by Connor Mccoy
Conrad looked to the left side of the street and grimaced at what he spotted there. No, scratch that. There were people around. Just dead ones. The man lying on his back was just the latest victim. The trail of dead citizens began when they crossed an intersection onto this street. Up until now, the streets were mostly littered with the aftermath of property destruction and, of course, stalled-out vehicles, but it wasn’t until recently that they ran into the dead. Conrad wondered if the band of survivors burning the dead outside of the city had something to do with it.
Were those the same nutjobs we ran into earlier? Conrad puzzled over the people who were burning the bodies. No, if those were the same arsonists we stumbled upon earlier, they’d just burn the bodies on the spot. Why go through the effort of hauling the bodies outside of the city? If you’re aiming to have fun, why exert yourself?
Conrad slowed his pedaling to keep close with Liam. “Hey,” he said softly, “Keep an eye out for animals. This place is going to attract more of them.” He then nodded in the direction of the latest corpse on the ground. A gaggle of flies buzzed over the deceased person’s head.
Liam’s face turned a little green. “Right. Yeah, sure.” Carla simply looked away with a sad expression.
Conrad returned his gaze to the road. He wished he hadn’t. Two fresh bodies lay across the sidewalk in front of a small twenty-four-hour medical clinic.
But then something about them caused him to stop almost immediately.
“Dad?” Liam put on the brakes.
After quickly parking his bike, Conrad hurried to the two bodies. “Take a look here,” he said.
These two were indeed different from the other corpses they had encountered thus far. They wore blue buttoned up shirts, dark blue pants and black shoes. One of the men possessed a hard, leathery face, while the other was skinnier with a short moustache. Conrad knelt over one of them and looked at the dull bronze badge on his chest. These were policemen.
“I think these two got shot maybe a day or two ago,” Conrad said. “Look at their bodies. Decay hasn’t set in.”
Carla stepped back a little. Liam took hold of her arms. Conrad’s jaw clenched. He wondered if either of these two youngsters had ever viewed corpses up close before. It was a damn shame to expose these two to such horror, but sadly the world wasn’t going to give them a choice.
Conrad glanced at the name on the badge. “Simon,” he read. “Well, Officer Simon, I wonder what you were doing out here. I can imagine the city government had well broken down by the time you two got here.”
The three of them conducted a quick check inside the clinic. It was almost stripped bare, with just heavy furniture left. That was hardly a surprise. The medical supplies obviously would have been ransacked first. But that wasn’t what caught their attention. The inside was riddled with bullet holes and more dead bodies, a few men, including two more policemen. The back door out of the clinic was also broken open. In fact, the door was hanging limply off one hinge.
“What do you think happened?” Carla asked as they all exited the clinic back onto the street.
“Some of those people looked like they were cornered inside,” Liam said.
“A damned gunfight. Over what?” Conrad stopped next to the policeman. “These two must have stayed around to try restoring order. Probably for longer than they should have.”
Then he leaned over the other man’s body, the one with the moustache. His badge read “Wolters.” His body was pinning his right arm. Conrad grabbed the man’s arm and pulled it free. He still was holding his gun. All the other policemen had had their guns taken. Not this one.
“Officer Wolters,” Conrad said, “I hope you don’t mind, but we need your sidearm for where we’re going.” Conrad found it distasteful to remove anything from the dead, but these were desperate times. Besides, he doubted the policeman would have minded. Conrad handed the weapon to Liam.
Liam seemed no less comfortable, but Conrad insisted. “Remember that it’s not just your ass on the line, Liam,” Conrad said, “You’re protecting two other lives behind you.”
The young man turned, seeing Carla, and knew what his dad meant. “Thanks,” he said softly as he took the gun and put it in his holster.
Conrad’s right hand suddenly twitched. A spot on his knuckles felt wet. He quickly rubbed the back of his right hand. That was definitely a drop of water. Damn. It was starting.
“Get back on the bikes.” Conrad glanced skyward. “It’s going to start soon.”
After remounting the bikes, Conrad and Liam pedaled onward, but after a while their clear street abruptly became cluttered with random equipment and vehicles. The asphalt in the left lane was dug up, with a forklift sitting a few yards back, its hoe frozen in place in mid-air. The right lane continued a short way until it was blocked partially by a car in the road. It just had turned from a parking lane and had stopped in the street, likely frozen by the EMP blast.
“Slow up,” Conrad said as he and Liam swerved onto the right lane. “We’re going to have to walk these babies past the car.” As they approached the car, it was evident it would be hard to pedal around it. A few orange cones had blown onto the road. They would have to weave around them.
Conrad came to a stop as he felt another raindrop hit his left hand. Additional drops had marked the street around him. This was a damn bad time to slow down, but better to do this than to take a nasty spill navigating around obstacles.
As he walked his bike past the car, he noticed the driver’s side door hanging slightly loose off the vehicle. The driver must have jumped out and run off, escaping to an unknown fate. Perhaps he made it to safety, or he might have been one of those burning bodies he and Carla observed coming into town.
Or he could have been one of the dead people in that clinic.
There’s thousands of untold stories around here, Conrad thought. Human beings caught up in their world’s demise, suddenly faced with horrible choices. God only knew how many couldn’t survive what was to come. He watched behind him as Liam and Carla walked their bicycle around the car. The risks of this trip clearly were huge. It was more than just his son and his love, but the child they had made together. Conrad was more than a father, he was a grandfather-to-be. In one fell swoop, all of that could be taken from him if something should go bad.
By now they were being hit with a slight shower of rain. Nothing their clothes couldn’t protect them from, but if this downpour got even slightly worse, they were in trouble.
“Dad, do we keep pedaling?” Liam asked.
Conrad took a quick glance at the road in front of them. The right side still was clear, while the left remained coned off. “Yeah, but watch it. This keeps up, the ground is going to get slick and we’ll have to get off.”
Riding their bikes on streets that just were getting soaked with rain would be an absolute nightmare. The water would turn the dirt and sediment on the asphalt to a slippery coat that easily could send them out of control. They’d have to stop and let the rain wash the streets before they could continue.
The three of them remounted their bikes, and Conrad and Liam resumed pedaling. The cones continued until they reached an electronic sign that likely warned motorists that a construction project was ahead, but now had gone dark.
“Hey!” Liam pointed to their left. “Over there!”
Conrad’s son had discovered a brick tower behind construction fencing. It looked like this whole area had been part of one massive construction project. The tower resembled a monument. It looked as though the Redmond city government was erecting something special in this part of the city, a wonder that now never would be realized.
“Looks like a good place to crash,” Carla said.
The tall buildings around them caught Conrad’s attention. The rain still was very slight. Anybody still could see them easily from one of those windows.
Conrad looked at Liam. “One more around the block,” he said.
“Dad?”
“Do it.
I’ll explain later.”
Liam obeyed. Conrad led his son around the other side of the fence. The rain kept up, slight and steady. If Conrad was right, anyone spying on them from above wouldn’t realize the tower was their goal.
The other side, the road construction side, there’s a lot of good hiding spots there, Conrad thought. A plan started to come together. Conrad could get them to the tower with little risk of being detected. But he needed one more element to do the job.
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning flashed in the sky. A few seconds later, the rain picked up.
“Ha!” Conrad said, nearly loudly. What a damn irony that he was now counting on the rain!
By now their circular path had taken them all the way back to the forklift. “All right!” Conrad called. “We’re going to get a little drenched, but at least we have our cover!”
The rain’s intensity picked up so much that Conrad had to shout to be heard. He pointed to the fence on the other side of the street. There was a gap between fence posts, big enough for one adult to squeeze through at a time.
“See that? We’re going through!”
Though the pounding rain slowed their pace, Conrad pushed his bike through the gap and onto the monument grounds, with Liam and Carla guiding their bike through just moments later. They had a direct path to the tower. Conrad, Liam and Carla walked their bikes across the increasingly muddy and watery grass until they reached the monument’s west side.
“See?” Conrad yelled, “Almost impossible for anyone to see us now!”
“But how do we get in?” Liam called.
Despite the rain, the monument building wasn’t hard to make out. It was a small structure, mostly square in its construction, with a flat brown roof and a set of front doors. However, the doors were barricaded with metal bars, and Conrad didn’t possess the tools to remove the bars.
But there was a small maintenance door on the side. Conrad already was leading them there, but it still could be locked.
However, Carla didn’t allow him to worry about that for long. She rapidly tromped through the water ahead of them, saying, “Leave that to me!”
She squatted down by the doorknob and fished out a thin metal needle, the same one that she used to spring open the mining building. After sticking it into the lock, she worked quickly, turning the pin carefully. As Conrad watched her work, it was clear this lady knew what she was doing. This wasn’t luck at all.
Then Carla suddenly pulled out the pin. “We’re in!”
Conrad seized the doorknob and turned it, pulling the door open. Once again, Carla had gotten them inside a locked structure under major duress. Carla clearly had been an asset to them thus far, but Conrad continued to ponder what her skills meant.
Chapter Twelve
Once they finally had put their bikes inside the building, Liam slammed the door shut behind them, sealing him, Conrad and Carla off from the now heavy rain just outside. No longer being hit with a constant downpour, Liam gulped in dry air. But his relief was short lived as he found the air was also stagnant, causing him to cough.
Conrad was not any better as he held a fist to his mouth while he coughed. It was some time before he spoke up. “Damn. Well, it’s not the Ritz, but it’ll do for the night.”
Carla unhitched a small lantern from her belt and lit it up, providing some illumination for their new shelter. It wasn’t much to look at. Their quarters were just one chamber with a high ceiling, but lots of supplies and tools cramping up the place. It was likely this place was the main building for the monument being built. Fortunately, the roof had been completed, but it had not progressed much further, as a lot of construction tools packed the inside of this room, including a large air compressor, packs of cement, piles of hoses, a couple of wheelbarrows, and a few hand tools.
Conrad tapped the floor with his boot. Solid concrete. Likely, the floor was intended to be finished and polished, perhaps even carpeted for visitors, but now that never would happen. They’d have to make do sleeping on it.
“Well, kids, first order of business is to get out of these wet clothes. No sense in getting pneumonia while we’re on a rescue mission.” Dragging his backpack along, Conrad marched around the back of the air compressor.
“And let’s designate our spaces while we change.” He stopped and turned to the two youngsters. “No sense in seeing anything we don’t want to, right?”
Liam turned to Carla. “Right, right.”
“I mean, I know I’m sixty, but I still can impress the ladies. I don’t want to be tempting your bride there, Liam!” Conrad called back.
Liam’s skin burned as he cringed. “Dad! For God’s sake.”
Beside him, Carla braced her mouth with her hand as she laughed.
“C’mon, you gotta admit he’s pretty funny,” Carla said as Liam continued wringing out the bottom half of his shirt. Thanks to some rope they had found in the room, it was easy to string up a clothesline to hang their wet clothes. “Besides, your mom was far worse.”
Liam finally smiled a little. “Yeah, yeah.” He shook the loose drops of water from his hands. He had changed into a dry shirt and comfortable shorts. Carla had changed into similar clothes.
“I’ll never forget Thanksgiving at our house,” Liam continued. “First time we had Tom over for a big holiday dinner. And Mom had to go and talk about that little incident I had in school.”
Carla chuckled. “Nobody tells the gym story like your mom does.”
Liam reached down into his bag and grabbed a dry towel. “I wish she wouldn’t tell it at all.”
Carla knelt beside Liam. “I think she was trying to impress Tom, show how good a mother she was. After all, she did fish your butt out of that fire.”
Liam squeezed his shirt again, hard. “Well, I think she definitely was impressed by Tom, that’s for sure.”
Carla nodded. “I hope he’s not a touchy subject,” she said softly.
Liam rubbed his hands together. “He made Mom happy. What else can I say?”
“Yeah,” Carla said, “But he wasn’t your dad.”
Liam let out a long breath. “No, he wasn’t. But I guess I didn’t care. By the time Mom and Tom hooked up, I was at college. I never had to worry about him trying to take over as my father. So, why care?”
Liam then peered past his hanging shirt to the dark space beyond the air compressor, knowing his dad was on the other side toward the back. “Just seeing my dad handle all of this, it just reminds me of what Tom isn’t. He’s big with talk, a smart guy, but I’ve seen him bail out of tough situations.”
Carla wrapped her arm around Liam’s right arm. “But your Mom’s a strong woman. If he can’t wear the pants in that relationship, she’ll step up and take charge.”
“Hey!” Conrad called from the other side of the clothesline, sounding more cheerful than Liam had heard since the two of them had reunited. “I hear some chatting going on. Feel like company? I just realized this cozy little place doesn’t have cable television. Looks like we’ll have to occupy ourselves.”
“We’re fine, Dad!” Liam sat up. “You can come in.”
“Regrettably, I did not pack extra clothing,” Conrad announced, “So, I’ll have to join you buck naked while my clothes dry off.”
“Dad!” Liam shut his eyes and looked away.
“Just kidding, Liam. I’m fine.” Conrad then pushed aside Liam’s pants to prove he was indeed dressed, covered in a T-shirt and khakis. “I’ll join you in a moment. Let me fetch my pack.”
He turned and walked back to his private space. Liam’s ears still burned while Carla giggled. “I take it back. He is about as bad as your mom.”
After a short time listening through the door, Liam backed away from it. “I think the rain’s starting to slack off,” he said as he rejoined Carla and Conrad, who were sitting cross-legged on a pair of towels on the floor.
“The rain’s not lingering.” Conrad’s pack was right next to him. He dug into it as he talked. “Hopefully, b
y morning the rain will be gone and we can continue without a problem.”
Liam groaned. “It’s probably still early in the evening. We’ll be stuck in this tin can for a while.”
He wiped fresh sweat off his face. The place was well-sealed from the elements, but that also made it quite warm. There were no windows to open even a crack, and the walls seemed well reinforced. Obviously, this place was meant to be well secured. Unfortunately, it would be hell to try sleeping in here tonight.
Conrad zipped open a back pocket in his bag. “No problem. We have some ways to pass the time.” He then held up a pack of playing cards. “Anybody up for a game of rummy?”
Liam shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t even think I’ve heard of it.”
“I have,” Carla replied. “It’s easy. You’re trying to get a small set of matching cards, about three or four. Like, let’s say, you get four aces. Or, you can get four cards that are one after the other, two, three, four, like that.”
Conrad grinned. “Not only can she get us through locked doors, she understands a good card game.”
Both Liam and Carla smiled, but Carla’s smile was a little awkward. Conrad’s joke might have poked something inside her that was a little delicate. Conrad decided to proceed with the game, giving Liam a few more pointers about the game before he started dealing, and even inviting Carla to “team up” with Liam to help him out.
“I didn’t get my first video game until I was nine,” Carla said as she accepted the cards from Conrad. “All my first games were things like this, cards, checkers, and board games.”
The result was a Conrad victory, with four kings to just three spades in numerical sequence for Team Liam. “Not too shabby,” Conrad said.
“I’m just glad we’re not playing poker,” Liam said with a laugh.
Carla actually chortled a little. Something about the mention of poker didn’t sit well with her.
Conrad held up a card. “Ready to go again?”
“Actually, I brought my own game. It’s not much, just checkers.” She dragged her pack over and opened a small pouch, containing a small checkboard and small checker pieces, about half the size of a regular checkers game.