by Skylar Finn
Ethan was obsessed with the idea of being able to instantly regress back in time and live off the land. It was a recent acquisition of his, purchased shortly before I met him. I hadn’t understood then what the ranch truly was to Ethan: it was his homestead, his bug-out location in the event of an emergency. He hadn’t described it to me that way, of course. He later confessed that he censored himself a great deal in the early days of our knowing each other. He was apprehensive, he said, that I’d think he was crazy.
Going to the ranch always did seem like traveling back in time, but I’d always liked that about it. Of course, it had always felt like an escape from the noise of the modern world. Now, we didn’t have a choice.
“Do you know what you’ll do here?” I asked. “There might be people who will try to break in. The two of you will be vulnerable here alone.”
“We’ll be fine.” Her face was illuminated in the beam of the flashlight. “I appreciate your concern, but my nana still has a few tricks up her sleeve. As I mentioned, it’s an old house. We have a bomb shelter out back from the fifties.” She shined her flashlight in my direction. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Ethan has a ranch upstate,” I said.
“I won’t forget this,” she said.
“I owed you one,” I said.
I felt saddened and worried, on top of the worry I already felt for my family and myself. On her own, she might have been fine. She could have come with us, or escaped on foot or by bike. But to be saddled with someone elderly and infirm under the current state of affairs seemed like a death sentence, bomb shelter or not.
I shook myself of these morbid thoughts as I drove up the street. There was nothing I could do for them now. Even going this far out of my way had been a risk.
The shopping center that held the costume store was pitch black. I drove behind it as I had at the pharmacy. Now that it was dark, something about entering a premise inhabited by people had become a terrifying prospect. I reminded myself of the Governor, tucked securely in the holster under my jacket.
Aside from the distant crack of gunshots echoing from a nearby intersection, I felt like I was entering a ghost town. I could see through the glass of the back door that the store was pitch black. For the first time, I felt doubt that Ethan and Grace were here. Why remain in a darkened costume store in the middle of the end of the world? There were no supplies here and they were unarmed and vulnerable to anyone that entered the premises. Even if he had known I would come for them, how long could he have afforded to wait?
I pushed the door open, my hand in my jacket. The shop was not only dark, but silent. The only light came from a lit jack-o’-lantern on the front counter of the store. It glowed eerily and I stared at it, momentarily transfixed with fear.
Behind it, I could just make out the silhouette of a shadowy figure. As I watched, I heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked.
“Don’t move,” said the shadow.
“Don’t shoot! Please. I’m unarmed.” It was a lie, but he didn’t need to know that.
When he heard my voice, he lowered his weapon. A woman alone and unarmed wasn’t much of a threat, to his line of thought. “What are you doing out here alone?” he demanded. “Are you crazy?”
“I’m looking for my husband and daughter,” I said. “I have a picture of them. I’m just going to reach into my pocket and get it. Is that okay?”
“Real slow,” he said. “No funny business.”
I pulled out my wallet. I reached for the picture I kept of Ethan and Grace, then realized he wouldn’t be able to see it. “Do you have a flashlight? One that works?” I didn’t want to take mine out if he didn’t. He had a gun, too. I wasn’t willing to enter a stand-off over a flashlight, but I wasn’t willing to potentially lose it, either.
“Hold on.” He reached into his pocket. I heard the click of a lighter and a small flame appeared in the darkness. I held up the photograph.
“This guy? He just left,” he said. “Are you Charlie?”
“Yes, that’s me,” I said. I nearly wept with relief.
“He told me to tell you that he and the little girl were going to the elementary school, where they’re setting up sort of a temporary shelter?” he said. “Some Red Cross people came by about an hour ago. He thought it would be safer for them there.”
“Did they tell you what was going on?” I asked him.
“They were pretty vague about it, to be perfectly honest with you,” he said. “Me, I have my suspicions. Bunch of people in my shop getting last-minute stuff for Halloween. Power went out, people went out to their cars, but nobody’s would start. Phones stopped working. Folks started to panic. A bunch of us decided to hole up in the grocery store next door. I went out to my truck to get my gun and the carton of cigarettes I keep hidden in the back, so my wife won’t know that I smoke, y’know?”
I wondered where he was going with this. I was already edging for the door, more than aware that the safety was still off on his loaded shotgun.
“For trading purposes, see?”
“Ah,” I said. “I see.”
“How are you planning to get to the elementary school?” he asked.
“On foot,” I said immediately.
“By yourself? Unarmed? In the dark?”
“I need to get to my family,” I said. “I’ll have to take my chances.”
“Well, that’s mighty brave of you, ma’am, but that’s an awfully big chance you’re taking,” he said.
Of course I had no intention of doing any such thing. I also had no intention of allowing a well-armed man to discover that I had a drivable vehicle just out of his line of sight. Even with the Jeep, I was daunted by the thought of making my way back across town. It was a twenty-minute drive and easily an hour’s walk on foot.
“Who did they leave with?” I asked.
“Some Red Cross folks and an old vet with a permit to carry concealed,” he said. “They were well-protected, don’t worry.” He studied me in the dim glow of the jack-o’-lantern. “You, on the other hand, not so much.”
For the first time, I felt real fear at being alone in the dark with this man. Losing our access to all the comfort and convenience that modern life has afforded us only seems like the end of the world if you forget that we existed long before all these luxuries, and at one time in history, we didn’t miss what we’d never known. The real danger wasn’t having to live off the land. The real danger was people.
I watched in horror as he reached into his jacket and withdrew a knife with a wicked, serrated blade. My only thought was whether or not I’d be able to reach my gun in time.
4
“Here you go,” he said, holding the knife out to me. My hand froze halfway to my jacket. I was paralyzed with fear as I stared at the knife, dumbfounded.
“Go on, take it.” He waved the handle at me impatiently. He caught sight of my expression. “What, did you think I was going to stab you?” He laughed. “I’m not going to hurt you, but there’s folks out there that will.”
Slowly, I reached up and took the knife from his hand. Relief surged through every fiber of my being.
“I still think it’s a mistake for you to go out there alone,” he said. “I’d feel a little better about it if you at least have something to protect yourself with.”
“Thank you,” I said, finally finding my voice. “I appreciate it.”
If things were starting to deteriorate on my way there, by the time I left, full-blown chaos was on the brink of setting in. In the short time I spent in the store, the night had gone black. The crack of gunshots was incessant, broken only by the sound of glass shattering. The streets were dark, but fires burned inside of wrecked vehicles and trash cans lining the street.
I was just entertaining the possibility that making my way back was going to be much more difficult than I bargained for when I saw the line of spikes laid out in the road, silhouetted by the light of a trash can fire. I swerved, and thought I had avoided
them, until I heard a pop and a hiss followed by a tremendous, lurching jolt.
This immediately raised the question of: who laid the spikes? Followed by, where were they now? Because it was clearly a trap laid to ensnare an unwary passerby with a still-working vehicle. Rather than stopping, I sped up, driving on the rim and kicking up a shower of sparks until I was off the street and in a nearby alley.
At the end of the alley was a used car lot. It was the perfect place to conceal the Jeep while I quickly changed the tire. In the street, I would be exposed, but here, I might have a shot.
I kept my head ducked low, glancing out the window periodically as I pulled into the lot and cut the engine. Whoever had laid those spikes was still out there. They were probably looking for me right now.
There was a spare tire on the back, but even after I tore the interior apart, I couldn’t find a jack. There was nothing but our packs and an extra case of water. I was frustrated, but unsurprised. Ethan rarely took the Jeep out except on fishing weekends in the late spring and summer, and it was fall. When he did, he took the jack from the car rather than buying a second for a vehicle he used only seasonally.
The jack was almost certainly in the trunk of the car, which currently sat stalled in the parking lot of the costume store. I kicked myself for not having gotten it when I was there, but after the tense episode inside the store, I couldn’t condemn myself for not having borderline clairvoyant foresight. I wasn’t Ethan.
Where could I find a jack? I got out and looked around the neighborhood. It was difficult to discern my surroundings with no street lights or illuminated store signs to see by. The moon was a waning crescent and the night was accordingly dark. In what little light I had, I saw the lot was lined with a fence topped with barbed wire. It was lucky the back gate was open, but someone had left in a hurry.
This left me with the option to comb the neighborhood on foot with only the Governor and the knife gifted to me by the man who owned the shop. I didn’t relish the thought, especially with the nearby presence of whatever desperate individual or entire group of thugs had laid the spikes across the road, but what choice did I have? It was obviously a preferable alternative to walking an hour on foot.
I had scarcely set a toe off the lot when I heard a harsh whisper in the darkness.
“Hey! Hey, lady!”
I bit back a scream. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins now and my nerves were on edge. I looked behind me to see a man with a matted beard crawl out from under a nearby car. He put his hands up, conciliatory.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I saw you pull in here. You looking for a tire?”
I looked around nervously. Talking to anyone at this point made me apprehensive, but maybe this guy knew a place nearby where I could find a jack. It was better than looking for a needle in a haystack.
“I have a tire,” I said, careful to keep my voice low. Who knew how many other people were lurking underneath the neighboring SUVs? “I need a jack.”
“There’s a mechanic about four blocks from here,” he said. “Might be locked up; might be that they already got broken into. I can take you there. If you got something to help me.”
I considered his offer. Four blocks didn’t sound like a far distance—during the day, when civilization was running smoothly and my community hadn’t crumbled in the wake of an international incident. But at night, with no law and order, I might as well have been running through the street with a target on my back. He might be a threat to me, or he might get me there more quickly. They were highly disparate results and it was, at best, a calculated risk.
“Are you armed?” I said finally.
“No, but I know these streets like the back of my hand. Won’t be able to fight anybody with a gun, though.”
I was less concerned with his assets as a guide than I was with how big of a threat he was to me, but I had gotten my answer.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Got any food?” he asked.
“That’s it?” I said, surprised.
“Lady, it makes no difference to me whether or not the power’s out. I didn’t have a roof over my head before, or running water or electricity or a computer or phone. So it’s pretty much all the same. All the same, I’m just as hungry now as I was this morning.”
It was an interesting answer. I filed it away in my memory as a future observation, if I ever got out of this alive and academic papers were ever again relevant to the world, which seemed unlikely. Perhaps the people with nothing were the best suited to survive when we ran out of everything else.
“I have some cans of soup and a few granola bars,” I said. “Will that do?”
“That’ll do me just fine.” He stood up from the ground. “I’d shake your hand, but it’s not the cleanest under there,” he explained. “Name’s Leon.”
“Bethany,” I said. I couldn’t account for why I lied about such a simple thing, but as of this morning, I no longer trusted anyone.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, weaving his way through the cars as I followed. “We’ll take the alleys and avoid the street. That’s what I usually do, anyway. Too many cops. Though now, it’s too many of a different sort.”
He glanced back and forth up and down the road. I heard the ringing report of gunshots uncomfortably close by.
“There they go,” said Leon. “Twice as crazy as before.” He ran across the street, ducking into the alley, and I followed him. I assumed he was older from the lines on his face and the matted gray of his thick beard, but he was actually quite spry.
Leon paused at the other end of the alley. He took a step forward, then quickly jumped back. He turned to me and hissed, “Get back, get back, get back!” I crawled behind a dumpster and crouched, shaking. Seconds later, Leon crawled behind the dumpster and crouched down next to me.
“What is it?” I whispered. He held a gloved finger to his lips and listened, eyes flicking back and forth. I heard voices in the street, growing louder as they approached. They were arguing.
“I saw it, it came this way—”
“—they turned into the alley—”
“—must be here, somewhere…”
A thrill of terror surged through me as I realized the voices belonged to whoever laid the spikes. They were looking for me. I trembled behind the dumpster and squeezed my arms tightly in order to stop.
The voices passed and Leon gestured toward me to move forward. He scurried across the street again, down another alley, and cut across a side street.
A car sat burning in the middle of the street, and I willed myself not to look inside, telling myself that whoever had been driving was long gone. The hellish flames cast ghoulish shadows in the street.
Leon came to an abrupt halt and I stopped, confused and a little afraid. Was he working with the group out looking for me? Was this all a trap, and would he hand me over to them now?
It was then that I looked up and saw a garage door before us, doors thrown wide open to the street. The cars inside had been vandalized, the windows and windshields broken. The floor of the garage reeked of gasoline. The only untouched cars were suspended on lifts high above the floor.
“Sometimes the guy that closes up leaves the side door open for me,” he explained. “On the nights he opens the next morning. That’s how I knew it was here. He knows I’ll come in here and sleep on the floor and leave when he gets to work. I don’t touch anything and I keep to myself.”
As he spoke, he weaved in and out among the destroyed cars, further into the depths of the garage. I felt wary again. No one I knew or care about knew where I was. To purposely disappear into the dark with any stranger, even one who claimed to have good intentions, seemed ill-advised at best. I waited towards the front of the garage, hovering at the entrance.
I heard a scraping noise across the floor and Leon re-appeared, grinning triumphantly. In one arm, he cradled the jack like a newborn. In his other hand, he held a tire iron.
&nbs
p; “I’m armed now,” he said.
I carried the jack as we traveled back across the city streets and up the alleys towards the used car lot. Leon clutched the tire iron like it was a baseball bat. We were nearly to the lot when Leon pulled me behind a bench.
I saw them this time rather than just hearing them: a group of five men, roaming the street in a loose V formation, armed to the teeth. I knew we would never get past them. I cursed under my breath.
“I got an idea,” said Leon. “I’ll distract them. Then you make for your car. I’m quick, so it’ll take them a while to catch up to me. You’re gonna have to change that tire in a hurry, though. Can you do that?”
I knew how to change a tire; no one related to Ethan was permitted to go without such vital information. Not only that, but we were required to do so with the speed and efficiency of a race car mechanic in the pit. I was far more worried about Leon.
“But what will they do when they catch up to you?” I whispered. “What if they hurt you?”
“I’ve run into them before,” he said. “Roughnecks, bar crawlers, troublemaking type. They know me well enough to kick me back into the gutter, but they’re not gonna pound my skull in or anything. They think I’m just some crazy old homeless man.”
I was still afraid for him; afraid that maybe the lack of repercussions had made these men into something much worse, but he was giving me a priceless opportunity to escape unharmed.
“Ready?” he whispered. I nodded and tensed.
“Hey! Over here!” He leapt up from behind the bench and waved his arms. As soon as they looked up, he turned and ran up the street.
“Is that him?” I heard one of them demand.
“Only one way to find out,” said another. They sprinted up the street after him, past the bench. I couldn’t believe such an obvious gambit worked. Why would the driver stop, get their attention, and run away? Then again, the kind of people who live to hunt others down and take what they have generally don’t tend to be of the pragmatic variety.