At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (3 page)

I lived at the end of Rhododendron Way,
which hadn’t change much in the last twenty years. In fact,
Bellingham hadn’t changed much. Still relatively small, fewer than
200,000, still considered progressive in its collective views, from
what I understood anyway.

The Troll was different. I didn’t know why
he didn’t live up north in Lynden, probably would’ve fared better
there, but then again, I knew little about the man. Except that he
favored hunting, boasting an arsenal fit to take down a small
militia on his own. No one on the block had liked that.

The cul-de-sac presented us with more cars
than the usual Tuesday afternoon. Extra vehicles dozed in driveways
all down the street, probably never to be woken again. We slinked
into the front yard, crouched behind some flowers I had never
bothered to learn the names of, mostly because my mother rattled
them off as if I already knew them. I examined the
neighborhood.

Dead.

The same symbol marked all the doors that I
could see: a slanted line with three lines pointing upward, like a
tilted E, colored black and red. I turned back at the engraved
marking on my door, my eyes flooded, no stopping the tears. I
wanted to run back inside, sit back down on the comfy couch and
watch cartoons, so that I could pretend that everything was fine.
Not a chance. The TV had died like everything else around.
Damn.

I glanced at Félix; his face was the same.
We weren’t soldiers . . .

I could not say for sure how long it took
us, but we made it to the Troll’s house, three houses up and across
the street. “His house is marked,” Félix noted in a tone full of
apprehension.

“Yeah, but he could still be alive, after
all, we are . . .” I said. We spun around to meet each other’s
stares. Neither of us had thought about that. Our houses were
marked, yet we weren’t taken.

“The foil?” we said in unison.

“But that was just for fun. It doesn’t do
anything,” he said. Two years ago, we had put foil up above our
beds, for protection from aliens, of course. It started as a joke
at school, I scarcely remember why, and neither of us had bothered
to take it down since.

“Maybe we should wrap ourselves in it,” I
suggested. “Just in case.”

“Yeah, all right, I guess it couldn’t
hurt.”

I nodded. My skin pimpled from a shiver, the
silence of the street was starting to eat at my already fragile
nerves. We confronted the mark on the door, then snuck inside, the
Troll’s properly lubed hinges produced no noise. In the kitchen, we
stocked up on more cutlery, as his were top notch, sharpened to
perfection. Conveniently, the Troll had three large boxes of foil
that we used to blanket our bodies.

We crept down the stairs, but our furtive
steps seemed pointless, nothing jumped out of the dark at us.

“Over here,” I said, heading towards an old
armoire covered by dust. The whole room matched, decaying and
dusty. I opened both of the doors to the furniture, where several
bows greeted me, including an ancient one without any technological
enhancements. Hunting blades hung on the inside of the doors, a few
of them the size of small swords.

“No guns,” Félix observed.

“Guess not.” I snatched one of the newer
bows, and a pair of goggles fell to the floor, a small dust cloud
puffed up upon the impact. I scooped up the pure black goggles that
looked like ski goggles. After I extracted my 3D contacts, I put
them over my eyes. I flipped the switch on the side and the room
lit up in black and white. “Wow, I can see everything.”

“Infrared. There are lights on the side of
the goggles.” Félix pointed to a light, then grabbed his own
pair.

“Slick.”

“Expensive.”

“Yeah, I bet,” I said, pulling back on the
bowstring. “Except for that.” I nodded at the ancient bow. “Don’t
know why he would keep that around.”

“Probably worth a ton, bromigo. It looks
like an artifact.” He touched the heavy wood, careful not to knock
it over. Eventually he selected one, stowed a bundle of arrows,
along with half the hunting blades. The other half I took, placing
the deadliest looking one in a soft sheath that I wrapped around my
calf. The Troll had three quivers, one probably as old as the
ancient bow, the other two maybe a few years past their prime, but
they held together.

I scanned the room for anything else viable
for combat, but came up empty. Pictures of the Troll and hunting
companions hung on the wall, displaying their acquisitions. I’d
never seen such a spitting image of the fantasy creature; the apt
nickname described the man in full detail.

I turned back to Félix.

“Ready?” Félix’s voice was as shaky as my
sweaty hands. I hoped I would never have to fire the bow; I would
never hit a target with such rebellious nerves. A sickness attacked
my stomach, climbing up my throat. I saw the ceiling above before
the goggles went flying from my head.

Félix sprinkled cold water on my face as I
came to. “Hey,” I said weakly. He handed me the bottle, but it was
hard for me to pour. He guided the bottle for me, my hands still
quivering. “Thanks.”

He nodded. “Forget it.”

“Time?” I asked.

He pressed a button on his wristwatch. It
lit up for a second. “Three,” he answered.

Good, it had only been ten minutes or so,
not the end of the world. Not yet. He helped me to my feet.
“Maggy,” I mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Maggy, I forgot about Maggy,” I said,
searching the darkness for the goggles. I found them under an
antique chair.

“You think she made it?” he asked.

“Uhrm. She was in on the joke, too.
Remember?” I took a step and wobbled, almost collapsing again. He
reached to support me. “I’m fine,” I said, waving away his hands.
“I’m fine. Let’s go check out her house. We have time before it
gets dark.”

“Sure, sure.” I was glad to hear his
sympathy.

When I had first met Maggy a few years ago,
before we became close friends, I had the biggest crush on her.
Funny thing about that, it never actually went away. I think she
had always known how I felt, girls always seemed to know, but they
were excellent at concealing any awareness. That was probably to
make it less awkward when their feelings didn’t match.

We met daylight again in the Troll’s
backyard, which connected to the Railroad Trail that wound all
around Bellingham. My foot sunk into the soft dirt, mushy from last
night’s rain. On the other side of the trail, a fence stopped us at
somebody’s backyard, too high for me to scale.

“There’s a gate over there.” Félix pointed
to the next neighbor down. The latch was simple, a fence more to
keep dogs in than people out. No dogs chased us as we crossed into
the front yard to Lake Crest Drive. We crouch-walked along the
sidewalk, passing a few houses until Crestline Drive. Her bright
yellow home shined, as if it smiled in the overcast.

We stopped on the porch, whispering what to
do if she wasn’t there, or if it was a good idea to know at all.
The foreign symbol marked her door. I gripped the handle. “Okay,” I
sighed.

I twisted the knob.

A knife struck the molding. In a panic, I
swiveled, pushing Félix off the porch as I jumped away. I heard a
strange shrill scream. It was my own. My heart had pounded playing
video games before, but nothing compared to this. And the heat. It
was the worst hot flash, the temperature lingered only in the 40’s,
maybe low 50’s outside, but my skin sweated as if it were in the
high 90’s. I gushed like a waterslide.

I spotted a few bushes and hid behind them,
desperately trying to calm my breathing; it was as rapid as a fully
automatic bursting 5000 rounds per minute. Félix joined me a second
later. “You all right?” he asked. I nodded, drawing in a deep, deep
breath.

I had dropped my bow, so I reached for the
sword-like knife resting against my calf. The blade shook and
shook. Damn my nerves. I looked over at Félix. He nodded as he drew
the same conclusion I had come to: aliens.

I cleared my throat a hundred times, the
vein in my neck bulged as if a thousand snakes shot through it in
rapid succession.

We charged around the corner, yelling war
cries. I threw the knife, but it more slipped from my hand than
anything, rotating in the air like a saucer. Félix fired an arrow
towards the door, but missed, only to hit the doorbell. My knife
didn’t make it that far, as it thudded into the stairs of the
porch.

Maggy stood in the doorway, eyeing us with
complete disbelief. “Jelly? Tortilla?” She was carrying two steak
knives but dropped them once she saw us. “You morons . . . you’re
alive . . .”

At that moment, I hoped the wetness around
my crotch was sweat. “IQ,” I said. I ran up the steps, hugging her
skinny body as tightly as I could muster, though my muscles
trembled, aquiver with fear. I released my weak hold. “You tried to
kill us.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“Even?”

“Even,” she replied. “You guys made it,
how?”

“Do you still have the foil hanging above
your bed?” Félix asked.

She nodded, her long, sleek black hair
swaying with the movement.

“We think it has something to do with
that.”

She giggled. “Is that why you guys are as
shiny as a new quarter?”

“You guessed it, bramiga,” he answered. “You
should wrap yourself as well, just in case it’s true.” She led us
inside, where we sat on the couch while she neatly dressed herself
in foil.

I stared at her beauty, probably a bad habit
I should deter, but I didn’t know how. She was short, thin, and an
Asian-American that actually lived up to the old stereotype: she
was a brainiac. Her yellow eyes stunned me for a few moments every
time I looked into them. “When were your parents taken, IQ?” I
asked.

“The first, yours?”

“Same,” I replied.

“The second,” Félix said, taking a sip from
a water bottle. I had already engulfed half a container in the few
minutes since we had sat. The icy liquid helped steady my
out-of-control heartbeat.

“Sorry, Tortilla, must be a little harder.”
He didn’t reply, just slowly drank his water. “Jelly, can you help
me?” She struggled to wind the foil around her back.

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t mind her nickname
for me, even though it meant I was bigger, it also implied a
sweetness, like Santa Claus and his bowl of a stomach. She gave it
to me because the only thing I liked more than sugarcoated wheat
flakes were jelly-filled donuts, raspberry or strawberry, it didn’t
matter. Félix never complained about his either—she called him
tortilla because for an entire month last year he had eaten tacos
at lunch with a specific kind of soft tortilla shell, and I guess
the name sort of stuck after that. His mother never cared for it,
that’s certain, always making sure that Maggy understood that they
weren’t Mexican but Salvadoran. Why it mattered though, I never
understood.

When she finished with the foil, she
concealed it under thin clothes. “So I don’t look like the dorks
you two look like,” she said. When she was done poking fun, we
explained the plan, the journey to Moletii’s house. “I’m in,
bromigos.” She was good enough at Spanish to pull off the word. I
think Félix had always liked that.

“You’ll need gear.” Of course, she already
knew that. She played just as many video games, and spent just as
many hours taking down opponents as we did. Packed with kitchen
utensils and a replica axe from
Lord of the Rings
, she added
in a few more things that we had forgotten, chiefly, a change of
clothes.

“Isn’t the axe a little heavy,” I said.

She laughed. “It’s not the 20’s.” She tossed me the
axe; it was as light as the hunting knife. “It’s neo-plastic,
probably stronger than that blade you have,” she bragged.

With a smirk, I handed it back to her.

“You two ready?” Félix asked. “It’s almost
four.”

“Ready,” she said. I nodded. We went down
the porch and looked both ways. “West Birch Street would be faster,
we’ll just have to cut through a few yards.”

“Guess no one will mind,” I said.

“Unless they are alive. Maybe we should look
for survivors on the way,” Félix spoke up, nocking an arrow back,
primed for engagement. I copied him, though I doubted it would make
a difference, the damn thing would fly ten meters from anything I
aimed at.

“We have about three and a half hours of
decent daylight, if we look too much, we won’t make it there before
twilight, and I don’t have any nifty goggles,” Maggy said. She
started towards the cul-de-sac, axe raised, her eyes on duty,
alert.

I followed close to her right, so Félix
trailed to her left, putting her in the middle. She could probably
take us both, but that didn’t matter, something instinctual made us
bookends. After two cluttered yards, we hit the pavement of West
Birch, and the silence finally tore into me.

“Are the rounds of a dead end called a
cove-va-sac or cul-de-sac?” I asked. I had loosened my hold on the
bowstring, but the perfectly aligned arrow did not move regardless
of the applied tension.

“I think it is cul-te-sac,” Félix
countered.

Maggy laughed. “No, it’s definitely
cul-de-sac.”

“I think it is cove-va, myself,” I said.

“Have your phone?” she asked. I shook my
head. Félix dug around in his pockets but came up empty-handed from
them all. I doubted any of us had gone somewhere without a phone
since the third grade. Weird.

“Well, it shouldn’t be hard to find one,”
Maggy said. The conversation numbed the high levels of
apprehension, at least enough for us to breathe at a regular pace.
“Let’s try that house.” She pointed up the road to a two-story baby
blue home with yellow trim.

The front door was locked, so Maggy swung
her axe at the crack where the door met the frame. The fake wood
splintered after a few hard strokes, and with one hard kick, she
threw it open. I stared at Félix. Neither of us knew she was so
tough: built like a kitten, but as deadly as a cougar.