In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel (14 page)

Jim shook his head, certain that he
was not going to be able to put up with this for very long. Angela reappeared
carrying a mop bucket.

“You guys should wring the water
out of your coats,” she said, setting the bucket down in front of them. She
quickly made her way to Jim’s side and put an arm around his waist and
distracted him with a kiss before he could make another statement to offend the
woman.

“That’s Jim and Angela,” Terry
said, taking advantage of the moment to change the subject. He could see that
Bo and Geraldine were going to be a problem. At least Geraldine was. Bo seemed
okay.

Geraldine looked at Jim and Angela.
Her gaze traveled down to their left hands and their bare ring fingers. Her
scowl of disapproval intensified with a slight shaking of her head.

“Pleased to meet you,” Bo said,
looking at Angela. “Ma’am,” he added.

“Is this your lodge, Mr.
Stepp
?” Geraldine asked.

Terry hesitated for a moment,
thinking fast. “Yes it is. You’re welcome to stay for the night to dry off, and
I can offer you a bowl of soup, and then a ride to your cabin in the morning.”
He figured that ought to terminate any thoughts they might have about a
prolonged stay.

“That would be very good of you,
sir,” Bo replied.

“With a place this large, surely
you have room for two more people,” Geraldine said, looking around at the
spacious main room and then looking toward the hall that led to multiple
offices and doors leading to a few other areas.

Terry felt very uncomfortable and
didn’t know how to respond to the woman inviting herself and her son to become
long-term occupants of the lodge.

Jim filled the awkward silence.
“Terry giving you a ride to your cabin in the morning will beat the hell out of
walking. Your knees will appreciate it, and you’ll be able to change into dry
clothes so you won’t look like
somethin
’ the cat drug
in.”

Geraldine flinched when Jim said
“hell.” Bo nodded in agreement.

“That would be mighty kind of you,”
Bo replied, earning another disapproving glance from his mother. They were
clearly not on the same page. Geraldine grabbed Bo’s sleeve and pulled his head
down as she craned hers upward to whisper into his ear.

Once again, Terry felt awkward in
their presence as he watched them whispering not more than ten feet away from
him. He stood up.

“I’ll go fix up some soup. You
folks can feel free to lay your coats out in front of the fire after you
squeeze the water out of them.” He headed toward the kitchen, leaving Jim and
Angela to deal with the new guests.

Jim wanted to slip back into his
bedroom to get away from Geraldine, but he didn’t trust leaving them alone with
all of their stuff sitting on the table. That gave him an idea. He picked up a
box with spices and seasonings and asked Angela if she would take it to the
storage room. He looked intently at her, indicating that she should do it; he
had a reason. She took the box and walked down the hall. He slid the heaviest
box over closer to himself and waited until he saw her heading back. He picked
it up and headed down the hall toward her.

They met at the near end of the
hallway and he whispered, “I want to clear our stuff out of there, but with
only one of us gone from the room at a time. Grab another box, please.” He
resumed walking down the hall before she could
answer,
carrying the box into the break room where they were storing acquired goods.

They continued clearing the table,
timing it so that Geraldine and Bo were never alone more than a few seconds.
Terry emerged with a large pot of soup which he set on the table then went back
for a tray of bowls and spoons as Angela took the last of the supplies from the
table.

When Terry put the bowls on the
table, Jim grabbed one and ladled some soup into it.

“No crackers?” he asked Terry.

“Be right back.” Terry looked over
at the mother and son still seated on the hearth. “Soup’s on!”

They walked over and sat in
adjacent seats. Terry returned carrying a red and white box of crackers. Jim
reached for the box and took out a package and ripped it open. Terry filled a
bowl with soup and slid it in front of Geraldine, then did it again for Bo.

Geraldine brought her hands
together in front of her face and looked at Bo. He did the same, closing his
eyes. Geraldine closed her eyes and began speaking.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

Jim put a cracker in his mouth then
loudly slurped soup from his spoon as she spoke.

“Hallowed be Thy name.”

Slurrrrrrp
!

“Have you no gratitude for the food
He’s provided you?”

“Thank you, Terry. I love chicken
noodle soup!” Jim said, smiling.

Geraldine was perturbed and
abruptly said, “Amen,” then touched a finger to the left and right sides of her
chest, then her forehead, ending with a touch to her solar plexus. Bo copied
her and said, “Amen.”

Geraldine looked at Jim as though
she was in pain and said, “Would you please pass the crackers?” She looked at
the package that he was taking a cracker from with each spoonful of soup.

Jim reached across the table and
slid the box of crackers several inches over so that they were now right next
to her bowl. He looked at her as if he didn’t understand why she needed him to
do that.

Angela set her bowl down on Jim’s
right and took a seat. Jim moved his crackers from his left side to his right
to share them with Angela.

“So, where do you folks live?”
Terry asked, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence.

“We did live in Denver. But now,
we’ll be staying up in—“

Geraldine interrupted her son. “By
the grace of God we were out of town when the bomb went off, destroying our
home and our church. After that, the Lord led us up the mountain, and has
brought us to this place. We don’t know what He has in store for us next.”

Jim started laughing. Bo smiled
automatically at the sound of laughter and wanted to share in the good humor.
“What?” he asked, looking at
Jim.

“Nothing.
I was just imagining Jesus driving you guys up the mountain road, but I guess
you actually drove yourselves - until your car broke down.”

Bo was confused. Geraldine sipped
her soup. Jim thought from the look on her face, she could’ve been drinking a
bowl filled with lemon juice.

She looked at Jim. “What faith do
you belong to?”

Jim was raising his spoon to his
mouth and stopped. He looked directly into Geraldine’s eyes. “I’m a nihilist,” he
said, continuing to stare for a few seconds.

“Well, I suppose you must be happy
with what Satan has done to Denver if you believe in annihilation.”

Jim shook his head in dismay and
said, “I can’t do this.” He picked up his bowl and walked to the kitchen to
finish eating, alone.

A few minutes later he came out
carrying a mop which he used to clean up the water Bo and Geraldine had tracked
in from the front door to the fireplace.

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,”
he said, smirking at Geraldine, and setting the mop down in the bucket.

He walked down the hall and stopped
at his doorway and turned to face the main room. “Terry, wake me up in the
morning when you’re leaving to take them to their cabin.” He went into his room
and shut the door, loudly.

The next morning when Carl woke up, his neck was stiff with
pain. The diaper, stained with dried blood, was sitting beside him. He turned
and looked at the stone wall behind him and saw only a few smudges of dried
blood on the stones. The bleeding must’ve stopped. He got up and moved very
carefully as he got dressed, aware that too much motion with his left arm could
break the clotting loose and the bleeding would resume.

The rain had finally stopped and he
needed to find help for his wound in addition to finding Trey for revenge. Trey
had it coming even more so now than before. If it wasn’t for him taking off
with the woman and the gun, Carl wouldn’t have had to go looking for a new gun,
and he wouldn’t have gotten shot. Trey was going to pay for that now too.

He knew the road where Trey’s
parents had a cabin. He didn’t know the address, but he knew close enough to
where it was and he was sure he’d recognize it when he saw it. There weren’t
many other places Trey could go. He had to be there.

***

Trey woke up on Monica’s couch feeling much better than when
he had fallen asleep. He sat up slowly, wary of the pain that he expected to
start pounding in his head and was relieved that it had reduced to a dull
throb. He looked around Monica’s living-room. She wasn’t there. He went to the
bathroom, glancing in her room as he passed it, but she wasn’t in there either.
He was a little concerned and as he urinated, he wondered where she could be.

He rinsed his hands, wiped them on
a nice towel hanging in a silver hoop on the wall and went back into the
hallway. He walked over to the spare bedroom and saw her asleep in the guest
bed. It made sense. She didn’t want to sleep in her own bed after what had
happened there.

He lay down on the bed beside her
and adjusted his position until they were perfectly spooned. He put an arm
around her with his palm flat on her abdomen. He breathed in the scent of her
hair and kissed the back of her head.

“
Mmm
,”
she moaned, stirring and rolling onto her back. She opened her eyes and smiled
at him. “You look like you’re feeling better.”

“I am. Thank you. I also feel good
enough to drive to my parent’s cabin and see if anyone is there.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’d like to take some guns from
your safe, if you don’t mind.”

She smiled and spoke a series of
numbers. It took him a second to realize what she was saying. He got up slowly
and went to the safe. “Tell me again?”

***

After solving the problem of nearly freezing to death, Tori
struggled with a new problem; trying to keep Liz entertained without
television. She was fortunate that Liz liked to hear the same stories over and
over, but even Liz had her limits and was getting bored.

She had other problems as well. The
woodpile was getting low, and the food was nearly gone. They had to leave soon.
She tried to think of where they could possibly go to stay warm and fed, and,
she hoped, entertained to some degree. Being with other people would help a
lot, especially if they had young kids that Liz could play with.

The only thing she could think of
nearby was the Ice Bunny Lodge. It hadn’t been scheduled to open until after
the bomb went off, but it was possible that some employees could’ve been
scheduled to start early. Maybe they wouldn’t mind helping a stranger and
sharing what had to be a large food supply. And if the place was empty, maybe
she could find a way in. She knew there would be plenty of wood there too. At
least a couple cords.

She looked outside and saw that the
rain had stopped. She took it as an omen telling her it was time to go.

“Liz, honey.
Let’s get dressed and go for a drive.” After they dressed, Tori went to the
kitchen and found a pen. She couldn’t find any paper but she found a grocery
sack. She wrote on the sack and put it on the table, setting the sugar bowl on
top of it. “Let’s go see if we can find people,” Tori said, escorting Liz to
their car.

***

Carl wet his hair in the sink using both hands before he
realized what he was doing. He felt the pain in his shoulder-blade as he raised
his hands to his head and stopped suddenly when the sharp pain came to life in
his shoulder. He turned and looked at his back in the mirror, twisting his head
around as far as he could. Dammit. He was bleeding again. But at least it was
only oozing out and not gushing like yesterday.

He went and got a diaper and took
it into the office, then sat in the leather office chair with the diaper on his
bullet hole. He rolled the chair up close to the desk so he could reach the
drawers while keeping his back pressed against the chair. He found standard
office supplies in most of the drawers. To reach the last drawer, he reclined
the chair back a little, then swiveled it, bringing his hand low enough to pull
it open.

“There you are!” He slid his hand
past a box of ammo and felt around for the gun he hoped to find further back in
the drawer, but there was nothing there. He lifted the box of ammo and set it
on the desk. It was a box of Smith & Wesson .22LR. “Well at least it’s the
right caliber,” he said. “Thank you, Lord.”

After a short while, the bleeding
stopped again and he decided to grab a few things and get going. He wanted to
take a case of whiskey, but he couldn’t carry a case, so he took half a case,
carrying two bottles at a time in his right hand. He was able to carry a case
of cigarettes one-handed, so he took one, then went back and grabbed the
remaining one. He put the cigarettes in the back of the station wagon. The
supplies were as good as cash if life didn’t return to normal. And he didn’t
see how it possibly could. Denver was history. There would never be a city
there again – at least not for a long, long time.

For the first time, Carl thought
about other places. He hoped Denver wasn’t the only city that got blown up. If
it was, then any survivors would just end up migrating to a city nearby. He’d
have to either join them, returning to his normal life as
a
nobody
, or stay here and be nothing but a drifter in a ghost town. He
may have been a bit overly optimistic when he’d first seen the mushroom cloud.

After loading up the car, he sat
behind the wheel thinking while he reloaded his pistol. If he stayed in the
mountain area west of Denver, he could still rule the land. Fuck it. That’s
what he’d do until he found out more about what had happened and how badly
America was hurting. He put a diaper under his shirt, covering his bullet wound
and started the car, heading south in search of Trey’s family cabin.

***

Trey took a shotgun and the other Glock from the gun safe.
He pulled back the slide on the Glock and saw that the chamber was clear. He
released the magazine and saw that it was full, as he had expected based on the
weight of the gun. He took all of the ammo he could carry and put it in the RV.
He came back for the shotgun and found Monica sitting up on the bed.

“We should take the revolver too,
just in case one of the
Glocks
jams. That’s why
Thomas bought it – as a backup.”

“Okay. Would you like me to get
anything out of your room for you, like some shoes or something?”

“Thank you, but I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. If I can’t go in my own room,
then he’s still victimizing me in a way. You know?

She got up and gave Trey a brief
hug on her way to her room across the hall. Trey watched her go, feeling bad
for her and imagining what must be going through her mind. He hoped she didn’t
relive the attack she was still physically recovering from. He wished she would
have let him get her things for her.

When she didn’t immediately come
back out crying, he took the shotgun and the revolver out to the RV. After that,
he didn’t know what to do. Should he leave her alone and wait? If he did that,
would she think he didn’t care? Or should he go in and comfort her? If he did
that, would she be insulted, thinking that he didn’t believe she was strong
enough to confront her demons by herself?

He decided on a compromise. He
walked down the hall, stopped outside the door and knocked twice. “I’ll be in
the kitchen. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

He couldn’t tell if there was
anything different in her voice to indicate if she was having difficulty being
in her room or not. He sighed and went to the kitchen to find something to eat.
He noticed the table was out of place and the salt and pepper shakers were
lying on their sides. That was odd. An open pack of bacon and a carton of eggs
were sitting next to the gas range.

Carl.

He threw away the rotted food and
took the liner from the trash can outside. He came back in and pulled the table
back to where it was before and set the salt and pepper shakers upright. He
looked around for any other signs of Carl that might upset Monica. He grabbed a
sponge from the sink, wet it, and wiped grease splatter from around the
stove-top burners.

He turned on the hot water, hoping
to clean the sponge. He waited a minute and the water turned hot. He was glad
she had a gas water heater.
A gas water heater?
They
could shower!

Monica came in to the kitchen and
Trey looked at her closely for signs of emotional trauma.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, but didn’t
quite sound fine. She spoke quietly and pursed her lips, drawing them into her
mouth. Just seeing her try to be strong made Trey feel awful inside. He wished
for the hundredth time that he could turn back
time
.
“Did you find anything to eat?”

“Not really. I sure wish I had a
Sausage
McMuffin
right about now.” He laughed,
wondering if or when that would ever be possible again.

“Maybe someday I can make you a
veggie sausage muffin.” Trey wrinkled his nose at the thought of veggie
sausage. “You’d like it. It’s really good.”

“If you say so.”

“I don’t have much food. I decided
not to go shopping until after the storm had passed. Everything in the fridge
will be ruined by now.” She walked over to the cabinet where she kept snack
food and pulled out a bag of seaweed puffs.

Trey looked at the bag and said,
“I’ll just wait till we get to my folk’s cabin. I’m not that hungry.”

Monica laughed and said, “Try one,”
lifting a green puff toward his mouth. He reluctantly opened his mouth and let
her put it in. He chewed it, looking like she had just fed him a cockroach,
then his expression changed.

“This is alright,” he said,
surprised. She smiled and held the bag out toward him. He took a handful. “I’m
eager to get going, but if you don’t mind, I’d love to take a quick shower
before we go.”

“That’s a great idea. But you need
to be careful. Use my hair cover. It’s above the shower head.”

After Trey showered, he found that
Monica had hung some clothes for him on the doorknob. He got dressed and
thought maybe he’d be able to go to the market further down the mountain for a
razor and a comb sometime soon. After he came out wearing Thomas’s clean
clothes, Monica went in and showered.

With both of them looking like
clean and well-dressed violent crime victims, they went outside and climbed
into the RV and headed south.

***

Tori found the turn-off for the Ice Bunny Lodge and couldn’t
wait to get there, hoping to find people. When she reached the parking lot, she
was excited to see two cars parked there, but then she saw the boarded up
windows and frowned. This didn’t look good. At least not as far as hopes for
finding people went. It looked like the lodge had gone out of business.

“Are people here, Mommy?”

“I don’t know yet, honey. We’ll
find out in a minute.” She went around the car and released Liz from her car
seat and lifted her out. “Hold my hand, baby.”

Liz took her mother’s hand and they
walked to the front door. Liz tried to skip but her mother wouldn’t match her
pace by skipping along with her. Tori thought about how Liz knew nothing of
what had happened. She hoped that if they did find people that they wouldn’t
traumatize her with morbid talk of mass death.

She stopped when she reached the
door and just stared at it for a few seconds.

“Come on, Mommy. Why aren’t you
knocking?”

Tori took a deep breath, let it out
and knocked on the door, unconsciously squeezing Liz’s hand a little harder.

“Mr.
Stepp
,
I think someone’s at your door,” Bo called out toward the kitchen where Terry
had gone to see what he could come up with for breakfast for five.

Terry came out wearing a cook’s
apron. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Someone at your
door.”

Bo and Geraldine had slept on the
floor close to the fire. They had hoped their clothes would dry as they slept,
but they hadn’t.

“I’ll be right back,” Terry said.
“Don’t open it,” he instructed before heading down the hall and knocking on
Jim’s door. “Jim, we got company.”

Jim was half-asleep when Terry
knocked. He quickly got up and yawned. He grabbed the .45 from the top of a
file cabinet and opened his door. “Company?” he asked.

“Yeah.
Bo
said someone was knocking on the door.”

“Shit,” Jim said and rubbed his
eyes with his free hand. “Well, let’s go. There’s nothing like a good shoot-out
to wake you up in the morning.”

They walked back to the main room
and took up the same positions as the night before when the mother and son had
arrived.

“Who’s there?” Terry called out.

Tori looked at Liz and smiled.
“Me and my little girl.”

Terry looked at Jim and Jim nodded.
Terry held his gun behind his back. If it was just a woman and her child, he
didn’t want to frighten the child. He looked at Jim and gestured for him to do
the same. Jim put his gun behind his back and blinked sleep out of his eyes.