by E S Richards
Len watched his companion turn and walk back down the stairs before he stepped into the bathroom, splashing some cold water over his face to wake himself up properly. This was it. They needed to get back on the road and he wasn’t going to delay it any longer. As quickly as possible he pulled on his clean clothes from the night before and cast one last look around Amy’s bedroom before closing the door. He would be back, he vowed to himself, and he would not be alone.
“Len!” Aubrey cried out as she saw him walking into the kitchen, wiping oatmeal from around her mouth and running toward him.
“Morning,” Len replied with a smile, lifting up Aubrey’s chin and looking her in the eyes. “How did you sleep?”
“Great,” Aubrey grinned. “Really great.”
“Well that’s great to hear,” Len laughed. “And you’ve made breakfast as well? What a good little housewife you are.”
Aubrey giggled and hid her face, her cheeks turning pink at Len’s comment. He smiled at her once more before walking further into the kitchen, offering Harrison, Justin, and Max all a nod and a smile as he reached for a bowl.
“I’m sorry if I slept too long,” Len started, slightly embarrassed by how long everybody else could’ve already been awake for. “I’ll do the cleaning up afterwards.”
“No bother,” Justin replied with a smile. “I think we all had our best night’s sleep in a while last night.”
Len laughed politely and filled up his bowl with the remaining oatmeal, surprised to find it was still slightly warm. Everyone else had finished eating and as he tucked in the kitchen fell into silence, the question about what the day was to bring hot on everyone’s minds.
“Len,” Justin started to speak again before he paused and dropped his chin, looking down at the tiled floor. He seemed ashamed somehow of what he was about to say and it took Len a second too long to realize why.
“Justin,” he spoke up for the man instead between mouthfuls of food. “I think you and the kids should stay here. It’s safe and I don’t want to drag you out on a journey that isn’t yours.”
“But—”
“No, I insist,” Len interrupted, his voice suddenly strong and confident. “Besides, I intend to return here with my family one day and it’d be nice to know the house was being looked after.”
Awkward laughter filled the room for a second before Justin took a step toward Len, his hand outstretched. “Thank you, Len. I mean it. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Just promise me you’ll take care of them,” Len replied, taking Justin’s hand and shaking it firmly. “Don’t let anything happen to them; either of them.”
“I promise,” Justin locked eyes with Len. “You have my word as a father.”
Len smiled and shook Justin’s hand once more before letting go and returning to his bowl of oatmeal. The exchange had been slightly awkward, but he felt he trusted Justin slightly more because of it. It was the right thing to do for all of them. Bringing the children along would only slow himself and Harrison down and it wouldn’t be safe either. At least if he knew they were all in South Haven, it was three fewer people for him to have to worry about.
“You’re leaving?”
Looking down, Len saw Aubrey’s sweet face gazing up at him, the smile gone and replaced with a questioning expression. He hoped she would understand but Len knew how hard this would probably be for the little girl. The men in her life who she’d been taught to trust growing up had betrayed her, and now two of the men who had rescued her were leaving. Len knew she must feel completely abandoned.
“I’m sorry,” he placed his bowl on the counter and knelt down on one knee in front of Aubrey. “I need to go and find my family. My little boy and his mother. But I’ll come back here with them soon, and Justin and Max will keep you safe until then, okay? You need to be brave, just like you were before. I know you can do it, Aubrey.”
“Okay,” Aubrey whispered quietly as she nodded her head, not looking up at Len.
“Hey,” Len tilted her face up to look at him just like he had before. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore, okay? You’re safe here.”
Biting her lip, Aubrey nodded once more and turned to walk away from Len. It broke his heart slightly to see how she felt, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had his own child to save and he had to keep telling himself that Aubrey and the others would be safe in South Haven until he returned. Pushing himself to his feet, Len took a deep breath and swiveled around to face Harrison.
“Right,” he said confidently. “What’s the plan?”
Harrison looked around the kitchen for a moment, locking eyes with Justin, who gave him a brief nod and ushered Max out of the room. Len wasn’t sure what the older man was going to suggest but he could tell instantly from Harrison’s demeanor that they were in for another long journey. He still remembered the first conversation they’d shared in Harrison’s bunker like it was yesterday. The shock of waking up down there, tied to a camp bed with no idea what had happened was going to take a long time to forget. But now Len trusted Harrison completely. He knew the man wouldn’t ever lead him astray and he was willing to follow him anywhere, as long as it led to his family.
“Okay,” Harrison said firmly. “Listen carefully.”
Chapter 7
“I guess this is it then.”
Len stood awkwardly outside Amy’s home, his rucksack back on his shoulders, his Beretta in its holster and the bow and arrows slung over his left arm. It was just how he had looked several days ago when he’d set out from Chicago, Harrison guiding him then just as he was now. They may have looked the same, but Len himself felt very different. This time he was confident, determined, and certain he would find his family at the end of the journey. He trusted Harrison with his life and he knew that while the man remained by his side, they would make it where they needed to go.
“I guess so,” Justin shrugged, slightly in front of Len and Harrison, the father standing in the doorway with Max and Aubrey on either side of him. “Good luck out there.”
“Thanks,” Len replied in a similarly awkward manner. It was a strange feeling leaving a group of three almost-strangers in his ex-wife’s home with very little except a loose promise that he would return eventually. It wasn’t an emotional goodbye, but one that every party still felt had to be done.
Aubrey was taking it the hardest, as Len had expected. Out of the three people who were staying in South Haven, she was the one he most regretted leaving. But he’d been over this a thousand times already in his head. It was the right thing to do; South Haven was safe, and no one could predict how the second stage of Len’s journey would go. After everything that had happened so far, it was clear it wasn’t a journey for a little girl to be dragged along on. Still, as he looked into her young eyes, Len couldn’t shift the lump in his throat. Her cheeks were marked with old tears, a sight that made Len crumble even more.
“Come on then,” Harrison cleared his throat and placed a hand on Len’s shoulder as he spoke. “We better get going. Need to make use of the daylight while we still have it.”
“Okay,” Len nodded and tore his eyes away from Aubrey. Truthfully he was thankful for Harrison’s words. As it happened he just wanted to get away from South Haven now. Both the awkwardness of the goodbye and the hopefulness over seeing Amy and James again tugged at his heartstrings, urging him forward.
“We’ll see you soon,” Len spoke one last time, lifting up his right hand and offering an uncomfortable wave to the trio that remained.
“Goodbye!” Justin called after as Harrison and Len started to walk away down the road. The two children remained silent, though Len couldn’t resist sparing one last glance at Aubrey over his shoulder as the distance between them steadily increased. Truthfully he didn’t know whether he would ever see her face again but as they rounded the corner at the end of the street, he desperately hoped that he would.
Silence passed between the two men for several minutes after they had left Amy’s home
. Their bags were refilled with ample food and water supplies, Harrison purifying several bottles of lake water before they left and ensuring they had enough food for the second leg of their journey. In turn, though, that made their luggage heavy and while it had only been a couple of days since Len was walking hard every day with a rucksack on his back, he still felt the strain more than he had before.
Both Len and Harrison had agreed to leave the Dodge pickup truck behind in South Haven. Firstly, it was too difficult for the two of them to maneuver it out of the gridlocked roads, and secondly, they couldn’t predict whether the path they would be taking would even be drivable. Len also felt slightly more comfortable leaving the truck behind with Justin and the children—that way if they needed to escape South Haven, they would have a way out.
Grand Haven was a shorter distance away than Chicago to South Haven had been, so even on foot he hoped they could manage it in a couple of days. Harrison had warned him not to get ahead of himself though. They were going to be passing through several other small towns along the way and while South Haven had luckily been deserted, Harrison suspected the others might not be. While Len believed the bigger cities would be more dangerous, Harrison was of the opposing view that smaller towns would be worse. In a group of only a few surviving individuals it only took one bad ringleader to send everybody off the deep end.
It was odd for Len to think he was potentially walking exactly where his son had been a week or so beforehand. He still hadn’t fully let it sink in that Amy and James were alive and safe in Grand Haven. Finding the note had been an incredible moment, the proof of life instilling more hope in him than he had ever thought possible. Though he had kept the spark alive all the way from Chicago, Len couldn’t deny that there had always been a little thought at the back of his head that Amy and James might not have made it.
Now that thought was silenced. Though South Haven had been reduced to ruins, somehow his former wife and son had made it out alive. Amy had always been resourceful and Len knew that if she had gone so far as to leave a message behind explaining where she was going, she would be able to get there too. Nothing could stop that woman when she had her mind set on something.
Harrison had planned a route that was slightly different from the one Len would have chosen, but it made sense why they were walking that way. It was more child-friendly and Harrison was right in thinking Amy would’ve traveled whichever route was easiest for James. His needs had always been her highest priority and Len didn’t doubt that she would suffer herself so long as it meant that James was safe. So as Harrison pushed through a small gate and started walking closer to the edge of the lake, Len followed behind. Previously busy roads and interstates were a no-go from now on. The two of them were staying completely off the radar.
“What is that?” After an indeterminate amount of time had passed between them in silence, Len finally spoke up, pointing toward a huge building’s wreckage in front of them. “That can’t be the country club, can it?”
“The what?” Harrison asked as he squinted forward. Sure enough, the whole structure had collapsed, but he had no way of knowing what it had been before.
“The country club,” Len breathed almost to himself again. “It was a massive building. I stayed here once when I came up to visit James for a weekend. It had…” Len trailed off, expanding his gaze around them as he remembered his time at the South Haven Country Club. “Oh my God…”
Looking out over the beach, Len saw the decomposing bodies of fifteen or so young children. He remembered the country club had had its own speedboat, often taking children out on the lake as they dragged an inflatable banana behind it. James had ridden on that inflatable. James had played on that stretch of beach. The thought made Len retch as he doubled over, gagging at the sight before his eyes.
“Come on,” Harrison placed a hand on Len’s shoulder once more. “Let’s go take a closer look at the building.”
Thankful for the distraction, Len allowed Harrison to lead him up the grassy verge that led to the country club. He didn’t dare look back at the beach; even from afar the sight of those bodies was burned into his memory forever. It was almost like when Len had walked through Chicago’s Chinatown what felt like half a lifetime ago. That was before he had even met Harrison and he was merely trying to get out of the city and make his way home. That had evoked great memories of James, the stores Len walked past being ones the two of them would visit from time to time. Now Len couldn’t stop picturing James playing on that beach, paddling in the water and laughing on the sand. It was too much, Len needed to get away from the sight of it.
Seeing the country club ruins in all their glory didn’t make him feel much better. The building had collapsed almost completely; it was impossible to tell what had caused it or where things had started to go wrong. Len wondered when it had happened. Was it before Amy and James walked past or after? If it was a direct result of the solar crash, then he knew there was a real possibility they could have witnessed it. A shiver ran down Len’s spine as he hoped that they hadn’t. After everything that had happened, it was unlikely that anyone would have been inside. Amy certainly wouldn’t have led James into such a risky building.
“There’s some of it around the back that’s still standing,” Harrison spoke again as they both stared at the wreckage. “Let’s check it out and then we can move away from here.”
Len nodded again, letting Harrison lead once more as he followed behind in a daze. He wasn’t really sure why they needed to check out what remained of the country club but, as usual, he wasn’t going to argue. The thought occurred to him for a very brief second that it wasn’t too late to turn around and go back. He could join Aubrey, Justin, and Max at Amy’s home and just wait there until everything went back to normal. The selfishness of that one thought snapped Len out of his stupor immediately. He couldn’t think like that. He refused to let himself think like that. Suddenly his eyes seemed to open wider and he returned to his determined self. Amy and James were alive somewhere, and he was coming for them.
“What do you think caused it?” Len asked Harrison as they moved around the rubble, some of it so destroyed they couldn’t even make out what had been there before. Other bits were more obvious. Several beds were visible through the broken timbers, although the majority was burnt and broken.
“Definitely a fire of some sort,” Harrison mused, his right hand resting cautiously on his Glock as they walked just in case. “But what caused it, I don’t know. You’d have to guess something fused when the power cut out. I reckon that’s how most of the fires would have started.”
“Imagine,” Len whispered between the two of them. “All of this, effectively caused by one big power outage.”
Harrison let out a ream of laughter. “One big power outage,” he repeated to himself in between laughs. “Well that’s certainly one way of looking at it, Len. The whole country—probably the whole world, actually—reverts back to the Dark Ages and you put it down to one big power outage.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Len was laughing too now, realizing how funny his statement must have sounded to someone like Harrison who undoubtedly knew the exact cause of everything. Whatever it was that had happened—the coronal mass ejection, as Harrison had called it before—the results were still all the same. No power, no modern home comforts. They were back in the Dark Ages and slowly but surely, Len was starting to get the hang of things.
The laughter between the two of them served the great purpose of relaxing them both. Harrison moved his hand away from his 9mm and all thoughts of James lying on the beach faded from Len’s mind. If he thought about it, Len couldn’t remember the last time he had properly laughed and it was a good feeling to rediscover. It made things seem normal again, like old times, like he was safe—that was until, Len saw a body lying off in the distance.
“What’s that?” He froze immediately, putting one hand out in front of Harrison and touching his chest. “Look,” he spoke again, “there’s a
body.”
Immediately Harrison’s hand returned to his holster, removing his Glock and gripping it firmly in his hand. Len mirrored his companion’s actions, taking his Beretta out of its holster and nervously holding it by his side.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Harrison spoke seriously, all traces of laugher gone from his voice. “Still, move quietly. Follow my lead. We should check this out.”
Len nodded and followed Harrison’s instructions. He understood why the older man was suspicious about the scene ahead of them. While they had passed many dead bodies on their journey, they had all been found in natural positions. People trapped in their cars on the roads, the bodies strewn across the beach, or the ones that littered the streets. This one was different though. There was no one else around and yet a body was lying dead in the middle of the grass, almost placed carefully in front of the only still-standing part of the country club.
Something didn’t seem right. Slowly, as the two of them approached, Len noticed the cause of death. The body—a middle-aged woman—had had its throat slashed. This was no natural incident. This woman had been murdered. Suddenly Len didn’t feel quite as safe anymore.