In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel (2 page)

Angela was still staring down the road when she heard the
cabin door open. Jim came out, shutting the door behind him. “Go inside. You’re
going to freeze.” He walked past her, crossing the driveway diagonally.

“Where are you going?” she asked,
realizing she would be all alone if he left.

“I’m going back for the gun.”

“What gun!?”
The fear she had just started to feel as she watched Josh and Hailey act
completely insane by driving toward a disaster area as if it was nothing just
increased and her heart started beating faster. She turned around and followed
him.

Jim talked as they walked. “So,
they’re going home?”

“That’s what they think they’re
doing. Actually, they’re not thinking.
Not at all.
They’ve both lost their minds. Hailey’s insane and Josh is a zombie who follows
her orders. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“I can tell you what’s going on.”

“Please do.”

“They’re fucking stupid.”

“Thanks, Jim. That really clears up
everything. Now, what’s this about a gun?”

“It appears that guy across the
street flipped out when he saw the nuke and decided he and his female companion
would be better off dead. So he shot and killed her, then tried to kill
himself.
And failed.
He was alive when I left, but he
could be dead by now.” He stopped about ten feet from the door.

“What? He was alive and you just
left him there and didn’t even do anything to help him?”

“Why would I do that? The bastard
wanted to die, and he shot himself, Angela. Do you think he’d appreciate being
helped?”

“Who cares what he wants? He needed
help.”

“Angela, the only help he needed was
another bullet to the head. In fact, he was begging me to shoot him.”

“You didn’t …”

“Of course, I didn’t. I left him
there to bleed out. I wasn’t going to help the asshole.”

“I’m not getting this. First Hailey
and Josh, and now you seem to have lost your mind too.”

“How have I lost my mind? The guy
wanted to kill himself. That’s his right. Who gives a fuck if there’s one less
person in the world who can’t deal with life? We’re all better off. But the
woman who was with him... she didn’t deserve that shit, so yeah, I left him
there to bleed out and suffer. He deserved it for what he’d done.”

Angela just stared at him. There
was too much going on in her mind.
Too much to deal with, too
soon.

“Wait here. I’ll just be a minute.”

Angela waited, hoping it wouldn’t
take long for Jim to do whatever he was going to do. He was right when he had
said she didn’t want to know what had happened in that cabin. She wished she
still didn’t know. And she sure as hell didn’t want to see. She silently asked
herself what was wrong with people.
Murder and suicide.
Shock and denial.
She wondered if something was wrong
with her and Jim too, or were they the normal
ones?

Jim pushed the front door open and
immediately looked at the man who had been slowly spinning like a bug pinned to
a board and saw that he had stopped moving. His eyes were open, but glassy and
still. He had finally died from his self-inflicted gunshot. Jim was glad.
Although he hated the man for shooting his girlfriend and felt that he deserved
to suffer, Jim was also slightly freaked out by the macabre scene of the man
hanging on to life and trying over and over to move to the gun so he could
finish the job.

He stepped into the room and pulled
the door shut in case Angela’s curiosity won out over her fear and caused her
to peek inside. He walked across the hardwood floor, making a wide berth to the
left of the dead man. He picked up the small, silver gun. It was heavier than
he thought it would be. He examined the left side and saw a small tab above a
red dot and he pushed the tab downward, concealing the dot. He reached behind
himself and slipped the gun into the back pocket of his Levi’s.

He had only come for the gun, but
now that he was here, in an “empty” house, he felt that he should check if
there might be other useful items he should take as well. He walked into the
adjoining kitchen/dining room area and glanced around. There was an open laptop
running on the table against the wall. He stepped closer and looked at the
screen. The only program running was a web browser which was at a
do-it-yourself stock trading website. Jim shutdown the
laptop,
closed the lid and put it into the empty carrying bag that was on the floor
leaning against a table leg. He didn’t know if he’d ever need it or not, but it
was an expensive laptop without an owner and it didn’t make sense to leave it
behind. He zipped the case shut and set it down on top of the table to grab on
his way out.

He stood still in the silent cabin
and tried to think of what he should be looking for. He thought of the
circumstances he was facing. A nuclear weapon had exploded in Denver. There was
probably no power. He looked around the luxury cabin and didn’t see anything
running on electricity. He flipped a light switch and nothing happened. He
stepped over to the fridge and opened the door. It was dark inside and silent.

He suddenly realized why everything
seemed so extraordinarily peaceful. There were no sounds! No motor humming at
the bottom of the refrigerator; no ceiling fans or blower from the central heater
unit; obviously no TVs or radios. The power was definitely out. Okay, now he
had to think.

He and Angela were indefinitely
stranded on top of a mountain. Josh and Hailey had driven away in the SUV. They
had enough food for about a week, but even less if you discounted anything that
needed to be cooked. That gave him an idea.

He started looking in cabinets near
the stove, hoping to find some
Sterno
, but there was
nothing but pots, pans, glasses and mugs. Other cabinets contained seasonings
and food. No
Sterno
,
and no matches anywhere. He’d have to see if either cabin
had barbecues.

Jim decided this was a task better
suited for two people. He left the kitchen, crossed the living room, and again
steered wide around the dead stock trader and went to the other side of the
cabin where there was a small hallway with one door on each side. He picked the
room on the left for no reason and pulled the comforter off the bed. The
pillows came with it and fell to the floor as he bundled the comforter up
against his chest.  He walked to the main room and covered the body of the
young woman. He went to the other room, grabbed that comforter and used it to
cover the man.

He went to the front door and
opened it. Angela was standing there with her back to the door lifting one foot
and then the other, walking in place to try to generate some heat from mild
exercise. Even with Jim’s jacket on, she was cold and every breath she took was
visible in the frigid air. “I need some help in here,” he said to her back.

“Jim, I don’t know if I can— “

“I took care of it. Come on.” He
reached for her shoulder and gently pulled her toward him. She came in slowly,
taking small steps through the doorway, afraid of what she might see. She
looked at the floor, first at one blanket with a body shape beneath it, then
the other.

“Is that— Are those…?

Jim’s hand was still on her
shoulder and he used it to turn her toward the hallway with the two bedrooms.
The man’s body was now behind her but the woman’s was still to her left, easily
visible in her peripheral vision. He pulled her toward the hall and this time
she didn’t hesitate to start walking.

“I want you to look through their
suitcases, or backpacks – whatever they have – for anything you think might be
useful. Also check the bathroom in the master bedroom on the left.
Shampoo, razors, toothpaste – anything like that.

“We’re robbing them?” she asked,
alarmed.

“We are not robbing them. They’re
dead. They don’t own anything. We’re gathering—“

“Okay, so we’re looting. Whatever
you call it, it’s still wrong.”

Jim took a deep breath and told
himself to be patient and keep his voice level. “Listen to me, Angela. I’m
trying to think ahead here. We don’t know how long we’re going to be without
power or any kind of services. We have no vehicle to go to the market for food
or supplies, if there’s even a market to go to. We sure as hell won’t be
shopping in Denver, and if there are stores up here, we don’t know how far away
they are. Our cell phones have no signal and even if they did, there’s no one
we could possibly call. We’re stranded here for the time being with a limited
amount of food, and this cabin has supplies that the former occupants won’t
be needing
.

“We have to survive, and we don’t
know for how long. If we don’t take what’s available here, someone else will.
Sooner or later,
it’s
gonna happen. When people run
out of food and can’t just go buy more, they’ll start looking for it wherever
they can. So let’s think about ourselves and our immediate survival for now and
we can map out a revised moral code later. Will you help me?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I just
didn’t think about… I haven’t really…”

“It’s okay. Just see what you can
find. Anything that you would want to buy if it was sitting on a store shelf – put
it in a bag or suitcase. I’m gonna see what useable food they have. Okay?”

She said, “Okay,” and just looked
at him, not moving. He could see that she was barely holding on and was close
to crying.  He pulled her close to him and put his arms around her. She
gratefully wrapped her arms around him, holding on to him tightly and
whispered, “Jim, I’m so scared. I don’t know what I would do right now if you
weren’t here.”

“It’s okay,” he said softly with
his mouth beside her ear. “I’m here.”    

It took them two trips to carry back the things they had
gathered. They both went back once more to make sure there was nothing else.
They finally emerged from the cabin empty-handed, satisfied that they had
gotten everything that might be useful. Jim turned around to lock the door with
the keys he had taken from the male corpse. Angela was looking across the road
and through the trees.

“Jim, what’s that?
Oh my god!”

Jim immediately thought another
nuke had hit and quickly turned around. “What? Where, Angela? I don’t see
anything.”

“Right there,” she said, pointing
at nothing but trees as far as Jim could tell. “Look at the roof of our cabin,
then look to the left through the gap between the branches.”

“Oh shit.” Jim saw what she was
looking at. There was a small figure dangling against the backdrop of the
winter sky, swinging his legs back and forth.
“God dammit!”

“What’s wrong?” Angela asked.

“There’s a guy stuck on a ski
lift!”

“I know.  But why are you
cursing?”

“Because now we
have to go rescue the poor bastard.”

“Is he a skier?”

“Can’t be.
The resort isn’t open for a few more days, but it’s definitely someone on a ski
lift.
Must’ve got stranded when the power went out.”

“Jim, we’ve got to help him!”

Jim handed Angela the keys he was
holding and said, “See if their car will start; if it does, turn on the heater.
I’m gonna go lock our cabin and be right back.”

Angela took the keys and hesitated.
She knew there was no reason not to use a car that no longer had a living
owner, but she still had a feeling that it wasn’t right somehow.

Jim ran across the street and
Angela looked at the keys in her hand, easily identifying the button that
unlocked the BMW in the driveway. She unlocked the door and got in the driver’s
seat. She looked for an ignition to the right of the steering wheel and found a
button where she expected to find a place to put the key. The button had the
words “START” and “STOP” written on it. Not sure if it would work or not, she
pushed the button and was a little startled when the engine came to life.

She looked at the keys in her hand,
then out the window toward her cabin and saw Jim coming back, heading toward
the driver’s side of the car. She pulled her legs up and moved over to the
passenger seat.  Jim got in and asked, “Did you turn on the heater?”

Angela looked at the dash console
and said, “No. All I did was push that button and the car started right up.
What’s to keep people from stealing expensive cars like this?”

“What do you mean? Any car can be
stolen.” He put on his seatbelt and backed out of the driveway.

“Well, it seems like all you have
to do to steal it is get inside. You don’t even have to hot-wire it; you just
push a button and it starts.”

“Oh, that.” He shifted to Drive and
headed down the hill. “If you didn’t have the fob, the button wouldn’t do
anything. There’s a microchip in the fob that the car’s sensors read, which
then unlocks everything, like turning a key to the
On
position.”

“That’s really cool. You probably
think it’s dumb, but I’m always amazed by modern technology and the things
people come up with. We really do live in the space age, ya know?”

“Yeah.
 
We’ve been moving forward technologically at an amazing rate while we’re
steadily moving backwards as a society. Now we’re in a position where we
shouldn’t even be allowed to have access to our own inventions.”

Angela was about to ask what he
meant by that, but then she thought of nuclear weapons and assumed that’s what
he was referring to. Jim turned the car at a corner where a sign directed
drivers to the Ice Bunny Ski Lodge.

“We’re like monkeys on crack, with
laser guns,” Jim said as he shifted the car into Low for the steep incline up
to the lodge. “We’re stupid, out of control, and more lethal than we’ve ever
been before. Today, somebody pushed a button and everybody in Denver suddenly
died. Aren’t we amazing?”