The Pulse

by Skylar Finn

  “I’m walking away,” he called. “I’m just gonna walk, and I don’t want to get shot. Please.” He backed away slowly, never taking his eyes off. Peterman and I didn’t lower our guns even after he disappeared in the shadows. Ethan was already filling the tank.

  I ran around to the driver’s side while Peterman covered Ethan. I got in. Ethan opened the back door and got in next, and I immediately started the engine. Peterman got in last and I sped off down the street, before anyone else could emerge from the shadows to terrorize us.

  My second fear was accurate: it had been far easier than I ever could have imagined.

  Ethan checked on Grace in the backseat, then told her to stay on the floor till we got to the ranch, re-covering her with the afghan.

  “Thank you,” I said to Peterman. I glanced over. He looked a little shell-shocked.

  “I’ve never shot anyone,” he said. “I mean, I know how to shoot--I’ve been hunting my whole life, my father took me when I was a small boy and I still go during hunting season. But a person…” he faltered for a moment, and I saw him looking at his hands again. “I just always thought of myself as saving lives, not taking them.”

  From the backseat, Ethan spoke up. “We don’t have a choice,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re bad people. It just means that we survive.”

  We went several miles without encountering another obstacle. I started to think that maybe the worst of it was over; that we might make it out of the city unimpeded. I squinted through the windshield. I had to change lanes frequently when a stalled car loomed in front of us, and turn off onto side streets when there were too many to get by, but there was something else up ahead. It was still several blocks away, but I could just make out the back of a crowd. Towering over them were what looked like police on horseback. I slowed to a stop in the middle of the street.

  “What’s going on up there?” I asked. “It looks like some kind of checkpoint or something, like maybe they’re detaining people.”

  “They’re stopping people from leaving the city,” said Ethan grimly.

  “Why?” Peterman sounded outraged. “How can they prevent us from leaving under the circumstances? It’s not safe in the city. That should be our decision.”

  “Should I try to go around?” I said uncertainly.

  “We can try,” said Ethan. “It’s hard to say how far down it extends.”

  I reversed and turned right, going down the next block and up before turning left. Same story, fewer people. Block after block, it was the same thing. Barriers, police, crowds.

  “Should I go back the other way? They can’t possibly have everything cordoned off already, can they?”

  “How do they have the manpower?” Peterman demanded. “There are riots all over the city.”

  We were driving up a relatively clear but still barricaded block. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to take any of the main roads out,” said Ethan. “They probably have everything blocked by now. Maybe they’ll let us through.”

  I slowed down as I got closer to the barricade. “What if they don’t?”

  “Then we’ll go through, anyway,” said Ethan.

  I pulled to a stop, wishing I was no longer the one driving. I’d never gotten so much as a speeding ticket, led alone broken through a police barricade. I told myself that we’d burn that bridge when we came to it.

  One of the mounted officers turned and approached us. A small group of people clustered anxiously near the barricade, calling questions to another officer, who appeared to ignore them. They had backpacks, tents, coolers. They looked like they were heading out to the wilderness--or had planned to, until they’d been detained.

  The officer reached the window. I rolled it down with the old-fashioned hand crank. “Could you tell us what’s going on, please?” I asked.

  “There’s been a lot of violence on the roads,” he said, looking down at me. “We’re encouraging people to stay in their homes or get to the nearest shelter until we have more information about what’s going on. People in the streets are killing each other over supplies and rations. You folks are especially vulnerable, still having a working vehicle. How old is this thing, anyway?”

  “Thirty years,” said Ethan, who’d leaned over the center console to address the officer from the backseat. “Officer, we just want to get to our ranch. We’d much prefer to be someplace remote with all this going on, and we have all our supplies there. Can you let us through?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid that’s out of the question.” He was genteel enough about it, but his eyes were steely, and beneath his polite tone, his voice was steel as well. “We can’t allow anyone out right now. We’re still gathering information about the attack and who’s responsible. It’s a security measure, and it’s for your own safety.”

  Peterman was indignant. I could see that I’d been right about his being unaccustomed to being denied, told he was wrong, or deferring to anyone. “It’s unsafe for us here!” he exclaimed from the passenger side. “If we have the means to leave, why not let us? We’re clearly not the ones responsible for what’s going on here.”

  “As I clearly stated, I cannot allow you to do that.” The officer peered through the window at Peterman, then glanced back at Ethan. “And we are requiring all citizens to surrender any functioning vehicle to authorities. If you’ll step out, we would be happy to send an escort with you to the nearest shelter.”

  I thought of the shelter we had just left and what might wait for us at the next one. Then I imagined being trapped there with no means of escape and no way to get to the ranch.

  I could feel the outrage radiating off Peterman in waves. “But--” he protested. Ethan held up a hand, silencing him.

  “We just need to gather our things,” he said.

  “Make it snappy,” said the officer, dropping all pretense of politeness.

  I rolled up the window and made a show of unbuckling my seatbelt. “What are we going to do?” I asked Ethan quietly.

  “Charlie, you’ll get out and open the back, as if we plan to get our things. I’ll get out as if to help you, but I’m getting in the driver’s side. As soon as I get in and close the door, get back in and lock your door. Gracie, you stay here on the floor, no matter what.”

  “What if they shoot us?” whispered Peterman, eyeing the mounted officer’s shotgun.

  “We can make it,” said Ethan. “They expect compliance. He won’t be prepared for anything deviating so drastically from complacency and obedience.”

  I, too, was concerned about the potential repercussions of defying authority during a state of emergency, but Ethan was just as eerily well-versed in the dynamics of power and authority as he was anything else. I thought we would almost certainly die if we wound up in another shelter. It seemed better to take our chances now.

  I got out and went to the back, under the watchful eye of the mounted officer. I left the door open. As I passed Ethan at the back, our eyes met. He reached out and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze as he passed. For the second time that night, I heard a hail of bullets rip through the air.

  Ethan pulled me to the ground. He crawled under the Jeep and I followed. I saw the hooves of the horse turn and gallop away, followed by the thud of a body on the ground: the mounted officer.

  “Take their horses!” someone screamed from the direction of the crowd at the barrier. One of them must have had a weapon and, growing increasingly restless at the refusal of the officers to let them leave, decided to take matters into their own hands.

  More shots rang out, followed by answering shots from the remaining police. “We’ve got to get out before they come for us,” Ethan said to me. “Stay as low to the ground as you can.”

  We crawled on our stomachs out from beneath the undercarriage. Ethan got out first, using the open front door as a shield, and opened the back door for me. I crawled out and into the backseat, slamming the door as Ethan pulled himself into the front. He turned the ignition and revved the engin
e, throwing us into gear. Peterman reached up and grabbed the bar above his head, squeezing his eyes shut. I buckled my seatbelt.

  Ethan floored it. I could smell burning rubber as I ducked, pressing myself as flat against the backseat as I could. Gunfire rang out around us. I could see night sky through the window above me as we sped toward the barricade. I heard a ringing thud and wood splintering. I was jolted into the air as we rolled over something large and heavy--a sandbag, maybe, though for a heart-stopping second, I thought it was a body--and then, nothing.

  “We’re out,” said Ethan.

  “Good lord,” said Peterman. “Please tell me you have some sort of liquor stashed at this ranch of yours, man.”

  “You’re in luck,” said Ethan, as I sat up and checked on Grace. She regarded me, nonplussed, as I smoothed back her hair, but otherwise seemed none the worse for the wear. “As a matter of fact, we brew our own moonshine.”

  8

  I was never so happy to see the ranch as I was when we walked in. The last twelve hours had been the most harrowing of my life. Ethan seemed wholly unfazed for someone who’d just defended himself and the lives of his family multiple times over the last few hours. He immediately started bringing in supplies. I brought Grace into the living room and built a fire in the fireplace while Peterman collapsed on the couch and gazed dazedly out the bay window.

  At the ranch, I almost felt normal again, as if the recent events that occurred had been little more than a nightmare. I’d always felt at peace there, since the first time I’d ever gone. It had been nearly a year since I’d first met Ethan in the library. He seemed almost shy about revealing it to me; apologetic even, like he thought I might laugh. I was puzzled by this until he explained that his ex-wife had found all of his doomsday preparation borderline pathological, on par with some sort of psychological malady.

  “At first, it was like a project for her, I think,” he said, after building a fire. He looked at it instead of me. “I was like something she thought she could fix. Like when you buy an old house, a fixer-upper? You’re vaguely unsettled by it, as it is, but you think if you put enough work into it, you can make it something special. I think she thought that’s what I was.” He gave a short laugh, prodding the logs with a poker and sending a shower of sparks into the air. “I guess she thought wrong.”

  I didn’t think there was anything odd about the ranch. It was unusually well-fortified, with electric fences and video surveillance. I knew very little about Ethan’s past, at that point, outside of vague references to an eccentric childhood that he said inspired much of his fiction. At the time, I thought he was just highly protective of Grace.

  And he was. Then later on, he became highly protective over me. The only thing I found bizarre about it was the feeling of having someone so invested in my safety. My ex-husband and I could go days without talking: we'd be apart for conferences, only occasionally remembering to check in. It bordered on indifference. I forgot to text Ethan back during an academic convention out-of-state, and he thought I had been taken. I got a cryptic text asking if it was safe to call, followed by a phone call asking if my security had been compromised.

  “Charlie.” I heard him whisper in my ear. I opened my eyes. The room was bathed in the blue-gray light of early morning. Startled, I looked around: Grace was curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace, fast asleep beneath her afghan. Peterman and I had evidently passed out where we sat the night before. I was still sitting upright in a chair.

  I didn’t have to ask what Ethan had been doing. I regarded him, bleary-eyed, taking in his alert expression. I knew he hadn’t slept, and had been up while the rest of us slumbered--securing the perimeter, taking inventory, and assessing the situation before conceiving the next phase of whatever plan he’d hatched long ago.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, trying to rouse myself.

  “It’s okay,” he said in a low voice so as not to wake Peterman or Grace. “Come to the kitchen. I made coffee.”

  The incentive of coffee, even when exhausted, is a powerful one. I stumbled into the kitchen and Ethan pressed a hot mug into my hand. I sank gratefully into one of the kitchen chairs.

  “I know it’s a relief to be here,” he said. This, I felt, was the understatement of the year. “But we can’t let our guard down. We’ve got to remain vigilant. I don’t know who’s still here in town or who might have showed up since the EMP. This is a remote area, so the likelihood is that there are still a large number of supplies available. I was thinking you could go into town and pick up some things for us. We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. It might be for a while.”

  He set a lengthy list, made on a yellow legal pad, on the table in front of me. I squinted at it, trying to make out the words without my glasses. I gave up. They were at the bottom of my bag somewhere.

  “You want me to go?” I was surprised. We’d been shot at so many times since the EMP I’d lost track. I figured Ethan would want to be the one to undergo any potentially combative situation.

  “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you and Grace with Peterman yet,” he admitted. “My instinct so far is that he’s a trustworthy individual. But we haven’t even known him for a full day. We can never be too careful. We need to be safe rather than sorry. I want to keep an eye on him. I’d take him into town with me, but I need him to help me do some heavy lifting here.”

  “You think it’s safe?” I sipped my coffee, starting to wake up. My whole body hurt and I was badly in need of aspirin. Fortunately, we had a whole case of it in the barn.

  “Again, it’s an unpopulated area, and most of our neighbors are likely holed up on their ranches with their guns,” he said thoughtfully. “I doubt anyone is even in town today. Anyone that would be wanting, anyway. This isn’t a place that gets a lot of people passing through, which is exactly why I chose it. I think that you’ll be safe. And in any event, you’ll be heavily armed.” He waited. After a few seconds, I realized he was waiting for me to respond.

  “Oh, sorry, I just...I’m so tired. Yes, of course I’ll go. What is on this list?”

  “I put a line in the middle, I’ll get the stuff under it later. All the heavy stuff, and things that are more...involved.”

  I squinted at the bottom half of the list. Fertilizer...Propane...Nitroglycerin. Deciding not to ask, I turned my attention to the top half, most of which was food and medicine.

  “The antibiotics, especially,” he said. “We won’t be able to go the doctor out here, we don’t know for how long. We’ll have Peterman, of course, but he doesn’t have any equipment or supplies. I’ll ask him what he needs when he wakes up and we’ll plan a second trip, but you can probably get most of the basics from Davidson’s.”

  “Okay,” I said. I left it at that. Ethan knew I wasn’t very coherent in the morning, let alone on this one.

  Dawn was breaking as I went to the toolshed to get one of the bicycles. We had a horse, Clover, but she was far too valuable to ride into town until we knew more about who was here and what kind of threat might be present. Ethan hired a ranch hand to tend to the horses during the week when we weren’t there, though I was sure she wouldn’t be returning. I fed Clover an apple before I left.

  As I rode into town, I thought of all the things I hadn’t known how to do before I met Ethan: ride a horse, fire a gun, defend myself. Prepare for the worst. If I was alive, it was only because he had taught me how to survive.

  It was not a short ride to Main Street, but I rode as fast as I could. My one-mile commute between school and home hadn’t prepared me for the trek and I was ready to fall over by the time the quaint, historic buildings loomed ahead.

  Main Street was little more than a single block arranged around an old-fashioned water pump. It held a post office, Davidson’s Drugs, the hardware store, the general store, and the feed store. There was an apartment over the hardware store that the owners rented to the traveling ranch hands and caretakers who’d tended to the seasonal owners’ horses and homes
in our absence. I was certain it was unoccupied. No one would have lingered in the wake of the disaster to take care of someone else’s things.

  I pulled to a stop, winded, behind Davidson’s Drugs. I was unsurprised to see it was locked up and shuttered. I was certain the Davidsons were at home with their son, Tom. I went around the back. There were two rusty old bikes leaning against the brick wall. Someone had thrown a chair through the glass front of the back door. Shards glittered on the asphalt in the early morning sunlight.

  We hadn’t been without power long enough for anyone to get desperate, and this was one of those places that was small enough that everyone around knew everybody else. Whoever was inside was being greedy. They were collecting. And they were outsiders. I had no idea if they were armed or not. I had the Governor, but there was only one of me and two of them.

  I opened the back door slowly. Pat Davidson had fixed the loud creak it usually made and for this, I was thankful. I crept up the narrow hallway that held the bathrooms and peered around the corner. The first thing I saw was Pat behind the counter. Relief washed over me and I stepped out of the hallway.

  Pat looked up at me and shook his head. Get down, he mouthed, motioning to me with his hands. It took a second for me to process, then I dropped to the floor and crawled on my stomach down the aisle in front of me. I heard voices: first a woman’s, followed by a man’s.

  “Ain’t you people got anything in this place besides Vicks VapoRub and cough drops?” the woman’s voice demanded. “Dexter, there’s nothing but Flintstones vitamins back here. What kinda drug store is this?”

  “I know you people got the good stuff in this here place,” said the man’s voice, gravelly and rough. There was something familiar about it that I couldn’t quite place. “Oxy, Adderall, Xanax--where is it?”

  “I told you, we don’t stock Schedule II substances,” came Pat’s quiet voice from behind the counter. “For exactly this reason.”