“She’s sick,” Jess said. “And I don’t want you guys to see her like that. I’ll look after her - we’ll try to get her some help but that’s the end of it.”
Dustin was scratching the dog’s head. They wondered what to call it. Dustin moved his fingers behind its ears and laughed as the dog thumped his foot against the floor. It was the first time Jess had heard Dustin laugh in ages.
It had a red collar on, but no name-tag. When they held out some crackers for it to munch on, it hungrily gobbled them up.
“Let’s call him Hoover,” Dustin said, as he willingly forked over more of his crackers to the hungry canine.
They agreed and the old man – now awake – fastened an extended leash for the friendly animal out of some rope from what looked like expensive window drapery, originally. The leash they found wasn't the retractable kind you'd see on many dogs - it was a simple four-foot leash that didn't allow for much freedom of movement if they needed to tie it up. With his newly created extender, the old man patted the dog's back and said: "There you go, boy."
The low clarity of that morning’s sky was short lived. Jess, his boys and dog in tow pulled everything they needed together in backpacks and other bags and walked out of the store and onto the street. The ashes, now layered thickly on everything, crunched lightly under their footfalls. Hoover at one point decided to dunk his nose in it and sneezed, then shook his head to get rid of the rest of it. The temperature too, had dipped considerably overnight and the combined effect of grey ashes and a morning chill gave them all the sense that they were in a strange winter land devoid of life. It was as if they had taken some overnight shuttle to the most remote part of Russia.
“We don’t have room for you to come with us,” Jess said to the old couple, who stood against the cold wind, holding the young children tightly to them. “But maybe we’ll have some luck finding another vehicle out here.”
Their faces were downcast and helpless. Jess remembered what they had said when they first met. The parents had gone out to find a vehicle.
“I’m sorry - I just assumed you had made a decision to come with us.”
The two looked at each other, and then the old man spoke, his deep and grumbled voice sounding more and more painful by the minute.
“There’s no food here and the fact that their parents have been gone for three days doesn’t give us a lot hope.”
Jess nodded, silently.
Several cars were parked out in the lot but most were locked. Some doors opened but there were no keys inside. The one vehicle that did – an orange pickup truck – had a set of keys already inside the ignition but would not turn. Jess turned to the others, all paired off: old, teens and toddlers. He walked over to the older couple, both wrapping their arms tightly around their torsos for warmth.
“I don’t suppose that either of you know how to hot-wire a car?”
They both shook their heads. No.
While the sky wasn’t as dark as it had been over the last few days, it was still masked by what looked like one giant, dark cloud. A wind that funnelled around in continuous circles occasionally kicked up dirt and flung ashes into their faces.
They walked a ways down the street until they again came upon the gas station, the one with a metal roof propped up on metal stilts with signs that shook in the wind. A van was parked in front of one pump with the driver door opened. Jess realized that this was their best chance. As they got closer, he saw a foot resting on the edge of the open door. He turned back to the others.
“Everybody stay here for a minute, I’m going to check something out.” He pointed a finger at his sons. “Don’t move, and stay together.”
There was a little shop area, like a glass box where a cashier sat on one side of the counter, so he opened the door and went inside. The lights were out and no sound could be heard inside. He peered over the counter. The till for the cash register was open and the bills had been removed. The glass case that usually contained instant scratch lottery tickets had been smashed and pilfered. The store was largely empty, and a display stand for potato chips had been knocked over by someone who seemed to have left in a hurry.
After ensuring that the place was secure, he ushered the others inside the enclosure. He wanted to keep them occupied while he tried to start the car. They went in silently, but Michael turned to give his father a frightened look before moving through the door and closing it behind him. None of them could see the driver side of the vehicle from inside. He moved around to the open door of the vehicle and saw the body of an overweight woman fallen back on both front seats. Her tongue hung engorged out of her mouth and her eyes looked blankly towards the inner roof of the vehicle. Jess could see the shape of a smartcard within her blister-covered and blue-tinged hand. The rest of the van was empty.
Jess reached for the smartcard and pulled. The dead woman would not relinquish them. He grabbed the woman’s hand and tried to extend the fingers, but they were strong, like it was the last grip the woman had on her life. He tried harder and with a crack that made Jess feel like he had broken the woman’s digits, the smartcard was released. Jess put them in his pocket, grabbed the woman by her ankles and slid her out of the van and behind the gas pump, out of view.
Returning to the vehicle, he slid into the front seat, taking a quick look around the other seats and the controls before him. The van was clean, save for some maps laid out on the passenger seat. He folded these up, put them aside and hoped they would come in handy later. He took the smartcard, clasped together with some kind of jewelry that looked like red glass cherries that clanked against each other when the set was moved. He inserted the smartcard into the dashboard and waited.
“Orson?”
“I’m on it.”
While it didn’t sound like a confident turn of the engine, it did start. The gas tank was full. Leaving the car running, he checked the back of the van and found two large plastic orange containers already filled with H-gas.
The others, including his sons, were filling their pockets and bags with the few items they could find from the snack bar at the cash. Dustin had already put a few potato chips into his mouth. Jess snapped his hand back at the second attempt.
“How do you know those aren’t contaminated with radiation?” he said.
He had smacked the bag away and it fell to the ground, the chips scattering across the floor.
The old man came forward.
“Everything should be okay.”
He was leaning uneasily with a hand on a box of motor oil.
“When we were his age, we had regular lessons on how to act in case there was a nuclear bomb. Obama may not have been much of a hero, but he sure wasn’t a cowardly lion. He defused the biggest nuclear threat we had at the time, but we sure as heck learned a lot until that happened. Radiation is deadly, no doubt, but it doesn’t stay in ordinary objects very long. Seventy-two hours and it’s mostly gone.”
Jess looked from the man to the chips on the floor to his sons. He felt like the old man was right but he couldn’t help but succumb to the anger and the fear that seemed barely contained within him. One wrong decision was all it seemed to take to doom them all.
“Are you certain?” he said. The boils on the old man’s face had worsened.
“Our grandchildren are hungry too,” the old woman, Patricia, answered. “We wouldn’t put them in danger if we weren’t sure.”
“Fine,” Jess said. “We’re leaving in two minutes. Grab what you want and let’s go.”
He opened one of the large refrigerators, took two bottles of water, slid them into his coat pockets and walked out.
He motioned to the others in the shop and got in the car. The dog had to go with the older couple but was clearly okay with it. Hoover was wagging his tail in the very back, licking the young boy’s salted dangling hand over the back of the seat. They drove away through the ash-covered street, slowly navigating around abandoned cars pot-marked throughout the parking lot back to the van. None of them noticed that there was movement in their wake, things roused by the sound of life in a barren landscape.
In the back of the van too, came the sounds of rustling, then banging.
“I know it’s going to be weird hearing your mother back there but she’s okay. Even though she’s sick, she’s still with us.”
The old man pulled up alongside them, rolled the window down and leaned his head out.
“Where are we going?”
“Their mother’s parents live on the east end of the province. There’s a solid emergency bunker built below ground which I would love to have handy in case the you-know-what ever hits the fan again.
“Sounds good. You think we’ll have enough gas?”
“Probably not - but hopefully we’ll get lucky on the way.”
The old man coughed into his hand. He looked down at his palm and they both saw some blood there. He grabbed a tissue from the middle console and wiped it away.
“Well, after you,” the old man said.
It was a tiring route. Each of them were on guard, looking out their particular window for sources of danger. Michael was breathing on his window and drawing shapes in the frost that was created from the warmth of his breath and the cold air outside.
“Now I see why you almost failed art,” Dustin said.
“It was because of my teacher! She’s an old woman and thinks that everything good has to be in charcoal or watercolour.”
Michael flicked the back of his brother’s ear with a finger.
“Ow! You dumb jock!”
“Clueless dork!”
“Shut up! Why don’t you go back to staring out the window and think about pigskin some more.”
“I’m bored. Don’t you have some stuff in your jacket pocket I can look at? There must be a comic book you’re hiding somewhere.”
“I wish,” said Dustin. “I’d be reading it right now.”
“Can’t we play a game or something? Remember that time we drove down to Disney Land and we started counting licence plates to make a game out of it?”
“I can’t see any of the licence plates. It’s too dark.”
“Okay, hold on. How about we count dead people or something. How many zombies can you spot. You call it out first, you get a point for it. If one is missing a limb, you get an extra point.”
“That’s kind of gross,” Jess said.
The other car was starting to stray behind them. Jess had to purposely slow himself down to make sure that they didn’t lose the old couple and the young kids.
It wasn’t long before his fingers felt strained from gripping the steering wheel too tightly. He had decided to avoid the highways, travelling along small, unknown roads that had less abandoned vehicles in the way. And although highways were often the quickest way to get around in a big city, he knew that if they ran into problems, he would potentially end up having to backtrack a significant distance to get around the obstruction. Such barriers were everywhere on the larger roads and highways. Thus, he took the main road that travelled alongside the lake. There were enough side roads and tributaries that he was able to avoid most of the cars that had stalled in the middle of the asphalt track.
Every so often they would pass through a mid-sized town that had familiar stores. Some had their big windows broken but many still looked largely intact.
The boys started jumping up and down when they passed a big sign that indicated they were close to a McDonalds.
“Please dad, can we?” Dustin said.
Jess looked over at Michael who enthusiastically nodded his head.
He pulled the van over to the side of the road near the restaurant and waited for the other car to come up beside him.
“They’re begging me to go in,” Jess said.
“It certainly would be a nice taste of the familiar,” the old man said. “We’re a bit hungry too.”
Jess went ahead alone to make sure that it was safe. The doors were open and some garbage littered the floors inside but it seemed largely intact and empty.
“Come on, it looks safe.”
A basket of happy meal toys were beneath the counter and Jess threw them on a nearby table. The kids, older and younger, all pounced on the things like it was food.
Further back in the kitchen they found a large freezer with partially defrosted burger patties inside. Jess smelled them, pulled one apart with his fingers and said: “I think these are edible, if we can just find a way to cook them.”
He remembered the lighters and candles that he had taken from the home store and went back to the van to get them.
“This might take a while but I think it will work.”
They let the kids eat the first burgers. They weren’t fantastic offerings, since Jess had to overcook them to make sure that they weren’t going to get sick but each of them hungrily gobbled them down without complaint.
The best find may have been the cool pies he found in another refrigerator. Apple and blueberry. Jess swallowed four of them himself until he felt like he couldn’t eat another bite.
“How’s your leg?” said Patricia.
“Hurt’s a little.” George said.
“And your stomach?”
“Feels like I’ve swallowed a bowling ball.”