The other women had crowded around.
“But we don’t know how to defend ourselves in case people like them show up,” said one of the others.
“Brittany said they had a roomful of weapons, right?” They nodded. “So we’ll teach you to defend yourselves.” He looked at Sean. “I suppose we can wait a few more days to get to our destination.”
“I think you might be right.”
Brittany and Roxy trusted the men from the beginning, but the other two held back, possibly fearing a repeat of what they had endured for so long. Aaron knew it was going to take a little while before they could gain a measure of their trust. They started by disposing of the bodies of Ronald and James. Then the women showed them the house. It was fairly comfortable, and once any remaining signs of Ronald and James were gone, Aaron was sure the women could make a go of it.
While the women purged the house of the frightening memories, Aaron and Sean checked out the gun room. In fact, Ronald and James had acquired an impressive arsenal. It was obvious, however, that they knew very little about the weapons they had accumulated. Most of the guns were unloaded, and the ammunition was stacked in a corner in no particular order. If these men had needed to defend themselves quickly, it never would have happened.
They spent hours matching up ammo with weapon, labeling everything in the process. They wanted to make it as easy as possible for the women to be able to defend themselves. Tiffany and Sue remained the most timid, but it didn’t stop Sue—the cook of the bunch—from preparing quite a meal from cans.
Ronald and James had kept an old, pre-computer chip, truck in the garage. The men used it to locate firewood to help the women make it through the winter. Certain things in the house had fallen into disrepair, and Aaron and Sean fixed what they could.
On the third day, they began the weapons training.
“Three things,” said Aaron at the beginning of the training. “One: Never travel outside the perimeter of the yard alone. Always go in pairs when searching for food and other items. By the same token, always have two people in the house. No one should ever be alone. Two: Always carry a weapon when you are outside the house—not the yard, the house. The handgun on your hip should become part of you. When you leave the yard, also carry a rifle or a shotgun, whatever you become most comfortable with. Three: If you have to shoot at someone, shoot to kill.”
“None of this shoot to wound bullshit you see in the movies,” interjected Sean. “If you’re shooting at someone, you want to kill them. Pull the trigger twice. Try to put two bullets into them. It’s called double tap. When you get good at it, you’ll be able to put two bullets in a row in virtually the same spot.”
“Also,” added Aaron. “Keep practicing. Long after we’re gone, you should have regular practice sessions. You have a shitload of ammunition, and we’ll try to find more before we leave, so you should never run out.”
“What about the noise?” asked Tiffany.
“Who’s going to hear it?” asked Sean. “You’re what’s alive around here. And if someone does show up, better they know you’re prepared for them.”
They stayed two weeks. In that time, they all became good friends. The women began to pay attention to their appearance—not for Aaron and Sean’s sake, as there was nothing sexual between them, but for themselves. They had spent so long trying to look unattractive so as to ward off the advances of Ronald and James, it was refreshing to them to suddenly have the confidence to care again.
The morning they left, the women were in tears. Aaron and Sean also had to fight back tears, and eventually lost the fight. They all hugged and Aaron promised if they headed back that way, they’d check in on them.
When they were out of sight, Sean turned to Aaron. “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Remember in Yuma, we were all trying to find someone to help?”
“Yeah.”
“Well it took almost a year, but we finally did some good.”
“We did, didn’t we.”
Chapter 20
The next day, once they were out of the affluent suburb, they found what they were looking for—what would have done them no good in the earthquake-ravaged Midwest—an old vehicle that worked. It was a vintage Volkswagen Bug, hidden between two Lincoln Town Cars in the lot of an auto repair business. The tires were flat and the battery was dead, but with a little work, they got it running.
“Runs rough,” said Sean when they finally got it started.
“Probably why it was at the repair shop,” answered Aaron.
“Not very comfortable.”
“You going to complain the whole way? Hey, if it gets us where we want to go, who cares.”
“I do. What are you? 5’10”? 160 these days? You can fit that wimpy body into anything. Not me.”
“I get your point. If we run across a Rolls Royce, we’ll trade up.”
“That’s all I’m sayin’.”
They still couldn’t go fast, having to maneuver around the thousands of cars stopped in the roads, but it beat walking. They made Rhode Island the next day. As they inched closer to Sean’s home in Providence, Aaron noticed a change in his buddy. Sean didn’t talk as much and spent a lot of time in space. Aaron wondered if he would be doing the same thing once they approached Newton.
They pulled up in front of what had once been Sean’s house, a three-decker in an old neighborhood. Now it was a blackened hulk, as were all the houses around it.
Sean had tears running down his cheek.
“I’m sorry, man,” said Aaron gently. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
They sat for almost half an hour without talking. Finally, Sean squeezed out of the car and walked over to his former home. Aaron climbed out and stood behind his friend.
“We lived on the first floor and rented out the other two. My cousin lived on the third floor. I lived here my whole life until I joined up.”
“Maybe it’s better this way. We’ve known our families are dead. Maybe the fire was good—like a cremation.”
“Maybe.” He was deep in thought again.
Aaron let him walk around the base of the structure, obviously reliving his memories. Finally Sean was done. He got out of it what he came for. The real mourning had taken place a year earlier for both of them. This was just a necessary tying up of a loose end. He walked over to Aaron with a trace of a smile on his face.
“Got a surprise for you.” He strode to a covered car sitting at the curb in front of the house. “Never told you about this.” He pulled back the cover, revealing a Ford Mustang convertible of an old vintage. “My dad’s pride and joy. A ‘65 Mustang. If I can get it started, we can get rid of this shit box and drive something with class.”
Aaron was excited too. Riding in the cramped VW was getting old already. Although it was fall, the weather—minus the routine violent storms—was still warm enough to enjoy driving with the top down.
Happy to move beyond the morbidity, he said, “Fucking fantastic. Let’s do it.”
It took them most of the rest of the day to clean it up and to find a bicycle pump to inflate the tires. Unbelievably, the battery still had a little life and the car started, albeit with much coaxing.
Finally, with whoops of joy at being in a real car again, they were on their way. Once again the going was slow, especially in downtown Providence. Sometimes they had to take several detours before being able to get to the roads they were looking for, but finally they landed on I-95 North and picked up speed. Sean drove in the breakdown lane some of the way, but in many places it had become overgrown from the grass on the side of the road. Almost three hours later they reached the outskirts of Newton, and Aaron directed Sean to his family’s house.
As they were passing a shopping center, Aaron suddenly yelled out, “Pull in here.”
Sean made a hair-raising turn into the parking lot and came to a stop. “Thanks for the warning,” he said.
“No problem,” answered Aaron, standing up and look
ing over the sea of cars.
“What are you looking for?”
“I think I saw my parents’ car. Drive around closer to the supermarket.”
In a minute they were stopped in front of a silver—or what used to be silver, now black from dirt—Subaru Outback.
“You sure this is it?”
“Look at the license plate.”
The plate read “FNWAY.”
“My brother Ben was a big Sox fan. When he saw this was available, he pleaded with my parents to get it.”
He got out of the car and pulled out his Swiss Army knife and attempted to take the back plate off. Being plastic screws, they came out with ease.
“For old times,” he said, and threw it in the backseat of the Mustang.
“If your car is here, it means…” started Sean.
“Yeah, I know. Probably my mom. She did the shopping.” He hesitated. Finally he turned toward the supermarket. “I’ve gotta see,” he said and slowly approached the door. Sean fired up the car and brought it up to the door.
“Don’t want the car or our things out of my sight,” he said.
Both men entered the store. Even though it was light outside, the inside was gloomy. They turned on flashlights. They carefully walked around the dead bodies, looking at each one, Aaron hoping he’d recognize something that belonged to his mother. By this time the bodies were nothing more than a little skin and hair, and the skeleton with some tattered clothes. They were able to look at them much more easily than those weeks after the event when bodies were bloated and the smell and the flies were everywhere.
They searched for about fifteen minutes before Aaron finally said, “I don’t think she’s here. Maybe she had to go into one of the other stores.”
“There’s one more over here,” called out Sean, who had gone into the chip aisle to see if any of the cans of nuts were still good. “Someone put a tarp over her.”
Sean had pulled the tarp partly off when Aaron got there. He gasped. All of a sudden he couldn’t breathe. His heart was pounding so hard, he could feel it in his ears. He knelt down and looked at the form. “It’s my mother. I’m sure of it.” He had trouble getting the words out.
Sean picked up her bag and searched through for a wallet. He opened it to her driver’s license, took it out, and handed it to Aaron. Aaron sat back against a shelf and let some tears come. Sean gave him his space. Finally Aaron rose. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.” Now he was anxious to leave. There was nothing he could really do with the body. Burying it didn’t make sense anymore. Besides, it wasn’t his mother. It once was, but now it was no different than the thousands of other bodies they had walked over and around in the last year.
“You’re serious, right?”
Aaron looked back at Sean. “What do you mean?”
“Man, you’ve gotten stupid over the last year.”
“That’s a given. I’ve stayed with you, right? That says it all.”
“No, I’m serious. You don’t see it?”
Suddenly Aaron did.
“Holy shit! How could I miss it?”
“I told you. ’Cuz you’ve gone stupid.”
“Possibly.” Aaron was deep in thought now. Finally, he said, “My mother couldn’t have died under the tarp, so who put it over her?”
“And why her and no one else?” added Sean. “A family member or a friend?”
“A friend would be too busy dealing with their own dead family …” Aaron left it hanging.
“Let’s go to your house,” suggested Sean.
They couldn’t move fast enough. They hopped in the car, not even using the doors, and Aaron directed Sean to his house.
It was still there. The whole neighborhood was still there. All the yards had become overgrown, but the neighborhood was still recognizable. They pulled into the driveway. The house was as Aaron remembered it, just looking a bit weather-beaten. Two empty shopping carts from the same supermarket they just left were on their sides outside the front door. Aaron looked at them as he walked in the front door. Again, they had to use their flashlights. Immediately they saw the pile of food cans and other items in the middle of the living room. Some of the items had come from Eastern Mountain Sports near the supermarket. It was all survival gear of some sort.
“This came after,” said Aaron.
Sean just nodded.
They walked into the kitchen. A few empty cans lined the counter, long since picked clean by the flies and worms and mice. Two dirty plates sat on the table, a candle between them. A roll of toilet paper was perched on the edge of the table.
“Someone was living here,” said Sean. “Two people, if I had to guess.”
“But not for very long,” agreed Aaron. “A few days at most.”
Aaron headed up the stairs, first checking his parents’ room, then Ben’s. Nothing had been disturbed in his parents’ room, but Ben’s room looked like a tornado had hit it.
“Was it always this way?” asked Sean.
“Not this bad. I was the pig in the house, not Ben. He wasn’t clean, but he wasn’t this bad. Someone was looking for clothes. They’re spread out all over the bed. Could it be a random person?” In his mind he was pretty sure not. Sean proved that theory a moment later.
“There’s a picture frame on the bed, but the back has been taken off, and the picture is missing. Also, did your brother work at someplace called Maiden Farms Dairy? ‘Cuz there’s a shirt with a nametag on the floor.”
“So he wasn’t at work.”
“Unless he had more than one nametag.”
“From his description, I think they were too cheap for that. However, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s go to Maiden Farms Dairy.”
Aaron gave Sean directions as they went, and they arrived five minutes later. It was starting to get dark outside, adding to the gloom inside the dairy. They walked through, shining lights on customers and employees alike. One man had his head down in a bowl. At this point, it had been reduced to some skin clinging to a skeleton, with a full head of hair. It was a hair-piece.
“Any other time,” whispered Sean, pointing out the man to Aaron, “that would be funny. Not so much today.” Being smaller than the supermarket, the restaurant had more of a tomb-like feel to it, and they felt the need to whisper.
There were only three male employees, two dead near the grill, and another outside an open walk-in freezer in the back room. Aaron checked outside, in case Ben had been on garbage duty.
He walked back in to the restaurant and said to Sean, “Ben’s not here,” with a little bit of hope in his voice.
“He was,” replied Sean from the corner. He was standing in front of the time-clock. “He clocked in at 8:30am, and never clocked out. The clock reads 2:05, the time everything stopped. Aaron, it’s looking like your brother may have survived this.”
Chapter 21
“Holy crap, do you think he did, Sean?” asked Aaron, a bit shell shocked. All of the signs were leading to that assumption, but it was still a bit much to fathom.
“It looks that way, but don’t get your hopes up. A lot of people survived who are dead now. Could he survive on his own?”
“Shit, no. I hate to say it, but my brother was pretty much of a wimp. I don’t mean that as an insult. He just wouldn’t have a clue of how to survive on his own.”
“If that was him back at your house, it looks like he was with someone. Maybe that person knew what to do. Your dad, maybe?”
“Nothing in my parents’ room was touched. No, it was someone else. Someone he met up with?”
“How about someone from here?” asked Sean. He got up and went to the time clock, sorting through the cards. "Nine people were working that day, including the manager. Let’s match up nametags to the cards. It might give us a clue as to who he might be with."
They checked nametags and threw away the cards each time a match was made. Finally, they were left with two cards; Ben’s and one other.
“Card says her name is Lil
a Martin,” said Sean. “Date of birth … oh shit. When this happened last year, she was only sixteen, a year younger than your brother.”
“What’s that old saying?” asked Aaron. “Something about babes in the woods?”
He felt deflated. Not only was Ben incapable of taking care of himself, if all this was true, he’d now also be responsible for a teenage girl. That couldn’t be good.
They headed back to the house and settled down for the evening, eating from the pile of canned and freeze-dried food left in the living room.
“So what do we do now?” asked Sean.
“Wish I had a clue as to where they went.”
“Aaron, look,” began Sean. “The fact that your brother might have been alive a year ago is great—no, it’s fantastic. But this is a big country and we have no way to know where they went. It’s not like they caught a bus and we can track them down. Hell, there’s not even anyone to ask. Look at it this way: The fact that they didn’t stay here and curl up into a little ball is a positive sign. They made a move. They did something. They were collecting food for a journey, so they had someplace in mind, probably. You have to have faith that just maybe they survived. Stranger things have happened.”
“I want to believe that he made it, but it’s hard, ‘cuz I knew him. This would have overwhelmed him.”
“Everyone is capable of reaching deep down and coming up with something that will take them a step further. You gotta have faith.”
“You’re right. I have to believe he’s still alive.”
“Here’s the thing. We’ve got to get on with our lives. All we can do is move on. If we see other people, we can ask if they’ve seen him. Maybe someday we’ll hear something. Consider this a victory. You came here expecting to find your family dead, but there is a chance that your brother is still alive. That’s one hell of a victory.”
“Okay, then. Suggestions on where to head?”
“I liked Cali, but I’m sure that’s gone. Hell, Aaron, I’ll be honest. I always hated living in the East. Yuma mighta sucked, but I liked it out West. If it wasn’t for the way the earthquakes fucked up everything, I could head out there. Mainly I want to get out of here. We saw what we came for. Now let’s get the fuck out.”
Eden Lost (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 2) Page 14