Everyone Dies in the End #56

Todd

1

The white Bronco crossed the railroad tracks and rolled to a stop next to the convenience store pumps. Artemis scanned the area, Susan sat silently in the back seat, and Todd chuckled bitterly. The gas tank was empty, dry, not a drop left. A real problem, and yet they were parked beside gas pumps, yet it was still a problem. For the first time, Todd longed for the good ole days, for the days when—mid-seventies gas crunch excepted—gas flowed freely. The days when he didn’t feel obligated, didn’t feel responsible, for anyone but himself and he longed for the days when he didn’t feel guilty.

“Looks different, no?” Artemis’s comment refocused Todd’s mind on the present.

“It does,” Susan answered quietly. And it did.

In front of the Bronco sat a small, country convenience store. They had passed many like it as they cut across the mountains, all of them abandoned, all of them derelict, but this was different. The store was cinderblock construction, whitewashed, with a large wooden sign on the roof, running the length of the store, also white with large, neatly-painted black letters that read Henry Store. The parking lot was deserted, but clean. Todd knew that was strange. The apocalypse was many things, but clean wasn’t one of them. The store was abandoned, that was obvious. Perhaps a bit too obvious, he thought. The windows had been boarded over, precisely, carefully, with precision-cut plywood, well-braced, and secured with straight lines of screws.

Next door sat a white house, green trim, windows—real, not-yet-smashed windows, and cut grass. That was stranger than strange. As if hearing Todd’s thoughts, Arty whispered. “The lawn is mowed, who the hell mows their lawn?”

Todd’s hand moved to the shotgun waiting on the seat expectantly.

“This isn’t good,” Susan added.

“Yeah,” Arty responded, we left good sometime last summer. “This is downright creepy.”

“Good, bad, creepy, it doesn’t matter, boys and girls,” Todd intoned. “Unless one of you has a few gallons of gas in their pocket, this is as far as we are going with these wheels. Let’s get out and take a look around.”

Without preamble Todd opened his door and stepped away from the white Bronco. He should have told Arty to cover him; told Susan to sit tight, but he was tired. Tired of it all. If some redneck was waiting to put a bullet through his head, let him have the hell at it. Todd knew he should have died back in Charlotte; way back when he ratted out his friends. But no guilt-releasing bullet smacked his brain. The others stepped out behind him. Todd shrugged and walked past the pumps to the Henry Store.

The boarded double doors at the front of the building were locked. He had expected nothing less. A foot-long piece of angle iron, held them shut, and the iron itself was padlocked. Todd hadn’t seen a padlock in a month. Padlocks didn’t mean much in today’s world, not unless you had somebody watching those padlocks with a gun. Todd didn’t see anyone with a gun. Todd didn’t see anyone at all.

Around the side, the story remained the same. Deserted, but strangely well kept. I minnow tank sat next to the store, and in its metal confines water still gurgled, minnows, still swam, just like they could be bought for bait. Just like money was still good for anything. Not fifty feet from the tank a large creek, almost a small river, although Todd wasn’t sure of the difference in a large creek and small river, flowed briskly. They had crossed the wooden bridge that spanned it just before they rolled to stop at the Henry Store. Maybe it supplied the minnows; maybe the minnows were used to catch fish from the creek. Either way, the minnows’ existence meant someone still cared for the tank, but where was that someone?

The three turned the corner at the back of the building. A small breeze teased the treetop leaves. The back of the building was also neatly deserted, with one exception, and it was a big one. The exception was a black Indian motorcycle. Todd had ridden some bikes in his life and this was a classic. Sleek, low, built for speed, enough room for two, no more.

“She’s beautiful,” Susan whispered. She walked by, entranced by the sleek machine. The fenders and forks were chrome, but the gas tank and wheels were black.

Arty came up beside him. “I’m no biker, but that is one sweet piece of machinery.”

They both watched as Susan ran her hand across the gas tank. “It’s so clean.”

It was clean and that bothered Todd. How could a place, any place, stay so clean, so well-tended, in Armageddon’s wake? The store, with it’s well-boarded windows, clean parking lot, and beautiful Indian bike, felt more like an out of season tourist stop than another casualty of civilization’s decay. Even the air smelled different, cleaner, and the quiet? Why was it so quiet? Todd knew the quiet shouldn’t bother him anymore than quiet ever bothered him. The world was quieter now. Less people, less animals, less machines. This quiet, however, was complete, intentional. It made Todd’s skin crawl. They were being watched, and the watchers were keeping very quiet.