Pilgrimage_A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story Page 25

  “Grant is up on the roof now.” Sonny looked up at the ceiling as he spoke. “He’s by himself right now. I’ll join him in a couple minutes. But I wanted to show you something first.”

  “Okay.” James looked over Sonny’s shoulder at his wife. She was on the sofa, rocking back and forth, biting her cuticles. “But let me talk to Leigh for a second.”

  “She’s killing herself over Sloane,” said Sonny.

  “I know.” James frowned.

  “Meet me in the basement when you’re finished up here.” Sonny patted James on the shoulder.

  “Got it.” James smiled and walked the few steps to the family room sofa, dropping next to his wife, who seemed too deep in thought to notice him. “Leigh?” he said, putting his hand on her leg.

  Leigh looked over at her husband, her eyes heavy and framed by dark circles. The faint laugh lines at their corners were etched with worry. Her index finger was in her mouth, the edge of her nail between her teeth.

  “Leigh,” James repeated softly, “Sloane is fine.”

  Leigh blinked back tears, her eyes welling until the lids couldn’t hold the pool and they streamed down her cheeks. She wiped them with the back of her hand without saying anything.

  “She is fine,” James said a third time, praying it was the charm. He needed his wife’s strength. “She’s nine years old. You can’t expect to know what she’s doing twenty-four seven.”

  “Yes I can,” she whimpered, sucking in breaths like a child on the backside of a tantrum. “I’m her mother. She’s my responsibility. I should have known. I should have stopped her.”

  “Nothing happened,” James reassured her, inching closer to her and softening his voice. “She’s here. She’s unfazed.”

  “Oh, Rock!” She laughed, snot spraying from her nose. “Unfazed?! Do you really believe that? Our children are fazed. Don’t kid yourself. They’re not the same.”

  “My point is,” he tried to clarify, “we’ve done nothing but protect them the best we can. We’ve done nothing to harm them.”

  Leigh wiped her nose with the back of her hand, sniffling. “It’s not what we’ve done or haven’t done. It’s that we can’t protect them forever.”

  “That was the case before the world turned upside down,” James argued. “There were always dangers.”

  “But now they’re amplified,” she said. “Now they’re everywhere, around every corner. And I don’t know, Rock. Even if we get our house back and these horrible people are gone, who’s to say another threat doesn’t appear right after them.”

  “You’re right.” James nodded. “When we get our house back, the outside world is still the outside world: chaotic, treacherous, short of electricity and food but long on weapons and criminals.”

  “That’s my point.” She grabbed the sides of her head with her hands. “What’s the point?”

  “The point is”—James took a deep breath, as much to gather his thoughts as to lament his wife’s malaise—“nothing worth having is ever easy. We will survive this chapter. And we will thrive in the next.”

  “You can’t promise that.” She shook her head, her eyes searching for comfort James imagined her mind was willing to accept.

  “Tomorrow is never promised to us, Leigh,” he offered. “But that’s no reason to give up on today.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and lay her head back against the sofa. She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. She was shutting down and James knew it, so he grabbed her hand.

  “Look at me, Leigh,” he said, his tone firm and direct. “I need you. The children need you. We cannot have you retreating into that head of yours, intent on defeat and darkness.”

  Leigh looked at James, focused on his message. She picked up her head and turned her body toward his.

  “Get over yourself,” he said. “Focus on what needs to be done now. Be strong for your children. Be strong for me. When I get us back into our house, you can collapse in our bed, wrap yourself in a blanket, and hide for a week. But now you need to man up.”

  “Ha!” It was a genuine laugh. “Man up? You’re ridiculous.”

  “Maybe,” James smirked, “but I’m serious.”

  “I get it,” she said, taking his hand. “I just…”

  “Just what?”

  “Needed a good cry,” she said. “I’ll be okay.” Leigh drew her finger into her mouth and gnawed on the cuticle.

  James knew his wife. He knew she was placating him. She was on the verge of a breakdown. He’d seen it when their daughter Nora died. She drifted away from him, from Max and Sloane, from the functioning world.

  He’d pulled her back by forcing her to participate, by pushing her to get out of bed in the morning and stay up late with him at night. He’d decided the only way to live was to push themselves beyond their limits.

  That’s when they began the extreme adventuring. That’s when he bought guns and learned how to hunt. He took cross-fit classes, became a certified SCUBA diver, took sailing classes. He dragged her along for the ride until she could drive herself literally and figuratively.

  He couldn’t let her slip into the morass again. This time, he knew he’d lose his grip and they’d both sink beyond redemption.

  CHAPTER 64

  EVENT +1 Week, 3 Days, 13:11 Hours

  University Park, Maryland

  Temporary Recovery Zone 5

  Sonny’s basement was unfinished, blanketed in the pink insulation exposed between the pine wall studs. It was dank, with a cold, veined cement floor. Sonny had always talked about making a man-cave out of it: a bank of flat panel televisions, Ravens and Orioles memorabilia covering the walls, a popcorn machine in one corner, a full bar in the other. When his wife died, he’d abandoned the plan.

  “The whole place is man cave now,” he’d lamented. “No need to escape anywhere on Sunday afternoons.”

  Where the popcorn machine would have stood was a large metal shelving unit. On it were canned vegetables, containers of rice and flour. There were large gallon jugs of water, vinegar, empty mason jars, and cooking oil.

  Adjacent to the shelves, on the floor, were warehouse-size packages of toilet paper and paper towels. He had enough to last at least six months, maybe a little longer. There were also a couple dozen bottles of hydrogen peroxide.

  “You’d be amazed by the uses for the stuff,” he’d bragged to James the first time he showed him what he called his “prepper shelf”. “It’s a great disinfectant and cleaner. It’s good for mouthwash, getting out bloodstains, and killing mold or fungus.”

  “You could spray it on your hair and give it a natural, golden tone,” James had joked.

  “Because a brother like me wants to look like that,” he’d laughed, running his hand across his head.

  James thought about that day as he crossed the room to where the bar should have been. Instead there was a large gun safe and a small drop-in freezer. James pulled open the freezer and found it empty.

  “There’s nothing there because I ran out of gas to run the generator,” explained Sonny. “We had to eat what food I had in there on day four and five. There was chicken, a few fish filets. I really wasn’t as prepared as I planned on being.”

  “More prepared than me.” James closed the freezer and looked at the open gun safe. It was an identical model to the one in his own basement. The contents were different.

  “I think these’ll work.” Sonny pulled out a pair of Bushmaster 300 AAC Blackout semiautomatic rifles. “They’re super light.” He handed James one of the rifles. “Magpul ACS stock, takes any AR-type ammunition. It’s pretty nasty looking, right?”

  “It is.” James held the rifle as if aiming it across the room. He adjusted the stock to fit his arm length. “You have two of them?”

  “I have four.” Sonny nodded toward the safe. “I buy the same weapon because it breeds familiarity. I’d rather be super proficient with one type of weapon than have some crazy cache of weapons I don’t know how to use.”

&nbs
p; “Makes sense.” James thought back to Camp Driggers in Pennsylvania and Steve’s employment of the same philosophy. “Any handguns?”

  “A couple of Smith & Wessons,” Sonny said. “Nothing fancy.”

  “Are these going to be noisy?” James asked, holding the weapon up to his cheek, noticing the lack of a sight. “I mean, do we lose the element of surprise after the first trigger pull?”

  “No.” Sonny smiled. “These have noise and flash suppression on them. We’ll be about as quiet as we can be with this kind of firepower. Not dormouse quiet, mind you, but pretty close to it.”

  “Cool.” James handed the rifle back to his friend. “Hey, I can’t thank you enough. You’ve been really good to us.”

  “It’s nothing, James.” Sonny put both rifles back in the safe. “You and Leigh were so kind after…” Sonny choked on his words and shrugged. James knew he couldn’t say her name, couldn’t talk about what happened, couldn’t delve into the pain he suffered in the wake of her death. “I just…especially when you were coping with your own loss…I could never repay you. But this is a start.”

  “You’ve more than repaid us,” James said. “Despite the awful bean soup we’ve eaten three times already.”

  “There’s only so much I can do with a pot and a gas cooktop.” Sonny laughed. “Like I said, the meat’s gone. Beans are good for the fiber.”

  “They’re good for something else too.” James patted his stomach and winked. “In fact, we might not need any smoke grenades after another helping of the soup.”

  “Speaking of which!” Sonny held up his finger. A cartoon lightbulb might as well have appeared over his head. “I’ve got a couple flash grenades. Some SWAT guys gave them to me after the pandemic. They’ve got a ten-year shelf life.” He reached into the safe and pulled out an army green cylinder, handing it to James.

  “I’m guessing this is a metal oxidant mix of magnesium and aluminum plus an oxidizer of ammonium perchlorate or potassium perchlorate.” James examined the flash grenade. It was embossed with white lettering that read “2 BANG 1.5s DELAY”.

  “Hell if I know.” Sonny laughed. “You’re the science professor! I just know it knocks someone silly long enough to get the upper hand.”

  “Teacher,” said James. “I’m not a professor.”

  “Whatever you say.” Sonny chuckled. He took the flash grenade from James and put it back in the safe. “We’ll come back and grab these when we need them. I don’t want the kids having access to them.”

  “Good idea,” said James.

  “So it’s back to surveillance.” Sonny pushed shut the safe door and spun the combination lock. “Wanna join me until the Woods show up?”

  “Sure.” James followed Sonny up the stairs. “I think Max is up there with Stuart already. He wants to be part of this.”

  “He’s turning into quite the young man,” said Sonny, talking over his shoulder. “Despite everything, or maybe because of it, he’s got a maturity about him I didn’t notice before.”

  “It’s probably both,” James acknowledged. “We’ve all seen and done some things that’ll make anyone age.”

  “Leigh’s having a tough time.” Sonny stopped at the top of the steps, waiting to open the door to the main floor. It was an observation more than a question.

  “Yeah.” James pursed his lips. “We all are. I’ll fill you in on everything once we’ve had some distance from it.” He let the response hang in the air until Sonny forced a smile and pushed his shoulder into the door. They could hear Grant and Emma Woods in the kitchen, talking about what they brought for dinner. James was about to tell Sonny how relieved he was to avoid another bowl of bean soup when Max met them in the hallway. He was out of breath.

  “Dad,” he gasped, “Mr. Lawrence, you gotta come quick! Mr. Gilbert says there’s a problem.” Max waved both men to follow him and raced up the steps two at a time.

  They reached the window and climbed out onto the roof. Stuart Gilbert was crouched behind the gable, looking in the wrong direction. The binoculars pressed to his eyes were facing west when they should have been on the Rockwells’ house, facing east.

  “What’s the problem?” James asked. “Max said you told him to come get us.”

  Stuart lowered the binoculars, revealing a man who’d just seen a ghost, or something worse. He blinked against the sun, which was hanging low against the horizon, ready to sink behind the trees, but he said nothing.

  “What is it, Stuart?” Sonny waved his hands in front of Stuart’s face, trying to snap him from the haze.

  “I think the Whistlers are dead.”

  CHAPTER 65

  EVENT +1 Week, 3 Days, 13:46 Hours

  University Park, Maryland

  Temporary Recovery Zone 5

  James listened to Stuart repeat himself slowly. His face was pale, his forehead beading with sweat. What he explained was almost too hard to believe.

  “I had my eyes on your house,” he said, gulping past what must have been a thick knot in his throat. “I think Max was looking over at my house. That was the plan. Look east. That was the plan.”

  “Yes.” James tried to soothe his neighbor with his voice. “That was the plan.”

  “So I was looking toward your house and the woman came outside,” said Stuart. “There was a kid with her. A boy, I think. He was young. And she was scolding him, making a scene.”

  “What kind of scene?” asked Sonny.

  “She slapped him across the face and then grabbed his arm,” he explained, his hands gesticulating wildly. “She was yelling at him. The kid shrank from her when she raised her hands. It was bad.”

  “It was bad, Dad,” Max echoed. “Both of us were watching it.”

  “But then she stopped.” Stuart’s gaze was distant, as if he were watching a replay as he described it. “She shoved the kid toward the stoop and then looked up, straight at us, and pointed.”

  “She pointed at you?” James looked at Sonny, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean she pointed?”

  Stuart sat on the roof, one hand gripping the edge of the gable. He was mumbling something unintelligible.

  “No!” said Max, picking up the baton. “She looked at us but pointed down the street at Mr. and Mrs. Whistler’s house. She was telling us to look there.”

  “Then what did she do?” asked Sonny.

  “She went inside.” Max shrugged. “We both turned to look across the street. I didn’t see anything, but Mr. Gilbert did. Then he told me to come get you.”

  “Stuart.” James took his neighbor by his shoulders and shook him gently, drawing Stuart’s eyes to his. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing at first,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes drifting downward. “But then it was a flash. At first I wasn’t sure what it was. But it was a flash. And then another flash. Like a small explosion or something. I don’t know. I thought maybe they were taking photographs. You know, to remember their house as it was before they left. I don’t know.”

  “The light wasn’t from a camera, was it?” James already knew the source of the flashes.

  “No.” Stuart shook his head and buried his face in his hands. “It wasn’t.”

  “They were shot,” James said.

  Stuart nodded. “I saw one of the men at the window. He pulled back a curtain and stood in the window. He had a gun in his hand. He waved at me. He stood there with the gun and waved.”

  “They knew we were watching them?” Max asked. “How could they know? How did they slip by us? We were always watching?”

  “First,” James explained, his hand cupped around the back of Stuart’s neck as his neighbor mourned, “we don’t know how long they’ve been watching us. Second, they clearly set us up. Her beating on the kid was a distraction. It was a sick distraction, but one nonetheless.”

  “But how did they get to the Whistlers without us seeing them?” Max asked again, but with more urgency.

  “They could have traveled backyards,” suggested Sonny. “T
hey could have gone either direction to the Whistlers, knowing we’d be looking in the wrong place.”

  “Why the Whistlers?” asked Max.

  “They’re older,” answered James. “They live alone.”

  “Easy targets.” Max understood.

  “Something we haven’t asked you,” added James, turning to Stuart. “Are they still in the house? Have you seen the men since one of them waved at you?”

  “They’re still in the house,” said Stuart. “I mean, I think they are. I haven’t seen them leave.”

  “It’s been less than ten minutes, Dad,” said Max. “We could go get them. We know where they are. They won’t be expecting us.”

  “That’s not happening,” said James. “You’re not going anywhere. But I do think the rest of us should pay the Whistlers’ house a visit.”

  “That’s suicide,” said Stuart, looking up from his stupor.

  “So is waiting for them to come here,” countered James.

  CHAPTER 66

  EVENT +1 Week, 3 Days, 14:01 Hours

  University Park, Maryland

  Temporary Recovery Zone 5

  “Stuart’s in no condition to go with you,” Leigh stressed, having lost the brief fight to keep her husband within the walls of Sonny’s home. “He’s essentially catatonic up on the roof. I don’t know that it’s a good idea for just you and Sonny to sneak up on the Whistlers’ house.”

  James watched Emma and Grant Wood talking to each other through their teeth. They were standing off to the side of the room, close to the mantel. His hands were on his hips, hers were crossed over her chest. From the hunch in his shoulders, James could tell Emma was winning the argument.

  “Did you hear me, Rock?” Leigh waved her hand in front of her husband’s face. “I said I don’t like the idea of the two of you going alone.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” James whispered, acknowledging his wife. “I have a feeling Grant’s going to be coming with us.”