Ashes of the Unspeakable, page 16
“Jim tried to get us to go with him,” Alice said. “We blew him off.”
Boyd nodded, then turned and followed Rebecca. Alice stood, adjusted her pack, and fell in line.
*
Most people had pulled off the road and abandoned their vehicles on the shoulder, but occasionally they ran across cars stopped dead in the center of a traffic lane. Alice guessed that some people must have given it their all, driving until their vehicles burned the last fumes of gas and stalled. They had passed cars all morning before Boyd pulled open an unlocked car door and began searching the vehicle.
Rebecca stopped walking and stared at Boyd. “That’s someone’s car.”
He didn’t even look up at her. “No shit.”
“So you’re just breaking into people’s cars now, like some kind of criminal?”
“Yep.”
Alice had been lagging behind. Her Nikes were too thin for this and her feet were beginning to throb. She leaned on the car as Boyd popped the trunk latch and began going through that.
Rebecca sat on the warm hood and let her pack slide off her shoulders. “He’s as bad as Jim. He thinks there might be stuff in there we can use.”
“He’s probably right,” Alice said. “We’re going to need more than what we have now. If stuff we can use has been left behind in these cars, then we need to take advantage of that.”
“Yahtzee!” came a cry from the car.
Rebecca looked back toward the trunk, an eyebrow raised. “What did you find?”
“Vehicle emergency kit.”
“How do you know?” Alice asked.
“Says so right on the box.” Boyd held up what looked like a plastic toolbox with white letters on the lid. He dumped the contents of the box in the trunk and rifled through them, finding a couple of bags of water that looked like children’s juice boxes labelled Emergency Water, survival energy bars the size of candy bars, some Hot Hands hand warmers, two highway flares, a lighter, a roll of paracord, an orange triangle for showing that your vehicle was in distress, and two Mylar emergency blankets.
Rebecca reached in and picked up an energy bar. Boyd snatched it from her. “That’s mine.”
Rebecca stared at him. “Uh, we brought you along. Alice stole one of those Go Bags for you, and now you’re not going to share?”
Boyd’s expression hardened. “Then fucking take it.”
“I don’t want your stupid survival bar.” She crossed her arms and stared a hole through him.
“Take it,” he repeated.
“No.”
Boyd stalked to the front of the vehicle and grabbed Rebecca’s pack off the hood of the car. He carried it back to the trunk and slammed it down, then began cramming the contents of the emergency kit into her pack.
“What do you think you’re doing? I don’t want to carry all that.”
“You wanted it, you fucking carry it.” He continued angrily pushing gear into her pack. Not just the stuff they needed but everything he could find in the trunk – an ice scraper, de-icing spray, a tub of car cleaning wipes. When he was done, he closed the pack and held it out to her.
She continued glaring at him, making no effort to take the pack.
He reached out, took Rebecca’s shoulder and spun her body violently, until she faced away from him. He put the pack on her forcefully. She went limp and allowed it, then turned back to him, and put a finger in his face. “You don’t fucking touch me ever again, you bastard.”
They were still staring at each other when Alice walked off. She was tired and hungry. There were rations in her Go Bag, but she could not stomach eating with those two. They deserved each other.
*
They did not stop as a group again that day. They rotated their order as they walked, not through any planning, but simply because that was how it worked out. They ate their rations on the go, so there were times that each of them felt more energetic and refreshed than the others. Boyd continued to search each abandoned vehicle they passed. It had become an obsession. He started that morning with the unlocked ones. Now if they were locked, he broke out the window with a tire iron he’d found and continued his search.
Having made his feelings clear as to who owned the plunder, Rebecca and Alice no longer paid any attention to what he found. They did not ask, did not look, did not engage him. They continued walking. Alice noticed that Boyd’s pack was getting much heavier than it had been earlier in the day. She didn’t know what he’d found, but he now leaned forward against the weight when he walked.
When Alice paused to rest for a moment on the guardrail, Boyd passed her on the road. She let him go without a word, not even acknowledging him. When she continued walking, she came upon him going through an abandoned pickup truck. His pack was open and he was still shoving items inside. When he heard her coming, he positioned his body so that she could not see what he was doing. She kept going, but she thought she’d seen him shoving a handgun into the side pocket of his pack. That could be a concern.
They passed many houses and no one greeted them. Somehow, Alice had assumed there might be people who would take pity on stranded travelers and be standing by the road to offer drinking water and PB&J sandwiches, like relief stations at a marathon. She had really thought that and was incredibly disappointed to find that there were no crowds waiting to commiserate. Instead, all they saw was fleeting glimpses of distant forms taking shelter upon their approach. They saw shadows melting into windows. There were signs of life, but they were not friendly.
Outside of Narrows, Virginia, the houses became more frequent, but no more welcoming. Possibly due to the proximity to town, the frequency of abandoned cars dropped off. Boyd rejoined them and silently fell into stride beside Rebecca. The two of them did not speak, but she didn’t discourage him.
When they came upon a country church beside a creek, Boyd halted in the road. “It’s getting late. Maybe we should consider staying here for the night.”
Rebecca looked around. “Where?”
“I saw a picnic shelter behind that church. We could stay there.”
Rebecca looked at Alice. Alice shrugged. She hadn’t thought about where they were going to stay, only about getting out of the camp.
Boyd took their silence as assent. “Alright, then we’ll take a look.”
They walked from the shoulder of Route 460 down a gravel driveway to the church. It bore white wooden clapboards and had a bell tower that was missing a bell. Instead, there was a speaker, probably connected to an old record player that rang out the Sunday call to worship. The picnic shelter behind the church was large and had a stone fireplace at one end.
Boyd looked around. “This place is kind of hidden back here. We might be able to have a fire in the fireplace tonight and not draw too much attention. A fire would help drive the bugs off.”
Alice dropped her pack onto a picnic table. “Fine with me.” She carried her pack to the far end of the shelter and sat down at a table where she could look at the creek. After a moment’s consideration, she removed her shoes and walked down to the creek. She sat on a rock and dipped her swollen feet into the chilly stream. It was cold enough to make her flinch but her feet instantly began to feel better.
After fifteen minutes, her feet were numb and she could tell that some of the swelling had gone down. She walked back to the shelter and dried her feet with a spare shirt. She hung her socks, damp from her sweaty feet, over an electrical wire that ran between two nearby posts.
She noticed that Boyd had his pack open and he was eating with Rebecca. They were smiling and laughing. She could not tell what they were eating, but it did not appear to be one of the Go Bag’s ration packs. Alice felt that she was clearly on the outside of this triangle. Though they were not particularly a group that she wanted to be part of, the rejection still bothered her. She was human, after all. It hurt that they did not acknowledge that it was her plan that had gotten them out of the FEMA camp in the first place. She had come up with the plan, she had collected the intelligence, and she had taken the Go Bags. Where was the appreciation? She should throw on her pack and take off down the road without them. If her feet hadn’t hurt so badly, she probably would have.
She dug into her own pack and retrieved a ration packet, not caring that they were standard military MREs. Anything would help fill the void in her stomach. She could not let herself care about being singled out from the group. Even if her feelings got hurt, she would have to remember that these people were not her friends, they were merely travelling companions.
With this acceptance, she realized that this was how Jim must have felt when she and Rebecca had ganged up on him early in this disaster. He was only trying to help and no one was giving him any credit for his efforts. She hoped that his group was doing better than hers and that they had made it home. If she ever saw Jim again, she would tell him that she was sorry.
Then she’d ask him how to build a Get Home Bag.
*
Alice reluctantly joined Boyd and Rebecca around a fire that night. They made small talk with her but maintained a distance that clearly distinguished where she stood in this pack. She was okay with that, she had accepted it. She was a strong, independent woman and she had invited these people because she wanted to help them, not because she needed them.
Alice could not recall the last time that she’d been at a campfire in such blackness. She’d been to bonfires at social events and sat around fire pits with friends, but this was different. The fire was the only light. It was remarkable to her how much light a fire could put out. She wasn’t sure she’d ever paid attention to that.
Suddenly, the way that the fire brightened the area around the shelter concerned Alice. She wondered if the local people noticed it. She wondered if people were watching them from the dark. Were they good people or bad people? Were they waiting for them to go to sleep?
Before long, Alice told Boyd and Rebecca that she was going to bed. They still sat around the fire, lost in talking quietly to each other and they paid her no attention. Boyd may have raised a finger in acknowledgement from where it lay on his leg, but it may just as easily have been to stir an insect from his finger. She walked the aisle between the picnic tables until she was at the same table where she had eaten her solitary dinner, beyond all but the occasional stray flicker of the firelight. She reclined on the top of a picnic table for a while, her stolen FEMA blanket folded in her arms, not quite ready to wrap herself in it and commit to sleep, thinking that sleeping on the table would keep her out of the reach of snakes and spiders. She could not get comfortable, though. It had nothing to do with the table, which was probably as comfortable an accommodation as she’d find out here. It was the conversation taking place by the fire that bothered her.
She could not hear what was being said, only the tone of the words. In her exhausted delirium, the conversation reminded her of classical music. There was cooing and giggling, reminding her of flutes and woodwind instruments. Then the music would change to reprimands and strong words that made her think of cymbal crashes and atonal chords. Then there was the male voice, softened by desire, promising. Then there was the female voice, accommodating, then rejecting. It was a cycle of romance to anger to romance. Alice wondered if Rebecca wasn’t just playing some game with Boyd, where the prize was his assistance in surviving this ordeal. Alice worried that this would not turn out well for Rebecca if that was her game. Boyd did not seem like the kind who would enjoy being played. Either way, she could not listen to this all night.
She gathered her gear quietly. She did not want them to see her leaving and did not want them to see where she was going. She had no idea where she was going either. She slipped on her shoes and pulled the socks free of the wire where they dried, cramming them into her back pocket. She walked into the dark, her eyes adjusted enough by now that she could see slightly in the sliver of moonlight. She hoped that she did not step on a snake because she could not see well enough to notice one if it lay across a warm rock in her path. She would scream if that happened and she did not want to scream.
She tried several spots along the creek and in the woods before she ended up at the back door of the church. Even in the darkness, the tall white walls of the church caught light and loomed over her. She tried the door and found it unlocked. She thought that must certainly be a sign. A welcome. She went in and closed the door behind her, taking out the small flashlight that she’d stolen from the camp. It was the only one between the three of them. She turned it on and flashed it discreetly around the room. The old oak pews were padded. She slid some of the pads into the floor and made herself a thick bed in the middle of the center aisle.
Before she lay down for the night, she went to each door of the church. Each had an old-fashioned surface-mounted deadbolt. She locked them and made certain that they engaged. She asked herself what was out there that she was afraid of.
The answer was everything.
Chapter 14
The Valley
Russel County, Virginia
Charlie Rakes got in the Dodge that he’d stolen from Henry when he’d killed him and taken his house for himself. He no longer saw it as a stolen truck. It was his truck now, just as the house they’d taken was now his house. Of course Henry’s son had thought he had a right to it and had come to claim it back. That had been a problem for about all of thirty seconds until Charlie fixed it. The boy had been full of big talk. Charlie had never cared much for talk. As he often said, most people didn’t have the ass to back up their talk. That boy was still talking up to the second that Charlie killed him dead. Some people just didn’t know when to shut the hell up.
He drove down the road a short piece and stopped at a little ranch house just off the road. The whole house looked to be about five rooms. It always made him wonder why some of these folks had these big sprawling farms with hundreds of acres and tiny brick houses that weren’t any size at all. He didn’t get it.
He walked straight in through the front door because he knew he could. There had been an elderly couple here when he stopped by yesterday. They’d still been eating fairly well from their root cellar, but they were old and weak and no match for Charlie. He’d not even had to use a weapon. He’d taken the old man’s cane and beat him like a bony piñata. The old woman howled the whole time. It pissed him off. He’d kicked her to death. The pair didn’t weigh any more than a bag of dog food when he carried their bodies out to the barn. There was an old horse stall, so long in disuse that the tack hung in decay from rusting nails in the wall. He tossed their bodies into it, one atop the other, and slammed the stall door shut.
He could have demanded that Angie and her kids come help him but he wasn’t running a commune. He cared for them because they were family but his main interest in life was still taking care of himself. He would share some things, but other things were only for him. Before he shared anything from this house, he wanted to find and separate out those things that were just for him.
In a habit that had been established long ago, he started his exploration in the medicine cabinet and kitchen cabinets. That was where he usually found the drugs. He’d never considered himself an addict, but nothing took the edge off the day like a good pain pill. He lucked out that the old man had apparently had several surgeries in the recent past and there were hundreds of pills to choose from. He loaded them into a pillow case. He felt like the Grinch looting Whoville.
There were several framed commemorative coin sets hanging on the paneled living room walls. A few months back he’d have taken those too, but he could think of no use for them in this current world. After finding the pills, he searched for booze, finding nothing in that category. He then went on a weapons search. There were several guns in a walnut cabinet in the spare bedroom. The cabinet was locked, so he knocked the glass out with a porcelain rabbit and removed several long guns and some old boxes of shells. The only pistol he found was a .22 caliber Colt Woodsman. He carried the guns out and put them in the back of his truck. The sack of pills went behind the seat.
The last item on his search list was food. He scoured the cabinets and found quite a bit. These people apparently kept themselves well-stocked so they didn’t have to go out to the store much. He found more pillowcases and filled them with the contents of the kitchen and pantry. In the basement were shelves of home-canned goods. He filled every milk crate and cardboard box in the house with the items he found down there. He noticed that among the Mason jars was stewed venison chunks. He unscrewed the ring on the jar and used his keychain to pry the lid off. There was a satisfying pop, indicated a good seal on the jar.
He shoved his dirty fingers into the neck of the jar, fished out a cube of venison, and shoved it into his mouth.
“Damn, that’s good.” He licked every bit of juice from his fingers.
He continued about his business, hauling out jars until nothing was left. In the process, he finished the jar of venison that he’d opened. He hoped there were more cans of that. If there were, he was hiding that shit for himself. In a slouching smokehouse of grayed poplar logs, Charlie found a dozen country hams curing on steel hooks. This was better than the venison. He backed his truck up to the smokehouse and emptied it. While he loaded hams, an aging coonhound crept from the barn and slunk toward him, tail wagging, ribs showing. Charlie cut off a chunk of ham and fed the dog, then shot it in the head while it ate.
When he was sure that this farm had nothing more to offer him, Charlie pulled his truck away from the house and left it running. He found a can of charcoal lighter fluid on the back porch, squirted it across the shag carpet of the living room, then stuck his cigarette lighter to it. The fire spread quickly. Charlie backed out the door and watched the fire flicker through the windows. He did the same in the barn, striking his lighter to a pile of straw bales.
