Dominion

by Doug Goodman

  My brother’s still alive, she knew. Kurt. My parents are dead, but my brother’s back home in Wellington and he’s alive. A million miles from here, but I’ll reach it, because my brother’s alive, right now, and I’m alive, right now. I don’t know how I know this, but it’s true. My brother’s alive, holed up somewhere in my hometown, and I-

  There was something else in there as well, but Meg pushed it back into the receding tide.

  ***

  Noon came and passed. The sun stopped rising and started to set.

  As she rode she noticed two things. The first was that she wasn’t getting tired. She’d never been a very athletic person, never on any track or soccer teams, and she was sweating out all the water her body could spare, the single water bottle already half empty in her pack. Yet she didn’t feel tired, not even slightly tired. It wasn’t from any sort of adrenal rush either. Whatever adrenaline she’d ever had was all gone back in Dallas.

  It was the lack of options that made ‘tired’ disappear. Her body knew that the bike was all she had. It was either the bike or death, so her body left tired behind, just another piece of refuse on the road. No room for it in her overstuffed pack, or on her shoulders, behind her eyes. Tired was dead.

  The other thing she noticed was her front tire was going flat.

  It’d started around two. The bike simply wasn’t taking her weight anymore. When she tried to continue forward, it would sink and rise, wobbling under the deflated inner-tube underneath the front tire. Once, when she maneuvered sharply around a briefcase lying in the road, she almost skidded right off the bike. It’d taken a frantic moment of counterbalancing to keep from falling facedown onto the asphalt. You can’t steer a bike on a flat, she thought. Go figure.

  She reluctantly got off the bike, knowing that if she continued to ride on it, she’d damage either the tires or herself. She didn’t want to leave it behind, however, so she walked it along, her arms rested on the handlebars. Her pace slowed to a dead crawl.

  It was something else to walk rather than to ride. On a bike she was as weightless as air. The world gave way and it made her forget where she was going, or coming from. On her feet, Meg couldn’t help but take frequent looks back behind her, one quick glance followed by an obsessive double take every few minutes. She knew that it was a ridiculous thing to do, and that she’d hear the danger coming from a mile off. No sound in the world was bigger, more obvious, but that knowledge didn’t keep her from continuing to look back.

  The world was clear and slow and dull. Grey brush and grass gave way to short, bright-green grass, the farther from the city she went. The number of cars receded, as did the number of bodies. Instead of loose trash and possessions littering the road, things looked thoroughly picked over, as if drivers, upon running out of gas, stalling from mechanical issues, or stopping for various other reasons, had taken everything they could with them, having time to spare. But to where? Meg wondered. Do they know something that I don’t? Why would you leave your car and the highway? Where would you go? Into small towns? The back country? There were probably plenty of drivers, the majority of drivers, that’d run into no trouble at all and were a thousand miles away by now, going west to California, north all the way to Canada, or east to DC, to knock on the doors of the White House and tell the President of the United States that there was a mess to clean up in Texas, and he needed to get his ass in gear and order some low flying AC-130s into downtown Dallas.

  Thinking of the city made the tide rise over the dam in her mind. She started to put together all the pieces of the questions she’d wanted to ask in the city, but hadn’t had the time. What the fuck’s happening? Had been numero-uno on her list, followed shortly by how? And Why? The last two were apt to drive her crazy, the first would give her nightmares for the rest of her life. The real question, the one she could’ve used an answer to, was what am I really gonna do, and how am I supposed to do it?

  Then she saw the people, ahead on the road.

  Four of them, all standing behind a low barricade of smashed cars directly under a double-headed streetlight at the center divide of the highway, two of them held weapons in their hands. One was man holding a shotgun by a front grip, another a woman with a baseball bat. There were two others behind them, young teenage boys by the look, unarmed. The boys, both of whom looked no older than fifteen, were focused primarily on the dark sweat under her neck that made her shirt cling to her midriff.

  The wielder of the gun was a middle aged guy, grey hair went straight down to his shoulders from a widow’s peak. A fresh, shallow scar ran across one cheek. He put up his right hand, the left kept the gun balanced on the hood of a car. Meg stopped.

  “You’re from the city,” the man said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yea,” Meg said back, her throat ached as she made the words. “Going north.”

  The man nodded. “You know,” he said. “Others have come from the west and east, and there was one dumbass I met going south, but you…You’re the first we’ve seen from the city, coming from the highway at least.”

  “Really?” He nodded unsmiling. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “There’s nothing I wanna hear. Keep your stories to yourself. What’s your name, Miss?”

  She shrugged uncomfortably, “Megan. I-uh, my bike’s got a flat. You know where I could fix it? Anyone in town that would help me?” She knew of the town off the interstate, Gainesville was its name, and could also guess the reason these people were out on the highway. They were locals, keeping refugees out of their pocket of highway land, away from the provisions of grocery stores and twenty-four-hour gas stations.

  “You know why I’m out here, don’t you?” the man with the shotgun said, reading her mind. “Some came yesterday, after it started. They said bad things. Things we didn’t want to hear. We told them to leave and they did. Are you gonna say bad things?”

  “No.” She promised. “I’m not gonna say anything if I’m not asked. If I am asked and I know it’s…bad I’ll say I don’t know. I’ll be a good guest. And I don’t want to stay. As soon as I can, I’m gone.”

  “Good.” He seemed convinced. “Head to the mechanic’s shop. Guy by the name of Jim runs it, young kid but good mannered, he’ll help you out. Tell him Manny sent you. It’s a home shop. Take the exit down Weaver till you hit California street, head right, and after you go over the railroad, take a left on Denison. He’s the lime-green house right past the scrapyard. He’ll fix you up, just don’t go wandering.”

  “Thanks.” She memorized the directions.

  Meg turned to the right to pass them and start down the exit. The woman with the baseball bat nudged Manny on the shoulder and gave him a look. He rolled his eyes, then spoke to Meg once more. “One more thing. You don’t gotta answer if you don’t want to.”

  “What?”

  “How do you know that your brother is still alive?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  She didn’t answer the man’s question and didn’t think of it any longer than she had to. She passed by a few people milling about in town, all frowns on their faces. An old man in overalls spat tobacco out in the road ahead of her, shaking his head as she passed. Others gave her similar nasty looks, but none came too close, and she found her way easily enough without having to ask for directions.

  Gainesville was a surprisingly small town, for something nestled so close to the highway. It reminded her a little bit of home. Like Wellington, Gainesville was a community nestled on the interstate, only there at all because a highway went through it. An hour’s drive would take you to Dallas from here. The Wellington equivalent would be Wichita. A ten minute drive away from the interstate on either side would take you out into the endless, nowhere farmlands of Middle America.

  All the towns I’ve ever seen are highway towns, she reflected. Maybe that’s the real reason I’m heading north. I just wanna ride the highway one last time.

  The house was easy to find, just past a scary looking scrapyard where
three or four cranes stood in the air. Long chains hung down, each with a hook on the end. The place was barely more than a covered garage with a four room shack of a home leaning against one wall, all built in the middle of a grassy field, the only building around for several blocks.

  The structure had seen better days. Its terracotta roof was cracked and faded. In many places, entire sections were missing, revealing cheap layers of exposed plywood underneath. How much of the damage was the work of yesterday’s events and how much could be attributed to simple neglect, Meg didn’t know. A small path of gravel led to the house from the street. Behind the house were three huge ash trees, bright red in the height of autumn. The gravel wound its way around to the back of the house, past a chain link fence and gate.

  The door of the house opened, and a man emerged, one foot on the doormat, the other inside the house. He looked to be in his late twenties, tall, with bulging forearms that came out from under his navy blue shirt, which, like everything about the man, looked both worn and well maintained at the same time. He had a pair of blue eyes that, despite the rest of him, gave him a young look. She thought he was attractive, not just because he looked strong, but because he looked real too. She’d seen all too many fake men at her college, half-toned business majors that sported muscles they didn’t know how to use. This guy doesn’t just have strength, he knows strength. She thought. Mechanic. He’s earned it, and he’s cute too, blue eyes, dimples. Yeah, I dig it.

  He rolled his eyes impatiently at her. “Whatcha want?” he asked, with hands still at his hips.

  “I-uh,” Meg stared around, uncomfortable at the openness around them. There was nothing to see for miles and miles. The streets and buildings were deserted in every direction. “The-uh-guy on the highway said to find your shop. That you were a mechanic.”

  He nodded. “Manny?”

  “Yeah, Manny. He was watching the highway.”

  “Uh-huh. What can I do for you?” She motioned to her bike, gently nudging the flat front tire with her shoe. “That’s no problem.” He said, I’ve got a few inner-tubes. Come on in, uh?”

  “Meg,” she said.

  He didn’t go back up to the front door of the house, instead he went around to the covered door of the garage. With the turn of a latch on the garage door and a yank upward, he exposed a fully furnished mechanic’s shop, complete with a car raising piston on one side. It was non-electric, powered by a foot crank near the ground. On the other side of the garage, nestled into a corner, was a massive workbench surrounded by shelves and cabinets on every side.

  “Well, Meg, you uh, know what you did? Run over a piece of glass? Something else?”

  “No idea.”

  Jim walked over to a tool cabinet on the far edge of the garage. He opened a door on the cabinet to reveal several columns of drawers inside. He pulled one of the drawers halfway out, thumbing through tools and nails lying loose inside. He found what he was looking for and pulled it out, a long slender bar of metal with a curved sharp edge.

  He took the bike from Meg and flipped it over, letting it rest on its seat and handlebars. “Where you coming from? The city?”

  Meg nodded, “Yeah, I’m uh…not supposed to talk about it.”

  Jim laughed. “Manny’s a funny guy.” He unlatched the bar that held the front wheel in place and unscrewed it from the bike. When it was loose, he pulled the whole thing off and set it on the ground. “Mayor Greenwood says we need to start asking questions, but Manny disagrees. He ran against him last year, lost by a landslide. Manny thinks that if we just sit and wait, everything will just blow over. Thing is, it’s already blown over. Came from the south, went north, and it’ll blow back over again and again and again.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jim gave a small chuckle. “Cause we’re still here.”

  He grabbed the detached wheel with one hand and held his curved tool with the other. He used it to dig the inner tube of the tire out from under the wheel.

  “There’s your problem,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’ve got a chunk of gravel stuck inside here. Probably been there for a while. Tore a hole in your tube. How long does the tire usually last, before it goes flat?”

  “I wouldn’t know. It’s my roommate’s bike.”

  “Oh, okay.” He didn’t ask where her roommate was. “I don’t have what you need, but I bet somebody around town has a tube that’ll work for your wheel size. It’s getting late, you hungry?”

  “No, I-uh-“

  “Come on.” He smiled reassuringly. “You look pretty hungry. I’ll cook up some supper, no worries.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  They entered the house through a door in the back of the garage. The interior of the house took Meg a little aback. It was clean and well furnished. A single hallway was adorned with a dozen family pictures, some of individuals standing for school portraits, a few older black and white photographs hung in expensive frames, and others showed a group of three: a skinny mom, grizzly haired dad, and little freckled kid with bright blue eyes. The hallway led to a kitchen and living room put into one, the backdoor was half a step steps from the dining table, a circular piece of furniture carved from a single piece of redwood.

  “Coffee?” He opened up a cupboard and pulled out two mugs, setting them on the counter. Meg nodded, took a seat at the table.

  “Parent’s house,” he explained. “Left me enough to pay the taxes off and keep the business running.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “Thanks.” He reached down to a low cupboard and pulled out a saucepan and a boiler. “You like spaghetti?” She shrugged, nodded.

  He began to work on the meal, filling pans with water, getting tomato mix ready from the pantry. Meg sat still, her shoulders slouched, and no words passed between them for several minutes. She realized there was something caught in that room with them, a tenseness that neither would face. She wondered just how much he knew about everything that was happening.

  “So…where you planning on sleeping tonight?” he asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “You’re not planning on leaving before it gets dark? There’s maybe two hours of sunlight left. I’m not gonna find a tube for you that fast. People in town are probably already shutting themselves in.”

  She hadn’t considered it, “I uh-“

  “If you want, you can stay here,” he said quickly. “My parent’s room is still set up.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she said, regretting the words as soon as they came out. The offer had caught her off guard. Up to that moment, Meg had forgotten who and where she was. She’d gotten caught up in the rest of it. She wasn’t as safe as she felt, here with this stranger, and she shouldn’t, of all things, go to sleep in his house, in the middle of nowhere, in a nowhere town. But what other choice did she have?

  His head bobbed slightly as he poured a handful of dry spaghetti noodles into the pot. He turned back, gave her a quick smile, and went back to the dinner.

  ***

  They ate together at the kitchen table, and the words between them started slow, but picked up as time progressed. By the end of the meal, Meg felt a little reassured. She learned a few things about Jim, the first being he was younger than he looked, twenty-one, going on twenty-two. He’d gotten an Associate’s degree at Willow Community College, majoring in auto-mechanics. He didn’t look surprised when Meg told him she was a sophomore undergrad. She probably looked the part.

  “I almost went to university, but I backed out,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Just didn’t want to go in the end. Wouldn’t have been right for me. I’m a picture-oriented person. Can’t get ideas very easily from books, but show me a cross section of a 68-Mustang’s engine, and I can take that thing apart, put it back together too. Not bragging, just the way my mind works.”

  The sun was far under the horizon when they cleared away the dishes and prepared for the night ahead. She was still uncomfortable to a deg
ree with the prospect of sleeping in his house. It felt like an unnecessarily dangerous thing to do.

  Meg grabbed her pack that she’d left with her bike in the garage. When she returned, Jim was waiting in the hallway.

  “Parent’s room is on the right. If anything happens in the night, meet me in the hallway and we’ll go to the garage.”

  “Why there?”

  “It’d be safest if it comes again. Sturdiest part of the house, no windows. The whole thing held up last time, but the garage will be the last thing to fall, if it comes to that. Here, I’ve got something for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large padlock, its key stuck out of the lock’s keyhole.

  “What’s it for?”

  “It’ll fit over the latch on the inside of my parent’s door.” She gave him a confused look. “It’s okay! Really, take it. I get it, okay? If I were you, I’d want one over my door.”

  “Uh, thanks.” She took it, and despite the fact that in many ways the gesture was kinda creepy, giving her a lock for her door when he was the only other person in the house, she was thankful. He nodded and disappeared behind his bedroom door. She closed hers. The lock fit over the door like a glove. Meg went to sleep. When she woke the next day, the lock was untouched.

  ***

  Jim greeted her in the kitchen. Something good smelling was frying on the stove. A jug of orange juice sat on the counter. “Sleep fine?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Meg gave him a tired smile. He returned it, flipped a pancake onto a plate, and then poured another batch into the pan. Meg poured a cup of orange juice for herself. She took a drink. The cold liquid ran down her dry throat, awakening the core of her body as it trickled down to her stomach. She had actually slept rather well. The previous day had been a long one.