Under a Broken Sun (20 page)

I sat on a chair facing backwards and sucking in air.  I felt light headed.  Headache.   I watched Ashley cradle Louie’s head in her arms.  But I could barely breathe. 
Holy shit,
I thought. 
I'm turning into a wheezer.

PART III - AUGUST

Columbus

You stay here, I'll go look for guns.

I think I know where they've hidden some.

'Cause if a tiger comes one night

We won't go without a fight.

20.   

We drifted along the river for three or four days like Tom Sawyer on the Mississippi.  Thank god the boat had a canopy or we would’ve fried.  We found its winter cover under the back deck which we put on over the deck during the day.  We’d crawl under the cover like vampires, sleep fitfully in the stifling heat, and wake up at dusk.  I rarely slept. 

The rain that swept through here left the air thick with humidity.  My lungs worked overtime just to draw breath in and out.  The fear of becoming a crazy air-sucking zombie crept around my mind constantly. 

At night, the temperature dropped lower to the high twenties, a swing of what seemed like a hundred degrees.  We alternated between extreme boredom, terror, and frozen asses. 

Once the storm ended I broke out my army backpack and emptied the contents on the boat floor.  We had enough provisions to last us maybe five days, but I'd have to ration the water-logged food very carefully.

After four days in the sun things began to dry out.  The boat stretched maybe eighteen feet, but it didn't provide nearly enough room for five people to sleep in.  And throwing the cover over us just crushed us down even more. 

Today, like the previous four days, I woke up before anyone else.  I reached up and untucked the cover, lifting it slowly over my head revealing the dark purple sky at dusk.  I broke out my soaked and swollen book and sat in the corner to read another page or two.  Kerouac’s character Sal had just made it to Denver in search of Dean Moriarity.  A man on a mission to find his soul mate: the man with the answers.  Like me with my dad.  Just not the soul mate part.

It's hard to hate your dad.  You really have to work at it, because it doesn't feel right, and there's always a moment that pops up, like at the foot of the forest when I was ready to pull the trigger.  Your mind throws a moment out there like a life preserver when all you want to do is drown.  Kerouac summed it up perfectly:
"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof?"
  Yeah, it's true.  Then you grow up, and the bullshit peeks out behind the peeling paint.  But your mind still clings to that life preserver, ready to toss it whenever you need it.  Whether you want it or not.

Tolbert sat down next to me on the boat floor and let out a yawn.  “What’s that?” he asked.

I showed him the book.  “On the Road.  By Jack Kerouac.  Ever read it?”

His brow furrowed, like he had heard of it before.  “No.  Never.”

I offered it to him.  “You can read it if you want.”

He stood up to walk to the front.  “No thanks.”   He climbed over the side and sat crossed legged on the bow lowering his head.

I followed him, nervous. 
Praying
?  “What’re you doing?” I asked. 

He looked around at me and smiled.  “Relax, man.  Not everyone who prays is your enemy, ok?”

I sighed and sat down on the cherry red, sticky plastic seat and watched.  Prayer made no sense to me.  I prefer to talk to people, not ghosts.  My dad would've told him to knock it off, and then gotten into a big debate.  But I always just had three rules about religion: don't try to convert me, don't try to discount me, and don't think you own me.  You live your life that way and I won't care if you worship a pile of dog shit.

Ashley came up behind me and rummaged through my backpack for a bottle of water.  She took a sip and passed it to me.  I took a sip.  “Sleep ok?” I asked.

“Oh yeah.  Just perfect.” She replied, stretching her back and shoulder.  “Where are we?” 

I broke out the tattered, flimsy map from my backpack, unfolding it on the boat dashboard.  “See that curve up ahead?” I asked.

She squinted to see, holding her hand over her eyes.  “Yeah,”

“I think that’s this turn here, at the southeastern base of Ohio.  We’re getting closer to your home ground."

She nodded, looking away.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said, folding up the map.

She changed the subject.  “How’s the arm?” she asked.  The scar had formed and the bandage fell off.  I preferred to heal it through the air anyway.

“Good,” I said, rubbing the red scab.  “How about you?”

She rubbed the back of her head.  “Head still hurts a little, but the shoulder’s better.”

We heard a splash.  I shot up, looked around.  Tolbert, Louie, Ashley…

“Tommy!” I shouted. 

Tommy’s head popped up from the river.  “What?”

I flopped back down into the seat.  “Jesus, don’t do that,” I said.

“Gotta shower sometime,” he said, then dove back underwater.   Louie grabbed the water bottle from me and took a swig.

I took the bottle away.  “Hey, go easy on that, ok?”

“Up yours,” Louie grunted, heading to back of the boat. 

I looked at Ashley and she shrugged.  Travel changes people.  Long, hopeless, going-nowhere-fast travel especially.  Throw a few near-death experiences in there and anyone would tend to go off the deep end.

The sun sank lower, the temperature now in the comfortable zone, but we knew it wouldn’t last.  We had to get ourselves wrapped up again.  At night we didn’t put the cover on the boat, just over ourselves.  Then we told stories for 8 hours.  Then went to bed.  But not that night.  I decided we had to stop this cruise ship.

“Tommy – get back in here,” I yelled over board.  Tommy swam to the boat, climbed the ladder, and shook the water off of him like a mutt.  “We’re pulling over.  We’ll make better time on land.  If we stay on the river we’ll end up in Kentucky.”

I took the wheel of the boat and steered it hard to the right.  Starboard, Tommy called it.  Learned it all from fishing with his dad, he told me.  He always looked away when he mentioned his dad.  Like it was my fault.

We slowly drifted to the side, and within a few minutes ran aground on sand and mud, still ten feet out.  “Let’s go,” I said, picking up the backpack.  We climbed over the side, dropped into about three feet of water, and slugged our way to land. 

I’d never been so happy to step on solid ground in my life.  I hoped like hell we had advanced ahead of Hill's army, but the plume of black smoke in the distance made me think otherwise.

We walked through dark woods, the moon now only a fingernail in the black sky.  We could see light up ahead, the familiar flickering orange light of a man-made fire.  As we came to a clearing in the wood, across a blacktop road, however, we could see the fires in the distance stretching far too high to be just providing light.

The street stretched on, black and empty, a car or two pulled over to the side of the road.  We listened but heard no screams, no rushing people.  The fire must've been going for a while.  Nature is the only fireman left – the world had gotten too big for the bucket brigades we used a century before.

The town had a single main street, with small, formerly well-kept boutique shops on either side.  Now doors hung open near piles of rubble and brick, and canopies lay dead on their side.   The earthquake stopped by here as well. 

The fire rose from an office building down the street from us.  We walked down the middle of the street, the flames lighting our way and reflecting off the glass of the shop windows still standing.  Toys & Hobbies.  Goodwill.  The First Place saloon with its sign hanging at an angle by a small chain and swinging in the breeze.  Cutter’s – a hair cutting place.  I had to smile at that one. 

A dog ran into The First Place and came out with a hunk of something I didn't want to identify in its mouth.

“Where is everyone?” Ashley asked. 

“Probably in bed,” I replied, grabbing her hand. 

A small boy darted out in front of us with a gun and shouted “Bang!  You’re dead.”  I grabbed the gun away from him, leaving a shocked, screaming, crying mess of a tiny human.  I popped out the clip of the forty-five, and counted six shots in the clip.  If the safety hadn’t been on I would’ve been dead.  I pulled the chamber back and another bullet popped out, landing on the ground with a metallic bounce. 

“Give it!” the boy cried.  I put the clip in my pocket and handed him the gun.  He took it with a squeal and ran off, shooting other imaginary bad guys.  I probably should've stopped him and taken him with us - his mom and dad were more than likely dead.  They certainly didn’t care where he was at three in the morning.  But honestly, I was too fucking tired. 

We walked to the town hall building – Millersville, Ohio, a sign said in front.  Founded in 1788, the first incorporated town in Ohio.  Good for you. 

“This place have an earthquake too?” Tommy asked.

I just looked at him.  Tommy was a good guy to have on your side, but didn’t have the brains to feed a starving zombie.

“We must be closer to the epicenter,” Tolbert said. 

“New Madrid,” Louie whispered. 

I turned to him.  “What was that?”

Louie looked up at us with a tired expression of defeat.  “New Madrid fault line.  It was the main storyline in a video game called Deadly Future: Aftershocks.  Anyway, it’s near Memphis.  Runs all the way up to St. Louis.  That or the Ramapo fault line, which cuts right through New York City.  If those two went off, the whole country felt it.  Terrible game, by the way.  Boring as hell."

I looked at the burning building, the broken store fronts.  The splits in the road beneath my feet that jutted up like something underneath trying to escape.  Jesus, what did the rest of the country look like?

As we walked further, closer to the burning building, the heat grew intense, but felt good in the cold air.  Guilt blended with that relief - never thought I'd be glad to see a three story building in the middle of a small town burn down. 

As we arrived at the crossroad to Main Street in the heart of the town, something in our perception of the scene changed.  Bullet holes surrounded shattered windows in a spray pattern.  Parts of the building on fire didn’t just crumble from an earthquake.  Rubble lay strewn across the street, blown out rather than fallen. 

Tolbert recognized it immediately.  "This place was a battlefield," he said.  Once that realization set in, the camouflaged bodies of soldiers and civilians littering the scenery became clear. 

“Oh my God,” Ashley said, grabbing Tommy's hand this time.

A hand grabbed my pants leg and I jumped.  One more step and I would’ve tripped right over him.  A soldier, lying face up, face burned to a black, wrinkled mess.  Spit bubbles popped from long, raspy breathing.  When the shock wore off I was able to yell.  “He’s alive!”

I knelt down beside him.  His shirt bore the name “Jaworski”.  Tolbert knelt down next to me as I took my backpack off.  What the hell was I gonna do, use gauze and a bandage?  This guy was a pile of blood and charred flesh.  There was nothing I could do.

Jaworski’s mouth moved.  I bent down over his head, my ear nearly touching his wet mouth, smelling burnt flesh and hair.  “St..”

“What?  I can’t hear you,” I said to him.

“Stop…”  Jaworski gasped.  “Stop.  Them.”

Them?  Tolbert was way ahead of me.  “Who?  Stop who?”

“The.”  His white eyes drifted over to me, flames dancing in them.  “Non.  Believers.”

We worked the rest of the night throwing the bodies onto the burning rubble and wood, turning an office building to a funeral pyre.  In all, we dropped fourteen bodies onto the pile.  When dawn set in and the air began to warm, we collapsed, exhausted and swallowing gulps of air as much as we could. 

“We need to keep moving,” I said. 

“I.  Can’t.”  Tommy said in between breaths.  “I need a break.”

I looked at the others.  They all nodded.  Same thing.

“Fine.  We’ll hole up in a store.  See if we can find one with fresh clothes.”

Didn’t take long to find one, and even less time for us to fall asleep.

21.   

I woke up with a jolt; couldn't remember the dream, but could feel that I didn't want to.  The sun set, lowering the temperature, leaving me to marvel at how nocturnal we'd become, our bodies now used to the change in sleeping habits.

I looked around at the clothing store we had holed up in.  Looked like a consignment shop, with used clothes clinging to their hangers or dropped on the floor like worthless rags.  I walked about looking for men’s clothes, found a pair of jeans and some shirts.  I ripped off my tattered hoodie and put on another.  The fourth one in what, three weeks?  Long sleeve - old cutter habit.  I checked my cut, just below the tiger tattoo, and made sure it was healing ok.  I had to flick my hair out of my face – it likes to grow long when it’s allowed to.  I haven’t had time for a haircut.

I pulled the shirt over me, over my necklace, and started with the pants.

“Wait,” Ashley said behind me.  “Sorry.”  She hurried into a dressing room and slid the well-worn shower curtain closed.  A thought flashed through my mind. 
Did she sleep with Tolbert?  Tommy?
  A protective instinct, I figured.  I looked around, couldn’t see Tolbert. 
Did he split?

Tommy came up with some riotous bed head.  “Yo,” he muttered, then shifted through the clothes as well.  When he found something that looked like it’d fit, he disappeared into the bathroom behind me.  Louie shuffled clothes around in the kid’s section.  At five foot three and maybe eighty pounds, he wasn’t gonna fit in anything around us.  I heard a “YES!” from that area and before I knew it, Louie came strolling back with a Mario and Luigi T-shirt.  The kid found his suit of armor.