Rebel Radio

A World Burns Story

Boyd Craven III

Contents

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

About the Author

Copyright © 2015 Boyd Craven III

Rebel Radio, The World Burns

By Boyd Craven

Edited by Katy Light

Many thanks to friends and family for keeping me writing!

All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Z-

I’ve been walking for two days now, scavenging and looking for supplies. The only thing that bugs me more than my search for water and food is the daily grind trying to survive. I’d stayed alive and out of harm’s way for almost two months by layering up and binding my chest flat. A pair of kitchen shears took off most of my brown hair and, for the most part, I could pass as a young boy from a distance.

I’d seen the horrors of this land without rule of law; I’d seen what men did when they had no fear of consequences to hold them in check. I was with a couple who had taken me in, and they had gotten raided. I survived by hiding under the front porch and going into the crawlspace under the house. Through the vent, I could hear Stephen begging for mercy, but two gunshots took care of him and the screams began. Miss Sarah screamed for a good long while before two more gunshots rang out, silencing everything.

The house was ransacked, and I really, really tried to bury them, but I wasn’t strong enough. Like my namesake, I had been a gamer and had pretty much been a loner when the power went out for good. My diet, Redbull and nothing else, had kept me thin, but I was in no shape for this world. Moments like now, where I was struggling because I couldn’t find clean water, were ones that reminded me that maybe I should have listened to my teachers more instead of playing another round of Sailor Moon or Call of Duty.

The thirst was almost a real, living thing; all-consuming and making me sloppy. That’s why I had decided to come into Charlotte proper, despite knowing that more people meant more chances for ugly situations to arise. The sound of a motor made me look up sharply and I headed towards the bushes by a nearby house and ducked behind them, praying nobody was in the house behind me, watching me.

My skin crawled and, for the thousandth time that day, I wondered if I’d made a horrible mistake. A military hummer was driving down the street, soldiers visible from the cracked windows. It really stood out to me, because it wasn’t American made and it wasn’t anything I recognized from GTA or any of my video games. Sneaking into the house behind me was now out, so I focused on getting as low to the ground under the hedge as I could. The hummer drove past my position and was stopped at the intersection when the first shots rang out.

Sparks flew off the side of the hummer and somebody inside it let out a high-pitched scream. A round must have found a way in or there had been a lucky ricochet. I could only see out of the corner of one eye because I was pressed in so tight. Getting up slowly and standing at a crouch, I could see two soldiers jump from the passenger side and start returning fire. More sounds of motors made me wince. They were the un-muffled sounds of big bikes.

I crawled to the side of the house, letting the porch hide me, and I pulled frantically at the latticework. A section popped free, cutting the side of my hand. I wiped the streak of blood on my pant leg and crawled under, praying no one saw me. The section of lattice wouldn’t go back in easily, so I leaned it in place, hoping it looked natural.

Gunshots rang out, and a man screamed, but the wooden frame of the stairs blocked my view. I crawled on my stomach to the other side and peered out of the latticework, only able to see the back quarter of the hummer and the one soldier crouched there. He was firing behind the back of the hummer like I’d done in numerous games, but he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head. A man in black leather pants and vest had risen from his hiding position behind the passenger side and raised a shotgun.

I didn’t want to look, I closed my eyes. Not again, this can’t be happening, not again! Nothing happened, so after a moment I peeked. My timing sucks in real life. In a video game, I’m one of those gamer girls all the boys hate having on their teams, whether it’s a raid in WoW, or playing Call of Duty; I’m pretty good and it pisses them off. Reality is much much worse. My eyes opened just as the man holding the shotgun pulled the trigger. Chunks sprayed across the side of the hummer and the biker pulled the pin on a rounded object and threw it inside the cracked window.

Doors flew open and gunfire hit the first man trying to escape, causing a fresh set of screams that were cut off seconds later by a loud thump. Coughing and trying not to dry heave, I buried my face in my arms and made myself as small as possible under the stairs going up to the porch. Muted voices carried my way, but no decipherable words.

Hot tears ran down my face. Horror, a sick feeling, and anger were all warring within me and I hated myself for a moment for being so weak. I was dehydrated and half dead from exhaustion and hunger. I kept myself from sobbing, but as my breathing slowed, I realized I was going to fall asleep. No more self-preservation left in me, I let sleep take me.

I woke up some time later. The light was different, softer. It looked like it was afternoon or just before the sun went down. I crawled to the edge and peeked out of the latticework again. Bodies littered the street and the half burned out shell of the Hummer was visible. I waited, and after what I judged to be an hour, I left the sanctuary of the small space. I hadn’t heard anything in that time I was waiting, and I had been listening for noises above me in the house as well. It had remained silent.

My heart was racing and my clothes were soaked with sweat when I got out from under the porch and slowly looked around. Spent casings littered the street around the bodies of the soldiers. Should I go loot them like in the video games? A gun would be nice, but I’d kill for a bottle of water and something for the cramping that was coming on. Deciding the house to be the safer first stop, I let myself in the back door, which had been left unlocked. Who does that anymore, I wondered.

“Hello?” I called out softly, not wanting to get shot by a nervous homeowner who was even more scared than I was.

Nobody called back so I took that as an invitation to ransack the house. The first month, I stayed in place, my apartment sweltering in the heat as the rest of the population went crazy. It was worse than the stories I heard about the LA riots. People shooting others, settling old scores. Looting, rioting and after a while… the cops quit showing up for work. A month ago, I never would have done this, but times are desperate and one way or another, most of the people are dead or gone.

“What do we have here?” I asked myself, an annoying habit I’d developed since being alone for so long.

The kitchen had been gone through, but not thoroughly. There was a foil packet of a noodle side dish and a can of tuna wedged in the back corner of a cupboard. I would have drooled at the find, but I didn’t have enough moisture left in my body.

“Wait…” I fumbled with the can of Tuna and smiled. “Packed in water.” It read.

I sat down and pulled a can opener out of my pocket and made quick work of the can. I half thought about it but, in the end, I tilted the can back and drank all the water inside the can. I almost gagged at the rich flavor, but my stomach loved it. I resisted the urge to scoop the can clean with my fingers, and got out a camping silverware set I kept in the other pocket.

My stomach rumbled when I finished off the can and, out of habit, I went to the sink to try to rinse off my fork. Nothing. If I hadn’t been running on automatic pilot, I would have drunk that water first if any had come out. Putting the noodles in my pack, I decided to check out the rest of the house. There were two bedrooms downstairs and a den. All of them had been gone through by looters and graffiti was painted across the inside of a room that looked like it belonged to a girl a little younger than me. “Cunt” was rudely sprayed. With one word, whoever wrote that word put me on edge. I checked the bedroom thoroughly but no birth control and no Pamprin. Damn! I looked in what looked like the boy’s room a little closer, hoping for some sort of weapon. Nothing.

The den had a useless computer and a rack of file folders that had been half emptied all over the desk, overlooking a beautiful view of the ocean. The tug of the surf was mesmerizing. It made me think that no matter what, things would be ok. They had to be. I moved out of the den and into the hallway leading up the stairs.

Pausing to look at the family portraits, I felt a pang of sadness. A red-faced man was holding a fishing pole while smiling teenage kids hugged either side of his body and a beautiful brunette held onto his arm. The setting looked to be the dock out back I had seen from the den. Their happiness left me feeling gut punched as I missed my own parents. Geeks and gamers, just like me. They’d been gone for a while now, almost a lifetime ago.

The upstairs was stifling hot and dust motes floated through the air. There was a bathroom and large bedroom up there and I checked the bathroom out first. I opened the linen closet and was rewarded with two boxes of Maxi Pads. I stuffed those into my backpack and resisted the urge to pump my fists into the air and scream in victory. An unopened tube of toothpaste and toothbrush followed closely and I moved into the bedroom. Everything about the bed looked like it had been made up neatly and the family had gone on vacation.

The drawers of the dresser and the closet spoke a different story. The looters had been up here too, and, judging by what was missing, I could figured it was a group of guys. Ladies’ clothing had only been gone through in a cursory manner, but the side of the drawers that held men’s clothing had been ransacked. A jewelry cabinet by the night stand had been emptied, and an empty brass casing was on the floor in front of it. I picked it up, knowing it had some trading value, and looked around harder.

There wasn’t a hole in the wall or furniture that I could see and I puzzled over the reasons the casing might be there, as I methodically went through the rest of the room. I found a pink sports bottle in the closet, along with a pair of hiking boots. Trying them on, I was pleasantly surprised to find they fit rather well and I left my worn out shoes that had been giving me blisters right there on the floor. I pulled out my small flashlight and flipped it on in the darkest corner of the closet. I didn’t expect to find a gun, but I always looked. The glint I saw made my breath catch in my throat and I knelt down.

I pulled at the checkered grip in reverence and almost spat in disgust when I saw the orange tip on the barrel. I’d just found some kids paintball gun. Shit! I backed out to check through the nightstands, the last place to look here. I smiled immediately. The left side of the bed obviously belonged to a man, and whoever trashed this house didn’t go through the drawers thoroughly. I found a foam trap holding twenty rounds of 9mm shells and a pocket knife. I put those in the pack, the knife in my pocket. The woman’s side was where I hit the jackpot.

Tylenol; it was definitely a lifesaver for these god-awful cramps. I thought about trying to dry swallow the pills, but knew I would gag. That sucked, but I was dehydrated and I couldn’t even spit when things came right down to it. Smiling at my own luck, I headed downstairs to stare out the window at the dead bodies I could partially make out near the husk of the hummer.

It took me an hour to slowly work my way over there. Nothing was alive within earshot or eyesight. The smell of burnt flesh was overpowering near the hummer, and a half burned arm hung out of the passenger side window. Two men lay dead near the rear door, and it was one of those who was lying face down that I was trying to roll over.

I saw the canteen right away and I didn’t want to cut the straps if I didn’t have to.

“Why do these guys have to wear all this heavy gear? This is nothing like Call of Duty where you just walk over the bodies to loot them,” I muttered bitterly. I sat down and put both feet on the man’s arms and shoulder and used the strength of my legs to roll him over.

“Yuck!” I almost gagged at first, but then I realized this was the man who had taken the shotgun blast to the head. Most of his face was gone, but it had left the rest of his body intact and without a lot of blood spatter.

No gun. Shit. Working the strap on the web belt, I got the canteen loose and then paused, considering the radio that he had in a pouch hanging off of his vest. I was almost ready to pass it on by when I heard the roar of a motorcycle. With nowhere to hide, I laid between the body and the hummer, my heart hammering a thousand miles an hour.

“This is so not good, Z,” I told myself, my voice too hoarse.

I listened for minutes, waiting until the sound faded into the distance. In relief, I drank half the canteen until my stomach cramped in protest. The water tasted clean, cold and slightly metallic. I wiped my lips absently with my hand, and was shocked to see a smear of red. I looked into the canteen and the water looked normal but the edges of the canteen were stained. I touched my lips and nodded. They had split and bled again.

“Do I take it?” I asked myself, looking at the radio.

I was back at the house from earlier again. I knew it was safe for now and, instead of going through the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, I wanted to be here, in this one. I considered hiding but it made no sense. I figured I’d probably rest and then push on. Absently I considered the web belt and two canteens. Full, they would probably be heavy, but coupled with the water bottle, I would be able to carry enough water to last me a couple days, if I could only find water.

I played with the knobs of the radios I found on the dead soldiers, and was shocked when the red light of power glowed and a burst of static filled the silent living room.

“Hello?” I asked, not expecting anything but more static.

“I can hear you, are you ok?” a voice asked, sounding tinny and far away.

The fact that it was a woman’s voice immediately put me at ease. In a flash it crossed my mind that the bikers might have a lady to transmit over the air to put people at ease, but I decided to be cautiously optimistic.

“Yeah, I just found this radio and decided to try it out. Dumb luck huh?” I laughed nervously after taking my finger off the transmit button.

“Yeah, I guess it is. Is it a big radio?”

“Oh no, it’s a hand held radio. I found it under a dead soldier. I thought it was a weird thing to hold on to since all the electronics died…” I let my voice die off as I considered the radio, noticing the odd script on it, definitely not in English.

“From what we can tell, most military radio pieces work fine, but tell me, why was the soldier dead?” she asked.

“It was from the group that got into a gunfight with the biker’s out here.” I told her reluctantly.

“Where’s here?”

“Charlotte. Listen, I have to go find some water somewhere. I’ll be back later on. It’s nice talking to people who aren’t out to hurt me.”

“Thanks. I’m Patty. I’ll be right here.”

“Thanks Patty, call me Z.” I told her, wincing with the inevitable follow up question.

“Z?”

“I have a weird name.” I told her.

“Hey Z, real quick, do you know about water heaters?” Patty asked.

“No, what about them? They quit working when the gas quit.” I was confused, water heaters?

“This is Blake,” a man’s voice came out of the handset, “the water heater is still a holding tank. There’s a valve at the bottom for maintenance. I’m willing to bet if you’re around a ton of empty houses you can find one or two that are full. That’s probably more water than you’d need…”

“I have to go,” I said, startled by the man’s voice.

I turned off the radio and ran for a closet I had found earlier on the first floor under the staircase. I had two thoughts clanging so loudly in my head, and I half wanted to scream. Maybe Blake was part of the trap. Maybe they knew where the radios came from and the men were going to come here, they were going to find me and they were going to—

I almost fell into the water heater. It was sitting on an aluminum pan and a short length of hose ran from a spigot near the bottom to a floor drain. No way. This was too easy. I decided to try to use the pink water bottle first. It was mostly clear, so I could see if the water was full of crap. I wouldn’t be able to see if I used the canteens. The flow of water almost startled me, and red flakes floated in the water at first. I dumped the water into the floor drain, but when I turned the spigot back on and into the cup the water flowed out cold and clear, though cold was probably a relative term. Summers in Charlotte were hot and the water was probably seventy degrees, but I tried not to let my hands shake as I filled the containers.

Maybe it wasn’t a trick. Maybe that Blake fellow was just trying to help; I mean, the voice sounded far off. I turned off the spigot and sat in the dark, wondering if I should figure out how to get the noodles cooked, wondering if I could be so lucky in the surrounding houses. Hoping the bikers didn’t come back. Feeling grateful and reckless, I turned back on the radio.

“Hey, uh… Blake, this is Z.” I whispered, not sure why I was suddenly feeling shy.

“Go ahead, I’m still here.”

“I think you saved me. I haven’t had water for a day and a half now. I’m in somebody’s closet and found it just like you said. Thank you,” I told him, feeling grateful.

“No problem. Just call back on this channel if you need to brainstorm or talk or—“

“Blake,” a new voice came out of the radio, cutting him off, “Thanks for the tip also, it’s something… Oops, my lady says I just walked all over your transmission. Thanks,” a male voice said.

Three more voices spoke up, calling in from across the country one by one thanking Blake.

“Hey world, what do you think of the name, Guerilla Radio for a regularly scheduled broadcast on tips and help? An old school radio version of the internet or Wikipedia?” Patty said.

“Rebel Radio,” I said immediately, not knowing why.

There was a smattering of agreement from all over the country as people checked in. I smiled, feeling good for the first time in ages. My sore and battered body lulled me into a half doze. I remembered to turn off the radio, but sleep wasn’t far away. I needed…

Chapter Two

Don –

My mouth was dry and my lips were chapped from constantly rubbing them. My hands were starting to shake as I wondered for the hundredth time if I should go to one of my backup locations and get some booze out. It wasn’t dehydration I was fighting off, it was the DT’s. I’d let them catch me once after the power went off when I tried to dry myself out. It was horrible. I was sick constantly; crying, puking sick. I finally caved and downed half a fifth of vodka and the shakes subsided and I regained some sort of resemblance of normalcy. Now, I just drink enough to keep the shakes away, but I reasoned that every day if I cut back a little I could eventually quit. Then I drank even more.

I was cutting through a ritzy portion of Charlotte, about a day’s walk from my main camp, looking for more liquor and anything else to make my miserable life easier. A hundred times a day I tried to figure out how I could just let the lights go out forever on my miserable existence. A couple times I even felt the rope against my neck as I considered stepping off the stool, but I never did it. I wanted to, but I could never take that last step. I don’t know why, but every time I resigned myself to die, I found myself alive.

The booze helped me sleep. Nothing else seemed to work. If I slept even halfway sober, nightmares would overtake me and then I’d get drunk to stop the shakes, but those were more caused by grief and loss rather than withdrawal symptoms. It was a weird existence that was only interrupted by the biker gang that Reno led. I’d run across him in his old life as a building inspector and Reno never forgot when I denied their permit at the clubhouse. It was obvious that they had built a dozen apartments upstairs of the old bar and the building wasn’t zoned for occupancy.

I’d run across him a week after the power went out, and I still sported sore ribs and some scars from the beating I took as they exacted their revenge. I’d been out trying to buy supplies and booze, but nobody would have taken my card anyways. Since that moment, I’d kept myself hidden away as much as I could, tying on a bender once in a while. That’s what led me out to this side of Charlotte; I was looking for more booze to add to my stash. I was too scared to go dry suddenly and it was that fear that had me moving in the daylight when I usually moved at night.

Only Reno’s club, the Devil Dogs MC, other than the soldiers, had any sort of transportation. A lot of his crew were ex-cops and ex-military, and all of them were acting like thugs and mercenaries. The soldiers never had a chance. I had been drunk the day NATO rolled into town, and I locked myself into my hidey hole and got even more drunk. Somehow, locking myself in for a week worked out for me, because when I came out again, everyone was gone or dead. Mostly gone.

A lot of things were left behind, and one of the places I was fixing to loot, the golf course, I was hoping had been overlooked. Before I fell into a tequila bottle, I used to golf here and I knew the bar was fully stocked. I was hoping that it was mostly untouched. Most of the liquor stores and grocery stores had been stripped bare, but restaurants that also served alcohol had been an ok place to find booze. They were obvious to me, but maybe not to those who were left. Granted, the people that were left in Charlotte were assholes and degenerates who’d rather slit your throat and kill you as much as help you. I didn’t have a lot of faith left in the populace at large and, with no way to communicate or get news, I was pretty out of touch.

I had the golf course on my right side and I cringed when I realized I would have to either walk on that side of the road in the open, or start going through the yards and hedges of the houses that lined the left side of the road across from it. It was an easy thing to do but I hated all of those doors and windows at my back. I knew I didn’t have enough time to check every house on my left with the remaining daylight, so I ignored the overgrown lawns, the houses with the doors and windows gaping open with trash everywhere.

Those who were left had made it a veritable hellhole compared to the million dollar houses and mini McMansions with the manicured lawns that there used to be. Sadly, I knew most of the people who had lived in these houses and darkly wondered if any of them were behind closed windows in the dark, checking my progress with a scoped gun. I shuddered and moved as quickly as I could, until I was across the street from the parking lot, full of dead cars that lead to the clubhouse. With any luck, I’d be sipping martinis in a few minutes and not filled with holes caused by gunshots from nervous survivors.

My shoes were the loudest sound, crunching over the gravel of the parking lot, and I went from car to car in cover, much like I’d seen the cops do on television, hoping I wasn’t making myself a target. I needed a shot of booze and was pissed that I’d only brought half a pint from one of my safe houses on this excursion. It was literally a half constructed house that I’d started to stash supplies in, just in case Reno and his guys ever found out where my main camp was.

Seeing the coast clear, I ran to the front door and tried to look inside. I cupped my hands around my eyes and tried to see into the darkened room beyond, but couldn’t make out anybody. Just an empty room with a bar at the back end. Everything was pretty neat and tidy and my hopes soared. Maybe I would find some food as well as booze. The door was locked when I tried it and, for half a second, I considered using the hammer I brought along as protection for knocking the pane of glass out and letting myself in.

If I did that, then anybody walking by might think somebody was inside or had been. Was that a good thing? Would it be something new and different that caused people to investigate? I decided to go around to the back to the large patio overlooking the greens. I was depressed with how overgrown the lawns were. Sometimes only the flag sticking out of the hole showed me where the putting greens were compared to the fairways. It was depressing me, right up until I found an unlocked door leading into the kitchen.

The room was surprisingly clean considering when the blast went off that took out the power. I would have thought the bar and grill in the restaurant side would have been going full swing on a Friday night, but it looked unused. I didn’t dare open the big refrigerators; I’d learned my lesson a long time ago how soon food turns nasty and foul. Instead, I worked my way past the stainless steel appliances and through some swinging double doors, stopping dead and marveling at the glorious sight to my right.

“Oh momma, thank you,” I muttered to myself and almost ran to the bar, my hands picking up first one bottle of booze and then another.

“Oh baby, this I needed.”

I undid the cap of a bottle of Jack Daniels and drank deeply. The sickly sweet flavor of the Tennessee whiskey flooded my senses and I could actually taste the smoky flavor from being aged before my taste buds were seared senseless from half a bottle. I capped it and staggered as blessed numbness soothed my brain and my thoughts slowed. I could already feel the fire in my stomach and I smiled for the first time that day.

I looked around. There must have been over 100 bottles on the bar of various flavors and kinds, and cases and cases of liquor underneath the front of the bar on the bottom shelves underneath the ones that held the dusty but clean glasses. One box was shoddier looking than the others, and I pulled it out and set it up on the old redwood bar. It was full of bar snacks, pretzels and bags of peanuts. I left that up there and smiled.

My backpack was mostly empty but I needed to move all the booze; there was no way I was going to leave it all behind. It was a year’s worth, probably much much more. I packed half a dozen full bottles of scotch, vodka and whiskey into my backpack in case I had to abandon things quickly, and went looking for keys.

Most golf courses, I found in my life as a building inspector, had things separated. The private and public areas. Private areas of the course were the back offices, inside the kitchens and then the tool/equipment shed. Usually the managers had a set of keys to everything in case the head of maintenance or the groundskeeper lost his, so I went in search of them. I found the office easily, having been inside it a time or two, but I hadn’t remembered which particular one until I found the frosted glass covering the inside of the door.

I almost felt bad when the door was locked, and I pulled the hammer from the side loop on my shorts and broke out the bottom right corner of the glass. Two seconds of fumbling had the door unlocked and I went in. The office had been remodeled since I’d been in it years before. The golf club’s president must have been a sailor of sorts. Pictures of a man on the bow of a small sailboat adorned the pictures and the paneling had been redone in teak with brass accents everywhere; the picture frames, the desk’s edges.

On a corkboard behind the desk, notes and papers were pinned up. Those I ignored, but the hooks on the bottom of the frame had what I was looking for. Keys. Not knowing which ones I’d need, I took all three rings and headed out. I knew where the maintenance and equipment sheds were. Hopefully I’d find a wheelbarrow to start moving my find. I left the office, smiling. This wasn’t going to be that bad of a day. I decided to leave the way I came in so I wouldn’t have to find the right key, but as I was going out the door, I tripped on the threshold, falling flat. I barely got my palms up before my head hit. Luckily I‘d saved my backpack from falling, but the weight from the bottles did nothing to make me feel warm and fuzzy when they slammed into me.

I cursed and brushed the grit off and looked at the gravel imbedded into my bloody palm. I wiped the grit out of the wounds and squeezed them, letting the blood flow a bit and then began walking towards the large pole barn. It had large roll up doors on either end, and a side entrance with a regular sized entryway door. That’s the one I was planning on going through, knowing the roll up doors would be on an opener and dead.

I got to the door and wiped the blood off my palm again before I began trying keys out. I swayed a moment, my head fuzzy. I missed the key slot in the handle and smiled for no reason as the alcohol started to mellow me out. Half a bottle would normally barely affect me, but I’d been going light lately, only drinking enough to keep myself from shaking. Drinking half of it was a little bit overboard, but I didn’t care. I was celebrating.

I got the door open sometime through the second set of keys. The heat and darkness was overwhelming. The heat was almost enough to knock the wind out of me but, standing in the doorway, the 90 degree heat outside felt like air conditioning. I got a lighter out and lit the Zippo and walked around. I had to vent the place; the heat and the smell of fumes was terrible. I walked to the side wall where the roll up door was and found the opener. I pulled the bypass cord and rolled the door up slowly, mindful of my earlier fears.

Even though I was solidly drunk again, I still had my wits enough to be careful. The door I opened faced the back of the building facing the golf course. I stepped outside and into the shadow of the building to cool down and, after a few minutes, I went back inside. The open doors let in enough light that I could make out the row after row of golf carts and lawn equipment. I was looking for a wheelbarrow or garden cart, so I walked down the rows past those until I came almost to the end. There was an old golf cart that somebody had been restoring, as evidenced by the cardboard boxes and Styrofoam pieces scattered.

No way. The thing looked old enough that maybe the EMP hadn’t killed it, but that would just be too much luck and I didn’t believe in that kind of luck.

“It’s going to bug me forever,” I muttered, “if I don’t at least check it out.”

Talking to myself had become a habit and, without anybody around to keep me entertained, I did it quite a bit when I wasn’t feeling down and depressed.

“Oh wow.” I noticed the keys were in the ignition switch under the driver’s seat.

I sat for a moment and held down the brake and tried the ignition. I didn’t hear a starter so I looked around and saw an ignition button by the steering column in the dash. I pressed that and I could barely hear the motor fire to life. It was quiet, almost quiet enough that even in the oppressive silence it was hard to hear.

“I take it back, I do believe in luck.” I turned off the ignition and got out of the golf cart.

This was a game changer. Something that could literally make the difference of life or death. A quick and quiet mode of transportation. I was tempted to leave then, but if I found this treasure, what else awaited me? I went through the rest of the stalls where the golf carts were and found another two of these bad ass carts in various states of repair. None were complete, not unless you called the first one I found.

I reasoned with myself as to why they would have antique carts they were rebuilding when I found it. It wasn’t a wheelbarrow like I’d hoped to find. It wasn’t a garden cart with a good handle and drop down sides, but a small four foot by eight foot trailer. The truly golden thing about it was that it would hitch up to the old gas golf cart I found.

“See, even god looks out for old drunks,” I said gratefully and pulled it into the main aisle way, to make things easier to hitch it to the cart.

It was a lot easier than I thought and, when I backed the cart out and got it close, it was like they were made for each other. I fired up the golf cart and drove both it and the trailer out of the barn, turning it off once I cleared the roll up doors. I pulled the door down and then went out the side door, locking everything up behind me. With any luck, I could come back and loot another cart and stash it after finishing the rebuild and taking any and all tools I could.

Lord knows, I left everything I owned when the bank foreclosed.

Almost everything fit into the cargo space of the cart and the trailer from the clubhouse. At least, everything I wanted to take. I put most of the booze in the trailer and loaded the cart with food that I’d found in the kitchen. Egg noodles, beans, rice, flour and everything canned I could. A literal treasure trove of food and booze. I could live off this for months if not years if I wasn’t a pig about things. I waited until dusk to leave. I didn’t want to use the single headlamp, it’d give away my position if the quiet motor didn’t. By this time, Reno and the gang would be bedded down or partying or doing stuff with the girls they had caught… The last thought left me sick to my stomach, but what was I to do? There were over twenty of them in the club and I was just a single guy.

I had the trailer and cart packed dangerously heavy but had planned on going slow. At most, I expected a twenty minute drive to my first safe house. After that, I’d refuel and wait for another day or two to move the rest to my home base. I grinned; finding the home base years ago, I never knew what I’d lucked into until the day the power went out. I started the ignition and immediately turned it off when gunfire filled the night.

I waited a long while afterwards. I heard the Harleys fire up and move off. They had either made another raid, or Reno’s gang and the Angels were fighting again. The Devil Dogs were still the biggest and meanest MC left in the area. I decided not to get stuck in that mess and drove the full trailer back to the barn and parked it inside. My buzz had started to wear off and I hated that. I debated sleeping in the barn with the rest of the booze, but it was a few times hotter there than it was inside the clubhouse. I found myself in the locker rooms and made myself a small spot in one of the shower stalls, the tiled floors cool enough to allow me to sleep. I killed the rest of the Jack Daniels waiting for the sandman.

It was the next night and I’d eaten a few bags of snacks I’d looted from the bar. I had the cart ready to go and took off as slow as I could, expecting the motor to echo with sound. I was lucky, it had a new muffler on it and it was quieter than most mopeds, even fully loaded. I drove down the coastal road, a risk because I knew Reno’s gang patrolled the area, but it would cut miles off of my route and I could save half a day of worry if I was lucky.

From the previous night, I knew the bikes went the opposite direction, so I felt pretty safe. I’d been dodging him most of the summer and pretty successfully too. The ride through the McMansions was tense, but I made it. Something in a backyard caught my attention as I was fixing to turn. It was a hammock, something I’d been wanting for my home base for forever. It would be a thousand more times comfortable than the army cot I was used to sleeping on. I noted the address, took a hit from a bottle of tequila I’d stashed up front with me, and kept on going.

It took me three uncomfortable minutes to crawl through the narrow window of my safe house, pull the release on the garage door opener and pull the cart and trailer inside. I closed the garage door, put the release back in place so the roll up door was essentially locked and placed a black piece of cardboard in front of the window I used to climb in. I made sure the lock between the garage and house was locked before I let myself relax a bit. It was a close thing, but I managed to get it all done before my nerves had me hitting the bottle again.

I’d gathered a few five gallons of gas, and I unloaded those first and then filled the cart. It took less than a gallon, which surprised me, as I had been pulling a heavy load of at least a thousand pounds. I really had to remember to keep this cart road worthy! I went to the shelf and found my little hobo heater I’d made out of an old coffee can. I hadn’t gathered stick for fuel like I had before, but I had a different idea.

I took an old empty soup can that had a lid on the bottom still and filled it half full of gasoline. The fumes were horrible but I didn’t care, I was more hungry than thirsty. At least I thought so until I took another pull on the tequila without thinking about it.

“Shit, this is no way to try to quit,” I muttered, putting the bottle on top of my pack in the seat of the cart.

I grabbed a sleeve of the Styrofoam cups I had looted from the golf course and pulled out a couple of dozen. I broke them up enough to start putting into the gasoline and smiled as they dissolved. I kept going until the entire soup can had been rendered into a gel. I had basically made jellied napalm, turning the gasoline from an explosive into a fuel. It was a trick I’d learned burning out ground wasps as a kid. I held the lighter away from the soup can in case some fumes still persisted but in the end, the flame touched the gel and it started to burn in earnest.

I opened a can of Dinty Moore and put the hobo stove over the burning soup can of napalm and then put the can of stew on the top of that. While that was heating I pulled out my notebook and wrote out what was left on the golf course to loot. Sadly, it wasn’t much. It was my way of remembering in case I got too drunk to remember or doubt myself the next day. I’d been doing a lot of that, ever since…

“Shit. Stop it man.” I scolded myself, wiping tears away with my left hand.

The stew started to bubble and a heady steam rose from it. I used a spare sock to wrap around my hand to pull it off and laid a sheet of tinfoil across the soup can of napalm, smothering the fire.

“Food for a king,” I told myself in the gloom, a can of instant stew and a bottle of tequila to finish off a fine day of looting and pillaging.

I don’t know how long I slept, but it looked like it was getting dark, not getting light. Perfect for what I wanted to do. My basic plan was to walk back to the golf course and get another cart running. There was enough left to fill the front passenger seat and cargo boot. I planned drive the finished cart back to the first safe house and then take off to home base. I had enough for a while and I wouldn’t push my chances any further than I could.

I left just as dusk was falling, noticing the flash over the ocean as the sun passed the horizon and I stopped to marvel and the wonder. Raw beauty in its finest. Raw beauty wasn’t going to keep me alive and not suicidal, so I started moving again.

“What is there for me? Why am I such a coward?” I asked myself over and over.

Of course nobody answered and I kept rolling the question through my head. I was halfway into the parking lot of the golf course when I heard the roar of Harleys.

“Oh fuck!”

I ran for the edge of the lot, knowing they were close. Real close. I started crawling underneath a Land Rover when I heard hogs roll into the parking lot, and I almost pissed myself when one stopped just beside my legs. Hands pulled at me, and the gravel cut into my exposed flesh as I was dragged out and into the open.

“Hey Reno, we got us a little bitch here, is he a keeper or should we just kill him?” Spider asked, Reno’s right hand man.

“Shit man, please, I mean please?!” I begged, already tears welling into my eyes.

“What’ve we got here boys?” another man asked, stripping me of my pack and holding up the three bottles of booze I hadn’t drank.

“Take it, take it. Just—“

“Shut the fuck up Don.” Reno said, walking up.

I shut up and looked. Reno was decked out in his denim and leather ensemble. He was smiling at the spoils of the backpack and I almost cried as he pulled the cap off a bottle of vodka and took a big healthy swig and then passed the bottle around to a circle of bikers who had started to park their bikes in the lot.

“Where did you get the booze, you fucking ass licker?”

“I… Inside. The bar inside. I was coming back to get the rest,” I admitted in shame, not wanting to admit how much I took.

I never saw the punch coming, but it took the breath from my lungs and I doubled over in pain until the knee to my nose laid me out flat on my back. I felt the cartilage give and tasted a coppery wetness coming down my throat. I rolled over, my eyes filled with tears from the pain of the bloody nose and spit the blood out of the back of my throat.

“Donald Fucking Thomas. The goody two shoes motherfucker who denied our expansion to the clubhouse boys!” Reno said and paused before going on, “Guess what now, pencil pusher? We can expand all we want and none of you shitheads can do dick about it, can you?”

I shook my head, spitting blood.

“How much booze is left in there?” Spider asked, kicking me in my hip, flipping me over and igniting a new spot of horrendous pain with his steel toed boots.

“Cases of the shit, cases,” I gasped between the shooting bits of pain.

Heavy boots kicked and stomped me. I wrapped my arms and hands around my head to protect myself, and I cried and screamed as I felt things break. I may have lost some teeth as a result of the beating. I wish I could remember more of what happened, but I remained in a fog. It hurt so bad, the only thing that registered was the beating stopping, and the Harleys firing up and leaving some time later.

I could halfway open one eye and did so. In the fading moonlight, I saw a small figure darting through the shadows. I raised my hand to call for help, but I had no voice. The darkness was coming and I had the shakes again. The taste of blood was the last thing I remembered.

Chapter Three

Z-

The cramps were bad, but not as bad as they were the previous month. I took a mouthful of Tylenol. It would have to work. I held my side as I considered the situation and looked at the noodles, feeling helpless and out of sorts again. My earlier win had soon become another in a long set of disappointments. How the hell do I cook when there is no microwave?

“And why do I have to cramp so bad?” I sobbed as my entire torso ached and I fought the nausea down.

If I could only have some chocolate, even a small bite. It helped, I don’t know why, but it did.

“Don’t girl up now,” I told myself, pulling my knees to my stomach and rocking. I was still in the small closet containing the water heater and furnace.

The roar of motorcycles firing up close by made me let out a surprised squeak and I cracked the door to crawl out and look out the closet door into the living room. I didn’t have to pull the slats of the blinds aside to get a good look at what was about to happen. The moon was bright tonight, and a man was walking drunkenly through the parking lot of the golf course on the opposite side as the ocean view. Harleys pulled in and surrounded the man who had tried to crawl under an SUV. More men than I could count quickly. The man’s features were too obscured by distance but they pulled him to his feet. He held his hands up as if it say, “hands up, don’t shoot!” when he was sucker punched.

The men circled him and I lost sight of him, but the bikers closed ranks, coming closer together as they started making motions like a soccer player kicking a free shot. I felt even sicker to my stomach as they moved aside for the big guy who had gotten some of the first licks in. He stomped the man in the lower back and he rolled in pain before doing an elbow drop on the back of the man’s head. He crumpled, but his legs shook as if he were having a seizure.

“Oh shit, no way, no way. They are not going to catch me,” I promised myself as the echo of the men’s voices reached me.

They had already stripped the figure of his backpack, but now they were going through his pockets and pulling his boots off. I knew how miserable it was when my shoes were dying and the soles had started to separate, but I couldn’t imagine walking the hot streets without shoes. My heart went out to the dead or almost dead man and I felt a stab of sympathy. If I wasn’t so scared and so hungry, I’d rush out right now and see if I could give the Call of Duty equivalent of a stim pack to the poor man.

Instead, I waited and waited. He didn’t move. I felt horrible as I realized I had watched the man’s death, because he’d quit moving and twitching once the bikers had left and just laid there in the dirt.

“Shit.” I muttered before grabbing my pack, intending to leave as soon as I could.

I went out the back door, cracking it opening and listening. I didn’t hear anything in the night air, so I closed the door silently behind me. I was ravenously hungry, but I didn’t want stop. I moved through the hedge to the next yard and I heard the echoes of the Harleys fading away somewhere to the North West. I ran into the doorway of the porch of the next house and crouched behind the railing and the hedge that covered it halfway up. Lights rose and fell from the bikes left the area. I was surprised by how far noise and light shone in this new world, but not as much as I was surprised by the violence and depravity of people.

“This is so not like a video game,” I muttered to myself as I checked the door and let myself into the house.

It took me thirty minutes to toss the house, and there was literally nothing left. It looked like it had been only partially moved into, as the kitchen and master bedroom were the only rooms that had any sort of furnishings. The kitchen was a mess, but not of food… Empty takeout containers littered the floor and a foul funk hung in the air as the food had obviously rotted, then petrified in the heat. Thousands of dead flies covered every surface and were a thick carpet on the window sill.

I tried not to gag, but something outside the window caught my attention and I got closer to all the dead bugs, one of my biggest gag causers in the course of womankind. The dead man wasn’t as dead as I thought. His legs were kicking and his arms were moving. He was trying to roll himself over, and his movements looked uncoordinated and slow.

“Oh shit,” I muttered to myself for probably the thousandth time since the power went out.

Do I help him? Do I go to him? Is he a rapist? Murderer? Cursing myself a fool and reminding myself this isn’t a death match of Halo, I made my way slowly out of the house wishing I had more than a pocket knife. The knife I had gotten out, more to comfort myself than to be used as a defensive tool. The streets were empty and silent and the only thing I saw moving other than the man’s legs was an empty McDonald’s bag blowing through the streets.

“I shouldn’t be doing this.”

But I did. It took me two careful minutes to inch my way to the man who was groaning. I knelt down, seeing the ruin of his face and the way his hands looked mangled and twisted from the big stompy boots of the biker gang. I looked closer and realized only a couple of fingers were broken, but they were broken badly.

“Hey, hey,” I nudged the man in what I hoped was an uninjured spot near his right shoulder.

His eyes flickered and then opened wide in fear. His moth dropped open to scream, but consciousness fled him and he passed out. I held my fingers to his throat and felt a strong, steady pulse. I was going to lean in close to see if I could tell if he was breathing, but the pungent vapors of his breath told me he was, and had, drank quite a bit.

“Hey, are you ok?” I nudged him again.

His eyes fluttered and he rolled to his side and vomited. I stood up and backed off until he was done, groaning and holding his left side with his uninjured hand. I waited, sickened by the stench of booze and blood. After a while he stilled, then rolled to his back, wiping his mouth off with a dirt smeared shirt sleeve.

“Kid?”

“Yeah?” I asked, trying to get in eyesight of him.

“Can you help me up?”

That took me back. I felt a stab of pure fear hit me low in the stomach, almost as crippling as the cramps had been earlier. I stepped back and looked him over. He was mid to late thirties, sandy brown hair still somewhat close cropped somehow. It was hard to take in the features of his face as bloody, cut up and bruised as it was, but his hazel eyes pierced me and a quirky smile lit his features when he caught me looking. He was a big man, not huge like the big biker but as big as my father had been. I swallowed, trying to decide how to answer, to determine if he was a threat, if he was one of the bad—

“Please?” he asked and my heart melted.

I folded the knife and put it in my pocket. I knelt down, letting my knees pop as I bent with them, bracing myself and I held my hands out. Gently, he took them and I was surprised at how weakly he seemed to pull. I added my weight and pulled back hard. He barely moved but I was finally able to get him into a sitting position. He hiccupped and dry heaved again, and I moved before he could splatter my shoes. He didn’t so I sighed in relief and got behind him, trying to pick him up from the armpits. The stench of booze was almost as overpowering as the smell of blood and body odor.

It had been a while since I’d gotten a proper cleaning and I’d planned on wading into the ocean later that night or the next day to give myself and my clothing a good scrub, but this guy had obviously been without for days. I fought down my gorge and held my breath as he drunkenly made it to his feet.

“Thanks kid,” he said through lips thick and fat from the blows earlier, blood running down his cheek.

“No problem. Do you uh… Do you need any more help?” I asked him, not wanting to bail out on him before he could snag someplace safe.

“I don’t know. How long was I out?”

How should I know? I wanted to scream, but then checked my snark because I sort of did know.

“Almost two hours according to the sunlight.”

“Damn. Can you help me get to my safe house?” the man asked me, his words hard to decipher.

“You have a safe place?”

“Yes, two miles away. Bastards robbed me. Probably took the shit inside the club too,” he told me, looking over his shoulder.

“Yeah, they went inside and carried a bunch of stuff out.

He cursed far more than a man who looked half dead should. I snickered at his creativity. My dad could swear, but this guy could use the F bomb as an adjective, noun, pronoun - and properly in a prepositional phrase. The geek in me cheered but in the end I was still horrified by the situation. He got to his feet painfully and tried to take a step. It didn’t work well, and he fell towards his left side as his face contorted in a rictus of pain.

“Ok, well can you lead me to your safe place?” I asked him.

“Yeah, come here and get my side. I’ll give you a good meal if you help me. Does that sound fair?” the man asked me.

The fear was back and it was huge. I knew the man was hurt and hurt badly, but was he hurt enough to take me? Time and time again I was surprised how low people could get, but this guy seemed sincere. Stinky, but sincere. If he tried anything, I’d kick his ass.

“Yeah, a good meal.” I told him, my stomach already rumbling and I tried not to drool as I got under his left armpit to hold him up.

I tried not to gag at his smell, but it was a close thing. Slowly we made our way out of the parking lot. I asked him about using the hedges as cover but he told me if Reno’s gang came back to run and let him die. That seemed both heroic and strange so I let it go. Maybe he wasn’t such an asshat.

“You’re serious?” I asked him, looking into the pitch black garage through a dark window.

“Yeah, it’s inside there. I have supplies and some bedding.”

“You expect me to go in there, alone, in the dark?” I asked again, worried about a trap.

“Listen kid, I can’t crawl through that window. I think I’ve got a busted rib or two,” he said, motioning with shaking hands.

“You sure that’s all that’s wrong with you?” I asked him, taking his hand until the trembling stopped.

“Yeah, just… Pull the release on the garage door opener then you can roll up the door.”

I swore and pushed my backpack into the dark opening of the window, listening to it fall. I climbed in when I felt his hand on my ass. I almost screamed out in outrage and shock, but he was just boosting me through. I about fell on my face, but I caught my feet in the window as I was going head first down and got my hands up to finish the job of pulling myself in.

“Watch your hands, asshole,” I snarled out the window, trying to get my bearings.

“What did I do?” he asked absentmindedly.

I barked my shins on something right away, but I felt the rope and handle slap me in the face. It was just about exactly where he told me it would be. I pulled and felt the catch release. By feel, I worked my way to where the roll up door was, and felt along the right hand track until I found the lock. I flicked a lever on the top and the door rolled up two inches of its own accord, and pale moonlight shone in.

“Hurry,” I told him as the door rolled up with my gentle nudging of my foot.

“Thanks, kid,” The man said, shuffling inside.

The garage had one side full of a golf cart and trailer full of boxes. I could make that much out in the moonlight before he was closing the door, plunging us into absolute darkness again.

“Uh… so, what’s your name?” I asked him nervously, just wanting to hear his voice so I could get a read on where he was at in the darkness.

“Donald, or Don. You?” He asked, a Zippo lighting up his torn features as he flicked it on.

I felt something, almost relief or hope. I wasn’t overly religious but I dabbled with Catholicism when my parents pissed me off when I first got my license. I remembered far more scripture than they would have liked, as it wasn’t the prayers of Nintendo, Mario, Sega, Sony or Microsoft. The gods of gaming. The lords of the digital world. In the end, I caught a little religion, but hope and faith was something that stuck with me.

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you,” I said smiling, half wondering if I should tell him or not.

“I have to call you something.” He said, moving to the shelves and pulling down to garbage bags.

I watched in fascination as he opened them and pulled out some heavy duty foam pads and put them on the concrete floor. Next he took the blackened piece of cardboard and put that in the window before grabbing a big candle from the same shelf and lighting it, closing his Zippo.

“Well… you can call me Z. All my friends do.” I told him, feeling self-conscious and part of me wanted to tug at my hair, but as I made the motion all I found was my cheek.

Damn it, why was I suddenly feeling girly? I needed to be on my toes and tough.

“Z? Are you making fun of me?” The man asked, a hint of anger in his voice.

“Making fun of you? No, why would I?”

“I go by Don. You’re asking me to call you Z. I know you helped me kid, but I kinda took you back to my bat cave with my stash. You trying to lay one over on me? Kill me in my sleep?”

His eyes were piercing and they held me in place. If there had been any intent to make fun of him in my heart, I probably would have been scared witless, but in reality, my first name did in fact start with Z.

“No, I’m not joking.” I told him softly.

“Well shit. Don and little Z,” he said cryptically, and pulled a cut up tin can and a foil wrapped soup can off the shelf.

He sat on the pad Indian style and unwrapped the smaller can and the fumes of gasoline wafted to me. I was going to scream a warning but he lit it and it flamed up, but not like I had feared. He put the cut up Folgers can over top of it and then pulled out a couple of cans. One was instant stew and the other was a medium sized can of mixed fruit. It wasn’t the bigger cans like you sometimes buy canned pasta sauce in, but more like the middle size like crushed pineapple came in.

The sight of that froze me.

“The stew is for you. I’m going to have some Veggie-Links and half that fruit. Does that sound like a square deal?” He asked me, starting to open the can of stew.

“Deal.”

“Good, I do have a favor to ask you though.”

“Yes?” I asked, feeling my heart drop into my stomach, waiting for the proposition.

“Can you help bandage me up? My fingers are busted and…” the stranger broke off and started weeping.

I sat there in shock. The entire walk over had been agonizing for the man, but here he was safe and sitting with cooking food and he was losing his shit. He’s supposed to be the adult here. Wait, I’m an adult! Shit!

“Uh... Don, what’s wrong?” I asked him, un-nerved.

“You should have left me out there,” he said, sobbing.

“Why? You would have died.”

“Yes.” Don said simply, stunning me into silence.

“Let me look at your hands.” I asked him, watching as he uncurled his legs, putting the small stove thing between his legs.

He hesitated a moment and held his hand out to me. I pulled my pack close and got my flashlight out so I could see better than in the flickering stove’s weak light. Two of his fingers were swollen and twisted. Broke for sure. I pulled my first aid kit out and dug through it until I found two popsicle sticks and a roll of tape.

“I know it’s going to hurt, so would you grab me a bottle from the cart over there?” he asked as I resigned myself to the gross task ahead.

“What?” I had almost started.

“Booze. This is going to hurt bad. I don’t want to do this straight,” he murmured.

I pushed my pack out of the way and found the box in the cart. I did a double and triple take when I looked inside. Not only was this box full of bottles of booze, but so was half of the trailer. Hundreds of bottles. Thousands? No… There was quite a few cases of canned food in there too. I pulled a bottle of Bacardi out of the first open box and worked the cap free, handing him the bottle. I expected him to down it, but he took two quick slugs and then handed it back to me with his good hand. Once I capped it, he gave me the hand with the broken fingers.

I tried not to gulp and show my horror, but I put the cap back on and gently took his hand in mine. The middle and pointer were twisted and swollen. I held his wrist with one hand and gently pulled on his middle finger with mine while he grunted and began sweating. I felt more than I heard the bones click back into place and it was so gross I almost vomited. I buried my mouth in my shoulder and tried to get the dry heaves under control as Don sweated and cursed.

I knew he wanted the bottle back, he was motioning with his free hand, but I was going to lose my nerve if I didn’t finish quickly. I took his other finger and pulled a little faster. The pop was even louder than the first and Don bit down a scream that only half vocalized. Quick as I could, I put popsicles sticks under his fingers and taped them up. I broke off the excess of the sticks, then taped the fingers together to immobilize them.

“Oh my god, that’s bad…” Don said, starting to dry heave himself.

For the first time that night, I wondered how much this man had already drunk, and if the alcohol would kill him with what looked like an obvious concussion. Real life had very little to do with the gaming world, and I was learning that first hand here. Who knew setting bones made a man cry and almost puke? Not this girl.

“Here,” I handed him the bottle, knowing it’s better to be numb than in pain.

Maybe in death we could all find peace?

“Thanks, kid,” He took a long pull and then almost jumped back as the can of stew bubbled out of the can, almost splattering his crotch.

“Shit!” I muttered reaching for the can.

He swatted my hands away with his good one and threw a dirty rag to me.

“What the hell, man?” I asked, outraged.

“It’ll burn your hands, stupid.”

My cheeks burned, but I doubt the drunk noticed it in the dim lighting. I wrapped the rag around the can and pulled it off. I used my camping spoon to stir it and blew on it, watching the man, still on guard. He pulled out a fork from a pocket and opened a small can with a pull tab. He dug out short hot dog looking things nestled in a thick film of fat or gelatin. I shuddered at the gross look and stirred my stew some more.

“You want a drink?” Don broke the silence, holding the bottle to me.

With disgust, I noticed the bottle was almost 1/3 gone already.

“No, thanks.”

“Ok, more for me. I think I have a case of Gatorade if you don’t want to drain your water jugs there,” Don pointed to the trailer.

“I’m good for now.” I lied.

“Ok, well, there’s one more thing.”

Oh boy, I was waiting for this. I gripped the knife in my pocket and half it halfway opened with a flick of the hand when he spoke.

“I can’t tell how bad my ribs are. Can you help me take my shirt off? It hurts too bad to move that arm.”

Really? I looked into his eyes and saw nothing but pain and fear, not at all what you’d expect to see if a man was a blood-thirsty rapist.

“Yeah,” I told him after a long hesitation. “You better not be a creeper.”

Agonizing moments later, he sat there, his body already turning purple. The side of his chest was a mass of bruise so dark I couldn’t tell where one stopped and the next started. I touched the ribs on his thin chest and he winced about three down. I sat behind him because he began trembling and used my legs to steady his shaking body, keeping his waist pinned with my knees. He could have moved, but he didn’t. He sat there and let me feel the breaks and bruises.

“You’re in bad shape.” I told him softly.

“I know,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking about his injuries or…

He didn’t smell so bad with the shirt off, perhaps it was something foul he had spilled on him, or sweat from the bikers. Don was slightly out of shape, but I could tell that there had once been some serious muscles on this man. His shoulders were broad and his waist was narrow in comparison, and faint scars peppered his back in places. I pulled my first aid kit to me and pulled out gauze and hydrogen peroxide. He had more cuts and dings than I had at first thought, and his left ear was a mass of dried blood. An infection in this day and age would be lethal unless I could find some sort of antibiotic and I’d already run out of triple antibiotic ointment long ago from using them on my own blisters.

Don grunted in pain here and there as I slowly washed him clean in the flickering light, putting patches over him until he seemed like he was half covered like a mummy. The entire time, he took small sips from the rum bottle, and twice offered some to me. I of course told him no and he joked that I was too young.

One last spot to clean, I ran my left hand through his hair to find where the blood that was matting above the ear was coming from when his body relaxed and he slid backwards, his back almost pinning me to the wall behind him.

“Great, he passed out,” I muttered.

Really though, it was probably easier this way. I’d clean him up and sneak out of here when it was safe. He’d wake up sore, alive and alone. That’s what I thought, but as the flickering light of the stove started to dim, I realized I was somewhat comfortable leaning on my pack and the weight of the man keeping me warm. I hoped the candle would stay lit…

“You’re a girl,” a rusty voice said, startling me awake.

“Well, yeah,” I admitted and pushed myself backwards as Don leaned forward.

“Shit, I’m sorry. That didn’t sound polite, did it?” He pulled the mostly empty rum bottle to his lips.

“No, it didn’t. How can you drink this time of day?” I asked him standing up and stretching.

One thing about getting hydrated, you suddenly have to use the bathroom a lot more than you do when you are dehydrated. I looked around the garage in panic.

“It’s easy. I hurt, so I drink.” He said simply. My eyes made it to the corner where I saw a bucket with a toilet seat fashioned to it.

Don followed my gaze to the bucket and he nodded. “Facilities are over there. For modesty, you can always pull it behind the trailer.”

I grimaced. No way, not in here, not with him watching. Even if he wasn’t watching.

“Can I take it inside the house? Wait, is there a toilet in there?” I asked him suddenly confused on why he didn’t use the bathroom in the house.

“Go ahead, but the bathroom in there is plugged up. I’d use one of the bedrooms unless you want to gag.”

I already wanted to gag, but I hurried and grabbed the empty bucket and unlocked the adjoining door. As soon as I cracked it, bright sunlight flooded the garage, almost blinding me. I put my hand up to cover my eyes and pushed my way inside. Five blessed minutes later I was coming back into the garage to find that Don had the small stove already refilled and relit somehow. He was wiping his body down with a package of baby wipes that had been on the shelf, being careful to avoid the bandages.

“You’ll have to teach me your soup mixture trick sometime,” I said, thinking of Rebel Radio for the first time that day. “Blake would know how to do this,” I thought to myself.

“You know kid, it isn’t all that hard. Gasoline and Styrofoam. Makes napalm. Stabilized, for the most part. Burns hot and won’t hardly go out. Don’t cook meat or something on it like a charcoal grill though, it’ll make you sick. It’s good for soup cans or boiling water.” He took another long pull, finishing off the rest of the Bacardi before capping the bottle and pushing it out of the way.

“Oh… Do you need some help uh… putting your shirt back on?” I asked him, not wanting to stare at the wreckage of his body.

“Maybe eventually. It’s going to be hot today and I don’t think I can move much. I think I’m going to spend half a day lying down. Would… you wouldn’t mind sticking around a little bit longer, would you?”

His words were raw and they hit something deep inside me. I almost agreed immediately but the practical side of me screamed caution. He could still be a creeper.

“Maybe. We’ll see how it goes,” I told him.

Don gave me a look and nodded.

“You know, Reno and his guys are going to be pissed when they go back and find me gone,” Don started to chuckle but stopped as a grimace of pain replaced the look of amusement.

“Why? Why did they do that to you?” I asked him curious.

In honesty, I was ready to believe anything but I was still curious if this stranger knew why.

“Old grudge from years ago. I think they meant to kill me this time,” he said, looking longingly at the open box on the cart.

I followed his gaze and grabbed another fifth sized bottle of rum and handed it to him. He smiled at me and surprised me again by taking two small drinks before putting it down.

“How did you know, that I was a girl I mean. You called me kid.”

This one was bugging me; was it when he grabbed my ass? Was he peeking in on me in my sleep or…

“When I woke up, I felt your uh… Well, through your shirt. You were bound up like a girl. Figured bras were hard to find in the zombie apoc.”

“There’s no zombies,” I said, feeling my skin blush in the darkened room.

“Yeah, well, sorry. I didn’t mean to pass out on you last night. Your, uh… You working on me, relaxed me… Shit, I’m not saying this right.”

“It’s ok, don’t worry about it,” I muttered, embarrassed for some reason.

“No it isn’t ok. I’m sorry I passed out… and thank you for taking care of me. I’d probably be dead if it wasn’t for you. I’m grateful, and when I was feeling my most low, you were there for me.” He took another quick swing.

I was half melting and half disgusted at his drinking. It was his drunken behavior that had probably gotten him caught and here I was wanting to mother up on a guy who was probably almost twice my age. Get some ovaries! I scolded myself.

“It’s cool, don’t worry Don.”

“Z, really. Thank you, kiddo,” Don said taking a sip and then capping it and pushing the bottle to me.

He laid down and started to snore softly, moments later.

“Really? You’re going to lay that shit on me and pass out?” I was more than a bit mildly pissed.

Later on that day I helped him stand and get to the bucket and back to the garage afterwards. We ate another hasty meal and we actually split the can of fruit like he promised the night before. A couple days passed like this, and I ventured into the house to refill my canteens with the water heater. Donald gave me a knowing look and went back to sipping whatever bottle of the moment had in his hand. How anybody could function drinking booze off and on all day was beyond me.

One day I woke up hearing movement and was surprised to see Don on his feet on his own.

“You ok? Do you need a hand?” I asked, seeing the pain in his eyes.

“No, no, I’m good.”

He was gone for a long time, and I was going to go check on him when he appeared in the doorway, shame-faced.

“We need a new bucket from the shelf there for next time,” he said, holding up the toilet seat.

I grinned at the crude humor, but in truth, that bucket was pretty ripe smelling no matter what we poured over the top of the waste. He’d warned me not to open any of the closed buckets in the house. This had been an emergency bolt hole for a long time for him.

Then it hit me. In this small world after the EMP and the bombs I heard in the distance, this was what the rest of humanity was like, at least around here. Drunks, thugs, rapists and murderers. I longed to get on the radio again, but I’d been holding that little piece of information a secret. Giving up everything can sometimes be a dangerous proposition, I reasoned.

“You know, you really should switch to water some,” I told him, meaning it to be a joke, but Don’s face fell and it almost looked like dark storm clouds passed over his face.

“You should mind your own business, you’d probably live longer,” his words were just as sharp and painful to hear, and I hated the fact that he was partially correct.

That pissed me off, not that he was partially correct, but that it hit a nerve.

“Really? How about this? If you weren’t dead drunk the other day, you probably would have heard Reno’s guys instead of getting half killed.” I knew I shouldn’t, but the words I’d been thinking over and over just spilled out, like pus from a lanced sore.

“You know what kid? Go to hell.” Don snatched up a bottle of tequila from the trailer and downed a lot more than the two or three short sips I’d become accustomed to seeing him drink at a shot.

We settled into an uneasy silence and didn’t speak for the rest of the day. It was uncomfortable, and dinner was a quiet affair. Don seemed to drink less than normal, but he’d done much to demolish that bottle of Cuervo earlier, so maybe it balanced out. All I knew, was he was up and on his own, so maybe I could trade him some stuff for some food and go the other way?

That made me stop and pause. I didn’t want to leave him, not like this. His drinking and lack of self-control disgusted me in a way that was aggravating, because it was so constant that it grated on my nerves until I wanted to scream. Part of me was also strangely attracted to him, the first man since all of this happened who knew I was a woman and ignored the fact. He even blew me off except for the one occasion he acknowledged my help and thanked me. He seemed embarrassed by that and that pissed me off even more, but not so much that I wanted to leave; but I probably needed to, didn’t I?

I tossed and turned for hours that night and my dreams were horrible, chasing me awake many, many times.

Chapter Four

Don –

I watched her toss and turn in an uneasy sleep. The kid had spunk, and she’d stayed around when I gave her the cold shoulder yesterday. She was starting to grow on me, and that only made the pangs of guilt that much sharper; the bite, that much deeper. Every time she pulled away or put distance between us, I figured it was because of her disgust with me. Hell, my lack of self-control was horrible and it disgusted me too! I found myself drinking less and listening more. Hearing another voice, even a feminine one, was a welcome change, though it was painful in the memories.

It was because of the guilt and my growing fondness that I decided to up and leave her here. She could have my backup spot. I’d take the sleeping pad I had, and leave her the rest of this place. I was still too busted up and sore to go out through the window, so I decided to just use the roll up door and hope to make my getaway. I don’t know if I could take tears, not that I was sure she’d shed any for me.

She had turned out to be a kind kid, and very attentive, even when keeping her distance and snarking at me for drinking or making some obscure video game reference that I didn’t understand… Making sure my ear wasn’t going to fall off, or the multitude of cuts got infected. Hell, she probably saved my life a dozen or more times already. That’s why I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t tell her why I was like I was. I couldn’t explain to her that I was already ashamed of myself and I’d tried to quit. I couldn’t tell her how much I wish Reno would have just killed me, because that’d put a burden on her that nobody deserved. More than anything else, I didn’t want to have to tell her that I didn’t blame her for being disgusted with me.

Opening the overhead door was a lot quieter than I thought. Z stirred a little bit, but was soon snoring softly again, sounding like a kitten’s purr. I tried not to cry out in pain as I pushed the golf cart and trailer partially out of the garage before I had to stop as the pain got too bad. I remembered how quiet the motor was and decided to just try it. It fired right up quietly and I backed out of the garage. I got the door closed and debated figuring a way to lock it, but in the end I just left. It was probably the lowest and most cowardly moment in my life and part of me hoped that someday if Z survived, she’d forgive me for leaving her without notice.

I looked down at the pink clear water bottle next to me on the seat, an impulsive move on my part. With it, I could remember her, at least until her memory faded. The woman-child who had saved me. I drove on, going to the edge of the city into the industrial section. The bridge had been renovated in the sixties and held an open secret. Back in the cold war, bomb and fallout shelters were added or improved to existing shelters. Charleston, being a seaboard town, had already had bomb shelters, but this one was something a little extra special.

It was enough for a dozen families and had been built at great expense but, when the cold war ended, it was almost forgotten. I’d inspected it before it was decommissioned, that’s how I knew what it was. By decommissioned, it was shut down, locked up and forgotten. Someday when they rebuilt the bridge they may do something with it, but the EMP happened and from a quirk of circumstance, I found myself living there two weeks before it happened. I’d arranged to have a copy of the keys. At the time, I had no idea why, but I did.

When my wife and I were fighting years ago, I’d go there, in the quiet and solitude and listen to the river move around the concrete supports and rock the shelter was built into. The shelter door was on the riverside, down a narrow ledge and it opened into a large room. From there, there was a small bunkhouse with dozens of cots built into the wall. The next room was a combination storage/kitchen area. I had my Coleman stove setup there, along with a turkey friar bottom and dozens of propane tanks Id scavenged from the city.

My food was in boxes by the back wall; it one of the first things I looted after booze. I’d gotten lucky and emptied out a house near mine, where some friends who belonged to the Church of Latter Day Saints had lived. They had what looked like almost three pickup trucks worth of food and then some. Since I didn’t have a truck, moving that much stuff took me weeks with a wheelbarrow. I don’t know what happened to them, but they never came back and I took everything that was left behind. That’s how I truly thought of life though, what was left behind.

It took me all day to move everything into the shelter with a hand trolley, my ribs screaming at me in pain. I stashed the golf cart and trailer in an old Muffler Man and pulled the ignition wire and took the key. A cursory glance would show that it was just one more broke down dead to the world machine in a world of dead machines. I rolled the door down and made my way carefully towards the bridge, feeling my hands start to shake and the dry thirst that started low in my gut, and dried my lips out. I rubbed them, wishing I had brought something with me, anything.

I got back inside my bolt hole and locked it, throwing panic bars up and over it with solid chunks of steel I’d scavenged from a nearby demolition and dragged myself into the kitchen area to find a bottle. I considered food, but the guilt, the pain and the thirst had me wanting almost nothing else. A sleeve of stale saltines was snagged to compliment my second bottle of Cuervo and I made my way into the second to the last room in the shelter. It was my room, a place I carved out just for me.

A queen sized bed was set up on one side of the room with a dozen comforters and pillows thrown haphazardly on the bed. Empty boxes had been filled with booze bottles and rinsed out tin cans. I didn’t want it to stink in here, but I didn’t want to shove all my garbage in a closet somewhere, I needed to keep it in sight until I felt good enough to take care of it somewhere.

One of my bigger fears though, was where to dispose of it. Too much in one spot is evidence of a survivor nearby, spread it around too much and you risk being seen. I was half tempted to sink it in the river below to be washed out to sea, but enough garbage had been thrown into the river to last a lifetime. So, I rinsed everything out and stored it until I could figure things out.

As busted up as I was, I had a long time to figure things. The booze helped settle my brain and make me tired enough to start to forget. I took another long pull from the bottle and laid down on the end of my bed, my legs dangling off. I stared at the cracked cement ceiling and asked myself for the thousandth time, why? Why did this have to happen? Sadly, I wasn’t talking about the EMP.

Days quickly passed and my ribs started turning rainbow hues of brown, yellow and gold. I did the best I could and put a couple ace bandages on them after taping them up. I hated to admit it, but I really could have used Z’s help getting it done. If my wife was still around, she would have helped too, at least she would have a few years back. Now it was too late. I looked at the pink water bottle sitting on the stack of wooden crates across the bed, and felt a stab of pain. Was it the day?

I took a long swig, letting the alcohol numb me, making my thoughts slow to manageable levels, and I went into the last room of the bunker, the one where the utilities were. A small turbine was spun from diverted river water. The filters weren’t hooked up, but they pumped fresh air into the bunker, preventing it from becoming dank and stagnant. In war times, the filters were put on and it would work well to keep fallout away. Some of the diverted water went into a large cistern built into the furthermost wall, where the old charcoal filters were still in use. The water was pulled from runoff and the river and, after going through a literal ton of gravel, sand and activated charcoal, it was safe to drink.

It was also the room where a crude shower and toilet had been hooked up. It was a thousand more times elegant than the garage I’d spent the last few days in, recovering from the beating. I debated another shower but my eyes stopped at the noose, the stool. How many times had I found myself up there, the knot just under my ear? How many times did I look at the light bulb in the wire cage almost at eye level, the hook the rope was tied off to, and wonder if I could do it this time.

I started to climb on the stool and almost fell over in agony as the pain in my ribs protested my movements.

“Nope, not today,” I said, partially relieved, partially horrified at my continued existence despite my cowardice.

I flopped back down on the bed and took another long pull of the bottle. Vodka. Nothing else, just vodka. I caught sight of the pink water bottle again and closed my eyes, trying to picture Z. Small, waifish. Even with her hair cut short and her diminutive size, you could still tell she was a beautiful woman, young but beautiful. Hell, she was probably already a grown up judging by the looks she gave me when I called her kid. Maybe she was nineteen or twenty. Piercing blue eyes, almost startling. When she spoke, you could hear the deep timbre of her voice, shocking when it came out of such a small bundle.

I had no frame of reference in her shape or figure, she was always layered up six ways to Sunday and I felt like a creep even thinking about her. She was too young and I was still too raw to have the feelings I had. She was kind, and I could still feel the way her fingers ran through my hair, cleaning the cut over my ear and then the one in my ear. Such kindnesses that not even my wife would have given me.

There, I thought it, and it hurt. She was probably dead and long gone, but she even didn’t even treat me as well as Z had. Our young daughter hadn’t been as unkind as my wife had been, but in the end, she was gone too. So my feelings were complicated and Z hit every raw nerve ending I had left. I ran because of that, and now in my solitude and misery, she was still making me feel the pain. I couldn’t take that fall off the stool, not only was I too chicken, I had a debt I needed to repay to her. As painful as life was, I wanted to live it now.

Getting the little johnboat out of the big storage room wasn’t bad, but it hurt. My ribs complained, even when I let the boat slide down the narrow ledge into the water. I kept the rope tied to the front in my hand, and pulled the boat to the edge where I could get in. I got a pole I stashed here for this purpose and polled upstream slowly. I had half a dozen cans of sardines, a few rolls of kite string and a few fishing hooks. I kept my net tucked into the supports of the boat until needed, so I didn’t have to carry it around. I baited a hook and tied it off on a piece of kite string, tying off a ten foot section on the back handle of the boat. I began poling further upstream to where I had stashed my traps.

Part of the reason I had survived so long was by staying hidden. I might be a raging alcoholic, but I’m not an idiot. I took a pull of vodka and lowered a mesh bag from my backpack into the cooler water of the brackish river. The water would cool the vodka and bottle of water from my house. Ten minutes of poling and a small yellow streamer reminded me where my traps were. The spot moved, and I always moved the streamers when I chose a new hiding places.

The six traps were quickly stored into the flat bottomed boat, their ropes and floats coiled neatly atop of them. I got back out into deep water and polled more up stream. Finding a likely spot, I took out a can of sardines and a piece of old nylons from a pocket. I cut one end of the nylons off and tied it and then dumped the can of sardines inside it and tied the other end. I put the bait into its central compartment, checked the depth with my pole and tossed the trap overboard, making sure the trap entrances were in line with the current coming or going.

I repeated this three more times when I felt a gentle tugging on the boat behind me. I pulled on the kite string behind me and smiled as the water splashed. I’d hooked a red drum by the look of it, almost a month earlier than I’d expect them to be this far up the river. I pulled him in, grateful that I wouldn’t have to waste two more cans of sardines. I smacked the fish in the head with the edge of the boat and put the baited hook back into the water. I cut the fish in half roughly and put him into the remaining traps.

I know the fish itself was edible and delicious, but I was going after something else. Something that would pay me threefold for the two foot long fish. Besides, going on living and finding a spot of happiness is what my daughter would have wanted of me. Little comforts like this would go a long way to improving my attitude.

I was throwing the last of the traps in when I felt the tugging at the back of the boat. Again, another fish. I pulled the line in to find a medium sized sheepshead. I poked it in the head with my knife and smiled. Maybe my change of heart was paying off already. I baited the hook and put it back out and let myself drift back downstream, dreaming about cutting the noose down from the hook.

If or when I saw Z again someday, I’d have to thank her. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I considered the bottle of vodka I’d pulled up to my lips without thinking about it, and capped it, grabbing the pink water bottle instead.

The fish fried up well. I couldn’t believe I ate both fillets. After doing the dishes in the crude sink, I headed to the back room. I stared at the hateful noose and wooden stool that hadn’t moved in weeks. If I hesitated more, I’d lose my nerve, so I climbed up on the stool and opened the noose. I stared it for a long time, knowing what I really wanted to do. With my mind made up, I ran the knife blade through the loop, slicing through it. I then cut it down from the hook, letting it fall to the floor. I put the knife in the sheath and let that fall also. My hands were too shaky to trust otherwise, and I slowly got off the stool without falling. I knew deep down that I couldn’t just quit the drinking entirely, my body wouldn’t physically allow it, but I could work at it. Stronger men had done it and survived. So would I.

I took in my features in the mirror by the shower and noticed I’d lost even more weight than last time. No wonder I could eat both fillets. If I was going to turn my life around, I had to stay healthy. I hopped into the shower for the first time in a while and pulled a safety razor out for a shave that was a long time coming. I’d make it up to the world somehow. Never had the old phrase that god took care of drunks and idiots been more poignant. For me, he was leaving the door open for guys like me, to find redemption.

Chapter Five

Z –

The morning I woke up alone I cried. The shock of being left without a word almost hurt as much as finding out that Don stole my water bottle. After all I had done for that man, taking care of him, cleaning his cuts… Finding the baby wipes so he didn’t smell like twice rotten rancid ass. The water bottle didn’t even make any sense to me once I realized he left a couple days’ worth of food here. Was he some sort of sadistic asshole? The point was, I was alone again and despite how tough I thought I was, I was afraid.

I locked the door and tried to decide what to do. The roar of Harleys had me running to the roll up door to peek out the edge of a window. A long string of bikes, riding side by side, rolled down the street, not pausing, not stopping. The roar of those bikes had my heart beating hard, almost giving me a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. Fear, true fear. I recognized the man who killed the soldier with the shotgun, his long black beard blowing over his right shoulder as he roared past my hiding spot, the one who had stomped Don almost to death.

I noticed the garage door was unlocked, so I slid the lock in place quietly, even though I was positive they couldn’t hear it. I stared out the corner of the window for what felt like hours before I wandered over to my pack to see what else Don had stolen. It took me a few minutes but I didn’t find anything gone. In fact, I found a melted Hershey’s bar still in its wrapping. I was positive I hadn’t seen any chocolate in a long long time.

I was hot, I was pissed and I was stumped. Why would he steal the water bottle but leave me a bar of chocolate? That wasn’t even a fair trade, although I might have gleefully taken on one of those bikers for it…

I sighed and tried to come up with a plan. Where to go now? Stay here? Maybe Don was planning on coming back? I had my immediate needs met and, with nothing else to do, I sat down and looked through what Don had left on the shelf. Two soup cans with foil lids were next to the small hobo stove. I opened them and found them both full of the gel. There had only been one can before, and it was almost used up cooking soup last night. Had he left them for me?

Anger turned into confusion and then wonder. My emotions and fears were starting to overwhelm me, and I pulled my knees to my chest and rocked and started to imagine playing my father’s favorite game. It was an old game on the original Nintendo console, Contra. I still remembered the cheat code to get 99 lives. Up up down down left right left right B A B A (select button if you wanted two players) and then start. I hadn’t had to play with the cheat code in a decade but the game was soothing, even in memory. I avoided the panic attack and laid down, pulling the radio from my pack and turning it on for the first time in days.

Rebel Radio was already on, and a man I hadn’t heard before, David, was talking with Patty and other survivors, sharing stories, listening to shout outs to friends and family. Folks checking in to find out if their loved ones had gone into some of the camps or were just gone. Patty shared much of her experiences with Neal and that made me sit up straight and listen in harder. I could tell by her shift in tone of voice that Neal was somebody she cared about, and she was sad. Was he somebody she lost?

“How did you get food while you were traveling?” I asked her after she stopped talking.

“Well, we had a small cache, but we hunted frogs, made some small traps. Things like that.” Patty told her, forgetting to say over.

I listened to the silence and considered eating a frog, or its legs, I assumed. I almost gagged at the thought, but I had food for now. When I was hungry again, it might be something worth looking into.

“Thanks for the idea! Over,” I said, trying not to sound grossed out.

Redbull, Ramen and Skittles had been my mainstay until a couple months ago. The new diet and lifestyle left me miserable, but I could now say what real hunger was, and it started to color my outlook. My days were measured with how many times I got to eat, if at all. I’m sure there was all kinds of food around me, especially in the swamps and sea by the sound of it, but I just didn’t know how. I listened to the radio all day, only pausing long enough to set the radio aside and cook on the small soup can stove.

I first noticed the red light start blinking later on that day and almost panicked. Two, I had two of these. I quickly found the second one and turned it on. The red light glowed and it was slightly louder than the first one. I almost sobbed in relief and turned it off to let the other one go. If it still had battery, then it would be fine for a little while yet.

I studied the second radio, looking for the battery compartment, looking at how the battery went in. It wasn’t like anything else I’d ever seen battery wise, so I closed it and checked out the connections. It had a round hole for an AC/DC jack and a USB outlet. If I could figure out how to get it hooked up I could recharge it. I smiled, confident, and figured I’d ask sometime the next day when I had to start using up the battery in the second one.

The sound of un-muffled Harleys woke me in a panic and, for a moment, I was sure that they were here for me. They smelled the food I’d cooked earlier, or noticed something out of place. I ran to the windows and peeked out to see the last in the string of Harleys roaring down the road. No wonder Don moved on; it must be really close to their home base.

That thought sent a jolt of pain through me, and I remembered the chocolate. I’d laid it out on the concrete floor, the coolest part of the room, and found it mostly solid according to touch. I opened it with shaking fingers and devoured it. I even licked the wrapper clean, letting the chocolaty goodness soothe my body and raw nerves. Whoever said chocolate was made to subdue women was lying. It was used to soothe women, to keep us from taking over the world.

I turned on the second radio, and listened to the frequency that Rebel Radio was broadcasting on. I immediately perked up as people talked about odd places to find food. I had probably passed dozens of semi-trucks that had pallets and pallets of food. If I had a crowbar or some bolt cutters – hell, even some pliers - I could probably be rolling in the food. That’s when I reminded myself I had food for now. What I was lacking was safety.

Was it stupid to admit to myself that I missed Don? I’d had a day and night to think and dream, and in my head he was a friend, brother, boyfriend and father figure, all rolled up into one. Even though he left me high and dry, he didn’t hurt me deliberately, that I could tell. Sure, leaving me without notice hurt, but maybe he had reasons. He left me the chocolate, he left me my sleeping pad. He left food. That had to count for something, didn’t it? Damn the man for making me care! I’d avoided it my entire life, but I could fucking cry right then because I cared too damn much.

I sobbed and listened to the radio. I hated the reach out portion that always seemed to happen. People trying to contact others. It took up much more time than I liked, but my ears perked up when I heard Blake and his wife on the radio, trading jabs back and forth in a snarky manner like those in love do, making fun of each other and entertaining the rest of us. She was out on patrol somewhere, but tuned into the base station where he was at. I was confused by that, but I never keyed up my mic to ask. Sandra probably scored better at death matches in CoD.

I know that sounds sexist, but I will totally own thinking it. It also made me more curious about the couple, the homestead, as I heard it referred to, and the soldiers that would check in and get some cryptic message and go silent. I tried to absorb it all, but a couple days later the red light blinked on the second radio, just as the food was starting to run low. In desperation, I keyed up once again asking for Blake. He had become my inner voice when I asked myself “what would Blake do?”

“Z, this is Blake, how you doing kiddo?” His voice was friendly and eager to help.

“I’m good. I need a way to recharge these batteries for this unit and I tried the trick of that AC DC converter with car batteries and it doesn’t work, over.” I told him.

What I’d found in the house had been a bust.

“Oh… that’s because the circuit in the AC/DC converter is probably fried. Let me think a minute,” Blake said. “What kind of batteries are they? Over,” Blake asked me.

I tried to describe them, including the funny clip the battery had coming off the wires. He told me, “I don’t know—“

“Excuse me Blake, I may have a solution,” a voice cut in. Not one I knew, sounding vaguely Eastern European.

“Sure, by all means,” Blake said.

“Miss, I was listening the day you found that radio. If you go back to where you found it, there’s a bound to be a charger. Your unit has a USB plug on it, yes?” The voice was cultured, and I could hear more of a hint of accent than before.

“Yes?” I asked after a slight hesitation as I tried to remember how it looked inside.

“Ah good, it works much like your American smart phones. It has a box you can plug in a battery pack or plug the cord into the side of the unit. They are EMP shielded, so they should work here. A cigarette lighter male adapter is what they use. You can rig up a female adapter to any twelve volt source and charge it that way. There are more twelve volt sources than you can imagine.” The voice replied.

“Where are you from, Comrade?” Blake asked,

“Georgia, over.” The voice said amused.

“Hey, I think I remember seeing a box like that!!! It had these big clips on one end like a battery charger has! Thanks! Over,” I bubbled.

I snapped the radio off before it died and stood to do a little mini happy dance. I had seen that in the mess of the gun battle. I hadn’t known what it was at the time but I had seen it on the passenger side floorboard, the only empty portion of the entire nasty mess. Fist pump, air guitar!!! Bonus level!

I found the charger just as described; right where I remembered it to be. I grabbed it and tried to hurry away before the stench of death made my clothes stink even worse than they did already. At least with Don gone, I’d shed some layers for a short while to rinse out the innermost ones and hung them to dry. I hadn’t felt as itchy or skuzzy I had before and I was grateful. More than once I looked at the beach, with the endless waves crashing against the sand, one that had no footprints anymore.

There really was no good way to make it to the water without making tracks, and the last thing I wanted to do was—

The roar of the Harley’s had me jumping inside the hummer. I got the door closed on the passenger side as the noise overwhelmed my ears and I could actually smell the exhaust of the bikes.

“Spider, isn’t this the guys we got last week?”

“Yeah Reno, we already stripped it.”

“Did we siphon the gas out of this one?”

“Yeah Reno, we spiked the tank right away. That’s where I got this beauty here,” whoever spider was said.

“Oh. Ok.”

The voices carried over the bikes, so they must have been close. My heart was in my throat and the fear had my stomach in loose knots, making me nauseated. That’s when I realized that I was also sharing space with three corpses. Three crispy and exploded corpses from the grenade and gunfire. Never before had I felt so out of depth in this world. Video games were one thing. You frag somebody and you move on. Nobody ever talked about the stench and bloat and decay and… No other sound than their revving motors had ever before given me such relief. Again, I held back tears.

“Now I just have to find a battery I can carry,” I muttered and slowly cracked the door, making sure the coast was clear.

“Patty, what would you suggest?” I asked, once I’d gotten one of the units recharged.

“The easiest way I found to travel inland, was the rail road tracks. They cut through the countryside and mostly avoid the cities unless there’s a big depot for loading cargo or people, over.” Patty said.

“Where can I go from Charleston?”

She told me. I somewhat knew where she was talking about, and it would be a long and difficult hike. One I was sure I could do, but I’d have to prepare. I hadn’t asked, but I was halfway wanting to join up with their group. It sounded like the women were treated fairly and the men seemed honorable enough. I’d heard whisperings on other stations or frequencies of the battles they had fought and wondered if the urban legend of Blake and his pixie wife Sandra was real. I knew they were individual voices I talked to from time to time but was the hype real? They fought off marauders, cannibals and part of the military!

I was very tempted to find out, when the smell of smoke wafted to me through one of the garage vents through the attic. I made my way to the window and almost started sobbing. Three denim and leather clad figures were passing around a bottle, while the windows in a house across the imploded from the heat. They were burning it out! I rushed and turned off my radio and packed everything I could into the backpack and put the web belt with the two canteens over my shoulders like a bandolier. The backpack went next and I felt around until I found the knife in my pocket.

I flicked the blade open and considered the back window. It was opposite of the men. I pulled the cardboard back half an inch and peeked out. All I saw was the overgrown backyard and the privacy fence that only provided privacy in two directions. It would have to do, as I heard more breaking glass. Closer to where I was. The smell of smoke grew stronger for a moment and something hard smacked into the roll up door of my garage. I almost fell out of the window in a panic to escape. These men weren’t like Don. These men were the worst of the bad news I could ever imagine and they made my legs watery just letting my imagination run wild with what would happen if they caught me.

“Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit,” I muttered as my chest hit the ground, almost driving all the wind out of me.

“Spider, you hear that, man?” a voice asked.

It wasn’t the big guy, I’d recognize his voice, but I ran anyway. I probably clinked and clanked as I got to my feet with the canteens banging against my side and my pack, but I ran like hell.

“Hey, get ‘em!” somebody screamed and I almost yelled myself in desperation.

To be fair, I was probably in the best shape of my life. Even thin already, I’d lost all the flab from hunger, walking and short rations. I’d had almost a week’s worth of food and rest and now I had to run. People were shouting and the roar of un-muffled motorcycles was deafening but I ran on and on, until my chest was heaving. I stopped at the edge of the neighborhood, across from an old golf course.

I waited a moment, to catch my breath and then darted towards it, planning on making my escape. I ran like hell, my feet almost flying across the ground. Almost too late, I realized that I’d fled in the same direction I’d found Don. I almost stopped in horror, but kept going towards a water trap. Surly there weren’t ‘gators somewhat inland, where there? A snatch of lyrics flooded my mind, a favorite “Disturbed” song.

“Another taste of the evil I breed, will level you completely,”

“Oh hell no,” I thought as I dove into the water, begging god or anybody who would listen for that water trap to be free of alligators.

I held my breath for a long while, my clothing, boots and pack almost holding me under when I tried to come up for air. I got a good sized breath and sank under the water again. The rest of the lyrics flooded my mind as I prayed for no gators. I held my breath for a long while, until something seemed to hit my foot and I swam to the surface almost in a panic.

NO!!!!

I pulled myself to the shore, thrashing and making far more noise than I should have.

“Over here boys,” A shout went up.

In terror I fled.

Chapter Six

Don –

I had every intention of checking the traps first thing this morning, but I was puking sick. My body was trembling and I knew why. Lord help me, I knew why but I couldn’t help it. I grabbed the same bottle I’d been nursing for two days and took two small swigs to settle my nerves. I waited, my breathing hard, making me feel like I was having an asthma attack. I couldn’t get enough air and I was sweating hot but freezing at the same time.

Finally my heart slowed as the alcohol hit my system. My brain slowed, my mind focused. My self-disgust was only equaled by the stench of myself. I eventually got my lazy carcass out of bed and headed into the back room, where the cold shower stall was. For the third time that week, I let the cold water wash away my sins. I shaved, despite the frigid temps. I was risking a cold once I hit the 90 plus degree air outside the bunker, but I didn’t care.

I had a plan in mind for the day. I was going to check my traps, but I was also going to try to find Z and apologize. In my mind, her face had morphed into a mixture between my wife’s and my daughter’s. I knew that sounded all kinds of messed up and a therapist would have a field day with it, but since I had decided to live, I needed to tell her. To thank her. I wanted to find her if nothing else and hug her one last time.

I packed light for the day, only two bottles as a just in case. I had a big flask to hit on my day to day part of the journey but I reckoned that in this week alone, I was down by over half of my daily intake. I could be proud of that, I could thank her for that. There wasn’t much else in this shitty life to be thankful for, other than waking up every morning.

I had absolutely no clue where to even start. I didn’t want to get the cart out, but I was tempted. There was no easy way to hide once that was rolling, so I decided to leave it where it was and hoof it. Hey, I was having a moment, ok? It isn’t easy trying to remake your life once you had decided to die, deciding to live is much harder! That thought had shocked me when the realization hit me. I’d decided to die? I chewed on that. Yes, yes I had, but I’d changed my mind. Go me.

My heart swelled as I thought of Z. She’d shown me kindness when the rest of the world wanted pain and death and suffering. If nothing else, she was one of the last few good people and I figured if I truly wanted to die, in the end, I’d die trying to help people like her.

Big words. Big thoughts. Noble thoughts. Easy to think, hard to do, especially when you were a coward. Self-preservation had become almost all consuming; thinking about somebody else’s welfare was almost a foreign thought.

“I wonder if she’d like to go crabbing with me. I know my daughter would,” I mumbled to myself.

I knew I’d had my fill of canned food, and stretching my long term storage food out more was the least of my worries. I had put out enough traps to totally feed myself for a while.

“Only one way to find out,” I muttered.

I walked quickly, feeling stronger and surer than I had in ages. I didn’t know where to find her, but I hoped she was still at the bug out house. It had been one that Reno and his guys had gone through and marked. I’d followed their patterns when I could, usually hiding from them. Once they went through a house, they’d mark the garage door or the front entry way door to the house. It probably saved them time and it was those marks that let me know they hadn’t touched a place yet.

I followed those marks slowly through Charleston, making my way towards the bug out house. Shutters fluttered closed at my approach, marking somebody behind the window. That un-nerved me and I realized it couldn’t have been the bikers, but I didn’t know them or their intent. I’d only run across survivors of the burn-out downtown, and none from the suburbs. Those I found downtown were almost as bad as Reno’s gang, but even more pathetic and easy to avoid.

Out on the fringes of the city, everyone avoided everyone. I was more than fine with that, and I crossed the street and walked quickly, keeping a low profile.

The bug out house looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry and the houses on the other side of the street were burning. Through the smoke and flying ash, I tried the garage door. It was locked so I halfway considered the garage window but instead went through the house. I could check on her from in there. What I found scared the crap out of me; Z’s backpack was sitting there in the garage. Not something she would have left in a normal circumstance. I quickly packed up what was left of the food, noting two big handheld radios that were plugged into a car battery with alligator clips. The wires from the clips went to a black box and it had two USB cords that ran to the batteries. That stopped me cold. Would they work? I turned the knob and a red light and a crackle of static surprised me so bad I dropped it.

“I don’t have time for this shit,” I rubbed my lips after I said it and then unhooked the wires and radios and stuffed those into the pack too.

It wasn’t that heavy of a load, but I’d brought a small fanny pack that I had two pints of vodka packed in a roll of socks each. It’d keep them from clinking and pad them from breaking. I took one of those pints out now and had three small drinks, almost half of the bottle. I wanted to quit, but if I was going to go find her, I wanted to be ready and not shaking and puking if she was in trouble. Judging by the evidence, she must have fled in a hurry.

Walking out, I could see somebody had walked through the waist high grass of the back yard and through a fence to the adjoining yard. Being careful, I followed. This continued for more yards and houses than I cared to count and the direction was un-mistakable. She was heading back towards the golf course. I never stopped to ask her where she had hidden there, I was too out of it, too hurt. Hell, I was still hurt, the cuts and bruising causing me to look like one of the walking wounded. One more yard, one more gate and I was sure of her direction.

I knew a shortcut, and if I was wrong, I’d double back here and pick up her trail again. I knew who liked to burn things for fun, they’d done it to me once already. I’d lost so much in that fire and later, my wife. I hope I was wrong, but I had a sinking feeling.

I heard the Harleys’ long before I saw them and easily hid. They were roaring down the cement pathways that criss crossed the golf course, looking everywhere but where I was. They were searching for something, someone. Z. My stomach dropped and my fight or flight mechanism kicked in. I couldn’t enter that overgrown mess with nearly twenty of them combing the area, so I did the only thing I could think of.

I checked the handle of the house first, but it was locked. It was one of the houses that Reno’s gang hadn’t gone through yet. I ran around to the back door and checked there too. Locked. I raised my elbow, ready to smash the bottom of the pane of glass over the handle when the door was jerked open and a double barrel shotgun pressed up to my nose. I didn’t piss my pants, but it was a near thing when I heard the hammers click back into ready position.

“Get in here and if you make a sound, yer dead boy,” An older man said, moving back an inch taking the pressure off my nose.

“Yes sir,” I muttered, my throat finally going dry.

A wave of the shotgun got me moving into the direction he wanted. I went through the back door into a kitchen/dining room. An elderly lady was at the sink, one hand over her mouth and her eyes looking at me in fright.

“He’s that man,” she said, pulling her hand away finally.

“Yeah, he is. You, sit there,” the shotgun was shook in the direction the old timer wanted me to go.

I held my hands up, showing them I was no threat and kept them up as I sat on a kitchen stool without a back. With a strong hand, the man pulled Z’s backpack off and set it out of reach. Leathery callused hands frisked me and I squirmed in the embarrassment.

“I have a fishing knife in my fanny pack,” I admitted, figuring I’d be up front and as quick as I could with this. Z was out there, and she was being hunted. I knew it.

The pack was removed and without taking the gun off of me, the old man walked around the bar to stand next to the woman. She put her arm around him and whispered something into his year.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me after a moment.

“I was trying to get up high. Those bikers are looking for a friend of mine. I can’t let them get her,” I said, half stating it, half pleading.

“Ahhh, well you’re out of luck. They aren’t chasing no woman or girl. It was a boy that headed into the golf course. Get out,” the old man now motioned to the back door.

It wasn’t her? For half a second I was relieved but then I remembered the pains Z had taken to conceal her gender.

“Short brown hair? Five and a half feet tall?” I asked.

“Yes?” The woman answered.

“That’s my friend,” I was both relieved and horrified.

The Harley’s were still roaring through the paths and angry voices were heard shouting to each other, so I was confident they hadn’t found her yet.

“I’m trying to get her away from those guys. They’re bad news. Please sir, put the gun down and let me look from upstairs?”

“You don’t need to, you sit right there!” The shotgun was suddenly in my face again.

“Nancy, you got better eyes than me, see if you can’t spot where she is now.”

“Thank you,” I told him, but the shotgun never moved.

“What is she to you, this girl?” he asked me after a moment.

I heard footsteps going up the stairs and the floorboards creak above me.

“She saved my life,” I said.

“Yeah, that she did. You look like shit… wait, you’re the one those punks were kicking across the street?” A dawning comprehension lit the man’s face and the shotgun wavered.

“Yes, still bloody and bruised from it.” I pointed to my face and shredded ear.

“We thought you was dead and somebody removed the body in the middle of the night. Been worried about cannibals. That’s why we thought…”

“Carl?” Nancy came down the stairs.

I looked back at Carl, the old man, and saw he’d laid the shotgun down on the counter.

“It’s ok, hurry Nancy, you see her?” Carl’s voice was now touched with a bit of anxiety.

“Yes, Carl, why isn’t your gun on—“

“Woman, got no time for questions. Which way?” Carl snapped.

“She’s headed west, towards the drainage ditch… but honey—“

“You know where that is?”

I nodded.

“Get.” Carl waved the shotgun at my stuff he’d put on the counter and then to the back door.

“Thanks,” I said, my nerves shot as a struggled to hurry into the backpack’s straps. Strong hands belted the fanny pack before I could even startle in surprise by the touch.

“Get that kid to safety, God must have plans for you. Go with God,” he said, picking up the shotgun and opening the back door.

“But Carl—“ Nancy said, her voice a quiet hiss, probably because of the open door.

“Get,” he told me, shooing me out the door.

I did precisely that, and hurried as much as my sore ribs would let me. My pace was less than a job, but it was about three times faster than my walk here. I used the hedges and shrubs across the street much like I had before to shield my movements, but I couldn’t take being bent over too much longer, what I’d done earlier had left me almost gasping and sweating in pain. Throwing caution into the wind, I gritted my teeth and moved into a slow job as the gangs insistent shouts became clearer.

“… Trail through the grass,”

“You off-road and find…”

“Not going to …”

“Let's go…”

I made it into a run. I don’t know how, but I pushed myself until the pain was like the urge to drink. I felt a constant jab, a constant battle for breath but I found I could push it down and focus on the drainage ditch that took care of the hurricane season overflow of water and shot it back out to the ocean. It was a system I knew, I was on the planning on that, but the actual construction inspection was handled by somebody else. If I could catch up with her…

My leg gave out just as I crossed the road, still unable to see the bikers. I stumbled, and I let out a muffled shriek of pain as my side hit the ground. I bit down on my arm and squinted my eyes closed, fighting off the tears as I got my feet back under me and stood.

“If you move, you’re dead,” a knife was held to my throat.

I froze, but I recognized that voice. Z.

“Z? We have to go, they’re close.” I begged.

“Donald?” the knife was removed and she came around in front of me, soaking wet, smelling like a wet dog with streamers of algae sticking to her clothing and hair.

I noted all of this in half a second and nodded, wiping my eyes.

“They are close, they’re tracking my trails through the grass. I made a ton of circles and cut backs but we have to hurry.”

“The storm drains,” I pointed.

She put an arm under my shoulder and I hurried the best I could, each step sending dark bolts of pain into my chest, making it hard to breathe. She must have seen that in my fall, even when she wasn’t sure who I was. The kid was good, I’ll give her that.

“No, not in there!” Z hissed as we were getting close to the large opening.

“We have to, it’s the only thing close,” I gasped, not understanding.

“Snakes, alligators, crocodiles. No, no, no, no,” she protested, but kept moving.

The opening was almost five foot tall, and when we got within ten feet of it the tall grass gave way to cement, leaving us exposed.

“Over there!” A shout behind me had us both look over our shoulders as Reno’s head could be seen flying through the grass.

“Go,” I yelled, pushing her ahead of me.

We could see for the first thirty feet, but after two sharp turns, the darkness was almost overwhelming. I went by feel, keeping one hand on her shoulder as she kept up a constant chatter, most of it insults to herself for being freaked out. I almost pulled a lighter, but the glow would give us away.

“Shhhh, if you don’t shut up I can’t hear if they are behind us,” I whispered.

“I can’t help it, oh my god, was that a snake?” she almost screamed.

I felt something bump against my leg in the darkness. She hadn’t been wrong, there could have been snakes or bigger critters in the ankle deep water with us, but I didn’t want to dwell on that. Couldn’t. I was searching for an alcove, one where maintenance could get out of the way in case the water flooded and they were trapped. It usually led to a manhole cover above and that’s where I was headed. I hoped.

“Shhhhh, hey, over here,” I pulled her by the shoulder when my fingertips brushed metal railing.

Cement steps by the feel and if I remembered correctly, would open into a six by six room off and slightly above the main drainage channel.

I found the steps and Z stepped behind me, her small hand holding onto the straps of the backpack. I got to the top and tried to take another step, but fumbled and almost fell when there wasn’t another one. I put my hands out to catch my fall but found a cement wall where I thought the railing to be.

“You ok?” Z whispered, her small body having stumbling into me in the pitch blackness.

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

I looked up, hoping for a shot of sunlight coming through the access hole of a manhole cover. Nothing.

“Where are we?”

“Lost,” I admitted after a while, sliding down the wall in pain and exhaustion.

“Oh shit,” She said and slid in next to me on my good side.

“You ok?” She asked me after a long pause.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I had to come find you, I—“

Her hand clamped over my mouth as the faint splashing and murmur of voices could be heard. In horror, I pulled her hand away from my mouth and strained to listen. I held my breath, and realized Z was doing the same thing. Sound in the tunnels was tricky, but this sounded close, real close. Things were getting brighter, and with a shock I realized they had a lamp or lantern or…

“See, I told you, dead end. I can’t even track them in this mess, and did you see the size of that fucking snake back there?” a voice asked in the fading darkness.

“You’re telling me you lost them?” Reno’s voice was angry, and the echo caused by the cement walls of the storm sewers made it sound even more menacing.

“I don’t think they are even down here, I told you, man.”

“I fucking told you I saw them come down here. Find them.” Reno’s voice a snarl.

“Not in this mess, you know I don’t like tight spaces—“

A flash of light and a roar of sound had me ducking and sucking big lungful of air. A gasp of air signaled that Z had also, but it wasn’t as loud as the angry shout and the echo of a shotgun blast. The blast was deafening and made my ears ring. I could hear Reno and another man arguing before the light started to fade away, but I couldn’t make out any words. I sat in the darkness, wanting a drink, thinking about my cold, wet feet. I wondered how long I could sit there in the dark like that before going crazy.

“I think they are leaving,” Z whispered to me, scooting closer so our hips touched.

“I think so,” I pulled the half a bottle of vodka out of my fanny pack by feel and uncapped it, my nerves shot to hell.

I couldn’t tell if it was nerves or the DT’s, but my whole body was starting to shake. Instead of my usual two quick swigs, I started to down the last of the pint, when Z grabbed the bottle out of my hands.

“Hey?” I asked, pissed as some of the vodka dribbled down my lips from being pulled away abruptly.

After a moment, Z handed me the bottle back. Empty.

“Oh, well shit, if you wanted some, I would have given it to you.”

“I poured it out,” Z said from the gloom.

“You did what?” I was pissed.

Wanting a drink I could have probably forgiven very easily, pouring it out was another thing.

“I poured it out. You don’t need it, and you’re too hurt to be drinking at a time like this.” Her voice instantly started grating on me, and I felt the old anger flare up from within my chest.

“Don’t. Pour. Out. My. Booze.” I said very slowly, trying to control my tone of voice.

She didn’t know, and I didn’t know if I could tell her. I was already disgusted with myself, but it had been one of those days, and I’d been cutting back hard lately.

“Ok,” she said after a long pause.

“Ok,” I felt around and got the other bottle out and took two quick swigs and resealed it, putting it back in my fanny pack.

“You reek of booze, dude.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious, now can you please shut up so I can think and listen?” I asked her in frustration.

“OooooooooooooKaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy.”.

So she was going to suddenly be a brat? No, no, what was I doing? Should I tell her why? I don’t know. I don’t even think she would understand. I sat still and listened hard. No glow of whatever light had been used earlier showed up.

“Stay here,” I whispered to her and scooted on my butt until I found the first step down.

“You’re not going to leave me here are you?” Z asked me out of the gloom, all brattiness and snark gone from her voice.

“No, I’m going to see if everything is all clear.”

Using my hand, I found the railing and made my way down carefully until I came into the intersection where I thought I’d had heard Reno and his gang. I flicked a Zippo lighter, holding it out as it lit up the cramped tunnel. I looked the way we came in and saw nothing but muddy tracks through the ankle deep water. Following the line of them, I looked the other way past the cubby where we hid out and saw a body lying in the foul water.

The shotgun had torn off most of his head and luckily the water was flowing away from the way out because it carried most of the blood and gore with it. I got closer, grimacing as what was left of his features lit up even more. I knelt and considered. I had no intentions of doing what I did, but I started pulling his vest off, with his gang colors. I grunted in pain as pulling on the body took my whole strength to get it turned enough with one arm.

“Here, I’ll hold that,” Z said, startling me as she took the Zippo.

I used both hands and got first one arm out, and then the second. Before the body dropped, I saw something chrome and shiny in his back belt. Reaching into the muck, I felt around and pulled out a stainless steel Smith and Wesson .357. I recognized the make and model because it had been the same type of gun that was used to kill my daughter. I inspected the body again and smiled, and then to laugh. If this is what I thought it was…

“Are you losing it? Take whatever you’re going to take and let’s get out of here,” Z pleaded.

I found two speed loaders and a couple dozen shells in his front pockets along with a set of keys. I pocketed it all and took the last thing on the body that I wanted. A long Bowie style knife, tied down on his right leg, the sheath loop near his belt. I pulled almost a foot of gleaming steel from the sheath and cut his belt loose, untying it from his leg.

“We can go now,” I said, getting my laughter under control.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked, unnerved by the condition of the body.

“Nothing. Let’s see if they left us a Harley to ride out of here.”

“Isn’t that going to be too loud?” Z asked me.

“Do you want to walk?” I grinned afterwards.

“This isn’t GTA5, I hope you know how to drive this thing.”

“That kid, I do,” I told her.

Chapter Seven

Z –

I bit my lip and held on tight as we got on the motorcycle. I was almost positive that the bikers would hear this monstrosity fire up in the quiet city. Hell, they were probably already coming back for it, but I didn’t make any of these words come out. I was on a Harley Davidson! I would have been more enthusiastic and excited if I wasn’t a bit worried. I was pretty sure Don was drunk, or close to it.

The bike firing up startled me. The noise and vibrations were a living thing, and it was all I could do to wrap my arms around his waist as he took off. Suddenly all my travel by foot seemed trivial. Once again I had a motorized form of travel. Miles passed in minutes as we weaved through the stalled out cars that hadn’t all been pushed to the sides of the roads by the military transporters.

We passed the safe house I’d been staying in and in a few more minutes, he was killing the ignition and letting us coast down a gentle road. I was impressed to be alive to say the least. I was almost expecting him to swerve and splatter me across a windshield in the worst case of GTA style. My stomach felt half exhilarated and nervous and the other half relieved. This time, he had saved me.

The bike stopped in front of an old Muffler Man that had probably been closed up when the EMP hit, judging by the broken windows and boarded door.

“We’re going to stash this,” Don told me.

“Cool,” was all that came out.

In truth I was relieved. We still weren’t safe yet, but getting this monster parked took my stress levels down to a more manageable level instead of the screaming memes. I looked around the garage for a moment and saw in the shadows of one bay the golf cart and trailer. Shaking my head at the empty trailer, but marveling at the sheer effort of will it had to have taken to unload the boxes of liquor and canned goods with a badly beaten body.

“So uh… you live here?” I asked finally.

“No, I just stash stuff here from time to time. My place is a little,” he paused as if considering his words carefully, “unconventional.”

“Oh. So it’s like another garage then?” I asked, out of curiosity more than anything else.

“Like I said…”

Don wasn’t lying. It was nothing conventional at all. I almost turned and ran when he walked down the embankment to the estuary and the base of the bridge that ran over the water. He hadn’t shown me once that he was anything other than a guy on his own. Other than getting drunk and acting embarrassed or ashamed, he didn’t give off the creeper vibe like so many people did now a days. In the end, I had followed him down to a heavy steel door set right into the foundation of the bridge.

“Holy shit!” The words escaped my lips as he unlocked the door and pushed it open.

The door was at least eight inches thick and it moved slowly, but smoothly.

“Mi casa su casa,” he said, and held his arms wide in a flourish.

I almost giggled, but checked that. Hardcore gamer girls don’t giggle, but the movement seemed to come from another age. My father wouldn’t even have done that, and he’s older than Don for sure.

“Thanks,” I told him and was almost shocked into silence when I took in everything.

The door opened into a large room that held a small johnboat and beyond that a room that held more bunk style beds than I thought possible. The enormity of the place had me wonder how far under the road and surrounding land this place went.

“Go ahead and look around,” Don said but stayed back by the door, closing it and turning a lever that closed to heavy locking bars into metal brackets on either side of the frame.

I walked past the first room and into the bunk room. The beds were old, some surface rust pitted the sides, but the mattresses were still sealed in a cocoon of material. Hiding out in a lot of basements and crawl spaces, I expected the smell of damp, but the air was surprisingly fresh. Cool, but fresh the further into the fallout shelter I went.

The kitchen area made me wrinkle my nose a bit. I could tell no woman had ever been in there; the clean dishes were haphazardly stacked on one side of the sink with dirty ones stacked in the left hand side ready to be washed. The real surprise was in the next room, where a modern queen size mattress heaped with blankets and pillows dominated one corner near a dresser. I recognized the water bottle sitting atop of it. I planned on ripping Don for that, but the stack of boxes across the room had me curious.

With disgust, I realized more than half of the stack was booze of all kinds. Some of it still in cases, some of it haphazardly. The slightly bigger side was food. All kinds of food. Some of it was food in large round cans I’d never seen before with the brand Augason Farms on the cans. Wheat berries, oats, dehydrated ice cream… Wait, what? In an almost panic, I pulled boxes and boxes down and sifted through the contents until I had a pile almost all the way around me. Three large cans of dehydrated ice cream and yoghurt sat in front of me.

Ice cream. I’d had dehydrated ice cream in school once. We had a presentation on NASA and it had been passed around for everyone to sample a piece. I haven’t had ice cream in months and now here it was. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry… and the yogurt had even more flavors. I repacked the boxes, suddenly feeling ashamed and startled when a shadow fell over me. I almost slide into the stacks by Don’s sudden appearance behind me, looming close. Here it comes, the creeping from a creeper.

“Sorry about that,” Don said shamefacedly and pulled a bottle from the left stack containing the booze.

He stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed and broke the seal on the cap and held the bottle up to his lips, drinking deeply. After capping it, he wiped his lips and sat on the edge of the bed.

“You have a clean change of clothes?” he asked me.

I stood and looked at myself. It had been a while since I’d had a chance to wash things, but I had a clean pair of shorts and a tank top in my pack that he’d rescued.

“Why? Do I stink or something?” I bristled at the question.

“We both do, we were just in the storm sewers with god knows what. Plus, I stink like fear sweat.”

I looked at the filth covered legs on his jeans and had noticed mine were the same. In fact, my wet feet were starting to throb and the irritation of being in my socks and boots.

“Unless you have a shower and a bar of soap—“

His laughter pissed me off. His laugh transformed his normally serious face into something that was almost boyish, but it wasn’t a joke I told, he was laughing at me. For some stupid reason, he was laughing and…

“In there!” He pointed to the last archway going into another room.

I bolted, forgetting about the mess I’d made with the boxes and cans to find myself in a room straight out of a Fallout game. I recognized the air filtration and a large water filter. How they were powered I couldn’t tell, but what had my attention was the two shower stalls side by side and a toilet with a roll of toilet paper. TOILET PAPER!

A towel hung over the stall on the left, so I opened the one on the right. It had built in hand raise on three sides with a small corner shelf that held shampoo, a bar of soap and a razor. I turned the water on and stepped back, watching it come down, the pressure good.

“You’re going to need a towel,” Don said from behind me, startling me again.

I spun and he had a beach towel in one hand, my backpack in another.

“Thanks,” I took them, throwing the towel over my shoulder.

“The shower stalls are the only doors in this place. It’s probably going to be best to change in there.”

His cheeks were a little pink if not outright red and he walked into the other room again, only to return with a pile of clothes for himself.

“What about the toilet?” I asked almost in a panic.

“If you’re going to stick around a little bit, I’ll rig up a curtain or something.”

“Oh.” I said in a small voice.

I wanted to thank him again and again but my words were stuck. I just nodded and threw the towel over the stall door like the other one and stepped inside. I heard the door close to the stall next to mine and after a moment the door open again. Then the water turned on. Feeling excited, I stripped out of my soiled clothes and opened the door a crack. I shoved them out and closed the door and turned the shower head to the side towards one wall and turned it on.

Immediately the water flowed and I waited for it to warm up. Waited. Waited some more.

“There’s no hot water?” I called.

“No, but it’s not that bad.” Don yelled.

I turned the shower head my direction and felt my skin start to goose bump when the water hit it. The water wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold. More like cool pool water. Something in the seventies for sure. Still, it felt wonderful. I stared at the floor and let it cascade over me. The water running onto the white shower basin was a dark muddy color at first. I marveled at that. I never had seen so much dirt come off of me like this, and it was a shock. I didn’t think I looked all that grimy, but rubbing my hands across my body gave the same effect.

That was it. I took the bar of soap and started scrubbing.

An hour later, and about 40 minutes after Don had turned his water off, I emerged from the shower in clean-ish clothing. The tank top was now bigger on me than when I’d bought it from Hot Topic the previous spring, but it still covered what it needed to. My shorts still fit well, so I went in search of a comb or brush. With my hair clean, it was longer than I had thought, almost a short bob or pageboy in length according to the distorted image of the galvanized metal walls of the shower stall.

For the first time since the power went out, I felt like a girl again. Not a prey creature, cringing in fear. Somewhere inside me, I knew I would have to be careful in general terms, but something about the bunker made me feel safe. The door looked like it would take a beating from heavy equipment and still stand. The fact that you could only reach the doorway by foot on the riverside made it even safer. The lock was the clincher.

I had worried for half a second in the shower about getting stuck inside, or somebody waiting us out outside if we were followed here, but then I thought about the stockpiles of food. If we didn’t have to, we wouldn’t have to go outside for a while. If I stayed. Did I want to stay? Where else would I go? Would he let me stay?

Too many thoughts were swirling through my head at once, so I hung the towel over the stall door like Don had done and left my pack and dirty clothes and went looking for him. I found him in the front room with the large blast door (for lack of a better word) open, standing on the narrow ledge looking up the hill towards the roadside. I started to smile until I noticed the bottle held loosely in his hand. It was almost halfway gone.

“Don?” I called softly.

He turned and looked at me. He almost stepped off the edge into the water and I took two quick steps forward but he’d already gotten his balance back.

“Hi,” He said, his words slurring a little.

“I wanted to say thank you again. I really appreciate it.”

He looked at me hard and I felt the weight of his gaze. Suddenly I felt self-conscious at his glare and crossed my arms and stepped back into the bunkhouse.

“I’m sorry, yeah, no problem, Z.”

That stopped me short. He had been calling me kid, kiddo, and short stuff. He hardly used my name.

“Um. Can I stay here for tonight?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound like I was trying to take advantage of the situation.

“Sure, there’s a ton of space here,” he said, suddenly looking everywhere but me.

“Do you have a brush or a comb I can use?”

“Sure, top of the dresser, right next to your water bottle.” He definitely wasn’t looking at me.

“Thanks,” I told him, anger flaring up in my stomach suddenly at the petty theft.

I’d done a good job of getting all the dirt and snarls out of my hair in the shower, using my fingers to get it straightened out as much as I could, but the brush I found puzzled me. It wasn’t a man’s hair brush, but something a lady with long hair would use. Curious, I picked out a long hair from it. It definitely wasn’t his. I cleaned the brush up the best I could and then used it myself.

I don’t care what anybody tells you, two months after the world ends and you suddenly have a shower and hairbrush, you feel like you have died and gone to heaven. Then my gaze rested on the pink bottle. I didn’t feel the same surge of anger that I did earlier, I mean… I’d looted it from that house. Still, it had been mine and he took it. Then it hit me. I looked at the bed and back at the dresser. The brush and water bottle were on the edge. Where he could see them.

For a moment I was grossed out by my initial thoughts, but then an alternative popped into my mind. Memories and remembrances. Big fancy way of saying, something that reminded him of something or someone. Now my curiosity was piqued. I walked back out to the main room to see him holding the boat sideways to fit it out the door and slide it into the water below.

“Where are you going?” I asked almost in a panic, not believing he was leaving me again.

“Going to get dinner. You in the mood for seafood?”

“Yeah?” I answered, confused.

“Ok, if you don’t mind, make yourself at home here while I’m gone. I think it’ll be close to dark when I get back. If you could throw some rice and veggies on for like a stir fry, I’ll bring the rest. I’m going to lock this from the outside. I don’t think you can hear me pounding on the door.

“Sure. I think I’m going to figure out how to wash my clothes in the shower if it’s ok with you?”

“Not a problem. That’s how I do it. Listen Z, I really hope you stick around. Things get lonely out here with nobody to talk to.

“Yes, I mean… I’ll stick around.” I almost gushed.

“Good, I’ll be back soon,” he said before grabbing the half full bottle and closing the door.

“Good luck,” I whispered at the closed door.

I washed all my clothing with the bar of soap in the shower, turned it inside out and repeated the process. I hung it in the utility room, where Don must have hung his. I knocked over an old binder hanging up the last of my clothing. The edges of it were gray, just like the shelving and walls back here, and I picked it up and opened it. This really was a fallout shelter! I was holding the maintenance logs. The last time it had been serviced was almost six years ago, with the inspectors certifying name. Don Thomas. The last thing I found gave me the shivers. It was a coil of rope with a funny knot. I unrolled it and realized what I was looking at. A hangman’s noose, the loop neatly cut through.

Things clicked into place and I decided to explore some more.

Chapter Eight

Don –

I was startled at Z’s appearance. She’d gone into the shower looking like everyone else did nowadays. Dirty and scared. What shocked me, was when she came out of the shower scrubbed clean and her hair with the tangles and dirt out, she also had on only two layers of clothing. I felt ashamed, but I had looked. She definitely wasn’t a kid, with curves. She must have done some sort of trick to make herself look less like a woman, but there she had been, raw and fresh. The memories of my wife were almost overwhelming.

Without the snarls in her hair, she looked so much like my wife that I almost fell out of the doorway and into the water. Sure, the hair color was different, but Z looked eerily like the way my wife had when we first met, right down to the short haircut. I was able to rescue the bottle and get the boat launched after getting the lock on the door. I repeated my tasks from the other day but in reverse. I threw out a baited hook behind me and polled up stream, past all of the traps I’d thrown out already. I got to the last one furthest upstream and pulled it up. Several crabs considered me as it broke water and I smiled.

Crabbing was a hobby my dad taught me as a kid and the traps were the easiest way, but the most fun for me was with a string and hook and a hunk of liver or chicken. Since I’d wanted enough to make a decent meal, I’d used the traps. I shook the crabs out into a waiting bucket, put the lid on the bucket and considered the bait. The fish was half gone. I threw the trap back out and floated downriver to the next one. I threw out the smaller crabs from that trap and only kept the three larger ones. So far, so good.

I repeated this until I had two traps left when a tugging on the boat had me putting my pole down and pulling in the line. I had hooked a sheepshead, and the line almost cut my hands as the fish fought me. I dropped the line, pulled out a pair of gloves I kept around for this purpose and pulled the damned thing in. I hit it on the edge of the boat and tossed it on the floor by me and considered baiting it again. I decided not to and just put it behind the seat and headed back towards the remaining traps.

The last two traps netted me another four large crabs. I drifted the rest of the way to the bridge and tied the boat off. Many of the crabs were still alive, but I fixed that problem as I cleaned them and tossed the offal into the water. It wasn’t long before a school of small fish and seagulls littered the water around me in the fading light. I emptied the boat, finishing my bottle of scotch off and unlocked the door.

I could tell right away that something was off. I made sure the boat was secure and ran inside, following my nose to the kitchen where I expected to have to use the extinguisher I’d stashed inside.

“It won’t air out in here,” Z said, waving a hand over a pot.

“Did you burn it?” I asked her, thinking she’d gotten the pots too hot and it was the Teflon I was smelling.

“No, I was trying something out with the freeze dried food. The pudding didn’t work out like I expected,” her cheeks colored.

Truth was, mine did too. The white tank and khaki shorts clung to her curves, once again reminding me what first caught my eye when I met my wife almost twenty years ago. Young, fresh, and unaware of the effect she had on men.

“Oh, well… Uh… I’ve got the crabs,” I told her, forgetting I’d come in here in a panic after the smell.

She laughed. She sat down on the floor of the bunker and pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them tight and laughed.

“You tell all your first dates that?” she managed to ask me, between the snorts.

To say I felt like a horse’s ass would be an understatement, and I’m sure I was ten shades of red, but I had food to bring in now that I knew there wasn’t something deathly wrong inside. I brought in the bucket and then dragged the boat in. Z walked up and looked in the bucket and busted up all over again, holding her sides until she got up and ran to the back room, wiping her eyes.

I put things right the best I could, and then pulled the boat in before closing and locking the door over the soft sounds of giggles. With a sigh I decided to see what this pudding was, and why it stank so badly, before I figured out what I wanted to do with the fish and cooked the seafood.

The rice was done to perfection, and a large bowl of mixed veggies from one of the big cans was steaming on the far left side of the counter. Two large plates stood ready, as well as two glasses and two sets of silverware. I checked the stove and the pudding. The gas was off, but what was left looked like a congealed brown mess. I decided not to save or try to save what was there so I took it back and opened the blast door and scraped the mess into the water. When I returned, Z was there, red-eyed and wiping the moisture off her cheeks.

“You know, I didn’t mean it like that,” I told her, still slightly embarrassed.

“Oh I know, it was just this serious, deadpan look you gave me and then said, ‘I’ve got the crabs,’” she started laughing again.

“All right, I know… Hey, stop it,” I told her and wedged my way to the sink so I could finish cleaning my catch.

“Ohhhhh, crab cakes?” Z asked, her voice suddenly serious.

I don’t know whose stomach growled the loudest in response to that.

Every time we started to talk about something, we would bust up laughing. I know the joke wasn’t intentional or even funny, but there had been this tension between us, between us and the world and tension in general. I guess it was either laugh or cry. I kept doing the dishes when Z finally spoke up.

“Don, what happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You wear a wedding ring, but I don’t see any pictures of a wife or family around. Did something happen to them when the power went out?”

My stomach dropped and I began to sweat immediately. I fought back the anger and fear and kept washing the dishes.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” Z said after a few moments.

“No, no… I’m just trying… to find the words.”

“Oh,” she said softly.

I wiped my eyes and dried my hands on a dish towel and went to the stash and pulled out a bottle of Bacardi. I cracked the new cap and took a swig, ignoring the disgusted look Z gave me from her perch of supplies.

“Reno, and his buddies.”

“Yeah?” She asked.

“They all but destroyed me. My life.” I told her simply.

“What do you mean?”

Then I told her.

“The Devil Dog’s Motorcycle Club had requested permits for updating their electrical service, expand their plumbing and other things they wanted to do in the bar end of their club. When I’d gotten there for the inspection I’d found what looked like a hotel, bar and god knows what else. There had been bedrooms added upstairs and everything they wanted to add really didn’t make sense. Their existing utilities could handle what they were wanting to do. Curiosity got the better of me and I went into the basement of the structure so I could see the sewer drains, or at least that’s what I told them. Most of the basement had been walled off by brick and I could hear huge air handlers moving in the other side of the room.”

“They were growing pot?” Z interrupted.

“That’s what I was wondering at first. They really didn’t want me to go down there, but I did. Their sewer main was fine, but I kept getting a whiff of some kind of chemical smell. Spider, Reno’s right hand guy was almost coming unglued, the closer and closer to that wall I got. I left at that point, before things got ugly. Reno gave me a big smile as I was leaving and told me he hoped to get his permits back soon so they could finish their upgrades.

“In my official report, I never mentioned the basement or the locked room down there. I had to deny the permits though, they were unnecessary given what was already there and the five bedroom apartments upstairs were a clear code violation, though I didn’t mention those either. I sent them a form rejection letter with instructions on how to appeal or fix their permit.”

“They were doing something down there, weren’t they?”

I nodded, taking a big drink to keep going.

“About a week later, I got an angry phone call at the city’s office. Reno was threatening all kinds of legal action because of my block, and when that didn’t work, he threatened to… Hurt me. I told him there was no way I could change that, no matter what I did. He threatened my family when I heard somebody in the background yell ‘Police’, and then the call dropped. I read the next morning in the paper that the cops had raided the motorcycle club. One of the guys had sold some crystal meth to an undercover cop.”

“The cops waited until they could follow the biker back to the bar, where they hoped to find all the drugs and gear.”

“Did they find any?” Z interrupted.

I nodded.

“They didn’t find the lab. The basement had been emptied, and the wall had even been taken down. Empty sockets were everywhere down there. Other than minor possession charges and one for dealing, most of the guys got off free and clear. Just a bunch of guys hanging out after work, drinking beer inside a private club, with girls dancing on the poles for them.” I sighed and put the rest of the dishes on the drain board, then took another healthy swig.

The alcohol was compounding now, and I knew I was breaking my oath to myself, but I wanted Z to know who the real me was, so maybe she’d understand when I told her that I wanted to live now. I’d lost so much, but in this telling, I needed a little extra to get me through. It hurt that bad.

“In the basement, they found traces of meth on the walls from the processing. It was a big mess. They closed and padlocked the club, and the bikers claimed it wasn’t them it was probably the former tenants, but we all knew it for the lie it was. I kept out of all of it, and I never alerted the cops. It was just bad luck it went down the way it did.”

“They blamed you, didn’t they?” Her voice was quiet, and she brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

“Yes. A month passed, and things quieted down. I’d been expecting Reno or somebody from the club to come after me, but they never did. I thought my fears were silly by that point and I was starting to relax. My daughter, Jenny, was 13 at the time, and I’d gotten a pay raise. I took my wife out to dinner to celebrate, letting her stay home alone to watch movies. I was getting pretty happy with the drinks and steak when I got a frantic phone call from my neighbor. Said he’d heard a gunshot and my house was on fire.

“Oh no,” Z whispered, who stood behind me now.

I’d faced the sink again, not wanting to look at her for the next part.

“I almost ran us off the road and rear ended the police car that was there when we pulled in. I’d had more than I thought at dinner, but I didn’t care. I kept screaming my daughter’s name and demanding to know if anybody had seen her. I tried running inside twice but was tackled. I watched the house burn down from the backseat of the police car I’d hit, handcuffed. They realized early on how drunk I was.

“And I wasn’t always like this you know,” I took another swig and felt Z’s arms circle my waist and hug me.

She didn’t let go of the grip but held me close, putting her head on the small of my back. It was at that point I realized I was crying as well, silent tears falling to hit my shirt.

“I never used to drink. That night, the world was really good. I got a raise I’d been wanting forever, I had a beautiful wife who seemed to love me, a daughter who had straight A’s and was already making me nervous about dating and Reno happened.”

“He did it?” She asked me.

“Him, or one of his guys. I’m sure of it. That’s what I told the cops as I sat in the back of the car. When they realized I was the homeowner and it was my daughter who was missing, they delayed taking me in and booking me. They ended up letting me sober up in the car… Then I heard my wife scream about an hour after the fire was out and a team had gone in. They found Jenny, she’d been…”

I broke down. The horror of it was crushing and I was having a hard time breathing, catching my breath. Great big sobs. My legs wobbled and Z pulled her arms back and caught me under the armpits and lowered me to the ground. I scooted around to face her, handing her the bottle.

“You don’t have to tell me, not if you don’t want to.”

“I need to. I just…”

“Take your time,” she told me, sliding the bottle behind he back.

“The fire was supposed to cover up what they’d done. She’d been beaten, raped and shot. Most of her body was burned from the fire, but a burst water pipe kept her from…”

“Don’t, don’t relive that part. Go on.” Z said, her face chalky white.

“Once she was buried, we had the house rebuilt. We never intended to live there and sold it as soon as we could. We got an apartment and a couple of things. There wasn’t much of our old life left and we both felt a little lost. We both took paid leave from work and found out that we really didn’t have that much in common anymore. I told her what had happened and my suspicions that it was the Devil Dogs. She blamed me for everything. All of it. Jenny’s death, the fire, our crumbling marriage.

“I couldn’t take it, I was still too raw,” I reached for the bottle but Z shook her head.

I wanted to be angry, but I wasn’t. I was mostly drunk, hurting in a way that hadn’t happened in years.

“In the end, I screwed up. The fights grew even nastier and I took to getting out of the apartment as much as possible. When I had to do the maintenance inspection on this place before they closed it, I decided to keep a key. I don’t know why I did, but I found myself starting to stock the place with booze and the odd bit of food. See, whenever I had a bottle at home, my wife would scream and pour it out. She blamed me for our daughter’s death and she blamed me when I lost my job with the county about four months back.”

“Oh Don, I’m sorry,” Z said, tears standing at the edges of her eyes waiting to fall.

“She left a month after I lost my job. I’d already signed the divorce papers a while back and we’d just been waiting for our day in court. I didn’t want it, but she couldn’t live with me anymore. My drinking, my guilt, my shame.”

“Didn’t the cops ever catch them?”

“They all had alibis. I got one phone call from one of them. It was right after my wife left me. They told me ‘You’re next,’ and hung up. I took what cash I had left and bought as much booze and food as I could and went to the bunker here. I spent over a week underground. I was drunk most of the time. Planning on hanging myself,” that admission hurt worse than I’d cared to admit.

“I had the noose tied off, and no matter how many times I felt it around my neck, I couldn’t do it. I was still too much of a cow…cow... coward,” I sobbed.

I reached for the bottle, but this time she slid it over to me. I finished it off and coughed as the booze left me breathless, something that hadn’t happened in a while.

“Then when I couldn’t do it, I came out. I think I was down there for a week, I don’t know… but the EMP had already shorted out everything. I wandered all over, there were people still around. Things were bad, looting, rioting. Fires burned everywhere. No matter where I went or hid, the sound of those Harleys haunted the streets.

“NATO troops have been fighting with the Devil Dogs since they’ve landed. They’ve never won and all they’ve done is give the club better equipment and weapons than they could have gotten before. I guess they weren’t vicious enough already.”

“So you’ve been down here, all alone,” Z started talking, “and you only come out to what, get food and booze?” She asked me finally, pulling the empty bottle away from me.

I leaned back against the cupboards behind me and rested my head on the cool edge of the counter.

“Yeah, trying to work up the courage to take that short drop with a sudden stop… or to keep on living,” I wiped my eyes, feeling my head spin as the alcohol start to numb my thoughts and slur my words.

“Have you decided?” Z asked me quietly.

“I was going to take the rope,” I told her truthfully, “but then I met you,”

I woke up to crawl to the toilet. I don’t know how I went from sitting on the kitchen floor to my bed, Z’s soft snores beside me, and a line of pillows separating us. I barely made it in time before the trip-hammer pulse of a hangover headache had me throwing my guts up. I heard Z coming, but I couldn’t turn away. I was done throwing up by now, but the enormity of my admission was making it hard for me to turn, to face her. Instead, I rested my head on the basin and waited for my head to quit threatening to explode.

I don’t know how she got the cloth wet without me hearing it, but a cold cloth was put over my neck and gentle hands kneaded my shoulders. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes after a while and took the cloth and wiped my face clean.

“Thank you,” I told her, turning to see her wearing one of my tee shirts.

It looked like a dress on her, almost coming down to her knees. Her hair was mussed from sleep and her eyes were read and puffy.

“No problem. Can you stand?”

I did, and I felt a ton better than I had before, with just a little bit of the fuzzy headedness that comes with partial drunkenness.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“You should try drinking some water before you lay back down.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just so sleepy,” I complained.

Her arms helped me to the bed where I flopped on my back. I was almost out cold when I felt her slide into the bed next to me. I was too tired to panic when she moved the pillows out of the middle and put her head in the crook of my arm and curled up next to me. I don’t know who fell asleep first, her or me, because for one moment, I felt at peace at last.

Chapter Nine

Z –

Alcoholism wasn’t something I studied about in school, but what had been staring me in the face all along was the fact that Don wasn’t just a guy drinking to escape the world. I’d seen his hands shake and him weak-kneed. I figured it was because he was hurt or drunk. I’d never considered that he’d tried to stop drinking before. How hard was it?

I know I nearly died when he told me he almost chose the rope. That left all sorts of conflicted feelings inside of me. I was sore, and my lower back hurt from dragging him into the bed, but curling up next to him had felt like the right thing to do. I had no agenda, just the need to hold and be held. I dozed for a while, waking up to him thrashing around in his dreams.

I pulled a sheet loose from the tangle of bedding he slept on top of and headed towards the blast door. The lights here looked like old gas lamps or oil lamps, but I hadn’t seen him light or fill them. I held my hand to one to feel the heat and was surprised to find none. It had some sort of switch and I tried it, and the light turned off. Electrical? I’d have to ask him. I turned the light back on and headed to the blast door, pulling the sheet around me.

When I turned the door and pulled it open a crack, I noticed that it was dark out still with dawn’s light starting to make the horizon glow. I hadn’t checked my radio in a while and I rushed to my pack, remembering that I’d seen them packed away. I’d kept them a complete secret, but before rescuing me he’d found and packed them when he took my pack. I smiled when I saw the charging cord there also, with the alligator clips.

Turning the knob, the red light of the power button glowed red. I turned the volume up slowly and all I got was static. I figured as much and headed to the cracked doorway and sat just inside, the cool cement cold on my back.

“…. The guards were over ran. It seems like a small team went in and literally blew the gate off the camp. Over,” a voice said.

For half an hour, I listened to somebody talking about a FEMA camp in Alabama that had been liberated. The people there had been forced to work making some kind of electrical motors. The conditions there sounded horrible. The men, women and children had been separated. The only ones it sounded like made it out without major psychological or physical scarring, was the kids. Some of the women had been forced into some sort of sexual slavery to the guards and former prison personal.

Most of the survivors from there had told the guys spreading the word on the radio that they had at first welcomed going to the camps. It was safer than the violence and looting that was going on all around them. But things shifted subtly, and it happened so quickly and so smoothly that it took them by surprise. They had essentially given up all of their freedoms, and given in to a form of slavery that had been unseen in ages. The food was barely adequate and disease and illness were starting to become a real issue, when an APC had lit up the guard towers and a snuck a small team in who started a riot. I’d heard rumors of this and other camps that had been attacked and the citizens released.

I got tired of listening to the doom and gloom, so I switched frequencies so I could listen in on Blake’s group and the new station, Rebel Radio.

“Don’t know where you are at in the world, but mulberries are in a season, so are raspberries and rhubarb. Have your lady friend make you up some jam and jellies and your kids will forget about the candy bars and gobble that up. Over,” an unfamiliar voice told somebody.

“That’s a great idea,” a feminine voice answered with a Midwestern accent.

“Yeah, thanks buddy. Do you think that will work for people who have sugar issues?” another voice asked.

“Well, a long time ago I knew how to make sugar but you had to either grow sugar cane or sugar beets. It’s easier to find some honey and let the bees do the hard work, over.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” I thought.

“Don’t you have to have a hood, smoker and a bunch of other stuff to get the bees to cooperate?” the lady asked him after a moment’s hesitation.

“Depends. Bees are pretty normal and sleepy at night time. I would do my sneaking at night. Sometimes making a smoky fire under or near the hive. The biggest thing with bees is to not worry about getting stung,”

“How do you do that?”

“They can smell the fear on ya. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but as soon as you panic, they seem to swarm you. You swat one away and the rest of them attack. It’s ugly and it’s happened to me before. It’s been twenty something years since I’ve done any bee keepin’ though. Over.”

“Hey, I was wondering if somebody could help me?” a young voice asked, its sex indeterminate with the crackle and distance.

“Sure thing kid,” “Yeah,” “Shoot,” “Of course!” was chorused, people talking all over each other.

“Something keeps getting into my grandpa’s chicken coop and pulling the heads off the chickens. I can’t find out how they are getting in or out, but if this keeps up I won’t have any birds left.”

The voice from earlier, the man talking about bees, keyed up his mic and cleared his throat. “Is your grandpa around to help you out, little man?” For once the air was silent waiting on his answer.

“No sir, he fell off the tractor when the power went out. Died right then.” the young person answered after a pause.

“Pacemaker?”

“Yes sir,”

“Sorry to hear that, I hope you aren’t all alone… but for your chickens… It doesn’t sound like somethings getting in really. It sounds like something is reaching in. Are the heads pulled off and left there?”

“No sir, the heads are all gone,”

“That’s what I figured. It’s raccoons for sure, kid. You got any traps out there?” he asked, his voice rusty as he asked the question.

“I don’t think so, sir. We’re mainly a horse farm, we do some hay. When my mom and grandma come back they could probably tell me, but it’s been a while.”

“I’m sorry hun,” the female voice said.

“It’s ok. It was bad at first, but I’ve kept everything else on this farm alive since then. I was even able to get the tractor started and put up. I just can’t seem to get whatever’s getting my chickens. Uh... Over.”

“It’s raccoons for sure. You say you were a horse farm?”

“Yes sir,”

“Good, good. Your grandpa use a fly poison out there to keep the flies down and not bugging the horse’s eyes?”

“Yes sir, Golden Malrin. I keep the bait stations full for the horses, sir. I’ve got three big cans of it left.”

“That’s the exact stuff. Now, I’ll let you in a little secret about killing raccoons. It isn’t nice, it isn’t pretty. Hell, it isn’t humane or legal but it’ll kill them every time. How badly do you want to save yer chickens?”

“Pretty bad, sir.”

“Ok, get an old pie tin out. One you ain’t ever gonna use for food ever again. Pour you something sweet in it. Pop or watered down corn syrup or juice. Pepsi works best. Then dump in a can of tuna or cat food, something solid. Then take about two cups worth of that fly bait and put it in that slurry. Mix it up real good like. It smells like death and it is, so don’t you get it on you or in you, you hear?”

“No sir, I won’t.”

“Good, and make sure all the barn cats and all the dogs in the area aren’t coming by for a visit, because there’s no cure. The critter who sups at that table will be dead within ten feet of that poison. It isn’t a nice way to die, and you’ll have to bury the bodes so they don’t keep killing the next thing and the next… You hear me?”

“Yes sir. Thank you!”

“Poison should never be used on animals, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” a belligerent, nasal-sounding female voice broke in.

I listened to the squabble for ten minutes with the judgmental bitch turning her radio off mid-sentence, sounding like she was crying. I saw both sides of the issue though. It sounded like a horrible death, but without anything else to use, the kid didn’t have a lot of choices.

“Would that also work on all the dogs that were turned loose and are starting to form large packs? Over.” I asked.

“The fly bait? Well sure. Kills just about anything. Why, you have a dog problem?”

“No,” I said, trying to keep my voice quiet so I didn’t wake up Don. “I saw a pack run down a little girl one or two cities back. I dropped some food I was given and ran. I got lucky I guess.”

“I’ve heard of big packs roaming the countryside. Killing livestock, running the game down for sheer sport. I used to shoot every damn dog I saw on my property, but I’m running low on powder.”

That sparked off a new discussion and I saw back and listened to. It wasn’t the “Official” radio show that Blake hosted, but it had become a frequency that folks had started tuning into, so they could share survival information. I figured that the folks who were left alive were numbered by the handfuls across the nation, maybe even the world. That’s why a way to share information over vast differences was so important and used to be taken for granted. Hell, I’d used Team Speak forever playing with folks across the globe in raids on WoW.

What happened was something that only video game designers had ever began to explore. Not even the movies went as far as they could have describing the horrors of being suddenly thrown back into the Stone Age. What we had left, machines and tools, were probably going to get used up, never to be replaced. Too much was lost. Too many processes relied on automation and robots and computers and they were all gone. Even the machines to fix or replace the parts that were fried out were themselves fried.

It was the most frustrating problem I could have imagined. I also had no idea what to do when all the food had gone, I mean… Don had a way of fishing and catching crabs somehow, but we still ate rice out of a bag, veggies out of a can. What would we do when there was none of that left to loot? I didn’t know the first thing about getting my food and that thought alone scared me, especially since meeting Don, I’d more or less eaten regularly.

That’s how I decided I was going to become a sponge. I lost track of time, only noting its passing as the sun moved overhead signaling that mid-day was close to coming. I heard Don start to stir and smiled. I wondered if he’d had a monstrous hangover. I’d already cleaned up the toilet spatters from his episode earlier, but didn’t want a repeat. If he was going to be miserable, he’d have to do it neatly or I’d kick his ass.

“You been up long?” I hear Don’s voice behind me.

“Yeah, just before sunrise.” I told him.

“You hungry?”

“Always. What do you have in mind?” I asked.

“How about more of last night? Teach you my tricks on fishing and crabbing.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’d work.” I smiled back at him, turning the radio off.

Both batteries seemed to have a decent charge so I figured I’d talk to him later about finding a bigger battery to keep these alive. Problem for another moment.

“Good, go ahead and get,” he motioned to my sheet covered form, “uh... ready? We’ll take the boat.”

“You feeling better this morning?” I smiled at the look he gave me.

“There won’t be as much as the feast last night, but we ought to be able to get a few. Besides, I want to show you some stuff. You know. Just in case?”

I stood, facing him, my head coming up to almost his shoulders, “In case of what?”

“You know, in case something happens to me,” he replied finally.

“I found the noose. Are you serious, about wanting to live again?”

“More than anything in the world,” he told me with a grin, “besides kiddo, somebody has to take care of me when I get too old.”

“I am not a kid!” My voice was petulant and sounded bitchier than I wanted it to be.

“Oh I know. Bad habit of mine, I’m sorry.” He pulled a bottle out from behind his back and took a swig.

“Do you really need to do that?” I asked, pointing to the bottle.

“Yeah, I actually do. I’ve been drinking so hard for so long, I’m trying to wean myself off of it. Last time I tried going cold turkey, I got so sick I thought I was dying,” he told me, with a lot less shame than he’d exhibited last night.

“Do you want me to help you?” I asked him after a pause so I could think and clear my head.

“Please.”

So I did. He locked up behind us and we took the boat into the river. He’d caught some sort of ugly fish the previous day called a Sheepshead, but he was holding it back so he could use it for bait. He’d cut a hunk off near the tail and threw that out behind the boat from the usual spot and showed me how to tie a hook with the heavier line. Through the eye hole and bring the string parallel. Then twist the hook, letting the heavy twine roll up leaving a small loop near the eye of the hook. Put the top of the line through that loop pointing down and pull.

“That’ll break the line before the knot comes out if you do it right,” Don told me as I tied on a second set.

“Why didn’t we eat the fish last night?” I’d been dying to know.

“I guess they’re good eating, but figured he’s so ugly he’d change your mind for ya.”

“He might have, unless you know… you would have filleted him before bringing him up.” I told him.

“Nah, I figured you’d like some mud bugs and crabs better than some sushi anyways,” he grinned and poled us to the first trap.

He explained how to tell where the deep parts of the rivers were. On one side of the curve in the river was a sand bar, the water scooping out the other side. So about three quarters of the way across the river from the sand bar should be deep water. He told me ten to fourteen feet in depth is where he’d had the best luck, but you can catch them about anywhere the water is somewhat salty.

“Shoot, you can even catch them on a piece of string tied to some chicken liver,”

“What?” I asked, thinking he was joking.

“No, really.”

“This I want to see,” my voice was challenging.

Then Don gave me a weird look and took a swig from his bottle, just one and a smaller one than I’d seen before. He pulled out some more kite string and cut a chunk off the sheepshead, leaving the skin on. He tied a hook to the line and put the bait on it. Looking around he pulled ten to fifteen feet of line from the reel and looped it in one hand loosely. With an underhanded toss, the line flew out, snapping straight and coming down in the shallows.

“Now we just wait a minute,” he told me, smiling.

“You catch a crab that way, I’ll clean the catch tonight,” I was only half teasing.

In truth, the look on his face when I challenged him lit some kind of fire in his soul. I could see it in his eyes. If he needed something small to accomplish to show his worth to me, then I’d do something as disgusting as digging out fish guts or whatever.

“Deal, and if I don’t catch something, I’ll have kitchen duty for a week straight. Sound fair?”

“You are so going to lose this game,” I said, standing in the boat carefully.

We waited and I watched the bait. The current ebbed and flowed and as I was starting to get impatient, Don pulled in the line. I knew there wasn’t anything on the fish tail, I’d been watching it. But as the tail hit the harder current, the mud that the crab had been covered with washed away showing a white shell with blue markings. Very slowly, Don worked the line in until it was near the boat and gently pulled it up.

The crab was holding onto the piece of fish with one pincher and let go of the fish within a second of being pulled from the water. Don’s other hand was ready to slap the crab into the middle part of the boat on the way down. I didn’t quite shriek as the crab almost hit my back, but it was at least a little squeak of surprise, perhaps?

“Ha!”

“That is so not funny, how did you do that?” I demanded.

“See, crabs are scavengers too. They grab onto something to feed and when you feel that you reel them in so slowly that they can’t even tell till it’s too late. A lot of times as a kid I’d use a lantern to draw them in and a net to catch them when I pulled them out of the water. Caught a lot of crabs that way,” he finished.

I snorted and was about to lose my shit again when he pointed at me with his finger and thumb shaped like a gun.

“Looks like you clean this next mess,” he smiled and I tried to smile back.

“Ok, fine. But you’re going to have to show—“

A sharp tug on the boat almost had me flip out of it and the line behind Don’s seat went tight. Then it really pulled. The back end almost submerged with whatever had hooked it. I screamed in panic and held onto the front of the boat that was now hanging up in the air out of water as the rear end was dragged back towards the bridge and eventually, the ocean. The back end of the boat was throwing up a small wake as we were towed backwards when Don cut the cord with a fillet knife he kept on him.

The cord parted with a crack and I almost fell off the boat as the front end came down. Don scrambled over to me on his knees so I wouldn’t fall in. I was a mess, and had started crying in the panic.

“Are you ok?” he kept asking me over and over.

I was looking over his shoulder and I pointed. He turned and blanched. Swimming away from us was a fin, with a lot of displaced water as it moved quickly away from us.

“Was that… was…..?”

“Probably. Next time remind me to use lighter weight cord,” he said with a grin and crawled back to his end of the boat and took a swig from a plastic bottle he’d brought along for the trip.

“But it’s fresh water here, there’s no sharks in the rivers!”

“Well, that’s not entirely true. This is brackish water, some salt, some fresh. That was probably a bull shark. Good thing it wasn’t a big one.”

“Big one? That wasn’t a big one?” I asked in panic.

“Well, not really, see they can get to about—“

I pulled in the lines by me, dropping them in the boat motioning for him to get the pole going again.

“What?”

“Pole us in, hurry!”

“But the current will take us home,” he said with a smile, finding something amusing about my freak out moment.

“I don’t want to wait,” I told him, meaning every word of it.

In my world, sharks have one purpose, to eat the bad guys. For all I knew it was a reincarnation of Jaws, or something.

“Ok, Ok. I suppose we can hurry it along,” Don said with a smile and moved us down the river at a faster clip, “Good thing you didn’t lose the crabs, I still have to teach you how to clean them.”

Time passed slowly. I only left the shelter alone to find a battery from a nearby stalled car so I could recharge my batteries on the radios. Mornings and evenings I listened to Rebel Radio and tried to become a sponge of information. Sometimes, sitting in the doorway, Don would join me. He had been drinking less and less lately. The bitchy part of me wondered if he let himself get so far gone by being alone and bored. I knew that was selfish of me, but he was starting to grow on me some.

We pulled the tape off his broken fingers and redid the wraps without the sticks so he could have some movement. They were moving fine and no horrible pain, but neither of us knew how long it’d take for finger bones to heal. His various cuts and scrapes also healed without infection and he could move without pain in his ribs, but lifting heavy stuff still hurt him.

In the evenings, we’d open the blast door wide and let in the dying rays as the sun set. We’d play cards or even some board games he found from somewhere. A couple days turned into a week. A week turned into three. Other than that first night when I thought he was going to die of alcohol poisoning, I’d taken one of the cots closest to his room, but I’d slept alone. I didn’t want to, but I was too scared to try the first move. What’s the protocol when the world ends and you’re attracted to somebody? What would he say? Does he feel the same way? All these questions were swirling though my head over and over until I pulled a small foam pillow over my head and fell asleep that way.

I’d gotten over the fear of the shark, and we’d gone out just about every day for fish or crabs. It had really helped out with the food situation, but it wasn’t something we could do forever and go without other stuff. The basics, salt seasonings, veggies. I broached the subject with Don, but he just grunted and drank. I couldn’t decide if he was really mellow, or just didn’t worry about things like me. He claimed to be a coward, but after what happened to him, I couldn’t blame him for being terrified of the Devil Dogs.

I just wished there was a way of getting out of the bunker. That’s when I broached the subject with Don.

“Are we going to live here forever?” I asked after an evening of playing the thousandth game of solitaire.

“We? You planning on sticking around now that I’m all healed up?” he asked, a shy smile on his face.

“Well, yeah. You’re about the only normal one around here.”

“You know, there was an old couple that lived across from the golf course. They were pretty normal. Scared, but normal. Cautious.”

“What?”

“The day I went to go looking for you. They almost…”

He told me the story and I immediately knew which house he’d been talking about. It was the one that was two doors down from where I had been hiding when I’d seen him beaten. The old couple must have too, yet they did nothing to help. I started to get angry but then remembered that I hadn’t done anything either, until much later. I know part of it was the numbers. A ton of bikers and one of me. Except for video games, I’d never hurt anybody.

“Wow. Well, I mean… We’re not exactly keeping enough food inside here. Your mountain of boxes is almost full of empty cans now.”

Don looked at me sheepishly, “I know. I am planning on doing something about that real soon. Do you like fruit?” he asked me suddenly.

“Yeah…” I said, thinking this was a trick question.

“There’s some berries by the river…”

“Along with sharks and alligators and…”

“Yeah, that’s true. Not many, but there are some around here,” he grinned when my mouth dropped open.

“I was kidding about the alligators,”

“I wasn’t. Don’t worry about it, kiddo. If we’re careful I know where we can get a ton of fruit. Probably nuts too.”

“Nuts?” I asked, a hint of disbelief in my voice.

“Yeah, pecan, hickory and probably walnuts too. I even know about a couple fruit trees the city planted in a park they set aside for the kids to play in. Unless others have wiped it clean, it should be full of fruit by now.”

“Why wouldn’t it be wiped clean?” my stomach rumbled at the thought of fresh fruit.

Fruit that hadn’t been canned… Fresh fruit. It became a mantra in my head and I started to get excited.

“Well, the city put the park in and for years, we had to pay the landscapers to pick up fallen fruit. People just didn’t take the time to pick it, or maybe they picked it too early and didn’t like it. It’s been pretty much ignored for a few years ago.”

“Can we go there?”

“Now?” Don asked me, standing up.

“Well, yeah…”

He got his backpack out and emptied it of everything. He then took my pink water bottle and filled it, stuffing it in the pack.

I really wanted to smack the man.

I did the same thing, getting a sheet of plastic we fished out of the river.

“What’s that for?” Don asked me.

“Keep the fruit from soaking my pack if it gets too heavy on the bottom.”

“You think that up yourself?” Don asked me as he took a swig from a bottle of vodka.

“Naw, Rebel Radio. Somebody was filling their pockets with wild strawberries. When they were going back to wherever they camp at, they fell. Instant strawberry jam!” I laughed.

“It’s a good idea. They really have some folks on there who know how to survive. That’s for sure.”

“Do you ever think about… heading in land, or even going towards Kentucky?” I asked, broaching the subject I’d been thinking about earlier.

Leaving.

“The only reason I haven’t left, is there’s nowhere else to go. I’ve lived here my whole life.” Don was serious, and he looked a little alarmed at the thought of leaving.

“Ok. Just curious,” I only half lied.

Chapter Ten

Don –

Other than my backpack, I tucked the .357 in my waistband where the barrel poked me in the jewels. I readjusted it and in the end slid it down the back of my pants, my belt doing double duty now. I’d been losing weight and Z was right… The food situation would become desperate in another two weeks. I’d gotten enough squirreled away to last me through healing up, but that was about it. It hadn’t been intentional.

“I wish I had another key to give you,” I told Z, locking up the fallout shelter.

“How come?”

“What if something happens to me?” I asked.

“Then don’t let it happen to you.” Z told me, in a matter of fact voice.

I kept that in mind as we walked up the embankment towards the street level from the river. For half a second I considered taking the gas golf cart, but I didn’t know if it would be worth it yet. I only roughly remembered when the fruit ripened, at least the peach tree, but the blackberries should be good to go this time of summer.

“I won’t kiddo, let’s go.” I told her.

“Don, can I ask you something?”

Uh oh. I’d been dreading this question all week, whatever it was she was about to ask, I didn’t even know how I felt about things. It was all too soon, I was too raw.

“Yeah,” I lied.

“You know I’m not a kid, don’t you?” she asked me.

I felt stupid. I thought she was going to ask me something else entirely.

“I… Well of course you are. How old are you?”

“I’m twenty two.”

I let those words sink in. Gulp. No wonder she had been giving me the stink eye every time I called her kid, kiddo or other nick names. I gave her an appraising look, not feeling guilty about admiring the view.

“What?” She asked me after a second.

“When I first met you, I thought you were younger. I didn’t know if you were a girl at first for sure either.” I admitted as we walked down the street.

My first goal was the old car lot two blocks over and one block up. It had been abandoned for the past five years, the owner dead and the property tied up in probate court. The edges of the parking lot by the old chain link fence had a ton of blackberry bushes growing there. I’d found them earlier in the year, but nothing had been ripe at the time.

“That’s what I wanted people to think. There’s a lot less risk in the world if you’re a guy than a young woman,” she told me softly.

Something in her voice made me stop and turn to look at her.

“Is that why your haircut…”

“Yeah, I chopped it off a while back, but it was snarled and I never had a chance to brush it out. I was always on the run. Anyways, I didn’t want to be a target you know?”

I had a feeling and knew I should ask, but I couldn’t help it.

“Did something happen to you?”

Z gave me a look, obviously this was a subject she didn’t feel comfortable with. She nodded.

“If you don’t want to talk about it…”

“You know, maybe someday I will. But what’s worse than what happened to me was what happened to this lady I was staying with. I never want that to happen to me.”

She told me the story. I was horrified, but it sounds like something Reno’s crew would do. Who knows, it could have been another, but with those choppers, they could be anywhere and all over the place before you knew it. That’s what made the fear of scavenging so frustrating. They might not even be in the city, or they were all boozed up and passed out… or they were doing something like Z was describing.

They’d murdered the woman’s husband right in front of her and then took turns raping her, beating and laughing before murdering her too. No wonder the girl has trust issues with guys.

“I won’t ever let that happen to you,” I promised as we entered the car lot.

“Promise?”

“Yeah,” I told her, hoping I could keep it.

Z had the foresight to pack a couple #10 sized cans from the shelter, and we filled both of them with the big juicy berries. We could have picked more, but these would probably go bad faster than we could eat them. We stashed the cans to pick up on our way back from the park after we’d eaten our fill, the juice staining our lips.

A motor fired up close by, then was joined by dozens of others. I panicked. I was away from my shelter, nowhere to hide in a world full of dead cars… Cars!

“Hurry, hide!” I whispered hoarsely, pointing to an Oldsmobile that had ended up on the side of the road, halfway pulled into the vacant lot.

The owner had probably tried to get it off the road when the EMP hit, and didn’t have the strength to move it off to the side. Unless it was locked, it was the closest shelter I could see without running across the street, potentially exposing us to whoever it was. Then again, I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

“Go,” I urged even more worried.

The girl was frozen solid. Maybe if I moved first it would get her going. I took her hand and opened the door, pulling her in the backseat with me. I laid on the floor and motioned her to lay down. For half a second her eyes locked with mine and then she looked at the car seat. I almost shouted at her to hurry, but she pulled the door shut and grabbed something off the seat I’d seen, but it hadn’t registered in my mind before.

It was an afghan loaded with dog hair. A seat for the owners four legged friend.

When Z rolled on top of me and pulled the afghan over us I felt my breath knocked out of me and it wasn’t just because I wasn’t expecting her to do that. She didn’t weigh nearly enough to do that, but it was the contact, almost skin to skin inside the explosive heat of the car as her body covered mine. My legs were a little tucked to fit, but she fit right on top of me and she kept her face sideways so our eyes were locked.

“Don’t let them take me,” she begged.

The fear, the sweat, the anxiety and the closeness made it hard to breath. The sound of the Harley’s roaring closer added an element to everything and I felt myself suddenly and desperately un-brotherly towards Z. The timing was inappropriate; she was fourteen years younger than me and I felt disgusted at myself.

Guilt is a weird thing. It can make you act or do or say things you normally wouldn’t. I felt this way when Z would ask me how much I had to drink and I told her. I was cutting back, just not as quickly as I told her, but she had to have known. She hadn’t called me out on it. My sudden urge to kiss her made me feel much the same.

“I won’t let them,” I whispered back.

She leaned forward as I said that and her lips touched mine. The tension had been building up inside of me ever since she moved in with me, and suddenly I lost focus of everything. The kiss started off being mind blowing, but her soft moans had me squirming. Even though she was half my body weight, I was pretty well pinned unless I hurt her to try to escape, so I took it like a man. One very desperately stupid man. Her fingernails dug into my chest. The pain was enough to bring my focus back to the present.

The roar of the Harley’s passing the car was huge. We both froze in fear and shock. As the noise faded, I tried to sit up, but Z kept me pinned.

“They might come back,” she whispered.

I know they might come back, but I needed to get out of here before I did something I was going to regret. I’d almost lost my mind over that kiss and the paperwork for the divorce wasn’t finalized. I was still legally married. Besides, she was too young and my feelings for her were all mixed up. Waves of guilt washed over me and I wanted a drink. I wanted a drink so badly I started to shake.

Z held me tighter, and tried to renew our make out and groping session, but I couldn’t. I wanted to, but my brain was for once, over-riding my body’s demands.

“What’s wrong?”

“We could be dead at any moment,” I said after a moment.

“All the more reason,” she whispered into my ear with a husky voice and pulled on my belt.

I let her, I was losing my ability to reason again when we heard gunshots and screams, maybe three or four blocks away.

“Z,” I said.

“I know,” she told me rolling off of me and opening one of the ‘Old’s doors.

Getting out of the car felt like I stepped into the air conditioning. It was probably 85 degrees but the car had been hot. Well over a hundred or more.

“Let’s go back to the shelter,” I said.

“Don’t you want to see what they’re doing?” she asked.

“No, there’s too many of them. Whoever they’re attacking is probably outnumbered. It sucks, but there’s only two of us.”

“Maybe we can help get them away, like you did with me?” Z pleaded.

I pulled out the .357 and checked it. I know I shouldn’t, but where does a coward like me draw a line in the sand? When is too much running too much? Somewhere, I found the resolve to swallow my fear and started moving towards the sounds of the gunfire. If I walked over half a block, I could take the street right to where the commotion was coming from, but we’d be left exposed. Instead we used backyards and hedges to make our way over there. With no maintenance, most of the lawns were overgrown and, if needed, we could lay down and hide. We finally made it to the backyard of the house across the street from the gunfire.

The bikes were parked side by side in the street, in front of a yellow two story house, its red shutters faded. The yard was halfway neat and a small garden was in the flowerbeds that surrounded the front of the house on either side of the steps up to the front door. Large picture windows were on either side of the door and appeared to be a dining room and a living room. I almost expected to see a white picket fence around the place, except there were dozen or so bikers holding it under siege.

A figure would poke into the upper windows and fire at something near the foundation of the house. It took me a moment, but I finally saw Reno and his men. Spider was directing the raid, using hand motions I’d only seen in the movies. Some kind of short hand. The bikers crouched and moved from position from cover, not giving the figure upstairs more than a fleeting target. Suddenly I saw the brilliance of it. They got close enough to the house that the person in the upper floor couldn’t shoot at them directly without hanging out the window, and to come downstairs and do it would expose the owner to the bikers.

Reno made a hoarse command and everyone quit firing.

“I just want your women and supplies. You don’t have to die,” Reno shouted at the windows above him.

“I don’t have any!” a voice called back.

I could see a window sliding open upstairs and silently prayed the man would make it. Z pressed herself into my side closely and pinched my arm.

“Ow, what?” I asked her.

“Do you still have your bottle of booze?” She asked me, pulling at her boot and getting her sock off.

“Yeah…”

“Give it to me.” She said, her voice urgent.

I uncapped it and got three big swigs, far more than I’d had lately, before handing her the bottle. She stuffed the sock in as much as she could. Most of it hung outside the bottle, but she shook it upside down a bit until the fabric was soaked with the vodka. She patted her pockets down in search of something, but I’d already figured out part of her ad hoc plan.

“You’re lying. I’ll give you to the count of five before I burn this place down.” Reno screamed.

“I don’t have anything,” the stranger replied from a separate window, one that had already had the sash slid up.

“1!” Reno screamed.

I handed Z the lighter I had in my pocket.

“2!” The shout was louder.

I could see another figure move past the window. The guy was lying; there was a woman up there with him.

“3!” Reno shouted, pulling a stubby orange plastic gun out of a pocket in his cargo pants.

The figure leaned out slightly to see where the bikers were. Most were in front of the house, some on the side.

“4!” Reno yelled and Spider hit the big picture glass window with a crowbar and tossed in a small gas can without the lid.

Z lit the Molotov.

With the rifle waving back and forth, the man quit trying to aim straight down, and fired on one of the Harleys as Reno screamed, “5!”

The flare gun went off at the same time as the guy shot and Z threw the flaming vodka.

Two blasts happened almost at once. Every window in the bottom of the house blew out as Reno’s men made themselves flat against the ground, every one of their mouths open to equalize the pressure of the blast. I almost took a shot at them, but the movement Z made throwing had me pull short. Almost in slow motion I saw the clear vodka bottle tumbling end over end towards the bike. The stranger’s bullet blew a hole in the side of the tank, letting gas leak out, but when the bottle shattered on the metal tank, the fumes and flames exploded.

We both ducked, putting our faces in the grass. There was a lot of shooting and shouts from both sides of the conflict when another bike exploded. For all their military training, they were still bikers, and one thing I always noticed was that bikers all park side by side. I don’t know why, but this time it definitely wasn’t in their favor. The lower level of the house started to burn, the flames licking hungrily at the edges of the broken window frame. It wouldn’t be long before the house was consumed.

“Kill them all,” Reno screamed as the men backed up, using the dead cars in the driveway as cover, not realizing the firebomb had come from us.

Half of his men were running for the bikes, trying to save them before another one blew up, many of them already starting to burn from flaming wreckage that landed on their seats, with several of them laid down from the blast. That was all the lack of attention the man upstairs needed, as his rifle began barking in rapid fire. Three of the bikers who were running to the bikes went down, one of them from a headshot that took most of his face as the bullet made a huge exit wound.

He fell in the street, right across from us, where we were hiding in the tall grass behind a hedge. Then things got even worse. The man in the upstairs window fired again, faster than he had before. The black gun he fired looking a lot like an M-16. Twenty, thirty rounds. Pause, more fire. The seven men who had instinctually ran to save their bikes were dead or screaming, their shrieks louder than Reno, who was trying to get them under a semblance of order.

When a stray round smacked the ground right in front of me, blowing dirt and grass into my face, I almost jumped straight up in surprise. Z held me down and we backed up. Maybe the guy with the machine gun could handle this. Maybe he could do what no one else could—

I saw a flare fly into one of the open windows and a round object right behind it. The explosion of the grenade wasn’t as big as the gasoline, but it silenced the shooter upstairs.

“Fuck them, Fuck this place. If anybody comes out of the house, shoot them.” Reno screamed in Spider’s face from behind a car’s chassis.

“What about the woman?”

“They killed the new guys, fuck them. Kill them. Kill them all, you hear me? Kill them all—“ Reno screamed into the man’s face.

“Yes, boss.”

I had to get out of there. There was no way I wanted to stick around for this, not this close.

“Let’s go,” I urged Z.

She nodded and pulled my hand, not towards the direction of the fallout shelter, but deeper into the maze of backyards that this neighborhood was known for. In a hedgerow separating back yards, she pulled me close to the ground.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten us involved in that.”

“They might still be alive,” I told her.

“Now you’re sounding like me.” she said softly, brushing something off my face.

“Why are we hiding here?” I asked, confused about her pulling me in this direction.

“We were near my cousin’s house.”

“Your cousin?”

“Yeah, that’s who I was eventually coming to find. The only family I have around here,”

“Why didn’t you go there right off the bat?” I asked her, not believing we were having this conversation a quarter mile away from Reno burning out some houses.

“I’ve only been here a couple times, forgot the address completely. Didn’t recognize it until we ran through the back yard and saw that stupid cherub bird bath.”

I looked and it was the usual posed cement figurine with his arrow pointed down into a disk that would usually have held water.

“Is he here?” I asked after a moment.

“I don’t know. If he isn’t, I remember where he hid the key,” she told me with a grin.

“You didn’t remember the address, but you do the key?”

“Yeah, it’s the birdbath. Come on, be careful.”

She tilted the bowl for the birdbath and reached under it. I fully expected her to drop it and pull out a stump of fingers. I was moving closer to help when she set it down and held up the key. I let out a sigh of relief and realized that I was standing exposed. I knelt down in the tall grass again.

“Let’s go, probably safer to hide here than wait for those guys to leave and risk it.”

“You got it kiddo,” I told her with a grin.

“I’m not a kid,” she told me, but her smile was big and toothy.

My grin faltered and she reached out and pulled me to the back doorway. Any second now, I was expecting something to happen. Anything. I was also feeling the weight of guilt as she opened the door and stepped inside. I watched for half a second and followed.

Chapter Eleven

Z –

That throw was the best thing I’d ever done in real life. In video games, I’m a sure shot. Outside of video games I’m just average. That toss had been perfect though, shattering just as I thought it would in my mind’s eye. I’d made that throw in many, many games, but that was the first time that life and virtual life matched up perfectly.

“Carl?” I called softly, not wanting to get shot if he was home but hiding.

“Look at this,” Don said, holding up a note he’d been reading on the dining room table.

I took it and read:

Dear Janice, Mom, Dad, Zelda or whoever finds this note.

I’ve been directed to flee to the FEMA camp south of here on the coast. I’m leaving in the morning with the rest from this block. There’s been a lot of crime so I’m somewhat relieved to be gone. If any of you reading this need anything from the house, take it. If you aren’t any of the people I named above, please don’t trash my place. I saved up forever to have it.

Also- I hope to be home as soon as the fighting stops, but the National Guard won’t let me bring any of my guns with me so I gave them to ‘Uncle Albert’ for safekeeping.

Sorry I wasn’t here to crack a beer with you all. Let’s pray that the world turns out a little better than the ashes it’s been in lately.

Carl

Uncle Albert, the name rang a bell and I was having a lightbulb moment when Don broke my concentration.

“Who’s Janice?” he asked.

“His girlfriend. She’s Navy, deployed a lot,”

“Oh, makes sense living here then. How about the other girl, Zelda?”

My cheeks flamed red as I re-read the note. Zelda. Shit!

“Well, uh,” this time I did tug at my hair, and turned away and walked to the antique grandfather clock.

“Zelda, stop.” his voice was commanding and my feet wouldn’t move, even though I wanted them to.

I turned slowly, expecting the laughter, but found him smiling at me instead.

“What?”

“It’s a beautiful name. Don’t be embarrassed.”

My cheeks burned. I looked at the clock, the only piece Carl had gotten from our great uncle when he died; I’d gotten a nightstand. I couldn’t find any false panels or drawers so I looked behind it. Nothing. I looked inside the glass door that showed the pendulum and clockworks and was ready to give the idea up as a dumb one when I saw the pendulum pushed slightly outwards.

“What are you doing?” Don asked, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“Uncle Albert,” I muttered, kneeling down to open the door.

The back of the clock was black felt, but it hadn’t been properly installed. The top was further away than the bottom that was touching the pendulum, and that’s what caused me to take a second look. I pulled at a corner of the felt and the backing moved. I held the pendulum out of the way to the side and removed the false front.

My cousin’s duck gun was sitting there. A Mossberg 12ga, with several boxes of shells. His rifle was there, along with a bunch of boxes for it also. What had my attention though, was the pistol. I’d fired that pistol with Carl several times.

“Oh, wow,” Don said behind me, giving my shoulder a squeeze before letting go.

Good thing he did, that touch was lighting me up in ways I’d not felt even before the war, when I’d had a boyfriend who pretended to care for me.

I handed him the rifle and boxes of ammo. Next the shotgun, and I picked up the Colt 1911 gold cup. It was a flashy gun, chrome and gold in color, Carl’s race gun with a four magazine customer leather holder full of mags ready to go. His holster for the Colt was pushed almost to the top of the back of the case and held up with a trim nail. I took it off the peg, and checked the action of the pistol, making sure it was loaded. I stood and put the gun and magazine holder on my belt.

Don’s expression was one of amazement.

“What? I’m a gamer girl who got to go out shooting once in a while, sue me.” I told him, smirking.

“You can shoot all of this?” he asked, holding up the rifle and shotgun.

“No, I mean yes. I can, but it hurts.”

“Too much recoil?

“Yeah,” I told him, “I can do it but it leaves big bruises on me.”

Don started to stay something and I cut him off. I was right, he was already pulling the shotgun to his shoulder to show me how to hold it properly.

“I know all about that. I’m not big enough, not unless we do something with the recoil pad or get a heavier gun. The wood was replaced on that when he went with the camo paint. Ever since then, I couldn’t shoot it. The wood was nice though, it shined up pretty good.”

“I can only imagine,” Don said dryly, looking a little disappointed, “but what about the rifle? It’s a .308?”

“Nope and nope. Literally almost broke my collar bone firing that thing. Dude, I’m like a hundred pounds with these boots on.”

“More like a hundred and twenty,” he quipped and my face turned red.

Not in a blush, but a flash of anger. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing, just guessing when you jumped on me in the car back there…” he started to back up, stammering and holding one hand up, and the gun straight up in the air.

“You better not be making a crack about my weight,” I told him with a pointed finger.

“I wasn’t, shit, chill out! Hey, we can’t stay here long though,” Don said, looking ashamed and not meeting my eyes.

“Why not?”

“I need a drink,” he admitted after a long pause.

I sighed, forgetting. Everything had been too much.

“Come here and sit in the living room, I’ll find something for you,” I told him, pulling him by the hand to a recliner.

The living room was dark and dusty, the interior wooden shades had been pulled and locked before Carl had left, and the house hadn’t been touched yet by people looking for supplies. I found that kind of weird, but if the house was this intact, then it reasoned that is liquor cabinet over the fridge would still have something.

I walked back into the kitchen, something straight out of the 50s. White counters on dark wood. His appliances were modern, giving the room a weird retro feel that I would have loved if any of it actually worked, but since it didn’t… I opened the cupboard and found a bottle of Stoli and brought it to him. He cracked the cap and took a nice long drink, pausing for breath. When he was done, half the bottle was gone. He hadn’t had much from the one I’d made into the torch, but he’d drank as much then as he’d been stretching out for a full day. I was halfway pissed.

“I’m going to check the rest of the house out,” I said, trying not to let the anger in my voice show too much.

“I’ll go with you,” he said standing, putting the cap on the bottle.

“My cousin’s house, so I’ll check it out. You just relax, and don’t hit that too much more. You’re already at your daily limit.” I told him, trying not to sound bitchy and nagging.

“Don’t walk in front of any windows unless they have heavy curtains. It’s the only way I can think of that Reno and his guys found that couple.”

“Good idea,” I admitted and headed out. I peeked in the one bedroom downstairs and saw his bed neatly made.

His drawers were empty and his closet only had his hunting clothes hanging up. Everything else had been cleaned out. I checked the bathroom next, and found the toilet tank to be full of water, the bowl almost so. It looked like he’d had a cleaning service come out and clean the house before he left… everything was in its place and even the toilet paper was put on the roll right… Toilet paper! I grabbed the roll off the holder and looked under the counter and almost cried out in victory as six rolls were stacked neatly under the sink.

I brought them out and set them on the coffee table in front of Don, who had the bottle rising to his lips. I gave him the stink eye and he quickly capped it and put it down. I didn’t know why today had been so much harder for him, but I’d noticed that he drank more when he felt stressed out. Today had been a stressful day so far, but not half a bottle of stress.

I padded upstairs, finding my cousin’s small art studio that took up the entire floor upstairs. It wasn’t a big room, maybe 20x30, but in the center of it, with views on three sides, was his easel. His last painting stood there, probably drying as he was loaded up to leave. It showed a set of train tracks heading off towards a sunset, the entire sky with an orange glow. Towards the top of the picture, in the distance sat a barn.

It was beautiful and breath-taking. It also reminded me about my conversation with Patty about the railroad tracks. Bugging out, a hidden cache I could use if needed… Leaving… Safety in numbers in Kentucky. No biker gangs, no rapists… It had become Shangri-La in my mind’s eye. I just needed to convince Don to come with me. Maybe he would come with me… Wouldn’t he?

Again, my mind returned to the memory of the kiss and how it had lit my body on fire inside. Despite the timing and the place, I had suddenly been ready for everything. Walking down the stairs I was excited to tell Don about the painting and see if he wanted to just stay here tonight. There was a neatly made bed that wasn’t being used…

The downstairs was empty. For half a second I felt a sense of panic. He ran out on me? Where is he? A toilet flushed behind me and I turned to find him coming out of the bathroom rubbing his hands together. I caught a whiff of hand sanitizer and kicked myself for going through there too quickly earlier. I could use hand sanitizer for tons of things. I knew that from Rebel Radio. I knew that... I almost growled in frustration as Don took a big step around me and went back to the recliner and sat down.

“We didn’t bring any food,” Don said, rubbing his lips with the back of his hand, the lips I’d just had pressed against mine earlier…

Stop it! I told myself; I’d very likely just watched two people die by a grenade or being burned alive and I was letting my hormones control me. Instead, I needed to be like Sandra. Smart, badass and resourceful. I’d never met the woman, but she sounded like she was a lot like me. Looked younger than she was, shorter cropped hair than me, but I could fix that… And on the elfin side, same as me. One thing about her that I definitely couldn’t do was kick ass hand to hand. She’d overheard a couple of Marines joke about her new world introduction and nobody could beat her square hand to hand.

It really made me wonder what kind of man can keep a woman like that happy. Was he some Special Forces badass? Was he some kind of ninja straight out of hell? How does a man learn so much survival related information otherwise? No matter, Blake had helped her out on more than one occasion, and the frequency they used for Rebel Radio was often full at all hours of the day, except the hour or two that Blake, Patty and David were on. Everybody stopped chattering to listen to the impromptu programs. They all saved questions for last.

Which still had my head spinning as I considered Don’s statement.

“Do you want to wait here for a while and head out later on?”

“I don’t know. I think I screwed up. Too much booze. Does your cousin have any food here?”

“I don’t know, did you look?” I asked him, wondering why all of a sudden he was letting me do all the acting, talking and decision making.

It was a little shocking. Was it the kiss?

“No, didn’t feel right since it was your family’s stuff, ya know?” He said, the small smile back.

“Yeah, I do know. Let’s see,” I told him.

Two boxes of stale breakfast cereal, a couple of cans of soup and a sleeve of crackers.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” Don smiled and pulled me close for a hug.

Gulp! The small amount of time I’d been with the man had left me aching for his presence every time he left me behind to go somewhere or do something. Now having him close was almost as overwhelming. Contact like this was completely new from him, and to be honest, from me too. I’d been too scared to open up until I found myself on his chest, nose to nose. The thought of dying probably helped me to just do it, but he’d kissed me back, dammit!

When he let go, I stepped back into a darker shadow so he wouldn’t see the effect he had on me, and instead got a couple of bowls from the cupboard. The utensils where I remembered them, but they looked like they were dusty. I cleaned two spoons with my shirt and handed one set of each over.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Don said after we were both eating the cold soup in the bowls.

We could have eaten it right out of the can, but we were in a real house with a real kitchen that hadn’t been looted and behind me in a bedroom was a real bed that hadn’t been used and…

“Sorry for what?” I asked him, not understanding the apology.

“Back at the car, I didn’t mean—“

“You don’t have to apologize for that. We were just in the moment,” I told him, not wanting him to overthink things.

“In the moment…” he said softly and finished his bowl and put it in the sink.

I crunched a handful of crackers up and used them to help me finish off my bowl. I’d heard Don go back to the living room. Hopefully he’d still be up. The day was mostly gone, but he’d also drunk a lot. Sometimes it made him sleepy, instead of drunk-acting. In the living room, he was sitting in the middle of the couch. Good, in the coming darkness it would be pitch black in there with the shutters closed.

I sat next to him, intending to see how he’d react after earlier. He’d given me a weird vibe a second ago and I wanted to make sure…

“What’s wrong?” I asked him as he stood up and paced.

He didn’t say anything, but he looked at the bottle sitting on the coffee table in front of me. I reached out and took it, not sure what had him so bugged.

“Seriously Don, what’s going on?”

“Zelda, it’s just that I—“

“Z, I’m still Z.” I interrupted.

“Z, about earlier in the car. I can’t, I mean… I shouldn’t have.”

“What?” I asked, my voice much quieter than I had meant it to be, but he heard.

“Kissed you, I almost went too far. I can’t…”

“Can’t or won’t?” I asked, feeling like my soul was starting to get shredded.

“I never went in front of the judge, I’m still legally married. And you, you are almost half my age. I’m sorry. I’m not what you want. Not really.”

He was getting worked up and his words cut my heart like a knife. “There are no more judges, and I don’t care about the age difference. You put up with me, and you haven’t once laid your hands on me. Not like that.” I said, anguished.

“You’re talking about what happened to you, from before?”

This time it was me who opened the booze bottle and took a hard swig. My first post-apocalyptic drink in this new brave world. What a crock of shit. The booze burned and almost knocked what breath I had left out of me. I sputtered and he moved over and pounded me on the back until I had my breath back.

“Yeah, yeah I am. But that isn’t important, and you’re changing the subject.”

“Because I can’t talk about it, and almost took advantage of—“

“You can’t rape the willing,” I almost yelled, my volume dial obviously broken, “I wanted it too!”

“Shhhhh, shit, I’m not saying the right things. I can’t…” his words trailed off and he walked to the counter where we had left the guns.

He still had the .357, but he took up the shotgun and moved towards the back door.

“No, no! Don, don’t go.” I was startled when I realized where he was headed.

“Z, stop ok, I’m not leaving. I just need to sober up some and think. I’ll be right out here looking round the place.”

“Then I’ll come and help you!” I pleaded.

“I just need some time. This is too much for me to handle all at once.”

“You wanted it too,” I told him.

“I did, I mean I do. I’m just no good for people. Sure, I’m a good friend, but this us thing, we need it to be like it was before,” he said, his voice sounding more serious and sober than I’d ever heard him before.

“What, where we steal glances at each other, or pretend we aren’t flirting?”

He looked at me with wide eyes as the realization hit him. That was what we’d been doing. Probably for close to a month. Ever since the day Reno got him. From the moment he passed out against me as I was cleaning his head wound. The comfort we’d shared as if we were the only two people left in the world.

“Z… I just need a minute. I’m not leaving. I promise. See, I don’t even have my pack!”

“Shit, I’m sorry, it’s just that…” I didn’t mean to cry, I swear to all the digital gods in the gamer realms that crying was the last thing I wanted, but I was doing it.

I staggered back into the house, shutting the door behind me.

“Shit!” I half screamed.

Chapter Twelve

Don –

My head spun as the door shut. I was seriously drunk and I didn’t trust myself to be around Zelda. Zelda, I mused to myself. It was awesome. What I couldn’t handle was the tears, and the hurt in her eyes. I went back to the hedgerow where we had hid earlier and sat down to think as the night drew in.

I know exactly what I wanted to do, but guilt was forcing me not to. I was a drunk, a coward. Still legally married and falling in love with a woman more than a decade younger than me. At first her clueless gamer girl attitude had rubbed me wrong a little bit, but it never colored my thoughts. Actually I’d pretty much admired her from day one if I was being honest with myself. She took the time to save an old drunk from what he probably deserved. She cleaned my cuts, fixed my fingers.

And what did I do? I started to fall in love with her, and apparently I should have seen she was falling too. I could forgive myself for my feelings for her. She was just awesome. But I couldn’t forgive myself for letting her fall for me. I knew it sounded stupid and twisted and the logic was all wrong, but kissing her had felt so right, despite all of that.

A movement in the shadows caught my attention and I stood to yell to Z when I realized she was still inside. Panic overtook me when a dozen figures came out of the shadows and surrounded the house, looking into the darkened windows. My heart stopped beating and my throat went dry. I pulled the shotgun to my shoulder in the shadows, my movements unseen. I was ready to fire, when I realized how outgunned I was. I couldn’t do anything without being cut down, and knowing Z, she’d start firing as soon as they breached the house and we’d both be dead.

Glass broke on the side of the house and a sun bright flash and boom went off as a flashbang went off in the house. I wasn’t even inside the house, but I’d been watching the windows. When it went off, I was blinded as well. I heard shouts “Go, Go, Go, Go!”

I rubbed my eyes frantically, trying to see, and I heard a gun go off, then one more shot before a scream. Zelda! I laid low, not knowing what else to do, and kept the shotgun in front of me as my night vision slowly returned. Zelda was pulled from the house kicking and screaming to kill her, I promised, with Reno and Spider holding each arm, her feet barely touching the ground as they dragged her off. She stomped on Reno’s shin with her boot and he must have had enough, he gave her a quick rabbit punch to the chin and she slumped.

Spider just slung her over his shoulder and started to walk easier. I couldn’t do anything but watch helplessly as they took her. The one thing I promised her would never happen. It was happening. I was beyond guilt at this point. I heard the Harley’s fire up, a waft of laughter carried my way and then the roar of the engines as they took off. I waited two more minutes before I stood and ran into the house, waiting to see if they left a rearguard. I needed my pack and I needed the shells I could find for the shotgun.

I didn’t stop running the whole way to the Muffler Man, not even when my body decided running was going to make me sick. The weight of the backpack and the shells banged on my sore ribs, but I ignored the pain. If I was fast, if I hurried…

I promised myself I would die if they hurt Zelda like they had my daughter. Since I had decided to live, there were no more excuses, no more bullshit. I needed to step out of the shell of a man I thought I was and become the man she needed me to be. I prayed nobody had found the bike, the leathers, and the keys. I prayed and prayed.

The hog was right where it was supposed to be. I stripped off my puke-stained shirt and wiped my face with the clean part of it. Tossing that off to the side, I slid into the leather vest I had taken off the dead biker at the golf course. The leather was heavier than I remembered, and stank of sweat and something animalistic. I fought down my revulsion and put the damn thing on. Then I slung the shotgun and filled the vests pockets with the shells I could and put my backpack in one of the saddlebags.

I pretty much knew where they were going, hell, Reno had told me a month ago. I denied their expansion all that time ago, and I could stop them from doing it now. They took the old clubhouse back at the edge of downtown Charleston. I kicked the bike started and tore out of there, not bothering to close the rollup door, not caring if somebody came and stole the golf cart or the small bits of things I had stashed there.

I had one focus, and that was to get to Zelda before those fucks hurt her, and I sped through the dead streets with a single headlight blowing a big hole in the darkness. Every time I passed a motionless car, the reflected sound was almost deafening from the straight pipes, but I didn’t care. Death was coming tonight, coming for Reno and his men.

I didn’t slow down much as I got into the city. It reminded me of the bike I owned before my daughter was born, the one my wife hated so much that I sold it two years later. If I wasn’t on such a desperate run, I might have even enjoyed the suicidal run.

Up ahead, I could see the clubs neon up and running and the windows lit. That caught my attention, and under the lights out front were a little over a dozen Harleys with several pulled up tight to the building in parts. Probably the ones earlier from the dead men. Two bikers were sitting on their hogs, passing a joint back and forth when I pulled up to the end of the line, opposite of them. They looked surprised to see a bike pull up, but no recognition and no alarm. There must be lots of turnover in the thug career tree.

“Hey, what’s up man?” one of them asked, handing the joint to the man next to him and standing up, making sure his kickstand was down.

I’d already done that and was getting off the bike. With the Mossberg over my right shoulder, I grabbed the butt of it and spun the gun off my shoulder to a firing position.

“What the fuck, man?” The second guy asked and the first froze solid no more than fifteen feet away.

“The girl! Where is she?”

“I don’t know what girl you mean, man.”

I pointed the shotgun at the second man who was still seated on his hog. “How about you? Do you know where Reno took her? What floor?”

“No man, I don’t know shit.”

BOOM, the shotgun’s discharge startled the standing man so badly he fell flat on his ass. What was left of the second man flopped wetly sideways.

“What floor?” I said in a low voice, already pumping in another shell in the chamber and advancing until my shotgun rested just under his chin.

“Upstairs man, Reno’s room, there… there… I toldja man, you don’t gotta kill me man, you don’t have to…” he begged.

Problem was, I recognized this one. He was the one who threw the grenade, killing the couple earlier. The second discharge from the shotgun almost masked the sounds of frantic screams and yells from inside the clubhouse. I had seconds before they all came boiling out, unless the smarter and more seasoned ones came out to flank me. Quickly, I shoved two shells into the shotgun from the bottom and pumped a fresh one in.

The man who’d been laying down when I shot him had a Custom Harley, with airbrushing on the gas tank. I considered the naked lady painstakingly sprayed onto the tank as I looted the saddle bags. I found a grenade and a pint of Jim Beam. I pocketed that just in case, and quickly checked the second man’s bike as the door burst open and three men boiled out with guns drawn. I didn’t jump up or act surprised, but I opened the fuel cap on the old hog. The kind with the large neck opening. I pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it in and pointed, yelling.

“Motherfuckers! Over there!” I screamed, running for the darkened corner of the motorcycle club near the dumpster.

The men saw what I hoped they had, someone dressed similar to them, heavily armed and trying to help whomever had just gotten bushwhacked. Their brains knew something was wrong, but the pack hunting mentality kicked in and their logical side was surprised as they turned to follow me. The grenade went off as I rounded the corner of the building. Two more explosions followed from ruptured gas tanks, and they knocked me to the ground with a pressure wave and wall of heat. That was what saved me as two men came rounding the corner, looking for me at eye level, and already firing their guns.

I had the Mossberg pointed in the right direction and pulled the trigger as soon as I saw their legs. The heavy buckshot took one man’s leg off completely and a few pellets hit his companion who started spraying the sky with lead as he fell down. I pulled myself to a kneeling position, chambered a fresh round, and blew a hole in his chest the size of my fist. Mentally, I ticked off the count. Four, I had gotten four so far. Out of breath, I dragged myself to my feet, my ribs throbbing in pain. I reloaded the shotgun again.

There were two dead men by the wreckage of the bikes that were burning bright, the tires and wires sending a black smudge into the night in choking waves. I smiled grimly and readjusted my count and banged on the steel front door with the butt of the shotgun.

“I got him,” I screamed.

“I don’t know you man, fuck off or you’re dead,” I could hear the muffled voice on the other side of the steel door.

I put the shotgun over my shoulder with the sling and pulled the .357.

“Is that your final word?” I screamed back, “You think you’re going to kill me?”

“You’re already dead, you just don’t know it yet.”

With my free hand, I pulled the other grenade out of my vest pocket and used my gun hand to pull the pin. I held the spoon down with my left and gave him one more shot.

“Then come out and fucking kill me.” I screamed, smacking the door with the pistol.

“Fuck off and die,” was all I got.

With a flick of my left hand, I tossed the grenade towards the bikes that weren’t burning yet, only laid down by the blast. When that grenade went flying, I went running the opposite direction, towards the side parking lot. I knew there was one more entrance to the old building. It had been there forever but the bikers had boarded it up in a fire code violation. That was the only way out if you didn’t count the fire ladder from the roof…. The roof!

I was already climbing when the grenade went off, lighting the night up. Men were yelling and screaming as I made my way up towards the second story of the building. I aimed the Smith & Wesson and shot out the mercury light, dousing the street in darkness. Only the neon light lent a red glow from the ‘Devil Dogs MC’ sign remained. There was gunfire from the street below me, but nothing came my way. I heard somebody scream out in pain and more gunfire, then more screaming.

The dumbasses were shooting at each other in the flickering light of the flames. They probably never thought about how to defend against someone camouflaged as one of their own. The friendly fire causalities made my job easier - if I could make it to Z in time

I saw movement to my left, and I realized I’d been hearing something but ignoring it: the sound of a generator. I glanced left as a man looked over the edge of the roof with a rifle in his hands. His back was to me so I snuck on the flat gravel embedded roof as quietly as I could as he yelled out names, trying to ensure he didn’t fire on the wrong men. But God was with me, and I was the Angel of Vengeance. Gone was the cowardly government paper pusher, that night I was more than I had ever been and I was almost too pissed to care.

“Surprise, motherfucker,” I whispered.

The man startled and started to turn, putting his back to the four foot ledge of the roof and bringing his rifle to bear on me. I shot him in the stomach with the .357 and watched him crumple and fall off the building backwards. Looking around, I could see the rooftop AC unit and the doorway that led down to the second story of the building, but there were no more targets.

I kicked the door in when it wouldn’t open and the old rotted wood gave, sending the door crashing down the stairs. I followed it, pulling the shotgun out and making sure it was topped off. At the bottom of the stairs, the hallway turned left only on crushed red carpet. Looked like they went with the brothel theme after they took the clubhouse back. I looked around the corner with one eye and saw nothing. I made sure I had the shotgun pointed there before I followed around with my body.

The hallway was set up with solid walls for both sides for the first twenty feet. The right hand side opened up to a railing at the far end, and a staircase led down to the main floor of the club. I could see somebody standing just inside the front door with a pistol at the ready, trying to look out of a peephole I hadn’t noticed when I hammered it from the other side. Another man was standing beside him, his concentration on the door.

They didn’t have a direct line of sight on me, but that could change at any moment. A muffled shriek from the first door on my left had my finger twitching on the trigger. I waited half a second and let out a cleansing breath when the door opened and the man Spider had been talking to earlier walked out. His eyes met mine and even though he saw the barrel of the shotgun aimed at him, he pulled for his handgun. The shotgun went off and I was cycling another round into the chamber as I watched the red mist erupt from a huge chest wound, the pellets not having had a lot of time to expand.

The biker was thrown off his feet backwards, the noise of the shotgun drawing the attention of the two men by the door. They turned and I had half a second to run and dive into the room before their shots hammered the floor of the hallway where I’d been standing just a second before. I rolled into the bedroom as I saw Reno pulling a bowie knife out from a sheaf on his back. My heart stopped when I saw who was there on the bed.

Z had been stripped and her legs were tied at opposite ends of the bed. One wrist was tied behind her head but her right hand was still free, with the beginnings of bindings tied there. Her bare breasts were red and it looked like they had been pinched and slapped by rough hands. Her face, her lovely face, was one big bruise from where Reno had hit her earlier and blood still dribbled out of one nostril and the side of her mouth. Her eyes were wide and panicked.

“Drop the knife,” I told him.

Chapter Thirteen

Z –

There was a big flash, an explosion and everything around me shook. In a daze I realized that somebody was carrying me towards the back door. In relief I thought it was Don, come to take me out from whatever had happened. When I felt two sets of hands as my head cleared, I knew I was wrong. I kicked, spit, tried to bit, and wrestled my legs free until the men were forced to drag me out by my armpits. The arms were heavily tattooed and when I whipped my head to the side to try to head butt one of them I got a good look. Reno and Spider.

“Kill me, you promised… kill me!” I tried to plead, knowing Don was out there somewhere.

I didn’t see the blow that knocked me out, but I felt a brief pain and then my legs went watery. I came to on the motorcycle as it was being parked. I was thrown unceremoniously over Reno’s shoulder and taken upstairs amongst the cheers and jeers of the club. The vile and disgusting things they told me they were going to do to me was almost enough to make me beg for death again.

The last hallway on the right was where Reno opened the door and dumped me on the bed. No matter how much I kicked, punched or scratched, he was everywhere. He slapped me two or three times, driving my senses away and making my head spin in pain and agony. I felt the fabric of my shirt part at the same instant I felt hands on the legs of my pants and my belt buckle. I opened my eyes, almost too afraid to see what was going to happen.

The entire club was crowded into the dingy bedroom, many of them rubbing bulges in the front of their pants as the three or four of them pulled my pants and underwear off in the corner. Reno just tore my shirt off me in long strips and I gasped in pain when he ripped my bra loose, letting the buckle tear off in the back, cutting and scratching me.

Totally exposed, I wished for death as several of them started pinching and fondling my tits. I screamed so hard I realized I couldn’t really hear myself screaming anymore. When a hand touched my thigh I went rigid in fear, knowing what was going to come next. I’d rather die first, but I was scared it was coming later, much later.

The next thing I heard, I knew what it was. It was muffled, but it was so loud it startled everyone including Reno. Gunfire. The men left the room leaving Reno and one more.

“Can you hear me now, bitch?” Reno asked, one big hand holding me down, my left breast being kneaded and squeezed painfully.

“Yeah,” I whimpered, trying to see a way out of it.

“Good. Now listen. You fight me, you die. You let me have my turn and let my boys all have a turn I might let you live for a little while. If you’re good to us, make us happy, maybe I’ll make you my bitch—“

His words trailed out as the door was opened downstairs and an explosion rocked the building.

“That was the Harleys,” Reno told the last man in the room. “Go look and see then come right back.”

“Got it, boss,” the lackey said.

“Looks like things are going to get—“ he paused as more gunfire rang out and he winced at the cries.

“Never mind,” he told me before punching me in the face so hard I blacked out.

Hands, I could feel hands on my ankles. Rough callused hands, and pressure. Something tight. I opened my good eye and saw that I had been tied to the bed and my left hand was getting tied to the bedpost. I tried to fight but there wasn’t a lot left in me, my head hurt so much, but I didn’t feel sick, just broken up. I spit blood at Reno who turned on me and started tying rope to my right hand. I fought him from moving my arm over my head when a gun shot right over the top of us and he flinched.

“How many of them are there?” He asked.

“I don’t know boss, we still going to use her for ransom?” The man who left earlier must have come back and was looking at me hungrily.

“Maybe. If we have a big force hitting us, we may have to. We lost too many in that fucking raid earlier today. Do you know where Spider and his three buddies went?”

“They’re outside, securing the grounds. Hopefully that’s them on the roof. That didn’t sound like Jake’s rifle.”

“Go check, I’m going to finish tying the bitch up and I’ll be right there.”

“Ok boss,” he opened the door and immediately had a large hole blown in his chest. Reno looked on in shock, as gunfire erupted in the hallway and a man rolled into the room like a ninja turtle.

The shotgun came up and Reno paused as his hands held the knife. Reno’s muscles were twitching and his hands had started to shake when the man spoke.

“Drop the knife.” I heard Don’s voice from the hallway.

Reno’s eye twitched for a moment and the Bowie dropped, landing beside me on the bed. He stayed very still but I couldn’t help but notice his mouth open in stark disbelief as Don jabbed the shotgun right under Reno’s chin. I grabbed the knife and rolled to my left so I could reach the bindings on my wrist. Instead of cutting it off my hand, I parted the cord and then did a crunch and untied my legs. Once the rope parted, I started pulling it off of my wrist and did the same to my ankles before sliding off the bed behind Reno, where my pants and underwear had been tossed.

I saw Don look me over, his expression grim, but he was looking and taking stock. Don had a look to him that would send almost anybody running away in screams. He looked completely unhinged in one of their vests without a shirt. His chest was rising and falling, but his eyes were everywhere and nowhere.

“You’re wearing my colors. No wonder. How many of you are out there?” Reno said as I pulled my panties on and started getting one leg of my jeans together.

“Just me,” Don said in a cold, quiet voice.

“You’re crazy, it can’t just be—“

I’d gotten my pants on and buttoned. I spotted my gun and magazines on the far side of the room by the door. The knife would have to do.

“Which one of you raped my daughter?” Don’s voice was death incarnate.

Reno didn’t answer and Don gave me a questioning look. I nodded and stabbed Reno in the back on his lower left side. Dark blood welled around the blade and started gushing as I pulled it free, the dark red specks hitting my chest, spattering my skin as I tried to move back quickly. The screams started when the pain that had taken his breath away finally came back.

“Now, you’re going to die, Reno. But it’s up to you how you are going to die. I’ll have the kid punch another kidney of yours if you lie, or I can just shoot you if you tell me. Your choice. 5 minutes of agony or 2 seconds of a bright light.”

“I did, it was me.” Reno gave it up instantly.

“Who shot her?” I asked, needing to know.

“Spider! Please God, that hurts.”

I stood by Don’s side, waiting, knowing that at any second somebody could be rushing the stairs. I needed to see, to make sure we were safe, but I didn’t want to miss the death of my would-be rapist.

“You promised, make it stop, make it stop!” Reno begged, rolling on the ground.

“Sit up,” Don commanded.

Reno used one arm to push himself into a sitting position, leaning his back against the wall next to the bed.

The shotgun going off was the loudest thing I’d ever heard, and Reno howled in pain. I flinched at the sound, but there was a big hole in the floor and through part of Reno’s anatomy. His lower torso was shredded in gore and Don pulled me out of the room before I could realize he’d just castrated Reno with buckshot.

“Wait, my guns!” I rushed back inside, and grabbed the gold cup and the holster for the magazines.

“Here, take this,” Don told me, holding the vest out.

Somewhere in the final seconds of me putting the gun on, he’d taken the vest off.

“No, I don’t want that,” I wrinkled my nose, making it hurt. Absently I wiped away a smear of blood and snot.

“You planning on distracting the guys who are trying to kill us with those?” he asked, looking down at my chest.

I felt the flush start low until I felt it even up to my ears.

“You never know, it might work out in our favor.” I tried to sound brave.

“Take the vest,” he said holding it up again.

I put it on, and it covered me up, mostly. Reno was still making gasping noises, his sobs gone as his life’s blood ebbed out of him at a fantastic rate.

“Hold on, I have to do something.” I told Don and pulled out the 1911.

Reno’s eyes met mine and he gave me a half a smile when I pulled the trigger, splattering what was left of his face out the back of his head. I grabbed the flare gun off the chair where I’d found my gun earlier and went back out.

I’d had to be the one to kill him. To put it to rest in my mind that I was ok, that there would never be a doubt that he could come back and hurt me. Rape me. Kill me. I knew that murder should make you feel bad and sick inside, but I felt nothing more than relief.

“Let’s burn it.” I told Don, showing him the flare gun.

He nodded and took aim downstairs where the bar was, the liquor bottles lined up, ready to pour drinks.

The men who had fired on Don from downstairs by the front door when he crashed in on Reno left hurriedly when the fireball lit the bottles of alcohol on fire, causing an almost instant blaze. Since the roof had served him well, I followed Don out and to the ladder. We hoped to be able to escape the same way he came in from.

“They could be down there waiting for us,” Don said quietly after walking the whole roof, “Waiting for us to run out the burning building like they did to that couple earlier.”

“We have to go, no matter what. This place is lit.”

“You know Zelda, if we make it through this, you and I need to have a talk,” Don said soberly.

“I’d love that, but let’s get out of here first.” I pleaded.

“Ok, if I’m hit, just drop down on me. I’d be dead anyways and your 120 pounds won’t hurt me if I’m already dead.”

“If you make one more crack about my weight, you will be dead, that I promise!” I pointed with the knife, only half joking.

The trip down the ladder was uneventful, and I never saw sign or movement. I could only hope that the few remaining bikers had fled the area. Hell, even Reno had thought they were getting hit by an overwhelming force, judging by what he’d asked Don.

I stumbled more than once as we made our way across the city. I worried that we’d be fired upon because of the vest I was wearing, but it was dark out and Don reasoned that, if anything, it’d hide me more than it’d make me a target, and he pointed out how white my skin was compared to his, and he’d been living in a bunker for months at a time.

“It’s the gamer geek look,” he said.

I tried to laugh, but I hiccupped instead and my feet tangled up. I was aware that I was falling, but strong arms held me tight, holding me close. A hand brushed the hair out of my eyes.

“It’s ok Zelda, I’ll keep you safe.” Don whispered, before starting to walk again.

Chapter Fourteen

Don –

It took a week for the dizziness to leave Zelda, who was nauseated the first couple days after I got her back to the bunker. I never left her side and kept an eye on her, waking her every two hours despite the vile threats of pain and destruction. I cooked for her and helped her to the bathroom. Reno and his men hadn’t hurt her, not the way both of us had been worried about, but he’d definitely given her a good concussion with the punches and the slaps. I just kept her cool, cleaned up and was there when she needed me. I don’t even think she noticed that I hadn’t touched a bottle, but I was too proud to bring that fact up myself. I’d moved the entire stash of alcohol to the first room where the boat was, to get the temptation as far from me as I could.

See, something happened to me on that run for the Harley, when they had taken Z. I’d thrown up, but I pushed on through the pain. I’d decided that my life wasn’t worth living without hers, and without keeping her out of harm’s way. I’d mostly succeeded, and I was able to move through the killers like a scythe through a field of wheat. Quick, silent, deadly. That wasn’t like me. I was the coward, I was the one who always got along to get along. Something changed in me that night, and part of that change was the booze. I was done with it.

I still couldn’t bring myself to pour it all out, but it was a close thing a couple of times. On the seventh day, Zelda was pissed and wanting to get a shower. I’d been too afraid of her falling to let her go, but she was adamant. She’d managed to make it around the whole bunker without falling or wobbling at all.

“I need a shower, I stink and I can’t be sure I got all of the blood washed off of me unless I do this. It’s bad enough you gave your bed up to me, I don’t want to ruin your sheets any more than I have.”

“But, what if you fall?” I asked.

“Well, then you’ll have to make sure I don’t,” her eyebrows rose and fell, at me.

“What—“ I started to ask, but I couldn’t put up much of an argument, she’d grabbed me by the belt and was dragging me towards the back room where the shower stalls were.

I started to feel the old pangs of guilt, but I shut that down and let it go. That was my old life, and even if my wife was alive and here in front of me, she’d still spit in my face and demand the divorce. I guess in God’s eyes I already was divorced. Maybe it was time to really reconsider things and see where this new life and this new ‘me’ went. Lord knows I wanted to, needed to.

“Oh, and you’ve been sober for two days. I’ll give you a special treat every day you keep sober from here on out,” her voice was low and husky.

“Yes ma’am,” I said, trying not to grin like the Cheshire cat.

Whoever it was who said the apocalypse was always doom and gloom, they forgot about the silver lining that awaits everyone who’s looking for a better life. There’s always hope.

--The End --

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About the Author

About The Author –

Boyd Craven III was born and raised in Michigan, an avid outdoorsman who’s always loved to read and write from a young age. When he isn’t working outside on the farm, or chasing a household of kids, he’s sitting in his Lazy Boy, typing away.

You can find the rest of Boyd’s books on Amazon here.

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