of sharing and cooperation to keep society together.”
“So, how do your progressive values deal with those lunatics on the bridge who wanted to kill us? A little peace and love?” Tara asked in a sing songy voice. “Why don’t you just admit that sometimes force is the answer?”
“I never said force was never the answer.” Preston finished off his cracker between sentences. “I do say that you right-wingers always think it’s the answer.”
As Tara and Preston went back and forth, Shyanne giggled. “They’re silly,” she told Carl.
“That they are,” Carl said. But at least the pair were arguing quite calmly this time. He wondered if Preston had warmed up to Tara since she had helped him with his fear of heights on the overpass. Tara might have developed some sympathy for Preston as well.
“You know who these two remind me of?” Carl walked a little closer to Shyanne. “It’s an old sci-fi film. It’s called Enemy Mine. It’s about two fighter pilots, a human and an alien. They both crash on a hostile planet. At first, the two try to kill each other, because their species are at war. But then they must put their differences aside so they can survive.”
Carl spoke loudly enough so Tara and Preston could hear. In fact, he did it on purpose. He was interested in seeing how they would react. It had been a while since Carl had felt relaxed enough to try to provoke a humorous reaction.
“Enemy Mine?” Preston turned to Carl. “I haven’t seen that.”
“Me neither.” Tara shrugged.
Carl looked down at Shyanne. “Isn’t it sad how no one likes the classics anymore?”
“It’s sad,” Shyanne said. Then she smiled and pointed to Tara and Preston. “Hey Mister Carl, which one of them is the alien?”
Tara, eyes narrowing, smiled at Preston. “That would be you.”
Preston snickered. “Sure. You’d like that so you can have me deported. Remember, Tara, our ancestors were all aliens here, once.”
“Here we go!” Tara shook her head. “This is going to be about Indians and the Pilgrims—”
“Pee-eeew!” Shyanne suddenly grabbed her nose.
Tara and Preston slowed down. “What’s wrong?” Tara inhaled more intensely. “Wait, I smell something.”
Carl then sniffed the air. A strong odor wafted into his nostrils. No, that wasn’t smoke. It was more like a liquid. Actually, it reminded Carl of a few bars he had visited. “Yeah, I smell something bad, too.” He winced as additional horrors tickled his nose and he detected odors of human sweat, urine, and feces.
Tara came to an abrupt stop. She backed up and turned to her friends. “Guys.” She shook her head. “This is pretty bad.”
“What is it?” Carl asked.
Tara parted the grass, revealing an open spot where several men were lying on the ground in various poses, but all of them appeared passed out. They were of various ages, including one old man with thinning hair and liver spots. Also, to the group’s disgust, he was naked. The rest of the men were in different stages of undress. A middle-aged man wore a shirt but lacked pants. Two young men, perhaps Preston’s age, retained pants but were bare-chested. Two more men, one middle-aged and one young, were clad in boxers, with the middle-aged male face down in the dirt.
It was not hard to see why these people were in such a burned-out state. Spent bottles of liquor were scattered across the area, some dangling from the men’s hands. One of the young men clutched a marijuana bong.
Shyanne turned and pressed against Carl’s stomach. “It stinks!”
“I know,” Carl whispered. He started walking backward.
“Hey.” Preston was turned around, his back to Carl, Shyanne and Tara. “Check this out.”
Carl and Tara peered over Preston’s shoulder. At one man’s side lay a sleeping woman, who was topless, her breasts in full view. Looking around man’s side revealed more women, mostly undressed. Piles of dirty clothes were strewn around.
“A regular liberal’s paradise.” Tara looked at Preston with a smile. “C’mon, you have to admit this is what some liberals want, a hippie commune where you screw and smoke weed all day?”
Preston put his hands in his pockets. “Well, it’s always better to make love and not war. A little sex in the field sounds a lot better than pushing the nuclear button, don’t you think?”
Carl might have been more pleased that Tara’s and Preston’s banter had become more civil if it wasn’t for the sight that greeted him when he pushed aside some nearby grass. He winced. “Sure, guys. Screwing and smoking weed’s a lot of fun until someone ends up dead.”
Tara and Preston looked where Carl had parted the grass while he grasped Shyanne to keep her from looking. A nude woman was lying in the grass, dead. Her flesh had turned blue, perhaps during the night. A couple of red marks dotted the side of her neck.
“God,” Tara said.
“Did someone stab her?” Preston asked.
“Stab her or bite her, I can’t tell.” Carl turned to Preston. “But it’s clear these people aren’t in their right minds to handle themselves.” He aimed a glance at Tara. The pair nodded sheepishly, perhaps ashamed of their joking earlier.
Carl retook the lead. He pushed aside the grass, wa
lking slowly, taking care not to step on any broken glass that might be lying in wait. He carried Shyanne as he walked. He would circle around this horror, hopefully finding the end of it, where they could leave it behind. Along the way, they kept careful not to be too loud.
Just when Carl thought they might have reached the end of their latest nightmare, he pushed aside more grass that revealed a man, hunched over, and fully nude. He was thin, with a few bruises on his back and an ugly blister on his right shoulder. At the moment, he was taking a piss into the grass.
Tara and Preston quickly backed up. Carl did as well, but the man suddenly turned around. His eyes were half-open. He had a stubbly beard, and a red scab laced his right cheek. His white hair was tall where it wasn’t balding. He also reeked badly of booze.
However, the moment his addled eyes met Carl’s group, he suddenly sprang to life. He seized a handful of Shyanne’s shirt while screaming, “Well, hello there, little flower!”
Shyanne screamed while Carl sprang into action, slamming his knuckles into the man’s teeth. Carl’s blow easily released the man’s hold and sent him down into the bed of grass.
Tara pointed her rifle at the now slumbering male. “You goddamned animal!”
“Don’t waste your ammo on him,” Carl said, no matter how much he might have wanted to nail this pervert in the head for daring to put his hands on Shyanne. He quickly checked her over. “Are you okay? He didn’t hurt you?”
Shyanne looked at Carl with wide eyes. “He…he just scared me.”
Preston glanced behind them. “Are these people so far gone that they’d hurt a child?” He shook his head. “What am I saying? I should know better than to expect any less by now.”
Just then, the grass where they had left the sleeping mass of bodies behind started rustling. Moans, gurgles, coughs, and vomiting cut through the air. All of this commotion had stirred up the drunken rabble.
“Hey!” A slurred man’s voice called out. “Keep it the hell down!”
“What’s going on?” This voice sounded young. “Hey, where are my pants?”
“My head. Goddammit, my head hurts!” shouted an older man.
Now the women were stirring. “Hey, where am I?” cried out a stammering woman.
“My clothes? Where are my clothes? Why am I naked? My God, what did you do to me?” screamed a second woman.
Carl quickly picked up Shyanne. “Let’s bolt before this turns into something real ugly,” he whispered.
Preston and Tara followed Carl through the grass. “Hey, I hear someone!” a man’s voice called out.
“Well, put some goddamn pants on before you go check it out. Stop waving your pecker at me!” griped a man with a gravel-throated voice.
“Are they following us?” Preston asked.
Carl turned back to look, but the tall grass made it hard to see any more than a few feet. He would have to stop and push the grass down to get a look, maybe even backtrack a few steps.
But Tara already was digging into her pack. “No problem.” She slowed down as she fished out her binoculars. She turned and looked through them.
Tara didn’t say anything right away. “Well, what’s the story? Are they coming after us?” Preston asked.
“Keep your shirt on.” Tara tightened the focus.
“No. It looks like they’re just talking. Actually, I think they’re shouting. They’re arguing over something.” She winced.
“Ouch. Well, he’s going to remember that for a while.” Tara took the binoculars from her eyes and hung them around her neck.
“They’re at the edge of the field. They were gesturing this way.” She turned to Carl, Shyanne and Preston. “I say we don’t stick around to find out.”
Carl turned back to the field before him, but the grass helped obscure a lot of the view. The former Marine could not be sure if even a small house was just a short distance in front of them.
He pushed more grass down in front of him. “Hey Tara, aim those binoculars this way. I want to see where we’re going.”
Tara took a look through the gap Carl had made. Suddenly, she gasped. “My God!”
“What is it? What did you see?” Preston asked.
But Tara already was pushing through the grass. Carl quickly followed, with Shyanne beside him. “Take my hand,” he told her. This grass stood so high that the little girl might get lost.
“Wait!” Preston called as he hurried after them.
Before long they reached an area where the grass dropped to about waist-level. Tara had come to a halt and was looking just ahead of them, her face contorted in horror.
“Tara?” Carl looked at her, then at the area just ahead of them. He quickly saw that he didn’t have to ask any further what had stunned Tara. This made the scene of naked and inebriated men and women look like nothing.
Chapter Twenty
Preston mouthed a “Holy shit!” as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Even Carl, who had seen more carnage that he could describe in a lifetime, was stunned at the sight that was lying just a few yards away.
A jet airliner had slammed into the side of a building, leaving such a large hole that Carl was amazed the building hadn’t collapsed. The plane’s fuselage was burned black except for a few traces of white across the back. The right wing had been torn off and flung several yards away, where it had been bent in the middle before careening to a stop. The plane’s left wing was buried under a mountain of rubble from the building.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The plane’s whole mid-section was torn open, perhaps from an explosion. The plane’s jet fuel could have ignited and caused the plane to burst into flames. Bodies lay strewn about from the plane’s yawning opening, as if it had vomited up the passengers.
Carl pressed Shyanne against his body and then covered her face with his arm. “Don’t look at this,” he whispered.
Indeed, he didn’t want this image etched in his brain. Some of the bodies were charred black, perhaps the ones closest to the explosion. They had caught on fire and likely burned on the ground outside the jet. But some of the passengers were not burned at all. They merely had been flung out of the plane when it crashed. Unfortunately, some of them were badly mutilated. The unfortunate souls must have been picked up and thrown through glass, plastic or even metal before they came to a stop. One person, lying quite close, had lost most of his face.
Carl turned his back on the ruins, walking Shyanne so she looked away from it. Then he withdrew his hand. “Here,” he said softly.
“Is it really bad?” Shyanne asked.
“Yeah,” Carl said. He turned his eyes to the field ahead. A stretch of road lay ahead, along with some short buildings that he couldn’t identify. There were no tall buildings that way. Perhaps they finally had reached the edge of the city, where the small rings of suburbs acted as a bridge to the wilderness beyond.
“I saw…” Tara turned her back to the wreckage. “I saw that plane go down. I saw it when Matt and I were on the road.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t see anything but a fire, a big fiery blast.” A shiver ran through her body. “Damn, I didn’t expect to see it up close.”
“I used to have nightmares.” Preston joined them. “My parents flew a lot. Sometimes they’d take me with them. I’d be petrified that the plane would crash. They kept telling me it was alright, that plane crashes were rare, that hundreds of planes took off and landed every day without a problem.” He stiffened up. “Of course, I got over it by the third grade.”
Carl glanced at his companion’s face. He wondered if Preston wasn’t exaggerating how young he was before he finally had kicked his fear—or even if Preston had conquered his fear at all.
Tara started walking. “God, this probably happened many times across the country. Planes, cars, trains.”
Preston marched even faster. It was evident the pair wanted to get away from the wreckage. Carl was just fine with that. Besides, they had a close destination now. Carl wondered if there wa
s a sanctuary up ahead, someplace where they could rest.
As they trekked through the grass, Preston and Tara kept silent. The normally combative duo had put down their verbal swords. The carnage no doubt had knocked some sense into them. For the moment, they understood what was important in life, and it wasn’t arguing over who had started the EMP that had shut down the world.
“Mister Carl?”
Carl looked down. Shyanne kept her gaze ahead. “I’m here,” Carl said, “What is it?”
“Does it hurt?” the little girl asked, “When you die? I know a lot of people died. You were looking at them. Did they hurt?”
Carl swallowed. Shyanne might not have seen the bodies, but she knew the adults in the party saw something pretty horrible. He did not want to keep this subject alive in Shyanne’s mind any longer, yet he couldn’t just brush off her curiosity. Besides, this world wasn’t going to let her stay so innocent for very long.
“I guess sometimes it does hurt, very much, but only for a moment,” Carl replied quickly.
“And then it stops,” Shyanne said, “because you go to Heaven. Unless you’re really bad. Then you go to the bad place.”
Carl almost smiled. The bad place. He liked that. How else could you describe an eternal place for all the evil people in the world? The kinds of people who would fire off nuclear missiles to wipe out millions of people? The people who would roam the streets, looting and killing without remorse?
The people who would set bombs on roads, or march into houses of worship with explosives on their chest, ready to kill themselves and as many people around them as they could…
Carl cringed. He nearly stepped back into that world of terrorism and destruction. He tried to keep focused on the dangerous world he already was living in.
“Bad place.” Preston muttered the phrase to himself. “Seems like we’re already in the ‘bad place’, if you know what I mean.”
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