by Ryan Schow
“Come here, Daisy.”
She trotted over and he said, “I’m going to lay this on your back, okay?”
The dog might not have understood, but she seemed to be okay with whatever Ben was doing because she trusted him. Gently, he lowered the carpet padding over her back. He then tied the two grocery sacks together and fit the entire contraption on her like they were saddle bags. Daisy didn’t move and she didn’t protest.
“I have to carry my food on my back, so you’re going to have to carry yours, too.”
That said, he began filling the bags with Daisy’s dog food. He emptied the opened bag of kibble into the saddlebags before cutting open the next. As he added food to her load, he studied the dog’s face through it all.
“Tell me when it’s too heavy, okay?”
The dog didn’t move. When the bags were full, he saw Daisy shifting uncomfortably on her legs.
“Too much?”
He scooped some of the kibble back out, filling a third bag until she looked up at him, opened her mouth and began to pant again. Was that a smile? Was that her being comfortable?
What he knew about dogs wouldn’t fill a sheet of paper, but what he knew about love could fill a hundred sheets of paper, and right now both of them needed each other more than anything. So he would take the extra weight.
“I’m going to carry this for you,” he said, showing her the bag. When he found an acceptable weight for the food in his own bag, he took the human food he got from the pantry and the dog’s food and water bowls and arranged them in a larger bag with the rest of their water.
“You ever been to the D.C. swamp?” he asked.
Daisy just looked up at him, not blinking those big chocolate brown eyes, the air about her totally changed from when they first met.
“It used to be a proctologist’s wet dream. Wall to wall assholes. But for you and me, just a couple of regular folks? You’ll get to see some amazing architecture without having to suffer all the bad energy of politics.” Daisy shifted with a little excitement. “So you all done hanging out in this toilet, or what?”
She gave a little bark, and he shook his head knowing it was time to go home.
They took to the highway where he found people mulling about, breaking into cars, stealing what they could. No one seemed overly concerned with the laws they were breaking. It was beyond that.
When he passed by, no one really gave him a second look. Daisy?—yes. But him…not so much. Already he was unrecognizable to himself. His cheeks were sun kissed red and peeling, his nose an even brighter shade of red, and his beard was coming in grizzly bear brown with several shots of gray in it. With a camo ball cap pulled low over dark sunglasses and tactical gear to boot, he didn’t look like the kind of guy ninety-nine percent of the downtrodden would mess with. And he certainly didn’t look like anyone’s President.
As Ben glanced around at the landscape and the smattering of people moving about, both aimless and purposeful—almost like zombies—he thought, all is not lost. There would be riots and famine, there would be mass deaths by way of starvation, dehydration and murder, but when the dust settled and all the survivors remained, Ben decided he would unite those chosen few and build this nation back starting with the first community.
In his heart, Ben was a leader, and this was still his country. That meant his only purpose in life was to carve a new path in this dark, crippled world and lead the way into the light. But that was him putting the carriage before the horse. For now, the path that concerned him most was the path he and Daisy were on, and that was the long road home.
Looking down at this dog walking beside him, setting aside the dreams of making his nation right again, it almost felt like he had what he needed in this life, that he just might survive it, Presidential failings and all.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Six
The next morning we set out on the road. Marcus has his group of girls in the big rig, I have Bailey with me in the El Comino.
“It smells like a cat pissed in this thing right after it gave birth to rats.”
I laugh at her sense of humor, but she has a point. I’m looking at this barely functioning seventies wreck and feeling like we’re driving a garbage can on wheels, but it’s better than walking. And if it gets dented or if we have to shove other cars out of the way with it, I’m not going to get all weepy over the ordeal.
“So does he know where he’s headed?” she asks about Marcus.
Looking over at her for a moment, I’m really starting to find myself letting go of my past around her.
“You look so beautiful right now,” I say, my tone different than usual.
She smiles, reaches out for my hand and takes it. “You know, I don’t think I’ve heard you tell me that with so much emotion before.”
“I’m teetering on the edge of…something. The point of no return, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“With you, and how I am, or could be. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I know, but what do you mean?”
“He’s got a map,” I look over and tell her. We slow down so Marcus can clear a pathway with the truck. Glancing her way, I say, “Do you think we have Stockholm Syndrome? That we’re just…what we are…out of necessity?”
“I like how you say ‘we.’ It’s nice to finally be included in a relationship again. Even if the relationship we have might just be a start. The first fifteen feet in the journey of a thousand…whatever.”
Marcus pushes through the cars, having to back up several times and nudge them out of the way so they don’t get dragged under the back wheels. When we finally get through the obstruction, we move forward again. The going is slow.
It’s like this all day.
The subjugated masses are mulling about the street corners and roadways, and through the freeway graveyard. They all look homeless. No one is dressed for anything but Armageddon. In fact, if you let your gaze linger too long, one look will tell you these battered souls are emerging from a deep stasis, or some kind of a short but ferocious hibernation.
To a number, each of these people I see on the streets bears the mortified, barely-alive look of a pack of zombies in search of brains to eat. Fortunately we don’t see much violence, and we aren’t attacked as much as we’re just stared at. No one has cars but us.
The slack-jaw stares of the masses rile me at first. It’s official. I no longer like being the center of attention, as I was in my skateboarding days, and I certainly don’t like the way some of these people are looking at us.
The morning passes at a rather lackluster pace, giving me time to think about the smells of this car and the pungent smell of the asphalt highway. I also catch myself thinking about the way Bailey looks right now and how we’re now starting to feel the permanence of each other. Of course, I’m also sitting on this stiff leather seat smelling the excrement of critters and the age of this heap thinking about every bruise, every cut, and all the ways we could’ve died but didn’t.
Bailey and I talk about meaningless things because we’re still too early in our relationship, as Bailey says, to talk about more serious things. Things like how she’s going to tell her fiancée she’s moving up in the world and it doesn’t include him.
“You still skate?” she asks, dragging me out of my reprieve.
“I thought about going back to it now that I don’t need a real job.”
“Not now, before this.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I always wanted to skate with Indigo, but she always wanted to do archery with her grandpa. He was good to her. Taught her to shoot a bow and arrow. Taught us both how to shoot guns. The guy was the consummate Boy Scout leader, but that was before the Boy Scouts became the Scouts and he got fed up with putting politics before people. I enjoyed my time with him. Indigo felt the same.”
“Well maybe you guys can change that when you get home.”
I think about this, even as we settle into a drawn out silence.
“Maybe,” I end up saying. “Hopefully.”
We head up Hwy 1 moving at a snail’s pace. The burnt out cars are easier to move than those that are merely abandoned. Some wrecks are easy to get through, but others take longer and it looks like they’re wearing on the Mack truck. But they aren’t. Not when me and Marcus check the welds and see everything is Kosher.
By the time we hit Huntington Beach, which is only six miles outside of Newport Beach, we realize this trip is going to take a lot longer than expected. Marcus asks me if we want to divert routes and hit San Francisco first. I don’t want that because it doesn’t give Bailey resolution with her future ex-fiancée. The truth that I know in my heart (but won’t tell Marcus) is that I’m already planning on having Bailey with me in San Francisco. It seems she wants that, too, so that’s where my intentions lie.
“Let’s stay the course,” I say and he nods. Looking at him, I ask, “What are you going to do with the girls?”
He looks like he doesn’t want to talk about it, but I know what he’s thinking. Now that he let me in on his fears as a man, as a potential father or father-figure, I have a better understanding of what makes him tick. In situations of survival, he shines, but pull the chaos away, give him a normal life and he’ll self destruct.
“Marcus,” I say, “you’re not him.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, giving me a dismissive wave.
“Of course you don’t want to talk about it, butthole, but you can’t live this life in complete isolation. I mean, do you even see how everyone looks at you? You’re these girls’ world. Corrine especially.”
“I know.”
“And that scares you,” I say.
Stepping forward fast, startling me, he all but growls, “Of course it does.”
“Jeez man, chill.”
“This is going to take forever to get there,” he says, running his hand through his hair and pacing alongside the truck where the girls can’t see him.
“If you want, I can put them in the back of the El Camino with the rest of the crap there. That way you can brood all by yourself if you want.”
He stops pacing, fires me a look. “I’m not going to end up being the person you want me to be.”
Now I step toward him.
“You can be whoever you want in this world, man! Don’t you get it? This is your chance to start over. Amber’s marriage to some douchebag doesn’t mean squat. It’s a piece of paper and a state run prison for a lot of men and women. Besides, these girls are looking to you to help them, to protect them. They want you to do what you’re good at. What you want to do anyway. So just do that and stop worrying about all their feelings. They’re tough women. They see you. They know you’re this uptight, closed-down rock of a man. It’s no surprise to any of us that your social skills suck and you’re worried all the time.”
“The thing I hated most about my old man was the brooding.”
“Well, you’re definitely a brooder.”
“It makes people uncomfortable. It makes them uneasy because it’s not the outside world that has me stewing, it’s the problems up here,” he says, aggressively tapping his forehead with two fingers.
“No kidding.”
“So, I can’t help it!” he hisses.
“You ever think about seeing a shrink?”
He starts to laugh because we’ve already been over this before.
“I know, we can’t find one and book a session,” I admit. “But a shrink is just someone with a different skillset for helping you solve your problems.”
“My problems are different!” he barks.
“Breaking news, pal. All our problems are different. But they’re all kind of the same, too. I mean, look around! This is Armageddon!”
“Which means what exactly?” he challenges.
“Which means you’re not special in this world anymore for your damaged psyche as much as you’re special because you have your own skillset of solving problems. For starters, you’re money with a rifle.”
“My old man taught me,” he grumbles, like the thought of it is just another tragic piece of the broken puzzle of his life.
“See? There’s something good you can take from him.”
“He taught me to shoot when I was six. When I was older, when I’d miss my target, he’d take out his .45, put it against the back of my skull and tell me if I missed again he’d pull the trigger.”
“And did you ever miss?”
“Once.”
“Obviously he didn’t pull the trigger.”
“No, he did. We were in the woods, so he could have killed me if he wanted to. I was convinced that was his intention. So when I missed and he pulled the trigger…well, I didn’t expect the chamber to be empty. I pissed myself anyway.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven?” I ask, aghast.
“He pulled the trigger, I pissed myself, and then he beat me so bad he had to carry me to the car and into the house where I couldn’t go to school for a week. After that, I didn’t miss. Not ever around him anyway.”
I’m speechless. I’m speechless and humbled. For me to be going around, poking him, telling him he needs to get over it is like some stranger telling me forget the pain Margot caused me and Indigo and just move on.
“I’m sorry, Marcus.”
“It’s alright,” he says, shrugging it off. “That was a long time ago.”
“Yeah.”
“We should head out,” he says, and he’s right.
After enough obstructions, we cut a clean path up Hwy 1 making surprisingly good time. The coastline homes and businesses are devastating, as is the hazy gray shoreline beyond. It’s sobering to say the least. Before the drones were taken out by what Marcus says was an HEMP, a high altitude nuclear EMP, they did catastrophic damage.
“It would’ve been so much better to have traveled this distance by boat,” I tell Bailey.
Looking over at her, her head is against the window and her eyes are closed. She looks so still. So incredibly beautiful. Eyes back on the road, we’re making good time. The speedometer hovers around twenty-five, maybe thirty miles an hour. But we never really get over forty and never for more than a minute or two.
Still, people are out. They have been all day. Some of them have taken to throwing things at the El Camino and the Mack truck, some just yell or watch us the way you think a zombie would watch a caravan of cars moving through town.
Twice we’ve gone through populated areas where the defeated masses rose up enough to storm our slow moving caravan of two. In those times I had to jump out of the car with the shotgun. I even fired off a load earlier to let them know I meant business.
Honestly, I don’t want to kill anyone, but I’m not offering up my life either because I decided to take the journey of a pacifist. Hell no. This is the end of civilization and I’m acting accordingly. For me, acting accordingly is riding in the back of the El Camino’s bed through the more densely populated areas, like Long Beach. It was riding with my shotgun out for people to see. It’s holding that look in my eyes, the same steely gaze that Marcus seems to wear all the time. He calls this the thousand yard stare. I’m not an alpha yet, but I’m well on my way and planning on making it me.
Several times we divert off E. Ocean Blvd. First because a giant tower of buildings had collapsed on Orizaba Avenue. The rubble of these buildings spilled all across E. Ocean and halfway down the beach. Locals digging through the debris in a weak rescue attempt said they’d been the Galaxy Towers. They said it was a nineteen- or twenty-story apartment complex with four buildings shooting off a centralized parking garage, one floor of parking for every level. There’d been cars and bodies everywhere. It was impassable. Another apartment complex had come down as well, 1900 Ocean, the kind of luxury apartment tower one man said was so beautiful inside it hurt to see it like this. He said he just sold his home in Freemont so he could pay thirty-five hundred dollars a month rent to look at
the ocean. The point is, we’ve had to leave E. Ocean more than once. Our final detour took us a few blocks up to E. 2nd Street where the high life with the beachfront property became one way roads full of forgettable architecture and overpriced multiplex living. Marcus pulls to a stop. Great. We do the same.
Bailey’s still asleep. She doesn’t even stir.
My smooth exit from the El Camino is hampered by screeching hinges and springs that rock and squeal as I get out. Now Bailey’s awake.
“What are we—”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Just try to wake up for a second.”
The late afternoon sun hits my skin, sucks the moisture out of it. I feel parched. Irritated. Marcus and I walk toward each other, a stiffness in our bones from driving too long without stretching our legs.
“Getting pretty populated up there,” he says. “We need to get back to Ocean Blvd and look for signs to the 710. From there it’s a straight shot to the 405, and from there we’ll take the 5.”
“You expect we’ll make it there tonight?”
“To the 5?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a chance,” he says. “Looks like a couple of planes went down up ahead. The smoke’s pretty bad. And who knows what we’ll run into up there?”
“So why are we stopping then?”
“Maybe some trouble up ahead. Bunch of guys, five or six of them, just hanging out.”
“Can we get around them?” I ask.
“They’ve got their eyes on us now, so it’s best to head straight through. Measure the toll.”
“The toll?”
“Yeah, the charge to get through. Get Bailey on the wheel. You get in back with the shotgun.”
“You want me out there? Like some sitting duck?”
“They’re not going to want your piece of crap. Maybe Bailey, and maybe one of the girls. But not that.”
“I could have figured that out,” I say.