by Lukens, Mark
And then he realized what it was.
CHAPTER 44
Ray
Ray checked out the kitchen again while Luke looked around upstairs. He couldn’t even hear Luke walking around up there; either Luke was being very sneaky or the insulation and construction of this large cabin was that good. Emma was still on the couch and Mike had been poking around in the office. Mike came out of the office and followed Ray into the large pantry.
“There’s not a lot of food in here,” Mike said.
“I know, son.” He was going to have to tell Mike soon. He was going to have to admit to all of them that he had made a big mistake coming here. He had played this hand, betting everything on it, and now they needed to make a decision soon—within the next few days—about whether they were going to try to move south before the hardest of the winter closed in, or if they were going to figure out a way to tough it out here. He was already trying to run numbers in his head. He had his leather-bound notebook he had taken from Craig’s house and he had started a list of what they had in the pantry, an inventory. He would include what they had in their backpacks to the list. He wanted to collect everything they had and calculate the rations they would need to make. Of course there wouldn’t be enough food, but it would give them a better idea of how much time they could survive here in this cabin.
It made him feel better to write these things down. As Ray compiled his list, Mike grew bored and left the pantry, but Ray kept writing. It made him feel like he was doing something other than wandering around aimlessly.
A box of crackers.
Two jars of peanut butter.
Eight cans of tuna.
Nine cans of soup.
A case of bottled water.
“What are you doing?” Emma asked.
Ray spun around. He had been so absorbed in his work that he hadn’t even heard her walk up behind him. “Uh, taking an inventory of the food and supplies we have here in the cabin. And doing some calculations.”
She smiled. “You’re in your element doing that, aren’t you?”
“It needs to be done.” He was quiet for a second. “Look, I know this situation is bad. I’m sorry I brought everyone here. I was so sure about this. About Doug. I had a feeling he’d been stretching the truth about things, so I was a little nervous, but we didn’t have a lot of other choices. And when we first got here, when I saw the cabin, I got my hopes up. I was even mad at myself for doubting Doug. But I know now that I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. I should know better than that by now. Doug had lied about this cabin. He had lied about a lot of things, apparently.”
“What do you think we should do now?”
“I don’t know. I think we should all talk about it tonight. I think everyone should get a say in this decision. There’s a lot to consider. If we leave, if we go south, we could get caught in a snowstorm—even the storm of the century. It’s not like we can check the weather reports on our phones. Or we could run into a horde of rippers. Or more Dark Angels. Eventually our luck is going to run out with the Dark Angels.” He took a breath and then continued. “Or we could stay here for the winter. If we do, we’re going to have to learn to hunt and fish before the winter sets in. We’re going to have to drive to the nearest homes and towns, see what we can salvage. If there’s anything left in those places now. There’s a newer-looking Jeep in the garage, so at least we’ll have a more dependable vehicle than the van. That’s about the best answer I can give.”
“What about Avalon?”
“I haven’t forgotten about it.”
“So you believe we should still go there?”
“I don’t know what else to do. Avalon could be our true salvation. There could be a bunker there or a new civilization beginning. It has to be something important or Craig wouldn’t have told me to go to his house to find the directions to Avalon; he wouldn’t have had me risk my life and my family’s lives if he didn’t think it was something worth pursuing.”
“If it’s so important, then maybe we should just go now.”
Ray had the same thought, but he had weighed the risks in his mind, the risks he’d just told her about: the rippers, the Dark Angels, the other survivors, the weather, breaking down. “Yeah, but we should all talk about it. And I think Luke’s right; we should stay here for at least a night or two. We should rest and eat. At least we’re safe here for now.”
Emma frowned, and in that moment Ray thought Emma might not believe they were safe in this cabin.
“I think we should all talk it over tonight,” Ray said. “And then maybe we should vote on it.”
“Every day we stay here, every day we don’t find some kind of medicine, is one more day that Josh’s arm gets more infected.”
“His arm might not even be infected,” Ray argued. “We haven’t even looked at it yet.”
“I’m sure it’s infected. I’m sure it needs some kind of medicine and treatment. I know you don’t like Josh that much—”
“I never said that.”
Emma sighed, not even bothering to respond to Ray.
“He’s a junkie,” Ray whispered, looking back at the doorway to make sure no one had snuck up on them.
“He’s in pain right now,” Emma said. “He needs something for the pain.” She hesitated for just a moment and seemed to be staring at him from behind her dark glasses. “It’s more than just that, isn’t it?”
Ray shook his head no even though she couldn’t see what he was doing. The truth was that Josh reminded him of his little brother Freddie, the little brother Ray couldn’t save from addiction, but he didn’t want to tell her that.
As if Josh knew they were talking about him, he called to them from the living room. “Ray! Come here. You need to see this.”
CHAPTER 45
Luke
Luke was coming down the stairs when he heard Josh calling for Ray. Josh was by the living room window between the front wall of the living room and the fireplace, the window that looked out onto the parking area where their van was parked and the free-standing garage beyond it.
“You need to see this,” Josh had just said, but he didn’t sound scared or shocked—he sounded excited. Still, Luke’s hand twitched, ready to draw his weapon from the shoulder holster.
Luke made it down the stairs by the time Ray and Emma came into the living room. Mike was already there, staring at the window like he was trying to guess what Josh was alerting everyone about.
“What’s wrong?” Ray asked.
They were all gathered around Josh now. He stood by the window with a mischievous smile, the drapes pulled apart. Luke looked past Josh at the window, trying to spot a threat out there. Ray had his leather-bound notebook clenched in one hand, a pen in the other.
“It’s this window,” Josh said. “Look at it. Do you see what’s different about it?”
Ray glanced at the window and then his dark eyes darted back to Josh. He frowned like he was losing his patience quickly.
“Just get to the point,” Luke told Josh before Ray exploded. They were all disappointed and short-tempered right now. Soon they would all be at each other’s throats, and Josh’s little performance—most likely fueled by opioids—probably wasn’t going to help matters much.
“This window doesn’t open,” Josh said.
They were all silent, all staring at him.
“A window that doesn’t open at all,” Josh said, like he was repeating the punchline of a joke until they got it.
Josh hurried past the fireplace to the window on that side. He pulled the drapes open, letting in the daylight through the tinted glass. “I’ve just checked all of these windows down here. None of them open.”
“So they don’t open,” Luke said.
“Who puts windows in their house that don’t open?” Josh asked with that smile still on his face.
Ray sighed. Luke could tell he was getting frustrated quickly after being pulled away from whatever task he’d been doing to entertain the ramblings of a dr
ug addict.
Josh seemed to be able to tell he was losing them. He darted over to the window beside the front door and pulled the drapes open. “This guy, Ray’s friend, was some kind of doomsday prepper, right?” He looked at Ray, waiting for a confirmation.
Ray nodded quickly, his mouth a tight line, his eyes narrowed.
“Okay. So this guy spends a lot of money building this cabin out in the middle of nowhere. A doomsday prepper. But the place doesn’t seem to be a fortress. Except for the front and back doors.” Josh moved over to the front door and put a hand on it. “Solid steel doors that could probably withstand a bomb blast. And these logs have probably been reinforced with steel rods inside of them, like rebar through concrete blocks. And they’ve been treated with something on the outside. You guys didn’t smell that smell on the front porch?”
Luke nodded. He had smelled a faint chemical odor when he had first stepped onto the front porch.
“I’d be willing to bet that the logs have been treated with some kind of fire retardant,” Josh said. “Even if they weren’t treated, it would take forever for a fire to burn through a log wall.”
Luke glanced at Ray who seemed suddenly interested in what Josh was saying now.
“If this place is fortified, which it seems to be,” Josh continued, “then why aren’t there bars on the windows?”
No one answered Josh’s question.
“I’ve worked on a lot of construction jobs,” Josh said. “We worked on this mansion in West Palm Beach, and the owner had windows like these installed, bullet-proof glass set in steel frames with a transparent film in between the panes of glass. Those windows could withstand hurricane-force winds, bullets, hell, maybe even a bomb blast like the doors. The windows are tinted on the outside so you can’t see into the cabin even with the lights on.”
Ray seemed intrigued but not completely sold yet.
“And now we’re getting to some kind of point, right?” Luke asked.
“You said this guy was a prepper,” Josh said, looking at Ray now. “And he was. It might not have looked like it at first, but when you inspect things more closely, this place is a fortress.”
They were all quiet for a moment.
“And I haven’t even seen the basement yet,” Josh said.
“There’s nothing down there,” Ray told him. “No food. No supplies.”
“Let’s take a look,” Josh said.
*
A few minutes later they all gathered in the basement. Josh looked at the water heater and the A/C and heating unit. He traced the wires and pipes from the units up to the ceiling, following them along the low basement ceiling. “There are a lot of wires and pipes that go up and out down here. More than there should be.”
Josh spotted the electric breaker box and hurried over to it.
“I already checked that,” Luke told him.
Josh ignored Luke and opened the metal door, studying the rows of breakers inside for a moment, tracing wires that came out of the box and up to the ceiling. “See where these wires are going?” he asked.
No one answered.
“They’re dummy wires,” Josh said with a smile. “Probably not hooked up to anything.” He studied another group of wires running along the basement ceiling, then he followed the wires over to the counter with the sinks in it, then down to a corner. He crawled under the counter, pushing thick cobwebs out of the way and rummaging around for a moment.
Luke heard Josh clicking something under there.
Josh crawled back out with a smile. “He’s got another breaker box underneath there. The real one. It’s hidden pretty good. That other panel box isn’t even real.”
Luke could hear the sounds of the water heater and furnace starting up, soft whooshing sounds, the distant and faint sounds of water flowing through pipes somewhere, sounds that used to be familiar in houses and buildings, sounds he had taken for granted all these years. They used to be background noise, but now these sounds were the sweetest music.
“There’s a solar pump for the well,” Josh said looking around again, studying the piping along the walls and ceilings now. “Has to be outside somewhere.”
“I turned on the valves under the sink in the kitchen,” Luke said. “But the water never came out.”
Again, Josh followed the maze of pipes and wires across the ceilings and then along the walls. A moment later he squeezed down into a little crawlspace between the AC system and water heater. “There’s a main shutoff valve down here,” he called out from down in the crawlspace. He backed out of the crawlspace with cobwebs stuck to his hair “Water should be on now.”
Luke heard more sounds of water running through the PVC and copper pipes along the ceiling.
Josh was beaming like a hero.
“Your arm,” Mike said.
For just a second Josh didn’t seem to know what Mike was talking about, but then he looked down at his bandaged right forearm. It was bleeding again, the strips of cloth wrapped around it soaked with blood, drops of the blood dripping down to the concrete floor of the basement.
CHAPTER 46
Ray
Ray and Luke got Josh upstairs and into the guest bathroom. There was only one small window in the bathroom, and like every other window in the house, it had dark curtains drawn over it. They flipped on the overhead light now that the electricity was working. Ray hoped that even though the windows were tinted and the curtains were drawn that the light wouldn’t somehow seep out from the windows into the late afternoon.
Josh had popped two more pills, waiting for them to hit his system. He knew as well as everyone else what was coming soon, the inevitable, the knife wound in his forearm was going to have to be stitched up.
Ray and Luke went into the bathroom with Josh while Emma and Mike waited down in the living room. Ray still didn’t want to sugarcoat things for Mike in this horrible new world they lived in now, a place where Mike was going to have to grow up and become a man too quickly, but he still didn’t think Mike needed to be subjected to what they might have to do to Josh’s arm.
Josh unwrapped the strips of torn T-shirts that he had used as bandages, dropping them into a small wastebasket Ray brought over to the sink. Josh winced as he rolled up the sleeve of his hoodie, peeling the cloth away from the sticky wound. The flesh of his forearm was pale, fish-belly white, and that made the wound seem even more grotesque somehow, the swelling and redness darker and more pronounced. The gash ran along most of his forearm, a long cut but not as deep as Ray had expected it to be, not deep enough to sever muscles, but deep enough to keep bleeding, deep enough to be infected now.
“I’m going to look for some thread and a needle,” Ray told Luke.
“Try to find some superglue if you can,” Luke said. “And some tape. We can use that to close the wound if you can’t find a needle and thread.”
Ray just nodded, happy to be leaving the bathroom, happy to be doing something else instead of looking at that infected, pus-filled wound of Josh’s. He made a list of things in his mind to look for: the needle, thread, the superglue and tape Luke had suggested, maybe more towels or washrags. He wasn’t sure how many of those things he was going to find in this cabin, the place had been so sparely stocked with what seemed to be the barest of necessities.
He grabbed a pillow case in an upstairs bedroom to carry anything he found in it. He stuffed two extra towels and washrags down into the pillow case from the closet in the hall. He went downstairs and checked that bathroom. He opened the medicine cabinet on the wall next to the sink. He found toothpaste, a new pack of razors, mouthwash, two toothbrushes still sealed in the packages, a small bottle of aspirins, but nothing much else they could use. He added the aspirins and mouthwash to the pillow case.
In the drawers under the bathroom sink he found some white adhesive tape and a box of Band-Aids. If he couldn’t find the superglue as Luke had suggested, at least they could try to squeeze the wound shut and tape it together with the Band-Aids and tape.
He checked the spare bedroom downstairs, the office, and finally the kitchen and pantry. He checked the basement once again, going through cabinets that only had a few tools, screws, and nails in them. No superglue or needle and thread. They were going to have to make do with what they had.
They had emptied their backpacks of any supplies and food they’d brought with them when they had brought them inside. Ray found some electrical tape among the supplies; he brought that with him back to the bathroom along with the pillow case of items he’d already collected.
Josh’s wound was cleaned with soap and water now, but the cut still looked ragged and red, the surrounding skin swollen and purple, the edges of the wound puckered. Josh held a washcloth over the wound and there were already spots of blood forming on the washcloth.
Ray handed Luke the Band-Aids and the tape he had found. “We could squeeze the edges of the cut together and try to hold them closed with the Band-Aids and tape.”
Luke shrugged. It was as good as anything else they could do.
Josh winced again as Luke squeezed the long cut together with his fingers. Ray applied the Band-Aids and strips of tape across the squeezed-together wound as quickly as he could. Then he laid down a washcloth and wrapped tape around his forearm, trying not to wrap the tape too tightly, but tight enough to hold the cloth in place.
Ray tore the tape off of the roll and then watched their homemade bandage for any bleeding, waiting for the little red dots of blood to appear on the washcloth like tiny blooming flowers. But no blood came.
“You need to keep your arm as still as possible for the next few days so the cut doesn’t open up again,” Ray told Josh.
Josh just nodded, cradling his arm gingerly.
They had done as much as they could do, but the most serious problem was the infection that had surely started in the wound.