Come Whatever Storms

by J. M. Snyder

  Beside him, Ronnie snorted. “Yeah, because back when we had police, shit like that never happened.”

  “I’m just saying,” Court tried to explain, “that it’d be nice to be in a place where someone can deal with shit like that.”

  “Who’s going to deal with it?” Adam asked, incredulous. “How do you deal with it?”

  Court found himself getting defensive. “I don’t know. Jail, courts, jury of our peers, you know. All that stuff—”

  “That disappeared when the virus came along,” Ronnie interrupted. “Wake up, will you? None of that exists anymore. Those of us left have enough of a problem looking after ourselves. How can we be expected to look after anyone else? To police anyone else?”

  Court felt an ignoble pout tug at his lips, but he refused to give up. “I’m just saying—”

  “Well, don’t.” There was a finality in Ronnie’s voice that made Court clamp his mouth shut.

  Bree and Adam exchanged a glance, but neither spoke. The silence between them was filled only with the dying crackle of the fire and the wind through the trees, whispering behind Court’s back.

  Within an hour, they were back on the road. There was a wide median and no jersey wall, so the many cars on the highway when their drivers succumbed to the virus veered into the grassy middle dividing the north-and southbound lanes of the interstate, leaving stretches of clear road for the ATVs to traverse. When they had to maneuver around wrecks, there was plenty of room on the shoulders for the bikes. An hour or so into the ride, and Court no longer felt the vibrations in the back of his teeth or the bugs stinging his face and hands. He tried to keep his head down, his cheek pressed to the center of Ronnie’s back between his friend’s shoulder blades, and hung on as tight as he dared.

  It still seemed impossible to outrun the memory of what they had found back in the woods.

  They’d been driving for hours, the sun slowly sinking behind the trees on their right, when a rest area loomed up beside the road. Ronnie signaled to Bree that they should get off on the exit. The parking lot was cluttered with vehicles, people who wanted to get off the road to die. Many of the cars had been looted by survivors, and bones glistened through broken windows, the flesh picked clean by scavengers. Ronnie jumped the ATV onto the curb and rumbled up the sloping hill to the building, zagging around piles of clothes that might have once been someone.

  Bree followed close behind.

  The building had been broken into long ago. The glass doors were shattered, and muddy footprints were strewn across the linoleum floor inside. What had obviously at one time been a welcome center now lay in ruins. A circular reception desk in the center of the room was coated with dirt and blood and leaves, and papers covered the floor like snow. Ronnie rode his ATV all the way up to the glass doors and cut the engine, letting the sounds of the motor die away as he studied the interior. Court glanced over his shoulder and shuddered. “What, you need to take a leak or something?”

  Ronnie threw him an unreadable look over one shoulder. “I want a map.”

  Court pointed at a frame attached to the outside of the building. The glass front lay in shards on the ground, but a map of the state still hung on the wall. “There’s one right there, but I can save you the trouble. Just take 95 all the way down. Nothing to it.”

  Beside them, Bree rolled her ATV to a stop and turned it off. With a languid stretch, she yawned and shook her head. “Perfect spot to take five. Let me find the little girls’ room.”

  “The toilet won’t flush,” Court reminded her.

  Bree shrugged as she stood and swung her leg off the bike. “Just sitting down instead of squatting will be nice for a change.”

  But when she stepped gingerly through the broken door, Adam called out, “Wait! You don’t know what’s in there!”

  “Nothing, I’m sure,” she muttered.

  There was a familiar nervous edge to Adam’s voice. “You don’t know that.”

  Turning, Bree tapped the butt of the revolver tucked into the waistband of her jeans. “No worries, babe. I’m packing.”

  Adam started, “I just don’t—”

  “For God’s sake,” Court cried. “If you’re that concerned, go with her already.”

  “In there?” Adam’s voice almost squeaked.

  “We’ll all go in,” Ronnie said, putting an end to the discussion.

  Adam paled. “B-b-but who’ll watch the bikes?”

  “Who’s going to take them?” Court slid back on his seat so Ronnie could stand, then climbed off the ATV, too. Stretching, he twisted until he felt a satisfactory crackle in his spine. “If you’re that worried, you stay here.”

  “I don’t have a gun!” Adam cried.

  Court looked at Ronnie, who was already stepping through the broken doors. Without a backward glance, Ronnie shrugged as if to say, So what? Court gave Adam a sardonic smirk. “We’re the only people around for miles,” he said, hoping he sounded more convincing than he felt. “The only ones alive, at any rate. Come on. Do you want to sit out here all by yourself?”

  Adam threw a nervous look around, then clambered off the ATV and followed the others inside the building.

  Carefully Court tried to step into Ronnie’s footsteps, staying close enough to his friend to keep a hand on the small of Ronnie’s back. The brochure racks ringing the reception desk stood empty, the brochures torn and scattered every which way. The place looked like a tornado had blown through, and everywhere Court looked, he saw footsteps and animal tracks. But the place felt empty. At least there was that.

  At the desk, Ronnie hunkered down to sift through the layers of torn and discarded papers around their feet. Court leaned over the desk and saw the blackened remains of a fire that must have been fed with the brochures and broken wooden chairs. Ashy remains left gray residue on the charred husks of the seats that hadn’t quite managed to burn down completely. At least the fire looked as if it hadn’t been lit any time in the recent past. Still, it gave him an idea…

  “Hey, you know, we could stay here tonight, maybe,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Here?” Adam cried. “Oh, hell no.”

  “Why not?” Court countered. “A roof over our heads, out of the elements—it’ll be warmer than those tents, and we won’t have to mess around setting them up only to pull them down in the morning. It’s getting a bit late—”

  “We can be miles from here before it gets dark,” Adam objected. “I’m not staying here. It isn’t safe.”

  “And sleeping in tents in the woods is. Because remember those girls back where we stopped for lunch?” Court looked down at the top of Ronnie’s head and resisted the urge to smooth down his friend’s windblown hair. “What do you think, Ron?”

  There came that shrug again, and Ronnie didn’t bother to look up to reply, “Sun’s already setting. We might as well camp out here for the night.”

  “Shit,” Adam muttered.

  “Not out here in the open,” Ronnie explained. “I’m sure there’s a room somewhere we can bed down. If there’s only one door, we can take turns standing guard through the night.”

  Adam sighed, exasperated. “A room, right. Like this is the damn Hilton.”

  Now Ronnie looked up, his eyes stony, his mind decided. “A supply closet, a storage area, something. Take a look around, see what you can find. We’ll get a fresh start in the morning.”

  The building wasn’t very large. Two hallways branched off the main reception area, with its floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the parking lot and the shattered glass doors. The last of the sun’s rays illuminated the hallways, so if they were going to investigate, they would have to do so before the light disappeared. Adam stayed behind, as if the circular desk might offer some small shelter in case of an attack. Ronnie and Court headed down the hall on the right to check out the place.

  “Who’s going to attack?” Court mused aloud. The acrid scent of stale urine and feces grew stronger with each step he took, and before he eve
n saw the sign, he knew this hallway led to the men’s restroom. Apocalypse or not, the men’s room always stank the same way, no matter where it was. Court didn’t know why. Was it something they used in the urinals? Did the ladies’ room smell the same way?

  Ronnie stood to one side of the restroom and pushed the door wide. It swung open on a grimy, shit-smeared floor. Dingy water pooled in the urinals and sinks, and puddled in one sinking corner beneath the mirror. “Did you need to go?” he asked.

  Court grimaced. “Ugh. I bet it looked this bad before the end of the world rolled around.”

  Leaning in farther, Ronnie spotted something on the wall and nodded. “Didn’t you say you wanted more condoms? You can probably break into the dispenser and grab the lot.”

  Tempting, but…Court backed away and shook his head. “I’m not going in there! I’ll need a damn tetanus shot. I already got a bullet hole in my leg. What, you want me to get infected?”

  “You’re mostly healed,” Ronnie said, but he let the door swing shut and didn’t pursue it further. Instead, he headed towards the end of the hall, where a large, open room held a variety of vending machines that had been broken into and worked over by earlier visitors to the welcome center. He took a quick look around and turned, dismissing the mess.

  Court wasn’t ready to give up that quickly. Carefully he nosed through the shards of glass, looking for a candy bar or bag of Fritos that might have somehow escaped notice. Nothing. Next he checked the soda machines—the doors had been pried away, but maybe there was a can or two inside, or maybe in the dispenser, something someone left behind?

  No. Shit. Court hadn’t realized how much he craved an ice cold can of Coca-Cola until he saw the familiar red and white logo on the machine. All he had was a backpack full of water, which was healthier for him, but damn. Was one soda asking too much?

  Soon all the soda will be gone. It was a troubling thought. When it was gone, who would make more? No one, no one at all. The virus hadn’t simply killed off most of the Earth’s human population but their way of life. Their loves and hates, their drinks and food, everything, gone forever.

  Sudden tears pricked his eyes and he blinked them away rapidly. He lost everything—his job, his home, his wife—and he’d be damned if the thing that got him crying was a damn can of Coke. But when he swallowed, he could almost taste the cool, caramel bubbles down the back of his throat. That fizz when the top was popped tickling his nose when he took the first sip.

  Damn.

  From down the hallway, Ronnie called out, “Court? You coming or what?”

  Court rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and drew in a shaky breath. I won’t lose it, I can’t, he told himself, the words a mantra ringing through him. Not now, not here, not like this.

  He heard Ronnie’s footsteps, heading back towards him. “Court?” Ronnie called again, concerned.

  “Coming!” Court took a deep breath, steadier this time, and shook his head, his shoulders, his arms, his hands. Shaking out the disappointment. Getting a grip. Then he kicked the door of the soda machine and muttered, “Fuck it. Shit rots your teeth, anyway.”

  That made him laugh. Without fluorinated water or dentists, who cared anymore?

  Chapter 12

  Bree was waiting with Adam when Court and Ronnie returned to the reception desk. Adam’s arms were around Bree’s waist, and he held her close. Though it looked like he was protecting her, something in the way they stood suggested to Court that Adam was drawing strength from Bree, and not the other way around.

  “Find anything?” Ronnie asked as they approached.

  Lifting her head off Adam’s chest, Bree smiled sleepily. “Ladies’ room is out of order, but I think you probably already knew that.”

  “Any other rooms down that hall?” Ronnie persisted.

  With a frown, Bree thought a moment. “One at the end, I think, but it’s shut. Says maintenance on it, or something.”

  To Court, Ronnie said, “Let’s take a look.”

  The shadows were already lengthening along the floor as they headed down the other hallway. The windows that still had glass in them flashed and blazed with the last of the sunlight, winking with every step Court took. As before, Ronnie pushed open the door to the ladies’ restroom and they glanced inside. It wasn’t clean by any stretch of the imagination, and the stench of urine mixed with cleaning solution was as strong as it had been in the men’s room, but the floor wasn’t covered in shit and standing water. Again Court wondered how much of the mess in the other restroom had been there before the end of the world came along. He’d seen enough public men’s rooms to suspect most of what was festering in the other restroom had been there long before the virus ended society as they knew it.

  “Why’d the ladies’ room always look so much cleaner?” Court muttered aloud.

  Ronnie let the door swing shut. “Because men are pigs.”

  “Hey!” Court cried. “I resemble that remark.”

  If he’d hoped to get a laugh out of Ronnie, he had to settle for a wan grin instead. Ronnie turned his attention to the door at the end of the hall, Court trailing after him. It didn’t say Maintenance as Bree had said—in fact, there was no signage at all, nothing to indicate what the door opened onto or if it were even there. Ronnie grasped the knob and twisted as far as it would go, but the door didn’t open. He jiggled it a little, and the door rattled in its frame, but remained firmly shut.

  Court felt a familiar sense of helplessness wash over him. “Now what?”

  Before Ronnie could answer, Court lashed out and kicked the door, hard. It rattled again, but stayed closed. When Court pulled back his leg a second time, Ronnie stopped him. “Don’t break it down. If we can get inside, we can close the door for a little protection while we sleep.”

  “But how are we supposed to get inside?” Court wanted to know.

  “There’s got to be a key around here somewhere.” Ronnie glanced around, as if he might just happen to find the key resting on the floor. Of course, it wasn’t there. “Maybe a paperclip, or something we can jimmy it open with. Take a look around.”

  Court sighed—he thought it was a fruitless exercise, and they could bunk down in the hallway or out in the reception area just as easily—but having a door shut against the world outside would be a nice change of pace. Keep them out of harm’s way, for a change. And afford them a little privacy, for once. Who knew? Maybe if they could get the door open, they might finally get to put the condom to good use. Court touched his back pocket to assure himself the little rubber ring was still there.

  It was.

  Heading back towards the reception desk, Ronnie called out, “Adam? Bree? You guys see any keys lying around up there?”

  “Yeah, that’ll work,” Court muttered. He turned his attention to the ground, and nudged aside fragments of glass as he looked for something to pick the lock. He’d never actually picked a lock before, but it couldn’t be too hard, right? Sometimes a credit card would do it. Maybe…

  He dug out his wallet, which he hung on to even though there was really no need for any of the stuff inside it now. A few crumpled dollar bills, his ATM card, his driver’s license—all useless. The only reason he kept it was for the two photos in the back. One of his wife Jeanie, a candid pose taken a few summers back as she reclined in a lounge chair on their back porch. Her hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, and her eyes were half-closed against the sun, but her smile was so bright and lively, it pained Court to look at it for too long.

  The other photo was of a young Ronnie and Court, high school seniors, both sharply dressed in tuxedos rented for their senior prom. Court’s mother had snapped the shot of the two of them just outside the apartment building where they’d lived at the time. Their hair was so outdated, the tuxedos shades of light blue that hadn’t even been fashionable then, and Ronnie sported the smallest attempt at a moustache, which thankfully never took root. Seeing the photo now hurt Court’s heart, more than the picture of Jeanie. If h
e’d known then what all he knew now, would he have lived his life any different? Done anything else? Been anyone else?

  No, he assured himself, tucking the photos deep into his wallet and reaching for a well-used MasterCard instead. He suspected he’d been in love with Ronnie even back then, all those years ago when that photo was taken, but he hadn’t known it at the time. And he had loved Jeanie, too. If he had to do everything all over again, knowing what he knew now, the only thing he’d change would be maybe telling her more often just how much she meant to him before she was gone from his life. And he would’ve liked to have thanked her for understanding how he felt for Ronnie, even when he didn’t know himself.

  Credit card in hand, he pocketed his wallet and tried to swipe the card between the door and the jam. He could get it in just fine, but when he tried to pull it down, it caught on the lock and stopped. He tried again, really yanking down on it this time, but still, nothing.

  Under his breath, he muttered, “They make it look so damn easy in the movies.”

  The third attempt cracked his credit card. He pulled the ends apart and split it up the crack until he held two halves in his hands. Then he let them fall to the ground. “Well, I tried.”

  Court waited by the locked door for a few moments, thinking maybe Ronnie would head back with something better than a cracked credit card to use to try and open it. He strolled over to the closest window—which was broken, its glass crunching under his shoes—and stared out at the eerily quiet parking lot. A few leaves had already begun to fall off the trees, and more swirled down from the branches with each burst of wind. In another fifteen minutes or so, the sun would disappear behind the tree line, plunging the rest area into darkness. They had flashlights in among their supplies, back at the ATVs, but he’d rather be safely on the other side of the locked door before they needed to use them.

  Most likely, the keys were long gone—he knew that without bothering to search for them. The employee who had them eventually grew too sick to come into work, and the keys were still resting on a bedside table, alongside other keys no one would ever use again. Or maybe they were locked in a drawer, and the key to open that rested in a dead man’s pocket somewhere. They’d be better off abandoning any attempt to unlock the door and rather focus on ways to force it open, instead.