When Gods Fail (5 page)

I hugged Jenny; she seemed sad to see me go.
I locked her inside. I told myself it was so that no one could harm
her. But in reality I wanted her waiting when I got back. I had
found something innocent in this world, and I wanted to hold on to
it. I walked over the ridge and to Carol.

My walk to Portland started out well. All I
saw were charred foundations, and pieces of roads that were nothing
but rubble, or washed away. The forests that made Oregon so green
were gone. It was depressing. I'd always been a person who fought
the overdevelopment that happened in my state, in the country. I
wanted things left untouched by humans. But this...

Civilization started with a lucky draw of
certain seeds in the right conditions, blossomed, and was now gone.
The thought of billions of humans seemed like a distant dream. The
world. The apocalypse. Carol. What was I expecting to find? The
more I saw, the more a gnawing feeling inside me said that there
was no way she could've survived this. And if she had she wouldn't
be the same, or I would never find her. She would be somewhere in
the hills scavenging off the land.

The first night I slept
between some metal sheets that I found under a layer of mud. My
skin didn't feel warm. Was radiation was still an issue? Then I
wondered if that even mattered. My life would be shortened
by
something
. I
woke up and kept marching. Around afternoon I got to where Portland
should have been. I'd seen pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and
was expecting charred ruins, but there wasn't even that. There were
several craters. The green hills all barren. I tried to think of
where our suburb was, and couldn't quite remember. When I finally
triangulated my neighborhood's location, with the side of the hill
and angle. I found more of the same: some foundations remained and
everything caked with mud. As if the city had never
existed.

I should have been ready for it, but I
wasn't. Carol's image flooded back to the back of my eyeballs and I
felt weak at the knees. I fell down. The sky seemed an ominous
gray. Lightening cracked slowly across the clouds like a Martian
snail.

Carol and I'd met trail running a race only
a few miles from Portland. It'd been a typical Oregon summer day.
When I saw her, she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen—all
smiles—a body flagrantly showing skin in the summer warmth.
Normally, I would have just looked, but she smiled and I felt warm
inside. I talked to her and asked her out for dinner that night.
The rest was history.

Now there was nothing. I looked around.

Absolutely nothing.

They'd really done it. They'd really decided
that nuking cities, was the best choice. I shook my head. Had the
people who pressed the buttons managed to stay safe? If so where? I
was angry and grasping at straws. In a world like this no one would
have come out on top. I wondered if God would have allowed his
entire creation to be destroyed. Like it didn't matter. I always
believed in the Bible, found hope in it. Now, however, I couldn't
see His hand in the world; was this His rapture? Not the way I saw
it. Was there even any law now? Or was it just me and my thoughts?
The wind blew, as if to say yes.

I still wanted to know exactly how it
happened, but it seemed like a futile endeavor. The news stories
Bill and Paul had shown me seemed either biased or unprofessional.
But, I supposed, it didn't matter one bit in the end.

The smell of flesh hit me in this moment of
weakness, but instead of freezing, my body relaxed and I gripped
the gun in my hand. Two seconds later I glanced around. No one. But
the smell was getting stronger. I was close to a rise on the hill.
There were some large trench-like grooves from erosion and I ran
into one. Lying on my belly I waited with my gun aimed at the
direction of the smell. Two seconds later a man and a woman
appeared. They were following my tracks. That was something I would
have to be careful about. I could hear them over the wind:

"Did you see him?"

"I tell you, look at the tracks, they're
new," the man said in a voice that sounded like glass scraped
against rock. He was small and skinny, with a face that sagged from
having lost weight recently. The woman was also small, though she
was younger, maybe in her thirties. Her voice didn't match her
look, as it was low and gruff. Both had rifles in their hands.
Their accents were not filled with the twang of the countryside. My
heart beat in my throat. So far meeting people, though it brought a
sense of elation at having found another human being, had mostly
led to violence.

Then, inside my head, the voice spoke up. If
they were tracking me over a hill, one they could not see, why were
they talking so loud? It defied common sense. I turned to see young
man with a gun trained on me.

"I got him dad!" the young man said.

The barrel was intimidating, even after
having so many trained my way. His accent, however, was soothing;
it too was a school-taught and affluent voice. I could reason with
him. "I am not a threat," I said and rose up slowly.

"Don't move," he barked. The man and woman
had arrived and trained their guns on me. "He was going to shoot
you mom, dad. He was going to shoot you both. "

A sneer crept across the man's face. "Is
that right?"

"No," I said. They seemed paranoid, but with
reason. "I wasn't, I just heard you two and was scared.

They all laughed.

It was sinister. Like they'd done it before.
I realized then that the parents walked as one to distract, then
the son came from a hidden flank to finish off those who waited,
like me.

"This was a trap?" I asked.

The young man smiled. "Let's see what he
has," he said and pointed to my backpack. I threw it down. He went
through it like a rat. "Oh mom, dad, he has whole meals!"

"Are you guys from Portland?" I asked.
Something inside me said that a family like this couldn't be cruel.
They couldn't. God please tell me there's another way. The universe
seemed to stand still to my plea.

"Yes," the old man said, without a hint of
emotion.

"My wife was here in Portland. I was out of
town. I just wanted to see if she was still alive." I thought I saw
a hint of emotion in the woman's eyes. But she sneered. "Do you
have any idea where she could be?"

They laughed, and sent chills down my
muscles. I tensed up. There was only one way out of this situation.
My intestines churned. I didn't want to do it.

"Anything else we can get from him?"

"I can tell you where to
get more food," I said, trying to iron out all emotion from my
words.
That
voice
inside was no longer a separate entity—it was me. They had to
believe me, give me some time. I had read in a magazine once that
the best time to escape was in the initial parts of a kidnapping.
If I didn't do that now I would be toast. I thought of making it
back to see Jenny. For some reason that gave me strength to move
on.

They all eyed me, trying to see through my
mask.

"You don't say. How much?" the young man
asked.

"Don't listen to him Anthony," the father
said, in a tone that reminded me of my professor. "He's only buying
time. Shoot him. It's your turn."

The boy looked at his father as if he had
some other thoughts then pulled his rifle up to his shoulder and
pointed at me.

"I'm not kidding you," I said, as calm as
ever. "Water too, fresh, from a spring. I just shot two rednecks
for it. You can't track it back. Only I know. It's hidden." The
father looked at the woman then back at me as I spoke. "And enough
food to last a few years." I shrugged my shoulders.

My apathetic ruse worked and the young man
lowered his rifle and looked at his father. "It seems to be the
truth."

"Listen." The father seemed angry with his
son, but as he spoke his rifle lowered and his finger came off the
trigger.

I pulled out my two handguns. Fired them at
the father. Then the son a split second later. Not sure where, but
I heard the bullets hitting something. Each fell back, dropped
their rifles. I trained my two guns on the woman. "Drop it. Now,
bitch."

She looked around, scheming.

I fired a shot into the ground in front of
her. "Last time I'm nice to you. Got it?"

She threw it on the ground, started to
shake. "We didn't mean anything. Really. We were just going to take
your food and leave you be." Her voice cracked. Tears glistened
below her eyes.

For some reason, they stimulated a pleasant
feeling inside me, like I could bathe in her remains and not care.
I didn't like this. "Turn around. Shut up. Face on the ground.
Hands on the back of your head."

She got on her knees and fell to the
ground.

I moved over to her husband who seemed to be
moving. A shotgun blast to his head stopped the movement. The son
wasn't moving, but I added a shot to his face to be certain. It
felt cruel. I reminded myself that their wounds were beyond repair.
I threw all my food back into my backpack and threw in the men's
weapons as well. Then I searched them for anything useful. All I
found was a knife. The woman tried to look up.

"Don't move," I said and walked up to her. I
searched her roughly, feeling her soft curves. She was old enough
to have lost the firmness of her body. "Turn."

She turned to face me. "Please don't."

I paused, then brushed off her plea. "Hands
behind your back." It was a weird sensation: her tears, her pleas;
they felt like power. I wondered if that was what my pleas sounded
like to the others. It was at that moment that I thought there was
no way that Bill let me live.

My survival was destiny.

"Please," she cried. "Please don't." She
raised her hands to defend her face.

"Hands behind your back."

She complied as soon as I spoke, and I
enjoyed the feeling that gave me—a surge from my balls to my head.
I scanned the landscape to make sure no one would surprise me. "How
many others are there?"

"N-none," she said.

"I see more tracks," I lied and pointed the
gun at her face.

"No, no one else, just me, my husband, my
son." She let out another sob.

I felt she was putting on a show, that
perhaps this was all just an act.

"You lot from Portland?"

"Yes."

"Why did you want me dead then?"

"I swear we didn't. Just your food."

The lie seemed like a taunt. I pointed the
gun at her foot. "One more lie and I'll start hurting you. Got
it?"

She nodded.

"Were you going to kill me?" I asked.

She seemed frozen with fear.

"What happened?"

"What?" She looked confused.

I glanced around. "The bombs, when did it
happen; why did it happen?"

She still seemed confused. "The bombs?"

"Yes," I muttered, annoyed, wondering if she
was playing me for more time, for me to get jumped by another son
lurking somewhere.

"A war broke out."

"What do you mean?" I said through my
gritted teeth. She was really annoying me.

"I don't think so. It was all so quick.
There wasn't much time to think. Then the nukes fell. And didn't
stop for a whole day."

"That's it?" I said.

"That's all I know. We were camping. We got
lucky."

Worthless. "Okay show me where you live,
keep your food and such." I motioned for her to get up.

On her feet, she looked at me wearily. "Does
this mean you'll let me live?"

"Of course, I have no beef with you." In the
back of my head I thought about how I had been lucky so far. By
letting her live was I stretching that luck too far? A new
beginning, I tell myself. Remember, it starts with you. The Bible
comes back to me and I think about Jesus. I will have to win this
woman over.

She glanced over at the bodies of the two
men in her life and shook; tears fell from her face.

After a few seconds, I nudged her. "Move," I
said thinking of their laughter when I had mentioned my wife.

I marched her for a few hundred meters
before she walked to a hidden trap door in the ground. I motioned
for her to enter first. She seemed in a daze, but listened.

The place was a dug out cave. There wasn't
much food. I threw some in my backpack, which was full to the brim.
It didn't seem like they would've survived for much longer.

"Back out." I motioned at the ladder leading
out. She walked out. I closed the trapdoor. Covered it with dirt
again. It would be a good place to know in the future. I marked the
approximate area, judging from the terrain, on my map. A sense of
accomplishment splashed over me.

We walked some ways away from her home.

"Are you going to let me live? At least just
tell me. I want to live," she murmured, as if she knew her words
didn't matter anymore.

A pang of regret. If someone had asked me
what the first thing I would have done if the world was caught in a
nuclear firestorm, I would have said: "Easy, get a group of people
together and start building civilization again." What a fool I was.
Who could I trust? This woman in front of me? Could I even trust
myself? Part of me wanted to ravage her body, another part wanted
to shoot her dead, and a small, almost silent part said to let her
go. Maybe make friends with her. That last part seemed a fool's
hope. I beat it down: this was not the same world. I couldn't trust
someone who had just tried to kill me. No way. Don't be stupid;
those were the ways of a world now gone.

"Can you talk?" she said.

"Stop. Don't turn around."

She trembled in place.

There wasn't much else to do now. It had to
be now or never. I felt warm; a tender wind caressed my skin. The
sky seemed to have opened up, and some sun touched the ground.
Looking to where it landed I saw a green shoot. Life was starting
again. Was it a sign from God?