by Justin Bell
“Mom?” Winnie called out desperately. “I don’t like this, Mom!”
“They’re on this side, too!” Phil shouted, glancing out a window on the opposite side. “They’re everywhere!”
“Just drive through ‘em!” Max shouted, but Rhonda twisted around and glared at him.
“They’re just people,” she replied. “Sure, they’re desperate and misguided, but they’re still just people. I’m not going to run them down!”
Two men climbed up onto the hood, scrambling hand over hand, and one of them had a rock clenched in his fist. He raised it, leaving it hovering over the windshield, about to crash it down through.
“Mom, c’mon!” Max shouted. “Floor it! We can’t just sit here!”
“I won’t kill these people!” Rhonda barked back.
“They’re going to kill us!” Max shouted back.
Winnie shrieked a quiet, shrill shriek as a crowd collected at her window and began slamming at it with clenched fists.
“They’re going to break in here!” shouted Max.
“Just take it easy,” Rhonda said, and touched the accelerator slightly, sending the van inching forward. She hammered the horn and blasted the surrounding area with the noise, and a few of the crowd jumped, but nobody truly dispersed.
“We need to get out of here,” Max said.
The van inched forward a bit more. The crowd around the vehicle grew and thickened, people closing in from all directions. Brad shoved his way forward, squeezing between the two front seats.
“What are you doing?” Rhonda asked, turning toward him as he moved over Greer, stretching toward the passenger’s side window. “Bradley, what are you doing?”
“Getting us out of this!” Brad thumbed the window down and threw the top half of his body out. Rhonda could just see him lifting something in his hand, and she knew what was about to happen moments before it did.
Swift, loud gunshots blasted just outside the van, a quick series of nine-millimeter pops, the darkness just outside the vehicle bursting with rapid light. Refugees screamed and shouted, yelling and scattering, drawing backwards and ducking behind the vehicle, trying to turn and move away from Brad as he stretched out of the window, two hands clutched around the handle of a Beretta as it fired. Rhonda saw one shot careen off the hood of the van, blasting a spark as the bullet whined in ricochet and spun off into the night. The entire crowd converged near the front of the van seemed to jump in unison and frantically start backing away, peeling apart like the tide of the red sea before Moses.
“Hold on, Brad!” Rhonda shouted and as the crowd momentarily dispersed, she slammed the accelerator, sending the van lurching forward. Several of the refugees tried to scramble away, with at least two of them being struck and knocked aside by the momentum of the vehicle, but nobody was pushed under the tires and she didn’t believe anyone had died even as the vehicle charged forward with another desperate lurch, leaving many of the huddled masses stumbling forward onto the pavement where the van used to be.
A rock struck the roof and bounced away, echoing inside the vehicle, then a second rock skittered harmlessly off the back door.
Two smaller strikes followed, but then silence reigned as the dark van was swallowed by the night and drawn away from the angry and violent crowd who had threatened to destroy it.
***
Moments later, the cries and thumping fists of the crowd had faded to little more than scant echoes of memory as the van hurtled through the night along the Ohio Turnpike.
“That was a pretty dangerous game you just played, Brad,” Rhonda said from the front seat, glancing back at the boy.
“Sorry, Mrs. Fraser,” Brad replied flatly, not looking at her.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Max asked, coming to his friend’s defense.
“It did,” Rhonda replied, “but people could have ended up dead. It’s easy to forget that there are still living, breathing human beings out in this world. When we run across them, eventually it would be nice if we didn’t try to kill them.”
“Maybe you ought to tell them that,” Max snapped.
Rhonda shifted her backwards gaze toward her son, but he was already looking away, glancing out into the dark nothing of night outside his window.
The van continued on its trek down the straight path of Interstate 90, leaving the glowing husk of Toledo in its rearview mirror. Gradually the crusty smell of burnt buildings and spent weaponry faded from inside the van as well, leaving them with no residue and no lingering after-effects of their trip so close to yet another scene of Armageddon.
“Winnie, you awake, sweetie?” Rhonda asked her daughter, still sitting in the second row next to Tamar.
“Yeah, Mom,” Winnie replied, her voice low and faint, almost disinterested.
“Everything okay?” Rhonda asked. “Ever since you guys made that supply run, you’ve been pretty quiet.” She caught a brief glance from Tamar and her eyes locked onto his for a breath before he glanced away.
“Things are fine, Mom,” Winnie replied.
“Did something happen?”
“Doesn’t it always?”
Rhonda didn’t reply. It was hard to argue this point with her daughter. In the new world that they had all suddenly inherited, the line between right and wrong had become more than just a blur, it had drifted to fog.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“How long until we get to Cleveland?” Max asked, purposefully changing the subject. He could sense his sister’s discomfort, and for some reason unknown to anyone, he decided to take a measure of pity on her.
“About an hour or so,” Rhonda replied. Without warning the passenger seat jerked wildly, Greer lifting himself up, not quite into a seated position. He turned toward Rhonda, his eyes wild and mouth working to form words Rhonda could not translate.
“Clancy?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”
“I… the colors. Do you see those colors?” He thrashed backwards, his face twisting and contorting as he pummeled the back of his skull against the seat back. His shoulders tensed into rigid balls of muscle as his throat clenched and his jaw clamped together, threatening to split the skin at his cheek.
“He’s having a seizure!” Rebecca shouted from a row back, and pushed herself up, wincing as her shoulder stabbed pain down her left side. She made her way around the second row and squeezed in next to Greer, placing her good hand on his shoulder to try to calm the shaking.
“Rhonda, we need to move!” she shouted as Greer started to sit again, his face threatening to peel away from the bone underneath, then whirled backwards, slamming his head into the headrest.
“Easy,” Rebecca said, trying to sound soothing. “Take it easy, Clancy!”
Greer didn’t speak, he only clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, struggling to sit upright, his own body railing against him.
“Hurts,” he managed to growl. “Hurts bad.”
“I know,” Rebecca replied. “We know. Hold it tight, okay, tough guy?” She wrapped her fingers around his left arm as he clenched his muscles and pulled upright, straining against the seatbelt. Rhonda didn’t talk, didn’t look at him, didn’t even think. She slammed her foot down, ramping the van up to nearly 80 miles per hour. Thankfully the stretch of turnpike was clear, not just of cars, but of refugees as well. If another horde of rambling escapees had happened by the road now, she was sure to plow straight through them.
“Clancy!” Brad shouted from the second row. “Talk to us, Clancy, please!”
“I’m okay, Bradley,” Greer said through clenched teeth. “Don’t worry.” His seizing had stopped, seemingly by pure force of will, as every muscle seemed to be pulled taught and angular, as if his body was battling against itself. Rebecca gently pushed him back against the seat, leveraging against his left shoulder and his eyes met hers quickly. She saw something frightening in his eyes, a sense of awareness of what was to come if they didn’t ge
t to a hospital quickly. She saw resignation there. Acceptance. An eagerness to stop fighting.
“Don’t stop fighting,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare.”
He nodded softly as the van charged through the ink black night, a single headlight reaching through the darkness, looking for someone to save them.
Chapter Five
It had started out like so many of their other conversations, especially as she had grown older and braver, more aware of where she was and what kind of person she was growing up to be. Her parents had raised her to be capable, powerful, and her own strong woman and in doing so had forced her hand. Although she had been home-schooled her entire life and sheltered from what her parents described as a “twisted unreality,” Rhonda had begun to find her place in Brisbee, Colorado.
Her occasional trips downtown had brought her to the public library, and once there, Rhonda’s mind had been truly opened, and as the months crested past her eighteenth birthday, the decision had been made.
“I don’t understand,” Jodi Krueller replied, her eyes narrowing toward her only daughter.
“I’m leaving,” Rhonda repeated, the speech long practiced, but still coming out raw and unsteady. “I’m going to the University of Colorado.”
“How?” Gerard demanded. Her father stood tall and wide, his massive lumberjack arms crossed over his thick chest, eyes peering out from over the bulging hair-covered forearms.
“I applied. I was accepted.”
“You didn’t even go to school!” Gerard barked.
“You home-schooled me,” Rhonda replied, her voice tight and fragile, but not broken. Not yet. “You had to fill out that state paperwork to keep the government off your backs. They accepted those credits.”
“How are you even going to think about paying for this?” Jodi said, almost yelling. “You’re gonna get caught up in student loans and be a prisoner of the feds for your whole life! We won’t allow it.”
“I’m eighteen years old,” Rhonda replied defiantly. “I can make my own choices. Make my own mistakes. This is what I’ve decided to do.”
“It ain’t happenin’, Rhonda,” Gerard replied harshly, his voice a gravel growl. “It just ain’t.”
“There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” she replied.
“Like hell there’s not,” he snarled and started taking a step forward. Jodi intercepted him, placing a calming hand on his chest, becoming a barrier between him and his daughter.
“After everything we’ve done for you,” Jodi said. “Everything we prepared you for. We could have lived our own life, but we devoted the last two decades to preparing you for what’s gonna happen in the world.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Rhonda said, rolling her eyes. “This paranoia garbage has been a waste of all our times. While other kids my age are getting jobs and learning important life lessons, you’ve been trying to convince me I needed to learn to field strip weapons and kill people to survive. That’s not our world. It never will be!”
“You think you’re so smart because you go down to that library,” Gerard hissed. “You’re not. You’re not as smart as you think you are, child. You have no idea what could be coming.”
“So what would you have me do?” Rhonda asked. “Live here forever? Learn to kill for all of my meals? Not worry about pesky things like math, science, or English and just concentrate on killing, gutting, and living off the wilderness?”
“Worked fine for us all our lives,” Jodi replied. “What? You too good for the Krueller life all of a sudden?”
Rhonda turned, shaking her head. “It’s not about being too good for anything, Mom. It’s about having a choice. It’s about what I want to do, not what you feel like I have to do.”
“Life ain’t about want, kid, life is about doing what you have to do,” Gerard interjected.
"Maybe it was a hundred years ago,” Rhonda replied. “It’s not anymore. The world is a different place now. More civilized.”
“Oh, we ain’t civilized? That’s what you’re telling me now, is it?”
“Stop twisting this around, Dad! Don’t turn this into me versus you. That’s not what this is.”
“It’s startin’ to feel that way!”
“Mom, come on,” Rhonda said, turning toward Jodi. “Help me explain.”
“I’m not helpin’ you explain anything, Rhonda,” Jodi replied. “You’re diggin’ this here hole yourself. You get to try to unshovel that dirt.”
“There’s no dirt to unshovel!” Rhonda yelled. “I’m making a choice. I’m making my choice. I’m old enough to do it, and that’s what I’m doing, whether you like it or not.”
Her parents stood there, glaring at her, looking at once both offended and disappointed. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, and Jodi turned away, running a hand through her long hair.
“You’re gonna kill your mother, do you realize that?” her father asked.
“This is what I want to do, Dad. You’ve raised me to be strong enough to make my own choices, even if they’re not popular. This is exactly what you’ve raised me to do.”
“I haven’t raised no capitalist snot who willingly goes in debt to the government just to further some useless education. You ain’t my daughter, girl. Not by a long shot.”
“If that’s the way you feel, then I guess you’re not my father either. You and Mom can just go ahead and rot in—”
Gerard was a large man, but he could move quickly, and he did, stepping in toward his daughter, his hand lifting by his left ear, then whirling down toward her. Rhonda didn’t step back or move away, she simply shifted her weight and lifted her left hand, blocking the strike, cracking his wrist with the curved edge of her knife-hand.
Gerard shouted and drew his hand back, and Rhonda stepped in toward him and swung another punch, driving her fist into his solar plexus. Wind burst from his lips as his knees buckled, and he stumbled backwards, falling to his knees, barely catching himself with one outstretched hand.
“Please don’t!” Jodi shouted, turning back to her. “If you have to leave then leave, you ungrateful little girl. But don’t make it any worse than it already is.”
Rhonda glowered at them both, finally looking down at her father as he lifted his gaze at her. She could feel the power coursing through her limbs, the strength that she felt with the knowledge that she could defend herself, even against her own father.
“You got one,” Gerard replied through clenched teeth. “You sure as hell ain’t gonna get a second, kid. If you’re goin’, then go. Don’t you ever come back.”
Rhonda stood framed in the doorway, the backpack hanging tight off one shoulder. She couldn’t believe that she’d managed to pack all of her essentials into a single backpack, but it was there, pressed against her spine, the strap tugging at one shoulder. Her eyes flashed to her mother’s, then back to her father, and for an instant she felt the swift horse kick of regret. Part of her had hoped they would appreciate and understand what she wanted. They’d be happy that she’d made a tough choice and was determined to see it through.
Her emotions raged through her as she stood there, conflicted. At that point she hated her father, hated everything he stood for and everything he had put her through…
… but she had the strength to stand her ground. She had the confidence and power to fight back, even against her dad, and she knew well that he was the one who had imbued her with that strength. With that confidence and that power. He’d helped make her who she was, and she was repaying that by punching him in the stomach and walking out on both of them.
“Mom,” she said, her face loosening. “Dad. I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to go this way.”
Jodi leaned over and helped lift the hefty bulk of Gerard Krueller back to his tree trunk legs.
“Will you… will you forgive me? Eventually? I need to do this.”
Gerard’s eyes pinched, but his mouth stayed flat and straight. There was no angry snarl, no furious frown, just a rigid stone carving of h
er father’s face, devoid of emotion. He turned and walked from the room, vanishing down one of the rear hallways.
“You’re making a difficult decision,” Jodi replied softly. “Your father… he will understand. Eventually.”
Rhonda stepped toward her mother, who met her halfway, their hips brushing the couch that separated the entrance hallway from the living room. They embraced.
“I love you, Rhonda,” her mother whispered. “We just want what’s best for you.”
Rhonda nodded, but didn’t reply. All of a sudden, she felt like she couldn’t. Her throat was full of something, something that made it hard to breathe and impossible to talk.
Jodi stepped back, keeping her hands on Rhonda’s arms. “Please, girl, don’t forget what we taught you. Don’t unlearn what you’ve learned the past eighteen years. It may feel foolish, but these are skills that will help in life, okay?”
Rhonda nodded. Jodi leaned in one more time and pecked her daughter lightly on the cheek and Rhonda turned away, walking out the door, not realizing that the next time she returned to the cabin would be on the day that the end of the world began.
***
Dark smeared away to light and Rhonda blinked as she drove, scattering away the remnants of memories, sending them whirling away in a swift ephemeral tornado of things that were, but would never be again.
Her eyes focused on a shape in the horizon, a series of polygonal rectangles, bracketed in… bracketed in light? Actual, artificial light? Rhonda’s heart jumped as they drew closer, angling the van from the turnpike and steering it toward the vision. Who would have thought in the 21st century that seeing something as simple as lights illuminating a structure after dark would create a near-magical sense of wonder within her, a feeling of otherworldly majesty, something that no longer felt natural.
“Is that it?” shouted Rebecca, pushing herself up further forward. “Is that the Cleveland Clinic?”