“Maybe we should leave now,” Dustin threw in.
“Maybe we should,” Lilly agreed.
Jake had lowered his head as he often did when he listened. He would turn his head toward the speaker and listen as they spoke. His head shot back up and his eyes focused on Lilly, but he said nothing. Katie shot Conner a quick look. Conner shrugged his shoulders.
“No guarantee that we wouldn’t run into the same type of people no matter where we might go,” Conner said.
“Probably would,” Amy added.
Katie nodded. “Bad is bad. It’ll be everywhere.”
“If we went far enough,” James said, “who would there be to bother us?”
“No one, I guess, but,” Katie said, “Not everyone wants to do that, James.”
“Maybe it’s the only way,” James came back.
“I don’t want to do it,” Amy said. “But I don’t want to live in a factory either, and here I am. I also don’t want to live in fear of what someone might or might not do.”
Conner raised his hands palms out in a gesture of conciliation. “We can talk about leaving,” He said.
“Maybe we’re all not wanting to go to the same place,” Janna Adams said.
“Maybe,” Conner agreed. He tried not to show it, but her remark surprised him. He knew she wanted to go back to the traditional Native way of life, but, hell, everything was nature now, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the same thing?
“I didn’t really want to go,” Jake said. “But,” he looked over at Lilly, “Now I don’t know.”
Even Katie’s head shot up. It seemed everything was a surprise tonight, Conner thought.
“Maybe,” Conner said, “We need to air all of this out.” He waited until all the little side conversations that had sprung up fell silent.
“It seems everyone has something on their mind. Maybe this is the best time to get it off your mind. Speak your mind. Let it go. We should work out where we all are, where we want to be, where we’re going to, what we’re working towards… I’ll be honest,” he paused, “I was surprised twice in a couple of seconds. What I thought I knew about some of you… What I had thought you had said, turned out to be wrong. We can’t… No... I can't tell you what to do, but we shouldn’t do that to each other. We should all know what page we’re on. True?”
“It’s not like you can’t change your mind,” Katie said. “It’s your mind, your life, but to plan for all of us, we need to know where we’re going, where we are, don’t we?”
James spoke: “You’re right, of course. I guess once Sandy came along we started to think more about the real kind of life we wanted to live. I have always wanted to live, but I think I speak for Jan and Sandy too, I have always wanted to go back to the land… I mean really go back. I don’t want to live in a factory either. And I'm not saying I want to live in a longhouse even. It’s the way of life I want, the stories I heard as a child. Only do it right this time, not give up our land, live on it... with it. Can you see that?” He seemed defensive but enthusiastic.
“I can see it,” Conner said. “I can’t say it’s for me, not yet. Maybe it will be someday,” he shrugged his shoulders, “But… But I don’t know what else might be left. Could the world really be destroyed? All of it? Everything? I can’t imagine it, not all of it. Not everything. I’m not saying I want my T.V. back, but I’m not sure I want to live in a factory either.” He grinned and looked around. “But I did. I’ll admit that. It’s the first thing I did. Maybe that says something… and not just about me, but that’s me. If James is not talking about living in a factory or a cave, a long house…” He shrugged again. “I don’t know… We each have to make up our own minds. You have to live true to you, because if you don’t, you’re nothing.” Silence held. James nodded his head a few times.
“So… What are you going to do, James? What are you really talking about? I mean, say it so we know,” Amy said.
James looked from Janna to Sandy. “We have to decide, but we will go - we just haven’t decided where yet - back into the wilderness… Somewhere isolated, but we want to bring more people. It wouldn’t work with just a few of us. So we would like to go with you with the understanding that we would eventually go out on our own,” James finished.
“So you would try to recruit people from the people we meet along the way?” Aaron asked.
“You make it sound like stealing,” James said.
“No. No,” Aaron said. “I don’t mean to make it sound that way, but it makes it kind of hard to get behind. Here we would be trying to bring people together, and you would be trying to convince them to something else. We’d be trying to get them to work with us, and you’d be trying to get them to work with you. It might drive them away if they think we can’t even agree how it should be between us,” Aaron finished.
“Stealing,” James said again.
“No… It’s… This is a community,” He looked to Conner and Katie who nodded for him to continue.
“So... it’s a community and we would be trying to get everyone to work together. You see?”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t have us because of that?” Sandy asked.
“No one said that at all,” Katie said.
“Certainly not,” Conner agreed. “It’s not like that. If you want to come, you come. I can see where you would be an asset to us. I can also see your need to do this thing you want to do. I can see where you would need more people to do that. I can see where I might be convinced to go with you. Let’s not shut doors. Let’s not start mistrusting or trying to read things into what we say. Aaron asked the questions any of us might have. In fact I would have if he hadn’t. The people you need for what you want to do are probably not going to be the same people we need for what we want to do. It’s a different type of life. Different people… Different ideals… Different purpose, dreams, directions. How could that hurt either of us? I don’t see where it could. Let’s not go back to the old world view, fear of what we don’t know about each other; let’s just let it be. No one has decided yet to go with us or you. We don’t even really know if we’re on opposite sides yet,” Conner concluded.
”I agree,” Aaron said. “I didn’t mean to imply that I have some great plan or idea. I could find myself wanting to go with you when the time comes too. Conner makes sense. Maybe we don’t want the same things, maybe we do. And after today, I think it would be safer if we all travel together. Less inviting to trouble.”
James nodded, satisfied. Silence held for a few seconds.
“He’s not coming back. I know that,” Nell said. Her eyes teared up. “My husband,” She added after a short pause. “I lied to myself, you know. I don’t want to believe he’s gone, but I don’t want to wait here, stay here; I want to go with you guys. This place is… like a city of dead,” she finished.
Make that three surprises, Conner thought to himself.
“I want to go,” Jake said. “I… I want to go.”
Conner nodded.
“I want to go,” Lilly said.
Conner had been sure that if Jake had said he wanted to stay, Lilly would have wanted to stay too. Now he wasn’t sure. It seemed now it might be the other way around.
Allison was looking from face to face.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she said at last.
“You could come with us,” Dustin said. He smiled. “You want to, right?” he asked. His smile faltered a little.
She answered him with her own smile. “I want to.”
“Good,” Dustin said.
Conner looked around. Amazing, he thought. “I’m amazed,” he said. Echoing his own thoughts.
“When?” James asked.
“Today changes it. Doesn’t it?” Amy asked.
“Does it?” Conner asked.
“I think so,” Aaron said.
“I do too,” Jake agreed.
“Yeah, it has to,” Sandy agreed.
“Well, then it does,” Conner said. “What do we… what do you want to
do? Leave sooner?”
Yes, they all answered in unison. He blinked, surprised again. “My concern is winter,” he told them. “I don’t like this situation either. We could have two people out there with weapons waiting to come after us… Coming around, maybe taking shots at us,” He shrugged. “Or maybe they’re as scared as we are. Just as scared. And maybe we shouldn’t over react because of that fear. In any case, the days are colder. It’s still winter. It could snow at any time. We have shelter here. Yes, it’s a factory, but we’re living. It’s shelter. We know the area. We know where to get gas for the trucks, food, supplies.”
“It’s close to April,” Amy said. “Just a few days really.”
“So we could shoot for getting ourselves ready to go the first part of April,” Conner said. “Supplies.” He looked around at all the supplies in the vast factory. “First part of April, if the weather’s good, we go,” He paused. “Everyone agreed?”
Another chorus of Yes answered him. Even the dog barked and wagged his tail. The looks on nearly everyone’s face showed relief. The dog’s enthusiastic, and well timed bark caused most of them to break into laughter. Relief, Conner thought.
“Until we go,” Conner waited for the talking and the laughter to die down “We only go out together, and we take one of these rifles when we do. “He held up one of the rifles they had taken away from the two young men just hours before. “The others stay here to protect the factory. Double the guards at night, starting tonight.” He paused again, but no one spoke out. “Guess that’s it,” he said quietly. “We’ve decided.”
FIVE
Watertown NY: Mike
As he drew closer to Watertown the stalled traffic thickened, and when he reached the Watertown Center exit a heavy rain began to fall, which slowed him down even more. He followed the same muddy tracks that cut into the steep grassy embankment down to the road below the overpass. He slid the last twenty feet to the pavement, and proceeded slowly along the rain slicked street.
He had just passed the Watertown town limit sign, when he noticed the fresh muddy tracks had cut across the road and into a field on the right. He slowed the truck, and let his eyes follow the tracks into the field of standing hay.
A gray pickup truck rested in the middle of the field, at the end of the deep muddy grooves it had cut as it plowed through it. It had slued around at the end, and now sat facing the road. Mike shivered as a cold chill crept down his neck and into his spine. He couldn't explain the feeling that had crept into him when he had spotted the truck, but it set him on edge immediately. This had to be the same truck he had been following since before Oswego.
He stopped, but did not leave the truck. Instead he stared through the rain slicked windshield at the Ford. It appeared to have been abandoned after it became stuck in the field. The rain streamed across the darkened glass of its windows, and down the sides of the gray steel body. He fought the urge to get out and check the pickup. Someone could still be in it, hurt maybe, he reasoned, but he was sure his leg would never allow him to make the trip out to the truck and back. He felt unreasonably positive that the truck wasn't empty, that someone was watching him as he sat idling in the road. He put the truck back in drive and drove past, shaking off the chill that had passed through him, and sped up a little as he left the truck behind in the muddy field. It was nearly night, the gray of the afternoon moving toward blackness.
When a set of headlights appeared behind him a couple of miles down the road, he stared at them through the rear view mirror so long, that he almost slammed into the rear of a stalled tractor-trailer in front of him. He looked up just in time and managed to miss the truck, but slid off the road and into the front yard of an old, peeling green house.
He narrowly missed hitting the rickety front porch, and fought to bring the truck back under control as he shot past it. He goosed the gas pedal and the truck swung around, clipping several bushes that fronted the porch, but the truck was now angled toward the road. He gave it more gas and steered it back onto the roadway at last.
He looked into the rear-view as he gained the road, and he could now clearly make out the shape of the gray pickup behind him. It was gaining, and when it reached the tractor trailer, it seemed to skim by on the outer edge of the road without slowing at all. Mike jammed the gas pedal into the floor board and the old truck began to shudder as it picked up speed.
He glanced back, and as he did, the truck blew by on his left in a spray of water that momentarily covered the windshield. Mike instinctively released the gas pedal and jammed the brake pedal, while working the wiper switch. The old truck shuddered in protest and began to slide down the road.
The windshield cleared as the truck slowed down, and he watched as the Ford spun sideways in the road. It came to rest in the center of the road, blocking it from side to side.
Steam rose from the hot tires. Its black windows gleamed in the light rain as tiny rivulets streamed across them towards the ground; washing away some mud that still clung to the lower body.
Mike drew a deep breath into his lungs as the truck slid the last few feet and stopped. He ended up still pointing straight in the right hand lane, about twenty five feet from the pickup.
He reached for the rifle that had slid off the seat onto the floorboard, as his heart beat quickly in his chest. The passenger side window of the Ford slowly lowered as he watched.
The black glass gave way to a dark gray interior, and the young dark-haired kid that sat behind the wheel of the truck slowly turned towards him. Mike could see his yellow and crooked teeth, from where he sat in the truck, as he grinned. Two other faces moved beside him. His heartbeat sped along crazily, and he fought to control the panic he felt rising inside him. He clicked off the safety on the rifle as he slowly eased it up onto the seat beside him. The dark-haired kid continued to grin, a cigarette plastered into one corner of his mouth, jittering up and down. Talking to the others, probably, Mike though. The kid raised his rifle and pointed it out the window at Mike.
“Hey!. Get outta that fuckin' truck, man. Come on, man, get outta there right now!”
Mike heard the words over the rain, over his own closed windows, but there was no way he intended to get out of the truck. The kid motioned with his head and the two others with him climbed out the passenger side of the truck: Laying their rifles across the hood; aiming carefully at him, Mike saw, which was completely ridiculous. It was a shot of maybe twenty, twenty five feet. You could do that with your eyes closed. Unless...
Mike swung the rifle up fast and popped off a shot aimed at the kid at the outermost edge of the hood. A split second later he was sighting on the second kid. No one had shot back, the driver was still grinning foolishly, but he didn't think that would last long. They had no idea what they were doing. Playing roles in a movie they had seen once. Something like that, Mike told himself.
The dark-haired kid in the truck finally raised his rifle and aimed at him. It was almost funny, Mike thought, looking at the rifle jerk and jump on its way up, but the next instant, when the windshield on the passenger side cracked loudly, he was stunned to see a small hole punched through it when he looked. A nest of cracks ran away from it, and small crystals of glass glittered on the dashboard.
He quickly ducked, levered the door open, and dropped to the pavement. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. As he did he heard another shot, and felt a stinging sensation in his left leg. The right side of the kid’s face dissolved as Mike's shot found its mark. He saw the spray of skin and blood hit the black passenger side window behind him, as the bullet shattered it almost simultaneously. The young man continued to grin with what was left of his face, he shot once more.
Mike saw the flame lick from the end of his rifle, as he dropped towards the ground. The shot missed, and he heard the ford's engine whine as the tires began to bite into the pavement, producing a high pitched scream. Mike dove back up from the ground, and shot once more at the truck, that was now sliding around and heading for
him.
He dove back into the truck just as the pickup hit the still open door, and tore it from its hinges. It flipped up over the already braking pickup, and clattered to the pavement. Mike keyed the ignition, and jammed the truck into drive. The tires spun and began to smoke as he mashed the gas pedal to the floor and tore off down the road. The truck slewed around behind him, and began once again to give chase.
Although the truck shuddered in protest, Mike did not let up on the gas pedal: Instead he kept it jammed to the floor. The truck edged up and past eighty before he eased off.
At just under ninety, the truck rattled loudly, and the large tires hummed as it sped down the road with the gray pickup seemingly welded to its rear bumper. Mike used the stock of the rifle to smash out the rear glass of the truck, and fired twice into the windshield of the Ford. The windshield blew inward, and the Ford locked its brakes and spun sideways on the road.
The tires caught, and the pickup truck flipped into the air. When it landed it rolled several times before bursting into flames, where it came to rest in the middle of the road.
Mike mashed the brakes on the truck, and slid to a shuddering stop in the road, craning over his shoulder, staring out at the burning wreck behind him. As he watched the gas tank caught, and the truck lifted from the road with a loud, Whump! It clattered back down seconds later, scattering parts of itself across the rain slicked roadway as it did. Mike stepped cautiously from the pickup, and continued to watch as the truck burned.
He was still watching a split second later, in horror, as the kid spilled from the wrecked car.
The right side of his face was a raw mass of meat, and curls of flame and smoke leapt from his clothing as he tumbled out of the inferno and hit the pavement. The flames on his clothing seemed to flare up as if in anger, and then, within a space of seconds, die out altogether and disappear. Smoke curled from the kid. Mike stared momentarily transfixed. And then bent over and vomited on the road. He stayed, hunched over for a second, before he turned, crawled back into the truck, and quickly started it.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 35