When it finally happened and he died, I’m not sure how long I stood there, staring at his lifeless body. I was probably in shock, but I was trying to cement all of the memories of him in my mind and heart. Then, it was time to move. I had made up my mind. I went to the kitchen, gathered a jar of peanut butter and the remaining half a loaf of bread in my arms and went to my room. I packed my camouflage backpack with the food, two bottles of water and my Dad’s Swiss army knife. My mom hated how much I loved that backpack. She said it was not suitable for a little girl as pretty as me. My Dad had given it to me for my fifth birthday and I carried it everywhere.
After I had slipped on the backpack, I paused by my bed. I felt the loss of my parents. I felt it like a stone on my heart. Still, I didn’t cry. I wish I knew why. There was a great silence in the world. So much was happening. So many were gone. I was about to venture out into the newly quiet world when I heard the front door slam open.
Someone cursed in the living room. It was a man’s voice. I ducked down on the far side of my bed as I heard the footsteps coming down the hardwood hallway. The door to my room opened with a squeak. I could hear breathing, heavy and ragged, as if he had been running for some time. My Dad used to sound like that whenever he had just come in from his morning jog. For a long moment, I thought the person would just turn and leave, but then he spoke.
“Jennifer?” he sounded frightened, but I recognized his voice, now. “Rock? You here?”
I stood and looked into the eyes of my Dad’s younger brother, Derrick. He was only seventeen. He was alive. I ran around the bed, and into his solid hug.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” There wasn’t much else to say. “You okay, Uncle D?” He laughed out loud and tears rolled from his eyes. I wasn’t sure why he was crying while smiling but I accepted that it was fine. He just nodded and hugged me again, so tight I grunted. He released me and looked over my shoulder at the pack.
“You going somewhere?” he asked. I shrugged, and he shook his head at me in amazement, taking my hand. “Okay. Time to bounce, kiddo.”
I came to with the desert sun burning my face. I attempted to sit up but, instead, rolled over and puked onto the pavement. There was a pounding in my head as if some asshole was in there with a miniature jackhammer, furious to get out. I wiped my eyes, looked around. The two attackers lay dead in the street. They had come out of nowhere, it had seemed. I must be losing my edge. How the hell did they get so close? I was better than that.
I moved with deliberate speed, standing and snugging my .45s, Wilma and Betty, back into their custom holsters. It was dangerous to be caught out in the open; I needed to get to cover in case these two were part of a larger group. I inspected the bodies, retrieving anything I could use. There wasn’t much. The one who had bonked me on the head had a gun — an old Beretta — which I stuffed into my small backpack. I wondered why he had not just shot me, but then decided he probably preferred his rapes to be interactive.
I continued northeast through the town that used to be called Las Cruces. No one was left here to call it anything other than the Town. The blow to the head had jumbled my thoughts, everything seemed out of order, but I remembered. I remembered a lot more than I expected. I remembered that I’d been heading north when the ruffians attacked. Now, though, my memories had returned in full and I knew where I had to go. I walked along Main Street, past Apodaca Park. The park had once held a decent golf course. Now the desert had reclaimed it and there was little greenery in sight but for a few sparse trees that dotted the landscape.
I made my way across to Spitz, meandering through what had been local residential areas, scanning houses for garages that still had cars parked inside out of the weather. After breaking more than a few windows, checking for keys and inspecting gauges, I found a car with an almost full tank. I had to climb on top of the old Ford to jerk on the door opener cord to release the garage door. Once I could raise the door I pushed the car out into the street. I’d never actually found a car with a working battery, but Derrick had shown me how cars with a manual tranny could be bump-started pretty easily. No sense walking all the way to White Sands, even though I was not big a fan of automobiles. I much preferred motorcycles when I could find them.
I revved the engine, which sounded remarkable given its age, and set off toward State Highway 70 and Alamogordo.
CHAPTER 2
Alamogordo sits at the edge of the Tularosa Basin, at the foot of the Sacramento Mountains. Before the world died, it had mostly been a military town. With Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range not far away, in the middle of the basin, Alamogordo thrived in its own small way.
I cruised along White Sands Boulevard. One of the results of the rapid spread of the pandemic was that most people had not been on the road when they died. Most had passed away at home, only a minority lived long enough to die in a hospital.
Road travel these days, should one find a working, gassed-up vehicle, was a breeze. I turned onto 16th Street and eased along the road to my uncle’s house, scanning everything around me, trying to spot anything that seemed out of the ordinary. It had been quite a while since I was last here. I remembered that this was where we had placed the stash. It was also where I knew I would find what little refuge I had left in this desolate fucking world.
“We’re going to have to be prepared for the coming days, Rock,” Derrick had stated. He had taken me to his house and then down into the secured basement that had been built as a fallout shelter. My father and uncle Derrick were always concerned that living next to a missile range and Air Force base made the locale a possible strategic target and had built accordingly. The shelter was large enough to house a family of five and was encased in eighteen inches of concrete; walls, floor and ceiling. It had its own air filtration system and several large oxygen tanks sat in one corner. If the air outside was too toxic, the room could be sealed completely.
When I saw the shelter for the first time, I thought it was a large, mostly empty space that felt cold and cramped. Derrick saw it as a lot more than that. He moved to the shelving on the far side of the room and inspected its contents. After several minutes of perusing the cans and jars already present, he pulled out a small notepad and pen from his pocket. As he was jotting things down he would look up to the shelves periodically, then over at me. I stood in silence waiting and watching.
“We need to start gathering supplies, kiddo,” he said, calling me the pet name he had given me the first time he saw me in my mother’s arms. Or, so he claimed.
“Let’s go,” I said. I smiled uncertainly at his laughter, not understanding why he found my suggestion funny.
“Right. Let’s go.”
I parked the car a two blocks from the house, and waited for several minutes to see if anything stirred. One can never be too careful, even in a dead world.
I stood from the Ford, stretched and checked that Wilma and Betty were securely in place. The house was nondescript. It was impossible to tell, from the outside, what the inside held. My combat boots clunked on the street as I walked over to the front drive. I stepped on the walk leading up to the front door and hesitated, a deep darkness weighing me down for a moment or two. The planted row of cedar trees that lined the garage drive were struggling for life, but birds chirped high in the tall trees behind the house. I listened to the sounds, felt the breeze upon my skin, wishing I could hear Derrick’s laughter once again. Pushing aside my useless melancholy, I made my way inside.