by Dave Conifer
Out of nowhere he heard the sound of a motor vehicle approaching. He was struck by how odd the sound was, even though it had been just a few hours since the world had stopped. He turned around and watched. It was the unmistakable ticking rumble of a Volkswagen, the kind that had been common when he was a kid, back in the days when Beetles were all over the roads. As it neared, he realized that it wasn’t a Beetle, but a Volkswagen bus.
Apparently the driver hadn’t seen Nick until it was almost too late. The bus came within five feet of where he stood before it veered away. Nick was floored when he locked eyes with the driver. He wasn’t sure which was more of a shocker: that there was a car in the neighborhood that still ran, or that pompous Brian Martinsen owned a Volkswagen Bus, the vehicle of quirky mechanics and freeze-dried deadheads. And Martinsen looked just as shocked to see Nick wandering the barren streets. He waved half-heartedly from behind the wheel with no change in the expression on his face before rolling past and around a corner. That was weird, Nick thought, filing the memory away because he’d just about reached his destination.
~~~
Sarah was helping in the search for candles when she heard a knock at the door. She wasn’t sure what to do. It wasn’t her house. On the other hand, she lived there for the time being. Surely Nick wouldn’t want them ignoring any visitors. She aimed her flashlight and walked carefully to the front door in the dim light. She remembered meeting the woman who was standing on the porch, but couldn’t remember her name.
“Hi,” the visitor said. “Is Nick around? You’re Sarah, right?”
“He just left,” Sarah answered. “He went to get his grill.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name. I’ve met so many people today.”
“I’m Penny Hellikson. Tom and I live right across the back fence,” she said. “Can I come in and wait?”
Sarah backed out of the way. “Of course. Come on in.”
They both took seats on the living room couch. It was dark enough that they could barely see each other. In the background, people bearing flashlights came and went like comets. “They’re looking for candles,” Sarah explained.
“So you met our Nick today, huh?” Penny said.
Sarah smiled. “Yeah. Lucky I did. He’s a good guy. If it wasn’t for him, I guess we’d be spending the night on that bridge. I should thank him again for that when he gets back.”
“Nick has a good heart,” Penny agreed.
“He told me he’s divorced,” Sarah said. “It sounds like he really misses his daughter.”
“It was bad,” Penny said. “It broke our hearts to watch them tear themselves apart. Val hung on as long as she could, but she had no choice. She had to get out. And she took Jules with her.”
“Really?” Sarah asked incredulously. “Well, he did tell me it was all his fault.” She paused. “I know I just met him, but he seems pretty easy to live with.”
“Usually,” Penny said. “Unless—“ She stopped herself. “I feel funny talking about him behind his back.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Sarah said.
“It’s probably okay to tell you,” Penny said. “You’re living here now, after all. You need to know what he’s like. What I was going to say was he’s a great guy, except, well, I guess you could say he has a bit of a drinking problem. And when he drinks, he’s not that same great guy I was talking about.”
“Oh,” Sarah said. “I had no idea.”
“I yelled at Tom when he came home earlier,” Penny said. “After he told me they sat around guzzling beer all afternoon.”
“I’m afraid that’s exactly what they did,” Sarah said. “I thought they were just blowing off steam.” She spoke slowly, as if she was weighing her words carefully. “Is Nick an alcoholic?”
Penny shrugged. “I don’t know how that works. Val thought the drinking was a symptom. It got so whenever anything went wrong, he broke down and started drinking. It was a chicken and egg thing to her. She never was sure what came first, the breakdown or the drinking.”
“That happened on the bridge,” Sarah said. “We had a little trouble with some strangers. Nick and Dewey ended up handling it, but next thing I knew, Nick disappeared. When he showed up again, I could smell something on his breath.”
“That’s Nick all right,” Penny replied. “Deep down, I think he’s hurting badly. At the end of the day he’s usually taken care of business, but somehow he always suffers for it.”
“Is he an angry drunk?” Sarah asked. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great place to bring my girls after all.”
“No way,” Penny said. “Not at all. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him raise his voice in all the years I’ve known him, drinking or not. He just gets--distant, I guess I’d call it. He disappears, even if he’s standing right there.”
“Like, he withdraws, in a way?”
“Exactly. That’s the word I was looking for,” Penny said. “Even if he’s still there, he’s not. Know what I mean? And it lingers. He’ll sober up, but he stays all standoffish for a while after that, anyway. That was the hardest part for Val. I think she could have handled the drinking, at least for a little while more. But when he just checked out like that, it was too much to take.”
“Did it cause any problems with his roofing company?” Sarah asked.
“Nope,” Penny said. “I mean, I doubt he was crawling around on any roofs the morning after one of his benders. He’s smarter than that. But as far as I know, he always got up and went to work. No matter what.”
“Well, I cleaned up a lot of beer cans before you got here,” Sarah said. “They had plenty to drink. I wish I’d known. But he seemed okay.”
“Tom should have known better,” Penny said. “But beer isn’t usually Nick’s beverage of choice. Tom says Jack Daniel’s is Nick’s kryptonite.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Sarah said. “I won’t let him know you told me anything about it, but I’ll stay on my toes.”
“Good,” Penny said. “I better get back home. I’ll catch Nick tomorrow. Just tell him I stopped by, okay?”
~~~
Nick saw a flicker of candlelight inside the Irby house. The curtain of darkness had come fast once it started, enhanced by the absence of artificial light. He considered knocking on the door and letting Nate Irby know he was there, but decided not to. No need to startle them at a time like this. He’d just grab his grill and leave without making any noise.
Before he reached the side of the house he heard the soft clank of a gate quietly snapping closed, followed by a metallic rattle. Maybe he’d see Nate after all. He hoped so. After a day like this one, any familiar face would be a welcome sight. Better announce himself though, now that it was dark. Nate was a hunter, and at a time like this, he was probably armed.
“Nate?” he called out. “It’s me. Nick Mercator.” The rattling stopped. “Nate? Is that you?”
“It’s not Nate,” a gruff voice answered. A shadow of a man emerged from the darkness, rolling a grill along the sidewalk. Nick recognized Ryne Cronin, somebody he most certainly didn’t consider a friend.
He and Cronin had some ugly history. A few years back, just weeks before Val had left New Jersey with his daughter Jules, he and Ryne had a run-in. Ryne was the kind of father who talked about “letting kids be kids” and “parents keeping their noses out of their kid’s lives,” and a dozen other clichés that were popular among fathers without daughters, and those with sons who were a foot taller than the other kids in the neighborhood. When Nick found out that Cronin’s son, also named Ryne, had knocked Jules down and stolen her bike that day, he was livid. But instead of confronting the Cronins directly, he called the police.
After the fact it had turned out that Nick had misunderstood the entire situation. Jules hadn’t been attacked, and there’d been a legitimate reason why Ryne junior had her bike, a reason that Nick hadn’t heard because he’d been drunk. But as it happened, Ryne senior had jumped into his truck and sped down to the Mercator
house as soon as the two police officers had left. No punches were thrown, but a lot of hard, loud words were thrown around, mostly by Cronin. The kind of words that don’t usually get taken back, even if it all started because of a misunderstanding. Nick had spent the last few years avoiding Cronin. Until now.
He decided to play nice, and hope Cronin would do the same. All he wanted was to get his grill and go home. There was enough going on right now without a re-ignited feud with the neighborhood caveman. “Picking up your grill?” he asked, as pleasantly as possible. “Same here.”
“Yep,” Cronin said. “Got some steaks about to go bad.”
Nick moved to let him pass, but stopped suddenly and jammed his foot in front of the grill. “Hey, Ryne, that’s my grill you’ve got there.”
“Don’t look like it to me,” Ryne grunted. “What’s the difference? Just go back there and grab one. But get out of my way.”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” Nick said. “Why don’t you take your own grill?”
“Move your foot,” Ryne demanded. “I’m not telling you again.”
Nick didn’t move. “You’re not taking my grill.”
Ryne lunged at Nick and swung his fist, which landed sharply on Nick’s chin. Nick flopped backwards, landing hard in the grass. “Don’t get up,” Ryne warned. “I’ve been waiting for a clean shot at you for years.”
Nick stood, but stumbled immediately. The blow hadn’t been that hard, but it had hit a sweet spot. All the beer he’d drunk earlier wasn’t helping matters.
“Walk away while you still can,” Ryne growled as he left, pulling the grill behind him.
Now Nick was stumped. Returning to the house without a grill was out of the question. Knocking on Nate’s door to ask which grill was Cronin’s didn’t feel right either. Besides, he thought with a sinking feeling, Cronin probably didn’t have one back there at all.
He decided that he’d slip into the back and take the first grill he found. It wasn’t exactly the right thing to do, but he convinced himself that it wasn’t exactly wrong, either. Cronin was the one who stole a grill, he rationalized. Whoever it was that came up short, it was Cronin’s fault, not his. That was going to have to be good enough.
All of a sudden he was weary to the bone, and his body ached. With Dewey rear-ending him, then the scuffle on the bridge, and now being on the receiving end of Cronin’s punch, he’d had enough action for the day. Quietly enough not to alert Nate, he fetched a grill and rolled it into the street. Twenty minutes later he was back home, hoping nobody would ask what had happened to his chin or how to operate a grill that he’d never laid eyes on before.
~~~
Sarah, Dewey and the girls had scrounged up a few candles by then. A soft light filled the living room, where he found everybody. When he announced that he’d brought the grill back, Dewey immediately offered to cook up some of the ground beef they’d found in the freezer. Nick had no problem with that. People were hungry, and the meat wouldn’t last long without electricity. He wasn’t hungry himself, though. Too much had happened, and there was too much on his mind.
He managed to slip away while Dewey and Sarah were preparing to cook. He headed straight for the hall closet and rummaged through it. After reassuring himself that everybody was still outside, he pulled out his Remington 798 bolt action hunting rifle and a box of cartridges. Purchased with the guidance of Chuck Jevik, the hunting aficionado who lived next door, it was the only gun he’d ever owned. He didn’t plan on doing any shooting, and hoped he wouldn’t have to, but the next person who threatened him was going to get the barrel of that rifle jammed into his snout.
Clutching the rifle under one arm and the box of ammunition in the opposite hand, he walked quickly into the guest room. He fumbled through the drawer in the bedside table until he found a flashlight. It was a simple matter to load a fresh cartridge before sliding it under the bed. Then, feeling more drained by the second, he stripped off his clothes and collapsed on the hard mattress.
Seven
The next morning, before anybody else in the house was awake, Nick was out on his front lawn. An early riser by habit, being up with the sun was nothing new for him even though there was no place to go this time. Although he knew otherwise, he couldn’t stop himself from surveying the neighborhood, hoping it had all been a bad dream. The smell of bacon cooking outdoors somewhere nearby was a reminder that it hadn’t been. Here in suburbia, who cooked bacon outside on a grill if they didn’t have to? It was real, and it wasn’t going away.
He saw two men approaching from the entrance to the development, staggering under a heavy load. By the time they’d reached Nick’s place he recognized Matt Shardlake and another man that Nick didn’t know, each carrying at least five bags of groceries. Nick met them at the foot of his driveway, where they dropped the bags to rest. Both were dripping with sweat and breathing hard.
“Grocery shopping?” Nick asked.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “We’re just getting back. We were out all night.”
“Wait, did you go with Joe Garrison yesterday?”
“Yeah. I guess you heard what happened,” Matt said.
“No, I didn’t,” Nick replied. “How would I?”
“You know Ray Quinn?” the other man asked. “Real big guy from around the corner?”
“Yeah, I know him a little,” Nick answered.
“You mean knew him,” the other man said, correcting Nick. “On the way back last night he had a stroke or a heart attack or something. He died, man. Right there on the side of the road.”
“What?” Nick asked. “For real? Dead?”
“Dead,” Matt assured him. “Just what it sounds like.”
“I can’t believe it. Was he with you guys the whole time?” Nick asked.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “There were about fifteen of us. He was wheezing before we were even halfway there, but he made it. I guess we should have left him there at the store so he could rest. He seemed okay, so we loaded him up with bags for the walk home. Big mistake. Next thing we know, he’s leaning to the side, and then he went down on the sidewalk.”
“And he never got up,” the other man said. “He was way too fat for walking all that way. We never should have let him come. And we never should have let him carry anything. I feel like we killed him.”
“Man,” Nick said. “He went down last night?”
“Right,” Matt said. “It wasn’t even nine when we started back home. It happened right after that. Once we realized there was nothing we could do, everybody else left.”
“You stayed there all night?” Nick asked.
“We weren’t going to just leave him there to die,” Matt said. “It was bad, though. He was in and out of consciousness all night, but he suffered. We tried to go for help, but where are you gonna’ go for help? There’s nothing out there.”
“Where is he now?”
“Still there in the same place along the road,” Matt said. “He finally passed away two hours ago. We didn’t know what to do. Jim Finks stayed with the body. I’m not sure what to do with it.”
“Where are all the cops, or the EMTs, or whatever?” the other man asked. “What were we supposed to do?”
“Does he have a family?” Nick asked. “I think I remember he had kids.”
“Yeah, a wife and a ten year-old boy. Joe already went and gave them the news,” Matt said. “He knew them better than the rest of us. I’ll bet that was tough.”
“And I thought I was having a bad morning,” Nick said. “Doesn’t seem so bad now. What about the body?”
“We’ll either go back with a wheel barrow and bring him home, or just grab a few shovels and bury him there,” said the other man.
“Right there by the side of the road?” Nick asked. “That just doesn’t seem right,” he said, shaking his head.
“You got a better idea, then?” the other man asked.
“Nope,” Nick admitted. “There’s nothing else you can do, I guess.” They talked for a f
ew more minutes. Eventually Matt and his traveling partner picked up the shopping bags and moved on. Nick decided to tell his housemates as soon as they woke up. It was something they should know about.
~~~
Sarah, Dewey and the girls took it hard when Nick told them what happened, even though none of them knew Ray Quinn. It seemed to Nick that for the first time, the EMP was more than some fleeting novelty that rolled off Dewey’s tongue every few minutes. One man from just a few blocks away had died on the first night because he wasn’t tough enough to survive the new reality. “It’s, like, a good reminder that if things don’t get better, life will be a lot harder now,” Dewey said. “People like that guy, somebody who can’t even walk a mile or two, they’re going to have problems.”
“I want to go home,” Sarah said. “Maybe Eli heard what happened and came back already. There’s got to be a way to get to Medford. I heard a car or a bus or a truck about an hour ago. I’m sure of it.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too,” Dewey said. “And we saw an old Packard cruising along yesterday, remember? It seems like not every car got fried. It’s like there isn’t any rhyme or reason to it.”
“It was a Plymouth,” Nick said, correcting him. “But yeah.”
“So maybe I can get home,” Sarah said. “Of course, my Danali’s back on the bridge, even if it starts working again.”
Nick thought of Brian Martinsen and his Volkswagen bus, but decided to say nothing. He couldn’t imagine Brian, of all people, loaning it out to somebody who needed. No use getting Sarah’s hopes up.
“I doubt they just magically fix themselves,” Dewey said. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”