by E S Richards
After Len had watched the group make three trips around the corner with their supplies, he finally pushed himself out of the shadows and started moving toward them. One of the teenage girls spotted him first, her little brother still hiding slightly behind her back.
“Hey!” She called over, drawing attention to the rest of her family who all stopped and turned in unison.
“Hey,” Len called back over, not breaking his stride as he moved toward the group. “I’m just passing through.”
“Are you alright?” The older woman, probably the mother, asked with concern in her voice, noting the black eye and split lip Len wore on his face.
“Yeah,” Len stopped a few feet away from the group. “I live not far from here, just trying to get home.”
“You’ve been outside through all this?” One of the men spoke up, stepping forward slightly in order to protect his family.
“Partly,” Len grimaced, “missed the worst of it though. Now I need to get to my family.”
The man’s expression softened as Len suspected it would at the mention of his family. Theirs was clearly still very intact, a miracle after what had happened. His was not.
“Are they far?”
“Michigan. But I’m going anyway, I need to make sure they’re okay.”
“Oh my,” the mother spoke with a little shake of her head. Len could see she was imagining what it would be like to be that far from her own loved ones and knew he had made the right decision in approaching the group. They weren’t dangerous; they were just trying to survive, like he was.
“Do you not have any supplies?”
Another voice joined the conversation, belonging to the second teenage daughter. Len could tell she wasn’t related to the older woman, her physical features too different. But one of the men was clearly her father, the likeness almost uncanny.
Len shook his head. He hoped he would find everything he needed back home, but it wasn’t something he had put a lot of thought into as of yet.
“Well you should,” the girl spoke again, turning away from the group and walking out of sight around the corner. There was silence for a moment before she returned, carrying with her a backpack that looked to be filled with contents Len could only guess at.
“Nicola,” the man who looked to be her father spoke up upon seeing the girl return with something they had obviously packed for themselves.
“Dad, we’ve got plenty,” Nicola stared at her father with a stern but sincere look, “what if that was you?”
Not waiting for a response Nicola walked toward Len, holding the backpack out in front of her.
“Here,” she smiled offering it to him, “this should help a bit.”
“Thank you,” Len gushed, taken aback by the show of true kindness. “Honestly, thank you.”
“Like I said, you probably need it more than we do,” Nicola replied with a shrug as she turned back to her family.
Len pulled the backpack on, the weight of it sitting slightly uncomfortably on his shoulders, but he was thankful for it nonetheless. Continuing forward he walked closer to the family, each of them watching him as he moved.
“Good luck,” he spoke as he passed by, “and thank you again, Nicola.” He looked the girl dead in the eyes, trying to push as much sincerity as he could into his gaze. She merely shrugged again and started walking back toward a broken store window, going in for the next round of supplies they could find.
“I hope you find your family!” The mother’s voice called after Len as he reached the end of the street, causing him to turn back and lock eyes with her. The rest of her family had gone back to the routine they were in before he had interrupted, but she remained stationary, watching him go.
Len gave her a wave before disappearing around the corner, his faith in humanity being slowly restored as the day went on.
Slowly but surely, the streets become more and more familiar to Len until he knew he was only a few turns away from his home. He felt excited to have made it this far, although the annoying thought that he was still many miles away from Amy and James acted like a wet blanket to his joy.
As he walked, however, he noticed how the temperature seemed to increase again and the air became filled with smoke. He was only a few hundred yards from his house now, but looking in that direction his eyes grew wide as he saw a raging fire ahead of him. He had traveled much farther out of the center of Chicago and he believed that meant he was traveling away from the worst of the destruction. He was wrong.
Picking up his pace and whispering a silent prayer that the fire wasn’t blazing from his home, Len urged his body forward. His ribs protested in his chest but he kept moving, even with the added weight of the backpack on his shoulders.
Len kept an old motorcycle under a tarp beside his backdoor. He never rode it, nor really knew how, but it had belonged to his late father and he couldn’t bear to part with it. He used to push James around the garden or up and down the road on it, never starting the engine for fear of losing control of the bike and it tearing away from him. If he could get to it now, maybe he could find a quicker way out of Chicago.
As Len jogged around the corner, approaching his house from the rear his eyes fell on where the motorcycle should lay. Instead he was nearly thrown backwards by a wall of flames, fire burning through the metal, his house and the one next door.
Len felt tears prick at his eyes as he stared at his semi-detached house, one side of it completely devoured by flames. It surely wouldn’t remain standing for long; the fire was already threatening to jump across the small gap and over to the next pair of houses; soon the whole street to the north could be caught up in flames. He had traveled all the way back for nothing. In a moment of desperation and stupidity, Len yanked the backpack from his shoulders and dropped it to the ground, running forward toward his house.
He ran through a neighbor’s garden, forcing open their gate to allow him to access the front of his home. Fumbling in his pockets he realized he’d lost his house keys somewhere along his journey and so picked up a small ornamental rock from beside his front door and flung it through the window, scraping away at the glass to make a hole wide enough for him to climb through.
As soon as Len stepped into the house he started coughing from the thick smoke that curled around every piece of furniture, every possession that he owned. The heat was so immense it made him feel faint, flames itching to travel through the rest of the house and devour it completely.
Len moved as quickly as he could out of his front room, the fire thankfully not cutting off his path yet. He wasn’t thinking straight, he just knew he had to get upstairs; he couldn’t let his house fall without saving one thing first.
He moved carefully but quickly up the stairs, the smoke growing thicker the higher up the house he went. Len could barely see in front of him now, his chest heaving and coughing with every breath he took. But he knew the house well and he didn’t need to see to know where he was going.
Reaching the top of the stairs Len dropped to his hands and knees, crawling in the direction of his bedroom. The smoke was slightly thinner the closer to the ground he was, but he also knew if he didn’t get out quickly it would kill him. Already his insides felt like they were burning, each breath more difficult to take than the last.
His bedroom door was already open, a discarded tie on the floor by the doorway where he had left it two mornings ago before going to work. It seemed like a lifetime ago, that morning, trying to decide which tie to wear for the networking event his company never ending up having.
Crawling past it, Len made his way to his bedside table, now almost blind from the smoke. He reached up and tugged open the drawer, feeling inside for the familiar wooden box he had risked his life for. As the rough edges carved from pine brushed against his fingertips he breathed a sigh of relief. Now he just had to get back out of his house.
He grabbed an old sweatshirt that lay on his bed and wrapped the box carefully inside it, unbuttoning his shirt slightly to p
ress the box close against his chest. It was just how he had held the unnamed baby boy and in a way the contents of the wooden box were even more precious and valuable to Len.
Moving as quickly as his body would allow Len crawled back to the stairs and started edging his way down. The flames were creeping up the banister toward him and the wooden boards started to creak and groan under his weight. The whole stairway was going to collapse with Len on it, nothing but a fiery pit of red and orange waiting below.
Len pushed himself to his feet with strength he didn’t think he still had and jumped the final few steps, landing with a crash and a stab of excruciating pain in his ribs. The sound of the stairs falling smashed into reality behind him only seconds later and the heat grew once more as more of his house was swallowed up in flames.
Len staggered toward the broken window he’d entered by, one hand on the wooden box and the other shielding his eyes. He couldn’t see, he could barely breathe, he just had to make it outside.
Tens of cuts sliced open Len’s skin as he smashed through the window, widening the hole he had made. The fire roared behind him, encouraged by the extra burst of oxygen and spurred on to devour the rest of the house. Len lay crumpled on the grass outside, his body hacking and trying to clear his airways of smoke. He clutched at the grass, trying to move his body further away from the fire in one last desperate attempt of survival.
As a cold hand grabbed at his wrist his body finally gave out and Len let his mind succumb to darkness.
Chapter 16
When Len’s eyelids finally blinked open he found himself staring at a gas lantern swinging from the ceiling. Lifting his head he immediately felt groggy, his vision was slightly blurred and there was a ringing sound piercing through his ears. He looked around the room and saw brick walls covered in articles from old newspapers. It was like something out of a film, a place from before the current day.
Raising a hand to his head Len meant to massage his temples, but his hand never made it the full way. His eyes snapped open wider as he realized his wrist was fastened to the old camper bed where he lay. Cold, metal handcuffs stopped him from moving freely. Len’s breath caught and he let out a cascade of sharp, haggard coughs. Bile rose in his throat as he coughed, the black smoke he had inhaled poisoning his lungs to some extent.
“You ought to take it easy for a little while.”
The voice caught Len off guard and he spun his head around in the direction of the noise, the rapid movement only making the ringing in his head louder. His eyes fell on an old man, maybe fifteen or twenty years his senior, hunched over a desk with his back to Len.
“Who are you?”
Len’s voice shook with nerves, realizing as he took in more of the room that he was locked to a bed in what looked to be like some underground basement. His eyes fell on a wall covered in different types of weaponry; there were all sorts of guns, ranging from pistols to rifles to an old Browning machine gun. A selection of blades were fixed in a glass case beside the weapons, the metal on each of them shining under the dim lighting. Len’s mouth fell open as he wondered what he had been dragged into.
“Where am I?”
“Ha, I’m surprised you don’t recognize me,” the man started to turn in his chair, angling his body so it took the longest time possible for his face to fall into the light. “I’ve lived on this street long before you arrived.”
As the man’s face came out of the shadow, Len acknowledged him carefully. He did recognize him. He’d seen the man tending to weeds in his garden in the summer or shoveling snow during the longer winter months. Len couldn’t place his name, but he knew this old man lived nearby, just a few houses down from his own.
As the thought of his home flashed into Len’s mind the fire blazed back to life in his eyes. He felt the heat of it on his skin and the smell of smoke filled his nostrils, if only just a memory. His eyes swept through the room once more and landed on the backpack he had taken off before running into his house, his treasured wooden box resting on top of it. Both positioned just to the right of where the man sat.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t looked inside,” the man smiled, noticing Len staring at the wooden box with such fervor it was as if he thought it might vanish. “Must be something damn special in there if you’re willing to risk your life for it. Another minute in that house and I doubt you’d have made it out.”
Len blinked. Had he really been that close to death? His memories from being inside his house were fuzzy, distorted by the smoke in his vision and in his lungs. Slowly the realization dawned on him that this man had saved him and—even though he was suspicious of his intentions—he surely wouldn’t have been saved only to be harmed again, would he?
“Thank you,” Len stuttered, the words sounding harsh as they came out. Coughing a few times to clear his throat, he tried again, “I mean it, you saved my life. But, why have you handcuffed me?”
“Yes, well,” the man looked away wistfully for a moment, “there’s been enough death in the last forty-eight hours to last a lifetime. Yours was a life still worth saving, I think.”
Len considered the man more carefully, not missing the fact that he had dodged the question about Len being handcuffed. He wasn’t sure how to act around him; clearly he needed to show respect to the man, but Len was also aware he didn’t want to come across as the meek and mild man he’d so often been perceived as in the years before the chaos. Eventually he replied.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Ha, didn’t expect you to,” the man laughed. “All of you lot around here are all the same, a nod in the morning or perhaps a little wave but you’re not bothered about getting to know anyone. Off you go to your important city jobs every day like clockwork and yet when something real happens, you’re all left helpless and afraid, waiting for someone else to pick up the pieces and rescue you.”
Len stared at the man with a stunned expression on his face. He didn’t know what to say. The man was a neighbor of his, and he did recognize him to some extent, but the longer he stayed trapped away with him the more uneasy he felt. The weapons were one thing, but the fact he was so calm and mysterious when half of Chicago had collapsed outside his front door was oddly disturbing. Not one part of the man seemed afraid, a stark contrast to how Len truly felt.
“It’s Harrison,” the man eventually continued, “number 102. And I know you; Len Rodgers of number 86, married and divorced from Amy, father to James.”
“How…”
“Some of us take an interest in those around us, Mr. Rodgers. Some of us like to be prepared.”
The longer the conversation went on between them, the more uncomfortable Len slowly became. How much did Harrison really know about him? As quietly as he could Len strained against the handcuffs on his right wrist, doing his best to not make a sound as the metal pushed against metal.
While he did, he kept his eyes on Harrison, trying to prove to the older man that he wasn’t afraid of him. With his vision less blurred Len noted that the man probably wasn’t as old as he had originally thought. Maybe mid-fifties, but he was well built and looked strong underneath the jacket that he wore. He must be, Len realized, to have carried him all the way from outside his house. If the house numbers Harrison had supplied were correct then they were a fair way down the street from where Len’s house was. Or used to be. Len’s heart sank again as he remembered his house was probably completely destroyed now, lost to a fire like so much else of Chicago.
“I wouldn’t bother with that,” Harrison spoke again, turning his back to Len and focusing on whatever lay on the desk in front of him. “You inhaled a lot of smoke during your little jaunt, it’s best to let your lungs get used to clean air again before you go trying to snap metal in two…”
Len winced at Harrison’s words, stopping his attempt to free himself from the handcuffs. He desperately wanted to get up from the bed. He wanted to go outside and see what had happened to his house, he wanted to move toward his backpack and the
wooden box and he wanted to understand where he was being kept. But a part of him —a small, curious part—also wanted to stay with Harrison and find out more about the old man.
“Why have you handcuffed me?” Len asked eventually, still taken aback by his surroundings. “And what is this place?”
From the dim light and lack of windows, along with the slightly musty smell in the air Len assumed he was underground. Locked in the old man’s basement perhaps? The thought caused him to shudder involuntarily.
The items that covered the walls interested Len more so however, even after he’d already viewed the display of weapons. There was a wall covered in shelves of food, hundreds of tins and cans, some so old and dusty Len couldn’t even make out the name of them. Huge containers of water lay on the floor beneath the shelves, bigger than the tanks of gasoline Len had carried from the water taxi with Freddie; so big he didn’t think he’d be able to move even one of them.
A steady dripping sound also echoed around the room, telling Len that there was perhaps a source of water somewhere. He traced the sound to behind a curtain, which hung in one corner of the room, the roughly cut black cloth distorting his view of whatever lay behind. The thought frightened him, still absolutely aware that he was at Harrison’s mercy and although he had saved him, Len didn’t have any other reason to trust him yet.