by Geo Dell
“Desolation is fine as long as the dead aren't there.” Beth said quietly.
“Less likely to be,” Billy agreed.
A few minutes later they were running through the desert that ran alongside I 10. There were not a great many cars or trucks there, but in several places there had been wrecks that closed lanes down. With no one to clear them they would have ended up in the desert anyway. And there seemed to be a dirt road that ran beside I 10 for as far as they could see.
The landscape in the distance had been changing as they drove the day away, but with the sun setting a few hours after they set out once more it was hard to tell what the surrounding countryside was like. Billy dropped speed and flicked the trucks high beams on. A short while later Beth was sleeping, her head heavy against Billy's arm. He drove through the night and into the early morning before she woke again.
Watertown New York
Mike Collins' Journal
March 13th
Man, it’s been a long day. We walked out to Washington Street to where the car dealerships are. Everything’s torn up out there, but there are tons or cars and trucks. We found three trucks that we got running, and we drove them back. So we have a pickup truck, a suburban and a big four door state truck, one of those you always used to see along the highway when they were doing road repair. There were a few others we found that also ran, but they were in such bad shape that we left them.
Tom wanted to build one. I mean take one of the new trucks and put old parts on it. I got the idea from Bob that it probably wouldn’t work out the way Tom thought that it would. The right parts would be hard to find. I could see the idea, the appeal of a newer vehicle so we wouldn’t have to be concerned about break downs, but I could see Bob’s point of view too. I think it pissed Tom off though, but it seems that almost everything pisses Tom off.
I didn’t write this in here yet, but Candace and I are together. It just happened that fast. I was surprised in a way, but in another way I wasn’t all that surprised. Who knows how long this world will last, what it was that really happened? Maybe there is no time for slow anymore.
Candace said that, and once I thought about it, I agreed. Things are so different. And she’s right for me. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened this fast in the old world. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all, but everything’s changed. It’s all different, and this seems right. It seems like the way it should have happened with her and me, the right way for it all to work.
It also seemed to work out for the others as well. By that I mean Tom ended up with Lydia. She’s a lot younger than he is, but like I said, it’s a different world now. They seem to be happy together. I thought I felt some animosity from both of them at first, but either I imagined it, or they’ve moved past it, gotten over it, something like that.
We haven’t discussed leaving again. It’ll come up. Candace and I want to go. I think Bob and Jan want to go too. Tom and Lydia seem to be against it. Lydia keeps talking about how none of us know what it might be like anywhere else, like she wants to throw that out before we even discuss leaving at all. Here we have food, shelter, what’s so bad? I guess we have been talking about it without really talking about it at all.
Tom backs up everything she says with a nod of his head. He pointed out we’re in an area of mainly limestone, that’s what made this cave, and we may not find that anywhere else. At least not easily. Maybe they’re right. Hell, they make sense, but it’s the attitude. The rest of us bend. They refuse to.
We decided to go out to Arsenal Street tomorrow to the sporting goods store, and also look at some super markets out there, something else I didn’t check out while I was out there.
Lastly, I’m glad Candace and I have each other. It makes all of this easier to deal with.
She asked me why I’m writing this journal. I felt kind of stupid. I told her why I started it though, and that I’m continuing it for someone in the future. Maybe a child? Someone to come later on?
I expected her to laugh that off, or look at me like I was crazy, but she only nodded as if that made perfectly good sense. She told me she has a journal too. A diary, she said. Of course Lydia jumped on that as well. At first arguing against it, then saying she thought it might be okay. Tom said he wouldn’t do it. He said he’s not leaving to go anywhere and if someone shows up here, he’ll be here, not some journal. Okay.
It’s stuff like that that makes me wonder. And, anyway, I only mentioned it; it wasn't like I wanted anyone else to do it or was trying to encourage someone else to do it. It's that kind of jump on it attitude I don't like, like they think I'm looking to screw them over somehow.
But it’s all good. I’m alive. I looked back at some of what I wrote in here. I had no one just a short time ago. I didn’t even know whether there was anyone else. Now I have Candace. We have some plans, things we’ve begun to talk about, agree about. A little ego trouble with Tom is really just bullshit in the scheme of things. I have to try harder to look past that. Maybe I'm too damn sensitive. And anyway things are good. This could be a lot worse.
A thing that bugs me and I can not figure out, where are all the bodies? I mean there don't seem to be enough bodies to match all of those that were killed. It bothers me. Maybe they weren't killed? But that makes no sense. Where would they be? I don't have an answer. I only know it bugs me.
Billy and Beth
March 14th
The name of the place was Tonopah Arizona. Billy had eased the truck up onto I10 and that had waked Beth up, the tires bouncing over the broken asphalt.
“Not a big city... A town from the looks of it. Phoenix is close. Ten, fifteen miles maybe. Can't really tell from the map,” Billy said. A gas station loomed out of the early morning gray and Billy wheeled the truck under the roof the covered the pumps. He shut off the motor and they both listened to the tick of the cooling motor for a few seconds.
“Coffee would be real nice,” Beth said. “No way do we want to go into Phoenix... Too dangerous.” She yawned and then covered her mouth and laughed. “Jesus... Morning breath.” She zipped open her knapsack, retrieved a bottle of water, her toothbrush and some toothpaste. She stepped from the truck.
Billy opened his door and settled his feet onto the pavement. It wasn't just old pavement, he saw, it was gray, like it was completely washed out, used up. There was no black left in it. Beth stood slightly in front of the truck, her gun in one hand the toothbrush working around her mouth on its own. The other hand was reaching for the rifle which was just coming free of her shoulder. Billy hand his own rifle off his shoulder and into his hand before he even saw what had alarmed her. She spit out the toothbrush, holstered the gun and flicked the safety off. Three men stepped out of the shadows of the open garage bay.
They were kids, Billy saw. Or at least not much more than kids. They walked slowly forward.
Beth raised the rifle and pointed it at the lead kid. “That's it right there.” She said.
She didn't scream it, softly spoke it, Billy thought later, but the kid stopped I his tracks.
“What's with the fuckin' guns?” The kid asked.
“Ours weren't aimed at you until you aimed yours at us,” Billy said. He hoped he sounded as cool as Beth had.
“Bullshit,” one of the other kids said. “You had it in your hands when I looked at you. That's why I got mine ready.”
“I don't want to kill anyone today,” Beth said.
“It really don't bother me,” The third kid said. His eyes were blood shot. They had interrupted him while he was sleeping, it seemed. He kept rubbing at his eyes, Beth saw.
“I think you're right. Can't matter if you're dead,” Beth said.
“Hey,” the lead kid said, “Maybe all's we want is to party a little.”
“Well I don't know if Billy swings that way,” Beth said.
“Pretty funny,” the kid responded. “Look... It's our town. We ain't the only ones here. You shoot there will be twenty more here in seconds. Then everybody dies.”
>
“Oh... I guess I didn't see it right,” Beth said. “I can see where it might be preferable to get raped and then murdered instead of getting murdered outright.”
The one in the back, the one with the sleepy eyes, stiffed a yawn and reflexively raised one hand to his mouth as his eyes slipped shut for a split second. Beth shot the lead kid in that split second, Billy had the second guy a moment later. The third kid opened his eyes to a changed situation.
“Just give me a reason,” Beth said. “Any reason.” The kid released the rifle he held and it dropped from his hands to the pavement.
“Can't shoot me I ain't got no gun... Can't... Can't shoot me...” He spun and looked off toward a rag tag collection of trailers that lined a dirt road in back of the station. “Johnny!” he screamed. “Johnny! Killers!” he turned back to Billy and Beth. “Can't shoot me... I ain't armed... Can't...” Billy shot him.
A second later the truck roared to life and Billy spun the wheel hard heading back towards the drop off from the pavement, back the way they had come.
Beth bounced around the cab and smacked her head hard enough on the windshield to star the glass when the truck left the pavement at better than fifty miles an hour and hit the hard packed dirt that ran alongside I10. She finally got her balance, swept one hand across her forehead, looked at the blood and cursed lightly. Behind them three trucks had launched off the pavement and were running hard to catch them.
“Fuck me,” Billy said. He pushed the pedal to the floor, there was nothing else for it. The glass in the back window starred a second later as Beth rammed the rifle stock into it. Another hit and the glass fell out into the pickup bed area. She raised the rifle and began to fire back at the trucks. A second later a hole punched through the windshield to Billy's left. He mashed the pedal harder into the floorboard feeling the truck skate across the hardscrabble of the desert as it flew beside the highway.
“We have to get north, the other side of the highway. If they squeeze us south we'll be in the goddamn desert,” Beth yelled above the scream of the engine.
“There's cars up there,” Billy yelled back. “On the highway!”
“There are bullets down here and they're gaining on us,” Beth yelled back.
“Better sit down,” Billy yelled.
“Just do it, Billy!” She continued to fire out the back window.
Billy turned the wheel hard right and the truck lurched hard to the left, threatening to roll over as the center of gravity changed. It nearly rolled before it hit the edge of the pavement, broke over, and then became airborne. It came within ten feet of a stalled, wrecked semi and trailer and then it plunged off the other side of the highway so smoothly that billy couldn't believe it had actually landed.
“Nearly broke my neck slamming it into the ceiling,” Beth yelled. She fell silent. “I...” She started, but an explosion from the highway stopped her words.
“Hit that fucking truck,” Billy screamed. “Has to be.”
“Keep it floored though, Billy. Keep it floored.” She stayed where she was, staring out the back window, knees driven into the seat top. Billy's eyes strayed to her ass, and then snapped back to the road. He watched the hard packed earth fly by.
“Roads coming up... Like dirt roads,” Billy said. He had no sooner said it than the truck hit the slight rise and flew across it.
“Like back roads, looks like,” Beth said. “Nothing on the map.” She was trying her best to read the map as the truck bounced and tilted. One hand clutching the seat back held her in a somewhat stable position as she looked at the roads. “Looks like all dirt roads, back roads and then it falls away to nothing. Just keep it pointed at the mountains in the distance.” She turned completely around and sat down with the map in her lap. “Must have hit the truck or each other. Whatever it was I don't think they feel like coming after us again... Billy, we can't fuck up like that again. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking letting my guard down like that.”
Billy said nothing. Beth went back to reading the map.
“Start breaking left, Billy. There's a river... No, maybe some sort of waterway, not a river, too straight. It ends and then picks up again a few miles later. We can get through and into the desert from there.” She looked at the map for a few more minutes, “Maybe twenty miles or so. Just run right by I10 and we should be good.” She turned and peeked over the back seat once more. “We're leaving a lot of dust, Billy.”
He looked over at her.
“We gotta figure this out too. I mean, we're going backwards, back to where we came,” Beth said.
“I could loop out deep and then swing back,” Billy said.
“Yeah, except I'm thinking in this desert you can see dust for miles... The dust is the problem.” She leaned over and looked at the gas gauge. “Less than a half tank, so gas is a problem too.” She frowned.
“We've got gas in the back,” Billy threw in.
“I'm thinking this. We hit that water way, or an out building, has to be something around here. We crash, sleep the day away, and then tonight we run across the desert to the other side of Phoenix. What do you think?”
“Sounds like a plan... I'm shot,” Billy agreed.
“Okay, so take the next road that crosses, slow down to keep the dust down and let's start looking for a place to hide for the day... We've got enough gas in the back we can get a long way before we need to find a station if we don't burn it up running in circles and backtracking.”
Billy slowed the truck and began heading to the right, the east. “One of those towers will do... High voltage lines? Something like that. Just scrap metal now, but that will hide us if we drive right up to it,” Beth said.
They drove to the tower and a dirt service road that circled it and continued to the north. Billy pulled the truck up close to the tower and shut it down. The silence held for a few moments, he fisted his hands into his eyes. “Jesus, I'm shot.”
“Come here,” Beth said. She pulled him down to the seat and laid his head in her lap. She began to rub lightly at his temples.
“God, don't do that, It'll put me to sleep,” Billy told her half jokingly.
“Which is why I'm doing it.” She stretched her legs, angled them across to the drivers side floorboard, and leaned back into the door. The last thing she remembered was smoothing the hair out of his eyes and then she spiraled away into a series of dreams.
CHAPTER FOUR
Billy and Beth
March 15th
It was late afternoon when Billy awoke. Somewhere in the day Beth had wound up beside him, two spoons in a drawer. He lay still unwilling to let her go, his hand was curled protectively around her. Beth moved and he felt the sleep leave her body. One moment all soft and willing, the next a live wire.
“You didn't cop a feel did you?” Beth asked in a mumbled half sleepy voice.
“Beth, can't you ever just say something like, I don't know, good morning?”
She twisted her head around and smiled. The secret smile she rarely ever gave out. The one that had started him falling in the first place. “Good late afternoon,” she said and the smile slipped away. There was still something there, but it wasn't that secret, vulnerable glimpse into her heart that it was usually. She stretched, yawned, and her feet came up against the door. “Next vehicle we get is an SUV so we have some place to sleep too.”
“I don't know, I kind of liked this,” Billy said before he could shut his mouth down.
Beth laughed and it was the unguarded Beth once more. “As long as you know what the deal is.” She twisted her head once more, and then her entire body so she was looking directly in his eyes.
“I... I know the deal,” Billy said. The press of her body was maddening.
“We really don't need to talk it out?”
“You know how I feel, Beth.”
“I do,” she nodded and her eyes became sad. “Let me just say these few things.” She took a deep breath and then began to speak. “I am attracted to you. I conside
red sleeping with you before you became my friend, before I knew it couldn't work between us. I even considered it after... Maybe ten minutes ago too, but it would cost me a friend because it wouldn't mean to me what it would mean to you.” She held his eyes as if willing him to understand.
“It's like you see me as this fragile little princess, and I am so far from that, Billy. So far. You have been on the bad side of me and so I can't see why you still try to see me that way.” She laughed. “It's a thing men do. Like... Like that is love, you see? Instead of love just being about all the other stuff... The things I admire about you, you about me. The things in common, the things that we share, the parts of you and me that are real that end up in the mix... But no, I'm a princess, unattainable beauty, something to worship, and it has nothing to do with what I really am at all. I have lived that way, tried to live up to that. It's not possible... The man I need is out there, I hope. Just someone that looks at me as me.” She watched his eyes.
“I think I can do that,” Billy told her.
Beth laughed.
“No, really. I think I can separate those things... I'm pretty sure.”
“Yeah? I think you like the idea of me... I think you want to fuck me... I think it might even hold together in a situation like this... At least for a while. And I think you could talk me into that comfort we could give each other, and I think you would feel completely different about me once that happened. You would think it meant that we were together, and it wouldn't mean that at all. It would mean we were scared and we took some comfort in each other... Because the attraction was there, and because it can just be about that sometimes.” She drew a breath. “But I think then I would go from princess to whore, because that's the way this world works, princess to whore in sixty seconds. I've seen it... I've felt it... And then I lose my friend, and I also hurt my fiend, because he doesn't want to see it, I mean really see it for what it is.” She reached one hand up and pushed Billy's dirty blonde hair away from his eyes. That hair, and the way it hung across his eyes was one of the things that had nearly made her give in. He looked like a little boy, vulnerable, maybe he would love her forever, never hurt her, never treat her badly, never leave, but he would be reacting to something in her that didn't really exist. Something only he saw. That little boy, awestruck, in love, but not the kind of love she needed him to feel, to be in with her... She sighed again. She could see the hurt in his eyes.