Final Chaos

19

They watched the windows for hours, until night fell and they couldn’t see anything. Even so, Jim stayed by the door, and once or twice went out to walk around the perimeter of the house, looking for any sign of the Carpenters. Or anyone else.

But the Carpenters didn’t show up. Maybe they’d decided it was too risky. Maybe they’d decided it wasn’t ethical. Who knew. It wasn’t like Aly knew the family at all or what they were like. She’d heard her uncle bad mouth them more than a few times, but he did that to practically everyone. So it didn’t mean much.

It was even possible that Jim had misunderstood or misheard them. He had been, after all, hiding behind a tree, fairly far away from them.

It had been an exhausting day. More tiring than any day she could remember. And more emotionally draining, as well. Somehow, she’d managed to push the thoughts of her mother’s very recent death to the back of her mind and soldier on with the tasks that needed to be done.

But when the night came and she was lying alone in bed in an unfamiliar room, the memories of earlier that day came flooding back to her.

Jim was staying up, doing the first watch. He was supposed to wake up Rob somewhere around 3:00 AM, and she hoped he did, rather than try to do the whole shift himself. That was one of the things they’d argued about, Jim trying to do everything himself and taking on too much.

Rob was asleep on the couch in the living room, and Aly slept next door.

Aly had taken the room with the double bed, which had been her uncle’s. The bed smelled faintly of urine and alcohol, and there weren’t even any sheets on it. Although it wasn’t like she cared.

It took her hours to fall asleep. Her mind was filled not just with thoughts of her mother, but of everyone else she knew. What would happen to them all? Would they starve? Would they die violent deaths?

Or would everything just somehow work itself out?

She didn’t think so.

But she could hope.

Although she knew somewhere deep down that it was safer not to hope. It was safer just to keep going.

Finally, she fell asleep.

She woke early the next morning, with Jim sleeping next to her in bed. It was the first time in weeks they’d slept in the same bed. Even before the separation, Jim had spent plenty of nights downstairs on the couch rather than in bed with her.

The day was a strange one. Rob and Jim were both exhausted from staying up for their watch, and they took shifts taking brief naps.

The neighbors didn’t show up that day, nor did anyone else. There was no sign at all of the outside world. No sound of passing vehicles. No voices anywhere. The battery powered radio continued to not work. Nor did their cell phones.

Everyone in the house was anxious. The atmosphere was tense. It felt as if any moment something might happen, as if someone might show up with a gun, demanding their food.

And that was what made doing the housework so strange. Because in a way, it was almost as if they’d moved into an old house with some roommates, and had to clean it up to make it habitable.

Of course, in that situation, they wouldn’t have been fearing for their lives. Or for humanity at large, wondering what the future held for society.

There was plenty to do, and they all more or less wordlessly agreed that the best thing to do was keep busy.

Aly kept watch for the first part of their second night there, then Jessica relieved her.

The second day was more of the same. Cleaning the house. Organizing the supplies. Eating a little. Chatting, but not much.

The house had city water, which wasn’t working. There was only the little that was left in the pipes.

Since the lake wasn’t far away, they’d never be short on water. Jim mentioned that they could disinfect it with a few drops of bleach. But of course that wasn’t ideal, since bleach itself is toxic if you drink enough of it.

So they boiled the water. The lake water was likely clean enough on its own that they could have drunk it as it was, but they didn’t want to risk it.

Fortunately, the house’s stove still worked. It was gas, but there wasn’t a city gas line, so it was set up the old fashioned way, with a large tank of gas outside the house, with a line running into the kitchen.

The second day bled into the third, and the days started to run together.

It was more monotony than anything else. There was no sign from the outside world. Once or twice, a car drove by. They could hear the tires on the gravel road down the driveway, and they waited in tense silence until the vehicle had passed. But nothing happened.

And it seemed like nothing ever would.

Aly wished there’d be something. Some sign. Something to tell them what was happening.

Maybe they were doing this all for nothing. Maybe Rochester and Pittsford were fine. Maybe the power was out, but things hadn’t collapsed into chaos like Jim had predicted. Maybe they’d feel like fools in a couple weeks when they left the house and everything was more or less the way it had been. Only Aly would have lost her job. And Jim would have suffered losses with his computer shop.

Aly continued to try not to think about her mother. The photo album that Jim had brought along didn’t help much with that goal. But it did offer her some comfort and she found herself flipping through the album at odd moments through the day before getting back to work.

Unfortunately for everyone, there wasn’t enough work to last the entire week.

By the end of seven days, the house looked completely different. As if it had never been cleaner.

Every surface was dusted and polished. Every single bottle and piece of trash had been taken outside to the shed in the same trash bags that they’d brought their gear in. Some of the glass bottles were saved, since they might be useful in the future.

All their gear was neatly organized according to use and frequency of need.

Everything was in its proper place.

Now it seemed there was nothing to do but wait.

There was still no sign of the Carpenters.

It wasn’t until the eighth day that something happened.

That morning, Aly was up early. She hadn’t been able to sleep well the night before, finding herself tossing and turning through nightmares. So she’d dragged herself out of bed a couple hours earlier than normal, just when the sun was starting to poke out over the trees.

Jim was already up as well, making coffee in the kitchen, even though it wasn’t his watch shift.

“Nothing?” she said.

He shook his head.

Things were still a little tense between them. They’d agreed to a sort of truce. No more arguing. No more fighting. But they hadn’t resolved whatever it was there issues were.

They’d had to spend plenty of time together, and not just in the cleanup. Jim had insisted that she and Rob learn how to fire and handle a firearm.

Since they spent as little time outside the house as possible, most of the firearm training took place right there in the living room.

Jim had showed her how to empty and load his revolver. Then he’d taught her a couple different grips, helping her find the one that she preferred. He’d taught her how to hold it with both hands, with her hands well away from the cylinder and the hammer.

She’d learned that when the gun fired, pieces of lead and other matter could discharge sideways, burning her hand.

And the hammer, well, it was good to keep out of the way of that.

Jim had taught her and Rob that they needed to first work on simply holding the gun still as they pulled the trigger as fast as they could.

It’d taken her a couple days to get that down.

Since they didn’t want to waste the ammo they had, or draw attention to themselves, they limited their actual outdoor practice to a couple shots here and there.

“Want some coffee?”

“Yeah, two scoops,” said Aly.

Jim shook his head. “Rations. Remember?”

Aly groaned, but said nothing.

Suddenly, the front door flung open.

It was Rob, who’d been outside patrolling the property.

“You’ve got to see this,” he said.

They followed him outside unquestioningly.

From where they stood in the driveway, they could see something off in the distance. It hung over the trees, far away. At first, to Aly’s sleepy eyes, it looked like a huge dark cloud.

But it wasn’t a cloud.

It was smoke.

A huge pillar of smoke, rising high into the sky.

It was intensely black. Dense and thick.

“What is it?” said Aly.

“It’s the start,” said Jim. “They’re burning buildings now.”

It was the answer they’d been waiting for. It was the sign from the outside world.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the one they’d been looking for.

Behind them, a noise startled them.

It was the unmistakable sound of rubber tires crunching on the gravel.

Aly turned to see a beat up old pickup truck speeding towards them down the driveway.

Aly froze. Her eyes got wide. She felt paralyzed by fear.

The pickup was getting closer.

Only mere feet away.

She could see the driver’s face clearly through the battered windshield.

Jim’s strong hands grabbed her and pulled her out of the way.

He pulled her hard, and she fell down, her face hitting the gravel. Somehow, in the process, Jim fell too. She must have tripped him accidentally or something.

Someone screamed out.

Was it Rob?

Had he been hit by the truck?