“You pick your guys, and you stick with them,” I said with a shrug. “You want to take Grants Pass, I’ll be with you. You want to kill the bitch, I’ll be with you.”
Bo shook his head and raised the gun.
You just couldn’t lie to him.
I ran, and as I ran, something tickled at the back of my neck. I jerked away from the sensation and heard both barrels go off, heard the window shatter on the house I’d been running toward a second before. I got to the street with Bo shouting for Sarge, to get my gun and come after me. I kept running through the dark, hopping between houses and buildings, moving to put any space I could between myself and the men I’d trusted.
I didn’t sleep the next day. I walked on like a man half dead, making my way north, but the whole way thinking of how I’d survive on my own. Thinking of what a man could do with that much hate in him.
Thinking of what I’d have to do in order to stop him.
I’m writing this down in every town I come to, everywhere I find paper. I’m warning people at every guard post to keep watch for a blond beanpole, a sickly preacher, and a pale horseman who talks with a smile. Some folks say they’ve seen them ahead of me. Some folks tell me to keep walking on. Sometimes they’ll give me a bit of food to keep me going. Most times they turn me away.
Tonight I’m alone, in a place they used to call Deer Lodge, and the snows are getting bad through the mountains. I picked up a gun and some bullets from a dead man in the woods a few weeks back, and once I’ve written the end of this I’ll read some out of a bible they gave me in Missoula. Tomorrow morning I’ll keep looking for them and sounding the warning.
What haunts me is the fact that Preacher saved my soul. If it hadn’t been for him — if I hadn’t got so close to killing him — I never would have known. I’d have walked right into Grants Pass at Bo’s right hand, and if he ran into Jenny, well…I might have figured he had some right to do what he planned. I’d picked my guy. I’m afraid I might have stuck with him.
Then again…
We’re no angels, Bo said, and he was right. But I’m no devil, either; and I don’t mind saying that somewhere on the road I got fond of the idea of Grants Pass. Maybe it’s just because there’s nowhere else for me to go, but someone’s got to beat them there. Someone’s got to warn that girl, Kayley, and Jenny, and all the crazy dreamers who set themselves up for a world after the one we knew.
Biography
Ivan Ewert
Ivan Ewert’s work has previously appeared online in The Edge of Propinquity. He lives in an old house in northern Illinois with a lovely wife and enough gardens to feed them for the first month after the fall. Once that’s gone, he’s ready to look for work on one of the neighboring farms, but walking to Oregon isn’t out of the question.
Afterword
The very concept of Grants Pass seems based on an unspoken faith in the idea that you will be one of the survivors, you will make it to this fabled promised land, and you will set up a new life there, regardless of what the current inhabitants want. It’s a frontier mentality straight out of the American Westerns which I tried to echo here.
But that kind of faith, combined with the dark obsession that insists the world will end, gives rise to people like Bo — strong-willed bastards who can tear down the world for their own personal reasons.
There’s also a school of faith that says a person can be tempted to the edge of madness, but can come back stronger for it. That’s what I believe, and that’s what changes Davey from a would-be killer to a post-apocalyptic Paul Revere.
If the future comes apart, then everyone’s going to have to flirt with the darkness. Finding a reason to continue being human, being fundamentally decent, despite that temptation, is what makes a man — hell, what makes a hero — in my view.
I hope it never comes. But if it does, I hope my faith is proven right.
The Chateau de Mons
Jennifer Brozek
KimmyShan: You serious about Grants Pass?
Kayley98052: Serious as a heart attack.
Kayley98052: Actually, no. But it’s a really good mental exercise. You know? I mean, what would YOU do if the world ended? Would you be prepared? How would you live? Where would you go?
KimmyShan: I can’t go to Grants Pass. I’m in Belgium, remember?
Kayley98052: Oh. Right. Hard to get here. Guess you’ll have to make your own Grants Pass. Need to have enclaves all over the world for survivors.
KimmyShan: The world isn’t gonna end.
Kayley98052: Not the point. Point is to think about it. It’s a mental exercise.
KimmyShan: It scares me.
Kayley98052: The end of the world is scary. But it’s scarier to survive it. What then?
KimmyShan: I hope Dad’s stationed back in the States if the end of the world comes. I’ll just go to Grants Pass. Then, you’ll tell me what to do then.
Kayley98052: What if I die, too? Nothing says I’m going to live through the end of the world. I’ve just written about it and suggested a plan. If I survive, I’m gonna go to Grants Pass. I hope my friends from all over will meet me there. Some have already said they would. But, if I die, my friends will meet each other and survive together. Grants Pass is a good place for that.
KimmyShan: You won’t die.
Kayley98052: Everybody dies. That’s the easy part. It’s surviving that’s hard.
****
Kim reread that instant message log from over a year ago. She had taped it into her journal because she had wanted to remember it. It had changed her life. Kayley had not realized how young Kim was. Kim had just been an internet friend after all. Since she had typed in mostly complete sentences, readers thought she’d been older than her fifteen, highly impressionable, years. This conversation, and others like it, had sunk deep into her psyche. In turn, she had peppered her parents about emergency preparedness and plans of action, just in case something ‘bad’ happened. At first, her parents had been amused, then concerned, at her obsession over the idea of the world ending.
Her parents had decided that Kim’s obsession was a reflection of her nerves at being stationed in a foreign country for the first time. To fix this, her parents had gone through the motions of preparing for any eventuality. They stocked up on freeze dried foods, bottled water, power generators, propane tanks, emergency kits and contingency plans over and above what the military required of them. They even went so far as to run several disaster drills. Reassured that her family would survive anything that came at it, Kim relaxed and thoughts of imminent death and destruction left the forefront of her mind.
No one had any idea that a year later the unthinkable would come to pass, and that this preparation would mean the difference between life and death. At first, the news of California’s devastating earthquake had been interesting in a train wreck sort of way. Then, it became downright disturbing as the news of three, simultaneous plagues hit countries all over the world.
Kim closed her journal, trying to hold back the rush of tears that threatened to overwhelm her. It had been six weeks since her father had called from the military base to tell her and her mother that it was being locked down due to a lethal outbreak of the Super Flu virus. He ordered them to stay at home and not to leave or even open the front door for any reason until he called again or came for them.
They lost power four weeks ago, but due to the previous year’s preparation, she and her mother had remained relatively comfortable. Last week, a woman and her young son had come begging for food. Her mother had answered the door against her father’s orders and had given the hungry pair what was left of the fresh fruit and bread.
They had repaid the kindness with death.
Her mother had caught the flu by that evening. She had died this morning and Kim knew she needed to bury her mother’s body as soon as possible, out of respect and safety.
She wrapped her mother up in the sheets she had been laying on when she died. Her mother was much lighter than she had expe
cted. Always a small woman, her mother’s body seemed as tiny and light as a child’s, rather than the vibrant spitfire everyone was always saying she took after. Except, now, there was no one to say that to her anymore. She was alone and, perhaps, the only person still alive in Mons. Maybe, the only person still alive in Belgium.
Taking out her fury and fear at the realization of her abruptly singular status, Kim dug a large hole in the far left corner of the backyard, next to the stone wall that enclosed it. Once her mother’s body was in the ground, she fashioned a wooden cross to mark the grave with her mother’s name, date of birth and date of death. She spoke a prayer for her mother’s soul out loud, her voice cracking with tired grief. Then, she walked to the base of the walnut tree and slumped against it, looking at the backyard and home her parents had fallen in love with at first sight.
“Jean Paul tells me that it is called the Chateau de Mons.” Her father had said. “It’s over three hundred years old. In times of dangers, the villagers would come here and camp in the backyard within the safety of the stone wall. Can you imagine that?”
Looking at the backyard that was bigger than a football field — with a vegetable garden larger than the backyard she had had on base back in the States — she could imagine it. Friends of her parents had jokingly started calling them the Von Taylors, to reflect their “landed gentry” status.
Kim had felt like a princess when they had first moved into the manor house. It had a full stone cellar that included both a root cellar and a wine room, the first floor with a library, the second floor with all of the bedrooms and her mother’s art studio, a full attic big enough to be another bedroom if they had wanted it and even a working bell tower — though she had been forbidden to ever ring the bell that dwelled above the attic.
The exchange rate had been good enough to allow her family to afford a maid once a week. The house was large enough that a maid was needed. Marie Rose had come on her bicycle every week with a smile. In her broken English, she would tell Kim how much of a good girl she was. Not like the other “ugly Americans” she had previously worked for. Now, there was no more Marie Rose to spoil her. She was the only one who remained and the house’s size dwarfed her; making her feel that much smaller and alone. She hurried back inside so she would not have to look at it any longer.
It only took two days of wandering through the empty house, futilely wishing and willing the electricity or phone to start working again, before she decided to venture outside. She armed herself with her mother’s Sig-220 and her father’s 9mm Smith and Wesson pistol. As a military brat, she had been brought up around weapons of all types and knew how to use most of them. The weight of the two pistols seemed to be her only security in this newly silent world.
She was surprised at how frightened she was of leaving the safe haven of her home. Part of her protested, insisting her father would come for her. The other part suspected that if he was not already dead, anyone still alive at the base would be under very tight restrictions — to ensure the continued safety of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. If SHAPE, as an entity, still existed. However, given the lack of any sort of air traffic in the last three weeks, Kim was almost positive that the base was as deserted as the streets of the city that she walked through.
After a few hours of wandering, she returned home, happy to be in familiar surroundings. She thought about the instant message conversation she had had with her friend Kayley, and all of the talks they had had about what to do if you survived the end of the world. Neither of them had ever honestly believed it would happen. But, here they were. The end of the world as everyone had known it had come. She wondered if Kayley had survived and thought about Grants Pass, wishing with all her heart that she was in the States, where she had at least a chance of making it to the meeting place.
“But, I’m not. I’m here in Belgium and I’m still alive.” She dug out her journal again, to reread what she had written over a year ago.
“July 14th, Kayley asked me what I would do if I was still in Belgium and the end of the world came. I didn’t have an answer for her but she really pushed me. She made me think about it. I really didn’t want to think about it. I don’t like the idea of the world ending. I don’t like it ending with me in a country where I don’t speak any of the languages.
“I answered her after I thought about it. I decided I would make my home like Grants Pass. At least, to begin with. We have everything we need: a large house, a working garden (oh, the tons of weeds I have pulled from that thing), a fresh water well on the property, weapons, wood burning fireplaces, a potbelly stove, a huge pile of wood, wild game in the fields and a fortified yard. I would call everyone still living to the house using the bell, just like they did in the old days. It would be kind of like Noblesse Oblige — the noble’s obligation.”
She closed the journal again, thinking about what she had written. Noblesse Oblige. The bell would reach farther than she could on foot. It would bring all the survivors to a central location that could house and feed them. The garden was ready to harvest. But, if she rang the bell, she might call bad people to her only place of safety. Or, she could call people like herself. Survivors who needed help and wanted to help others. She had the means to help and she did not want to remain alone. Fear of the unknown warred with her frightened loneliness.
She thought about Kayley and the idea of Grants Pass. Kayley had had no idea who would come to Grants Pass when she presented the idea to the online community. She just gave it as an open invitation: Come one, come all. If the Chateau de Mons was to be like Grants Pass, she would have to take the same chance.
She left the journal on her bed and walked into the large hallway. To the side there was the bell rope she had been forbidden to touch. It felt rough in her hand. There was a moment of shock and fear when her experimental tug met with a strong resistance. She had made up her mind to call everyone; the bell had to work. She did not know what she would do if it did not. Take a sledgehammer to it instead? However, her second adrenalin filled pull elicited the loud ringing she had been looking for.
The ringing was louder than she had expected, but she did not stop. If this first call did not bring people to her, she would try again at regular intervals over the coming weeks until she was certain no one was coming. Then, she would decide what to do. For now, she was willing to make the call and hope for the best.
Afterword
I wrote this story about the Chateau de Mons because I lived on an estate very much like it in Belgium, while my father was stationed at SHAPE, Belgium. Our home was referred to as “the Chateau de Mons” and was over 300 years old. It had a rich history of being a place of sanctuary in times of need. I was told, back when the Mons was a small village, if danger threatened, the estate bell would be rung and the villagers who could make it, would camp behind the protected stone walls on the chateau’s grounds until the danger passed.
Being an American on foreign soil, the military required my family to be prepared for all dangers. We had our stores of extra food and water, as well as instructions on what to do in certain situations. As I thought about the Grants Pass anthology, I wondered what I would do if the End came while I was in another country, and unable to go to my chosen place of sanctuary. This story immediately sprang forth. My own memories of living abroad mixed well with the concept of a post apocalyptic world, and the chateau of my childhood would be an excellent place to gather people together and to start again.
The Few That are Good
Scott Almes
Since when did you smoke?” I asked, watching my brother light up a cigar.
“It’s a special occasion,” Brett replied. He coughed a few times before he finally got the end to glow red. He was nineteen, a good seven years older than me. He was about six inches taller and was able to grow a beard. I always told him that I would be able to grow a bigger beard than him someday.
The two of us leaned on Brett’s truck. We were supposed to retrieve supplies from one
of our father’s friends. Our father was part of a gang called the Ravens. This would be the first time Brett got to be involved without our father’s supervision. In the last two months, the three of us have hardly left each others’ sides. Ever since the world fell apart, our father told us it would forever be the three of us. Of course, when Brett came into my tent telling me that he was allowed to drive the truck by himself, I couldn’t help but tag along. Besides, I’m sure dad would be proud of us.
In the distance, one of the other Raven trucks started to roll over the hill. I could hear the engine whine as it climbed the steep road.
I glanced over at Brett. He was pale and sweating badly. I guess he was nervous. I would be too. This was a big opportunity. Still, it seemed a little unnerving that Father was not with us. But, I knew Brett wanted to be a man, and I supposed doing this alone was the next step.
“Don’t be afraid, Ryan,” Brett said softly.
“I’m not,” I said. In truth, I wasn’t scared. I felt perfectly safe with my brother around.
The Raven truck finally pulled up in front of us. The back was loaded with boxes that never looked more beautiful. Jimmy came out of the side door, smiling widely. He was always laughing about something, and was Dad’s best friend.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Brett,” Jimmy said. The smile seemed to change. There was something I didn’t like about it.
“I came to bring the supplies back to camp,” Brett replied, almost twitching.
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