Ricardo smiled. “Mama worked hard to help Mister Eric get the oven working.”
Carl glanced from Ricardo to Maria. Ricardo’s mom was dressed in a dirty smock, but she wore a prize-winning smile. “Thanks,” Carl said, “This has really made our night.”
“We also have good news.” Ricardo said. His smile widening, he turned to his mother.
Maria turned to Carl. “My son and I would like to come with you when you leave tomorrow. He’s been very eager to accompany you, and I decided we should. The city is too dangerous for us to try going back home, and all our food probably is spoiled by now. Will you let us join you?”
“Absolutely!” Carl replied.
Carl tore the latest bite from his pizza. He never imagined he would taste pizza ever again. This was truly a godsend. Well, the guns were a godsend. This pizza was just the icing on the cake.
The other survivors were more alive than Carl ever had seen them. Not only were they enjoying the pizza, they were chatting amongst each other as if this was any regular party or large dinner. The only things that really were different were the warmer air and low illumination. Still, no one seemed to mind the lack of air conditioning or wall lights.
Carl ate with Shyanne, Tara and Preston, while Alicia and Lorenzo dined on the next table over. Of the group, only Tara remained a little moody, but she flashed a smile every now and then whenever Shyanne addressed her. Carl hoped Tara would perk up even more, but then Rupert showed up with Michael beside him, and his hopes faded. Seeing Michael was sure to make things a little worse.
“Hey,” Rupert said, “I made sure to bring Michael over to enjoy the food. Do you want him to sit with you?”
Tara looked at the table. With Carl, Shyanne and Preston, in addition to herself, the table was a bit crowded for one more person. Tara seemed a little tongue-tied, but Carl spotted an empty table behind her and said, “Tara, you can sit over there with Michael and Rupert.”
Tara turned around. “Oh. Sure.” She laughed nervously. “Thanks, Carl.”
Rupert ushered Michael into one of the seats while Tara fetched some pizza for Michael and Rupert. Then she sat and started eating with them, but Rupert seemed more interested in Carl.
“I wanted to ask if I could come along with you,” he said, “I’m sure Michael could use my help, and you probably need some kind of a doctor with you. I mean, I’m just a nurse, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Well that would be great, but don’t you have any place to go? I mean, do you have family around here?” Tara asked.
“My parents live in Knoxville,” Rupert replied, “There’s no way I can make the trip out there without a plane or a car.” He sighed.
“It’d be great if you came along,” Carl said.
Rupert then looked at Tara. “I’m sorry about Tammy. I needed some time off, and Tammy seemed like she could handle Michael. She didn’t know that Michael really shouldn’t have been left to walk by himself.”
“No, I shouldn’t have blown my top,” Tara said. “Michael’s my responsibility. I should be grateful he has been taken care of up until now.” She smiled. “And you’ve done very well for him. Thanks.”
A plate of pizza then bumped into her right arm. Tara looked up. Michael had slid it toward her. He was looking at her with a tired smile.
“Pizza date,” he said.
Tara looked down at the pizza. “Thanks,” she said.
His gesture was so touching that Tara almost wanted to weep. How much more did he want to say to her, yet couldn’t because of his injuries? Any word he expressed was more precious than a thousand words she could say.
“We’re going home, Michael,” Tara said, “I’ll get you home. I will.”
Chapter Nine
Carl glanced at the pizza oven. The grills inside finally had stopped smoking. Finally satisfied the ovens were no longer a fire risk, Carl turned and walked out into the food court, which now was nearly empty. In the distance, Tara was leading Michael off into the mall’s main corridor. Alicia was standing up at her table, pressing against it with both hands, with Lorenzo beside her.
“God, I’m going to pop a button!” Alicia pressed her stomach. “Lorenzo, I cannot keep these jeans! I told you they’re a size too small for me!” Alicia, already a full-figured woman, looked so compacted inside the denim that it seemed she couldn’t move much at all.
“Oh that’s ridiculous. I think they’re perfect.” Lorenzo then pressed each of his palms into Alicia’s backside and ran his hands up and down slowly.
Alicia laughed. “Lorenzo! Not here! I can’t move, I’m too stuffed!”
“We may never get new clothes for a while and we need to take from the mall what we can find,” Lorenzo said. While still groping his wife, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“Lorenzo!” Alicia shouted, “Carl’s here! I’m turning red all over! And don’t tell me that turns you on!”
“Well, everything about you turns me on.” Lorenzo kissed her again before stepping backward and taking her by the arm and helping her turn around, though his left hand remained cupped on her rear as they walked.
Alicia giggled a little more before saying softly, “I love you, baby.”
“I love you,” Lorenzo said as they walked off the food court platform and into the corridor.
Their departure left the food court empty. The pizza party largely had been over an hour ago, and it took about that long for the remaining people to leave. Carl decided to hang around. Nobody was sleeping in the food court as they had when Carl and his friends first had showed up. They either opted for the display beds in the stores or the benches out in the main corridor. A few still chose to sleep in the second floor of Kelly’s Boutique, feeling more secure slumbering up there. Carl couldn’t blame them. The trauma of Jason and Cyrus’s invasion would remain with these people for a long time.
But at least they’re alive, Carl thought. In this new world, life was what counted.
However, with life came choices. Carl had made his choice to leave. But there were many people here who would not leave. Carl couldn’t shake his fears for them. The city was full of anarchists gleefully taking advantage of the lawlessness, and he was sure the death toll had not reached its peak. That meant the mall still could be besieged by an anarchist band. Hell, it didn’t even take a whole mob to threaten these people, as they still did not possess any firearms.
Those thoughts made Carl feel better about not taking off the zip ties from the doors or removing the barricade. Jason’s men tied up almost all of the mall doors to keep the survivors inside, but now many of those ties would help seal the mall off from new invaders.
Still, what if help does come? Carl pondered that question as he looked at the skylight. He continued to discount that help from the military could arrive in the cities and towns. What if the government wasn’t completely caught off-guard? Only a few days had passed since the EMP, which wasn’t very long. Perhaps enough military units had retained operable transportation and could return to the major cities to restore order.
But Carl couldn’t count on that. And so he would move on until he did find a safe haven, if such a thing existed anymore.
From his place in the parking lot, Carl gazed up at the shopping mall. Leaving it felt strange. Perhaps because this place had provided shelter for the past few days at a time where a stable shelter seemed like a pure luxury. It was hard to pull away from it now. He also couldn’t help but picture the many people who remained inside it. The mall was housing a small community of people, the first stable community Carl and his friends had encountered since this disaster began. It was hard not to want to stay with a community once you had found it.
On the other hand, Carl had a small community of his own to look after. They numbered twelve in all, from himself, Tara, Preston, Shyanne, to Alicia and Lorenzo, to Ricardo and his mother Maria, Harold and his sons, and Rupert. And, of course, Michael was with them. He carried a lighter pack than the others, one
that wouldn’t weigh him down. He seemed as fixated on the mall as Carl was. No doubt the mall had provided a strong measure of security for him as well. How would he react in the wild?
He almost lingered on the mall, but then wisps of smoke drifted into view. They floated high, very high in the sky, not enough to produce a smell. Carl turned to the horizon, to the left, in the city’s direction. Stacks of smoke lifted, none of them close, but enough for Carl to realize major fires had broken out. It was a small comfort to know that the smoke appeared to rise from the opposite side of the city. The fires presented no immediate danger to these suburbs, but there was no way to be sure the fires would burn out before they reached here.
“Carl,” Tara said.
“I know, I see it,” Carl replied.
Preston turned toward the city as well. “This place really isn’t going to be safe for long.”
“No,” Carl said softly. “If the fires don’t kill the anarchists who still are roaming in there, they’ll spill out of the city sooner or later. Odds are those bastards will make it here.”
He turned to Tara and Preston. “Chad and the others know what’s coming. At least with all the guns Tyler still has in his store, they will have a fighting chance if they choose to make a stand.”
That was the other part of this departure that Carl hated—thinking of those who stayed behind. But choices had to be made. Carl couldn’t stay, nor could he force anyone to leave if they did not wish to do so.
Carl turned his head. “Alright, everyone. Let’s get going.”
Tara led Michael as the group turned around. Everyone marched toward the edge of the parking lot, to the curb of the street that crossed to the strip mall. Carl glanced toward Tyler’s store before he proceeded onto the street. He wondered if Tyler was looking at them from inside. Perhaps someday Tyler would change his mind and leave, opting to rejoin the remnants of society struggling to survive.
Sadly, Carl was unlikely to ever know if that would happen.
The big question for Carl’s party was whether they would run into more survivors as they trekked down this street, and if the survivors would turn out to be more anarchists. Carl and Preston’s encounters after they fled the Rally for Rights still weighed heavily on their minds, as well as Tara and Michael’s running gunfight through the city streets. Carl hoped their previous troubles mostly had arisen from the immediate aftermath of the EMP strike, and that a lot of these streets would be mostly clear by now.
A look at these suburbs gave them hope. The street made a broad curve upon leaving the vicinity of the strip mall into an area with no houses, just green fields, tall trees, and lampposts. The street soon took the group onto a bridge that led over a canal. Again, there were no homes on the other side to greet them.
This is good, Carl thought. No houses, and no stores. That means there are no people lurking around and no resources to try pillaging.
Unfortunately, another enemy was lurking in their midst—boredom. Ricardo was getting a little fidgety. They had been walking for more than a full hour. Unfortunately, Tom and Matthew were not the talkative types at all. Ricardo’s efforts to engage them in conversation almost turned up nothing except one or two word answers from the boys. Carl wondered if Maria would keep her boy engaged, but instead she just looked at their surroundings with nervous eyes. Carl knew very little about her. If she was just an ordinary suburban mom, she wouldn’t be prepared at all for the new horrors that lurked out here.
“Say,” Ricardo said, “anybody want to sing? If we’re going camping, we should sing.”
“That’s a good idea,” Carl said. A song might take their minds off the possible dangers of this trip, particularly when they finally left the suburbs and entered the forest.
“Okay!” Ricardo cleared his throat, then started out with “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.”
“Twenty-four bottles of beer…” Ricardo coughed. “Twenty-four bottles of beer…take one down, pass it around…”
Ricardo’s song had not gone over as well as Ricardo may have hoped. Tom and Matthew distanced themselves from Ricardo, though Shyanne joined in for a long time until she started coughing and stopped. Now even Ricardo was running out of juice.
“Twenty-five bottles of beer,” he sang.
“It should be twenty-three,” Shyanne said, “You’re going backward.”
“I am?” Ricardo asked, “Shit!”
“Ricardo!” Maria snapped, “No bad words.”
“Sorry, Mama,” Ricardo replied sheepishly.
Preston groaned while fingering the straps of his backpack. “If I had my phone working this wouldn’t be such a hassle. I could listen to music.” He sighed. “I can’t believe there’s so much suburb to walk through.”
“That’s because it goes by fast when you’re driving in a car going twenty-five miles an hour,” Alicia said. “When you have to get out and walk it’s a different story. It just goes on and on.”
Carl silently wished the suburbs eventually would stop. They recently had entered a small, fairly old neighborhood. It was a collection of houses with faded siding, chipped paint, and a few gated front doors, a fairly lower- middle class area by the looks of it. Carl wondered if anyone was lurking around here. Were they friendly? He wanted to pick up the pace, but his party was noticeably dragging their heels. They likely were feeling the weight of their packs by now.
I know we’re going in the right direction, Carl thought. If the map is right, we should be hitting countryside before very long.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of loud heaving. He turned his head. Michael, who had been quiet this whole trip, suddenly started breathing quickly and loudly.
“Michael?” Tara grabbed Michael’s arm with her other hand. She had been allowing him to walk under his own power as long as she stayed close to him, but now she gripped him tightly. “Michael, what’s wrong?”
Michael no longer was staring ahead. He had a glazed-over expression. He was turning his head to look at the houses with near panic. “My…gun….where’s….my…gun? Where’s my gun?”
“Michael, what are you talking about? Your gun? You don’t have it anymore. You lost it when you escaped from the auto parts store, remember?” Tara asked.
“Gun! Gun! They’re going to kill us!” Michael then flung his pack off as if he only now had discovered he was wearing it and regarded it as an intruder clinging to his body. “They’re after us! Don’t…don’t you hear them?”
“Michael, no one’s after us!” Tara grabbed his arms to try stopping him from flailing around. “Put your pack back on. We’re fine!”
Carl quickly joined them, as did everyone else. The group stopped their march and gathered around Michael. “What’s wrong? He’s going loco,” Ricardo said. Maria then grabbed Ricardo from behind and pulled him a few steps away.
“He must be remembering the firefight back in the city,” Carl said. “Michael, listen to me! No one’s after you. We’re safe. We’re…”
But Michael did not listen. Instead, he let out a holler and broke away from the group. He sprinted down the street toward a break between houses. He wasn’t running very gracefully. His injuries might have damaged his coordination, or he simply was not in the best of shape after the last few days, but still, he was an athletic young man and could cover a lot of distance when he wanted to do so.
“Michael!” Tara cast off her pack and then ran after him.
“Damn.” Carl quickly turned to Preston and the other adults. “Watch the kids. I’ll be back!” Then he dropped his pack onto the street before racing to catch Tara and Michael.
“Michael!” Tara shouted as she trailed Michael through the space between houses. Michael dove onto the grass behind three full garbage cans. He crawled on the ground and huddled behind them.
“Tara! Down!” Michael shouted.
“Michael, no one’s shooting at us! I swear!” Tara replied, though she dove behind the cans so she could get close to Michael. “
We got away. Don’t you remember?”
Michael was shaking, looking past the cans to some sight buried in his subconscious. Then he winced and ducked. “Shot! They shot!”
“No!” Tara grabbed Michael by his shirt and pulled him into her gaze. “No one is shooting at us!”
Michael kept trembling, but he seemed to calm down with only Tara in his field of vision. “Tara…”
“Yes! Yes, baby. It’s just us, us and our friends.”
Michael emitted a little moaning sound. “The houses…I saw them…they looked like…”
“The neighborhoods we kept running through to get away from those killers. Yeah, I remember, but that was days ago. We’re going into the forest. We…” Her voice cracked. “We’re going home.”
Michael’s trembling slowed. “Home?” he whispered.
“Right,” Tara said, “Home.”
Michael’s quivering came to a stop. Tara released his shirt and slipped back a little.
But Tara’s hopes of leading Michael peacefully back to the others instantly were dashed when the side door of the nearby home swung open hard. A thin, middle-aged man with a shotgun emerged onto the side porch and pointed the barrel in their general direction.
“Hey! Who the hell’s out there!?”
Michael suddenly changed. His eyes grew fiercely intense. His limbs tensed up. Then he screamed and pounced upon the man, who fired his gun but only hit the underside of his porch awning. Michael slammed him on the porch, and the two began wrestling.
“Michael!” Tara sprang up and tried separating them. The man still held his gun, but it was pressed against his chest. Terror gripped Tara. What if that gun went off and Michael was hit?
Tara rammed her boot into the side of the man’s head. The man still didn’t let go of Michael. She struck him again and again. He shouted in pain but still didn’t let go of Michael. Finally, Tara hit him hard in the upper chest. That last shot seemed to loosen his grip. Michael then retreated toward the open doorway, coughing and panting.
Silent Interruption (Book 3): An Uncertain Passage Page 7