But how will I ever find some place that has power if I do that? he thought.
It was less than forty miles to D.C. The capital had to have something- information, supplies, anything. It was the government’s responsibility to care for the people. They had to have some station set up with supplies, people to talk to, military officials offering assistance, things like that. So Gary folded the map and started on his way, decision made. In four days, he expected answers.
13.
Construction on the wall began immediately, but not without dissent. Craig and his group of naysayers were entirely opposed to building the wall, even after the attack. They argued it would take too long, would be more work than it was worth, and didn’t want to contribute their time and supplies to something that would be useless by the time it was finished, since they expected the power to be restored by then.
Burt heard their arguments calmly and gave them two options. They could either suck it up and help out, or move their families outside the areas zoned for the wall and save their supplies and energies for their own families. Craig was the loudest voice against the wall.
“What right do you have to order me to abandon my home?” he yelled.
“If you aren’t going to contribute to this community, you can leave,” was Burt’s response.
“Who died and made you my boss, hmm? You don’t own my home, I do! You have no business kicking me out!” He shook with rage.
Burt remained calm and reasonable. “I do if you’re going to be a leech on this community and its very limited supplies. You’re more than welcome to stay if you want to contribute.”
Craig lowered his tone and narrowed his eyes at Burt. “You think you’re so smart, do ya? Well, what are you going to do when this ‘community’ collapses on itself, and it’s every man for himself? What then, huh, fearless leader?”
Burt ignored the threat entirely. “What is your decision? We’re starting work on the wall in the morning. Either show up to help, or be gone by then.”
“And what are you going to do if I squat in my house?”
He had a point. Molly wasn’t sure what Burt could do if he decided to just hang around inside his house, steal supplies and otherwise cause problems.
“I’ll be forced to relocate you myself. Please don’t let it come to that. I have better things to do.” Burt turned and walked away, leaving Craig in the middle of a crowd that passed judgment on him with every gaze.
He looked spastically from person to person. “Mark my words, this’ll be the death of you all.” The crowd parted for him so he could storm off.
At the edge of the group, Molly noticed Jimmy watching the scene with a frown on his face. He turned to walk back to his home, and Molly yelled for him.
“Hey! Jimmy!” He kept right on walking. “Jimmy! Wait up!” She caught up to him just a short distance from his house. “Hey,” she said, breathless.
He nodded in response.
“Whaddya think?”
“Not much.”
“Really, Jimmy? Come on! Throw me a bone here! I know you have some kind of opinion on what’s happening with the wall, and Craig, and everything!”
“Yup. Not sure if I wanna share it with you, though.”
Molly looked over to find a mischievous glint in his eye. She smacked him on the arm. “Well, you better get your mind right, ‘cuz I wanna know. It’s dark enough around here without you trying to pull the covers over my eyes!”
He laughed. “I think Craig is gonna be a problem, no matter what he decides.”
Molly had the same feeling. “What about the wall? Don’t you think the power will be on by the time we’re done with it?”
“No, I don’t. And what does it matter if it is? Gives folks a chance to feel like they’re doing something to help, to protect themselves. Why take that away?”
Molly hadn’t thought of that. “I suppose if it is back on in the next few weeks, we can always disassemble it and reuse the supplies as we need them.”
“Yup.”
They stopped at the end of Jimmy’s driveway. “It just seems like such a permanent solution.”
Jimmy turned toward Molly and put his hand on her shoulder. “Honey, we’re looking at a permanent problem. The world is changed, and whether for the worse or better remains to be seen.”
Molly harrumphed at that. “Isn’t there any good news coming from that radio of yours?”
He frowned, remaining tight-lipped.
She sighed. “Jimmy, why save that thing if you’re not going to tell anyone you have it, and what they’re saying?”
He looked her in the eye. “To be ready.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant by that. She shifted her weight from leg to leg. “Well, at any rate, see ya tomorrow at the wall!”
Jimmy turned and waved as he headed up his driveway.
In the morning, they all gathered to begin the wall’s construction. Craig had decided to leave, and had done so quietly, but Molly feared it wasn’t the last they’d see of him.
They were lucky that the neighborhood was fairly small, and they calculated they would need to create a square that was about a mile long on each side, four miles of wall total. They estimated a week for each side of the wall, totaling a month of construction.
They sent messengers to the outlying, more rural homes to let them know that they would be on the outside of the wall, and they were more than welcome to move in and settle on the inside. Most said no. They were used to being on their own, and weren’t interested in moving in with strangers. Molly couldn’t blame them, but she was afraid it was a choice they would regret before too long.
At first, everyone in town was designated to gather supplies. They did that for two days straight. They gathered rocks from the beach and cut trees from the nearby tree farms. Although most of those were palm trees, they still worked for good solid planks of wood once they were cut down. Molly carried rocks mostly. She would collect as many big rocks as she could in the wheelbarrow she was given and bring them back. Round trip, it took about forty-five minutes, but she could gather a fair amount at once. Over the course of those two days she made about twenty round trips to the beach. During the trips, she couldn’t help but wonder about Cindy and what she was doing at that moment. Was she safe? How was her family? Was her community doing the same thing they were? Molly hoped so. Cindy lived too far away to go visit, so all Molly could do was hope her dear friend was all right.
By the end of two days gathering supplies Molly was exhausted, but there was no time to quit. Construction began immediately.
It had been sixteen days since the Blackout, and even though no Wanderers had been seen since the night Kyle was murdered, they were wary. There was a constant sense of unease, and they were all in a hurry to get the wall finished for that added security.
The town celebrated Halloween the night before the official construction started. Some of them just happened to have candy on hand, and some didn’t have anything to spare, but just wanted to see the children in their costumes. They agreed no one should be out wandering after dark, so the kids started knocking around four and quit by six-thirty. Molly felt it was nice to have a small taste of something normal. It served as a reminder that life does go on, that traditions remain despite disaster and tragedy.
But, much like any holiday, it was back to work the next day. They labored for the next two weeks on the wall. They mixed mortar from the nearby hardware store, they dug the foundation, and they assembled it under the direction of some of the contractors who lived in the neighborhood.
Then, it happened.
It was the middle of the night when a group of four Wanderers came into the neighborhood. They had stationed people around the area to guard the supplies just in case, and the alarm they raised cut through the night like thunder.
Molly was on her feet at once with the gun Burt had given her. Dug jumped up, growling, and Sally ran to hide under the bed. It was the first time Dug had demonstrated such ag
gressive behavior, and Molly wasn’t sure how to react. She ran for the door and Dug followed.
“No Dug, you need to stay here. I don’t want you to get hurt,” she told him and gave him the signal for ‘stay’. He wasn’t having it, though, and stayed right on her heels. There wasn’t much time to react, so she ended up letting him follow.
Once she entered the darkness, she had a hard time perceiving what was going on. It seemed like the commotion was a few streets over. There wasn’t any immediate danger to Molly or Dug. She was tempted to go back inside and wait it out, but she knew that if she were the one in trouble she wouldn’t want everyone to hide out and let her deal with it herself. So, she padded as quietly as possible toward the commotion.
By the time Dug and Molly arrived, everything seemed to be under control. She saw Burt and ran to him. “What happened?” Dug changed his attitude immediately upon seeing Burt and became friendly and joyous once again.
Burt patted Dug on the head distractedly. “We were attacked. Three Wanderers came and tried to take some of our supplies. Seemed like when they realized it wasn’t food they moved on. Betty said she thought she saw four at first, but there’s been no sign of a straggler.”
“Did they get any of our food?” Molly asked wearily. Most families were still keeping their food in their own homes, which would lead the Wanderers to their front doors.
“I don’t know yet. I hope not.” He spoke into the darkness, never really making eye contact with Molly, but constantly scanning for additional dangers.
“Well, what can I do?”
“The best thing? Probably go back to your home and make sure it’s secure. I can send someone with you if you’d like.”
“No, I’ll be OK. The original attack was so far from our street, I think we’ll be fine.”
Molly walked back home feeling relieved, and hoping the incident remained minor.
But as she approached the front walk she could tell something wasn’t right. Dug bristled and the hair on his neck stood on end. He growled loudly and she readied her gun, a small hunting rifle Burt had taught her to use.
The door was open slightly, and she pushed it the rest of the way with the barrel of the gun. It was dark inside, and Molly couldn’t tell what was a shadow and what was actual movement. At first, she pointed the gun wildly from corner to corner of the room. Then she took a deep breath and slowly moved farther into the house.
Everything was silent, save for Dug’s low growl. He pointed his nose to the air, whimpered and took off towards the bedroom. “Dug!” Molly hissed, but he didn’t listen, so she took off after him.
She rounded the corner to the bedroom and the smell of blood hit her like a ton of bricks. The only light she had was the moonlight shining through the window, so she carefully walked to the window and opened the curtains to try and shed more light on the room.
In the center of the floor by the bed Molly saw Dug bathed in pale light. He was standing over a grisly scene. A pool of blood and clumps of fur were all that remained. Molly sucked in a breath. “Sally…” she breathed.
Molly grabbed the gun and darted back out the way she came. Out in the street she scanned both ways for movement. Any sign of her beloved, and probably horribly injured, pet. But she had disappeared. Molly could hear Dug howling from inside the house. She fell to her knees in the street and cried. She had left her there alone.
It’s my fault she died so horribly, Molly thought. They probably wanted her for the meat, but I’d rather they starved.
Jimmy was making his way back to his own home after helping defend the supplies when he stumbled upon Molly in the middle of the street. He ran to her. “Molly, what’s happened?” He held his gun up defensively and scanned the horizon.
“Sal-ly,” she hiccupped. “They-killed-her.”
“Oh.” He didn’t have any pets of his own and didn’t know how to relate to this outpouring of emotion over a cat, so he cut to what he thought was more important. “What about your food? Did they get any of it?”
She thought, hiccupping every few moments. I didn’t check my food. I was so worried about Sally I didn’t look to see if they’d gotten any of my food. A new level of panic rose, and she sprang to her feet and ran to the house. Dug was still howling upstairs and Jimmy frowned at the sound. Molly went to the garage, where she was keeping her food. She figured it was an unconventional place and hoped it would discourage thieves, because they would have to search for it.
She’d put locks on the cabinets, hoping that would deter thieves even further. Locks take time to break. Lucky for Molly, the locks were undisturbed. She sighed heavily and Jimmy put his hand on her shoulder. “Well, there’s a blessing.”
“Yes, well. I had to sacrifice my cat to get it.” She turned to look at him. His eyes were big, green and full of uncertainty. He was single, and not used to dealing with emotionally unstable women. “They killed her in my bedroom! That’s were Dug is.”
He put his arm around her and led her out of the garage. “I’ll stay here tonight if it’ll make you feel better. I can sleep on the couch, OK? In the morning, I’ll help ya clean up.”
“I can’t sleep in there tonight, Jimmy!”
“Don’t ya have a guest room you can use?”
“I s’pose,” she pouted.
“Look, it’ll be OK. You’ve still got all of your food, and hey, you’ve got Dug.” Dug howled upstairs. “It could’ve been worse. What if you’d been here? What do you think they would’ve done to you?”
“I sure would’ve made it harder for them to hurt Sally.”
He shook his head, seeing this was a losing battle. “Why don’t you go get in bed? Hashing it out isn’t going to change anything.”
That night, she sobbed into her pillow as Dug lay by her side. Though her sobs, she asked Dug, “Where is your father? Why isn’t he here? He would never have let this happen.”
Dug only whimpered a reply as she soaked the pillow with tears.
14.
It was a long four days to D.C. The trek took him far from the coast, and Gary had run out of food by the time he reached the city. It was a wet few days though, so at least he wasn’t wanting for water.
The situation in D.C. seemed similar to Baltimore at first. But soon Gary saw it was different. Horribly different. As in Baltimore, the power was clearly off, and the place had been looted right down to the building studs, but there was no one. It was an absolute ghost town.
Garbage and debris littered the streets and sidewalks that wove their way through the capital city. Gary’s lone footsteps echoed off buildings and disappeared into nothingness. No aid for the country’s citizens. No information for those left. Nothing.
He kicked a small rock a few feet and listened to it bounce along the street. When he caught up with it, he picked it up and examined it.
What is going on? Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve such abandonment? He flung the rock at the nearest window. It was already broken and went sailing through, landing in what remained of the storefront. It wasn’t very satisfying, to tell the truth.
Deflated, he decided to fish the river near the Washington Mall for a bit. He tripped and fell spectacularly on the way to the riverbank. He clenched his teeth and stood up, brushing the front of his pants off, not having much luck with the mud and grass stains that found a new home on his clothes.
While Gary was readying the fishing line, he cut his hand open with the hook.
That’s it. I’ve had enough. He stood up, picked up the pack and flung it as far as it would go. What was left of his supplies spilled out as the pack arched over the field. He fell to his knees and cried while he watched it fall. But there was no one to see him cry. No one to comfort him. No one to answer his questions. Gary lost track of time while he knelt there, tears streaming into his newly-grown beard. He finally allowed himself to mourn the losses of the last few weeks.
When the tears stopped, he took a deep breath and stood. He gathered everything that
had spilled out of the pack and collected the bag from the other side of the field. Then he renewed his effort to catch some fish, and made a fire in a grassy field overlooking the Washington Monument. He feasted on fresh fish – his first real meal in about thirty-two hours. As twilight settled in, exhaustion overwhelmed him. He found a secluded spot near the Lincoln Memorial, and was asleep before he could even lay his head down.
Gary felt something poking him. He opened one eye, and couldn’t see anything. A light was shining in his face, with nothing but darkness beyond it. He brought his hands to his face to shield his eyes. “What the hell?”
“Don’t move.” A nondescript male voice commanded.
He froze. Shit. What now?
“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to get some sleep. I was having pretty good luck until you fellas came along.”
“Sir, the only thing his pack has that could be considered a weapon is a multi-purpose knife. Everything else appears to be simple supplies.” That voice seemed younger than the first, but it was hard for Gary’s startled mind to know for sure. The light made it impossible to see.
“Not a threat?”
“No, sir. Not immediately.”
“Copy that.”
His pack landed roughly in his lap. “Move along now. We’ve got orders to shoot on sight anyone who doesn’t belong here. Consider this your one and only warning.”
“But,” Gary paused. “What? I mean, where can I go? Is everywhere like this? How will I know where’s safe?”
The men didn’t answer. He watched the light become dimmer as they backed away. He never saw them clearly, just shadows and silhouettes. He thought he caught the outline of a gun on more than one of them, and helmets on them all.
The military, he thought. It’s worse than I thought.
When he felt like they were far enough away, he threw his pack over his shoulder and started trying to navigate the darkness. He still felt like they were watching him, but he didn’t see any sign of them by the light of the moon.
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