Dark Advent (20 page)

All he wanted for the moment was to sleep. Because sleep brings peace to a troubled soul. And time heals all wounds.

THIRD EPOCH

KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

October 1987 – January 1988

1

If a few months ago someone had told Erika that she’d be living in a department store by autumn, she would have thought them out of their mind. The place still didn’t feel like a home yet, but at least she felt she was making a little progress.

After the evening she’d watched Chad Wilder die, she’d turned her back on Spanish Lake. In no way could she stay where so many she’d known and loved had died. Anywhere but there.

Erika took her car and the biggest kitchen knife she could find and a few other odds and ends and went looking for sane people. If any were left. Fate must have smiled on her, because a couple days later she ventured to the home of two friends of her parents. By luck or some minor miracle, they were both alive and healthy.

Rich and Pam Patton had been friends of her folks as far back as she could remember. They played cards together, attended plays and Cardinals games and pop concerts together, often spent New Year’s Eve in each other’s company. They’d almost been secondary parents when Erika was younger. But after she’d discovered the freedom and adventure of a new driver’s license, she was doing good to cross paths with them two or three times a year.

None of that mattered when the door opened and she and Pam stood facing each other. They stared a moment or two, then Pam grabbed her and gave her the hardest hug she’d had in months.

“Thank God, Erika,” Pam whispered into her neck. “You’re the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.” She pulled her head back, and tears were brimming over the tiny crow’s-feet around her eyes.

Erika cleared her throat of a lump that had welled up from nowhere. “Need a houseguest?”

Pam nodded and wiped her eyes. “Your folks? Cal?”

Erika shook her head and reached out for one more hug. No tears, she’d promised herself that. “It hurts, Pam. It hurts so much.”

“I know it does.” She patted the back of Erika’s head. “We’ve lost Elyse.” Elyse had been a year older than Erika, recently married and moved to Chicago, more recently divorced. “Tom called to tell us. They…they may have had their differences…but he never quit caring. He was a good man.”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know, hon. I don’t guess we ever will.”

Pam took Erika’s bag, pulled her into the house, set her down on the couch. Erika glanced about, listened. They were quite alone.

“How about Rich?” she finally dared to ask.

Pam smiled, and it was good to see her face light up for a change. No more needed to be said. Good news for once.

“He’s just away for a little while, with someone he knows from work. Something about moving us somewhere else. I’ll let him explain it when he gets back.”

Erika sat quietly for several moments, reacquainting herself with familiar surroundings, comfortable surroundings. And gazing at Pam. She was a bit taller than Erika, and her hair was almost completely gray, attractively cut with a side part. Kind eyes. She’d always seemed so understanding over the years, had never passed judgment. Erika had more than once wondered what it might be like to switch places with Elyse.

“We’ve got a lot of gaps to fill, don’t we?” Erika said at last.

“Yeah, we do.” Pam leaned forward on the couch and laced her fingers with Erika’s right hand. “But I think we can manage if we try hard enough.”

* *

Rich Patton had always been a big guy. He topped six feet, and his shoulders were wide, as was his belly. Erika hadn’t known him before he turned family man, of course, but had always held the notion that he’d been something of a hellraiser in his younger days. Traces peeped through now and again. He’d done the funniest Santa Claus she’d ever seen at a Christmas party here two or three years ago. Rich had reddened his nose instead of his cheeks, and his eyes twinkled with earthy humor as well as good cheer, and he chortled, instead of
Ho ho ho,
a lascivious
Heh heh heh.
He also made it a point to grab almost every female backside in attendance.

That evening was light-years away now, and as they ate dinner, Erika thought she’d never seen Rich look more serious.

“Brannigan’s Department Store,” he was saying. “We got in and checked it out this afternoon. It looks perfect.”

Agitation showed plainly on Pam’s face as she asked why they had to leave their home. Erika, who’d been in the house all of five hours, didn’t feel like she had much say in the matter.

“For one thing, there’s safety in numbers. Another, we’ll be someplace with a lot of resources for what we’ll need to get by. Not everything, no place is gonna have it all, but this is probably the best we can do.” Rich rubbed his fleshy cheeks, then took a drink of warm, foamy beer. “And then there’s the health factor. Out here in the suburbs we got all these dead bodies lying around in the houses. It’s a breeding ground for germs, especially in this heat. Even after the plague finally burns itself out ’cause there’s no one left to host it, we’d have other diseases that might spring up. Cholera, for one. It’s like the aftershocks from a big earthquake. I’d guess that probably won’t be much of a problem by next spring…get through the rest of the summer, then fall and winter, and there probably won’t be too much left of the corpses to worry about.”

Pam looked at Erika and wrinkled her nose, then pushed away the half-eaten steak and corn-on-the-cob before her.

Erika smiled. Her appetite hadn’t waned. She ate more steak, just minutes off the gas grill on the deck. Rich had been one smart fellow right before the power went off for good. He’d worked for a pharmaceutical company, and had packed as many of their perishables as possible in heavily insulated coolers with dry ice. While everyone else had inoperable freezers full of rotting meat, they still had steaks.

“Rich, when are you looking into moving?” Erika asked.

He was busy attacking an ear of corn, then set it down. “Just a few days. Jack Mitchell and I want to get back in tomorrow and do some more work, get this more planned out, make a few more contacts.”

“And for how long?” Pam asked.

He shrugged. “Long as we need, I guess. Jack and I, neither one see it as permanent. Just long enough to get back on our feet again, wait and see how things stabilize.” Rich swiped a finger down on Pam’s lower lip. “It’s not forever.”

“What about the electricity?” Erika said. “Any chance of getting it running again?”

“You’re looking at the wrong guy,” Rich said, “’cause I don’t know the first thing about how to go about that. I’m sure it’s possible, but us leftovers would have to find someone who’s an expert.”

Erika nodded. She had a thousand other questions and figured that Pam probably had a thousand more. They’d eventually be answered. But for the moment, it was enough just to feel safe again.

* *

The move had been completed in just under a week.

As Erika helped lug boxes around and rearrange the floor plan of Brannigan’s fifth floor, she was reminded of just how much the entire situation was reminiscent of communes from the sixties.

Their numbers fell just shy of two dozen, and everyone was agreeable to taking in more so long as the new ones were universally approved; no elitism here. It was pretty well equal between male and female, the ages falling primarily between mid-twenties to late forties. There were three children…two girls, six and twelve, and an eight-year-old boy. Erika didn’t see anyone who looked much over fifty. The old had not fared especially well in the America of before. It must’ve been an absolute nightmare these days.

She sat watching from a chair by a row of dressing rooms, resting for a moment, half-hidden by a fern big enough to engulf a small town. None of them she knew, aside from Rich and Pam, though she thought she’d met Jack Mitchell at the party where Rich had done his lecherous Santa act. The rest were strangers. Friends of friends, relatives of acquaintances, someone who knew someone else who knew somebody who was alone now. They all had their own stories, and no doubt she’d know each one by heart soon enough. Rich and Pam were the only married couple left intact, though it seemed a few others were already pairing off. Affection or desperation, the motives weren’t so clear anymore. She guessed what it really boiled down to was need and availability.

Rich came puffing his way past, he and two others carrying a frame for a double bed. It was a long way down from the twelfth floor, but at least they were carrying them downhill, on the frozen escalators.

“Slacking off, huh?” Rich looked back at someone helping with the bed. “Make a note. No food for
her
tonight.”

Erika laughed and pleaded for a moment, and they were gone. She swigged the last of a warm Coke.

The fifth floor had been chosen over the rest because of the ease with which it lent itself to privacy. The store’s main offices were located here, with a honeycomb of small rooms which, when emptied of desks and file cabinets, could easily be converted into bedrooms. Children’s wear was also located on this floor, and chemical toilets from sporting goods on fifteen were lined up in the dressing rooms. The racks of kids’ clothing were moved aside for couches and easy chairs and rockers and pit groups, so everyone could get together comfortably. And behind the counter where several weeks ago parents and grandparents had paid for clothes soon to be outgrown, they’d now established a makeshift kitchen, complete with propane camping stoves.

Erika watched one of the other women across the room. What was her name again? Colleen? Something like that. She was keeping the kids entertained while all else about them was sweat and toil. Colleen was somewhere in her thirties but could’ve passed for ten years younger. Maybe it was her eyes, large and bright in a small face framed by long curly hair. Erika would’ve bet anything she’d been a teacher.

I
think it could work out here,
Erika thought, rising to rejoin the work.
If we all keep our heads, I think it really could work.

* *

She awoke in darkness, because the October night sky was cloudy. The tiny office-turned-bedroom was almost solidly black. She heard rather than saw the curtains fluttering in a cool breeze coming in the window. Though the building was well maintained, it was still old, built long before the stark towers of glass and steel started going up. And so the windows still opened. Good thing, too. Ventilation was a must, as none of them were bathing as often as before.

She pulled the covers about her and thought about the dream.

The dream? It had been a long time, but she still knew the difference. There were dreams, and then there were Dreams. This one had definitely been among the latter.

She’d been standing on something smooth and hard. Stooping to check it closer proved it to be, of all things, a slate. Chalk dust coated the bottoms of her shoes. The city of St. Louis rose tall around her, angled and surreal. Off-kilter. She was facing east, for the sun was setting behind her and her shadow arrowed forward, straining for the deepening rim of sky against the horizon.

Wind. Gentle at first, then gale force. Suddenly she found herself caught in the middle of a furious dust storm, swirling like heavy brown fog, tons of earth hurtling through the air. She knew she should be choking, but wasn’t.

When it all cleared, and only a muddy haze hung in the sky, she saw something ahead. The dust storm seemed to have passed through it, a doorway made of silver.

End of story.

Erika rose and looked out her window. Five stories below, Olive Street was a dark and silent canyon. She tightened the drawstring of the light sweatsuit she’d been sleeping in lately.

Erika had hoped that her dreams would grow less cryptic when warning her of things to come. No such luck. Just the same, this hadn’t really felt like a warning. Only a nudge to keep her eye out for someone from the east. This was about as deep an interpretation as she felt inclined to divine.

The room felt too confining all at once, like a box. She eased her door open to step into the office corridor. Pitch black. She ducked back into her room for a pencil beam flashlight and used it to find her way out to the main floor. Weird. They’d been living here nearly six weeks, and she still found the place eerie by night…frozen escalators rising like steel waves, racks of suspended clothing, furniture arranged as if awaiting some tribal council, a million shadows. The mannequins were gone, at least. They’d spooked everyone, without exception.

Erika settled into the pit group, remembering another life, at home. Her nocturnal roamings. Even now it still felt right to leave the memories and essences of the dreams behind in the bedroom, seeking sanctuary elsewhere for a while.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

She didn’t hear the footsteps until they were almost upon her. Erika flashed the pencil beam at the source, half-ready to raise an alarm. She was acquainted with everyone by now, and knew that a couple of the younger men had been staring her up from time to time. She couldn’t find it in herself to be interested; in fact, it worried her a little. Because history repeats itself.

“Pam?” she said.

Under tousled gray hair, Pam flinched at the beam’s scrutiny. “Only me. I thought it might be you up and around.” After Erika redirected the light, Pam pointed beside Erika. “Can I sit down?”

“Sure.”

She did so, straightening the red velour bathrobe around her. “Rich woke me in his sleep.” Pam smiled. “I’m gonna have to search this store for a pair of toenail clippers and get after him.”

Erika nodded, said nothing.

“Anyway, I heard somebody up. Could’ve been anyone, going to the toilet, you know. But something inside told me it was you. I remember your mom once saying you rambled around the house a lot at night, must’ve been two or three years ago.”

“She told you that?”
I
didn’t think Mom talked to
anybody
about that.

Pam yawned, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “You look surprised.”

Erika folded her legs beneath her and leaned forward. “Did Mom tell you
why
I’d get up?”

Pam placed one hand lightly on Erika’s knee and nodded. “She didn’t go into any great depths. I don’t know that I would’ve understood it if she had. I don’t know that I’d have believed it at all from anyone else. But she was my friend, Erika, and she wouldn’t lie to me.”