“May, watch outside. I need ta go into the barn for a moment.”
May checked outside, gave him the all clear, and stood guard, peering out the slits while he cautiously entered the barn. Inside, the stark room was dark except for the moon’s soft glow coming through the cupola. The half-dozen soldiers that guarded the encampment wandered predictably about the property with nothing really to do but to check for intruders — they had no reason to suspect that anyone lived inside the barn. He closed the door behind him and checked along the outer walls hoping to find just one scrap of 2x4 he could use. Winston scoured between every stud until he found what he was looking for near the rear window — a foot-long piece of 2x4. He grabbed it, and before he went back inside the apartment, examined the wooden crate. It was covered with radioactive markings and the top was hinged. It was all very rudimentary, like the crates of surplus mines Winston found throughout Vietnam during the war. He placed the 2x4 on the floor and opened the crate, surprised it would open at all. Inside was what looked like a couple dozen oversized red backpacks, each with the same radioactive markings as the crate and emblazoned with a logo that read Tabari. It was a fancy logo with a stylized capital “T” and “abari” in a modern script font. Curious, he picked one up. It was heavy, weighing probably fifty pounds or more, its heft immediately causing his lower back to ache. He closed the crate’s lid and placed the backpack on top where he could better examine it. There were no zippers, no way to get into it, and no other markings on it. He squeezed and felt the contents inside, but couldn’t feel anything discernable other than a solid, square, hard mass. Oddly, the backpack’s sole strap was shaped such that it wouldn’t have fit comfortably over a human shoulder, and he guessed that the strap functioned solely as some sort of handle. The backpack’s only other feature was a single grommet in the bottom, and a pin-like rod that he presumed fit into said grommet.
“Hurry up,” May whispered, loud enough for Winston to hear.
He put the backpack back into the crate, snatched the 2x4, and crept back into the apartment.
“Well, what is it?” She asked.
“I rightfully don’t know, Mother. I reckon some form of weapon.”
“Well, Genius, isn’t that some sort of radiation mark on the box?”
“Uh huh.”
“Then they nukes in there. Winston, they nukes in our barn.”
“Now, stay with me May, I haven’t ever heard of no nuclear weapon the size of a backpack. Doesn’t even make sense to me.”
“Neither do us livin’ in our barn.”
“Touché. Now would ya let me fix this here thing? Then I gotta go out for water an’ food ’cause I ain’t ready to eat Amadeus’ food.”
May didn’t argue any of it. She knew what she knew, and she knew that she was right, hungry, and thirsty. She pulled the metal hurricane shutters out while Winston pushed the piece of 2x4 into the space. The wall was as fixed as it was ever going to be, the splintered plywood sheathing pushed back into place.
Winston donned his black hoodie, gathered the items he always took out with him, and prepared to leave the safety of the apartment once again.
“It’s late. I can’t promise you I’ll be back by mornin’ light.”
“I know. Just be careful. I hate when you go out.”
Winston shrugged and kissed her. And he was off.
Just before May locked him out she said, “please find my cat. I’m worried about him.”
“I will.”
And as Winston climbed through the window, May pushed open the door and said, “I love you, Winston.”
Winston, whose left foot teetered on the stool outside of the window, smiled, put his right hand to his lips, and blew her a kiss. She closed the door and watched out the slits, like she usually did when he went out, and waited for signs of enemy response. After a few minutes, she drank the last of the water — perhaps a cup or two — lit a tea light candle (though Winston had forbade her to light candles at night), and read On the Beach for about an hour before falling asleep. The candle burned itself out two hours later.
McDonough 30253
Winston scaled the razor-wire fence in seconds and disappeared into the dark of the night. He filled the jugs and left them near the fence line along with the stepstool, and made his usual rounds, first using a small flashlight to check the trash pile for edible food. He came up empty, except for discovering the mechanic’s headless body near Jimmy’s nearly decomposed corpse. He noted that the body was away from possible foodstuffs, and appreciated that Woo-jin had done that on purpose. Winston was ever-grateful for that token of friendship, even though the scraps of food left remained unpalatable. He stopped at the grave, which was still unmolested, and he sat under the overpass as he pondered checking in on Ben and the other captives. Unsure if his psyche could handle such emotional turmoil, he decided not to visit them. Instead, tonight, Winston would make his way south to McDonough, a town of roughly twenty thousand inhabitants, less than ten miles from Johnsonville. Surely, the PLA hadn’t killed all of McDonough’s inhabitants — he and May and Jimmy were living proof that there were survivors. Well, perhaps Jimmy was a bad example, but he, in fact, had survived the PLA’s initial assault only to be felled by Winston’s defensive hand.
Winston hoped that perhaps McDonough would have food to spare or news to share. As he slowly made his way to the main road, he called out soft pleas for Amadeus, “here, kitty kitty. Amadeus, where you at?” Winston didn’t waste too much time searching for him — he was more concerned with getting safely up and onto the highway, which was high above his head. The banks of the overpass were far too steep to climb, especially at his age, so he made his way back toward Calef’s to walk up the off-ramp to 75 North.
He skirted along the water treatment plant’s fence to his own road, but instead of crossing it and confronting the field of ticks, he paced right on up the road toward Calef’s, keeping an eye out for PLA patrols. This was where he met Med and the other men, children, and women of Johnsonville, who had briefly defended their beloved town from an army of tens of thousands of soldiers. And he would be a son-of-a-bitch if he didn’t remember just then that Med had given him that loaded .357 magnum. He wondered if it was still stuck behind the truck’s passenger’s seat, and regretted not bringing it into the apartment — it sure would have felt a bit heftier in his hands rather than his little .22 rifle.
Winston gazed across the street at Johnsonville’s pride and joy. Calef’s carwash, gas pumps, and store were all dark, and it appeared that its entire contents — the unusable stuff like children’s inflatable toys and Georgia-themed knick-knacks — were scattered across the parking lot in what looked like a scene from a bad post-apocalyptic film. He strained to listen for Ben and the other men behind the store, and after a minute of silence, he turned his back and hurried up the off-ramp onto 75 North. The highway was an opaque and silent serpent as he slinked down it, walking as far into the safety of the shoulder as he could. Abandoned vehicles littered the roadway, as if their occupants merely shut them off and wandered away in search of solace they would never find. He didn’t bother searching them, assuming that they had already been scavenged by the PLA, so he pushed on quickly down the northbound side of the highway. Some of the vehicles wore bullet holes and blood, and the closer he got to McDonough, the more corpses littered the road — all of them civilian. Some five miles south of Johnsonville, Winston poked around in some of the vehicles that appeared benign. The five dozen or so vehicles he investigated were either empty, rummaged through by the PLA or other hungry Americans, or were such gory scenes of unhindered and brutal violence that Winston didn’t have the heart to disrespect their occupants’ final resting places — even though his belly rumbled loudly.