The Dark Roads

by Lemmons, Wayne

  "How many people have you killed since this started?" Buddy asked, "Because I'm losing count."

  "As many as I've had to. Just like you. Just like Elvis," Richie said.

  Buddy nodded, his logical mind taking what Richie said as a kind of gospel.

  "I just don't want to be the bad guys, man," Buddy declared, "I don't want any of us to be like them."

  "We aren't and we won't, Buddy. We do what we have to. Nothing more. Nothing less."

  "Yeah," Buddy agreed, but still looked out of sorts.

  Richie knew that Buddy would come to terms with all of it. He was in the process of doing the same. Everything he'd said to Buddy was coming from the internal dialogue he'd been having more often than not lately.

  It was as if they'd just stated all of his deepest thoughts in words. Buddy's anxiety was warranted. Richie wasn't worried about him. Elvis was the one he was starting to worry about.

  They'd have to talk to him, soon, to gauge his state of mind. His anger was coming to the surface more quickly and manifesting in a more lethal way with every confrontation they'd had with anyone. It was something to think about.

  When they reached the store room, Elvis was waiting for them with a huge smile, making Buddy reconsider his thoughts about the man for a moment. He was shuffling from side to side, excited about something.

  "I gotta show you guys this. You'll like this a lot!" he told them.

  They followed Elvis into the store room, starting to wear their own smiles after this terrifying night. Elvis had a contagious grin.

  ***

  "I found it," Elvis told them, "I was just lookin' around for stuff when I found it."

  "Found what, kid?" Buddy asked, trying not to giggle right along with him as they walked the length of the store room.

  "You'll see," Elvis said as they neared the back wall.

  Richie heard the swinging door squeak open and looked back to see Amanda enter the storage area, tugging at the bottom of her new shirt with one hand while draping the old garment across one shoulder. She looked at them quizzically. He shrugged his shoulders and waved her toward them.

  "Yeah," Elvis said, "You too Amanda."

  They waited for her to join them, impatiently. All of them were suddenly giddy. Richie wondered if it was the stress of the situation they'd just dealt with that was making them a bit manic. He thought better of inward examination for the moment. He was too excited.

  "I found it," Elvis said again, before pulling one of the large shelves out toward them with entirely too little effort.

  They watched as an eight-foot section of the shelf came loose from the wall, slid out past the shelving that had seemed connected to it, and rolled to the side to overlap the next section. They saw a passage in the floor, leading down under where they stood.

  "Holy shit," Buddy said breathlessly.

  "I second that," Richie agreed.

  They all looked at the portal and then up at Elvis, who was glowing with pride. He, after all, had been the one to find it. Richie and Buddy laughed out loud. Amanda simply smiled and shook her head.

  "It's safe. I already put all our stuff down there. You gotta see the rest," Elvis told them as he slipped down onto the ladder, the rungs supporting him without a sound.

  The group followed their friend down this new rabbit hole in the world. All of them were surprised by the discovery and weary of its existence at the same time. Had the men who'd been staying here as of late been using the area into which they were descending? Had they even known about it? Why was it there?

  Richie was the last to touch his feet on the floor below. He was standing in total darkness until Elvis switched on their lantern. He spun around in the twenty by twenty-foot room, smiling again, as Elvis began to point things out, excitedly.

  There were stacks of batteries everywhere. There were food pouches that were surely MRE's. There were fold out cots, of which their friend had already set up four. And the most important thing of all was the most evident.

  Richie scrambled to his pack and quickly found the thermometer. The mercury line was steady at the seventy-degree hash mark. It was like winter for them.

  "What the hell is it?" Buddy asked no one in particular.

  "You guys don't know?" Amanda asked, her smile as wide as theirs, "It's a panic room."

  "A panic room is hidden under a storage room at a random department store in Canada," Buddy said, trying the thought on for size, "Fucking convenient."

  "Not really. I forget that you guys came from the southern states. Up here, we have a speaking relationship with the Canadians," Amanda said, "You remember back in '17 when the terrorist attacks really got out of hand?"

  Buddy and Richie nodded. There had been a short time when the U.S. had seemed at the mercy of fanatical terrorist factions.

  Bombings and shooting on home soil had become an almost daily occurrence by 2017. People they knew had gone as far as moving to different countries, neutral ones, to insure their safety.

  Things were brought under control in 2018, when all of the American borders had been closed off completely, going against the very ideals the country had been founded upon. It was late in 2019 before anyone was allowed to leave or enter the country, but by that time the entire world had bigger problems on their hands than fighting over religion.

  "Well, if you had paid attention to Canada's statements on the news starting in '16, you'd have been able to predict everything that happened after that. The Canadian government didn't agree with the way the U.S. was handling the terrorists, so they started taking things into their own hands before it got worse.

  "Canada closed off travel a year before the states did. They made panic shelters a mandatory addition to every building constructed from the summer of 2016 on, along with any building that would house a large crowd of people, such as a department store. They were all to be underground. They were all supposed to have a hidden entrance so that no one without direct knowledge of the buildings would be able to find or enter them."

  Amanda sat down on a cot, stretching her slim legs in front of her. She ran both hands through her filthy mop of blonde hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. Her eyes were closed and her smile stayed strong. They watched, wondering if she might have more to say. She didn't.

  ***

  "How long do we have before sunrise, Richie," Buddy asked, already walking toward the ladder.

  "Forty minutes, at best. We need to wrap things up and close ourselves in."

  "Yeah, but I need something. I should be back in plenty of time. Wanna come?"

  The others watched as Buddy and Richie climbed the ladder. They were making Elvis nervous. He liked things more when they were all together, but Amanda was there to keep him company. They'd already started checking through the battery stocks and were replacing the ones powering their flashlights and lantern.

  "I can get most of it," Buddy told Richie, "But I need you to find something for me."

  "Okay," Richie agreed, "Give me a hint."

  "I need one of those inverters. You know, the ones that hook to a battery and you can run like a lamp or something off of it?"

  "Gotcha. That it?"

  "Yeah. I can handle the rest," Buddy said with his recently revived grin.

  Richie took up a quick jog, trying to remember where the vehicle repair section was. He thought it likely that he'd be able to find the inverter in that area.

  As he ran along the center aisle of the store, looking for signs that would signify which section he wanted, something caught his eye and he had to stop, abruptly. He looked at the thing for a long moment, not really knowing if it was worth taking, and finally grabbed the thick sketch pad from its shelf along with a pack of pens that was nearby. He stowed the new property and went after what he'd been told to grab.

  Within ten minutes Richie and Buddy were standing outside of the entrance to the panic room, arranging the objects they'd gathered in order to carry them down the ladder without too much trouble. One of the
items, a boxed up acoustic guitar, was way too large to carry. Richie finally looked down into the hole and yelled for Elvis.

  "Catch this!" Buddy shouted before dropping the guitar. They didn't hear a crash, but instead were treated to the sounds of a very pleased Elvis.

  Just before sunrise, they started down the ladder. Richie looked for, and found a switch that would allow him to pull the shelf back over top of the entrance so that they would remain hidden. As they descended, the glow of their lantern replaced the darkness of the shaft.

  ***

  Cardboard scraps were everywhere. The room looked as if a psychotic child had unwrapped and destroyed five Christmas presents.

  If Elvis' mother were alive to see the enthusiasm with which Elvis had unwrapped the cheap acoustic, she surely would've keeled over in fright. If she were alive to see the smile on his face as his fingers slipped up and down the frets, squealing on strings from time to time, she may have been happy enough to get back up.

  "He's actually really good," said Richie as he watched Buddy pull apart the plastic casing around a pair of hair clippers.

  "No shit. I never would've thought it."

  Amanda was curled up on the cot she'd sat upon and claimed earlier, watching their friend as he played. His eyes were closed and his mouth moved around silent lyrics. She looked dazed and tired, as anyone who'd gone through her earlier ordeal would be. Richie hoped she wouldn't hold a grudge against him for leaving her for the short time, but he would shoulder the blame if she did.

  "You want to be first?" Buddy asked, holding up the clippers.

  "Don't threaten me with a good time. This hair is fucking killing me."

  They set about dragging a twelve-volt battery to the back of the room where a few shower stalls had been built in, and hooked the positive and negative leads of the inverter to the posts. Richie set a folding chair up and took his seat as Buddy plugged in the clippers.

  The buzz of an old barber shop filled the room and Buddy set to work shaving his friend's head to stubble. Within minutes, Richie was a new man rather than an old hippie and was giving Buddy the same treatment.

  Elvis played a soundtrack of half remembered songs, humming the lyrics and sometimes, when he forgot himself, singing out loud. Richie and Buddy cringed slightly at the quality of his singing voice, but said nothing.

  "You're beautiful," Richie told Buddy as the last clump of his dirty brown hair hit the floor.

  "Wish I could say the same for you, my odd looking friend," Buddy jibed, putting his glasses on, "Elvis! Put that thing down for a minute and get a haircut!"

  Elvis carefully propped the guitar against his cot and stood, stretching his back. He walked over to them and did something that neither man expected. He hugged them, one at a time, before sitting in the chair and patiently waiting.

  Buddy grinned, taking the clippers and going to work on Elvis' head. Elvis was still humming one of the less recognizable tunes he'd been playing.

  "Just take a little off the top and sides," he demanded, out of nowhere, "Leave the back natural. Don't want you to mess up my "do"."

  "I'll do my best to keep you looking chic, kid," Buddy replied with a laugh.

  Amanda had walked over to the hair cutting area and shed her shirt, revealing a too thin figure and a dirty bra. They'd seen her naked. She'd seen them naked. There wasn't a sexual thing about any of it.

  "I'm next," she stated, "My hair has to go. Style is my least concern."

  "Will do, young lady," Buddy said as he shaved a handful from Elvis' mane, "Just take a seat and wait in line."

  "After that, I'll take a pair of scissors to your beards if you've got any. I didn't see any mirrors down here."

  "I've got scissors, shaving cream, razors, and even soap."

  "Good," Amanda said, "We may use all of it."

  "You're done," Buddy patted Elvis on the shoulder a few ticks later, "Water's already by the shower. Do it up."

  Once Amanda was in their self-titled barber's chair, Buddy hesitated. It was sad to see such lovely hair, even if it was dirty, be ruined. He thought for a minute before starting and asked Amanda for a favor.

  "Anything, as long as you cut this shit off of my head," she told him.

  "When we get to Alaska," he said, "If it's cool there, grow it back out."

  She smiled and reached back for his hand. Buddy gave it to her as Richie watched. She squeezed it once.

  "You too," she said to Richie as her hand reached toward him, "And I'll have to say this to Elvis after he gets out of the bath."

  Richie gave her his hand, noticing that all three of them needed to work extra hard at washing the blood away from their skin and from under their nails. She squeezed his hand just as she had Buddy's.

  "I know that you had to leave me. I know that you were coming back for me, whether I knew it then or not. I know that if you hadn't been able to," she paused, "If you hadn't been able to get back to me, it wasn't because you didn't want to. You tried to trade yourself for all of us, Richie. Don't think we didn't notice that."

  Richie looked at the floor as she spoke. Her hands were strong and held onto both men, tightly. She wasn't letting go of them until she'd had her say.

  "Thank you. Those men were going to use me. They were going to... Rape me. They were going to trade me to worse men for the ability to continue doing bad things to other people. You all saved me from that when you could've walked away, just like when you tried to save Alek. You're all good men. Thank you," she finished, her voice growing thick, and kissed each of their hands with dry lips.

  There was an awkward moment where no one said a word. It was broken by the voice of Elvis singing some song about the rain on his shoes. They laughed as discreetly as possible given the circumstances.

  They all stood there for a moment more, listening to the water splashing over Elvis and wishing that they could detect the smell of soap just one more time.

  ***

  After talking about the situation and taking a vote, the group decided to stay in the panic shelter for a week.

  After sunset, they climbed the ladder to the surface and opened the hatch cautiously. As soon as they’d cleared the storage area and the rest of the store, each of them went about the tasks they'd been assigned to by Richie. Mostly it was a gathering of supplies, but there were a few things that needed accomplishing to ensure their safety. Richie took those upon himself.

  The first thing was to clear the blood they'd spread throughout the store during Amanda's rescue. Richie cleaned all of the areas with paper towels and water, afraid of using a cleaning agent in case a smell remained. The second task would be to transfer the charred bodies they'd left from the entrance area to the back of the building. If someone found them, they might go looking for what the dead men had fought over.

  It wasn't likely that they'd be discovered, but they didn't need surprises upon their exit. Richie did all of the toting by hand, wrapping each man in a blanket and carrying them over one shoulder. By the time he was done, his body was screaming at him to stop all of the exertion. He wouldn't, though. Too many ideas were running through his mind.

  He continued his work until the night was close to done. The final job would be to find a way to lock the mechanism that held their hatch in place. Upon examination with a penlight, Richie found this to be the easiest thing he'd approached all night.

  There was a clasp on the handle that opened and closed the doorway from below that lined up with a thick slot. He had only to find a good padlock to make the shelf immovable. It was almost laughable.

  He walked the store, grabbing a new shirt and shorts as he went, looking for the section where the locks would be on display. He found it in a short time and picked out a few different sizes to try, just in case the clasp was too small or the fit too sloppy for his taste.

  He was walking through the camping section of the store with his newfound wares when he spotted a display sporting a picture of an outdoor shower bag. He picked the thing up and l
ooked at it for a moment. It would be a real treat to have an actual shower and the vinyl case looked small enough to take with them when they vacated the place if it worked well enough. Either way, they'd each have a shower on that night.

  Richie thought about his preparations as he walked back toward the storage area, going over everything, check marking a mental list to make sure that he hadn't forgotten anything. Something was definitely nagging at his subconscious mind as he walked.

  He'd done everything they'd talked about. They had already set all of their possessions down into the shelter and cleared any sign that they might have taken up residence. He'd carried all four bodies along the width and length of the store to-

  Wait, he thought, was it four or five.

  Richie had come to the door of the storeroom and dropped everything in his arms at the front of it. His eyes were closed as he tried to remember exactly how he'd done the carrying. Why would there have been only four bodies when he knew they'd put five of them outside? Realization was close. He thought harder.

  There were only four. Why?

  "Feeders," he said out loud, startling himself.

  He began to look for the others, scared to death that he wouldn't find them. If the local branch of Canadian Cannibals had paid them a visit, why would they stop with the cooked meat outside.

  Bail had told them that the feeders didn't like dead offerings. That meant they might go looking for more food. Richie pulled the pistol he'd been carrying from his waistband, cursed himself for not bringing the coach gun instead, and kept walking the aisles, looking for his friends. Richie tried to remember the duties he'd given them, where they would be, but couldn't. His mind was racing.

  Aisle after aisle proved empty. He cleared each one with his weapon aimed low, but was sure he was going too fast for his own good. He kept his finger outside of the trigger guard on the pistol to make sure he didn't accidently shoot one of his group. More aisles. Empty. Nothing. Jesus.