Everyone Dies in the End #51

Todd

 Getting the hell off that road didn’t turn out to be as easy as it sounded. Certainly any fool could drive off a road, but that really wasn’t the point, was it? They were going to Philadelphia; at least that was the plan. So getting off the road not only entailed getting away from Interstate 85, but also finding an alternate route that would lead them north with a minimum of difficulty, and a minimum of exposure. The visage of the UPS truck’s interior hung heavy in Todd’s mind. He didn’t want to run into whoever was callous enough, whoever was cruel enough, to stuff a crowd of humans in the back of a package delivery truck and leave them to die.  I’m no saint either. His mind flashed back to the dorm in Charlotte, but he squashed that train of thought as soon as it rolled into the station. There wasn’t room for saints in this world. There was only room survivors and those who died trying.

They discovered a rack of maps at a rest stop three miles further north, laying where they had been tipped on the floor. Susan searched through them until she found several that would suite their needs. Five minutes later the three of them sat in the Bronco, pouring over their find. After tracing multiple routes with dirty fingernails, and discussing, and occasionally shouting over, the various options, they decided to parallel Interstate 85 via a series of smaller roads that lay to the west. Eventually, they would cut back across on Highway 58, then north through a tiny town-dot on the map labeled Henry, and pick up Route 220, a semi-major four-lane road.

Now, as the sun dipped lower on the horizon, the tires hummed over the asphalt their fingers had traced. Todd figured they had an hour before sunset, and they were tired, weary from the travel. The small roads wound through the flat country of North Carolina and into the ever-increasing hilliness of Virginia. This was farm and ranching country, and Todd remembered that he had heard somewhere that it was also horse country. There was, however, little evidence of crops, cattle, or horses. The crops lay fallow in the fields, yellow and dead. He didn’t see any cattle, although they occasionally passed emancipated, half-eaten, furry lumps that might have been cattle once upon a time. A time before the missiles came. And horses? Todd saw nary a one. Todd thought he knew what had happened to them. He had heard that horsemeat didn’t taste that bad, as long as you cooked it long enough.

They were stopped once. Well into Virginia, hugging the hillside of a narrow road, they rounded a corner and nearly crashed into a thick maple lying across the road. Its leaves were a sickly ashen green, dead or dying, but of course most of the foliage was dead or dying. It didn’t mean the maple had been there long. Arty pointed at the base. “It’s been cut.”

Todd nodded, his eyes casually passing over the smoothly cut trunk, and pile of sawdust beneath it.  “I don’t like this.”

“Yeah,” Arty nodded. “I don’t like this either.” 

In the mirror Todd noticed Susan slide her revolver from her purse, her worried eyes searching the hill outside. He looked at Arty.

“Can’t go back.” Arty shook his head. “Shit.” Todd nodded, “Yeah, Shit.”

“Let’s do it.” Todd opened his door and stepped to the road, small pebbles crunching beneath his feet. Arty exited the opposite side of the truck, and then Susan’s door opened. Todd pushed it shut. “No, you stay.”

“But,” she began to protest.

Todd held up a warning finger. “But nothing. Cover us from the Bronco.” Susan opened her mouth as if to speak, but nodded instead.  Todd nodded back, not saying anything more.  

In retrospect, Todd guessed he spoke a lot less now. The missiles had done two things. Well, if you ignored the fact that they had irrevocably, completely, and obliteratingly changed civilization. Hell, perhaps even ended civilization. Yeah, if you ignored all that, the atomic Armageddon had affected Todd in two ways. Way one, he was a lot thinner. His slim physic wasn’t by choice. Food just wasn’t as plentiful, and for an instant his mind flicked back to his pallet of cake mix in Charlotte. There was no cake mix now. For some meals there nothing. Way two, he was hell of a lot quieter than when he had been a financial consultant, back then talking was his stock and trade. His main weapon so to speak. Now, his shotgun was his stock and trade, which he guessed brought out one last, ultimately defining way the modern world changed him—his conscience. There was very little of it left.

As soon as they left the truck, two men stepped from behind the tree. Both looked like they had seen better days, in fact they both looked like they had seen better days months before Armageddon arrived in this part of the world. They were skinny, yet their dirty coveralls stretched tightly over pot-bellied stomachs. Their hair was long and stringy, and when the taller of the two opened his mouth to speak, Todd could tell that teeth were is short supply in these parts.

“You fellers just drop those guns and we won’t have no trouble with you.” The voice was thin and reedy, as were the arms that held the sawed off shotgun. A nice compliment to the deer rifle his pot-bellied partner clutched in his hands. They might have been telling the truth. Perhaps they didn’t want any trouble. On the other hand, maybe they wanted to steel everything in the bronco, strip the three on them naked and re-enact the more gruesome scenes from Deliverance. Todd never asked. He was a much quieter man than he had been before the missiles.

Todd carried his shotgun nonchalantly, the barrel angled toward the road. He didn’t need to raise the weapon to fire. He didn’t need to raise the weapon to kill.

He pulled the trigger.

The firing was loud in the still evening air. The shotgun pellets sparked off the asphalt like a angry fireflies, rebounding up and away from the road, and tearing into the groin of the coverall-clad speaker. The blue coveralls turned urgently red, and their owner screamed. His friend turned to gawk at him, but the gawking didn’t last long. There was a flat crack and the man fell, quietly, without ceremony, with the fragments of his skull, brains, and hair flecking the dead branches behind him.

Todd noted that Artemis held the shooter’s stance a moment longer, his pistol thrust toward the fallen corpse, a delicate tendril of smoke gracefully curling from the muzzle.

“Hold it right there, you fuckers.” There was one more. Todd had always known there would be one more. The one more stood a little ways up the hill the road bordered. No more than fifteen feet away. He held a rifle, and the rifle was pointed at Artemis and Todd. Todd thought he looked plenty pissed. Looked like he was pissed enough to kill them both, right here and now. Todd didn’t really care. He would either kill them, or…

The glass window shattered as the big bullet smashed through. The retort of the gun was somewhat muffled by the Bronco, its effect wasn’t. The would be avenger with the rifle was thrown to the ground, the weapon falling out of his reach. He no sooner smacked into the dark earth than the screaming began. The bullet hadn’t killed the avenger. It had torn into his right shoulder, ripping the arm from the socket. Blood filled the surrounding leaves; his screams soaked the surrounding air. 

Susan was out of the car in an instant, the big revolver still smoking, held in front of her, her eyes scanning the hill, running toward the screaming man.

Todd’s shotgun stopped her in her tracks. The first blast ripped into the man’s chest, shredding it. Still the man lived, his mouth soundlessly flexing like a fish out of water. The second blast took off the mouth, and the face surrounding it.

Susan stopped, the gun lowering as if she could no longer bear the weight, her face pale. “You…you…didn’t need to do that. I…I could have helped him, could have saved him.”

Todd spoke as he jacked more shells into the shotgun, the click-thunk rhythmic, reassuring. “There is no saving, girl. Just surviving.”

            He knew she didn’t believe it, but he almost did.