by Max Wyatt
“Our tire…?”
Harper looked at Tara uneasily. Someone had come up to their car while they’d been sleeping. Had thought to send help…and breakfast… “At least we know you did see someone last night,” she murmured, not sure whether to be thoroughly creeped out or thankful that help was on the way.
From far away came the clanging of a dinner bell. The girl glanced over her shoulder scowling, then seeming to remember herself as she turned with a wry smile to the stranded travelers. “If you would drop the basket at the house before you leave, I would much appreciate it. Thank you!”
She was already halfway to the road before Tara thought to call after her. “Hey! What’s your name?”
The girl stopped, her bonnet half off, skirts catching again in the long weeds. “Patience. My name is Patience Schumacher!”
“Patience,” Harper said, watching the girl trip and fall into a puddle at the end of the drive. She heaved herself up, bonnet down over one eye. She paused, waving cheerfully, before disappearing into the trees.
“I expect her mother needs some,” Tara murmured, looking somewhat poleaxed herself by the encounter.
“I always thought Amish girls were supposed to be shy and retiring…”
“Maybe it is the end of the world.”
They looked at each other and laughed. Harper hefted the basket. It felt heavy, with jars rattling inside. “Shall we see what’s for breakfast?”
They spread their blanket on the grass under the trees. The morning was cool, with the sun still burning off the dew. The grass was wet under Harper’s feet, but she took her shoes off all the same, enjoying being barefoot because it felt more like a picnic that way. She wiggled her toes in the long grass off the edge of the blanket and pulled each treasure from the basket with a certain amount of wonder.
“Forget survivalist camps. Let’s just become Amish,” she murmured when she found not only biscuits still warm from the oven with honey to pour over them, but muffins as well. One jar held some kind of fruit compote that tasted absolutely heavenly. Thick slices of ham still piping hot were wrapped in butcher’s paper, nestled inside the top of a bowl of scrambled eggs. It was a wonder that things hadn’t spilled every which way by rough handling. A mason jar of buttermilk left both women exchanging glances. Was one supposed to worry about fat or calories at the end of the world? But a cautious sip left Harper’s teeth aching from the cold, and was so refreshing that she quite happily went back for more.
Patience’s mother had included plates and silverware, which showed to Harper’s mind a certain trust that they wouldn’t make off with the place settings. They served themselves, loading their plates again and again until they couldn’t eat another bite.
In the bottom of the basket was a thermos of coffee. This small gesture perhaps meant more to them than any other. This was a spark of normalcy in a crazy world. This entire banquet, a gift of hope, that not everyone was out only for themselves. Maybe violence didn’t have to be an answer to a problem rooted in fear. People were still good. She needed to remember that.
Tara was the one to wrap up the muffins, placing them carefully in the SUV for later. “We probably should ration what we have,” she said almost regretfully as they packed away the empty dishes. “But none of this would have kept well except the breads. I don’t think either of us ate last night, did we?”
“Other than ramen before I came over to your place? No.” Harper lay back on the blanket, staring up through the tree branches. A single yellow leaf caught the sun, a spot of gold in a sea of green. Fall. Fall would come. Then what would they do?
“How do the Amish do it? Live without electricity I mean,” Harper said after a bit. “I know they use animals to work the land, but I mean for cooking. Day to day stuff.”
“Propane I think. I saw a thing about them once. Propane refrigerators.”
Harper sat up and stared at her. “Wait, you mean a ‘light the pilot light’ kind of thing?”
“Yeah, why?” Tara placed the napkins in the basket, making sure to fold them first.
“You light a fire to make things get cold?”
Tara stared at her a long time. “You’re not…” She sighed and shook her head. “Never mind. We should get to that tire.”
“I thought some farmer was going to come help us…”
Tara got to her feet and tugged at the blanket, sending Harper rolling off into the grass. “I don’t like owing people. Besides, how do we know this guy is ever going to come?”
Harper lay on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows to watch as Tara struggled to fold the blanket. The wind kept catching the edges, sending it flapping. “I still don’t see why we have to be rushing around. What difference does it make when we get there? If the power is out for good, there’s no schedule to keep. We just…arrive when we do. I like it here.”
“And what if they don’t let us in? The sooner the better…”
Little pinpricks of pain along her stomach sent Harper shooting to her feet. “Ants!” she lifted her shirt, dancing around, trying to get them off her. “I was lying on an ant hill!”
“Serves you right. Are you going to help or what?”
Harper scowled, swiping at her stomach again and again, even as shy followed Tara to the back of the SUV. They opened the rear compartment and looked inside.
“What did you do, just throw everything in here?” Tara asked, eying the mess. Canned goods rolled out of the back onto the ground, scattering in all directions. Clothing draped over camping gear with cases of water thrust in every direction.
“If I remember correctly I wasn’t the only one panicking.”
With a sigh, Tara started piling things on the ground behind the SUV. She was organizing as she went, Harper realized. Canned goods together in one place. Dry goods in another. Water in a new pile. God help her, Tara was alphabetizing the cans of vegetables as she went along.
“Okay, okay, I’ll help.”
With the two of them working, it really didn’t take long at all to empty out the back. Neat piles littered the road behind the vehicle, ready for repacking. The only problem? No spare. None.
“Where is it?” Harper asked finally, standing arms akimbo, hot and sweaty as the heat of the day chased away what coolness had come with the night’s storm.
“I don’t know! I don’t know the first thing about cars!”
Harper stared at her friend, seeing for the first time that the great Tara did indeed have her limits. It was…well, scary. Like finding out that Santa Claus is just your parents after all. The great and capable Tara Lewis was a mere mortal after all.
A whinny broke her thoughts. Out on the road behind them was an old man with the longest white beard she’d ever seen. He was seated in a carriage that had seen better days. The horse that pulled the buggy was as grey as he was, with a lowered head and shambling step that made Harper wonder how it was the animal was able to pull anything at all. The man drove down the lane to where they were standing. Seated next to him was a young man, as dark as the other was pale – black beard, eyes so dark looking into them was like falling into a pool of ink. His hands that clutched the reins were so sun-browned that she might have mistaken him for a man of middle eastern descent had she not known Amish were generally of Teutonic ancestry. German at some point. Right? Or was it Dutch?
“Halloooo!” the old man called as they approached. “We heard you’re needing some help, ja? The name’s Silas Yoder. This here be my grandson, Samuel.”
Samuel didn’t look any too pleased to see them. Tara nudged Harper, nodding at the gun lying by the old man’s feet as the younger sprang from his seat. Harper nodded acknowledgement that she’d seen it, and edged a little closer to Tara. “We don’t have a spare,” she called as Samuel drew even with them. “We looked. But we don’t seem to have one.”
Samuel gave them a look, then bent, crawling right underneath the SUV. There came a clanking, and the next thing they knew he reappeared, dragging a tire ou
t behind him.
Tara and Harper stared from him, to the mess of everything they owned spread out on the road like some itinerant yard sale. Well, no hiding their precious possessions at this point.
“Um…thank you?”
For the second time that day, Harper felt like an absolute idiot.
It wasn’t even 8:00am.
Chapter Fifteen
Finn
Finn’s head jerked up again. He checked his place in the road, he hadn’t veered off from his lane, but the tiredness was starting to show. The rolling farmlands and occasional woods were growing lighter with the rising sun, so at least he wasn’t staring into the uniform blackness of the night lit only by headlights anymore. It had been a long drive, and he was flagging badly, but he needed to push, to get to Carlisle as soon as possible.
Maybe it was the back roads, maybe it was the luck of the draw, but there had been very little in the way of traffic once he got moving. He’d run the accelerator pretty close to the maximum, squealing tires around hidden hairpin turns in the night, fields of corn and sudden thick copse of trees looming in the darkness.
He’d pushed as hard as he could, trying to get as close to Carlisle and the sanctuary there as he could. As a result, he and the car were both running out of gas.
In the vague light of the dawning sun, the world was half mist and half glare. The road was a uniformed dark line that pointed to safety, to the known where friends and family awaited with open arms and smiles. Where things would make sense again.
When the road straightened, the car leapt and ran as fast as Finn could see, when it twisted again, slipping around the base of the hills, twisting in on itself to find a path between fields, Finn let the car slow, just enough to stay on the road. Not always enough to stay in his own lane, but the black line was a hypnotic pull that drew his eye and made his shoulders and neck scream for the rigidity of his posture, for the inflexible tension that held him erect and focused on the point just beyond the horizon.
He tried to think of the friends there, of the land, the welcoming, the last time he’d seen them, but whenever he did, the car slowed and the road became less defined. He focused on the blacktop, on the point just past the furthest he could see and the car ran, eagerly taking the challenge again.
But it was hard on man and machine. Despite the excellent progress he’d made, he needed to stop. He had to get gas, he had to stretch, to work the pain from his shoulders; most of all, he dearly had to pee.
There had been signs for a while now sporting advertisements along the little two-lane highway for ‘Mike’s Gas’ and the wonders of cold drinks and hot coffee, promising friendly service and clean restrooms. For the last half hour, he lived for those signs. It was his goal, his touch-stone, a promise and challenge. Just get that far, just that much. Each time he saw a new sign with the rapidly diminishing numbers, he felt a thin tendril of hope.
Her schooled himself on that the place was likely closed by now, all the gas taken, the supplies raided, the place burned to the ground. But it no longer mattered. It was where he was going, the small achievement on the way to his eventual goal of Carlisle.
In order to stay awake, he’d blasted the radio most of the night until it fell silent. There was one station that played all the great oldies all the time and Finn realized it was an automated station, one that just ran through prerecorded shows and automatically switched from music to commercial to commercial and then played a block of commercials. He wondered at the nonchalance of the announcer, the way he’d pretended that nothing else was wrong with the world except week beer, collar stains and men not talking to their doctors about erectile dysfunction, as if it was just another day. Then he’d figured it out, the man was only a recording, his announcements likely dating back years.
Sometime in the night, that particular station disappeared from the airwaves. It could have been because of the hills around him, or the distance from the transmitter, but then it would have faded or became splotchy, with the sound wavering in and out. This ended, like a switch had been thrown. Or the power went out.
He’d spun the dial for a while, though the new version of that which involved holding the SEEK button. The idea was the same. He turned up nothing. At all.
In desperation, he switched to AM and after a moment or two found someone on there giving a farm report. They sounded upset. At the close of the report he’d added that the news coming into the station was “concerning” as most of the eastern seaboard was experiencing blackout conditions. There wasn’t any word on whether the satellites were affected. But it didn’t appear so at this time.
Finn was desperately trying to figure out how satellites had anything to do with tractors, but had to accept that it was something significant if it merited a mention on a farm report. The station then played something from 1934, complete with scratches and pops and the tinny sound of an ancient recording and Finn drove down the side of a hill and it was gone, faded into the past. It was all very disquieting.
Eventually a sign declaring that Mike’s Gas was right up ahead, no more than a few miles away, brightened his mood the way the sun had burned off the mist and sharpened the shadows of the trees that lined the road like sentinels guarding the hidden ditch behind them.
Finn repressed a giggle, fearing that it wouldn’t end and resigned himself to sitting in a line for the gas. That had also been part of the farm report, long lines at the pump. Reports of fist-fights and violence. He drove slowly to the station looking for the end of the line. But he couldn’t find the start of the line and stopped in confusion. There was no line. Not so much as another car at Mike’s.
The only concession to the panic and civil unrest was a large cardboard sign taped to the pump sporting words carved from a marker; “CASH ONLY.” Finn pulled directly up to the pump.
And old man waved to him from a chair at the front of the building.
“You gonna want gas?” he yelled at Finn as he stopped the car and opened the door.
“Yes?” It came out as a question. Finn suddenly realized that he wasn’t sure he could get any.
“You have cash, do you?” the old man looked at him from over his glasses. “I got no credit machine here, nor debit neither,” he pronounced it debb-it, “’cause I got no power nor no connection on ’em. Got to have cash.”
“How much?” Finn thought of the available folding money he had in his pocket.
“Depends on how much gas you want, don’t it?”
Finn started to say something and a movement caught his eye. There was a dog, a German Shepherd mix laying behind the old man’s chair. The dog raised his head, suddenly curious about this conversation. The other thing Finn saw was a huge double barrel shotgun leaning up against the wall easily in the old man’s reach. Finn decided to be polite. Extra polite. He’d been able to speed all night because there were no police anywhere to be found.
“I guess I want…” he ran the math in his head, the distance left, the mileage his little car could get, “About eight gallons or so.”
The old man looked at Finn a long moment, “eight gallons should run you about twenty-five dollars,” the man said and eyed him speculatively. “You got that much?”
Finn almost sobbed with relief. He’d expected to pay four times that much. “Yeah, I…I have forty bucks…”
“Well,” the old man said getting up out of his chair. “That’s closer to thirteen gallons, but I gotta use the calculator to be sure of the exact amount. Let me see the money, son.”
Finn tried to jump out of the car, but his body was too used to being in the driver’s side, entranced by the end of the black top. He nearly fell and caught himself on the door as his knees buckled. He clamped his jaw tight against the pain of unused muscles and forced himself to walk it off.
Finn dug into his wallet and produced the bills. He walked stiff jointed and held them out to the man – presumably Mike. Finn’s presumption proved to be wrong.
The dog growled at him. Finn had
never been bothered by a dog; they all usually loved him at first sight. It was usually the family dog that Finn found first at parties and that dog would hold his interest through the whole night.
“Now, Mike,” the old man chastised the dog. “Be still.” The dog licked his lips but took his cue from the man and remained silent. “Don’t pay him no mind,” he said, reaching for the shotgun. “He’s just not used to people moving like they’re in a zombie movie is all.”
“I guess I cramped up a little.” Finn laughed a little nervously, eyeing the gun and wondering what kind of range that thing had.
“I reckon you did at that.” The old man took the money and shoved the bills in his pocket. “Wait here,” he said, “I got no power to run the pump, so I need to fire up the generator. You hold still a moment. Mike will keep you company.”
He disappeared into the store and Finn was left staring at the dog. Mike stood, stretched and came to Finn, his hackles up and a slow growl in his chest. Finn held out his hand. He’d been told that it was a show of aggression, daring a dog to bite you, but it was a gesture he’d used all his life and each dog he’d offered a sniff had taken it in the spirit it was intended.
Mike took a sniff and placed his head under Finn’s hand, the implication of ‘pet me’ being obvious. Finn complied, getting lost in the dog’s fur and love of ear scratches so that the old man’s voice startled him.
“Traitor,” the old man said without heat, looking at the dog. “First person comes along with an ear scratch and you’re all ready to up and leave with him.”
“You named the place after the dog?” Finn asked.
“Nope.” The old man smiled. “Named the dog after my father. This was his place for many years and when he died, I took it over. When I die, I suspect the dog will run things.” He laughed at his own joke. “I’ll pump your gas for you.” He held up a solar power calculator, “Twelve-point-eight gallons for forty dollars, okay?”