Enduring Armageddon (21 page)

He was able to move around a lot more than he could a week ago, but he still had a limp. He’d been lucky that he only got about twenty-five pellets from more than thirty yards away. Any closer and it probably would have torn his leg completely apart. We’d used the broom method again to make him a crutch before we left the warehouse, but so far, he’d refused to use it. I noticed that he’d attached it to the back of his backpack.

I was sad as I patted the truck’s hood in farewell. Two weeks of almost constant contact with the vehicle since we left Virden had caused me to be a little nostalgic towards it. On our travel south, we had heat and protection from the things outside the cab of the truck. Now we were just a part of the masses moving along the old interstate system on foot.

* * *

I set my leading foot and pulled the trail one from the knee-deep snow. Over and over again I repeated the process as I broke through the snow for our expanded group. Somehow we’d picked up a pair of children along the way. Jordyn was fifteen and her brother Jackson was thirteen. They’d been in the house we used for shelter three nights ago, but neither knew where their parents were or what had happened to them.

The children’s memories were sketchy about the events, but apparently they’d been traveling south to escape the cold when they were attacked by zombies. The best we could piece together was that the father had died defending them and the mother hid them in the house before attempting to draw the creatures away. That was two or three nights before we showed up and they were practically starving. We fed them and against my wishes, the girls decided we were taking the two of them under our wing and bringing them with us. I’d argued that their parents died trying to protect them and we could meet the same fate, but the icy cold glare I’d gotten from Rebecca was the same look that she would have given one of her students. I knew that this debate was closed; it was time for me to just shut up and color.

I wasn’t particularly happy that we’d taken on the responsibility for the children’s safety, but the two seemed to have accepted their parent’s fate and I got the feeling that they were pretty good kids. I hadn’t spent too much time with them yet, but they both seemed to be fairly smart and I hoped that we’d be able to help keep them safe from the dangers of the world we found ourselves in. They’d managed to stay alive this long, so maybe there was hope for them.

So here we were, the seven of us moving slowly in a line through a blowing snow storm. Actually, I didn’t think it was currently snowing, but the wind was blowing the particles around so much that it seemed like it was. I led the way, followed by Trisha. The two of us acted as the plows for the children, followed by Rebecca and Jesse brought up the rear. My aching feet and legs longed for the easy days of riding a bicycle from outside of Chicago to Virden. I laughed when I remembered how hard I thought that trip had been at the time. We’d actually tried to use a bike that we found a few towns back to carry our supplies, but it was next to useless in the deep snow.

The blowing snow made it nearly impossible to tell if we were the only ones walking this direction or if hundreds more were only a little ways ahead of us. That was a scary thought because the scavengers and zombies could literally be on top of us before we even realized what was happening. A glance behind the group showed that our little path was already beginning to fill in with snow and the evidence of our passing would be completely covered up soon.

The cold seemed to find its way through every possible gap in the layers of our clothing. I was extremely cold, but I didn’t dare say anything if the kids and our injured guy weren’t complaining. The children didn’t have gas masks like we did and our extra mask was too big for either of them, so we wrapped their faces in several old scarves that we discovered in the home we found them in. In fact, that was probably better for them because the rubber from the mask seemed to transfer the cold directly to my core.

One foot forward, focus on the next step. Keep going. The cold is already less than it was up north. There’s going to be a shelter for the night in only a couple of hours. Keep an eye off to the wood line. Listen for sounds other than the struggle of the group
. My mind repeated small little phrases like this over and over while we trudged along wearily eating up the miles.

We’d need to start looking for uninhabited shelter in about an hour. Otherwise, we could end up walking after dark and we really didn’t want to do that. Although the sky was clouded over with ash- and soil-laden clouds, the days were noticeably warmer than the nights. Plus, things tended to emerge from wherever they hid or rested during the day.

We turned a bend in the road and up ahead I saw a large hotel sitting beside the road with dark smoke billowing from a chimney. It resembled a mountain ski lodge that I’d visited in Utah one winter during college. From what I could tell, the entire building was designed to look like a giant log cabin. Newly painted signs beside the road announced that the hotel was “OPEN FOR TRAVELERS” and “SMALL FEE FOR SHELTER FROM THE WEATHER”.

I held up my hand in the gesture instructing the group to stop that Jesse had taught me. I turned around and trudged back towards the others. We huddled in a small group and I told them what I’d seen just up ahead.

“There’s a hotel up around the bend with signs advertising rooms for rent,” I said. Rebecca’s eyes squinted through the goggles of her mask as she smiled and I knew which way her vote would go.

“How much do they want for a room?” Trisha asked absentmindedly.

“We don’t have anything of value to pay for one,” Jesse replied.

“Oh, yeah,” she answered with her head held low.

I glanced at the darkening sky and said, “Should we go in and see if there’s something we can trade for a room?”

“Maybe only one of us should go,” Jesse suggested. “The rest can stay hidden.”

I regarded the composition of our group. We had an injured black guy, two attractive women, a smart-aleck teenage girl and two kids. Maybe I was remembering how things used to be and stereotyping people, but I didn’t think our group’s diverse dynamic would sell well in central Oklahoma. “I’ll go,” I replied.

Jesse nodded in understanding and ushered everyone off the road into the trees. “Alright, brother. I’ll be right here waiting for you,” he said. I shook his hand and dropped my backpack beside him, then started back towards the hotel.

I felt extremely exposed as I made my way over the open parking lot towards the building and my mind was unconsciously picking out places to hide if I came under fire. The snow was less than ankle deep and I could tell by the huge piles of snow ringing the parking lot that efforts had been made recently to keep the area clear of snow build-up. There were a couple of vehicles sitting vacant in the lot, but not many.

About the only modern-looking part of the old log hotel were the double glass doors leading inside and the lighting fixtures that no longer had power to juice them. I walked up to the doors and pulled them open. Several people sitting on couches in the lobby looked up from books and board games at me. I felt a little silly standing there with the snow blowing in softly from outside, staring at a group of what appeared to be extremely civilized people. I felt their eyes on me and I could feel myself begin to sweat a little bit in the surprisingly warm air of the lobby.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Come in or go back out. All the warm air is escaping!” an older man said from a barstool that had been placed against the customer side of the service desk.

“I… Uh. Oh, sorry,” I muttered and stepped completely inside to let the door close behind me. I looked around the room and the scene before me was surreal. A few seconds ago, I’d been standing in a winter-bound post-apocalyptic America and now…this.

The main lobby was fairly large and cozy with lots of couches and a giant fireplace that emitted more than enough heat to keep the room warm. Most of the furniture and artwork were southwestern in nature and I saw more than a few old cow skulls on the walls. The people ranged in age from a few children up to the man at the counter, who I’d guessed to be about sixty. If I’d stumbled in here before the bombs, the only thing out of the ordinary would have been the man along the rear wall facing the door. He was dressed in army clothing and held a rifle similar to mine across his lap. Thankfully, he was a black man, so I didn’t think we’d have a problem for Jesse if these people actually could provide us a place to stay for the night.

“Come in. Come in,” the old man said as he gestured me over to the counter.

I felt it was appropriate to stomp the snow off of my boots and then walked over. “Hi, I saw the signs…”

“Now, wait a minute son,” the man cut me off. “Around here, we consider it rude to talk to each other with one of those fancy masks on.”

My hand absently touched the canister on my gas mask. I’d been wearing it for so long and had gotten so used to talking with it on that I’d completely forgotten that I was wearing it. I lifted my hood back from my head, pulled off the beanie cap I wore, then took off my gloves and loosened the buckles that kept my mask tight against my face.

“Much better,” the man said after I’d removed my mask. “Now, please go on.”

I nodded and said, “I was walking down the road and saw the signs. I don’t have much in the way of trade, but your signs said it was cheap to stay the night.”

“It sure is. The only payment we require is information from the outside world,” he replied.

“That’s it?”

“That’s all, son. We’re sandwiched between Tulsa, Oklahoma City and the McAlester Army Ammunition Depot, just to the southeast. All three of them took direct hits from the nukes. Mark over there,” he gestured to the soldier in the corner, “thinks that OKC took two because the size of the population and the air force base there.”

“Geez, we really got hit hard didn’t we?” I muttered.

“If you’re gonna hit something like the United States, you better make sure it’s a knock-out punch or else we’re gonna kick your butt to next Tuesday,” the soldier in the corner said.

“Don’t mind him. He should just be thankful that he wasn’t on the base and he’s alive. My name’s Jasper, what’s yours?” the old man asked as he extended his hand to shake mine.

I grasped his hand and said, “Chuck. I’m coming from Illinois, making my way south.”

“Alright, I bet you got lots of information then!” Jasper said as he clapped his hands together slightly. “We’ve got some soup. Don’t taste like much, but it’s warm and will fill you up…” he paused and assessed my appearance. “You traveled all the way from Illinois on foot? Where’s your backpack?”

“I didn’t know what to expect, so I hid it in the woods before I came in,” I replied truthfully.

“That’s smart, Chuck,” Mark said. “Well, don’t worry. Besides me, the most dangerous thing
in
here is Monica’s cooking.”

“Shut up, Mark,” a lady about the same age as Jasper, whom I assumed was Monica, retorted. “The only thing dangerous about you is your gas!”

That brought about a few chuckles from the others in the room and Mark waved his hand to dismiss her. “We don’t mean anyone any harm,” he continued. “But mark my words: If you start any trouble, you’ll regret it.”

I stared at him for a moment and wondered what he meant. “Well, don’t worry, Mark. I’m not one to cause problems. We’re just passing through and this looked like it might be a nice place to stop,” I replied.

“Who else do you have with you?” Jasper asked while he searched over my shoulder through the glass doors. Shit. That was the second time in as many minutes that the old man had either noticed something or caught a slip in my conversation. He was extremely observant and I’d have to keep an eye on him.

“I’ve got some traveling companions—also in the wood line with my backpack,” I said as an aside. “We didn’t know what to expect, so I came in to check it out.”

“Most expendable one in the group, huh?” Mark asked. I didn’t like him.

“No, I volunteered to come in and check things out,” I replied.

“Well, Chuck. As you can see, we’re harmless,” Jasper said. “Most of us was here before the bombs and we were lucky enough to have a trucker staying overnight at the hotel during the attack.” Jasper leaned forward and placed a hand over his mouth and made it seem like he was going to speak so only I could hear. But then he began talking louder than he’d done before and I could tell he got a kick out of teasing the soldier. “Mark was in the National Guard. He was a trucker for a food distribution company and had a full semi truck full of food. Crazy bastard had his uniform and that gun in his truck with him.”

“Good thing too, Jasper. You’ve needed me.”

“Yes. Yes, you’ve came in pretty handy,” Jasper said to Mark. “Anyways, even after what, five or six months? We’ve still got quite a bit of food because we ration it and stretch our resources. All that snow outside is drinkable once we boil and then filter it through the hotel linens a few times, so we usually make soup from the melted snow and one or two cans of whatever comes off the truck next. It keeps us alive until the spring. There has to be a spring soon…” he trailed off and began rubbing his thumb along a rock. I recognized it as an old worry stone by the groove that his thumb had made over the years.

“I appreciate your offer to let us stay,” I said. “There are five of us, plus two children. We’d only need one room.”

“Bah, we’ve got an entire hotel. We can give you anywhere from one up to six rooms, but we only heat the lobby, so it may get cold in your room. That’s why most of us stay here instead of our rooms during the day.”

“Homes, Jasper. Those are our homes now!” Monica chided him as she paused in her knitting.

“Our ‘homes’,” he corrected himself as he made air quotation marks with his fingers. “Anyways, we’re isolated out here. Too far north of Interstate 44 to get a lot of foot traffic and we’re starving for information. Most of our electronic things were fried by the EMPs from the nukes that detonated all around us so the radios don’t work and neither do any cars made after 1980.”