The Dark Roads

by Lemmons, Wayne

  Twenty-two years old. They were all the same age, had grown up together. Benny, of course, had been one of them, but wasn't around to keep them company anymore.

  Their unfortunate names had brought them together in the first place, toward the end of elementary school when children found the ability to be truly cruel. Circumstance had made them stand up for each other and fight with the bullies as a team.

  Each of them was named after one of those old rock-legends, or so it seemed. Other than Elvis, the boys' names were coincidental. He was named after the long dead "King of Rock n' Roll", but Richie was named for a great grandfather, Buddy was nicknamed because of those thick fucking glasses he wore, and Benny was just a version of Ben.

  Elvis was born Down syndrome and his mom was idiotic enough to stamp him with the name and the hair that would make him a target for ridicule. Richie never cared for the woman, nor had Buddy.

  They'd come together at Buddy's apartment just as the heat started really building up and decided to take off. None of their parents had survived, most lost to the fatal choice of going outside too often, and the only other family any of them had ever known was each other.

  Richie decided on Alaska and the others followed without much question. It was go or stay and staying was off the market in Florida. There were hotter places, but not by much.

  Richie suggested that they stay to the highways for the easy navigation and drew a route that would take them across the Midwest. When Benny asked why they didn't stick to the coast, the others just looked at him as if trying to analyze his density until Richie finally spoke up, his voice firm and his tone mimicking those of many of their old teachers.

  "Salt water can't be drunk, Benny. There are more lakes and rivers moving through the Midwest so water will be easier to come by."

  "Don't forget the complete lack of fucking basements on the east coast. The ground is too brittle in most spots. You can't sleep underground if there isn't an underground," Buddy added.

  Elvis watched the exchange, his head moving back and forth as if he was a spectator at a tennis match. His decision had already been made. Where Buddy and Richie went, Elvis went.

  Benny sputtered a bit, wishing he had a way to argue the point, but finally conceded. There was no good reason to stay on the coast. It wasn't even the shorter of the two routes.

  "So we'll go northwest," Richie said, "It'll take the better part of the year to walk it, but we don't have much choice in the matter. Cars won't run worth a damn in this heat. Probably couldn't get past all of the break downs even if they could run."

  They all nodded at this. The ability to travel had become difficult during the decline, motors overheating only minutes after being turned over and tires exploding at random. Opening up a hood to add coolant had become a frightening task. Batteries had a tendency to explode lately. Bicycles couldn't even be ridden due to the tires falling apart. Elvis and Buddy had even seen the foam filled wheels of a forklift falling apart. Walking seemed to be the only way to move.

  Richie was roused from his memories as Elvis stood, his visage short and stocky, and walked to the stairway to sit on the bottom step. The slump in his shoulders, the way he leaned forward, the way his forearms propped against his upper thighs were all signals shown for Richie to read.

  His friend hadn't been getting much sleep over the last week. Richie was keeping a close eye on him, remembering the signs Benny had shown before going over the edge. He didn't want to bury Elvis until he was old and gray if such a thing was possible.

  Richie rolled over to face him, deciding on whether it was worth it to get up and sit with him. Would they gain anything from conversation? They hadn't been talking a great deal recently, so it might not hurt. He was tired and needed some rest, but knew that it would elude him if Elvis continued sitting watch over them. He sat up, the bones in his lower back crackling loudly against the silence. Buddy kept snoring.

  "What's going on little brother?" Richie asked him as he approached.

  "You haven't called me that in a while," Elvis said thickly.

  "Move over."

  He did, allowing Richie to sit, their legs almost touching in the narrow area. A fleeting thought reminded Richie to be careful sitting on old wood steps with a naked ass. Splinters in the behind would be just what he deserved for doing it.

  He noticed that Elvis was losing weight, just like the rest of them, but it looked worse on him. His muscle tone was weak because of the Down's.

  "I'm thinking about Benny," Elvis told him, knowing that he would ask.

  "He's gone," Richie said, the image of Benny pointing a pistol at him playing on the movie screen in his mind.

  "I know that. I know he left on purpose. Doesn't mean I don't miss em'."

  Richie nodded.

  "Do you ever think about it? Givin' up, I mean."

  "Yeah," Richie admitted, "Sometimes. I'd never do it, though. Chicken shit way to go out, Elvis. You aren't thinking that way, are you?"

  "Nah. Just talkin'. You know I'm not chicken shit."

  "Besides, if I did something like that you'd be stuck with Buddy every night. You two would get lost as shit and end up in Mexico if I wasn't around."

  "Me and ole' coke-bottles would get to Alaska in a week without you to slow us down."

  They laughed, chuckled really, together in the dark. Richie loved the innocent way that Elvis laughed. Even when he was trying to be quiet it was close to a guffaw. His whispers were bellows in a crowded room, full of life even if the man himself didn't seem so.

  ***

  "You know, I never thought I'd eat a rat," Buddy said, his tone thoughtful, but light.

  "Me neither," said Elvis.

  "I used to eat them all the time," Richie added, waiting for the other two to catch it.

  "That's because you were always a pussy... Cat," Elvis testified.

  That surprised all of them into a laugh for a moment. It was proceeded by jibes at each other that they'd gotten away from giving. It was nice to talk the way that they once had, before any of this started. Even if it was a conversation over a dinner of rat carcass, it was still a conversation.

  "Do you think anyone around here lived through it?"

  Buddy's tone sobered with the question and they became quiet. Richie started to speak and it was obvious that Elvis had an opinion, but they didn't want to say the actual words. It would be too much like dancing in a graveyard. They just kept eating, hoping that Buddy would either forget that he asked or decide he didn't want the answer. Buddy gnawed on tiny leg bones and considered the thing.

  "I think there must be people up north. That's the only way to go to get away from the heat. My grandma lived in that condo on North Beach. You guys remember?"

  Richie and Elvis nodded.

  "She always left in April or May and went up to Michigan for the summer. She said that the humidity wasn't as bad there and it wasn't near as hot. Fucking Michigan, right?" Buddy paused for effect, "But that's the way all of the old folks did things. Snowbirds. They came south for the winter and north for the summer."

  "Your grandma didn't go to Michigan," Richie said, "She stayed with Elvis' grandpa in Tampa and fucked her wrinkly old ass off all winter long."

  Elvis guffawed some more as Buddy shook his head. Richie stood and made a bump and grind motion with his hips to accent the comment. His thin hips made the motion look almost unsettling.

  "Your grandpa couldn't get it up any more than I could when your mom tried to jump my bones."

  "Richie's mom's pretty, Buddy. I got it up for her every time," Elvis said dryly, eliciting stunned silence and laughter soon after.

  "Dude. You just got burnt by the King of Rock N' Roll."

  "Fuck," Richie said in return.

  They concluded their meal and packed up their basement camp, making sure to leave nothing other than rat bones in their wake. Buddy checked their water and doled out enough to keep them alive but not a drop more. They drank, though it was still too warm to be goo
d. All of them wished for a cold glass of water in a silent prayer to a God that must have abandoned them. After that, it was time to start the night.

  "Who checks?" Buddy asked, knowing that he'd been the man to do so on the previous night.

  Elvis started to rise, but Richie grabbed his shoulder and made him sit back down. Richie stood, pulling his coach gun out of the pack, checked the breach to see that it was loaded with shells, and walked toward the staircase.

  He held the barrels to the doorway above, aiming low in case of any intrusion. They'd learned to do this at the beginning of each night early on. Sometimes people showed up. Usually they weren't nice. When food becomes scarce, there are those who don't want to bother with finding rats to eat.

  Richie used his shoulder to shove one of the doors open so that he could keep the gun in hand and was blasted by hot air.

  It was like a furnace in the basement, but was closer to hell outside. He was efficient without ever being taught and was able to clear the area quickly. He opened the other door with another hard shove and signaled for his friends to join him on the outside. They did, holding their own weapons at the ready.

  "Safety's on, asshole," Richie griped at Buddy.

  Buddy looked for a moment at the pistol before realizing what Richie was saying. The look on his face was amusing.

  "You're a dick. It doesn't have a safety."

  Richie grinned in the moonlight. To the others his face looked like a death mask.

  Chapter 2

  Wyola, Montana

  January 24, 2021

  12:02 AM 101*F

  Montana wasn't as empty of life as Wyoming had been. They'd spent the last week walking its roads in near silence. There were signs everywhere that people were traveling the same highway, but they were either too far ahead to catch up to, or they didn't want to be seen.

  Buddy was so tense that he slept with his pistol in hand. Richie and Elvis were afraid to wake him for fear that he would shoot first and ask questions later. It was distressing for all of them.

  Elvis had gone mostly quiet, barely talking to either of his comrades, and it was a bad sign to Richie- who'd watched Benny go from talkative to quiet, and finally, to dead.

  They'd tried a mine a few nights before and found it too dangerous to inhabit. Richie's thoughts about dry soil had proven accurate. They'd found three of the four shafts that branched off from the ballroom of the mine caved in.

  They decided to find another basement instead. It didn't matter much. The mine's depth wasn't what they'd thought it would be and the temperature wasn't very different from the surface. It was disappointing, but not surprising. Time was running out for everything.

  Richie wasn't troubled by the idea of other people being in the area. On the contrary, his spirits were lifted. If there were other survivors taking the same route, that meant that there was something to the idea of Alaska. Others might already be there. It might be safe and comfortable. There might be food that hadn't spoiled, water that was cool to drink and swim in, and life.

  LIFE had become a word on a huge flashing sign in Richie's mind. Life meant being somewhere that wasn't so consistently dangerous, a place where he and his friends might be able to survive.

  "Hear that?" Buddy asked in a hushed tone.

  "Yeah," Elvis uttered, pulling the pistol from his hip.

  Richie hadn't heard anything, being deep in thought, and said so in his own whisper. All of them had weapons at the ready, looking around for the source of some sound that Richie hadn't registered. All he heard now was the blood rushing through his ears. They were silent. No one moved for fear of making noise of their own that might be detected.

  "We're safe. We have no weapons. Please don't shoot," a man's voice declared from somewhere close by.

  Richie searched for the source of the intonation, unable to make anyone out in the night. A small superstitious part of him wondered if they were listening to ghosts. He shook the thought away and continued to scan the area.

  "Let us see you. We won't shoot, but we aren't putting em' down," Buddy replied, still aiming at everything in front of him.

  Three forms, specters in the shadows, seemed to materialize ten feet in front of them. Two teenage girls flanked a tall older man in a misshapen Stetson. Their hands were raised in surrender, but the man seemed, to Richie anyway, ready for anything.

  No one spoke for a moment, both groups adjusting to the idea of other people being within view. As tense as they were, the smallest of movements at that instant would have caused a fire fight.

  "I'm Steve Dundel and these are my girls. This is Annie," he said pointing to the girl on his left and then to his right without dropping his hands, "And this is Theresa."

  "I'm Buddy. These two are Richie and Elvis."

  One of the girls giggled, nervously, making Elvis uncomfortable. Buddy was taking the lead, quite easily, and Richie was impressed. The thought that Buddy might shoot them as soon as he could see them had crossed his mind. He was handling things calmly and logically. It was something Richie hadn't expected and he was thankful.

  "We aren't going to hurt anyone," Buddy said, finally, and holstered his gun.

  Richie followed suit and looked over at Elvis to see if he had. Elvis' pistol wasn't holstered, but he wasn't aiming it at the three newcomers anymore. Richie started to tell his friend to put the gun away, but something in the man's eyes told him that he might not listen.

  Elvis doesn't like something about this, Richie thought and filed the notion away for later consideration.

  ***

  Dundel had prepared well for the apocalypse.

  The home he'd built in 2016 was actually an underground bunker, the entrance standing above ground, discreetly, among the surrounding hills. The place was powered by solar panels and hooked into an underground well.

  The solar hadn't stood up to the intensity of the new dreadful sun, but the water still ran. It was warm and distilled by the heat of day, but it was better than what sloshed around in their bottles and was free of sediment. There were four rooms in the dwelling and an actual bathroom that the three men used with unexpected pleasure. Anything civilized in this new world was a luxury to be appreciated.

  Richie, Buddy, and Elvis marveled at these temporary lodgings. None of them knew that there could be such comforts as this after society had collapsed. For the first time in months, none of them felt the pressure of the sun beating on the roof of their habitat.

  They were all sitting around a scored kitchen table with Formica peeling away at the edges. The girls had brought in folding chairs from one of the other rooms so they could all sit. Things were still divided, the three men sitting close together on one side of the table while the girls sat with Dundel on the other. All of them had cups of warm water in hand, sipping as they spoke.

  "My girls were keeping track of everything," Steve Dundel began without a trace of the accent all of them expected, "They were watching the news and listening to the radio. I didn't bother much with the media. I could see what was going on just by looking outside, so I stayed here and waited for my people to show up. After a while, they did."

  "It was a good thing you just happened to have this type of place to stay in," Richie said, raising his eyebrows in question.

  "It was," Dundel agreed, "Having this place built was one of the best decisions I ever made."

  "But why did you build an underground house?" Buddy broke in, "I've never even heard of anyone doing this kind of thing."

  "Oh, there are a lot of these places. I don't think there are many of them in Montana, but there are quite a few people living like this in the Midwest and up in Canada. It got fairly popular in the late 90's and improved with the technology. Solar used to be the hardest part of it, but enough people worked on it to get power running without the big companies. It's not worth shit now, but it was efficient before the sun started burning everything up."

  "You didn't answer me," Buddy said, challenging Dundel, "Why did you build
an underground house?"

  Dundel smiled slightly, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, and met Buddy's stare for a few seconds. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind, deciding whether to tell them more. The look in his eyes was one of debate and Richie watched as his inner turmoil seemed to fall to the side.

  "I built it because the ash trees were healthy all of a sudden."

  Buddy said nothing, only waited as if he understood something about the statement. The others sitting around the table looked at one another without a clue. What in the hell do ash trees have to do with anything? was the obvious question in everyone's mind. Richie looked to Buddy, who nodded to Dundel for the rest.

  "Any of you ever heard of the Emerald Ash Borer?" Dundel asked the group, knowing that none did.

  "Never," Richie said for all of them.

  "Back in '02 the ash trees in Michigan started falling to shit. They figured out that there was a dirty little bug called an Emerald Ash Borer causing the mess, but they couldn't figure out how to contain it. By 2015 the Borers had spread all over the country, causing all sorts of havoc on the forests, which caused all sorts of havoc with lumber yards and the pockets of all sorts of carpenters. You know what baseball bats are made of? Ash. Hammer handles? Ash. How about guitars? Ash again.

  "So the EPA and all of the conservation groups were trying like hell to get rid of the Borers and no one was having any luck at all. The government even tried to quarantine any affected unfinished wood. You could see the problems with those trees if you went to the woods at all. We had major problems around here and, for me at least, it was obvious. One day, though, I noticed that the trees were coming back."

  "The sun was killing the Borers," Buddy said softly.

  Dundel pointed a finger at him, cocking his thumb, and nodded. He looked around to see if everyone was following, but it didn't really matter if we were.

  "Pests don't just go away when they have a nearly unlimited food supply. Something has to happen to force the point."