The Dark Roads

by Lemmons, Wayne

  Make sure that you get deep underground within the next few months, boys. This is all going to get worse if I'm right. Alaska could be safe, but I don't know.

  Take the food and water. Stay in the house if you want to. We're going outside, so we won't need them anymore.

  Don't let this sacrifice be in vain.

  Steve Dundel

  Secrets are hard to keep, but from time to time they have to be kept. Richie and Buddy decided to keep this one to themselves, saving Elvis from something he might or might not be able to understand. Neither of them stated their intention, sitting together in the heat of the stairwell, but both of them knew what needed to be done.

  They stood, one at a time and went down the stairs, made alone by the darkness, but held together by pain. They slept through dreams that would never hold in their minds and were grateful to wake up without memories of them.

  Chapter 3

  Billings, Montana

  January 28, 2021

  1:21 AM 97*F

  The going had been easy during the last six nights. They were far from the underground home of Steve Dundel and hadn't been very successful on the front of putting the things that happened out of their minds.

  Elvis was in his usual jovial mood, but Buddy and Richie were pensive at best. Elvis hadn't asked about the letter anymore, had just accepted the fact of leaving in a way that made Richie wonder if he had some idea of what he'd escaped. The very notion that someone would consider killing their friend was beyond Richie's ability to reason. It was a ridiculous idea.

  Buddy was walking ahead of Richie, Elvis behind him, and they both appeared to be lost in thought. They were silent. No hectoring or bitching was able to get past the thickness of the air.

  Richie had been watching the yellow lines in the center of the road and listening to his friends’ footsteps for a few hours without interruption. Their pace was good. They were making some headway on their journey. By Richie's calculations, they would be out of Montana and across the border into Canada in less than two weeks.

  "Holy shit," Buddy said from up in front.

  "What?" Elvis asked, but was soon standing next to Buddy in the middle of the road.

  Buddy began to laugh, as did Elvis, which made Richie look up at them for the first time in hours. When he did, he had to join them in laughter. They had stumbled into some good luck, after all.

  "Do you think it's empty, Buddy?" Elvis inquired once he’d stopped laughing.

  "Don't know, kid. Only one way to find out."

  "Might be. We're in the middle of nowhere," Richie added.

  They started walking again, this time side by side, as they always did when approaching something risky. It was instinct, more than anything, to make a larger image of their group than would be interpreted if they walked single file.

  Each of them pulled a weapon, but didn't hold them at the ready quite yet. They were too far away from their destination to justify pointing the guns at anything but the ground.

  "First one we've seen in Montana. Thought these places were like McDonald's. One on every block," Buddy said.

  "Don't care. I'm getting some new boots and about fifty bandanas if they got em'," Elvis pronounced giddily.

  "I'll get fifty more if it'll stop your whining," Buddy countered.

  "To hell with all of that," Richie said, smiling nearly from ear to ear, "If I have to I'm going to force a shit just so I can use toilet paper to wipe my ass."

  This cracked all of them up. They didn't stop laughing until they reached the parking lot of the Walmart Supercenter and headed for the back entrance. Their guns were now raised and ready.

  ***

  The thing that all of those books about the apocalypse never consider is how unpredictable weather can really get and how much that can affect everything.

  Things like canned goods and carbonated beverages become useless in extreme temperatures. If it gets too cold, everything freezes. If it gets too hot, soda cans and canned food can actually explode, wreaking havoc on everything that surrounds them.

  Luckily for Richie, Buddy, and Elvis, most department stores don't store the food next to the clothing, and water is usually sold in plastic containers. The plastic bottles can melt, but the thicker ones usually warp rather than dissolve.

  Richie took a few minutes to pick the lock on the back door while his friends kept a look out for anyone that might approach. When the door swung open they all nearly cheered aloud. It was nice, at least to Richie, to be in high spirits over something. It wasn't really happiness, but it was as close as they were getting to such an emotion just then. As they entered each of them had a similar thought.

  The place was quiet and obviously deserted, but they still walked the entire store to clear the area. No threats emerged from the aisles. There were no squatters near the end caps. Nothing moved or made a sound other than a few rats that were living in the shelves. Elvis noted their locations for further investigation. They would need some fresh meat and they'd have to eat something other than their current stock of dehydrated meals if they wanted to make them last.

  The rats had been a happy little coincidence from the onset of their journey across the United States. It seemed that they were the only sizable animals with the sense to both get under cover and stay there. The animals seemed to be plentiful in most of the squats they'd used and all of them hoped that they would keep up their appearances. Meat was hard to come by.

  "I'll bet they have a slingshot in here somewhere," Richie said, "You could probably use a new one by now, Elvis."

  "Yeah. I could," Elvis replied happily. He hadn't even thought about the possibility and was eager to take a look around for such a prize.

  "Ammo, too," Buddy remarked.

  "They probably have marbles, but I don't know about bearings. Don't wanna use marbles ‘cause they break, Buddy. I got enough bearings for now if they don't have ‘em."

  "Duh Buddy," Richie taunted.

  "Yeah. Duh Buddy."

  "Get bent," Buddy said as they completed their circuit of the place, "Let's go shopping."

  They pulled two shopping carts from a line of them at the front of the store, which looked as if it hadn't been touched by looters or even the odd shopper in a hurry. They walked through the grocery aisles while clearing the place and had seen the mess made by exploding cans, but didn't linger. There was nothing for them there. All of the food had long passed the point of spoiling and barely held the smell that would have assaulted their senses months before.

  There was an abundance of water to be had so they each grabbed a warped gallon jug from the shelves, tossed another into one of the carts, and began to drink the warm liquid as they shopped.

  Buddy led them, still holding his revolver in one hand, while Richie and Elvis pushed the carts. Better safe than sorry was their motto whenever they entered a structure like this one. In consideration of that, one of them would cover the other two at all times.

  They picked things off of shelves as they passed making Richie nostalgic for the days when the three of them would do the same thing on a weekly basis. They'd been soft then and were happy in a way that they'd likely never be able to duplicate. He pushed the thought away while taking a long swig from his water jug.

  They came to the toiletries aisle and Buddy stopped, abruptly. The other two men tensed, waiting for him to say he'd heard or seen something, but they relaxed when he turned to them with a huge smile on his face. Buddy took a bar of soap from a stack of ten and ripped it open.

  "Elvis, kid, how much water do we have with us?"

  Elvis grinned, already twisting the cap off of one of the jugs.

  Richie laughed as Buddy laid his pack on the ground, stuck the now unwrapped bar of misshapen soap between his teeth, and stripped. Elvis squeezed the plastic jug, spraying his friend with water, and Buddy began to wash for the first time in more than a month. Richie held his coach gun at the ready, laughing at the two of them as he scanned the area for danger.

&n
bsp; The smell of the soap, one he'd never thought he'd miss so much, was absent. It had been stolen by the same heat that seemed to pilfer everything from the world. It barely mattered to him. Barely.

  "I'm next!" Elvis shouted, which would usually have drawn ridicule from his companions. This time no one reprimanded him.

  For the moment, at least, they were safe enough.

  ***

  Three hours remained before sunrise. They'd each bathed in the middle of the toiletry aisle before making their way to the stock room at the back of the store to see if it had a basement. As luck would have it, the store actually had one. Usually they didn't.

  Richie and buddy took turns at point, clearing the parts of the store they hadn't been through, and found nothing to be alarmed about. Once the basement was deemed safe they went back to the main aisles and outfitted themselves with new clothing. They tossed their old garments into the child's seat of the carts for later disposal.

  None of them liked the idea of leaving evidence of their invasion. They'd even taken the time to clean up the mess from their showers. It was another of the habits they'd picked up in this new world that hadn't proven a bad one, as of yet.

  They replaced gear that had gone too many miles with new stuff from the camping and sports sections, where they stumbled onto another great treasure. On an end cap, in the section marked for fishing and camping, they found another stock of dehydrated meals.

  Arm loads of the packets were thrown into the cart. They would eat well without having to hunt if they chose. It was a luxury of epic proportions and each of them privately thanked whatever force might be helping to keep them alive.

  Elvis, the great hunter of creatures great and small, waited patiently for the other two men to walk into the aisle full of glass cases that he'd been the most excited to see. There were rifles and shotguns stored along with boxes of ammunition, but that wasn't what he was interested in.

  While Richie worked on the lock that held the glass cases closed, Elvis searched the shelves for a slingshot that would replace his weathered weapon. When he saw it, one of those models with the wrist support, he pulled it from the shelf happily and placed the old one in the cart.

  By the time they'd decided on going back to the basement there was an hour left before the sun would peak over the horizon. They would sleep easily, on this day, safe from the sun and most other threats.

  Each of them worked during the next hour. They barricaded all of the entrances to the underground stock room with pallets full of items that would never be restocked. They walked the wide open area to ensure that there wouldn't be any surprises. They covered vents if they were big enough to allow someone to breach them. None would've supported the size of anyone over one hundred pounds, but caution won out and they covered them.

  When the three men rolled out new sleeping bags in the corner farthest from the main door all of them were tired and ready to sleep. The temperature was rising steadily, but would max out, soon. It wouldn't be like sleeping in the comforts of Steve Dundel's home, but it would be much more comfortable than most of their recent lodgings.

  "It was a good night," Elvis said before drifting off to sleep.

  ***

  "One more day," Richie said.

  "Yep," Buddy replied.

  Elvis was walking the perimeter of the basement with his slingshot. He was creating a small pile of meat for the next evening.

  They'd been in the basement for two days, resting and recuperating in the way they always did when they found a safe spot to sleep. They never stayed for more than two days before this, but the distance between stops had been longer this time, more grueling. All three of them were in need of some time indoors.

  The walk would continue soon enough.

  Richie was working out the route that they would take once they crossed into Alberta. The Canadian road system was unfamiliar and it was taking some real concentration on his part to figure the plan.

  Their atlas was open on the floor in front of him and he was jotting notes on a small pad he'd had since the three of them had started this journey. A yellow highlighter lay in the crook of the atlas' binding, ready for use when he needed it.

  Buddy's nose was in the pages of a hard cover novel and he was intent on finishing the thing before they ventured back into the world. Richie remembered the book shelves that outnumbered everything else in Buddy's small apartment. The shelves seemed to be a starting point for a trove of books that were always laying everywhere.

  Most men's apartments needed a good cleaning about once per week to gather the fast food containers and clothing laid around the place. With Buddy, you had only to pick paperbacks up off of the floor to make it look clean.

  "You wonder why your eyes keep getting worse," Richie had remarked to him on some long ago day, "You read so much that they're giving up in protest."

  "Is that why your right hand has gotten so much weaker than your left?" Buddy asked without missing a beat.

  "Yes. That's how I know," he replied, “But you’re likely the expert.”

  Richie wasn't going to say anything about Buddy's small pleasure now. He wouldn't even pick at him to keep himself from going crazy right now. Buddy deserved his book as much as Elvis deserved his slingshot.

  Richie wondered what it was that he deserved and realized that he was enjoying his own prize. His friends were safe. For Richie, that might actually be enough. It wouldn't be a lasting thing, as the road beckoned to them even now, but he had it for the moment.

  THWACK!

  Buddy looked up from his prose to grin at Elvis. It was something that he didn't have reason to do for the most part, but the grin felt good. Elvis grinned back, loading a marble into the cup of the sling to replace the spent one.

  As he'd told them, marbles shatter, but that didn't matter here. He could hunt and not have to risk losing any of the steel balls he used elsewhere. There were four bags of ammunition next to his sleeping bag.

  "We needed this, you know?" Richie asked.

  "You think?" Buddy remarked.

  They slept well for the third day in a row. They woke with dusk, ate, packed, and left the place behind. Buddy turned the last page in his book an hour before they left.

  Chapter 4

  Livingston, Montana

  February 7, 2021

  3:00 AM 98*F

  They weren't making bad time, putting miles and experience behind them. The nights were seemingly longer as they continued their journey to the north.

  They started to notice signs of other travelers again. They would see the left over scraps or bones of an evening meal on the shoulder of the road, or a discarded piece of clothing. Elvis bent down in the middle of the road to pick up one lone shoestring and began wrapping it around the insides of his fingers only to unwrap it a moment later. He grew bored with the game after a bit and slipped the string into a pocket. Richie watched this with well rested eyes.

  He'd been worried about Elvis for a while there, but their little break from the walk had done him good. It seemed that he was truly enjoying the exercise now, as opposed to shuffling dreadfully along with no real end in sight.

  Richie didn't know whether he was out of the proverbial woods yet, but he was definitely on the right track. Buddy thought the same thing and had mentioned it to Richie. They smiled at each other for a moment. Both men were happy to see that their friend would likely be alright.

  Buddy had always been an odd duck, but his friendship with Elvis regulated his weirdness a little. Elvis and Richie had been close too, but Buddy was around him so much more that he'd become a real brother to The King.

  He was constantly letting him help when there was a simple repair to be done on a car at the garage, or taking him to the library when he needed a new book.

  The time they'd spent surviving had just made them even stronger as a group, which was more of a need than a want. They were all that they had left. All of them would have been alone if not for one another.

  "I feel
like finding another Walmart, with a basement, and squatting there for the rest of my life," Buddy remarked.

  "Spoken like true white trash, my friend."

  "Have I told you to fuck off lately, Richie?" Buddy asked sweetly.

  "They probably have them in Alaska," Richie added amiably, "Probably a bunch of them."

  "Hard telling until we get there."

  "You remember when we would've just pulled out a phone and looked it up?"

  Buddy smiled at this. It was true that there had been such a time. Everyone had knowledge of everything in their back pockets. You had only to swipe your fingertip along the surface of a touchscreen to answer any question you might have had.

  That was one of many things that all of them, the entire human race it seemed, had taken for granted. He nodded his head toward Elvis.

  "He's the lucky one out of the three of us. Never even had a phone. Didn't want one," Buddy said, "The only times I ever saw him touch one of the damn things is that time I downloaded Pacman. He killed the battery every time he got hold of it."

  "Blame him?" Richie asked with a chuckle, "I'd kill me some Pacman right about now."

  "Not if Elvis knew you had it. I'm pretty sure he'd grab it and run like hell."

  "You guys talkin' about me?" Elvis asked them.

  "Oh yeah. We were just saying that you might be the last man on earth who can jerk off with either hand," Buddy said.

  "You think so?" Elvis asked, the look on his face shocked and serious.

  A response was impossible, as was continuing to walk. Both Buddy and Richie were doubled over with laughter. Each tried to say something in return, but couldn't get anything out that would be understood.

  Elvis decided to give them the finger and say nothing more. Before long he was laughing right along with them. It was a good moment.