Nicholas shrugged. He either hadn’t understand a word of it, or he had, and just didn’t really care. “I wish we could get a ride in one of them. We could find a new home a whole lot faster if we were driving in a car.”
Hayden replied after a time. “I think it’s best if we stick with Trixie. Besides, hitchhiking isn’t the safest way to get around. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” The boy’s head dropped down and Hayden felt terrible. He sat next to him without saying another word. They watched Trixie munch away from a patch of dead grass next to the house.
The porch door creaked open behind them. “You have what you came for, now get the hell out.” An old man was standing over them with a rifle trained at Hayden’s head. “I’m sick of people pulling up here and taking what they please without a please.”
Hayden held his hands up and turned slowly. The man was so small and feeble-looking he could barely keep the gun pointed their way. It snapped up quickly enough when Hayden stood. “Easy there, guy. We thought the place was empty.”
“You didn’t so much as knock, just barged on in and started helping yourself. You’re the third bunch we’ve had since them goddamn Russians dropped their nukes.”
He was right. They had just walked in and taken what they wanted. Hayden had begun to get used to the idea of a world where private property and no trespassing no longer existed. But the old man standing in front of him hadn’t lost as much as Hayden and Nicholas. His farm was still standing. The nuke—Russian, North Korean, Iranian, or from wherever—had destroyed everything and everyone they knew. Hayden wanted to apologize, and he wanted to tear the rifle out of the gnarled hands and beat the old man into a pulp. He did neither. “We’ve ridden a long way. My boy was tired and thirsty. If I had money, I’d pay for what we took.”
“What the hell good is money now?” He was looking at Nicholas. The gun started to drop. “Is he sick?”
“No… well maybe.” Hayden looked towards the sky. “It’s all this shit in the air. I’m not sure what it’s doing to any of us.”
The gun fell all the way and the man ushered them into his home properly. “Don’t just let him sit there then. Get inside and we’ll get him cleaned up.” He held up one of his gnarled hands and stuck the arthritic fingers towards Hayden. “I’m Elton MacDonald by the way.”
Old MacDonald had a farm, Hayden thought grimly. He shook the hand. “Hayden Gooding. The boy… my son’s name is Nicholas.”
Chapter 23
“When the last group came and saw there wasn’t much more to take in the way of food, they started stealing whatever they could lay their hands on.” Elton MacDonald leaned forward in his living room armchair and pointed at a blank wall. “We had a painting hanging there for twenty-eight years. Some awful Japanese piece my wife always loved. They took the thing. A goddamn worthless hunk o’ junk oil in a plastic frame.” He leaned back again, shaking his head back and forth. “What’s the world come to, Hayden… when folks start stealing crap that has no value, no practicality, no meaning… except to the folks they’re stealing from. What’s a painting of a bunch of pink lilies gonna get them?”
“I have no idea,” Hayden replied. He was sitting on the end of a couch with Hayden taking up the rest of the space under an afghan as heavy as him and almost as old as its owner. “At least they left you the furniture.”
Elton snorted and wiped what came out from his big nose against a shirt sleeve. “That was mighty big of them. They left that stupid thing as well.” He nodded at the old dead television set sitting in front of the coffee table. “For all the good it does me now. As much as I hated that idiot box, I have to admit I miss the company. I have a generator hooked up out back still running the essentials. Lights and so forth. First thing I unplugged was that thing.” He pointed an accusing finger at the television. “All it’s broadcasting now is snow.”
Hayden had heard the old farmer say we and we’ve two or three times. “How long have you been on your own, Elton?”
The old man stared at him through hooded eyes. His bottom lip jutted out for the longest time before he answered. “May is still with me… We were sitting together on that very couch watching the news the morning it happened.”
The morning it happened. Less than two weeks ago. “Where’s your wife now?” He asked softly.
More long, lip-hanging silence. “Upstairs… She’s sleeping. Does a lot of that now.”
Hayden nodded. “I see. Well, Mr. Macdonald, I want to thank you for your hospitality, but Nicholas and I have kept you too long. It’s time we were heading on.” He shook the boy awake.
“Heading on?” The old man said. “Where is it you’re heading to?”
“The city, to see what’s left.”
“But there’s a storm coming from that way.”
“We’ve been through plenty of storms the last few days. We’ll take cover.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I have room here. At least wait until this one’s passed over.”
Hayden went to a window and lifted the faded drapes. It was just past noon, but it looked more like full night out to the east. The clouds had that sinister roiling appearance to them that reminded him of the storm Jake had stolen Nicholas out into. “Do you have a cellar?”
“Of course,” Elton said. “But we won’t need to take cover down there. This house is solid, built it myself over forty years ago.”
“They didn’t have this kind of weather forty years ago.” He was about to add they didn’t have this kind of weather forty days ago, but something else caught his eye. Below the wall of advancing grey and green Hayden saw a line of vehicles moving down the highway. Seconds later he heard the low rumble of motors. “It looks like the army is on the move.”
Nicholas pushed up in front of him to see. Elton joined them a few moments later. “There’s a military base not all that far from here. Those boys are probably looking for survivors, helping out those in need. It’s good to see.”
They watched a few more minutes as the line of vehicles made their way west. MacDonald’s farm was less than a quarter mile off the main highway. The six green transport trucks and the solitary tank following would be out of sight in a few more minutes. Nicholas tugged on Hayden’s shirt. “Are they coming to help us? Are the soldiers gonna find us a new home?”
Hayden watched as the vehicles slowed. They stopped a hundred yards short of an abandoned car sitting in the ditch between lanes running east and west. “I’m not sure what they’re doing out there.” The big tank rumbled around the trucks and rolled to a halt facing the car. Seconds later the turret swung thirty degrees to the left and a flash of yellow exploded from the gun barrel. The tank rocked back on its tracks, and the abandoned car was destroyed.
Elton spoke first. “What the hell are those idiots trying to prove?”
Hayden could see the hatch on top of the tank beginning to open. “Do you have binoculars?”
“Well yeah,” the farmer said, shuffling off to a closet next to the front door. He reached up and found them on a top shelf the looters before hadn’t thought to explore. “These things have come in handy the last few days. Don’t you go taking them when you leave.”
Hayden took the binoculars and focused them on the tank. The man climbing out was no soldier, or at least he wasn’t dressed like one. The only thing he was wearing from the waist up was a pair of sunglasses. More men were spilling out from the trucks. They were wearing dirty blue jeans and tee-shirts. They took turns high-fiving the gunner. One of them went to a piece of burning wreckage that had fallen close to the tank and began urinating on it. “Those aren’t soldiers, and I don’t think they’re helping people.”