Young Charlie was talking, but the older man was thinking about the time he tried to point out the irony of the continued use of this tired expression, her inability to articulate her feelings without the crutch of a cliché when she was talking about how unintelligent someone was. There you go actin’ all superior again, she’d said in response.
‘I know it’s an inconvenience, but I really wouldn’t be doin’ my job if I didn’t ask . . . Sir?’
‘What’s that now?’
‘Your truck, can I take a look inside?’
The older man’s hands reacted independently. One began scratching at the stubble on his chin, the other fluttered inside the jacket pocket.
The moment moved as if through molasses, no answer was forthcoming.
‘It’ll only take a second then I’ll get on my way. Do you mind?’ said Charlie at last.
‘Well, that depends there, Charlie.’
‘Depends? On what?’
‘Well, are you really askin’ me, or are you tellin’ me?’
‘There a reason I can’t get in your truck, sir?’ Charlie’s thumbs had returned to his belt, his weight impatiently on one hip.
‘None in particular. I’m just a man who likes to exercise his rights that’s all. I don’t care to surrender civil liberties unless I absolutely have to, son.’
Son? Did he really just say son? In what way was that helpful? the older man thought. His hand shook inside his pocket. He drew a hidden thumb across a hidden handle. His heart began beating in his neck and he was sure the shiny boy could see it.
‘Control to patrol two . . .’ The radio on Charlie’s shoulder crackled. Charlie reached to his shoulder to answer but his eyes were fixed on him.
‘Go ahead for Charlie.’
‘Charlie, how far are you from Bob Acres? We got a situation.’
‘Ten minutes maybe, what’s going on?’
‘The Lemieux brothers.’
‘Goddammit,’ he said to the sky before speaking back into the radio. ‘What is it this time?’
‘We got calls coming in; seems they been up all night drinking and now they’re on the front lawn trying to kill each other. I got other units en route but can you start heading?’
‘Sure, Sheila, I’m on it.’ Charlie swatted the air with a left hook and fished his car keys from his belt. ‘I swear those boys are gonna be the death of me. You sure you’re okay?’
The older man nodded and watched as the patrol car spun and sped off; the emergency lights creating blue halos in the morning mist. He drew his hands from his pockets and placed them gently on the frozen handrail of the bridge. They were shaking, he noticed, shaking like a hound-dog trying to shit out a peach pit.
Neil Hudson
Neil Hudson is a writer from Birmingham, United Kingdom who has typed stuff on a keyboard for Vice, Wonderland, Sick Chirpse and other places on the internet people go to avoid doing work. Having last year completed a Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, he is currently working through his Creative Writing MA alongside finishing his first book.
While Neil has no real experience of living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, he does reside in the Irish Quarter of Birmingham where they annually hold the St Patrick’s day parade – this has allowed him a unique view of what life may look like on ‘the day after’!
The central character in ‘The Bear Trap’, Calvin, is named after Bill Waterson’s beautiful comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes. Mr Waterson’s Calvin had an animal companion too. His was considerably friendlier . . .
‘It is a stretch to choose one favourite King book as I’m a huge Stephen King nerd . . . However, Pet Sematary is the first adult novel I ever picked up and it tears the heart out of my chest every time I read it. I’ve been checking the bedroom closet for Zelda ever since.’
THE BEAR TRAP
The genny was almost out again. It’d started to splutter and strain, which was generally never the best of signs. The bright, avocado paint that had formerly clung to its chassis had shed like snakeskin, presumably shaken off by the furious seizures it underwent any time it was being used. Now the machine simply looked like a dull hunk of metal. Calvin regarded it with his brow all crinkled up, making his twelve-year-old face comical with concern.
‘Dang it,’ he muttered. ‘Dang it to heck and back.’
The generator stood in the middle of the big red barn next to their farmhouse. Theirs had become a relative term recently. It’d been over a year since Pops had left the farm to go get Uncle Jake, tearing off along the untended strip of dirt that connected their house to the freeway in his sand-worn Volkswagen, mumbling something about Russkies as he left. Tears had been spilling down his cheeks, but he’d not gone to Calvin for any comfort before slamming the screen door.
Just hours after he’d departed the soot had begun to fall from the sky, thick and terrifying. The ash had hammered down so furiously that when Calvin summoned the courage to peer outside, looking out on the front yard had been like staring through static on a TV that’d lost reception. Calvin had been plenty relieved when the ash had ceased raining down six weeks later. Seeing the world outside like that had put a fright in him so bad he’d pretty much stayed in the basement the whole time, eating beans straight out of the can with a loaded BB gun set across his lap.
Finally, it had stopped.
The ash storm had left the ground thick with black dandruff, which shifted and swirled in tight little curls when the wind kicked up. It had been dark ever since. Clouds so obstinately impenetrable not a lick of sunshine shone through. It’d been hard for Calvin to get used to every day looking like midnight in winter, but he was an adaptable young fellow and made sure he carried a torch with him most of the time. It had a hand-crank on it so didn’t need any batteries, just a little gumption. He had a radio that worked the same way, but hadn’t gotten a single clear station on it since everything went to heck. Every so often a preacher’s voice would burst through the static, squawking about revelations and raptures. Calvin had an idea that the preacher wasn’t part of no legitimate radio show. He thought this because occasionally the self-proclaimed minister would start snickering darkly during his sermons, like maybe someone had whispered a particularly wicked joke in his ear. Calvin had not liked that, and the radio got switched on less and less as time went on because of it.
He thought a lot on where Pops and Uncle Jake might be. Pops was not, what he’d heard one of his schoolteachers refer to as, a ‘positive parental figure’. Miss Bailey, under whom he’d taken second period English, had claimed this, and Pops had made some fairly enthusiastic suppositions about her parentage by way of response. Nevertheless, there was no getting around it – Pops liked to tie one on. He’d often been known to disappear for days on end before moping in like a sore grizzly, ruffling Calvin’s hair with hands that stank of cigar smoke and Scotch.
‘Gas,’ he said, stalking off to the corner of the barn where it was kept.
He supposed he couldn’t stay mad at Pops, even though Calvin was sure wherever he was, he was off having fun without him. Uncle Jake was probably talking his ear off, or they were playing ’nopoly. Pops said when him and Jake were playin’ a game of ’nopoly, why, most occasions they’d just up and forget the time. It did seem to run away from them so.
‘Alley-oop!’ Calvin grunted, heaving the gas canister from its place next to many, many others on the shelving unit Pops had set up. Pops called himself a Prepper. Far as Calvin knew, that meant someone that liked to keep stuff handy just in case. Well, just in case had come around. In spades.