The sun was shining through the
open window blind when Noah woke that morning. It was bright enough that he
had to hold a hand over his eyes to cut the glare. His instinct was to get up
and close the blind, but Linda was still curled around him. Keeping his hand
up to block the sun, he turned his head to study her face. Her eyes were
closed. She was still asleep. Reluctant to disturb her, he shifted his body
very slowly, angling it so he could comfortably turn his head far enough to
avoid the direct glare of the sun.
He stayed in that
position approximately another half hour. During that time, Linda stirred only
slightly a few times, snuggling closer against him each time. Once he tried to
kiss her awake and came close to rousing her, but she muttered the word
“sleepy” and dozed off again.
When he heard Nick and
Aubrey moving around somewhere else in the house, he decided it was time to get
up. Snuggling with Linda was nice, but it was time to get the day started.
Time to refuel with some food and resume the journey westward. But there was a
more pressing need he would have to address before any of that could happen.
His bladder felt full to the point of bursting. He needed to get outside and
take a long piss.
As gently as he could,
he disengaged himself from Linda and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
After gathering up his clothes, he dressed hurriedly and left the bedroom,
easing the door shut behind him.
Aubrey and Nick were
sitting at a table in the kitchen. His sister was barefoot, but clad in her
usual raggedy black dress. Nick was shirtless but otherwise dressed. Both
were drinking from plastic water bottles and eating from bean cans. The smirks
on their faces as he came into the kitchen were nearly identical.
Noah rolled his eyes as
he headed for the back door. “Don’t give me any shit.”
Aubrey giggled.
Noah opened the back door
and stepped out onto a small covered patio. As expected, the yard behind the
house was overgrown, but there was a largish patch of ground adjacent to the
patio where the grass had died. He ventured out to the edge of this area,
unzipped, and groaned loudly in relief as he gave the ground a good watering.
While he urinated, he
took a look around at the neighboring houses. One thing was immediately obvious.
No one had lived in any of them for a very long time. A swath of destruction a
ways off to the east looked like the work of a tornado. A line of houses in
that direction had been reduced to rubble. Many of the houses still standing
in the vicinity looked like they had also absorbed storm damage. Noah saw sagging
roofs and blown-out windows. Houses closer to where they’d spent the night looked
mostly intact but were obvious victims of long neglect. They had lucked out
big time by happening upon a place as relatively well-preserved as this one.
He was zipping up when
he heard the back door open and click shut again.
“Nice day.”
Hearing Nick’s voice
didn’t surprise Noah. He’d figured the man would want a private word with him
today. “Nice day. Shitty scenery.”
“Want a smoke?”
Noah shrugged. “Sure.
Why not?”
He had no real interest
in smoking another of Nick’s stale cigarettes, but it was the sociable thing to
do. After joining him on the patio, Noah accepted the pack of Camels. A pack
of matches was wedged into the cellophane. Noah extracted it, struck a match,
and lit up. After sliding the matchbook back inside the cellophane, he
returned the pack of smokes to Nick.
For a while, they just
smoked and stared out at the panorama of suburban decay in silence. Noah knew
the silence was about to end when Nick glanced at him. “Something I want to
talk to you about.”
Noah didn’t say
anything.
“It’s more along the
lines of a suggestion.”
Noah nodded. He knew
what was coming. “Say what you have to say.”
“Let’s have a sit,”
Nick said, nodding at some chairs on the patio.
Noah shrugged.
The canvas deck chairs
were on the filthy side, but then it wasn’t exactly a clean world in general
these days. Noah tipped his chair to dump out a pile of dead leaves and other
detritus before sitting down.
When they were
situated, Nick eyed Noah in a speculative way. “Couldn’t help hearing you two
last night.”
“Sorry if we disturbed
you.”
A small smile touched
the corners of Nick’s mouth. “Nothing to be sorry about. Hell, I’m happy for
you. But this development raises some obvious questions.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, hell, you know
what I mean.” Nick shifted a little in his chair, apparently uncomfortable.
He flicked away his cigarette and glared out at the yard. “The whole reason
we’re walking across the damn country is so you can hook up with this girl. If
she’s alive.”
Noah sighed. “And
if
she still wants anything to do with me. Yeah, we’ve talked about this. You
know my position. You and Aubrey can always head back east if you want.”
“Aubrey still isn’t
going anywhere without you. As you damn well know.” Nick shifted in the chair
again, grimacing as he arched and twisted his back. “Listen, I get what’s
driving you. You’re looking for something to give your life a little meaning.
Perfectly understandable. But maybe you don’t have to go to all this trouble
now. Maybe what you’re looking for is right under your nose.”
Noah’s cigarette had
burned down to the filter. He dropped it on the patio and slumped down in his
chair. “Look, I know what a gigantic fucking burden making this trip is. I don’t
blame you for trying to change my mind about it. To tell you the truth, similar
thoughts went through my head last night.”
Nick did his best to
maintain a guarded expression, but it was easy to read a tentative relief in
his eyes. “So let’s do the sensible thing here, man. Take your new woman back
to the mountain and make a life there with her.”
A sweat bee buzzed
around Noah’s ear, making him jerk his head away and swat at the thing. “Look,
I like Linda. Last night was great. But I hardly know her. We’ve talked only
a little. Aside from her name, I couldn’t tell you a thing about her. Now,
you tell me, how smart is it to bet my whole future on an unknown quantity?”
The little bee was
buzzing around Nick’s head now. He didn’t seem bothered by it, perhaps because
he was so exasperated by Noah’s response. “That’s the thing about the future,
Noah. Nothing is guaranteed. Maybe you get back to the mountain and it turns
out you two don’t click in the long term. You’re too different or whatever. It’s
possible. But keep this in mind. This woman is real. She’s with you right
here and now. You’re a smart guy behind your bullheadedness. I think you know
that’s a better deal than this total unknown you’ve got us risking our lives
for. At your say-so, this is all over. We turn around and head back home.
Come on, man. It’s the right thing to do.”
Noah grunted. “Home,
eh?”
Nick nodded. “That’s
right. Home. Back up there on the mountain, where we could all live safely the
rest of our lives.”
Noah lapsed into
another silence as he mulled all this over. Nick was right, obviously. Last
night had changed things. Maybe not to the point where he was ready to abandon
the dream of an unlikely reunion with Lisa, but the fact that any part of him
was willing to entertain the notion was a significant change. And there was no
denying the man had a point about the risk in pressing forward. There was no
way to know what potential dangers might be lurking out there for them if they
continued making their way across the country. It was possible they would encounter
other survivors. Maybe even groups of them. And some of them might be even
more deranged and dangerous than the old man back in Crossville.
“Let me think about
it.”
Nick’s expression again
conveyed tentative relief, but it was a bit more pronounced now. “That’s all I
ask, man. Take all the time you need.”
“I do want to give it
some thought. Not promising anything yet.”
“Understood.”
The bee was back. Noah
took another agitated swat at it before abruptly standing up. “If we head
back, we’ll want to be well-rested before hitting the road. And I’m guessing
everyone’s still a bit worn out from yesterday’s excitement. This house is a
good one. I’m thinking we should take advantage of having stable shelter and
spend another day here while I make up my mind.”
Nick smiled as he stood
up. “Sounds good, man. I know the gals will be happy to hear it. Whatever
you decide, a day off from all that walking will do us all a world of good.”
“I imagine you’re
right.”
Aubrey was still
sitting at the table in the kitchen when Noah came back inside. She glanced up
from the book she was reading—a paperback novel she’d found somewhere in the
house—and gave him an appraising look. “You boys have a good talk?”
Noah shrugged. “We
agreed to stay here another day so everyone can rest while I think about some
things.”
Aubrey put the book
down and rose from the chair. She came to Noah and threw her arms around him.
“Thank you,” she said, her face pressed against his chest. “I know you’ll do
the right thing, Noah. I love you.”
Noah hesitated only a
moment before saying, “I love you, too, Aubrey.”
They held on to each
other a moment longer before breaking the embrace. Noah then excused himself
to go tell Linda the news. He opened the door to their room and saw she was
still curled up on the little bed. He felt a twinge of guilt at the sight.
The poor thing was utterly exhausted after days of being pushed to the breaking
point. He looked forward to seeing her smile when she found out she’d be
getting some extended relief.
Noah went to the bed
and sat on its edge, smiling as he brushed lank locks of hair from her pretty
face. “Linda?”
She didn’t respond. She
didn’t even stir.
He frowned and gave her
bare shoulder a nudge. “Linda?”
Nothing.
Noah felt a scream
rising in his throat.
She wasn’t breathing.
Six years ago…
By the time he pulled into the
little fenced parking lot outside the apartment building where Luke Garraty
lived, Noah’s head was swimming from the four cans of Bud he’d already downed.
It was the kind of pleasant buzz he liked best. He was slightly beyond the
point of mild inebriation, but he wasn’t really drunk yet. This was that
perfect in-between place where everything felt wonderful. His many worries had
slipped away and no longer seemed so important. So much of his sober time was
spent fighting desperately to stay sober and do the things necessary to get his
life back on track. It was a grim, joyless, unrelenting struggle, and it felt
so damn good to just let go of it all.
In a fair world, this
was how intoxication would always be. This pleasant, slightly beyond tipsy
buzz would be the pinnacle of inebriation. Every additional drink would simply
maintain this glorious feeling rather than resulting in a state of deepening
impairment. But this wasn’t a fair world. There’d been ample proof of that in
Noah’s life already. Even in the midst of feeling good, he was aware of the
darkness waiting for him just a little farther down the line. He would keep
drinking because he wouldn’t want to be sober again. Not for a good, long
while, anyway. It was the alcoholic’s catch-22. Easing back on the booze at
this early stage would result in a premature return to sobriety. Continuing to
knock the drinks back, on the other hand, would eventually bring about a state
of severe intoxication as well as a dramatically increased risk of dangerous
consequences.
But Noah’s fear of the
self-loathing he would experience if he let himself sober up was greater than
his fear of what might happen if he kept drinking. Which was why he took
another can from the Bud 12-pack and popped the tab on it as soon as he was
parked in front of the building. Right now he didn’t want to think about the
people he was in the process of letting down. Nor did he want to spend any
time ruminating on the eventual confrontation with his parents. There was no
room in his head for those things when he was feeling this good.
He took a deep gulp
from the can and stared at the building’s nondescript façade. The tri-level
building had twelve apartments, six on each side. Luke lived close to downtown
and was near a lot of cool stuff. This building, though, was on the opposite
side of Broadway and several blocks down from all that cool stuff. In terms of
actual distance, it was close to all that, but it was just far enough away to make
the area right around the building kind of sketchy. The building had security
doors that required a code for entrance.
Noah didn’t know the
code. He also didn’t know what side of the building housed Luke’s apartment.
After a few more big gulps of Bud, he set the can—moist now with
condensation—in a cup-holder and retrieved his cell phone from the Pontiac’s
dash. He pulled up Luke’s number and hit the call button.
Luke answered on the
first ring. “You’re late.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here
now. And I’m fashionably late, like all the cool kids.”
There was a brief
hesitation from Luke’s end. This was followed by a barely audible sigh. “You
sound a little strange.”
“Strange how?”
“Just, I don’t know,
strange.”
Noah grabbed the Bud
can with his free hand and took a little sip. “Whatever, man. I just
sound
strange. You actually are strange.”
Luke chuckled. “You
know what? I can’t argue with that. I’ll be right down.”
The line went dead and
Noah put the phone back on the dash. A few minutes passed and then the
security door on the right-hand side of the building swung open and out came
Luke. He was dressed all in black and his spiky blond hair was taller now.
Noah leaned over to pull up the lock on the Pontiac’s passenger side door,
leaning back again as Luke dropped into the car and pulled the door shut.
Luke had inadvertently
kicked over the partially depleted 12-pack while settling into the passenger
seat. Noah had left it on the floor there, either neglecting to hide it or
sensing that doing so would be pointless. He tensed in anticipation of a
rebuke from Luke, but that didn’t happen. It was what he’d expected. After
all, the whole point of this excursion was so they could go to an AA meeting.
Not only that, but it was happening at Luke’s suggestion.
Instead, Luke fished a
dripping wet can out of the 12-pack, popped the tab, and took a long drink,
downing half its contents in one go. He belched when he came up for air and
slumped down some in the seat. “All right, then, let’s get this party
started. Where do you want to go first?”
And that was that, they
were off to the races, alcoholically speaking, with no recriminations and no
“should we or shouldn’t we?” debate. The only time the AA meeting was
referenced was when Noah ventured the idea of dropping in on it while buzzed,
which Luke rejected with a hearty “fuck that.” Though Noah found Luke’s accommodating
attitude about the unplanned change in their agenda easy to roll with, he did
think it more than a little strange. It was almost as if his new drinking
buddy had been expecting this to happen. More than that, like he was
counting
on it. There was something a bit unsettling in that insight and so Noah chose
not to examine it too closely.
Noah didn’t know the
bars and nightspots of Nashville anywhere near as well as Luke, who was a few
years older and had a deep well of knowledge regarding local watering holes.
At Luke’s suggestion, they left the touristy downtown stuff behind and first
went to Elliston Place, an area not far from the Vanderbilt University campus.
Noah was game. Despite being underage, he was never denied admission to bars.
At a glance, he looked borderline old enough. Maybe right around legal age,
most would guess. What sealed the deal was a high quality fake ID he’d managed
to hang onto through his many travails.
Things started out in a
reserved way at The Gold Rush, where they nursed a couple beers for just under
an hour. During that time, Noah had to listen to Luke rant about how the bar
used to be a much cooler place with more of a dive bar atmosphere. Once upon a
time, he said, there had been a second floor to The Gold Rush, which had housed
another bar, some pool tables, a jukebox, and a small dance floor. But The
Gold Rush had been renovated since then, ditching the sleazy vibe in exchange
for a more upscale one. The second floor, apparently the location of many
great times for Luke, had been sealed off and was now presumably office space
or something stupid like that.
Listening to him go on about
it was wearying. He was borderline obsessed, maybe even a little bitter. This
struck Noah as odd, given that there were many other bars in the area that more
or less fit his description of his old favorite hangout. Later it hit him that
Luke was possessed by a desperate yearning to recapture something in his life
that had been lost, something important to him, regardless of how trivial it
seemed to others. When this occurred to Noah, he became a little more
forgiving of Luke’s behavior. After all, he could relate.
After deciding it was
time to move on, they each did a shot of tequila before paying their tabs. Noah
would later view those tequila shots as akin to lighting the fuse on a stick of
dynamite. The warmup was over and it was time for the serious drinking to
begin. After leaving The Gold Rush, they crossed the street and ducked into The
Corner Bar. This place had a more down-to-earth atmosphere than the renovated
Gold Rush and Noah felt more relaxed there from the moment they arrived.
First thing they did at
The Corner Bar was have another shot of tequila. Past experience had taught
Noah to be wary of tequila, but the first shot had gone down so easily another
seemed like a great idea, maybe the greatest idea ever. From there they
transitioned back to beer for a while, neither of them wishing to get falling
down wasted before it’d even gotten dark out. This would be the last gesture
toward restraint they would make that night.
Next they went to the
Villager Tavern in Hillsboro Village, another little area adjacent to
Vanderbilt. The Villager was a tiny beer-only joint. It was popular with the
locals and got crowded in the early evening hours. They moved on to a sports
bar a couple blocks down after just one round of Shiner Bocks. The sports bar
was significantly larger than the Villager, which meant it was louder and even
more crowded. The clientele was younger and not as laid back. It was here
that the booze began to catch up with them.
For Noah, this meant an
increasing tendency toward sloppiness. He became less coordinated, nearly
tipping his glass over numerous times. In Luke’s case, deepening intoxication
manifested in loud belligerence. He started hitting on every girl who so much
as glanced his way, even the ones who were clearly with dates or boyfriends. But
he didn’t just flirt. The advances were lewd bordering on obscene. This
resulted in some near-altercations, the last of which prompted Noah to drop
some bills on the bar and drag Luke out of there.
After that, they visited
several more places in the general Vanderbilt area, at some point along the line
moving into dangerous levels of intoxication. Noah mostly managed to keep his
Pontiac steadily between the lines each time they hit the road, an impressive
feat considering he felt like he was swimming in a sea of alcohol the entire
time.
Eventually, they
entered a bar where the staff refused to serve them. A bartender there offered
to call them a cab. Rather than taking this for the conscientious gesture it
was, Luke stormed out of the place, but not before knocking several glasses off
a table. The sound of all that glass shattering on the floor cut through
Noah’s alcohol haze for a fleeting moment. He knew he should tell the
bartender to call that cab. But then he heard Luke yelling at him from
outside. He stifled that final urge to do the right thing and walked out of
there.
The next place also refused
to serve them. So did the next. Getting increasingly frustrated, they stopped
at a convenience store. Luke waited in the Pontiac while Noah went in to buy
beer. In the store, he was able to hold himself steady enough when he
approached the counter that the clerk didn’t refuse to sell him the beer. It
probably helped that the guy was behind glass and thus avoided a direct blast
of Noah’s booze breath.
They took the beer to a
BYOB strip club, where they were not denied entry, amazingly enough. By then
it was almost one in the morning. Noah spent most of his remaining cash at the
club, most of it on an amazingly long-legged and big-busted brunette who did a
couch dance for him. The strip club made for a nice break from the bars. They
could cut loose a little more without being hassled by wait staff. But, once
again, Luke ruined it, this time by violating the club’s strict “no touching”
rule for the dancers. This time they didn’t just get kicked out. They were
chased out of the club and threatened by hulking bouncers.
At that point it was close
to two in the morning. Noah figured he’d had enough and suggested they go back
to Luke’s place to crash for the night. But Luke was adamant about finding a
particular nightclub, one where he insisted they would have no problems because
everybody there was “chill”. Noah reluctantly went along with this in exchange
for a promise that they would be done for the night after visiting this one
last place.
There was just one
problem. They couldn’t find the nightclub. Noah became frustrated as Luke led
him through a confusing maze of dark city streets, most virtually empty at this
late hour. He’d completely lost his bearings and realized finding his way back
to the interstate would have been almost impossible on his own. He just hoped
Luke would know how to get back to his place when the time finally came. At quarter
past two, he’d had enough and insisted that Luke direct him back to the
apartment building.
But Luke ignored this,
abruptly sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat. He pointed at something
up ahead as the Pontiac slowly cruised down yet another dark city street. “Up
there! It’s up there!”
Noah tried reasoning
with Luke. It was time to head back. Surely he could see that. But Luke
vehemently disagreed, calling Noah a “fucking pussy.” His face, normally very
pale, was a bright shade of red as he said this. Noah was a little afraid of
him in that moment, so he surrendered and continued down the street. A block
and a half later, they came to a more brightly lit intersection, where Luke
unhesitatingly told Noah to take a left turn. His seeming certainty made Noah
feel a little better.
Noah took the turn.
And almost immediately
realized they were heading the wrong way down a one-way street. He slammed on
the brake, shifted gears, and backed out onto the street he’d just turned
from. He’d just changed gears again when he saw the flashing lights appear in
his rearview mirror. Next came a stuttering blip of siren noise.