White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (10 page)

Chapter Eight
 

The Purple Cat came at them out of nowhere, awash in blinding white. Annie drove by it so often that she couldn’t recall the way it snuck up on you when you came around the steep curve before Lower Eastman Road. It wasn’t there, and suddenly you were in The Purple Cat’s parking lot, taking in the smell of greasy fries and burgers, except on Fridays when they had their prime rib and broiled chicken specials on the menu.

              The last time Annie and Christian had dined at The Purple Cat, Christian swore that he was a victim of food poisoning. Given that he had a pretty ironclad stomach, Annie swore off the place from that moment forward. And here she was again, trudging through waist deep snow as they neared the path, ready to kick in the front door, which looked like it had been recently shoveled or cleared out with a snow blower. Somebody had been here recently, but Tony continued, unflinching against obstacles.

The heavy oak door seemed unmovable at first, wedged in place by an icy accumulation of snow. The path from the road led directly to the front door and was well manicured, to an almost fastidious degree. Despite Annie's protests, Tony pushed ahead, leaving their “sled” behind, marching right up to the door, and pounding his fist once, twice, then three times. He didn't wait long for a response, instead opting to kick away at the buildup of ice along the threshold, freeing up the swing of the door enough to pry it open a few inches. "What do you think you're doing?" Annie asked, looking around at the scurrying drifts of snow that seemed like they might sneak up and strangle them at any moment. Tony inserted himself through the door’s crack. He didn’t naturally fit, but he contorted himself enough to force his way through.

In the last hour, Tony started panting, nearing the end of his useful internal battery, and so the sight of The Purple Cat was a blessing for them both. All the way through their trek, he had tried his damnedest to hide the fatigue that was overwhelming his every thrust, but Annie could see right through it. She could
feel
it in the movements of their sled-- the once sturdy engine was now diminished to a wobbly surge, sputtering by on energy-deprived fumes. Tony needed to rest if he was going to get her home safely. She didn’t stand a chance of moving the sled herself, and that still shamed her to no end. Tony was nearly twice her size, so the engine in their rig could not be easily replaced.

And this
, she thought to herself,
was why women always got the shit end of the stick.
She knew it wasn’t true, that a woman could overpower brawn with brains, but in this particular situation, she fell short on both. Her womanly nature was in jeopardy.
You’re just like one of those limp fairy princesses from the animated movies, waiting in your tower for a man to save you. Isn’t that disgusting, that you’re nothing more than a Walt Disney cliché?

Annie scowled now, pushing herself through the door crack after Tony. Regardless of the conditions of the world, this was still considered breaking and entering as far as Annie was concerned. She couldn’t help the thoughts that came with ease:
Shut your mouth
.
You know as well as anybody that
this is survival of the fittest
.
And
that shit just got real.

Annie couldn’t filter the joyous giggle in her throat, as the warm air caressed their bodies upon entering The Purple Cat’s inner sanctuary. For an instant
, it reminded her of that tingling feeling that one felt when they jumped in a pool, after being in a hot tub; a euphoric sense of inexplicable bliss in every nerve of the body. It was nearly orgasmic.

“How nice does that feel?” Tony asked, releasing a series of harsh sneezes. Annie noticed that he was getting sick, probably from exerting himself so much during their trip.  

Darkness filled the void of the tavern's high-ceilinged hall. Long oak rafters reached from one end of the formerly prosperous establishment to the other. Dangling from those beams was an array of animal heads such as elk, deer, and even a black bear. Annie experienced a strange tinge in her gut, as if the animals were watching her, ready to pass some sort of moral judgment on her insurmountable weaknesses. 

Tony flicked on the light switch, but there was no response, which was to be expected. "Candlelight
it is
," said Tony. Annie detected a pleasure in that statement. The cretin never stopped thinking about his sick internal fantasies.

Igniting a long grill lighter, Tony held it up near his face, then swept it towards Annie, asking, "You okay?"

“No,” she said, “I'm not okay, actually. We shouldn't be in here. It's not our place. We weren't given permission."

Tony chuckled, holding the phallic lighter near his own face once again, leering at Annie. "Who are you, Miss Manners? I think politeness and etiquette kind of goes out the window when the shit hits the fan. In case you haven't noticed," he said, gesturing towards the lengthy bay windows along the front side of The Purple Cat, completely obfuscated by snow, "
the shit has officially hit the fan, and its spraying all over the joint. It’s every man for himself." He reconsidered that statement, smirking. “And every woman for herself, too.”

"That's what scares me," she whispered, but not loud enough for Tony to hear her. He was busy surveying their new digs, as he had an air about him that he
did not intend to leave anytime soon.

The Purple Cat was devoid of life, but it still felt
lived in
. Auras and personalities clung to every surface, though those beings could not be seen. It hummed with recent activity, though Annie could not pinpoint what that evidence looked like. Tony touched the rim of the fireplace, looking over at Annie. The bricks encircling the fireplace were apparently still warm, which was a dead giveaway. "They haven't been here all day, but they were here this morning I'd bet." 

"It's getting dark so they’ll be coming back. Wouldn’t you, if you were them?"

"They may not come back at all," Tony said, plopping himself down in a faux-leather easy chair that was directly across from the fireplace. He looked as if he was born there, as if it was designed to support his exact specifications. He couldn’t hold back on the grin that slid on to his face.

Annie wasn’t so sure about that theory. If somebody had a place like this, they would not abandon it, not in these times. 

"Why don't you throw a log on the fire and get it stoked up again?" Tony asked, really sort of
telling
, looking to Annie with an expression that was just a hair short of disrespectful. Maybe this, thought Annie, was why he was on the rocks with his darling wife.

Annie grunted. "We should at least wait outside, until it gets a little darker. I know that I'd be pretty pissed off if I came back and found somebody squatting in my spot."

The calm expression on his face told her that he wasn't listening to her, that her words held no credence. Why would he? She was a lowly
woman
after all, the sissy who was being driven around in a snow sled like an invalid, unable to help them with her dainty arms and puny back muscles. 

So
came a new request, this time louder and more insistent: "Why don't you go back in the kitchen, see what's still good to eat. See if they have any steaks. We can put them right on the fire." He paused, staring at the fireless hearth, and then looked back at Annie, then at the hearth again. "And some whiskey. Or rum. Whatever they got, just no wine or anything like that. None of that sissy stuff. Beer would be perfect."

Annie couldn't deny that he deserved to be waited on hand and foot, as he'd taken on all the brunt of their day's arduous task. And sure, he was worn out and broken down, just about ready to pass out from exhaustion... so why the hell did she feel so violated when he demanded things of her, as inconsequential as they were in the grand scheme of things?
 

"Yes, master," she said, approaching the hearth, pulling a cracked log off the neat pile to the side. She tossed a couple of logs in, adding some scrunched newspaper from beneath the pile. He didn’t seem to pick up on her mocking tone, which troubled her even more.

At the end of the day, men were all the same.

Pigs, every last one of them.

*  *  *
 

It was all a muddy blur and Annie decided just
to leave it at that. No need to explore the intricate details and fully form those thoughts, as she would never be able to relinquish them again, once they rooted deep inside of her. Annie couldn't remember more than glimpses since they had seared a steak on a grill built into the fireplace. While they watched their dinner cook, she kept looking towards the windows, as darkness overtook the entire world, even more so than the bloody snow. They sipped on cheap gin, chilled and frosty, directly from the bottle. By the time the steak was done, fuzziness was all that she could piece together. He hadn’t drugged her, but he might as well have. She only blamed herself. It wasn't like
the first time
with Tony, but it would certainly be the last. 

Annie promised.

She promised herself that it would be the last. 

The fire crackled and she jumped at the intrusive sound. The thought of being walked in on still loomed in her mind, though it was quite late in the evening now. If the current squatters of The Purple Cat planned on returning, then it would most likely be tomorrow morning, if at all. Maybe, thought Annie, they were all dead or back home with their significant others. Or maybe they didn’t even exist.

That was a lie. She thought of the warm bricks and she couldn’t buy the lie, no matter how hard she tried.  

Tony rolled over, coughing into his forearm. A sheen of sweat still clung to his forehead, reflecting the dull orange flicker of the fire. Annie tensed at the sight of his face, as their noses were now only inches apart. She hated to look at his face. He was the ugliest stud she'd ever seen. Something about him made her quake when he was near, but for the most
part, he served to disgust all of her senses simultaneously. 

With weakened arms, she shoved him away from her, turning herself towards the roaring fire.
 

She needed to get dressed again, if only to mask her failure.

The fire wasn't all that warm, though she wanted to convince herself that it was. The flames were a bastard, convincing her that she would always be safe, but in the end, she knew that to be another lie. All fires died down into only embers, on a long enough time line. 

Annie stood up, pulling on her panties and stiffened, icy sweatpants that she had found in the trunk of her car, before it was buried by the snow. Her bra was basically an icicle, causing her nipples to stand at attention as she clipped the frosty clasps behind her. Outside of the thin
blanket (some sort of Native American wall art that Christian—no,
Tony
—had ripped down during their early fugue of—
stop stop stop thinking about it!
), it was another world altogether. Annie wondered if she would grow accustomed to these temperatures eventually. Anything became bearable once you were fully submerged, or so she had found on many occasions.  

"Where are you going?" Tony
mumbled, his voice a slushy rasp, just barely audible above the hissing, cracking fire. He had taken down about half the bottle, whereas Annie was flummoxed by only a couple sips of the juniper-laced gag-juice. She was surprised he was even able to formulate words after what he’d consumed. Even more so, she hoped that nobody came back to claim their end-of-time fort of comfort.

"I'm cold," she said, though she really wanted to say:
I’m going far, far away from you, that's where I'm going
. To which he might reply;
don't pretend you didn't love that romp, sweetness
. To which she might reply;
I'm a married woman.
At which point, he’d laugh at her naivety.

But he didn't respond to her, slipping into his comfort zone that came so easy in the man-cave that was this folksy, yet greasy, restaurant.
Instead, a wheezy, sickly snore filled the grand hall of The Purple Cat. Only a few weeks ago, there would have been cheerful people dining, laughing, and sipping on craft beers. Those faceless patrons were all so happy back then. Now they were huddled together in their respective homes, struggling to stay warm, praying that the government would come save them. One day, these folks were eating sweet potato fries and crunching on garlic bread, enjoying the cozy snuggle that The Purple Cat provided to its diners, and now some of them were most likely deader than disco. If they weren't dead, then they would be on their way to dying soon enough. Some of them still probably had moldy Purple Cat leftovers in their fridge, as they too molded only a few feet away, frozen to death on their living room sofas. 

It all came rushing back.

Paulie. 

Paulie might be sitting on the sofa, just like those folks. By himself, if his Daddy had perished. Christian was always a girly man when it came to the cold, so this was the
worst-case scenario for her husband-- if he was
still
her husband. There were no papers saying otherwise, but it felt like it was over. Sometimes, reality spoke louder than formalities.