The World's End Series Book One: Dymond's World

by CW Crowe

  The parking lot for the strip center was empty except for two cars. Patti got in hers. "Follow me. My house is only about ten minutes away."

  Fallon nodded and got into his car. Even after a year, he was proud to be able to get into a car that he and Dy bought together. It wasn't much, but it was a lot better than the Piece of Shit. It was almost ten years old and made some strange noises, but it was theirs, free and clear. After Dy got her promotion at Chick-fil-A, she paid it off early from the "buy here, pay here" place.

  He turned on the heater and it felt good. It was a cold, grey day. Before they got out of the parking lot, it started to snow lightly.

  ***

  Patti's house was a small structure in a big lot. The yard was full of unraked leaves that had fallen from several large trees that would provide cool shade in the summer. They both pulled into the small driveway. Before them was a separate single car garage. The door was closed.

  Fallon got out and looked around. No neighbors were in sight.

  Patty walked to the garage door and peeped inside through a crack. "Damn him all to hell. His car is still fucking here."

  Without another word, she turned on her heels and marched towards the front door, reaching into her purse and retrieving her keys. She stopped as she approached the door and turned to him like she'd just remembered he was there. "This was a bad idea. You go on home to your child bride, Fallon." She paused, "When you get there - if you love her, tell her, okay? Women like to hear it sometimes."

  With that, she put the key in the lock and disappeared inside.

  The old Fallon, the pre-Dy version, would have left as soon as Patti released him from this potentially uncomfortable duty. He would have driven away and looked up to see God's reaction to his cowardice.

  But the new Fallon stayed put. Dy had picked up an expression from her boss at CFA, "Do what's right, not what's easy." Whenever they had a decision to make together, she'd repeat that to him like some kind of mantra. It seemed to work, so Fallon applied it now. What was right was to stay and make sure Patti was okay. He walked near the porch and found a rake. He leaned on it, waiting. The snow continued to fall.

  ***

  He didn't have to wait for long. From his position, he heard muffled shouting. He knew they were arguing. He and Dy would get mad at each other once in a while, but they never shouted and were careful never to say anything that crossed the line - things that would hurt in such a way that the hurt would never totally go away. He would, for example, never refer to her past career as a whore when they argued - that was a line he wouldn't cross.

  Fallon doubted that Patti and her husband lived by any such rule. The noise from inside was almost continuous for several minutes until it started getting louder and more strident. He thought he heard a scream. Instinctively, he walked to the front door, still carrying his rake. Before he stepped up onto the little porch, he heard a "pop." It wasn't loud, but it was followed by total silence.

  Oh my God. He leapt to the door and tried the knob. It was locked. He turned it aggressively and pounded on the door. "Patti! Patti, are you all right? Open the door!" He tried to force the knob with his left hand as his right pounded harder until the door started to shake. "Open up, Patti, for Christ's sake."

  He felt the knob turn slightly; someone was trying to open it on the other side. Momentarily, he had a mental image of himself using the rake to fend off Patti’s husband, but he realized that it had fallen off the porch. He called out, "Patti, open the door! It's me!"

  She did and as he saw her, his heart skipped a beat. He'd seen her enter only a few minutes ago - tall, thin and neat with her hair pulled up on the top of her head.

  But now her hair had fallen down and was clustered over the right side of her face, partially obscuring her eye. The left eye was clearly visible though and the skin around it was darkening. Her red dollar store button up shirt was ripped open. It hung apart loosely, her pink bra intact. She had a small tattoo over her left breast, but Fallon couldn't see what it was.

  She wore tight yoga style dark pants - it was her normal work uniform. Today, they were ripped open at the top and a slit on her thigh revealed a cut that was bleeding.

  She was shaking almost violently, holding a pistol in her right hand. She lifted it slowly, until Fallon went to her and gently took it from her. As he did, he embraced her, holding her close. "Oh God. Oh God. Fallon . . . he . . . he hit me. He never did that before." Now her shaking was augmented by convulsions of sobs. "Oh God. I killed him."

  Fallon led her inside and sat her on the couch. He went into the kitchen and saw a man lying on the floor. There was no need to check for signs of life. Patti's husband had been balding; it looked like the bullet had hit him dead center on the bull’s eye - right through the top of his head exactly in the middle of his bald spot. Fallon didn't look for the exit wound. He picked up a pair of scissors and wet a handful of paper towels.

  Patti was sitting on the couch, still sobbing with her face in her hands. Fallon left her and found the bathroom and took bandages from the medicine cabinet. They were the same brand that the dollar store sold.

  He returned and knelt on the floor in front of her. "Patti, listen to me." He took both her hands and gently pulled them down and away from her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her left eye was slightly swollen and red from where the bastard had hit her. Fallon felt his anger rise, but it was too late now.

  "We've got to stop the bleeding of this cut on your leg. It doesn't look too bad, but I'm going to cut your pants a bit so we can see better. Is that okay?"

  She didn't answer. He wasn't sure she understood what he'd asked her.

  He took the scissors and cut off the leg of her pants just above her knee. He slid the bottom part down until it was a lump around her ankle. He then cut a slit upwards almost to the waist band. He opened the pants and used some of the paper towels to wash the blood away. The bleeding had almost stopped on its own. Fallon wiped away the last of the seepage and pressed a bandage over the cut. "It's not deep, Patti. Here, you hold it - put some pressure on the bandage."

  She nodded and did as he said. She had almost stopped crying. "Get me a tissue, would you?"

  Her purse was sitting upside down on the carpet. He reached for it and looked inside. It felt strange looking into her purse, like he was some type of voyeur. He found the tissues and gave them to her. She wiped and sniffed.

  "I found him in the kitchen. He'd been drinking; the bottle was half empty."

  Fallon started to tell her to just relax and calm down, but some instinct told him that it would be better to let her talk.

  "I told him to get his shit and get out and not to come back. You know what he did? He laughed. He said, 'Yeah, I'll go. I should have done it a long time ago. I could have had a real woman, not some skinny skank with no tits and a foul mouth. I just hung around today because I decided I wanted one final fuck - one time where you can't have one of your fucking headaches or have one of your fucking two weeks a month periods.'

  "He reached for me so fast that I couldn't do anything. He grabbed my shirt and ripped it open. I heard the buttons make little clicking noises as they hit the kitchen floor. I tried to fight him and then he hit me. I didn't see it coming. I was so shocked I stopped fighting. That's when he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me on the counter. He was out of control and he lifted me like I didn't weigh anything.

  "I was scared and reached in a drawer and pulled out a knife. I told him I'd cut his nuts off and he just laughed and grabbed my hand and took the knife away."

  Fallon could see that her eyes were unfocused - she wasn't there with him, instead she was in that kitchen, perhaps fighting for her life.

  "He's a gun nut. He's got them all over. He thought some of the rioters might get over this way and he said he was ready for them. There was a gun in the drawer. I pulled it out. He didn't see me; he was busy trying to pull my pants down - he tried to cut them off with the knife and I could feel the blade
on my skin - that’s when I got cut. I put the gun on his head and pulled the trigger."

  Fallon remembered how he hoped Ax was dead and realized he was glad that Patti had killed her husband. "You did the right thing, Patti. There was nothing else you could do."

  The crying returned. She embraced him again.

  Finishing College

  Victor made sure the house was locked up and saw Mary and the kids off. As Mary drove off in the Mule, Zoe turned around and waved, "Bye, Daddy! Tell Samantha I love her!" Without looking back, Mary made their circle sign over her head. Victor understood.

  He waited by the truck for almost twenty minutes until he heard Mary's voice on the two meter radio, "Kids are playing." That meant they were there and everything was fine. Vic thumbed the transmit bar and said, "Roger." He didn't think anyone would be listening, but it didn't hurt to be careful.

  He got in the truck and left.

  ***

  Vic shouldn't have been surprised at how light the traffic was since he'd had a report on it from Mary, but he was. He'd considered a lot of scenarios for how society might collapse - most of them called for things to get really bad almost immediately. He expected people to panic and the veneer of civilization to disappear as people started to die.

  Maybe things were quiet because the dying hadn't started yet. People still had food in their pantries and a steak or two in their freezers. They had gas in their tanks and secure places to live. It was only three days until Christmas - people were mostly off work already so Vic figured they were just riding it out - expecting the power to magically reappear so they could go about their last minute shopping.

  Vic didn't expect the calm to last long. He prayed it lasted long enough for him to get Samantha safely home.

  She had planned on taking the bus home to Missoula on Christmas Eve. She was working long hours and making extra money during the holidays at her part time job at Victoria's Secret. According to her, the place was mobbed every day with people buying gifts. "Rich white man like buying bra and panties from pretty Indian squaw," she said the last time he talked to her. The college had agreed to let her stay in the dorm until Christmas Eve. Victor knew it would be largely empty and that worried him.

  The trip to the intersection of Rt. 93 and I-90 was uneventful. As he merged onto I-90 west to begin the long trip through the mountains, a single ambulance roared by; its sirens screaming but with flashing lights on only one side of the vehicle. Victor set the cruise on eighty five.

  ***

  He didn't touch the brakes until he approached the Clark Fork River Crossing. A man was waving a flag, stopping traffic so that it bunched up. It took Victor several minutes to inch up to him.

  "Big wreck up ahead. Road's closed. You need to get off and take old US 10 west. It'll meet up with the interstate again about eleven miles up the road."

  Victor knew that road. It was tiny and full of curves and it meandered north for miles before it came back south to eventually meet up with I-90. With traffic from the interstate highway inching along on the little road, Victor thought it would add hours to his trip - and those hours might make all the difference.

  Victor nodded to the flagman and continued to follow the slow moving line of cars and trucks to Exit 33. The traffic went up the ramp like a slow moving snake, ignoring the non-working light at the intersection of US 10. The snake turned right.

  Victor turned left. He sped across the bridge that passed over I-90. At the other side, he turned onto a ramp leading to the highway. A sign completely in red said, "WRONG WAY," and then another, "DO NOT ENTER."

  He slowed and reached under the seat and pulled out a blue light. Victor put it on the dash and plugged the power connector into the truck's electrical outlet. The light flashed and moved from left to right. Victor had seen this advertised on a prepper site. The ad said, "Cops not around? No authorities in sight? After SHTF, YOU can be your own authority." He ordered it immediately.

  At the bottom of the exit ramp, he looked carefully and was pleased to find the way completely clear except for a van about a quarter mile away. Victor gunned the engine and turned his truck quickly to the side of the road. I-90 had a large paved area to the right of the direction of travel for almost its entire length. Victor drove in this lane, off the main lanes of the roadway. The van moved to the left lane to give this crazy driver more space.

  He covered the eleven miles to the next exit in just over nine minutes. He met sixteen cars and trucks and all of them moved over when they saw his blue, flashing light.

  The exit was clear of traffic, so he turned almost 180 degrees to get off and then quickly went back down the westbound entrance ramp - the right way this time.

  ***

  Victor drove the last ten miles on I-90 at forty miles an hour, because it started to snow. Normally, the highway trucks would have been out in force even with a light snow, putting down salt and rocks that, for some reason, they called cinders. But today, there were no loaded highway trucks around.

  Victor turned the knob on the Ram to shift into four wheel drive when the road started to turn white. Even with that help, the roadway quickly became slippery at it went up and down through the last of the mountains. A car in front of him spun a full 180 degrees. As he approached the car, it righted itself and continued slowly up the grade. Victor passed and saw a woman driving - she looked scared.

  By the time he exited at Coeur d’Alene, the snow had stopped, but the sky was still grey with clouds. He took highway 95 south through the large Indian Reservation. Here the land was mostly barren and thankfully flat. He passed through the small town of Plummer midway through the Rez - a place with two churches and an Ace Hardware along with a group of run down looking homes. Most of the streets were dirt roads. A group of people were gathered around a large open fire in a vacant lot. Several of them turned to stare as he drove by.

  ***

  Victor passed through the town of Moscow without incident. The large Wal-Mart on the edge of town had a few dozen cars in the lot, but the place looked dark.

  As he drove the ten miles to Pullman, home of Washington State, he tried to raise Samantha on the two meter radio. He didn't expect her to hear him at ten miles, but when she hadn't responded with only two miles to go, he became concerned. He knew there would be a dozen reasons why she didn't reply to his calls - and that most of them were innocuous - but he felt himself start to worry. What if she wasn't around? Went to visit a friend and couldn't get back?

  Like most university towns, parking was at a premium. Victor stopped the truck in a bank parking lot that had signs every ten feet - "Bank Parking ONLY. Violators WILL be towed." There was an 800 number on the sign for you to call if you were towed.

  Victor took the Smith and Wesson M&P out of his bug out bag and put it in the holster on his hip. It was loaded with eighteen nine millimeter rounds. He put another full clip in his jacket pocket and zipped up to conceal the handgun.

  He thumbed the transmit bar again, "Sam, reply please." The less said the better. If she heard him, she'd reply if she could.

  Nothing.

  He walked towards the university. He and Mary and both kids had helped her move into the dorm so he knew exactly where it was. Every minute or so, he tried calling her on the radio, but there was still no reply. He realized he was frowning and forced his face muscles to relax. Sam had been responsible for that.

  After her mother passed, Mary had insisted that Samantha spend at least a few days with them. She and her mother had lived in a trailer on the outskirts of town, but Mary knew a grieving eighteen year old should not be alone. Besides, they had all grown to love her and she loved them. She was as much a part of their family as anyone.

  Victor knew he had a tendency to be overly serious and Samantha had made it her job to make him lighten up. When he was working on a tough problem in the garage and cursed out loud, she'd walk in and peep under the car he was working on and say something like, "Pops, would now be a bad time to talk about tha
t raise I've been wanting?" He couldn't help but smile.

  Before she left for college, she'd started to bug him about frowning. "It's a bad habit, Vic. It'll make your face all wrinkly. By the time you're really ancient, like fifty, you'll look like you're frowning all the time. I'm sure I'll give you at least a handful of grandchildren by then and I don't want them to call their grandpa Old Sourpuss."

  From them on, whenever she caught him frowning out of habit, she wrinkled up her face so that her eyes were slits and her lips almost disappeared inside. "Here's a mirror, Old Sourpuss," she'd say and Victor would look up and laugh. It didn't take long for him to remember to not frown all the time.

  ***

  The entrance to the university was blocked by campus police car. The motor was running, but as soon as Victor walked up, it stopped and a fit looking guy in a rumpled uniform got out. He was almost bald even though he couldn't have been thirty.

  "Can I help you, Sir?" His word choice was fine, but they were delivered with just a hint of insolence.

  Victor moved towards the cop with his hand out. They shook. "I'm here to pick up a student. My daughter."

  The cop sized him up for just a second. Victor could tell he was thinking that he was younger than your average parent who showed up at the campus. "No can do, Chief. ECC's meeting right now, deciding what to do. Until then, we're on total lockdown. The kids are all in the Hollingberry Fieldhouse 'cause it's big and has lots of windows. They're all fine, but we're not allowing anyone inside right now. Come back in a few hours and I might be able to let you in."

  "What's the ECC?"

  The cop looked at him with an expression that said he was impatient to get back into his warm car.

  "It's the Emergency Coordinating Committee. The power went out last night and it's not back on yet. They're in charge."