by Tom Abrahams
Maggie leapt at the man as he exploded into Danny, tackling him against the wall, which gave way at Danny’s elbows and the back of his head. The man shoved his forearm against Danny’s chest, knocking the wind from him, and he dropped the knife to the floor.
Maggie snarled then yelped when the man kicked her in the side. His fist powered into Danny’s gut, doubling him over, and he drove his elbow into Danny’s back before Maggie bounded onto the man, her jaws clamping down on the back of his leg.
The man cried out in pain and shook her free, then bolted awkwardly from the hallway into the living room. Maggie gave chase while Danny collected himself. He groped for the knife and found it, then struggled from the hallway, using the walls for support while he regained his breath.
He followed the sound of the tussle between his dog and the intruder into the living room, where he found the furniture overturned and Maggie on top of the man near the kitchen. Danny moved across the chair and sofa to help Maggie as she snapped and snarled at the man underneath her. He was strong enough to keep her at bay, and he shoved her from on top of him and crawled to the kitchen. Danny reached the man as he pulled himself to his feet and found the bowl on top of the counter.
He swung wildly at Danny’s head and caught his ear with the side of the bowl, knocking Danny off balance as he swiped with the knife. The man grunted and cursed, but the victory was short-lived as the attacker wrestled the knife from him and spun Danny around, catching the small of his back on the counter. The knife clanged to the floor.
Now, in the candlelight, he could see the man’s face. It was ruddy and pockmarked. His scraggly, blotchy beard ran ragged across his sunken cheeks and chin. His eyes were infected with the same crazed glare as his dead partner.
He pressed his body into Danny’s and worked his hand around his throat. Danny grappled to regain any sort of leverage. He reached behind his head onto the counter, searching for any weapon, knocking over whatever was there but failing to grasp a tool that might help.
Maggie came to the rescue again, bounding onto the man and biting into him such that he let go of Danny and turned to find the dog. That gave Danny enough time to drop to the floor and find the knife, which he blindly drove upward toward the hulk looming over him. He jabbed it repeatedly into the same spot, the man screaming in pain with a cry that made Danny want to cover his ears, but he kept stabbing. Maggie kept chomping.
The man crashed to the floor, fighting for his life until Maggie found his neck. Danny collapsed to the floor, exhausted. His back, neck, arms, and head throbbed with pain. His chest ached; his throat burned.
He sat against the cabinets under the sink, blankly watching Maggie go full wolf on the man. The candlelight grew brighter and brighter until the flickering orange light was too bright for a pair of scented candles.
And the scent wasn’t pleasant anymore, it was smoky. Danny rolled away from the cabinet and pushed himself to his feet to find the curtains and cabinets on fire. Panicking, he cupped his hands into the sink and splashed water onto the thin sheers that framed the window and the edge of the pressboard cabinet uppers that hung on the wall.
It did nothing, and it was spreading quickly now. The crackle of the hungry flames grew louder, and the smoke grew thicker.
He was nearly out of water and the fire was out of control. Danny pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth and called to Maggie. She looked up at Danny, the light reflected in her eyes.
“Let’s go,” he said. He led her back to his bedroom, grabbed his backpack and a gallon of water he kept next to the bed, then hustled into the master bedroom.
He hadn’t spent much time in the room, preferring to keep it as Ken and Barbie had left it. It was enough that he’d lived in their home and eaten their food. He couldn’t bring himself to invade their sanctuary until now.
He blindly rifled through both bedside tables, hoping to find a weapon, a radio, or anything that could help him in the wild. There was nothing. He looked over his shoulder into the hallway. The smoke was thickening. He was running out of time.
Danny slid into the master closet and ran his hands along the top shelf above the clothing rods. His fingers moved along the stacks of folded clothes until they touched a metal box. He fought past the jabbing pain in his ribs, and Maggie tugging at his pants with her teeth, to reach up and pluck the box from the shelf.
He spun free of her jaws and assured her they were okay. It was as much for him as it was for her.
Shaking the box, he found there was heft to it. He hoped it might contain a gun and some ammunition. He wasn’t a marksman. He wasn’t much of a martial artist, having only finished his green belt, but could pull the trigger if he had to do it. After all, he’d just repeatedly stabbed a man to near death.
Danny blinked against the burn in his eyes. The smoke hung in the air, a barely visible dusty haze flowing into the master bedroom like a slow creek. Danny covered his mouth and nose again and, with the lock box under his arm, dropped to his knees to crawl from the bedroom. He’d have to push the gallon water jug with his free hand.
With the pack on his back, he groped his way halfway to the living room, planning a quick exit through the front door, when he realized it wasn’t happening.
Up ahead was the radiating orange and red of the flames. The smoke was too thick to see anything but those strobing flames. Their crackle was more of a roar the closer he got. The heat on his face was too much now. It reminded him of standing too close to a fire pit while roasting marshmallows. He inched backward on his hands and knees until he found the master bedroom, tugging the water jug along.
He coughed and squeezed his eyes shut, pressing tears down the sides of his face, and shut the master bedroom door. The smoke lessened, the roar of the flames dulled, and he felt for the large windows that faced the front of the house.
Once he found them, he flipped the locks to slide the windows open. The cold air seeped into the room and Danny breathed it in. He punched through the mesh screens separating him from the outside, then spread the hole wide enough to move past.
He pushed Maggie through the opening first, tossed out the lock box, the water jug, and the backpack, then crawled through. He rolled across the dead rosebushes that ran along the entirety of the front of the home. Thorns scratched his face and hands, and he fell awkwardly into the ash, sending a plume of it into the chilled air.
He lay there for a moment, his chest heaving up and down until he caught his breath. Maggie licked his face and whimpered, nudging him.
Danny looked over at the house, smoke pouring from under its eaves and mixing with the delicate haze of ash that clung to the air. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. Then he looked down at his feet and cursed himself. No shoes.
He glanced at the open window and, for a split second, considered crawling back into the house to get shoes. Any shoes. He thought better of it and reached down to grab his pack. He unzipped it, shoved his belongings down as far as they would go, and slipped the lock box into the remaining space. After struggling with the zipper, he finally closed it and slung it over his shoulders. He snapped the chest strap, grimacing and grunting at the pressure it applied to his aching ribs, and grabbed the gallon jug of water with one hand. He crossed the yard to the first of the dead intruders, crouched down, and yanked the shoe from the man’s right foot. He placed it next to his foot. It was easily two sizes too small. He tossed it across the yard, and it skidded across the layer of ash like a meteor leaving its mark on the Earth. He cursed the shoe, the intruders, the fire, and the nuclear holocaust. Then he cursed his ex-wife and her gazillionaire lover. He said some choice things about Google, Apple, and Amazon to cover his bases.
“All right,” he said to Maggie. “Let’s go find somewhere else to stay.”
The dog cocked her head to one side and then yawned again. Danny wiped his forehead and clicked his teeth. She followed him into the street and kept pace with him as he slogged his way from the house. The pop and
crackle of the flames as they devoured his temporary refuge stuck in his ears. The farther he walked from the house, the heavier the cold sank into his body. It was in his fingers wrapped around the backpack shoulder straps, in his toes shoveling through the ash, on the back of his sweaty neck.
He tried to ignore it and the swelling aches that sparked across his body as the adrenaline from the twin fights and fire dissipated. He focused on his needs.
“Maggie, we need somewhere to sleep tonight. Somewhere with a roof and at least three walls. That’s job number one.”
The dog padded alongside Danny, her tongue hanging from the side of her mouth. She didn’t disagree with him.
“Then we need to go through the lockbox in my pack,” he said. “I’ll have to figure out how to open it, right? That’s job two.”
They walked another block, the wind swirling past them and sending a shudder through his body, amplifying his pain for an instant.
“Job three is keeping our heads on a swivel. If there are two guys out there breaking into homes, there are more. No doubt in my mind we haven’t seen the last desperate, awful-smelling survivors willing to kill us for a can of soup.”
A half hour later, after countless blocks and a handful of aimless turns, Danny stopped. He hadn’t thought about where he might be headed. He’d just left. Spinning around in the street, scanning the houses and buildings around him, he had virtually no idea where he was. None of it was familiar. Not with the ash. Not in the dark. Not with the pain that threatened to overpower his senses.
He cursed loudly. His words hung in the air, dulled by the ash. Everything was dulled by the ash.
He covered his nose and mouth with his shirt collar and sucked in a deep breath of frustration. It was like a sigh, but deeper. He pushed the air from his lungs forcefully, hoping to refocus his mind and gain a sense of his surroundings.
The ocean wasn’t too far away; he could hear it washing against the shore. At least he thought it was the ocean. It could be the wind, which was constant. It ebbed and flowed like a tide, but it was always there.
If it was the ocean, he could orient himself. Walk straight for it, move along the coast until he recognized a landmark, and he’d be good.
He closed his eyes and listened to the rhythm of the distant wash of water through the whoosh of air. It was there. It was the ocean.
Danny opened his eyes and lowered his shirt from his face. He motioned to Maggie, and the two of them headed toward the coastline. Aside from the wind and breaking waves, the only sounds were the slosh of water in the jug he carried, the shuffle of ash around his feet, and Maggie’s panting.
It was strangely quiet. Danny hadn’t spent much time outside at night since the attacks. Other than waiting impatiently at the back door for Maggie, he’d spent all his time in Ken and Barbie’s house.
The virtual silence reminded him of Christmas Eve in the Rockies. Snow crunching under his boots as he walked hand in hand with his ex along empty streets, people in their homes prepping for Christmas morning or had turned in early for a good night’s sleep.
Danny caught himself smiling, thinking about it. He quickly frowned, pursing his lips. This wasn’t Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve was full of hope and wonder and the promise of a wonderful day when the sun rose. It was about family and love and peace and joy. It was magical.
This wasn’t any of those things. This was despair and loss of hope. He had no family other than Maggie, and his was a life devoid of peace or joy. If there was any magic involved, it was black and sinister.
He’d walked a couple of blocks closer to the beach when he found a service station with a partially open garage bay door. It had a roof and three walls. Danny stood at the curb staring at the opening to the bay. He pivoted toward the sounds of the beach. They were louder now.
His mind told him he could make it to the sand and find a place to sleep. His body told him otherwise. He walked toward the service station and cautiously approached the open bay. Maggie was beside him as he inched to the edge of the garage.
He got down onto his knees, dipping his fingers into the ash, and called through the opening with a voice above a whisper, “Hello? Is anyone there?”
His voice echoed against the metal walls of the building. Silence followed it.
“All right,” he said to Maggie, “let’s give it a shot.”
He pulled up on the door, working hard to heave it upward. It rolled upward with some resistance until it caught a spring and finished the job itself.
Danny got to his feet. He tried peering into the space, but only darkness stared back.
He stepped into the garage and was immediately met with the steel bumper of an old sedan. A budding bruise throbbed in his thigh. He dropped the water jug and pressed his hands flat against the smooth body of the car.
Once he’d regained his breath, he found the jug, picked it up, and ran his free hand along the side of the car until he found the driver’s side door. Danny slid his fingers into the recess under the handle and yanked open the heavy door. A dim dome light illuminated the interior of a 1974 Chevy Impala.
Surprised by the light, Danny at once shut the door, bathing the garage in darkness again. He groped his way back to the garage bay door and found a looped chain to pull it shut.
He quickly felt his way back to the car and opened the door again. Danny patted the driver’s seat for Maggie. She jumped into the car and then hopped into the back. She circled around twice before curling into a ball on the wide bench seat.
The light, while dim, provided more than enough for Danny to see inside his backpack to remove the lockbox. He adjusted the rearview mirror toward Maggie’s reflection. She licked her bloodstained chops and nuzzled her head into her paws.
The box was lock and key. Thankfully it wasn’t biometric like most safes. It was old school. He turned the box over in his hands, testing the hinges and the locking mechanism. It wiggled but didn’t give way. For thirty minutes he fiddled with the box while Maggie snored. Finally, about to give up, he set it on his lap and rested his head on the back of the seat. Clipped to the sun visor was a faded photograph of a man and woman on the beach. Danny pulled it from the visor along with the clip.
He eyed the picture, running his thumb across the glossy paper. The sun was behind the couple, so the picture itself was dark, their faces obscured by shadow. But Danny wasn’t interested in the photograph. He was interested in the clip.
He tossed the picture onto the seat beside him and unfolded the steel wire clip, bending it until it snapped in half. He took one piece and bent its tip downward. Using both parts of the clip, he tried manipulating the simple key lock on the front of the box.
He wasn’t a locksmith, no more than he was Chuck Norris or MacGyver, but he’d seen enough YouTube videos on how to do a variety of seemingly useless things that he thought he could easily pick the lock.
It wasn’t easy, but he was right. He picked it and the box sprang open.
To Danny’s chagrin there wasn’t a weapon. No gun. No knife.
There wasn’t food or gold or anything of value. At least it didn’t appear that way.
Still, piece by piece, he worked his way through the box’s contents. There were birth certificates for Ken and Barbie, really Sean Andrew McNeil and Loretta Underwood King.
There were passports. They’d been to more than a dozen countries, including Russia and Estonia. There were yellow immunization cards neatly stuck inside the passports. They’d both had shots for yellow fever. If they were on vacation on the day of the attack, it appeared they hadn’t been out of the country.
Beneath the passports were sealed letter-sized envelopes, both labeled in neat, precise handwriting with the words LAST WILL & TESTAMENT/LIVING WILL. There was one for Sean and one for Loretta.
Danny ran his fingers across the envelopes, tracing the letters he imagined Sean wrote. The lettering looked masculine.
Danny never took the time to write out a will. He and his ex didn’t have
much, other than the house. They’d been young enough they thought themselves invincible. He flipped one of them over and considered tearing it open, then thought better of it. They were likely gone. He’d violated enough of their privacy as it was. He tossed both envelopes aside.
There was a small booklet stapled at the spine. It was an insurance log, a list of valuable belongings. Danny flipped through it, scanning the extensive list of itemized furniture, china, jewelry, and artwork.
He’d seen the heavy acrylic work framed on their walls, abstract canvases by artists whose names Danny either didn’t know or couldn’t decipher. None of them were recognizable pieces, but according to the ledger, they weren’t cheap. They were ash now. Just like everything else in Southern California.
At the bottom of the box was a manila envelope. It was sealed with a brass brad that poked through the hole in the envelope’s flap. Danny squeezed the brad and slipped his fingers inside the envelope. He wiggled them around until he was able to snatch the contents and slide them out.
A rectangular piece of metal slid into his hand. It was gold plated and shaped like a hotel keycard. On one side it read, in engraved calligraphy,
The holder of this key is granted unlimited access.
Danny turned over the key in his hand. The other side was engraved with the same calligraphic font.
The Oasis
17985 PCH
Intrigued, Danny set the card on the dash and reached back into the envelope. He pulled out a thick piece of card stock. On the white stock, the size of a large smartphone, was stenciled what appeared to be an invitation.
The Oasis
Mr. & Mrs. Sean McNeil
Welcome To A Most Exclusive Retreat.
For entrance, please present the enclosed access key at the main entrance.
Our concierge will escort the bearer of this card to the Oasis.
We are available twenty-four hours a day.
No reservation required.
He laughed as he ran his thumb across the name at the top of the invitation. Ever since reading Ernest Cline’s dystopian novel Ready Player One years earlier, he’d come to think of the Oasis as a virtual reality simulation, an immersive video game in which players were identified by their digital avatars. It had long since lost its original meaning as either a mid-1990s English rock band or fertile spot within a desert where one could find water.