In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel (13 page)

“I guess he’s fucked,” Carl said
and moved the gearshift into Reverse. He put his right arm on the top of the
bench seat and turned his head to look behind him as he drove backwards. He
knew he’d been shot, but he didn’t feel anything yet. Maybe he wasn’t hit that
bad, he thought.

Monica woke without opening her eyes. She felt safe for the
first time in years. She lay there with her arm around Trey feeling his warmth
and the slight movement from his breathing, listening to the wind and rain
assaulting the RV. It appeared that the owners weren’t coming right back.

Trey had said that Denver was
nuked. She didn’t know what that meant and she didn’t want to know. It was too
much to think about. Nothing in life was the way it was supposed to be. It was
easier to just lie here with her eyes closed and let her whole world shrink
down to just this space. She felt safe right now and didn’t want to think about
anything.

There was a time when she had loved
life and had dreams of the future. When she was in college, she didn’t know
what she had wanted to do. Then she met Thomas and everything fell into place.
She quit school and got married. They moved to the mountain house he had
inherited from an aunt. She got pregnant and then she suddenly knew what her
life was supposed to be about. She was going to be a mother. The thought of
having a child filled her with happiness.

But then she had the miscarriage
and her dream was ripped away from her. All she had left was Thomas. And then
he went off to war, leaving her all alone. After that she just went through the
motions of life, not really caring what happened and not daring to dream.
Eventually she settled in to the routine patterns of living. Occasionally she
even painted, but without passion or inspiration.

Alone on the mountain, life was
peaceful and safe. Life was not good, but as long as she had nothing and wanted
nothing, she never had to fear losing anything. She did not look forward to the
future and she tried not to think about the past. She simply lived day to day;
secure in her knowledge that life could not get worse than it already had.

Then Carl and Trey appeared on her
doorstep. Life took another unexpected turn for the worse. And now,
unbelievably, she was doing something she thought she’d never do again. She was
lying on a bed with a man, and feeling safe and comfortable. The greatest irony
to her was that he was one of the men who had invaded her home. She believed
him though when he said that he hadn’t known that Carl was going to do what he
did.

The fact that he had saved her from
his friend gave him credibility. And she had saved him too. She could tell him
that they were even now and they could go their separate ways, but she felt
that they still needed each other to continue surviving – at least for a while.
She looked at Trey sleeping and felt anxious again about him being asleep so
soon after a serious head injury. She gently patted his chest where her hand
was resting.

“Trey.
Wake up.”

Trey moaned something
unintelligible.

“I’m sorry, but I think it’s better
if you don’t sleep yet.” She patted him again a little harder.

“What? What’s going on?” He looked
at her, blinking rapidly, trying to focus.

“I think we should go somewhere. We
can’t just stay in this RV forever. If the owners don’t come back and shoot us,
then it’s going to run out of gas eventually.”

“You’re right.” He struggled into a
sitting position and squeezed his eyes shut as the pain in his head returned.
“I’d rather stay asleep because then I don’t feel the pain, but I’ve got to
find my sister, and you need to find your husband.”

“I know where my husband is.”
Monica looked down and pursed her lips.

“That’s great. I need to head south
to my parent’s cabin. What direction is your husband in?”

“He’s in Fort Logan,” she answered
quietly.

“Fort Logan, the
cemetery?”

“Yes. He was killed in Afghanistan
two years ago.”

“Oh God.
I’m sorry.” Trey leaned forward and put his arms around her. She held him and
rested her head on his shoulder. She thought she would cry and was surprised
when she didn’t. She just felt the same numb grief she’d felt since Thomas’s
funeral. It was an internally cold feeling.
Cold and lonely.
Holding Trey was the first thing that made some of the cold go away since
Thomas had died.

“Is there somewhere you want me to
take you?” Trey asked.

Monica pulled away to look at Trey.
“I don’t have anywhere to go but home, but now I don’t know if it’s safe there.
And…
I’m afraid to be alone.”

“You don’t have to be. You can come
with me to my parent’s cabin. It’s not far from here. We should go now before
the rain freezes. I would really hate to drive this thing down the mountain
with ice on the road.”

“Can we look at my house and see if
he’s still there? I need some shoes.” She looked down at her bare feet.

“Oh shoot! I didn’t get any shoes
when I grabbed some stuff for you.”

“It’s okay. I appreciate what you
did for me. No one would expect you to be thinking about proper attire.”

“Let’s go take a look and see if
his bike is still there. Maybe he left since it’s been raining. Riding a bike
in the rain really sucks, but at least it’s possible. Driving in the snow is
pure suicide. Carl says he can do it, but that’s total bullshit.”

Trey stood up and reached out for
the wall as a wave of dizziness washed over him and he felt a pulsing pain in
his head.

“Oh shit. I don’t think I can
drive. Can you handle this thing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I go real
slow.”

“Well, I don’t want you
racin
’ down the mountain anyway.”

She laughed and got up to help
steady him, putting her arm around his waist. They walked together to the front
of the RV. He sat in the passenger seat and she sat behind the wheel. She stared
at the console, trying to confront the idea of driving this behemoth of a
vehicle.

“Think of it as just a car, only
bigger. Don’t let it intimidate you.”

“Okay. Here we go…”

“Just take it real slow. We’re in
no rush and we don’t have far to go.”

Monica backed out of the driveway
very carefully, then drove forward and turned left onto the highway, very
slowly accelerating until she reached 25
m.p.h
., then
she held it there.

“I don’t want to go any faster than
this.”

“That’s fine. There’s no traffic up
here, so don’t worry.
Nice and easy.”

Trey still felt dizzy and
foggy-headed so he was fine with the slow speed as long as he didn’t have to do
the driving. He’d already crashed once. He was not going to risk it again. He
wasn’t sure how they were going to deal with checking her house to see if Carl
was there. They should’ve thought more about that and come up with a plan
before heading out.

If nothing else, he figured they
could turn onto Monica’s street and use the RV’s high beams to see if Carl’s
bike was there. But even if it was, that didn’t mean for sure that Carl was
there. He could be in a neighbor’s house, or could have taken someone’s car and
driven away while it was still snowing. He would’ve only risked leaving on his
bike if it was raining, and he’d be reluctant to even do that. He could manage
it with his goggles and gloves, but he’d get soaked without a change of
clothes.

Headlights appeared behind them as
they were approaching the intersection of Monica’s street. This ordinary
occurrence was much more significant now since there were so few people on the
mountain. As Monica slowed down, the car behind them increased its speed. She
and Trey watched in their side-view mirrors as the car behind them appeared
determined to ram right into them.

Monica started to make the left
turn onto her street and just then the car zipped around to their left on a
collision course with them. She stomped on the brake pedal and Trey flew
forward into the windshield, yelling out in pain as his head bounced off of it
and he fell back into his seat. The car flew by, just missing the left front
end of the RV.

“Shit!”

“Are you alright, Trey? Oh no,
you’re bleeding again!”

“That was Carl!”

“What!?
Are you sure?”

Trey wiped dripping blood out of one
of his eyes and looked around for something to stop the blood flow.

“I’m pretty sure. I didn’t see his
face, but I saw his colors.”

“What do you
mean,
his colors?”

Trey pointed a thumb over his
shoulder at his back.
“His vest.
He had an
Unforgiven
patch on his vest – our colors.”

“But could it have been someone
else from your… group?”

“It could’ve been, but I think it
was Carl. All of the guys except him and me live in Denver, and we know Carl
was up here.”

“Do you think he saw us?”

“Not a chance. He flew by like a
maniac. He wasn’t looking backwards.”

“Well if he’s zooming down the
mountain, then it’s safe to go my house.” She took her foot off the brake and
let the car move forward at idle speed. Her hands were shaking from the
encounter with the speeding station wagon and Trey getting hurt again.

Trey found a microfiber cloth in
the compartment in front of his seat and held it to his head. It quickly turned
red as it absorbed his blood. Carl’s bike was in the street in front of
Monica’s driveway.

“Oh no.
Both motorcycles are there. What if that wasn’t him in the car?” She stopped
the RV in front of the neighbor’s house next to hers. “What should we do?” She
held her hand on the gearshift lever, ready to put it in Reverse.

“I’m going to get out and walk around
your house and see if it looks like anyone is inside.”

“But what if he’s there and he sees
you?”

Trey pulled the gun out of the back
of his waistband. “If he’s still here, I’m armed, and he’s not.”

“I forgot you had my gun.” She
smiled.

“I’ll give it back in a few
minutes.”

“No. Keep it. I only fired it once
when Thomas was teaching me how to shoot.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.
Keep the doors locked just in case. If anyone approaches who isn’t me, honk the
horn like crazy and I’ll come running.”

“Be careful. You’re still bleeding
and you probably have a new concussion.” Monica looked at him wide-eyed with
fear and concern. She didn’t want him to put himself in danger, but neither did
she want to endanger herself. She hoped to never see Carl again as long as she
lived – not unless she was looking at his corpse.

After three minutes that felt like
thirty, she saw a figure slowly approaching the RV. The headlights were still
on, but he was too far to the left of the beams to be visible. She placed her hand
on the horn and stared intently at the dark figure, waiting for him to reach
the light.

As he crossed the front of the RV
and was illuminated by the headlights, she relaxed, seeing that it was Trey. He
came around the side, opened the door and climbed up onto the seat.

“No one’s there. The front door was
still wide open and there’s no fire burning.” He stopped talking to catch his
breath and to wipe the sweat and blood from his face with his sleeve.

He gestured for her to go ahead and
pull up to the house. She put the RV in Drive and let it slowly roll forward,
knocking Carl’s bike over and pushing it until she came to a stop when the RV’s
doors were parallel to the front door of the house. They went inside cautiously
and slowly as if neither of them was certain that the house was empty. Trey
held the Glock in front of him, prepared to shoot if anyone rushed at them from
the dark interior.

“Have you got any candles?”

“Yes. We just have to feel our way
to the kitchen. Get behind me and hold on to my shirt. You can’t afford to hit
your head again.”

Trey reached into his pocket and
pulled out his lighter. He felt for Monica’s arm, found it and followed it down
to her hand where he deposited the lighter.

“Lead the way,” he said, smiling in
the dark.

After they found and lit several
candles, placing them in various spots throughout the house, Trey laid himself
down on the couch at Monica’s insistence while she started a fire in the
fireplace. Next she tended to Trey’s wound the best that she could with hydrogen
peroxide, and put a bandage on his forehead. He fell asleep while Monica heated
a can of stew for them on the gas range.

Carl took off, racing down the road and back onto the highway,
pulling into a scenic view area and parking out of view to see if he was being
pursued by the Mormons. While he waited, he looked in the back of the wagon and
found a box of supplies which included a package of diapers. He opened it and
put a diaper under his shirt where he was shot, then pressed his back against
the car seat to try to stop the bleeding.

After close to an hour and three
saturated diapers, he started feeling lightheaded from the loss of blood. No
vehicles had passed by on the highway and he concluded that no one was pursuing
him. Not yet anyway.

Dusk turned to dark as he waited.
He needed to go somewhere to sleep for the night and tend to his bullet wound.
He didn’t know how he was going to do that, and couldn’t think of anyone who could
possibly help him.

He knew where to go for a place to
sleep though – back to the tavern. There wasn’t much there for him and there
was nothing special about it, but it’s where he’d last been, and like anyone,
he was a creature drawn to the familiar. And there was plenty of booze and
cigarettes – and food, if he didn’t mind eating chips and nuts, which he
didn’t.

Back at the tavern, Carl added wood
to the embers in the fireplace. It took him a while as he only used his right
arm to carry wood. Using his left arm caused too much pain as it moved the
bullet lodged in his left shoulder blade. His clothes were drenched so he
carefully and slowly removed them then laid them in front of the fire. He took
another diaper out of the pack and held it behind him as he leaned back against
the warm stone wall beside the fireplace.

As soon as he was as comfortable as
he was going to get, he wished he had thought to get a tall glass of beer
before sitting down. He decided it could wait. He was weak and exhausted from
the adrenaline rush during the shootout and the blood loss afterwards. As he
drifted off to sleep, he wondered if his mother would help him with the gunshot
wound, or would she still be angry at him for knocking her on her ass the last
time he’d seen her.

***

After a moment of holding each
other in silence, Angela finally pulled away from Jim.

“Let’s go inside where we can be
more comfortable. I’ve never seen your room.” Her flirtatious smile was barely
visible in the moonlight spilling into the car.

“Okay. There’s nothing to see but
office stuff, but yeah, let’s go inside.” They got out of the car and Jim came
around to her side. She linked their hands and they walked slowly to the lodge,
each of them feeling that everything was different now. Their lives had been
changed first by a nuclear explosion, and now they had just changed again with
a kiss.

Jim opened the door and they
entered the lodge still holding hands. Terry was just finishing up with the
sorting job and looked up when they came. He was surprised to see
them
holding hands and looking love-struck.

As the couple walked past Terry,
Jim said, “Seems kinda pointless to board up the windows but leave the front
door unlocked.”

Terry didn’t have a comeback for
Jim’s teasing. He just slowly swiveled his head, watching them as they crossed
the main room and went down the hall toward the offices where the three of them
had made bedrooms.

As he got up to lock the door,
Terry muttered, “I should’ve seen that coming.”

When they reached Jim’s room, he
bent down and picked up the candle next to the floorboard. He struck a match
and lit the candle then opened the door. He guided Angela over to where his
blankets were laid out and set the candle on the floor a few feet away. They
sat down facing each other. Jim looked away, focusing on the small flame.

“Angie,” he said. “Are you sure
you—“

“Shut up,” she cut him off, pushing
him down and climbing on top of him, straddling him. “I don’t want to hear
anything negative out of you.” She leaned down and kissed him. Her hair
shrouded his face. He closed his eyes, wondering how long something this good
could possibly last before he ended up hurting her somehow.

She raised herself up and removed
her jacket, then her shirts, leaving on her bra for the moment. Jim gazed at
her in the candlelight and she reached back to her feet, undid her laces and
pulled off her shoes. After her shoes were off, she looked down at his smiling
face with a smile glued on her own face. Jim couldn’t wait anymore and reached
for her, pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her where he could
reach the hook to undo her bra. He pulled it away and looked at her.

“You are so beautiful,” he
whispered.

Angela blushed, hoping it didn’t
show in the flickering candlelight. Jim put his left hand on her waist and
reached for her with his right hand, gently fondling her left breast, running
the back of his fingers against her smooth skin and drawing a circle around the
edge of her areola. He lightly gripped her nipple between his knuckles and she
sucked in a breath.

He lifted her up so he could get
out from under her and quickly took off his jacket and shoes. She lay on her
back wondering if this was really happening. Was she about to make love to Jim?
She had dreamed of this day but never thought it would come. She knew it never
would. But now… it was happening.

Jim straddled her with his knees
beside her hips and leaned down to kiss her; one hand quickly returning to her
breasts as their tongues explored each other’s mouths. Angela had never been
happier or more physically aroused. She needed to feel more of him; to explore
his entire body with her hands. She wrapped her arms around him, then slipped
her hands up under his shirt then slid them up his back and felt long, thick
ridges everywhere her hands touched.

“Jim, what are these—” she started
to ask.

Jim pulled away from her and rolled
over to lie on his back.

“It’s nothing!” he snapped. He
sounded angry and distant. “I should’ve known this would happen.” Angela turned
onto her side, looking at him with concern.

“Jim, what’s wrong? Nothing
happened. We were just kissing and touching. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Nothing at all.”

“I left my shirt on for a reason,
Angela. I didn’t want you to see… or feel… what they did to me.”

Angela scooted closer to him and
laid an arm across his chest with her hand on the side of his ribcage, holding
him possessively.
“Who, Jim?
Your
parents?
Your foster parents?
Whatever they did
to you wasn’t your fault.”

“They ruined me, Angie; physically and
mentally; inside and out. I told you I’m no good for you.”

“That’s ridiculous. You are not
ruined! You may be in need of a good attitude adjustment, but no one ruined
you. Don’t talk that way.”

Jim abruptly sat up, turning his
back to her and lifting his shirt.

“Look! And that’s just my back. It
continues down to my legs. I’m scarred from my shoulders to my thighs. Who
could love someone who looks like this?” He pulled his shirt back down,
covering the scars.

Angela came up close and wrapped
her arms around him from behind.

“I can, Jim. I don’t care what they
did to you. Whatever happened wasn’t because you’re bad. They didn’t make you
unlovable.” She kissed the nape of his neck then lifted his shirt up and over
his head. She thought he’d resist, but he sat there, totally still, taking
shallow breaths.

Angela kissed his shoulders, then
moved her hands to the back of his neck and massaged there as she kissed his
shoulder blades. Her lips met with alternating smooth skin and scar tissue.

“I love you, Jim,” she said with
her lips against his tortured back.

He suddenly turned around and
kissed her fiercely, pulling her close to him, mashing her bare chest against
his. Angela was happy that he had found his way through some emotional barrier
and was embracing her now, physically and mentally. They heard a pounding on
the front door of the lodge. They held still, listening, waiting. The pounding
sounded a second time, like somebody very big was banging on the door.

Jim found his shirt and pulled it
on while Angela searched for her bra.

“Wait here,” he said, and quickly
left the room, running down the hall to the large room.

“Someone’s at the door,” Terry
said.

“No shit. Give me a gun.”

Terry reached into a box on his
left and pulled out a pistol. “You okay with a .45 APC?”

“It’s not my first choice, but
yeah, I’ll take it.”

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

They walked over to the door. Terry
stopped to the right of the door and put his arm out to stop Jim from going any
further. Terry whispered, “Never stand in front of a door when you don’t know
who’s on the other side.” He gestured with his gun to indicate the reason why.
They could get shot through a door.

“Who’s there!?”
Terry yelled, louder than necessary, lowering the tone of his voice.

“It’s me, Bo. And my momma,
Geraldine,” a voice replied.

Terry and Jim looked at each other
quizzically. Jim thought, “Oh, it’s you, Bo. Why didn’t you say so?” but he
just looked at Terry and waited to see what he would do.

Terry shrugged his shoulders and
said, “What do you want?”

“We’d like to come in and dry off
if we could. We’re soaked out here. Momma looks like
somethin
’
the cat drug in.” They heard a wet smacking sound on the other side of the
door.

Terry whispered, “I’m going to open
the door and see if it’s really just a guy and his mother. Step back a few
paces and be ready to shoot.”

Jim backed up a few steps and tried
to turn off his gun’s safety.
“Just a second.”
He
wasn’t having any luck pressing down with his thumb on what he was sure had to
be the safety.

“Hold on a second,” Terry yelled at
the door. He stepped over to Jim and put out his hand for the gun. Jim handed
it to him and Terry pressed down forcefully in the same place that Jim had been
pressing and there was an audible click. He handed it back and returned to the
door. He put his hand on the dead-bolt and looked at Jim, raising his eyebrows
to ask if he was ready. Jim nodded.

Terry pulled the door open quickly
with one hand and held his pistol pointing upward beside his head with the other.
Standing on the porch was the tallest man he’d ever seen. He was taller than
the doorway. The man stepped back and ducked to look in at Terry and Jim.
Standing next to him was a woman who was dwarfed by the tall man but was only
shorter than average at five feet, three inches.

The woman looked at Terry with
disapproval dripping off of her face along with rainwater. “Well, praise the
Lord! Will you let a couple of His children take shelter from the storm?” The
scowl never left her face, even as she praised the Lord.

Terry leaned his head over and
looked to their right to make sure there was no one else out there. He lowered
his gun and said, “Come on in.” He didn’t like that all of their recently
acquired supplies were laid out on the floor and in boxes, but he didn’t want
to make them wait outside while he and Jim stashed everything. “Have a seat by
the fire. Jim, help me move this stuff out of the way.”

Jim put his gun in his waistband
and Terry did the same. They both walked over and began moving boxes to the
table. The man ducked down to enter the lodge and he and his mother left a
trail of water as they walked over to the hearth, drawn to the heat of the fire
and sat down. Both of them were shivering. Angela watched them from the hallway
with her arms folded across her chest, her feet clad in socks.

After the floor was cleared of
supplies, Terry pulled a chair out from the table, slid it a few feet toward
the hearth, then turned it around and sat about ten feet away from the couple.

“So what brings you here – on foot
and during a storm?”

The tall man answered, “We were
heading back to our cabin...”

“My cabin,” his mother injected,
looking at him as if he should clearly know that the cabin was
hers,
and hers alone. Jim was still standing by the table. He
looked at the woman, considered the expression on her face and the way she
talked to her son and decided right then that he didn’t like her at all.

“…
When our car
broke down.”

“You mean my car?” the woman asked,
looking up at her son’s face.

“Yes, mother. Your car broke down.”
He turned his head to look back at Terry. “So we started walking. That was
several days ago. We’ve had to stop frequently because Momma has trouble with
her knees.”

The woman looked at him with
disapproval for revealing a private problem of hers to total strangers, but
stopped short of smacking him.

“Then we saw a sign saying that
there was a ski lodge, so we followed the road to the left like the sign said
and here we are; cold, wet and thankful for your hospitality.”

Terry got up and walked over to
them, extending his hand to shake.

“My name is Terry
Stepp
. It’s nice to meet you.” He shook hands with Bo and
then extended his hand to Geraldine who hesitated at first but then extended
one hand, palm down, fingers slightly curled, with her eyes closed. Terry
didn’t know if she expected him to kiss it as if she was royalty, but he just
grasped it lightly and released it.

“We have the Lord to thank for
showing us this place,” Geraldine said, looking at the ceiling.

“I thought it was just a sign on
the road,” Jim responded. “Probably put there by mere mortals working for the
Department of Transportation.”

Geraldine flashed a look of
contempt at Jim. Their dislike for each other was now mutual. “We might not
have seen the sign if the Lord hadn’t showed it to us.”