“Wisconsin and cheese, right? What’s up with that?” The tip of Ren’s branch caught on fire and she held it up in the air. The little flame held its own in the still night, but eventually snuffed to ember and smoke.
“Cheese is religion in Wisconsin. Honestly, I’m surprised churches don’t top the Communion wafers with a little disk of Monterrey Jack.”
Ren smiled. “You know what I miss most?”
“Tell me.”
“Subway.”
“The sandwich place or the method of mass transit?”
Ren smacked me in the shoulder playfully. “The sandwich place, doofus. A thousand cool, unique little sandwich shops in my neck of Brooklyn, each with their pretentious artisanal bread and locally-sourced ingredients, and for some reason, I just loved Subway. I could go there, get my Cold Cut Combo with lettuce, pickles, extra onions, mustard and mayo and it was always the same, always wonderful. I used to eat at least one of those a week. If I got the same stuff to make one at home, it never tasted the same. How did restaurants do that, by the way? I could make anything at home that I could get in a restaurant, but it never tastes the same. That’s some sorcery right there.”
“Weren’t you a vegetarian or a vegan or whatever?”
Ren laughed. She shook her head. “I wasn’t a very good vegan, truth be told. And that was really only during college. I don’t think my mother would have let me live at home if I’d tried to be a vegetarian during high school. I always tried to mentally justify Cold Cut Combos by telling myself that bologna wasn’t really meat.”
“I miss going to the movies, too.”
“I never went to a lot of movies. We weren’t poor, really. We just were your average lower-middle class family. We weren’t starving, but we weren’t rolling in extra income, you know? Movies in New York are hella expensive. It’s like a ticket, a small popcorn, and a small drink run you thirty bucks or more! At that price, my parents just waited until the movie came out on DVD and bought the DVD for seventeen or eighteen bucks. Then, my brother and sister and I could watch it as many times as we wanted. We had a good DVD collection.”
“I never went to night shows,” I said. “Only matinees, because I was cheap. In Wisco, a matinee would only be five or six bucks. Popcorn and a drink would usually cost about ten or twelve. Plus, it gave me a reason to not be home for two or three hours.”
“That’s not too bad. I should have told my dad to move to the Midwest. What’s your favorite movie?”
Before I could respond, an animal roar broke the stillness. Not a howl or a scream, but an honest-to-goodness roar, a deep, throaty declaration of presence and territorial acquisition from a large, male lion. I froze in my chair, but Ren leapt to her feet so hard and so far, I thought she was going to stumble forward into the fire. Her chair shot backward and clattered to the ground on its side. “What the hell was that?” She ran to the RV and grabbed her shotgun from where it stood leaning against the passenger door.
“A lion, I think.” I stood and peered into the darkness toward where the roar came from, for whatever good staring into darkness will do.
“Is there a zoo near here?”
“Any zoo animals still caged would likely be dead now. Starvation. Lack of care.” I told her about seeing the elephants in Ohio. “Other zoos must have released their animals, too. It was the only humane thing to do. Either let them go or put them down. I guess if they let them go, it at least gave the poor things a fighting chance to survive.”
Ren backed into the RV. She stood in the doorway, ready to slam it shut in an instant, should the need arise. “I spent a year in New York and didn’t ever see no damn lions. Are you kidding me?”
The lion roared again. A lion’s roar is impressive. It can be heard for miles under the right conditions. It is an unmistakable sound, one of those things where there’s no wondering what it was—you know instantly that it’s a lion, even if you have never heard a lion roar. It sends chills up your spine.
I’d read fiction novels about African safaris where the heroes built a big fire because it would keep the lions and other predators at bay. I have no idea if that was true or not, and I didn’t feel like experimenting to find out.
“I guess we turn in, then. If it comes around here, it won’t get into the RV. We’ll be safe enough,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Ren’s eyes were wide and scared.
“I’m positive. A lion isn’t going to open the door to the RV. A Bigfoot might, though.” Ren gave a little laugh. She thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. I think. Bigfoot has fingers and an opposable thumb.
I poured water over the fire until it was doused. Steam rose from the ashes. “We’d better go to the bathroom quickly.”
“Bathroom? What about—” Ren pointed at the little lavatory closet in the RV.
“It’s not hooked up. It’s just easier to pee outside.”
Ren’s eyes were still wide. “What if…you want to do other things?”
“Like…” I held up two fingers. She nodded. I said, “Well, what did you do in New York?”
“I carted a couple of gallons of river water to my toilet every day. As long as I filled it up, it flushed. If the sewer had stopped working, I never noticed, and it never bothered me.”
I looked toward the gas station a hundred yards to the left. “There are bathrooms in there. You can just go—”
Ren shook her head. “With a lion out there? You’re nuts. You have to come with me.”
“The lion is at least a mile that way, maybe more.” I pointed to the right. “The bathrooms are a hundred yards that way.” I pointed to the left. “Unless that lion has super powers, he isn’t going to be a problem. It’s not like he’s going to sprint here and be waiting for you.”
“Regardless. Just…come with me.” Ren was starting to shift uncomfortably. She picked up my MagLite.
“Fine. Let’s go.” I started to walk away, but rethought it. I went back and picked up my shotgun. It never hurts to be safe. Just in case.
When we’d first gotten to the gas station that afternoon, we’d found the doors unlocked. The little station was ransacked, like so many gas stations. Most of the cigarettes and booze were gone. The aisle with the chips and candy was picked over, as well. A few odds and ends were scattered about, but that’s all. The two cash registers were emptied, too. The world was dying, and still some people thought about money. I guess that is human nature. However, at the moment, a million dollars cash was worth zilch unless you were desperate for toilet paper.
“Stay by the doors,” said Ren. “I’ll be as fast as I can.” She ran to the women’s room in the rear of the store, lighting the way with the flashlight.
I stood by the doors listening to the night. The lion didn’t roar again, but the night still felt different than usual, charged somehow. And stupid me, I started to wonder what it would be like to watch a Bigfoot fight a lion. I bet it would be awesome. If TV still existed, I would put that fight on pay-per-view. It would put the UFC or heavyweight boxing to shame. And screw watching the Superbowl—if you’re trying to tell me you wouldn’t pay all the money in your bank account this second to watch a Sasquatch get loose on a fully-grown lion, you are either a liar or you’re deluding yourself.
While I waited for Ren, I stared out into the night. The gas station sat on the side of a main road, four lanes. The road led to a small commerce district. Fast food restaurants and a Walmart lay just down the road. I stared at the McDonald’s. I’d worked at a McDonald’s for almost a year before the Flu. I didn’t miss working there. My brain drifted back to those days. The McDonald’s wasn’t an overly busy one, and there was a lot of goofing off after the dinner rush. My buddy, the late, great Hunter Winslow, and I used to waste time making monster sandwiches. The Chicken McFishNugget Mac was my favorite. Enough carbs in that thing to choke a camel. I was so deep in the haze of remembering my McDonald’s stupidity, that I almost didn’t notice the light in the distance. When I did notice it, all my thou
ghts about screwing around at work instantly shut down. I slipped into a vigilant, hyper-aware mode of being. There might be someone alive. There was an actual light of some kind down the road. It was a small dot of light only slightly bigger than pinpoint, not very bright, and unmoving.
I waited until Ren emerged from the bathroom, and then I pointed out the light to her. “What is it?” she asked.
“Let’s drive down there and find out.”
“What if it’s another person?”
“Then, we hope they’re nice.”
Ren’s fingers tightened around her shotgun. “What if they’re not?”
I shrugged. “Then we put out that fire when we have to.”
The light got bigger as we neared. It was a glowing plastic or glass orb hanging in the window of a flower shop. I pulled the RV to the side of the road. Through the window, I couldn’t tell what was glowing, but it was definitely a light.
“Solar.” Ren cracked the door and slipped out into the night. “It’s a solar Closed sign, I think.”
I killed the engine to the RV and followed her. The light was a small globe, smaller than a volleyball. It did look like there was once the word “Closed” on it, however sun and age had bleached the word to almost nothing. The solar panel that powered it was still pointed at the window, though. Every day, it gathered power. Every night, it glowed.
“That’s the future, right there,” said Ren. “Solar. You know anything about solar panels?”
“Not a thing,” I said. “However, I imagine we will have to learn, won’t we? Libraries have books. We can figure it out.”
“You handy with tools and science like that? You think you can make solar panels work to generate power?”
I had no idea. My first thought was to tell her the truth, that I was absolutely winging everything every step of the way, but that did not really impart any sense of confidence. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Ren pressed her face to the glass of the shop, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Jesus!” She leapt backward. “Something moved in there.”
“What? Where?” I pressed my face to the glass.
“In the back.”
I squinted into the darkness. The solar globe helped illuminate the shop, but it gave the dim interior a shadowy look. The shop had a counter in the center, and several display tables filled with wilted, dried flowers in vases. Refrigerator cases lined the store on either side of the shop. The main area had a door to the rear marked Employees Only. There was a gap between the central counter to the work area at the rear of the store. I stared into the back and saw a shadow dart past the gap. Something big. Not human big, but big enough. “It’s an animal.”
“A lion?”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. “No. I’m fairly certain if it was a lion, there would be no question about it. Maybe a cat.”
“Never seen a cat that big.”
“Maine Coons are that big.” I walked to the clear glass door of the shop, but it was locked. I used the butt of my shotgun to smash the glass and clear it out of the frame. I heard something scrabble in the back of the shop. Sounded like something with four legs. I slipped under the push bar and stepped into the shop. The air smelled musty and wet. “Pass me a flashlight, please.”
Ren ran back to the RV and grabbed the MagLite from its spot by the door. She slapped the handle into my palm. I clicked the power button and the shop was flooded with light. Ren slipped under the push bar of the door and stood next to me, shotgun in hand. “Smells in here,” she said. The darkened coolers on either side of the room were black with mold.
I stepped to the counter gap and shone a light to where the shadow had been. I shined it straight on a fat, angry raccoon. The fuzzy bandit hissed at me and scattered, clambering to a table with a single jump off a short file cabinet, and then jumped from the table to the counter.
Ren shrieked and pulled the trigger on the shotgun out of panic. She hip-fired, off-balance and unready. The blast roared, the recoil sent her spinning. The raccoon, unharmed and scared, immediately crapped itself and pissed all over the counter and floor while sprinting out the broken door and into the night. If you’ve never smelled raccoon urine, it is a far cry from Chanel No. 5. I started to gag. Ren and I retreated back to the clean air outside the shop.
“How did a raccoon get in there?” Ren jammed her pinky into her ear and tried to clear the ringing.
“Probably a hole somewhere. It was too fat to have been trapped in there for a year. I started walking around the building.
Ren inspected a welt on her arm where the shotgun had smacked her. “This hurts. I never fired a shotgun before.”
“Never?”
“I never really had a reason. The movies make it look easy. It’s not. It’s scary. You know how to shoot?”
“Not really,” I admitted. I’d fired my shotgun before, but I was not skilled with the thing. I had read manuals, though. I had read books on guns. Shooting a gun is one of those things where book-learning is a far cry from practice, though.
Ren waved her arm in the night air to cool the burning. “One of us had better learn to shoot, then. If we plan on hunting fresh food ever, we might need to.”
“It’s been on my list of things to do.” I found the rear door to the flower shop. The door’s deadbolt had been extended so the door couldn’t really close. The winds probably battered it open and closed at their leisure. A creature with clever paws like a raccoon could easily swing open the door. “Mystery solved.”
“Disappointing.” Ren was looking at her shotgun. She looked like she didn’t want to hold it anymore. She looked around at the quiet, desolate city. “It would have been cool to find another person.”
“What would another person have been doing in an abandoned flower shop in the middle of the night?”
Ren rolled her eyes. “I know. I just…” She tilted her head toward the vacant road. “There’s nothing out there, you know?”
“There are lots of things out there. Just not people.”
“That’s not what I meant…”
“I know what you meant.” It was the same question I battled daily.
Ren sighed. “I’m ready to go to bed.”
“Me, too.”
We climbed back into the RV. Renata said, “You want to go back to the gas station?”
“Not really. We don’t need to. We can just sleep here.”
“That feels weird. We’re parked on a street in a strange town.”
“You’ll get used to it. This is life now.” I started pulling down cases of water from the bunk over the cab and stacking them on the little table. “Do you want the bunk up here or the bunk in the back?”
“What?” She looked confused.
“I figured you didn’t want to sleep together in the same bed.”
Realization crossed her face. She flicked her eyes to the two bunks. “Oh. Yeah. Of course. I just…I guess I hadn’t thought about sleeping arrangements until now. I don’t want to kick you out of your bed.”
“Then you can have the bunk up here. I’ve got a sleeping bag for tonight. We can get you sheets and real blankets tomorrow, if you’d like.” I cleared the last case of water, stacking them up on the benches next to the table and the table itself.
Ren looked around the cab and scratched at her arm. “It feels kind of…open out here, doesn’t it?”
“You can have the back bed. I don’t mind.” And I really didn’t. Both bunks were comfortable. “You might have to sleep with Fester, though. He usually sleeps in the rear bunk at night.”
She looked to the door of the back bedroom, and then the cab bunk. “No. It will be fine. I’ll take the bed out here. I don’t want to take your bed.”
“It honestly doesn’t matter to me,” I said. It didn’t really.
“No,” she said firmly. “I’ll take this bed up here. It looks cool.”
I dug the sleeping bag out of the storage compartment where I’d stashed it and handed it t
o her. I pulled one of the spare pillows from my own bed. “We’ll get you your own bedding and pillows tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.”
I unrolled the sleeping bag and tossed it to the top bunk, smoothing it out flat for her. I looked to Ren, and she looked back at me. She looked to her hockey bag of supplies and then down at her clothes. I took the hint. “Right, sorry. I just—I’ll go to bed.”
“Thanks, Twist.” Ren smiled warmly at me. She reached out and touched my shoulder. “I mean it. Really.”
I went into my bedroom and shut the door. I stripped out of my cargo shorts and t-shirt. It was hot and humid, of course. Virginia in the summer. I had taken to sleeping naked just for comfort’s sake, but with a new traveling companion, I decided that probably was not a wise or courteous thing to do anymore. I left my boxer-briefs on. I started arranging my unmade bed. There was a knock at the door. It was such an unfamiliar sound that my heart jumped. I cracked the door.
Ren was standing there in an oversized green New York Jets jersey. “Hey, I just wanted to say thank you again, you know? I don’t know why we met, but I’m glad you took me with you. There was nothing left for me in New York. I am really glad we are making a new start.”
I wanted to say five or six witty lines. I wanted to be charming or dismissive. Instead, I just took the sincerity she gave me and returned it. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re here, too. I needed a friend.”
Ren smiled. I smiled back. There was an awkward pause. She shrugged a shoulder. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sure. Good night.”
“Good night.” Ren turned and went back to her bunk. I closed my door. Fester was impatiently waiting for me to lie down so he could get his nightly dose of attention.
Sleeping in the RV with another human was a new experience. I could feel Ren’s movements. If she rolled over, the whole vehicle swayed slightly, waking me. It was reassuring, though. It was a reminder that I was no longer alone. It actually helped me sleep better.
My alarm went off at its usual time, and I shut it off. I dressed in my shorts and a Wisconsin Badgers t-shirt. I opened the door to the rear bunk and saw Ren’s sleeping form huddled under the sleeping bag in the front. I wanted to let her sleep, but when I stepped forward, I crunched down on a dozen empty plastic water bottles. They made a cacophonous sound. Ren was instantly sitting up in bed, shotgun in hand. Her head whipped toward me, and then to the window in the front bunk. She saw it was morning. She fell back to her pillow.
The Survivor Journals Omnibus [Books 1-3] Page 35