As he started to exit the aisle on the back side, he had a quick thought and turned back into the camping section. It was extremely hard to see, but then he found it, a water purifying system with water bottles. Even though they still had several full bottles of water from the convenience store, the purifier would take away the stress of potentially running out of drinking water.
He grabbed the box and shoved it under his arm. They’d get everything situated when they got someplace relatively safe and defensible. A woman’s shriek pierced the store from somewhere near the front and a baby began to cry. What kind of asshole would bring a baby out into the radiation to loot a Walmart?
Tyler led the way towards the footwear section as the store began to get darker the further away from the more frequented areas that they went. When they arrived at the shoe section, they were completely alone in the darkness. They worked their way along the back wall to the small work boot display. The store stocked eight different boot brands, so he went for a steel-toed model that didn’t seem to be too heavy and would likely be able to withstand the rigors of constant movement. He found his size thirteen and quickly slipped his shoe off to try it on. The boot wasn’t the most comfortable shoe that he’d ever worn, but it would work so he put the other one on while Tyler looked for boots to replace his own poor footwear selection.
“Hey, I need help finding fifteens,” Ty staid. “I can’t read the numbers on the boxes in the darkness.”
After scanning the shelf for a moment, he pulled the box off and handed it to his partner. Tyler made the boot switch as well and Aeric grabbed some gel inserts from the rack on the end of the aisle before they ventured out from the quiet shoe section back to the main part of the store. Like before, people seemed to be fighting over everything.
The men’s clothing department was on the way to the front door, so they weaved in and out of clothing racks, headed towards a large display which held coats and scarves for the coming winter months. The closely-packed racks threatened to dislodge the boxes that each of them held precariously under their arms. They were able to hold onto them and made it to the coat section without too much of a problem.
Aeric and Tyler both needed extra-large or possibly even a double-XL, which severely limited their options. They were able to find coats with a hood, but where Tyler’s was black and blended into the darkness well, Aeric’s was bright yellow and dark blue. He’d have to fix that—good thing that there was plenty of ash and dirt available to help him tone the color down.
“Anything else?”
“The cooking pan,” Tyler replied. “But that can wait. We need to get out of here. This place is too dangerous.”
He agreed. The men who’d confronted them at the ammunition display were evidence of that fact. “Okay, you’re right. Let’s get out of here, get this stuff stored away and then find someplace to sleep for the night.”
As they moved towards the front, the baby’s cries got louder. They passed a group of women and children huddled around the prone form of a man off to the side of the entry area near the shopping carts. They were the ones with the baby. He made eye contact with one of the kids as they passed through the entry. Tears streaked down her cheeks, tracing lines through the darkened ash on her dirty face. For such a small child, she looked so sad. Her life wouldn’t change, Aeric thought. Happiness is a thing of the past.
Then he noticed the clothing of the man on the ground and the dark stain on his shoulder. It was the man that he’d shot. These people must be the families of the men who’d confronted them in the back of the store. Guilt threatened to overwhelm him. Had he killed that little girl’s father? He had to grip Tyler’s shirt for support.
“What is it?” the big man asked.
“We just need… We need to get out of here,” Aeric replied.
They left the group behind and went out to the parking lot. He cursed himself silently for not thinking about the effects of his actions. He’d dealt with the threat immediately before him, but those men also had families who relied on them. Had he doomed those people to death or some fate even potentially worse than death? What would they have to do in order to survive without the protection that the men they’d killed provided for them?
He didn’t want to think about it, but his mind wouldn’t stop, regardless of how much he begged it to. Would they be alright or would the women turn to murder or prostitution to provide for their children? What about the baby? Did they have enough food for the winter and were trying to get the ammunition for defense? He would never know the answers to those questions.
They were shocked to see an older truck driving through the parking lot when they got outside. It slowed down at the stop sign near the exit, but the brake lights didn’t work. “Hmm, look at that,” Tyler said. “I guess the old vehicles that don’t have a lot of electronics in them still work.”
“Makes sense,” Aeric answered, thankful for the distraction from thinking about the fate that he’d doomed those people to. “If most of the parts were simply mechanical and not electrical, then everything should still be working.”
“Hmm, maybe we should get motorcycles instead of bicycles.”
Tyler’s comment made Aeric stop in mid step. “Shit! We were in Walmart. We could have gotten bikes there.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Want to head back in?”
The thought of going back into the store and passing by those families again terrified him. What if the man that he’d shot in the shoulder recognized him and the women attacked? Or worse, what if the kids came after him? He didn’t know if he could shoot a woman, but he knew that he couldn’t shoot a child. Surely, there’d be another store with bikes not too far down the road. It was a Walmart for Christ’s sake, they were almost as prolific as Starbucks.
“Uh, no. I don’t think so, man. Let’s walk for a few miles, maybe there will be something later on.”
The big man shrugged and said, “Okay. Doesn’t make any difference to me. Where are we staying for the night? I’m exhausted.”
Behind them, more gunfire erupted inside the store, answering the chorus of weapons that seemed to be firing everywhere in the small city of Corsicana, Texas. “Someplace safe, but close. I don’t want to be out walking around in the night, there’s no telling what people are going to do out here. They’re panicking.”
“What about that house right there?” Tyler asked while he pointed at a darkened home a half of a block from the parking lot where they stood.
“Don’t you think that’s too close?” Aeric asked.
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I did.”
He deliberated with himself for a few seconds and then finally agreed. They needed to get inside somewhere during the night, and that place was just as good as any other. The only thing that they had to worry about was the house’s owners.
That was the tricky thing. It wasn’t like the people had vanished into thin air out in the rural parts of the country, they were still present. It wasn’t a far stretch to imagine millions of people running around in the darkness, all looking to increase their odds of survival by taking from the weak. Or was that a stupid line of thought? Yes, there was some gunfire as old scores were settled, but ultimately, the human race would band together as a community and overcome this, right?
“Fine, let’s go knock and see if anyone is home.”
They trudged doggedly up to the front door of the house and Aeric pushed the doorbell. Nothing happened. He sighed at his stupidity and then knocked. The lack of any type of electricity would take some getting used to since it had been around for his entire life. Seriously, who thought of a doorbell as electric? It was just a doorbell.
He was surprised when the barrel of a pistol pressed against the glass of the side windows and then the locks on the door turned. It creaked inwards to the end of the safety chain and a man asked, “What do you want?”
Aeric cleared his throat and replied, “We’re looking for a place to stay for the night out of the ash, can I�
�”
“Go away, we don’t have any food.”
“We’re not asking for food, just a place to stay.”
“Ain’t got that either. Get out of here!”
“Can we stay in your carport?” Tyler asked from further down the driveway where he could see the vacant structure.
“Well… What can you give me for my trouble?”
“We don’t have anything to give—” Aeric stopped himself. “Do you smoke?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I can trade you an unopened pack of cigarettes for one night in the shed. We just want to have someplace semi-secure out of the ashes to sleep.”
“You really think that you can bribe me with cigarettes?” the man asked.
“We’re not trying to bribe you, sir. The fact is that before too long, there won’t be any cigarettes left. The companies that were manufacturing them are either gone in a nuclear blast or don’t have any power to run their machinery. These could be the only ones you see for a long time.”
“Give me three packs and you can stay.”
“We don’t have that many. I can offer you one pack. All we’re gonna do is sleep in your carport. It looks like it’s empty except for some boxes and stuff, so it won’t harm you at all.”
The man considered it for a moment and then stuck his hand through the door. “Fine, give me the cigarettes. You need to leave by morning.”
Aeric smiled and answered, “Of course. Thank you!” Then he stepped back to the edge of the porch and slowly took his backpack off. He unzipped the top pouch and made a show of digging through the pack like he was searching for the cigarettes instead of moving all of them around.
When he thought that he’d spent enough time searching, he brought out a random pack and zipped the backpack closed. “Here you go,” he said.
The man grasped the cigarettes and pulled them through his door. “Okay, I don’t want to shoot you, so don’t come back to the door tonight. Like I said, you need to be gone by morning.”
“Thank you!” Aeric said again as the door slammed shut in his face and locks were twisted into place.
He shrugged at Tyler and then the big man led the way towards the carport. Tyler dropped the sleeping bags on the gravel floor and began stacking things up at the entrance. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to make this place as secure as possible,” Tyler answered. “We’re out of the ash, but if anyone else gets the idea to find shelter, then we may have a fight on our hands.”
“Shit, Ty. You’re right. God, I can’t believe how messed up things are right now.”
“Yup,” he replied and then worked in silence stacking boxes. When he’d finally made it look like the shed was full from a distance Tyler turned to Aeric and asked, “Mind telling me what the fuck that was back there in Walmart?”
“They were going to shoot us. I heard them egging on the guy who had the rifle. If I didn’t take matters into our hands, then they would have blasted you.”
“No, I’m talking about the guy you were gonna shoot in the back,” he grunted. “I had it. Those two were the antagonists. The third guy was only a lackey. We can’t go shooting people in the back, man.”
“Sorry, I got caught up in the moment and didn’t want the guy ambushing us on the way out.”
“I get it, it’s just… Now that family has to take care of him and he’s probably gonna die anyways.” He stared at the pile of boxes that he’d built and then turned back to Aeric. “Are you alright? I mean, you took those first two kills really hard and you seem to be fine with what happened today.”
“Yeah, I’m alright, thanks. I don’t want to say that I’ve hardened up or something stupid like that; I knew without a doubt that those men were going to kill us. We’ll never know about the group at Veronica’s place. They killed that guy, but there’s no telling what he’d done to them—or to their family—prior to what we saw. We didn’t even give them a chance to see what they were going to do. We killed them before they knew what was happening.”
Tyler accepted his explanation with a slight nod that he could barely see in the growing darkness. “Good, I just wanted to make sure. Things are going to get much worse, Walmart proves that. I can’t have you flaking out on me.”
“No worries. I’m good,” Aeric assured him.
“Alright, I’m exhausted, let’s roll out these sleeping bags and get some sleep.”
“I’d kill for a toothbrush,” Aeric muttered.
“Yeah, you probably would,” his friend chuckled.
*****
Tyler couldn’t sleep. He was irritated that those men had made him shoot them, and if he was being honest with himself, he was a little worried that he was losing his humanity. He hadn’t hesitated in Austin to kill the men who’d taken part in the torturing of Veronica’s neighbor and hadn’t even felt any remorse afterwards. The men at Walmart did appear to be threatening, but there was no way of knowing what their intentions really were. He’d told Aeric that they were going to kill him. Was that the truth or was it simply easier to kill them and continue on with their plan to load up on supplies?
Was that it? Had he allowed the situation to dictate his actions? There had been multiple murders and gun battles from the food side of the store, had he let the emotions of the moment escalate his own response?
Whatever the reason, he still didn’t feel any actual remorse for taking those men’s lives. It was more of a feeling of letting himself down, not that he was sorry for getting the drop on them. They certainly had acted threatening towards Aeric when there was no need to act that way.
Tyler tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. He didn’t have any way to tell time since both his watch and cell phone had stopped working when the big EMP knocked out all of the electronics. As he lay there, Tyler really began to think about the journey. If what Lieutenant Griffith had said was true, everyone that he’d ever known in the world was dead.
His entire extended family lived in Lincoln. They’d expected him to go play baseball, and then return to the family homestead, like his father and grandfather had. They’d both left to fight in Vietnam and Korea, respectively, and then returned to Lincoln to work on the farm.
The homestead was what ended up killing them all. Nebraska was littered with nuclear launch facilities. Besides Washington, DC and the missile command center in Colorado, the launch sites would have been the first targets as the adversary tried to knock out the United States’ capability for launch. If the Vultures had hacked into the system and simply fired pre-arranged targets without changing any of the target data, then his entire family was dead.
That left Aeric. He was the only person that Tyler knew from before the war who was still alive. The guy had become like a brother to him over the course of the summer and fall semester together, and had proven several times already that he needed Tyler’s help to survive. He’d make sure that he got back home, but neither of them knew what else that would entail. He glanced over at Aeric, who was snoring softly. He didn’t think that his roommate had snored before all this. Tyler surmised that Aeric must have been as exhausted as he felt.
One thing was for sure, Tyler wasn’t built for walking over four hundred miles. They were both fooling themselves if they thought that they’d be able to walk that far with only a couple backpacks full of food and cigarettes for trade. They’d constantly have to go into situations like what had happened at Walmart and be in real danger every three or four days trying to get food. They needed bikes. Bikes would cut their travel time by at least half, maybe more.
Tyler looked out the shed’s window at the lightening sky. Somehow, he’d tossed and turned all night long and morning was approaching. The gunfire had ceased hours ago, which meant that either everyone was dead or that people had gone home, too exhausted to carry on for the night. The timing was as good as it was going to get and he could go back to the store without putting Aeric in danger also.
That made up his mind. He’d go back
to the store and get the bikes on his own. Aeric was his only remaining friend, he couldn’t stand the thought of the guy getting hurt, or worse. This way, he would be able to sneak in, get the wheels and sneak back out before anyone knew anything was different.
He unzipped his sleeping bag as quietly as he could and pulled his legs out of the noisy material. Then he slipped on his boots and grabbed the pistol and baseball bat. He really needed some other way to carry the bat besides in his hand all the time. Maybe some type of belt sling would work to hook the end of the bat into, he thought as he quietly moved boxes out of the way.
The trip back to Walmart was uneventful and the inside of the store was mostly quiet, like he thought it would be. He went in the same side that they’d gone through earlier that night and noticed the man that Aeric had shot in the back was still laying there, dead, in a large puddle of blood. He must have been hit in the lung and then bled out. So much for a hardship on the family, Tyler thought.
He weaved his way back to the sporting goods section and as he went, he could hear voices talking from the food section. They must have set up down on that end and were now guarding their stash. It didn’t’ matter, he wasn’t about to go down there. He found two bikes that looked big enough for them and picked them up. It would be easier to carry them on his shoulder than to try and wheel them both along.
As he was leaving the sporting goods section, he noticed the bow and arrows. The thought of using a bow was appealing, however, not practical if they were going to be on bikes. The arrow quiver, though, that had a practical use that he could apply. He grabbed a packaged quiver and stuffed it under his arm.
*****
Aeric woke to the sound of the boxes being moved aside. He frantically searched inside his sleeping bag until his fingers wrapped around the pistol that he’d slept with. He pulled it out and pointed the weapon towards the entrance. His hand shook in the cold of the early morning, but it was steady enough to shoot if it came to that.
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