The Dark Roads (12 page)

"Pick him up," Richie told the other two men. He wished, in a way, that they would refuse. He wished that they would take the lead of the thing away from him. They didn't.

Elvis grabbed an arm and began hauling the man up. After a moment, Buddy helped, looking at Richie in an intense way.

He didn't care for it, but what could he do about it. He looked at both of his friends for a moment before speaking.
It's like the fucking
Lord of the Flies
, isn't it? We're changing to fit the circumstances,
Richie thought to himself.

"We can tie him up and leave him here, but we can't leave until tomorrow. The sun will be up soon. If he gets loose, he'll come after us if we're still here. We can set him outside and lock the doors that lead downstairs, but you never know.

“You guys remember what happens in all the movies and books when you leave loose ends. You know what happens when you talk to the bad guy for too long instead of just fucking putting a hole in his head.”

The others were all watching him with growing anxiety, knowing what would come next.

"I say we kill him before he wakes up," Richie finished, swallowing the taste of the words, wishing he could spit them out.

Elvis thought for a moment. He nodded.

They looked to Buddy, who looked back for a full minute before agreeing. He cleared his throat.

Amanda took the gun from Richie's hand, her once delicate fingers making the weapon look much larger than it really was. She aimed it at the center of Bail's face, and pulled the trigger twice, considered for a moment, then squeezed off one more shot, just to make sure.

There was no ceremony. There were no real regrets. Elvis had a few small drops of blood on his face. He wiped them away with his shirt sleeve.

They went about their chores as if nothing had happened. Buddy and Richie found and dragged all of the bodies they'd left in their wake to the front of the store, close to the windows where the sun could reach them. Sunrise was only an hour away when they finished.

Elvis and Amanda were each working on a different aspect of food and water. Elvis was making the day's meal and gathering water as Amanda filled a large microwaveable bowl with dry beans and water, sealed the lid with duct tape, and piled bags of mulch over top of it just outside of the back entrance. By nightfall they would have well boiled beans. They would likely be mush, but everyone would eat them with pleasure.

"Wish we could make a fire, some time," Elvis was fond of saying at least once a week.

"You know we can't, kid," Buddy always replied, "Fire inside when you can't get out is dangerous."

"Yeah," Elvis would say, simply, "But it'd be nice."

Richie and Buddy were quiet as they carried the dead, working without saying anything about the task, but it was obvious that Buddy needed to talk about what had happened in the store room.

He'd made the choice right with the rest of them, but Richie could read the guilt written all over his face. Neither of them was ready to broach the subject until after they'd left Bail's ruined body at the front of the place. They both looked down at the man for a long moment, both being well past disgust at the sight of gore. It was common to them, now, and didn't have much effect.

"Are we the same as him?" Buddy asked as they walked away from the pile of dead bodies.

"We're surviving," Richie said in answer.

"So were they."

"They were catching people and giving them over to a bunch of cannibals to save their own skin. That's not the same as what we do."

"How many people have you killed since this started?" Buddy asked, "Because I'm losing count."

"As many as I've had to. Just like you. Just like Elvis," Richie said.

Buddy nodded, his logical mind taking what Richie said as a kind of gospel.

"I just don't want to be the bad guys, man," Buddy declared, "I don't want any of us to be like
them.
"

"We aren't and we won't, Buddy. We do what we have to. Nothing more. Nothing less."

"Yeah," Buddy agreed, but still looked out of sorts.

Richie knew that Buddy would come to terms with all of it.
He
was in the process of doing the same. Everything he'd said to Buddy was coming from the internal dialogue he'd been having more often than not lately.

It was as if they'd just stated all of his deepest thoughts in words. Buddy's anxiety was warranted. Richie wasn't worried about
him.
Elvis was the one he was starting to worry about.

They'd have to talk to him, soon, to gauge his state of mind. His anger was coming to the surface more quickly and manifesting in a more lethal way with every confrontation they'd had with anyone. It was something to think about.

When they reached the store room, Elvis was waiting for them with a huge smile, making Buddy reconsider his thoughts about the man for a moment. He was shuffling from side to side, excited about something.

"I gotta show you guys this. You'll like this a lot!" he told them.

They followed Elvis into the store room, starting to wear their own smiles after this terrifying night. Elvis had a contagious grin.

***

"I found it," Elvis told them, "I was just lookin' around for stuff when I found it."

"Found what, kid?" Buddy asked, trying not to giggle right along with him as they walked the length of the store room.

"You'll see," Elvis said as they neared the back wall.

Richie heard the swinging door squeak open and looked back to see Amanda enter the storage area, tugging at the bottom of her new shirt with one hand while draping the old garment across one shoulder. She looked at them quizzically. He shrugged his shoulders and waved her toward them.

"Yeah," Elvis said, "You too Amanda."

They waited for her to join them, impatiently. All of them were suddenly giddy. Richie wondered if it was the stress of the situation they'd just dealt with that was making them a bit manic. He thought better of inward examination for the moment. He was too excited.

"I
found
it," Elvis said again, before pulling one of the large shelves out toward them with entirely too little effort.

They watched as an eight-foot section of the shelf came loose from the wall, slid out past the shelving that had seemed connected to it, and rolled to the side to overlap the next section. They saw a passage in the floor, leading down under where they stood.

"Holy shit," Buddy said breathlessly.

"I second that," Richie agreed.

They all looked at the portal and then up at Elvis, who was glowing with pride. He, after all, had been the one to find it. Richie and Buddy laughed out loud. Amanda simply smiled and shook her head.

"It's safe. I already put all our stuff down there. You gotta see the rest," Elvis told them as he slipped down onto the ladder, the rungs supporting him without a sound.

The group followed their friend down this new rabbit hole in the world. All of them were surprised by the discovery and weary of its existence at the same time. Had the men who'd been staying here as of late been using the area into which they were descending? Had they even known about it? Why was it there?

Richie was the last to touch his feet on the floor below. He was standing in total darkness until Elvis switched on their lantern. He spun around in the twenty by twenty-foot room, smiling again, as Elvis began to point things out, excitedly.

There were stacks of batteries everywhere. There were food pouches that were surely MRE's. There were fold out cots, of which their friend had already set up four. And the most important thing of all was the most evident.

Richie scrambled to his pack and quickly found the thermometer. The mercury line was steady at the seventy-degree hash mark. It was like winter for them.

"What the hell is it?" Buddy asked no one in particular.

"You guys don't know?" Amanda asked, her smile as wide as theirs, "It's a panic room."

"A panic room is hidden under a storage room at a random department store in Canada," Buddy said, trying the thought on for size, "Fucking convenient."

"Not really. I forget that you guys came from the southern states. Up here, we have a speaking relationship with the Canadians," Amanda said, "You remember back in '17 when the terrorist attacks
really
got out of hand?"

Buddy and Richie nodded. There had been a short time when the U.S. had seemed at the mercy of fanatical terrorist factions.

Bombings and shooting on home soil had become an almost daily occurrence by 2017. People they knew had gone as far as moving to different countries, neutral ones, to insure their safety.

Things were brought under control in 2018, when all of the American borders had been closed off completely, going against the very ideals the country had been founded upon. It was late in 2019 before anyone was allowed to leave or enter the country, but by that time the entire world had bigger problems on their hands than fighting over religion.

"Well, if you had paid attention to Canada's statements on the news starting in '16, you'd have been able to predict everything that happened after that. The Canadian government didn't agree with the way the U.S. was handling the terrorists, so they started taking things into their own hands before it got worse.

"Canada closed off travel a year before the states did. They made panic shelters a mandatory addition to every building constructed from the summer of 2016 on, along with any building that would house a large crowd of people, such as a department store. They were all to be underground. They were all supposed to have a hidden entrance so that no one without direct knowledge of the buildings would be able to find or enter them."

Amanda sat down on a cot, stretching her slim legs in front of her. She ran both hands through her filthy mop of blonde hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. Her eyes were closed and her smile stayed strong. They watched, wondering if she might have more to say. She didn't.

***

"How long do we have before sunrise, Richie," Buddy asked, already walking toward the ladder.

"Forty minutes, at best. We need to wrap things up and close ourselves in."

"Yeah, but I need something. I should be back in plenty of time. Wanna come?"

The others watched as Buddy and Richie climbed the ladder. They were making Elvis nervous. He liked things more when they were all together, but Amanda was there to keep him company. They'd already started checking through the battery stocks and were replacing the ones powering their flashlights and lantern.

"I can get most of it," Buddy told Richie, "But I need you to find something for me."

"Okay," Richie agreed, "Give me a hint."

"I need one of those inverters. You know, the ones that hook to a battery and you can run like a lamp or something off of it?"

"Gotcha. That it?"

"Yeah. I can handle the rest," Buddy said with his recently revived grin.

Richie took up a quick jog, trying to remember where the vehicle repair section was. He thought it likely that he'd be able to find the inverter in that area.

As he ran along the center aisle of the store, looking for signs that would signify which section he wanted, something caught his eye and he had to stop, abruptly. He looked at the thing for a long moment, not really knowing if it was worth taking, and finally grabbed the thick sketch pad from its shelf along with a pack of pens that was nearby. He stowed the new property and went after what he'd been told to grab.

Within ten minutes Richie and Buddy were standing outside of the entrance to the panic room, arranging the objects they'd gathered in order to carry them down the ladder without too much trouble. One of the items, a boxed up acoustic guitar, was way too large to carry. Richie finally looked down into the hole and yelled for Elvis.

"Catch this!" Buddy shouted before dropping the guitar. They didn't hear a crash, but instead were treated to the sounds of a very pleased Elvis.

Just before sunrise, they started down the ladder. Richie looked for, and found a switch that would allow him to pull the shelf back over top of the entrance so that they would remain hidden. As they descended, the glow of their lantern replaced the darkness of the shaft.

***

Cardboard scraps were everywhere. The room looked as if a psychotic child had unwrapped and destroyed five Christmas presents.

If Elvis' mother were alive to see the enthusiasm with which Elvis had unwrapped the cheap acoustic, she surely would've keeled over in fright. If she were alive to see the smile on his face as his fingers slipped up and down the frets, squealing on strings from time to time, she may have been happy enough to get back up.

"He's actually really good," said Richie as he watched Buddy pull apart the plastic casing around a pair of hair clippers.

"No shit. I never would've thought it."

Amanda was curled up on the cot she'd sat upon and claimed earlier, watching their friend as he played. His eyes were closed and his mouth moved around silent lyrics. She looked dazed and tired, as anyone who'd gone through her earlier ordeal would be. Richie hoped she wouldn't hold a grudge against him for leaving her for the short time, but he would shoulder the blame if she did.

"You want to be first?" Buddy asked, holding up the clippers.

"Don't threaten me with a good time. This hair is fucking killing me."

They set about dragging a twelve-volt battery to the back of the room where a few shower stalls had been built in, and hooked the positive and negative leads of the inverter to the posts. Richie set a folding chair up and took his seat as Buddy plugged in the clippers.

The buzz of an old barber shop filled the room and Buddy set to work shaving his friend's head to stubble. Within minutes, Richie was a new man rather than an old hippie and was giving Buddy the same treatment.

Elvis played a soundtrack of half remembered songs, humming the lyrics and sometimes, when he forgot himself, singing out loud. Richie and Buddy cringed slightly at the quality of his singing voice, but said nothing.

"You're beautiful," Richie told Buddy as the last clump of his dirty brown hair hit the floor.

"Wish I could say the same for you, my odd looking friend," Buddy jibed, putting his glasses on, "Elvis! Put that thing down for a minute and get a haircut!"

Elvis carefully propped the guitar against his cot and stood, stretching his back. He walked over to them and did something that neither man expected. He hugged them, one at a time, before sitting in the chair and patiently waiting.