The girls smiled when Karen and I made it to the kitchen just after eight-thirty. “Long night?” Hannah asked.
“Very funny,” I said. “And before you ask, no, we didn’t have sex last night.”
Ciera grinned from behind her coffee cup. “We did.” Hannah Gibbs-slapped her.
I rolled my eyes. “So what’s the plan of attack today?”
“Figure out who’s not sure about where they want to go and talk to them about it,” Ciera said. “Then once we figure out where we’re going, start packing.”
Hannah shifted in her seat. “I think it’s Monica, but I’m not really sure why.”
Karen raised an eyebrow. “I was actually expecting it to be Paige. She’s the oldest of the kids, isn’t she? Probably doesn’t want to be responsible for all of them.”
Ciera nodded. “We talked a little last night when we were moving the leftovers. That was a concern, given her history with her big sister. She didn’t want to be a caretaker all over again. I told her I’d make sure that didn’t happen, and she seemed to be more okay with the idea.”
I nodded. “I’ll talk to Monica here after a bit. Does anyone think it might one of the younger kids?”
Karen laughed. “Those girls will follow you anywhere. Trust me on this one. They told me all about your escapade. Explains why you were tossing so much last night.”
I shrugged. Ciera raised an eyebrow. “Three times.” Three times I encountered Dawson stalking me in my dreams. Three times I killed him.
“What about the night before?”
“Five.”
She shrug-nodded. “That’s not too bad, actually. It’ll get better. Eventually.”
That “eventually” wasn’t exactly comforting.
By lunchtime, I’d called Joe and Rory for updates. Joe was emailing me a list of guys near me with radio equipment they’d be willing to part with. One was in Hagerstown, not painfully far from Gettysburg. He didn’t have any new information about Gabe or Cece, not that I expected it. Rory gave me his uncle’s number so I could call him to get a feel for what he had going on, although, as I told Rory, I wasn’t sure if we were going to go that way now. After lunch, Karen took Minion and the kids down to see Anthem while I talked to Monica.
“How did you know it was me?”
I smiled. “I didn’t until just now.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I am so stupid—”
“No, you’re not. Lots of people would have responded the same way to that question. So what makes you unsure about where you’re going?”
She shrugged, then tossed her hands up. “I don’t know what good I’d be to anyone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like you were talking yesterday. Everyone’s got to have a job. Everyone’s got to be useful to be able to survive. And I don’t know how useful I am, you know? What good am I? What can I do?”
This is why you’re not supposed to be a leader, Adam. I had no idea how to respond here. She’d obviously taken my comments way too personally, probably because I wasn’t paying attention to what I said, or to how people were reacting to it. “Well, so far I know you’re a pretty good cook.”
She was clearly unimpressed with my response. “Is that really the best you’ve got?”
“Hey, that’s not bad for only knowing you for a day or so.”
“Touché.”
I watched her for a minute. “So what can you do? I don’t even know what you do for a living.”
“I’m a loan underwriter.”
“Personal or commercial?”
“Commercial. Why does that matter?”
“Means you’re good with numbers. You can read a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet. You can math good.” I smiled, and she let one slip in return. “And I know you can ride a motorcycle, right?”
She nodded. “I used to ride dirt bikes with my brothers a lot. They raced. I just rode to give them someone to chase them.” She looked down for a second. “Man, but I miss them.”
I patted her hand, glancing around the apartment for some indication of hobbies. Was that guitar there before? “You play?”
She looked up with a grin. “Since fourth grade. I thought about minoring in music in college.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Dad didn’t think it was worth my time. I still took lessons though.”
I tented my fingers. “Think about how many musicians and singers we’ve lost this week. Generations of talent. Music . . . music is an amazing tool. It can heal a fractured soul. If you can play, I bet you could teach.”
“I’m not that good. I’d never take lessons from me.”
“Don’t sell yourself short here. Even if you just teach the basics of counting time and reading music, you’ll do wonders for someone who’s just starting out. That can be pretty darned useful.” She was still looking at the floor. I gently touched her chin to make her look up.” My point is, don’t base your sense of worth on some stupid thing I said that may not even be based in reality. I’m not sure what Rory’s uncle is doing, and I probably put way too much emphasis on the whole idea of needing useful skills. And we may not even go there, remember? Everyone else seems fine with going back to Gettysburg and staying there. If we do that, you’ll be welcome. If we got to Kentucky, I’ll make sure you’re welcome, or we won’t go.”
She pulled back, eyes wide open. “Why would you do that for me? After the way I’ve been?”
“Because there’s not a lot of us left, and we have to start sticking together.”
Based on the hug I got, I guess that was the right thing to say.
After lunch, Karen, Ciera and I took the kids shopping. We left Hannah and Monica behind to do some planning for our “move.” Ciera and I both had our sidearms, having left the heavy artillery back at the apartment. Karen would have carried a gun, but we didn’t have a holster for the only other handgun we had.

The smell outside had gotten exponentially worse over the last couple of days, and even more so during the relative warmth of midday. We’d moved Mrs. Taylor back into her apartment and closed the door, which helped with the smell in the building, at least. The weather was nice enough for April that we would have liked to have the windows open, but we were surrounded by death, and any breeze threatened to completely nauseate us.
We started off at a Target a few miles south of us in Warrington. There was a Walmart in the same complex, but Karen wanted to start at the Target. “Look, I’ve been wearing the same clothes for almost a week now and I want some nicer stuff. Besides, I don’t think the asshole left me any clothes. And the ones he might have left, I wouldn’t want.”
The place was completely deserted when we entered, even though there were a couple of dozen cars in the parking lot. The younger girls went crazy in the toys and electronics, and I started to try to explain the coming reality of reading by candlelight and cooking by campfire. Then I realized they were all going to grow up far too quickly in the months ahead, and kept quiet. We ended up with a bunch of DVDs, but I made them grab almost as many books. After an hour, we headed to the front of the store, still looking for anyone in a red shirt and khakis. It almost made me nervous that we didn’t see any bodies in the building. The stench of death was still present, but not overpowering like it’d been outside. Even with no one at the registers, we went through one of them to deactivate the security tags on the clothes and DVDs. Habit? Guilty conscience? I didn’t know.
We headed to the Walmart next, grabbing what little they had for camping foods. Then we loaded up on canned goods and picked through the produce, which was looking pretty ragged. I didn’t trust the meats in the coolers, but quite a bit of the frozen stuff was still solid, especially when we dug around in the bottom of the bins. I felt a little safer with that. At the rate we were going though, we’d need another truck just for supplies. I figured we’d need a minivan to carry the kids, too, plus a horse trailer for Anthem. We’d have quite the little convoy when we headed back to Gettysburg.
I couldn’t quite call it home yet. It would be home for the girls, but what would I do after I checked Portsmouth for my other family? I briefly considered traveling west to look for Gabe and his wife, Natalie, but even if I could drive out there at a normal pace, it’d take me a few days. Post-Event? Two weeks, easily. And what are you going to do if they’re not at the ranch? Did I really want to take up to a month to go look for them? I had no idea what I’d do if they were out on one of their wilderness trips. Then again, if there were out on a trip when the Event happened, they’d have been back by now, and they wouldn’t head back out once they got home. They’d stay at the ranch and move into survival mode, whatever that would look like for them.
I was still contemplating what that would look like for us. There were ten of us at this point. I couldn’t wrap my head around everything we’d need. Food, certainly, and the stuff available in the stores wasn’t going to last forever. I guessed we were early enough in the spring that we’d be able to plant at least a few crops, but I didn’t know what. We’d probably be able to rescue some animals that would otherwise die of starvation, but even that would have its limits. We’d have to balance land use carefully between crops and animals. I mentioned it to Karen as we loaded our haul at Walmart. The kids were riding with Ciera in the SUV Monica and Paige had picked up in Philly, a newer-looking Toyota.
“Some of that I can help with, you know. That was a big part of Ben’s planning and lifestyle. We should still have quite a few farming supplies. Won’t be easy at first, because most of the equipment was horse-drawn. But we had a bunch of seeds, and he and I had talked more than once about end-of-the-world scenarios. That was a bigger deal for him than I realized, as it turns out, but no matter. It’ll help in the long run. And as long as we’re here and we know where it is, we might go back up to that feed store from the other day just to see what they might have that’s useful.”
On the way back, I glanced at her and realized she’d been staring at me for a while. “What?”
“Wondering if you’re going to tell me more about what happened at the church.”
I stopped at a traffic light out of habit, sitting there until Ciera honked at me. “Not much to tell, really. We went down there. Found her stuff, figured out what had happened, then came back.”
“You always were a lousy liar.”
I smiled, started to say something about her being better, then decided not to screw anything up. I liked that we were being nice to each other. The smile went away as soon as Dawson’s face appeared in my mind, frozen in the expression he held when I realized he was going to try to kill us. “Well, what do you want to know? I killed a guy, Karen. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that whole idea.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. Not trying to upset you. Just worried about you. How bad are the nightmares?”
“Bad enough. It’s either my bullets don’t stop him, or he starts arguing with me while he’s lying there dead, asking why I killed him.” I drove on for a bit. “I’ll be alright, I guess. Not like there’s anyone I can talk to about it.”
“Hmph. Guess I’m chopped liver over here.” She was smiling though.
“Let me guess: you’re also a licensed counselor in addition to being an insurance agent and farm wife?”
“No, and you know that, and you know exactly what I mean. Quit deflecting. I just meant that of anyone here, I know you best, and that means I can probably help you through this.”
“So who’s going to help you deal with your stuff?”
She waved off my question and turned to the window. “Didn’t you say something about needing another truck to get us all to Gettysburg?”
“Now who’s deflecting?”
She shook her head and we drove on for a bit. “It’s just so damned embarrassing when I look back. How could I let it go on for so long? Why didn’t I see what he was doing?”
“Because he’s a sneaky bastard, like most guys like that. They know how to exploit little weaknesses. You’re not the first woman to get taken in, and you won’t be the last, unfortunately. And thank you for at least checking on me.” Yay for conflicting emotions. As much as I appreciated her worrying about me, and enjoyed the flirting last night, I couldn’t help but remember why we were no longer married. She’d cheated on me one time with a guy I’d never heard of before or since. It’d been a one-time thing, but she’d completely blown off the seriousness of it at the time, almost making light of it. I’d always thought that we’d have been able to work past it if she had admitted that it was wrong. But she never had, even when confronted with the irony of her second marriage. There, she’d been the other woman to a guy who’d eventually divorced the wife he was cheating on and married Karen. Six months after the wedding, she’d caught him in bed with a coworker.
I might have gloated just a little bit.
But even with that history, I could look her at sitting next to me and be overcome by memories of the good parts of our life together. It didn’t hurt that she was just as gorgeous as she’d been twenty years ago.
It was one hell of a confusing emotional state to be in. I randomly wondered how many people had just given up after the Event and committed suicide over the losses they’d suffered and the seeming impossibility of going on.
A pair of fighters roared overhead just then, sneaking up on us from behind. They were low enough that I could tell they were F-16s, but that was all I could tell.
“Maybe from Andrews? Sometimes we get them flying over the battlefield, but not usually so low,” Karen said. “Wonder what they’re doing out this way?”
I told her about the planes I’d seen in Mississippi. “Probably just doing what they can to gather intel. They need to see where there’s movement. See where the people are.”
We were a couple of miles from the apartment, cruising up 611 when we heard several gunshots uncomfortably nearby. Ciera called me a few seconds later. I was glad we’d thought to have her take Hannah’s phone. “I heard five rounds, off to our right.”
I hit the SPEAKER button and handed the phone to Karen. “Sounds about right. Too close for comfort, too. Handgun?”
“I think so. Not heavy enough for rifle.”
We drove on, keeping the call connected. Thirty seconds later, I heard a car engine downshift off to our right, then more gunfire, this time from two different guns, louder than the first burst we’d heard. I slowed down to a crawl, trying to figure out where the car was and which way it was headed. The noise carried well because there was so little traffic, but that also seemed to make it harder to locate. We were coming up to a big commercial area at Almshouse Road when a red SUV screeched around the corner of the supermarket there. A black pickup truck followed close behind with two men trying desperately to not get thrown out of the bed.
The SUV wove through the parking lot, swerving between parked cars and shopping carts. The truck followed the aisles more rigidly, the men in back taking turns shooting at the SUV. They’d connected at least once, because smoke began seeping from the front of the SUV as it made its way toward the exit right in front of us.
“Everybody down! StopStopStop!” I punched the gas hard, trying to clear the intersection, knowing that we couldn’t get both of our vehicles through in time. But if I stopped my truck, the SUV or the truck or both would hit me. I beat the SUV with just inches to spare, counting three black men in it as it sped by. The truck flew by a second later and the vehicles continued east on the side road.
Ciera pulled up beside me. “Keep going, and don’t stop. Just beat feet back to the apartment.” The younger girls cowered in the back, but Paige was only a little hunched over in the front seat, looking almost excited as they sped off. I stared after the two vehicles as they curved back around to the south and out of sight, then followed Ciera back home. It was a tense but quiet ride.
Copyright © 2019 Bob Mueller
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