Kyle opened his eyes and looked at Robert.
“Let’s go,” said Robert, stiffly getting up. “No rest for the weary.”
On the roof, they could feel the morning sunlight still warming the air. The sun had come up past the horizon, casting long shadows from the tall buildings. Alexis had set ten buckets on the roof, and arranged tarps and sheets of plastic to direct the rainwater into the buckets. Before they took the buckets of water back to the apartment, the men looked around the surrounding area from the rooftop. This height gave them a good vantage point to study what to expect in an urban area.
Stalled cars filled the streets below and the cars were vandalized, most having broken windows, although some were burned, too. There was a large building in the distance with smoke still rising from it. Trash littered the streets, some of it collected in small piles by the wind and the rest dispersed across the urban landscape. Movement in the city park across the street got their attention. It was a pack of dogs. People were either no longer able to feed their pets, or the owners had already died. The dogs were chasing a rabbit. The rabbit was running and turning as fast as it could, but the pack was gaining. The alpha dog captured the rabbit and the rabbit let out a high-pitched screech before the dog shook it, breaking its neck. The dogs hastily devoured the rabbit and the pack moved onward, noses to the ground in their search for another meal.
“Hey, Kyle, earlier you asked me if what we did was right. Now I have a question for you. Do you want to be the dog or the rabbit?”
Kyle put his foot on the roof’s parapet, bent forward, and then rested an elbow on his elevated knee. He continued to look at the park while he stroked his beard and contemplated Robert’s question.
“A dog,” replied Kyle, pausing to look at the desolate street below before he added, “with a conscience.”
Robert slapped him on the back and said, “Good answer. Let’s go before I chase down a rabbit and eat it raw, too.”
Kyle quietly laughed and looked back at the pack of dogs wandering around with their noses sniffing the air and the ground, looking for their next kill. The humor of his comment faded away as he thought about his answer to Robert’s question. Kyle knew it was survival of the fittest now. He did not ever want to kill and enjoy it, but he wanted to survive, and he still wanted revenge.
The men brought the rainwater back to the apartment and Alexis soaked pasta in the water to soften it. She opened cans of beans and fruit, which were quickly devoured. They put water into the empty cans and gently swirled it to dissolve any remaining nutrients, and drank it, then drank some more.
With food in their stomachs, they decided to finally get some sleep. Robert leaned back on the couch and put a towel over his eyes to block the morning light. Kyle and Alexis went to their bedroom, and all were instantly asleep. It had been months since Robert and Kyle had slept inside a building.
Hours later, they heard a loud blast through the apartment’s open window, rousing everyone in the apartment from a deep sleep. Robert was sleeping next to his rifle and instinctively grabbed for it, jumping off the couch. In a startled daze, Robert looked around the apartment, then realized that the blast had come from outside at street level. He put the rifle back down, and gave Kyle and Alexis a wave as they entered the living room.
“I’ve heard that before, mostly at night,” said Alexis, sitting on a chair in the living room. “I’ve mostly stayed in the apartment for months now.” She looked at a calendar on the wall that was no longer of any use. “Just like solitary confinement. I hate it.”
Robert and Kyle went to the window for a look outside. There was a person sprawled in the street, dead from a shotgun blast. Next to the body was a shopping cart, tipped over and empty.
Robert pointed out the window and asked, “Have you seen that before?”
Not knowing what Robert was referring to, she looked out the window. When she saw the body, she quickly turned her head and closed her eyes. “Disgusting. I hate it here,” she said softly to herself.
Kyle tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention and moved his chair next to her so he could face her when he spoke. “We can’t stay here. We have to go.”
With a confused look on her face, she shrugged her shoulders and asked, “Where?”
Kyle pointed toward Robert. “With him.”
“But I don’t know him,” she said, apprehensively looking away from Robert, “and you still haven’t explained how you got back here.”
“This could take a while,” said Robert, lying down on the couch and closing his eyes. Kyle began to explain to his wife what they had done to get back to her. “There were four of us on the job when the pulse hit. One had a pacemaker and it must’ve failed when everything else did. He died in his sleep. Three of us got rafts and headed downstream. It was Robert’s idea to get the rafts and travel on the Missouri River. That river got me all the way back here to you.”
Alexis smiled at the thought of her husband’s return. She then asked, “Three of you? Where’s the other one?”
Kyle quickly glanced at Robert. He appeared to be sleeping already.
“Richard was the third man. He was shot. Richard didn’t have much common sense.”
“You want us to leave with him?” Alexis whispered the question as she pointed at Robert. “Where to? When we leave the building, do we end up like the person on the street down below, like your friend Richard?”
“It’s not pretty out there. We were able to get some weapons and ammunition. If we stick together, we can help each other. That’s what has worked so far.”
Kyle stood up and walked into the kitchen. He opened the pantry door and pointed inside.
“What little food we have here is going to run out soon. When the food runs out, what will we do?”
He walked back to his wife, kneeling beside her. She put her arm around him and touched her forehead to his. “What do you want me to do, Kyle?”
“Robert said we could go home with him. He’s convinced me. And face it, Alexis, we don’t have a better option. I’ll let Robert explain.”
Kyle moved over to Robert’s sleeping body on the couch. He tapped Robert on the shoulder to wake him up. Robert was startled awake, took a deep breath, and sat up wiping some slobber from his beard.
“Sorry to wake you from your beauty sleep.”
“Asshole,” said Robert with a laugh.
“I told her about how we got here and that you offered to take us with you.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Tell her why you have a better deal.”
Robert rubbed his face with the palms of his dirty hands to help wake himself. He looked at Alexis, smiled under his beard, and said, “Let me explain to you what I’ve told your husband. I live in a house in suburbia. I wish it was a rural setting, but it’s not, so I will have to deal with that. However, I am away from the urban area. That’s very different from where you live now.”
Alexis nodded her head.
“My subdivision is located close to farmland and is next to an enormous county park. That open land is next to my house. It’s a new subdivision and not all of the lots are developed. Therefore, it has the advantage of low population density. The parkland I’m next to has an artificial lake. The lake is fed by a small stream a short distance down my street. I’ve seen deer, turkeys, geese, and groundhogs close by. I’ve seen them walking right through my back yard. That’s food and water, Alexis, and let me tell you something else. I’ve been stockpiling food, the kind of food that will last for years, and seeds, too. That will give us time to learn to grow our own food.”
“Where do you live?”
“A suburb of Kansas City, on the Missouri side.”
Alexis quickly stood up and ran to a closet down the hallway. She moved a stack of papers and books, and retrieved a road atlas. As she walked back into the room where she had left the two men, she opened the atlas to a page showing the route of the Missouri River from Omaha to Kansas City. She carefully traced the convoluted blue line of the river between the two cities on the map and compared the distance to the map’s key. Alexis shook her head.