Enduring Armageddon (2 page)

“Huh? Oh sorry, I was just thinking about what happened to Ali back in Plainfield. What did you say?”

“I said that it looks like what those people said about Virden being an open community may be true. See that sign right there?” she said as she pointed to a hand painted wooden sign placed strategically along the road so anyone paying attention would be able to see it.

The sign stated, “VIRDEN, ILLINOIS DECLARED AN OPEN COMMUNITY. SAFE FOR ALL TRAVELERS. THREE MILES STRAIGHT AHEAD, TAKE DIVERNON EXIT OFF 55 SOUTH, FOLLOW SIGNS. ~ MACOUPIN COUNTY MILITIA.”

We’d run into two types of communities so far: Open and closed. Well, actually, there were two other types also. The abandoned and destroyed, but we really tried to avoid those. Closed communities were places where the people who lived there before the nuclear detonations basically sealed themselves up behind walls of some type and didn’t allow any outsiders to come in, even if they were only passing through. Open communities were still secure, but they allowed people without homes to come inside their walls as long as they could be contributing members of the community. No place wanted derelicts and vagrants living with them. We’d heard stories about how communities dealt with bums who tried to move in and mooch off the population. Let’s just say, it wasn’t pretty and they made sure that other potential bums in the area knew that they weren’t allowed.

“What’s the Macoupin County Militia?” Rebecca asked.

“No idea,” I replied. “It must be some type of local police organization that runs things around here. They want us to think that Virden is safe for travelers.”

Truth be told, I was actually embarrassed that I’d let myself get lost in those memories from a couple weeks ago. That was stupid. We hadn’t run into any trouble on our southward journey so far, but from what others along the way had told us, we’d been pretty lucky because everywhere was dangerous these days. I wasn’t brought up in some type of misogynistic, macho family, but I feel like it’s my duty to be Rebecca’s protector and that I’m the one who’s supposed to keep us together and out of trouble.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rebecca asked me as we continued our slow bicycle journey south along the highway.

“Okay, what I meant to say was that they want people to think they’re still a nice town. What if it’s some kind of set-up? You know, lure us in and then harvest our organs or something.”

“Chuck, you have definitely seen too many movies. I’ve listened to you so far, but I want to sleep in a bed, okay? We’ve been on the road for over two weeks and sleeping in sleeping bags out in the cold. I want to go someplace nice with nice people. And I have to believe those kinds of places still exist, otherwise, what the hell are we even wasting our time living for?”

Shit, she had a point. “Fine. We’ll go to Virden, but we need to keep an eye out for anything strange, okay? And we can’t stay long, the weather is already colder since the dust and ash has blocked most of the sunlight, we need to keep going south.”

“Alright, just a day or two. Please, Chuck. Let’s go and meet some nice people, maybe we’ll meet some other travelers who will want to travel with us. There’s safety in numbers.” She’d added that last part because she knew I was worried about what I would do if we were attacked out here on our own. I wasn’t sure what good I would be, but I knew I’d do whatever I could to protect us.

“Alright, alright. You fight dirty! You know I think we need a couple of traveling companions, and you’re right. We might find a couple of decent people in an open community,” I conceded. She practically squealed with delight and lifted her mask away to kiss me quickly on the cheek.

I was reminded of how beautiful my Rebecca is. I hardly ever saw her without the mask anymore. The air was full of all sorts of shit floating around and the little paper masks that we’d picked up made it a lot easier to breathe. She was so covered up from head to toe that it was almost impossible to tell that she was a woman from over a hundred yards away. She had her mop of wavy red hair pulled back in a tight bun and a pale green rain slicker hood up over the top of that. It hadn’t rained in a few days, but it only took one surprise acid rain storm our first night out of the city to encourage us to keep covered at all times.

I truly believed that we were in for a massive extinction event in the next few months and everything we could do to prepare ourselves ahead of time was important. I’d seen a couple of documentaries about nuclear winter and it’s not a pretty scenario. The bulk of the population not directly affected by the explosions would survive the first few months after a nuclear war with what they have in their houses and could get from a grocery store that wasn’t too far away. Unless they killed each other off.

After a while, all the particles in the air from all the vaporized stuff at the blast sites would eventually make it impossible for the sun to warm the earth and we’ll be plunged into a nuclear winter. Shit, I wanted to get as close to the equator as possible and living all the way up in Chicago wasn’t a good starting point. Then again, if Ali hadn’t been murdered, Rebecca probably would have wanted to continue living in our apartment and we’d really be screwed when the winter hit. As far as I was concerned, every foot farther south we traveled before the freezing temperatures really set in was a foot closer to survival.

* * *

Rebecca and I turned off Highway 55 and followed the signs like we’d been directed. The road wound through an abandoned town and a few miles later we came to the walls of Virden. They’d been busy in the last month. As far as I could tell from my vantage point, the entire town was surrounded by a six-foot ramshackle wall made from cinder blocks, sheets of corrugated tin roofing panels, cattle pen fencing and overturned vehicles. Guards peeked over the top of the wall at us every so often and I had the distinct feeling that there was a rifle scope aimed right at my head.

I slowly dismounted from the bike and slid the handle of my baseball bat into my belt then raised my hands above my head. “Becca, I think it’s best if we show them that we don’t mean any harm,” I said to my wife. She nodded her head and followed my lead by lifting her arms as well. After no response from the guards we deliberately pushed the bikes towards the wall for the last hundred feet.

“That’s far enough,” a voice said from behind the wall. “State your business.”

“We came to Virden because it’s supposed to be an open community,” I shouted so I could be heard by the people on the wall. “We don’t want any trouble, just passing through and we saw the signs on the highway. If you aren’t an open community, then we’ll just keep going on our way towards the south.”

“No, the signs are right,” the voice replied. “We’re an open community, for the right people. Do you have any other travelers with you? Maybe you have children hidden in the woods a little ways back or something?”

“It’s just us,” I called loudly. I decided that it was probably alright to lower my hands.

“We’ll have to search you two and ensure you don’t have any open sores, which are an indication of radiation sickness, and worse. After that, you can come in, get introduced to everyone and determine if you want to stay or if you’re just visiting Virden. Hold on.” There were several loud clangs as the locks were thrown to open the gate.

I was surprised when the town’s gate opened about fifty feet to my right, far to the side of where I’d expected it to be since the road led right up to the wall. Three people dressed like scavengers came out from the gate and two of them had shotguns that they aimed right at us. The men wore heavy coveralls and had long trench coats to help with the acid rain. They wore military style gas masks and all had what looked to be firefighter helmets on, which was a wise choice since the helmet could protect against both rain and blunt force trauma.

The unarmed man came up to me and said, “I need both of you to strip naked.” I started to object, but he sighed and held his hands up to stop me. Clearly this wasn’t the first time that he’d encountered people unwilling to get naked in front of strangers. “Look,” he said, “Neither of you has anything that we haven’t seen a thousand times. We need to ensure that you’re not bringing any obvious diseases into our community. Either you strip and let us examine you, or you guys can continue on your way to wherever you’re headed.”

“It’s okay, Charlie,” my wife said to me. “I can handle it. We need a safe place to stay and if this is the price I have to pay, then so be it.” She didn’t even wait for my answer before she shrugged out of her backpack to let it slide to the ground and began unzipping her rain jacket.

Before long, both of us stood stark naked in the chilly air. The only exception was our masks, which they’d allowed us to retain in position over our mouths and noses. The man inspecting us had each of us bend over to expose the area between our ass cheeks and then I had to lift my scrotum up for his scrutiny while Becca was forced to raise each breast up so he could ensure there were no sores hidden underneath along the creases of her skin.

When he was satisfied, he said, “Alright, you passed. You can put your clothes back on. Welcome to Virden. I hope you enjoy your stay, but let me warn you right now; if you aren’t a contributing member of the community, you will be asked to leave and not return. Is that understood?” We both nodded that we understood the terms of our admittance into the town.

We rushed to pull our clothing back on as a storm blew in rapidly from the west. Just as we entered the main gate of Virden it began to rain. The dark sludge fell from the sky and we couldn’t see beyond a couple of feet in front of our hands. The men quickly swung the gate back into place and shuffled off to their protected watch positions.

As soon as we passed through, a girl yelled, “Come on, this way! We’ll get under the pharmacy’s awning.” She wore a large rubber army poncho and also carried an umbrella to further retard the rain’s ability to reach her. We ran behind her as she made her way to the front of the town’s pharmacy less than a block from the town’s walls. We ducked under the wide striped awning, both of us unsure what to make of our guide.

She closed the umbrella and leaned it against the building’s brick wall pulling the hood off of her head to reveal clean, straight blonde hair. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled behind the mask she wore. “My name is Samantha, Sam. Welcome to Virden,” she said.

“Hi Samantha. I’m Chuck, this is my wife, Rebecca,” I said as I indicated Becca.

Sam gave us both a quick once over with her eyes. “Have you guys been on the road very long?”

“We’re coming from just south of Chicago, the city became too dangerous. We’ve been traveling for a little over two weeks,” Becca said while she self-consciously tried to smooth out her wrinkled and dirty overcoat.

“Oh, wow! You made that trip with only a baseball bat for protection? You’re either really brave or stupid…” Her eyes widened as she realized she’d accidently insulted us. “I mean... Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to say you guys were dumb, it’s just really dangerous outside of the town’s walls,” she stammered.

I wondered how old our hostess was. It was nearly impossible to tell from her voice, but I guessed she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. “No problem, Sam. I know what you meant by the statement. We left with what we could carry and I already owned this baseball bat,” I said as I patted the big fat logo stamped across the bat’s surface. “We stayed mostly to the roads and kept hidden at night when the dangerous folks were out and about.”

“Well, I’ll take your word for it, Chuck. I came here from Springfield and…” she stopped abruptly again. “It was a difficult trip.” She glanced quickly towards the street and squeezed her eyes shut a few times. In the gloom of the rain, I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she was trying to get rid of tears without wiping her face with potentially contaminated hands.

“Anyways, Virden is a pretty safe spot for us right now,” she continued. “We have everything we could need for the foreseeable future. We were far enough south from Chicago and north of St. Louis that the EMPs didn’t destroy all of our electronic stuff. There was a large grocery store here with tons of canned food and our guys are constantly going out on patrol to get more food from the surrounding area. Our town’s leader, mayor, sheriff, whatever you want to call him, was this crazy apocalypse prepper-guy so he sprang into action right away after the bombs started exploding. He convinced the high school principal to allow him to fill up the gym floor with dirt, so they brought in tractors and saved enough dirt before the acid rain came that we can grow crops inside once we get the lighting and irrigation down.”

“Geez, that was really smart. I’d have never thought of something like that.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, he was one of those weird prepper-guys. He even got featured on that TV show about people like him. He’s made us all watch it a few times since he’s still got power at his place, I guess to validate his abilities or whatever, but he’s alright. He’s a little eccentric, but then again, I probably would be too if I’d been made fun of my whole life for believing something and then suddenly everyone who was still alive realized that I’d been right all along.”

“Funny way of thinking about it, but I guess you’re right,” Becca said.

The snapping noises of the dirty black rain hitting the awning above us began to lessen. “Looks like the rain is letting up, so we’ll be able to go to the guest registration office soon.”

“I’m sorry. Did you say that the town has a guest registration office?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. Allan, the mayor, likes to keep track of everyone in town and the office helps him do that. Also, if you plan on staying, you have to figure out what you’re going to do for work. They really don’t like people who don’t bring anything of value to the town. As you can see,” Sam said with a slight curtsey, “the tour guide position is already filled. They’ll tolerate you for a few days, but if you want to stay, you’ll have to bring something to the community that they don’t already have.”

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. “Okay, that’s our cue. Come on, the registration office is about half a mile or so down Main Street here.” Sam picked up her umbrella and started walking before we had a chance to say anything else.