In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel (8 page)

He went to the woman and fumbled
with the belt, trying to unbuckle it with his trembling hands. He constantly
looked from the belt to Carl to see if he was going to get up. With the belt
undone, he picked up the gun and tucked it into his waistband.

“Ma’am, I am so sorry about this. I
didn’t know. I really didn’t know. I hope you believe me.” He looked at her
swollen eyes with the flesh around them turning purple, and the blood around
her mouth that had dripped down to her chin. “Oh God, this is bad. I’m so
sorry!”

The woman had immediately rolled
over onto her back when she felt the belt fall away from her hands and rapidly
scooted backwards away from Trey until she reached the headboard. She had
pulled the blanket along with her and held it up over her body as she went,
staring wild-eyed at Trey. He felt like he was in a horror movie and didn’t
know if he was the good guy or a bad guy. He had helped make this possible.

“You’re safe now. I swear to God
I’m not going to hurt you. But we need to get out of here. He’ll kill us both
if he gets a chance.” He needed her to believe him, but she just stared at him
like he was talking a foreign language. She pulled her knees up to her chest
with the blanket bunched up in front of her and she shook like she was having a
mild seizure. Trey couldn’t tell if she understood him or if she was even
hearing his voice. It was the most awful thing he’d ever seen.

It was clear to him that she wasn’t
going to be any help getting them out of there. He looked at Carl and although
he still appeared to be in no danger of waking up any time soon, Trey didn’t
want to take any chances so he kicked his head again, then turned and ran to
the kitchen where he remembered seeing the woman’s purse.

Trey unsnapped the purse and was
relieved to see that her keys were inside. He also saw her Driver’s License in
a small I.D./credit card holder and read her name. Monica
Lourenz
.
He dropped the I.D. back into the purse and took it with him as he ran back to
her room. Carl was still down and out. He went to her closet and grabbed a
travel-case and laid it on the end of the bed.

“You’re going to be okay, Monica.
I’m gonna grab some of your things and take you away from here. I wish you’d
help me though. It’d be good if you could put some clothes on.”

Monica’s breath began to hitch and
she moaned like a wounded animal at the sound of Trey’s voice. He grabbed
clothes at random from her bureau and threw them into the case. When he figured
he had enough he ran out to her minivan with the case in one hand and her keys
in the other. He threw the case in the back and started the engine, then ran
back inside.

He looked at Carl as soon as he
entered the room.
Still safe.
“Monica, my name is
Trey. I need you to trust I’m not gonna hurt you. I just want to take you
someplace safe, okay?”

She looked up at him with what
could have been a look of terror laced with hope that he was telling the truth.
Trey’s heart was ripping him up inside and he hated himself for having had any
part in this. His one hope was that she was actually listening to him now and
believing him.

“If you don’t get dressed really
fast, I’m gonna have to carry you out to your truck like you are. We really
need to go. I’ll turn around if you’ll get up and put some clothes on.”

She made no move to do anything or
go anywhere. Trey approached her slowly with his hands extended out to his
sides, palms up. “I’m going to carry you out. Okay, Monica? Don’t be scared.
You’re safe now.”

Monica continued to stare at Trey
as he approached her. She kept looking at him with that look of hope and fear,
but she didn’t try to get away as he reached for her. She just looked at him
and her teeth began chattering as if she were freezing. Trey reached behind her
with one hand and under her with the other, scooping her up off the bed. He
struggled to get the blanket wrapped around her while holding her up with his
knee.

He carried her to the door and
adjusted her weight so he could turn the doorknob, then carried her out to her
vehicle, leaving the door open behind him.  Dammit, he thought. I should
have left the car door open, but I wanted it to be warm inside. He managed to
open the passenger door with the hand he had around her back.

He placed her on the passenger seat
and fastened her seat-belt. The blanket fell away from her and she pulled it
back up. Trey ran around to the other side, got in and slowly backed out of the
driveway, fearing that any second Carl would come running out and either shoot
them, or maybe grab the vehicle and stop it as he broke the windows and pulled
them out through the broken glass like some kind of insane killer from a horror
movie where the bad guy keeps coming back and never dies.

“I’m taking you somewhere safe till
we can find your husband. My family has a cabin nearby.”

“Thank you,” Monica whispered and
began to cry.

Tori stopped the story when she heard Elizabeth’s breathing
become shallow and even. She looked down at her little girl and made a silent
promise to find them someplace warm tomorrow. Or she’d find a way to insulate
the broken window. There had to be something. It was ridiculous that they were
freezing to death inside of a house.

She turned onto her side and laid
as close to Liz as she could and put her arm around her, willing her body heat
to transfer into her daughter. Her teeth started to chatter and she was thankful
that Liz was asleep and therefore a little warmer than she was and unaware of
how cold it was in the room.

Tori thought about how much
different her life was just one day ago. She almost laughed thinking of the
fact that she no longer had a job. The reason she was jobless wasn’t funny, but
the way her whole life changed in an instant, how her whole world had changed
today, it made her concerns of yesterday utterly ridiculous.

A few hours before she had left
Kelly’s house to head back to Denver, Kelly tried as she always did to talk
Tori into moving to Kansas. They were sisters, she said. They needed to be
closer and see each other more often, and she wanted to be a bigger part of
Elizabeth’s life.

Tori agreed with Kelly’s points,
but she really liked Denver and she didn’t like Salinas. She couldn’t imagine
living there. Her sister would be the only good thing in her life if she moved
there. And she’d have to start over from scratch looking for a job and then an
apartment. Just that alone was a depressing thought. She liked her current job.
Well, the job she had until yesterday, she reminded herself.

Tori had worked as a CNA at a
retirement center in Westminster and had just gotten approval for partial
company financing to go to school to become an R.N. The future was just
starting to look brighter for her. She wouldn’t be forever worrying about how
she was going to provide for Elizabeth.

Yesterday she was stressed about
the time she would have to spend away from Liz while going to classes, which they
would both hate, but she finally convinced herself it would be worth it. She
had agonized for months over whether she should go to school or not. While she
was grappling with the ironic merits of not being there for her daughter in
order to be a better mother, her sister was relentlessly urging her to move to
Salinas.

Liz rolled over in her sleep and
faced Tori. She tucked the blankets under Liz’s far side and adjusted the trim
so it was just below Liz’s chin. She softly stroked her daughter’s hair as she
gazed at her sleeping little angel face.

As frustrating as it was having to
constantly convince Kelly that she and Liz were happy in Denver and wanted to
stay in Denver – she now had to give her sister credit for her and Liz being
alive. If they hadn’t gone to Kelly’s for a visit, they’d be dead now – like
everyone else.

Tori hoped it was only Denver that
got destroyed. It was bad enough that she most likely lost her parents today;
she didn’t want to think about the possibility that Kelly might be dead too.
She had no idea where her brother was. He might be nothing but ash billowing
around on the streets downtown, or he could be somewhere up here on the
mountain with the biker gang he’d been hanging out with lately.

Tori rubbed her feet together,
hoping that if she made enough friction, she might be able to at least feel
them again. Her eyes flew open. Her feet were numb! She reached under the
blanket and felt Elizabeth’s feet. They were icy cold.

“Oh God.
I
have to pull my head out of my ass.”

She had thought she could just
address the problem of the window in the morning.
Right.
 
She wanted to be a nurse, and here she was sitting around waiting for herself
and her daughter to succumb to frostbite.  She berated herself silently
for being so stupid and putting both of them in such grave danger.

She got out from under the blankets
and sat up, determined to do something about the window right now. This wasn’t
something that could be put off. They were literally freezing in here. They
could die of frostbite. Jesus. What was she thinking?

She doubled her half of the
blankets over Liz, effectively putting her under six layers of bedding. Her
hands hurt from the cold. She started to rub them together to warm them up, and
that made them hurt more. She stopped and told herself to think. What did she
know about frostbite? She needed to warm them with heat. She put her hands
under her armpits and held them there. Then she tapped her right foot on the
ground. She still had sensation in her heel. Good. She’d be able to walk to the
kitchen without damaging the flesh on the bottom of her feet.

She fought against the pain in her
hands as she put her shoes on, and then walked on her heels through the cabin
and into the kitchen. The area near the broken window was no longer the coldest
spot in the house. It was that cold everywhere now.

In the kitchen, she turned on the
sink and was relieved that the pipes hadn’t frozen. Of course her father
would’ve had them insulated. He thought of everything. It was sometimes
annoying… well, often annoying, but now she was glad he was so thorough and
meticulous about everything. She filled a big pot with water and tried to turn
on a burner. Nothing happened. It had an electronic ignition. She opened the
cabinet above the range and found an igniter. She lit all four of the gas
burners and set the pot on the burner nearest her.

She held her hands high above the
flames to the left of the pot of water. She resisted the urge to hold her hands
closer where she would feel the heat more intensely. She knew that the warmth
would feel so good that she’d end up burning her hands. As she waited for the
water to warm up, she lifted her feet, one after another, walking in place on
her heels trying to get her blood circulating and spreading what little warmth
she had inside of her around her body.

She looked around the kitchen and
then walked into the living room and took the three cushions off of the couch
and brought them back to the kitchen, placing them on the floor between the
stove and the table, end to end. Then she went and got Liz and carried her into
the kitchen and laid her down on the cushions.

“
Shhhh
.
Go back to sleep, baby,” she whispered as Liz
stirred while being laid down on the makeshift bed.

Tori looked at the water and saw
small bubbles forming on the bottom of the pot. She lifted it carefully and put
it on the floor, then sat down on one of the dining room chairs and removed her
shoes and socks. She tested the water with a finger. It was hot, but not too
much. She slowly lowered one foot into the pot and waited for the water to warm
her freezing foot. As the blood warmed and her circulation resumed, she
grimaced at the pain and resisted the instinct to remove her foot. The pain was
a good thing. Her foot was coming back to life.

After she could fully feel her feet
and the pain subsided, she dried her feet with a dish towel and put her socks
and shoes back on. Then she had an idea she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought
of sooner. She went to the bedroom and stripped the sheet off the mattress. She
lifted the mattress off the box-spring and hefted it up on its side and dragged
it to the living room. Then she pushed the couch from the adjacent wall, first
from one corner, then the other, until she had it in front of the mattress. She
shoved the couch forward, pinning the mattress in place.

She smiled at her handiwork and
waited a minute to catch her breath. She smiled as she felt the heat from the
fireplace already start to reach her arms.

When Carl woke up, his head was killing him. It took a few
seconds for him to figure out where he was and then to remember what the hell
had happened. That fucking Trey! He was going to die. Carl sat up and his head
throbbed far worse than it had that morning from the hangover. The pain was all
over the place and it was sharp and throbbing.

He brought a hand to his face and
felt the sticky blood drying on his skin. He carefully felt around his head and
found three different large bumps.

“That
mother-fucker.”

A slow burning rage was building
inside of Carl.

He got up carefully. He looked
around the room and saw that Trey must’ve taken the woman for himself. That’s
alright, he thought. He’d get her back. Carl found his clothes and dressed
slowly. His head was killing him and every movement made it worse.

He decided he needed rest. He
dropped the boot he was about to put on and slowly lay back down on the bed. He
didn’t have to rush out right now in god-awful pain to go get his revenge on
Trey and re-claim his woman. He had time. He was sure he’d have no problem
finding him. There was really only one place he could be headed.

Trey’s parents had a cabin not too
far from here. It would be empty and the most obvious place for the dumbass to
go. Carl closed his eyes and thought about what he’d do to Trey when he found
him. Trey was going to regret what he’d done. He had a hell of a lesson
comin
’ to him.

Carl would not tolerate being
disrespected like this.