In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel

by Edward M Wolfe

  He couldn’t believe Carl was driving a convertible with the top removed. It was a fantastic looking car, but they definitely weren’t going anywhere in it until this rain stopped.

  When Carl came shuffling out of the dark hallway the next morning, he found Jeffrey already up and sitting next to the fire reading a paperback he had found behind the bar. Carl couldn’t believe it. Out there was a world, just waiting to be had, and this guy was sitting here reading a book.

  “Hey, Jimmy!” Carl yelled.

  “It’s Jeffrey,” he said, looking up from his book and hoping Carl didn’t take offense at being corrected.

  “Whatever. I don’t want to sit around this place for another day. Where’s the nearest gun store or pawn shop?”

  Jeffrey put his book down on the hearth. “I don’t know about that, but I know a place not far from here where there’s plenty of guns and all the food you could possibly want.”

  “What kinda place?” Carl was behind the bar now, pouring himself a beer.

  “It’s a small community of Mormons, barely a mile from here.”

  “Why the fuck would a buncha Mormons have guns and food?”

  “They have to. Their church requires it. I guess it must have to do with the End Times or something.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “Well, I’ve been kind of down on my luck lately, and a missionary I know told me where I could get some help from his church. So I went there and they gave me food and clothes so I did some work for them. That’s when I heard that they store at least a year’s worth of food in their basements, and there was plenty of talk about guns too.”

  “That sounds perfect. When I finish this beer, you’re gonna show me where this place is.”

  “In the rain?”

  Carl replied in a whiny voice, “Yes, ‘in the rain!’ I told you, I ain’t sittin’ around here anymore. I need a gun. I got business I gotta tend to.”

  They drove up the highway wearing large Hefty garbage bags that Jeffrey had turned into makeshift ponchos. The plastic rippled and fluttered in the heavy wind. Carl felt stupid wearing a garbage bag but he conceded that he was much drier than he’d be without it. Jeffrey told him where to turn off the highway and they followed a winding road more than a mile into the woods.

  The tree-lined road came to an end at an intersection that looked like a roundabout but with a large grassy circle with a brick wall lining half of the circle. They could turn left or right to go around it. Approximately every ten feet there was a square hole in the wall five feet up from the ground forming portals. On the other side of the walled off circle there was a Mormon temple. Turning left or right at the intersection led to the streets on either side of the roundabout.

  “This is it. Pull over,” Jeffrey ordered, not thinking. Carl scowled at him, but did as Jeffrey instructed.

  “I planned on pulling over,” he said, daring Jeffrey to doubt him. “Now what?”

  “Well, I guess we gotta get into one of those houses without drawing any attention. Any one of them should do. We can get guns, food and a car with a roof and then get away before anyone finds out that we were here.”

  Carl pushed his wet hair back and mopped water off his forehead. His eyelids lowered as he tried to think of a strategy. He thought they should back the car up till it was out of view, then try sneaking back into the compound through the trees on the right and emerge behind one of the houses. He didn’t think to tell Jeffrey his plan. He was just going to do it. He reached toward the ignition to start the engine but stopped when he heard a bell tolling.

  He looked at the temple where the sound was coming from. After three gongs, the bell stopped. Men ran out of the houses and went out of view behind the brick wall in front of the temple. All of them were carrying either rifles or handguns. Some had both.

  “What the hell is going on here? These people are fucking lunatics.”

  “They’re actually really nice people,” Jeffrey answered.

  “Shut up, you idiot.”

  A bearded face appeared in the center portal that looked directly onto the intersection where Carl had stopped the car.

  “Hello!” the man shouted. “Do you have business here?”

  Carl and Jeffrey looked at each other then looked back at the man. Neither of them spoke. Carl was trying to think fast. This was a lot more difficult than bullshitting his way into someone’s house.

  “Are you FLDS?” the man inquired after getting no response to his first question. He gave them only a few seconds to respond. “You’re gonna want to turn that car around and head back the way you came. This here’s private property.”

  Carl didn’t know if they should bother trying to talk their way in and then try to overpower someone, or just find something easier like he and Trey had done yesterday. He thought he might at least try bluffing a little and pretending they were lost and hungry, but before he made up his mind, the man’s face moved away from the portal and the barrel of a rifle came through it with the man holding it up to his shoulder and looking through the iron sights.

  “Ya’ll just go on now,” he yelled.

  “Fuck it,” Carl spat. These people didn’t fuck around. He started the engine. He backed the car up and was half way through a 3-point turn when he spotted a car coming down the road from behind them. He left his car sideways, blocking the road and quickly got out and ran toward the approaching vehicle waving his arms above his head as if he needed assistance.

  The oncoming car slowed to a stop thirty feet away. It was an old station wagon with two women in it. The man behind the brick wall yelled something but Carl couldn’t make out what he was saying, with the wind rattling the trees. It sounded like he was trying to warn the women off. Carl ran up to the driver’s window.

  “There’s a snake in my car rattling its tail at my friend and he’s scared to move. You don’t have a pistol I could borrow for a minute, do you? It might save his life!”

  The woman in the passenger seat quickly opened the glove compartment and took out a twenty-two caliber gun and reached across the car, carefully handing it to Carl.

  “Hurry,” she said. “We’ll pray for your friend.”

  Carl accepted the weapon, thumbed off the safety and said, “Thank you. Now get the fuck out of the car. Both of you. Nice and slow.”

  The women looked at each other, disbelieving that they had just been betrayed by what they had assumed were members of their congregation. This man was not a Saint.

  “Get out of the car, now!”

  The driver looked at Carl standing in the rain getting drenched. “We need to get our umbrellas from the backseat. Can you give us a second?”

  “No, you need to get the fuck out of the car before I shoot you in the face. How’s that sound?”

  They saw the man behind the portal shaking his head and gesturing to someone behind him. The driver opened her door and Carl grabbed her as she stepped out. He pulled her in front of him, holding her there by her upper arm. “You!” he said to the other woman. “Get in front of her and start walking up to that red car, slowly.”

  The other woman did as she was told. Carl and his hostage followed directly behind her. Within seconds the women were soaked and chilled from the relentless wind. When they reached the car, he yelled to the man with the rifle, “We just need a few guns. Send someone out with some and you can have your women back!” He was going to say he wanted something better than a .22 but he didn’t want to advertise the caliber of the gun he was holding.

  Behind the wall, the men huddled together. The man at the portal stayed where he was and told the others what he was observing. A brief discussion took place about how to handle the situation. Most of the men were willing to make the trade that Carl demanded. One man was opposed to trading and had a better idea.

  “He’s got my wife out there. If we just give him what he wants, what’s to keep him from coming back again when he want something else?” he asked the group.

  “W
e weren’t prepared for this, Noah. After we get rid of these two, we’ll build a barricade at the intersection and we’ll post guards.”

  “That’s fine for later, Stephen, but he’s got my wife, and Sean’s wife, and he needs to be dealt with right now,” Noah replied.

  “How do you propose to deal with him? He’s using your wife as a shield.”

  “The one in the car is unarmed and hasn’t even moved. I can take out the big one who’s got my wife’s .22. It’s an easy shot from this distance.”

  Carl yelled across the distance, “I’m giving you thirty seconds and then one of these ladies is gonna get shot. Ya hear me?”

  “Are you sure you can hit him in this wind?”

  “Yeah. Someone back me up at the next portal, just in case I miss. But I won’t.”

  Noah turned around and relieved the man at the central portal. That man ran to the left and stopped at the next portal and propped his rifle up there, taking aim at Carl. He didn’t want to shoot though with Noah’s wife standing in front of the man with the gun, and Sean’s wife standing in front of her. It would be too easy to miss and hit one of the women.

  Noah took aim and yelled through the portal.

  “Let them go and we’ll give you whatever you want!” Noah hoped that the man would be at least a little distracted by their refusal to give in, and by having a counter-offer to consider. He sighted in on the man’s head and squeezed his trigger.

  Carl’s face was sprayed with blood and bits of brain and bone fragments at the same instant he heard the shot fired from behind the wall.

  “Oh dear God!” Noah screamed and collapsed, falling to the ground as a wave of shock and guilt made his legs turn to water. “What have I done?”

  Carl fired back at the portal as the woman he was holding collapsed in front of him. The other woman screamed, “Oh my goll!” and ran to the left past Carl’s car and kept running alongside the border hedges on the south side of the property, never looking back. Another man took up Noah’s place at the portal and began firing a pistol at Carl.

  Jeffrey ducked down in the car. Carl’s shots sent chips of brick flying off the wall as he missed the portal with every shot. He ran backwards toward the station wagon as he fired. Halfway there, his pistol clicked. He was out of ammo. He put the gun in his pocket.

  The men behind the wall were firing repeatedly at him. He heard a bullet whiz past his head. Carl figured they were pretty shitty with their weapons as he turned around to run the rest of the way to the station wagon. Then one of them proved him wrong with a shot that hit him in the back, turning him more than he had intended. He fell down facing his car where Jeffrey was still ducked down out of sight.

  Carl crawled the remaining few feet to the station wagon and pulled himself inside, trying to keep his head low. The engine was still running. He honked the horn twice. Jeffrey popped his head up and looked toward the station wagon. Carl gestured for him to come. The passenger door of the Roadster opened and Jeffrey got out and ran toward Carl. He had only gone a few steps before Carl watched a cloud of red mist fly out of Jeffrey’s face as he appeared to dive, his body pitching forward and sliding a few feet on the asphalt.

  “I guess he’s fucked,” Carl said and moved the gearshift into Reverse. He put his right arm on the top of the bench seat and turned his head to look behind him as he drove backwards. He knew he’d been shot, but he didn’t feel anything yet. Maybe he wasn’t hit that bad, he thought.

  Twenty-five

  Monica woke without opening her eyes. She felt safe for the first time in years. She lay there with her arm around Trey feeling his warmth and the slight movement from his breathing, listening to the wind and rain assaulting the RV. It appeared that the owners weren’t coming right back.

  Trey had said that Denver was nuked. She didn’t know what that meant and she didn’t want to know. It was too much to think about. Nothing in life was the way it was supposed to be. It was easier to just lie here with her eyes closed and let her whole world shrink down to just this space. She felt safe right now and didn’t want to think about anything.

  There was a time when she had loved life and had dreams of the future. When she was in college, she didn’t know what she had wanted to do. Then she met Thomas and everything fell into place. She quit school and got married. They moved to the mountain house he had inherited from an aunt. She got pregnant and then she suddenly knew what her life was supposed to be about. She was going to be a mother. The thought of having a child filled her with happiness.

  But then she had the miscarriage and her dream was ripped away from her. All she had left was Thomas. And then he went off to war, leaving her all alone. After that she just went through the motions of life, not really caring what happened and not daring to dream. Eventually she settled in to the routine patterns of living. Occasionally she even painted, but without passion or inspiration.

  Alone on the mountain, life was peaceful and safe. Life was not good, but as long as she had nothing and wanted nothing, she never had to fear losing anything. She did not look forward to the future and she tried not to think about the past. She simply lived day to day; secure in her knowledge that life could not get worse than it already had.

  Then Carl and Trey appeared on her doorstep. Life took another unexpected turn for the worse. And now, unbelievably, she was doing something she thought she’d never do again. She was lying on a bed with a man, and feeling safe and comfortable. The greatest irony to her was that he was one of the men who had invaded her home. She believed him though when he said that he hadn’t known that Carl was going to do what he did.

  The fact that he had saved her from his friend gave him credibility. And she had saved him too. She could tell him that they were even now and they could go their separate ways, but she felt that they still needed each other to continue surviving – at least for a while. She looked at Trey sleeping and felt anxious again about him being asleep so soon after a serious head injury. She gently patted his chest where her hand was resting.

  “Trey. Wake up.”

  Trey moaned something unintelligible.

  “I’m sorry, but I think it’s better if you don’t sleep yet.” She patted him again a little harder.

  “What? What’s going on?” He looked at her, blinking rapidly, trying to focus.

  “I think we should go somewhere. We can’t just stay in this RV forever. If the owners don’t come back and shoot us, then it’s going to run out of gas eventually.”

  “You’re right.” He struggled into a sitting position and squeezed his eyes shut as the pain in his head returned. “I’d rather stay asleep because then I don’t feel the pain, but I’ve got to find my sister, and you need to find your husband.”

  “I know where my husband is.” Monica looked down and pursed her lips.

  “That’s great. I need to head south to my parent’s cabin. What direction is your husband in?”

  “He’s in Fort Logan,” she answered quietly.

  “Fort Logan, the cemetery?”

  “Yes. He was killed in Afghanistan two years ago.”

  “Oh God. I’m sorry.” Trey leaned forward and put his arms around her. She held him and rested her head on his shoulder. She thought she would cry and was surprised when she didn’t. She just felt the same numb grief she’d felt since Thomas’s funeral. It was an internally cold feeling. Cold and lonely. Holding Trey was the first thing that made some of the cold go away since Thomas had died.

  “Is there somewhere you want me to take you?” Trey asked.

  Monica pulled away to look at Trey. “I don’t have anywhere to go but home, but now I don’t know if it’s safe there. And… I’m afraid to be alone.”

  “You don’t have to be. You can come with me to my parent’s cabin. It’s not far from here. We should go now before the rain freezes. I would really hate to drive this thing down the mountain with ice on the road.”

  “Can we look at my house and see if he’s still there? I need some shoe
s.” She looked down at her bare feet.

  “Oh shoot! I didn’t get any shoes when I grabbed some stuff for you.”

  “It’s okay. I appreciate what you did for me. No one would expect you to be thinking about proper attire.”

  “Let’s go take a look and see if his bike is still there. Maybe he left since it’s been raining. Riding a bike in the rain really sucks, but at least it’s possible. Driving in the snow is pure suicide. Carl says he can do it, but that’s total bullshit.”

  Trey stood up and reached out for the wall as a wave of dizziness washed over him and he felt a pulsing pain in his head.

  “Oh shit. I don’t think I can drive. Can you handle this thing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe if I go real slow.”

  “Well, I don’t want you racin’ down the mountain anyway.”

  She laughed and got up to help steady him, putting her arm around his waist. They walked together to the front of the RV. He sat in the passenger seat and she sat behind the wheel. She stared at the console, trying to confront the idea of driving this behemoth of a vehicle.

  “Think of it as just a car, only bigger. Don’t let it intimidate you.”

  “Okay. Here we go…”

  “Just take it real slow. We’re in no rush and we don’t have far to go.”

  Monica backed out of the driveway very carefully, then drove forward and turned left onto the highway, very slowly accelerating until she reached 25 m.p.h., then she held it there.

  “I don’t want to go any faster than this.”

  “That’s fine. There’s no traffic up here, so don’t worry. Nice and easy.”

  Trey still felt dizzy and foggy-headed so he was fine with the slow speed as long as he didn’t have to do the driving. He’d already crashed once. He was not going to risk it again. He wasn’t sure how they were going to deal with checking her house to see if Carl was there. They should’ve thought more about that and come up with a plan before heading out.