The Survivor Chronicles: Book 1, The Upheaval (18 page)

They had been twisting and turning down so many back roads that John had lost track of their location long ago. It felt like it had been hours since he’d felt that first tremor, but as he glanced at the clock he was stunned to realize it was only ten o’clock. How was it possible that things had become so drastically different in such a short amount of time?

“I don’t know,” Carl muttered.

He made another turn when a large oak lying in the middle of the road blocked their path. “We could be going in circles.”

“We could,” Carl agreed. “But there’s not much I can do about it unless you can move a tree.”

“Not exactly feeling that ability today.”

“Neither am I.”

John peered out at the countryside, there was some upheaval here, but it didn’t seem as bad as some of the other areas they had driven through. A barn had collapsed in the middle of a field, but the farmhouse next to it was still standing. Smoldering livestock and bird corpses dotted the land. “It’s a warzone out there,” he murmured.

“At least the tremors stopped,” Carl said.

“Yeah.”

Two cars and a motorcycle passed by, going in the opposite direction. He was beginning to think that he would never find his parents, or that he would probably never even see tomorrow. Grief and sadness swelled within his chest, and for a moment he worried he might actually cry. Instead, he turned back to the farmland surrounding them and focused his attention on it.

“A blinker? Really?” John inquired when Carl clicked it on to make the turn into a gas station.

“Habit,” he muttered around his cigarette, but he clicked it back off.

“We need gas?”

“Not yet, but neither of us have a clue where we are. If by some miracle the gas works here, we should probably top off. Plus, I’m kinda hungry.”

“Coffee would be outstanding,” John groaned.

Carl pulled the truck in next to one of the pumps and they both hopped out. It was obvious that the pumps weren’t going to work, but like a fool John kept hitting the button beneath the blank screen in the hopes that perhaps he was wrong.

“That sucks,” Carl muttered. “There’s a car over there though.” Shoving the back of the bench seat forward, Carl fished around for the funnel they stored there. He dug out the pair of snips they used to cut the weedwhacker string with. “Maybe we can find some tubing inside and siphon the gas from the car.”

After all the noise of the morning it was disturbingly hushed as they made their way toward the store. John couldn’t stop his eyes from constantly darting around in search of some new threat as they made their way to the store. The glass door of the gas station was locked. The power was out, but John was able to see some of the store as he bent to peer in. Shelves had toppled, goods were scattered across the floor, but the building seemed to have withstood the worst of the quakes. He hadn’t realized Carl had walked away from him until he returned with a large rock in his fist.

John opened his mouth to protest, but quickly clamped it shut. What was there to protest? They had to have food, drinks, and whatever other supplies they could rummage. He felt low, but didn’t say anything as Carl heaved the rock at the door. The glass spider webbed but held strong until Carl threw it again. The shattering glass caused him to wince and look quickly around again.

John hesitated, but Carl reached through the broken door and threw the lock. A small bell tinkled as Carl shoved the door open. Glass crunched beneath their boots as they moved cautiously into the store. John held his breath as he waited for someone to jump out and hit the emergency button, to shoot at them, or for the police to come screaming into the parking lot with their sirens blaring. Instead everything remained silent, and eerily still.

Carl grabbed a box of trash bags from the floor and tossed another box to John. “Grab what you can,” Carl told him.

John nodded as he opened the box, grabbed a bag, and began to pick through the rubble. He shoved whatever food he could into it, as well as some soap, shampoo, and razors. When the bag was full, he started on filling another one, while Carl gathered automotive supplies.

He was near the back of the store when he spotted the full pots of coffee sitting on a counter. A strangled cry of joy escaped him as he dropped the bags and hurried toward the pots. He sorted through the rubble in search of the knocked over stand of coffee cups. Finally he found two cups that weren’t completely ruined and eagerly returned to the brimming pots. His eyes closed as he lifted the cup to his nose and savored in the delicious aroma wafting from it.

The store clerk must have already been at work, setting up for the day, when the chaos erupted. He imagined they had probably fled swiftly from the store in favor of their home and family over their job. He was halfway through his first cold sip when he remembered the car outside. “Crap,” he muttered.

He hurried back to the front of the store where he found Carl stuffing another trash bag with cigarettes. John froze as he spotted the gun sitting on top of the counter next to Carl. “Where did you find that?” he demanded.

Carl glanced briefly around before his eyes fell onto the gun. “Under the counter, behind some cartons of cigarettes.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Keep it,” Carl replied as if it were the most normal everyday occurrence in the world.

“Do you even know how to use one of those?”

“Yeah.”

“How?” John asked incredulously.

Carl shoved the last of the Marlboro’s into the bag and came around the counter. Tying the top, he tossed it toward the two other bags already piled by the broken door. “I joined the police academy in my twenties. Wasn’t really my thing though.”

John was taken aback by the answer. It seemed so out of character with the man standing across from him now, unapologetically robbing a gas station. “Why not?”

Carl shrugged. “I was always more of a lawbreaker, you know?”

“So I’ve noticed. Why’d you even join then?”

“My mom was pressuring me to do something with my life at the time. I wanted to make her happy, but I didn’t want to go to college. I’d seen Police Academy and I thought I could be Mahoney. My instructors didn’t agree. I lost my temper one day and walked out. Thankfully, it was after I learned how to use a weapon.”

“I could never picture you as a cop.”

Carl grinned. “I looked good in that uniform.”

John laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“Did you get the food?”

John suddenly remembered why he had returned to the front of the store in the first place. “I think the clerk is still here somewhere.”

Carl’s smile vanished instantly. He grabbed the gun off the counter, holding it before him with both hands as his eyes became deadly serious. John never would have imagined this side of Carl existed, he was frightfully callous, and the gun looked surprisingly natural in his grasp. “What makes you say that?” he demanded.

It took John a minute to find words again. “The coffee was already made, the car’s still outside.”

Carl’s looked around the store. Carl nudged aside the debris that littered the floor as he moved carefully through the toppled shelves and ruined goods. “You didn’t see anyone?” he inquired.

“No,” John told him.

Carl cautiously opened the door to the coolers and peered inside. He popped his head back out to look at John. “Did you see any flashlights out there?”

“Yeah.” John hurried back through the goods, cringing at every crack and snap his passing created. He pawed through one of the bags he had filled, searching for the flashlight and batteries he had tossed inside. He dug out two flashlights, filled them with batteries, and clicked them on to make sure that they worked. Carl was standing half in and half out of the cooler when he returned. He took one of the lights from John and held it up to illuminate the cooler. Most of the drinks had broken, their contents had leaked out to create a large puddle on the concrete floor.

Carl crept through the cooler, moving the beam around as he searched over the boxes stacked inside. Though the power had probably been out for a good two hours, John could still see his breath as they moved. Carl rounded a corner and stopped abruptly when an outstretched hand was illuminated by the glow of his light. John took a small step back from the discovery. One of the large fluorescent fixtures had fallen on top of the clerk; the only thing visible was their hand and legs. The clerk's blood had seeped out to mix with the liquid surrounding them, creating a pink puddle that made John’s stomach turn.

Carl moved with much more speed and assurance than when they’d first entered the cooler. Stepping around the fixture, he knelt at the clerk’s side and pressed his fingers to the clerk’s neck. He shook his head as he met John’s inquisitive gaze. “She’s dead.”

John’s skin crawled. He hoped her death had been instant, and that she hadn’t been pinned there for hours praying that someone would come to save her before she finally bled to death. Carl led the way back out of the cooler; the lines around his mouth and eyes were more pronounced as he lifted his hat and wiped his brow.

“Can you gather the rest of the stuff?" Carl inquired. "I’m going to siphon whatever gas is in the car.”

It was such a morbid thing to do, but John nodded his agreement. John felt shaky as he made his way around the rest of the store, filling trash bags full of some of the crappiest food he’d ever eaten in his life. His mom would kill him if she ever saw the amount of candy and chips he shoved into the bag. He just hoped that she would have the chance to do so.

He grabbed a bag of Twizzlers and tucked them into the waist of his jeans “You almost ready?” John jumped and let out a small squeak as he spun toward the door. Carl was standing there, his hands resting on either side of the frame as he fought against the smile tugging at his mouth. “Sorry.”

John glowered at him as he tried to steady his frayed nerves. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

He twisted the last knot and tossed the bag to Carl. They hauled their load out to the back of the truck. Carl already had the doors open and some bags inside with a freshly refilled gas can. Thankfully they had been on their first lawn when the quake occurred so there was no grass inside, though the bed was still stained green from the previous loads it had held. John tossed the bags up to Carl who hauled them to the front of the truck and covered them with a tarp. They carried out as many beverages as they could salvage and secured the breakable ones to the sides with bungee cords.

“I’m glad I listened to you about keeping this truck,” John said.

“Let’s just hope we don’t have to abandon it at some point.”

John closed the large doors and slid the lock into place. “We just robbed a gas station.”

“Probably won’t be the last time.”

John remained immobile as he tried to let that realization sink in. He thought it might be a long time before he fully grasped the strange new world they lived in.

Carl slid behind the wheel and started the truck. John pulled the Twizzler’s from his pants, tore the package open and offered Carl some as they pulled back onto the road. For a second, as Carl dug into the bag, John could almost convince himself that it was an ordinary day. They were simply in between yards on their schedule, enjoying a bag of candy together. He wondered if he’d ever do anything normal like that again, or if this had become their new normal.

Carl carefully maneuvered the truck around a large hollow in the road. John grabbed the handle as they bumped over a pitted field. On the other side of the field he spotted some people walking, but for the most part this area remained relatively calm.