Impetus (6 page)

CHAPTER
8
 

Rather than heading up the hill and through the gathering of dead trees as he usually did, back to his vantage point by the billboard, Mick detoured through a rusty old chain-link fence and down the hill toward what was left of the outskirts of Boston. The city was still plenty inhabited. People just tended to keep to themselves and out of sight the best they could. It was safer that way. And, like Mick’s own group, folks tended to stay gathered in packs. There was safety in numbers. These packs rarely communicated with one another, typically out of fear of running into the wrong type of person. The groups of survivors were all just islands floating in a sea of uncertainty, consciously unaware of each other.

There
were still good people in the world. There had to be. But Mick also knew for a fact that there were bad people remaining. Many of them. He had run into his fair share over the years. Societal rules were a thing of the past. Human decency was an afterthought. Not that he blamed anyone for becoming who they had. Colossus had left them all with little choice. But that did not mean he shouldn’t avoid them whenever possible.

While
Mick was determined to scout for new food, anything besides the canned meat, he was also a realist. He had been into the city many times before; a few months ago was the last time he’d ventured down. And he fully realized that this would not be a trip to the grocery store. If only it could be that easy. Anything and everything useful in any way had long since been scooped up. Shelves in stores had been bare so long that thick layers of dust could be used like the rings of a tree to date when they’d last held anything. Mick would have to think outside the box this time. Do something different. Do something he knew that he probably should not.

Mick
paused near the base of the hill and crouched down, his knees cracking as he did. He surveyed the dusty gray city. Aside from the scattered howls of wind, all seemed quiet. He then closed his eyes and listened, really listened. The years had taught him that his senses could, and quite frequently did, lie. Quiet could mean a trap. Noise could mean a distraction. He had learned it was best to question his senses if given the opportunity to; simply allow the best possible outcome to rise to the top. If one should even exist.

Swirls of debris, captured by a sudden gust of wind,
spun down the street in front of him, tempests without meaning or direction. He paused again, bringing his rifle to the front. While his caution was less, his preparedness could not be. He rarely encountered anyone or anything in his journeys down from the hill. But he would not be caught off guard. He could not afford to be. He owed it to his children to protect himself. He owed his group. And his survival depended on acting first and thinking later.

Normally,
Mick went straight down Main Street where most of the shops had once thrived. But he had been down there too many times already. Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Deep had told him that after his last unsuccessful trek to find food. He may be insane—he certainly would not rule it out—but he was not stupid. He needed to go a different, and therefore less safe, route.

A burp of
canned meat solidified that notion.

To
his left, about a mile or so away, flowed the Charles River. What had once been a favorite spot for showing off one’s kayaking prowess was now nothing more than a sewage spillway, clogged and contaminated like all the rest of the water around them. Mick had seen everything float down the Charles from half of a school bus—where the other half went was something he did not care to worry about—to bodies to picnic tables to dead trees to things he wished he had not seen and seemingly everything in between. He felt like there would be nothing of interest down that way, so he headed to his right and toward some of the old brownstones that once housed the wealthier Bostonians.

The sky above was just a
s dreary as always: gray and overcast with a constant tinge of brown from the dust. Before Impact, in the days when the seasons still came about, Mick had always found himself becoming grumpier as the weather turned colder, especially near the end of the year. The worst months were typically January and February in New England: cold, bitter, and gloomy. People were rude and tired of the season by then. That feeling now hung in perpetuity, thankfully minus the snow. Though the cold seemed to linger forever. Not the biting cold he was used to in the heart of winter. More of a steady cold that never left the air. He figured the sun was still up there somewhere. Else the Earth would have already turned into a giant ice cube.

Mick
pulled his bandanna over his mouth and flipped the collar of his coat up close to his neck. He kept a steady pace for the better part of an hour, winding into the city proper, his gun at the ready. The old brownstone buildings that lined the street to his left began to melt into larger apartment complexes built into the city as the population expanded. Burned-out and crumbling storefronts littered the street to his right. His shuffling footsteps were the only true sound to be heard, echoing off the buildings between the spurts of gusty wind.

An
other two hundred yards forward and he paused in the street. One storefront to his right grabbed his attention like a slap to the face, pushing long forgotten memories back to the present. Memories he tried to keep forgotten simply to avoid the pain of remembering them.

He figured
it must have been a dress shop of some kind. Broken mannequin parts were scattered the floor inside and jutted out from beneath the dust on the sidewalk in front. What was left of the front display window contained remnants of a princess-like blue gown window graphic. It was the same vibrant color as the dress that Sue had worn when they’d attended the governor’s ball a few years prior to Impact. It had happened to be their first true night out in the two years since the twins had been born. His mother had come over to watch the kids that night. Both Sue and Mick had been reluctant to leave the twins as most new parents would be. But his mother had pushed them out the door and sent them on their way to what would be a fun night.

Mick
walked slowly over the store’s remains, captured by his thoughts. He kicked away the debris at the base of the brick wall with his worn boot and slid down the wall and onto his butt. He removed the faded picture of Sue from his jacket pocket and stared at it, willing the picture to transcend reality and speak to him.

Let me hear your voice just one more time
, my love.

Sue
’s voice, how he remembered it anyway, became softer and less recognizable as the years traveled forward, more difficult to grab from the other voices in his mind. He hated that. Her voice should never have to relent to any other. To be able hear it one more time would spark a newer, stronger memory. One he was sure to never forget. But time was fickle, and his memories its slave. Mick did his best to hide his feelings in front of the kids. They were only four years old when Sue died. Their memories of her, the truly eventful ones, were unfortunately few as she’d traveled so much for her job. But Mick had many memories of her, and all but one was good.

On
their wedding day, Mick’s mother had given him one piece of advice. She’d said, “Never go to bed angry.” He’d laughed when she said it, though not because it was funny. Rather simply because she was being a mom; she was always being a mom. And he had heard that saying before. It wasn’t until Mick became a parent that he realized how wise she truly was. He had let his mother’s simple words of advice slip to the back of his mind when they should have become a staple in their relationship.

The day
Sue had left for Japan, three days prior to Impact, they’d had a blowout fight. The sad thing was he could not remember for the life of him what the fight had been about, only that he had regretted it ever since. They had no chance to make up, to profess their undying love for each other. Sue had left for the airport in a huff. She’d slammed their apartment door, catching part of her coat in it in her haste to leave. Mick’s final vision of his wife was of the strap of her coat as it slipped through the crack of the door, like the grains of her life in the hourglass that was about to run dry.

Mick
paused for a long moment, staring at the picture, his mind adrift, before placing it back in his coat, standing back up, and continuing down the street. He had not come down there for that.

He
watched the windows in the buildings to his left as he continued along the cluttered street. He would watch the windows to see if a curtain moved. Someone could be hiding behind it. He would study the rooftops. Someone could be watching. Greg had shown him what to look for; taught him what he’d learned in counterterrorist training at the Boston Police Department. If a place had been pillaged, which most were, the door would likely be busted open if even still on the hinge. Looters, like most of what remained of society, did not follow proper etiquette by shutting the door behind them. If the door was sealed tight, then odds were it was someone’s home and most likely fiercely protected.

In
the parts of town farthest from The Shelter, parts Mick had sworn he would never again travel to, the animals that had laid claim had gone so far as to crucify bodies in the streets, hanging them up on the streetlight poles, running as far as he could see. Whether those bodies were alive during the crucifixion or just cadavers used as props was not important. They were meant as signs to those that wandered too close; signs that crept closer to Mick’s shelter as the years carried on. Anyone that would take the time out of his or her miserable existence to do that was not someone Mick chose to cross.

On a hunch,
Mick turned left and down a dreary alleyway between two large brick apartment buildings. He had not been down this way in a very long time. His gut told him not to. To turn around. He ignored it. The lingering taste of canned meat pushed him forward. The alley was shadowed by ten-story buildings on either side that reached high above his head. While he fully understood that with newness came danger, it would take a more brazen approach to find anything worthwhile on this trip. And he was determined to find something.

D
ebris and several larger pieces of trash littered the alley, obstructing the path forward. An old busted tube television rested atop a pile of preserved black trash bags directly in his way. It seemed as if the bags had been put out recently; each still had a bit of man-made plastic shininess to it. His wife would harp on him to help save the world whenever he could. “Use less trash bags,” she would say. “They don’t decompose, Mick.” She was such a good woman. Too good to be taken by that damn rock.

He
put his foot down firmly in the pile, using the brick wall of the building to steady himself, and pushed himself over in one quick motion. His wife could take heart in knowing that mankind could not possibly do any more harm to the planet than what had been done already; what was left of their species was just slowly finishing the job the space rocks had failed to.

The alleyway spilled into a large street
dotted with abandoned vehicles; some upright, some not. Most of them had shattered windows and deflated tires—a graveyard of all things metal and glass. Mick paused again and looked from left to right. It never hurt to be overly cautious. Another thing he had learned over the years. This street looked like the one before and surely the one after. They all looked the same. But therein lay the rub. The quietest places were sometimes the most dangerous.

Careful steps carried
Mick out of the alley and to his left as a rumbling gust of wind whipped up the dusty street into a mini-sandstorm. He tilted his head down, using the brim of his cap for protection. It would be over soon enough. Tiny bits of loose debris banged and crashed into anything opposing its forward momentum. A large radio antenna, awkwardly perched atop the three-story building across the street, swayed and creaked as the wind failed to take it down. A personal grudge match between man and nature that he figured had been going on for years; it had the look of something that would soon end in the wind’s favor. As expected, the wind subsided and Mick pushed on, sticking to the cover of the buildings to his left, ducking below dipping awnings and over more dust-covered debris.

A
clinking sound startled him to a stop.

What
the?

He
bent down and listened. The sound came from up ahead, to his left. At least that was where he thought it came from. It may simply have been his mind playing tricks on him. It certainly would not be the first time that had happened. The sound could have been an aftereffect of the most recent gust. But it had sounded distinctly like an empty tin can being kicked, maybe accidentally, maybe not. If it was a can, and it was kicked, then someone had to do the kicking. And that meant he was not as alone as he’d first suspected.

With the rifle butt tucked firmly up against
his right arm, the barrel close to his body to limit its movement, Mick crept forward, listening, slowing his breaths that fought to come out faster. The silence was uncomfortable and heavy, almost palpable, to the point where he felt its weight pushing on his soul. The situation would be easier if the sound reared up again; if he could see what had made the noise, then maybe he could better track it down. But until that moment came, he would dwell in an infinite amount of what-if scenarios.