So here he is, pillowcase in hand, crouching in an aisle and scrounging up baby food.
Roger waits, and listens.
Maybe something just fell off of a shelf, knocked over by a rat, or an armadillo, or whatever the crap they had down here. A South Texas supermarket-lurking armadillo.
Or maybe a big snake.
Roger hates snakes.
Where he was from, snakes were largely silent and harmless. Here, they were equipped with rattles and poison fangs.
Roger breathes deeply and continues sifting through the dross. You would think the place would be looted clean, but the event was so sudden, so visceral, things got violent very quickly. He couldn’t make out the labels, but if it was intact, he placed it in his pillowcase.
His pillowcase bulges from the weight of the jars and cans as he steals toward the exit. It feels like someone else is in the store – They’d be as scared as running into me, he thinks. He glances back, but the shadowed aisles reveal nothing.
He slips through the sliding glass doors, forced ajar earlier in the week by looters, and out into the night air. It’s a relief to inhale in full breaths again. Almost home-free – just scoot across the parking lot, the street, and back into his room.
Except he’s been seen.
Three youths emerge from the cart storage area. The tallest one smiles and stares through slitted eyes. He is holding something at his side—they all are.
“Whatcha got there, mister?”
Roger doesn’t reply. What’s there to say? He wonders if he should drop the sack and flee, or try to carry it with him. I’m a technical writer, not a sprinter.
Would throwing the sack at the kid buy him a slight advantage? Or would it waste precious seconds and his desperately needed supplies?
Thinking, thinking, thinking. Deer in headlights.
The tall kid taps the end of a metal rod against the side of his leg. “I’m talking to you,” he says darkly. His companions, one holding a knife and the other a two by four with nails spiked through one end, look tense and ready to spring.
Roger holds his free hand out in front of his face, palm extended. “You want it, it’s yours.”
“We know that.”
A frail voice speaks from behind Roger. “Hello?”
An elderly lady in a western-style shirt emerges from the HEB with a reusable grocery bag. A dented loaf of bread peeks out of the top. Despite being hunched over, she’s about as tall of an old woman Roger has ever seen.
So she was the source of the noise he had heard in the store. Now what? Run and leave the lady? It might give him a chance, he thinks grimly. They’ll go for the easy prey, the sure thing.
Damn it, he knew he would be honorable. And probably be beaten to death as his reward.
But before he can act, the scene unfolds.
The lady reaches into her purse slung over her shoulder and draws out a small handgun. With no hesitation she levels the gun squarely before her and puts a bullet into the tall kid’s head. He topples to the ground, his metal bar rattling against the pavement. The next kid takes one in the chest before he can even react. The kid with two by four drops his makeshift weapon and flees, but a third bullet hits him in the middle of his back.
“You’re welcome.” The lady slips the gun back in her purse and disappears among the paralyzed cars in the parking lot.
Two boys sprawl in silence and blood. The third groans and twitches, but he won’t be getting up again.
Roger looks across the road to his motel and prays that no one else sees him before he makes it back.
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
The screams and laughs are clearly audible through the walls of The Palace Motel. Sneck’s bed is unmade, and clothes hang out of a suitcase in the corner. Empty beer bottles on the nightstand. Fast food wrappers in and around the trashcan.
Roger searches for something— a key. A key to the desperate hope that it might start the rental car still parked in the motel lot.
The smell of gasoline smoke ekes its way through curtains drawn shut before a shattered window. It had been the only way in for Roger. He tried kicking down the door from the inside, but only succeeded in fracturing his toe.
He opens each dresser drawer, and finds each one empty. He pulls the sheets off the bed. He carefully feels through each article of clothing strewn about the room, from designer jeans to twice worn briefs.
The search is fruitless. Sneck had not been back, and he must have disappeared with the keys on him.
Not that it matters.
Roger’s seen plenty of cars over the last several days, and almost none of them were moving. Nothing works, including people. People are the most broken element of it all.
The scene on the street has shifted from looting and panic to mob justice, and soon all-out war. Everyone has a gun, and at the moment, plenty of ammo. And if they don’t have those things, well, they improvise.
Like right now.
Roger peers through the curtains. The laughs and screams center on an unfortunate man. He has been accused of something, and the mob wedged a tire over his shoulders. Roger doesn’t want to see what happens next.
People are being pulled from shops and homes, and dragged out into the streets. Eventually the mob would work its way to and through the motel.
He couldn’t wait any longer.
Car or no car.
He has nowhere to head but north. But first, a moment for Sneck:
I don’t know if you’re alive or dead. You may be a tool, but you’re decent illustrator and alright to hang out with. I hope you got laid on what was probably your last night on earth. Good luck, Sneck, if you did survive.
Roger knows Sneck is probably just another corpse, now. And without a little luck, so would he. He slips out of Sneck’s room and lightly steps back to his own. He sits by a backpack filled with the last of his food and water and tries to rest until darkness and dispersal of the mob outside.
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
Roger walks alongside Route 77 North under the new moonlight. He thinks of it as the new moonlight because it filters through the new lights in the sky. To him, the new lights signal the end of the old world. He lives in the world of the apocalypse.
The night sky is high on acid, and the people below it are drunk on fear and hate. Surely, not everyone, Roger thinks.
He could not be the only sane person left, unwilling to do whatever it took to ensure his own unimportant survival. The gunfire had slowed to a lull, and there were more bodies horizontal than there were vertical. More sparking than thinking. But matches and gas are still aplenty.
He follows the road, but keeps it a good length from him. The city limits are well behind him, and the flatness and quiet is peaceful and cool. He wears boots he found from an abandoned motel room, a reasonable fit. He thinks about snakes as he tramps through field and bush.
He tries to stay alert, but his mind wanders, often northward, to Esther and the unknown. News doesn’t exist; with no way to transmit, word of mouth is the only conduit, and Roger is completely alone.
He can only rely on observation and inference. And hope. Hope that the farther north he traveled, the closer to sanity he would be.
Dawn mutes the green and blue colors in the sky as Roger plods past a bullet-riddled highway sign that reads “San Benito.” Ahead, the highway continues over a Resaca, a brown-water canal providing irrigation from the Rio Grande.
Beyond the Resaca, down the highway, a caravan of men on horses approach.
Roger doesn’t think he wants to meet that caravan.
The surrounding terrain provides little cover, but bushes grow up alongside the Resaca, along with who knows what else. Roger’s thoughts jump from snakes to alligators. Is it likely? He’d rather take his chances with the reptiles after what he’s witnessed the last few days.
Roger immerses himself in the water and crawls up under some overhanging bushes, praying he hasn’t been seen. From his vantage, he sees up to the highway.
<
br /> The sound of hooves on blacktop loudens as the cadre approaches. At least a hundred men on horses, a parade of leather faces and wide-brim hats; denim with rifles slung over shoulders- and not the I-like-to-hunt variety… the I-want-to-kill-as-many-as-possible-as-quickly as-possible kind with expanded clips and black metal steel.
No chatter, no singing save a silent hymn of grim resolution in the heart of each stone-faced man. And, leading them all, a man in white.
Astride a white horse, he rides in cool indifference. His denim jeans and khaki shirt are akin to those behind him, but there is something else that is hard to describe— a mystery shadowed by his white cowboy hat.
And so the men and the horses and the guns pass above as Roger wallows in the muck, head out of the water as much as he dares, breathing and praying. The rear of the procession is brought up by a line of men, roped together at the neck, shirtless and shoeless. Across their backs are large, red crosses, painted or perhaps branded.
Roger watches as the procession moves toward Brownsville. The morning sun has risen, and yesterday is dead forever. Today the world is a new one, to be shaped by fire and blood.
Farther down the Resaca, the banks are overlooked by palms and houses. Exhausted and starving he decides the highway is no longer an option. The water is up to his chest a few feet from the bank, and he pushes and swims his way along, looking for a place he can crawl into and rest, if only for a little while.
Chapter 5: Illustration
In the matter-of-fact light of morning, Roger looks for the Pony Express Man. Joe Mercusio stirs by the smoking embers of last night, booted feet sticking out from a worn blanket. Paltrow’s horse is gone, and with it Paltrow too, likely checking the livestock at Catclaw Glen.
Parched, Roger walks to the dug well to slake his thirst, where he finds the soft-faced man washing his face. Roger lowers down the bucket, and hoists up a fresh supply, from which he ladles himself a drink.
Without making eye contact, he addresses the man.
“The White Texan, is he coming for me?”
“Sí.”
“Is our deal still in effect?”
“Sí.” The man wrings out his washcloth. “He comes of his own volition.”
“How soon?”
“Difficult to say, exactly. But probably not for a month. He’s got a lot of territory to cover, and he’s doing so very meticulously.
“I appreciate the warning.”
“Of course. I could suggest some safe routes, areas of refuge…”
Roger studies the man’s face for a moment. It emanates trustworthiness. He brings himself to ask the question that has been growing on his mind.
“Your network, can it move people? I mean, I’ve heard rumors it can. Difficult to separate fact from fiction out here on the fringe, you know?”
The man dries his face, and combs his hair into place. “Yeah, we can move people. It costs, though, depending on how much they weigh, you know what I mean? And also on how far they need to go.”
“You mentioned north, as far as Vermont…”
“Nah, man. It hasn’t been done. I don’t know. Letters are one thing.”
“Could your network find someone that far north? To deliver a letter?”
The man pauses, as if he is considering something. “That’s more possible. I would need details.”
Roger casually glances to make sure they are still out of earshot of any passerby. “My wife.”
“And your wife, what’s her name?”
“Esther.”
“I’ll need her last name, and her maiden name.” The man packs up his morning items into his travel bag. “In case she is using it.”
Roger tells him.
“And when have you last seen her?”
Roger looks down, stirs the dirt with his boot. “Not since before the First Apocalypse.”
The man shrugs. “And what if you don’t like what we find?”
“I just need to know.”
“This Esther, where was she when it happened?”
“New York.”
“Sorry man… I don’t think we can help you—“
“The state, not the city.”
“Then that’s a small hope,” the man says. “Where in New York?”
“Elliston, do you know where that is?”
The man shakes his head. “No, but it doesn’t mean anything. I can put it out into the network.”
“I can pay,” Roger says.
“I will put out feelers in the network. If we find her, however we find her, then you pay.”
“What is the cost?”
The man smiles. “That, muchacho, we can settle on later.” He stretches and pats Roger on the shoulder. “But for the moment, it is time for my breakfast.”
“Thank you for helping me,” Roger says as the man picks up his items and heads toward his horse.
The man stops and looks back. “Do you have a photo? Because that would be most helpful.”
Roger doesn’t have a photo. But he has an idea.
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
The Fort Davis camp percolates as the sun warms the surrounding hills. Guard watches are switched out; Billy Mercusio trudges up Soldiers Hill. Yesterday’s embers are stoked into today’s breakfast fires. Roger’s path weaves through the canvas tents that encircle the central well as he heads to the edge of camp. At the outskirts of the impermanent community, Vane emerges from Julius' tent and stretches, blinking her dark eyes and smiling sheepishly as Roger approaches.
"Hi, Vane."
"Julius isn't here," Vane says. "He lets me use his tent."
"That's okay." Roger takes off his cap and looks about. "I was actually looking for you."
"Oh." Vane looks over at Paltrow’s tent, across the way, marked by the hitching post for his horse.
"Don't worry about him. He’s off at Catclaw Glen. I was wondering if you could draw something for me." Roger holds his hat in front of him, like an usher waiting for a tithe. "A picture of someone I know."
Vane is gratified and, in a way, relieved. "Yes, Roger. I’ll help you. Who’ll I draw?"
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
In the shallow shade of junipers, the nib of a charcoal pencil traces over the back of an old notebook. Roger peers over Vane's lap as she guides the emergence of lines and shadows.
"Is this how you described her eyes?" Vane does not look up from her work, but continues to gently sketch.
"Yes, I mean, I think so." Roger scrunches his face as he digs into grainy memories of golden glimpses enshrined within his mind. Esther's face moves, evolves; her face is unblemished by truth and gazes back with hope. "I haven't seen her in years, you know?"
Roger thinks of a number, to go with the years, but it doesn't seem real.
"And her nose, is it like this?"
"A little narrower, maybe?"
"Okay. And now?"
Roger takes the notebook from Vane and devours it with his eyes. Esther has appeared, pulled from his memory and translated to paper by the young Peruvian.
"It's her," he says. "It's Esther."
"She is very pretty," says Vane. "I wish I were as pretty as her." Vane brushes her hair, still holding the pencil, and errantly makes a small, grey mark on her forehead.
"You've marked yourself." Roger thinks about reaching out and brushing the stroke away, but hesitates.
Vane blushes and wipes at her forehead. "Did I get it?"
"Not quite."
"Here?" Vane rubs to another side.
"Getting colder— more down between your eyebrows."
Vane finally succeeds in removing the charcoal line, and shakes her head. She looks at Roger for confirmation, slightly self-conscious and eyes arching in question.
"You got it," says Roger. Vane is looking into his eyes. It's strange yet refreshing to receive such real eye-contact. In these days, people smile while looking through you, or ignore your face altogether. You never know what will happen to someone, suddenly and irrevocably. Or by
whom. Yourself, perhaps. So, real eye contact is a rare thing.
Roger glances down at the drawing of Esther resting on Vane's lap, and the chalk-on-paper image catches his gaze. By reflex, his mind protects himself, and puts words on his lips.
"Thank you for doing this. It really does look like her."
“You think so?”
“For sure. You’re quite the artist, you know?”
“Oh, no,” Vane says demurely.
“Seriously. I’ve worked with some talented illustrators— you know, before.”
“I barely remember… before.”
“How did you learn to draw so well?”
“I don’t know… well, my mother… when she was… well, she used to keep me quiet when we needed to be by giving me pencils and paper and having me draw. She would describe beautiful things to me, have me try to draw them. Sometimes, in another life, I think I could have been an artist.”
Roger gently touches her back. “Maybe you can be in this life.”
Hooves clop into hearing, and a horse whinnies. The only two horses at camp are Paltrow’s mare and Crimhauser’s pony. Horses are the sole property of elected members of the Freedom Republic, along with a handful of Pony Express men. Paltrow canters into view from the backside of the junipers and pulls up abruptly. He looks down on Roger and Vane with the faintest hint of a knowing sneer.
"Behaving ourselves, are we?" Paltrow’s hand lingers near his holstered gun, another item relegated to the sole possession of The Freedom Republic elite, perhaps a subconscious reminder of his position at the camp and the control he would like to exude.
Roger is respectful, if inscrutable. "Vane was showing me her drawing. She's very talented."
"Oh, I bet she is." Paltrow's phantom sneer sets in more visibly. "A talented little spicaninny slut. Too bad her talents don't involve feeding or protecting the camp."
"We’re both on our free period," Roger says.
Vane is quiet. She knows better than to address Paltrow, at all.
Letters from the Apocalypse (Book 1) Page 3