Staying Alive

28

John had been walking through the suburbs for what felt like hours. But he had no way of knowing the time.

The sky was cloudy, blocking the moonlight. The suburbs were dark. There were no streetlights. No ambient light from homes. No light coming from Philadelphia.

So far, John hadn’t run into anyone. He hadn’t seen a soul.

Once, he’d heard the rumbling of a truck, probably a diesel. John hadn’t waited to find out who it was or what they wanted. It was probably the rogue militia. John had ducked into a nearby backyard, hopped a fence, and moved a whole street over, changing his direction from north to east.

After a while, he’d gotten out of earshot of the truck, and he started heading north again.

It was hard to keep track of which way he was headed. He remembered how to find the North Star. He’d been taught it as a boy, and for some reason the information had always stuck with him. It had seemed like a neat trick at the time. Now, his life could depend on it. Unfortunately, there was no North Star visible tonight with the heavy clouds.

So he relied instead on his knowledge of the layout of the streets. He knew the pattern well.

At least, he hoped he knew it well.

He was hoping he was heading north again. But he wouldn’t know until he reached Route 30.

He knew he was south of Route 30. Once he crossed over it, he’d know he’d been heading in the right direction. Route 30 ran east from Philadelphia to Lancaster and beyond. It ran right through the Main Line, running parallel to the train line for which the area was named.

Once or twice, John saw candle lights flickering in houses. Mostly, though, there was nothing but tightly drawn curtains. Many of the driveways had cars still in them. Many people must have stayed home, not trying to flee. Or maybe they had, and they’d encountered some roadblock and returned to the relative safety of their home. There, though, they were likely to starve to death. Or meet some even worse fate.

The horrors of the new world in which John found himself had started to lose some of their intensity. John no longer found himself surprised when he saw something horrible, or when he thought of the horrors that the people here would soon face. Everything had somehow been softened for him. It was because of what he’d been through. He knew that and he was aware of it. His mind was recalibrating itself, as human minds do. He was adapting.

But he didn’t know if that was good or not.

John only found one dead body. John didn’t feel anything when he looked at the body. The horrors so far had sapped his compassion completely.

He peered down to examine her, merely out of strategic curiosity. It was a woman in her early 40s. Everything that she’d possibly had of value had been stripped from her. She lay there in mud-stained shorts and ripped t-shirt. Her shoes were missing, and there were marks on her neck. It looked as if someone had forcefully torn a necklace off her. On her fingers, there were marks from where a ring, probably a wedding ring, had rested for a long time.

The thing that should have disturbed John the most was that her skull had been broken open. But he merely studied it, trying to determine the cause of the injury.

He was disturbed by his lack of emotional response. He also knew that he had almost met a similar fate many times. Possibly a similar fate awaited him in the future.

There was no way to know. He was gradually developing his own strange sort of Zen philosophy about the whole situation. Maybe it was his own attempt to deal with what had happened, and to deal with his decreasing sensitivity. Maybe it was just his mind, unused to solitude, running in a different way than it ever had before.

In the city, he’d lost track of how many bodies he’d stepped over and walked past.

But there were more people there. And things had happened faster than out here.

Soon enough, there would be more bodies. And there was nothing John could do about that. He couldn’t change the fates of those here. He couldn’t help them.

The only thing he could do was to try to look out for himself.

John had come up from fairly far south, from where the Schuylkill River had taken him. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the unmistakable Route 30 ahead of him.

He had emerged from cutting through an apartment complex into an area that was less residential and more commercial. There was a gym, a gas station, and a small mini mart.

John approached Route 30 cautiously. It was a large four lane road. Normally, it was jammed with traffic at all hours of the day. Now, there wasn’t a car to be seen.

At least not from where he stood.

But when he moved forward, crossing the road, he saw something about a mile down. He stopped in the middle of the empty road and peered down. He couldn’t quite make out what it was. But it looked a lot like a military blockade. There was a large truck blocking at least part of the road, parked perpendicular to the lanes.

John hurried across the road, taking cover in some bushes on the other side. He hoped that no one had seen him. He waited, unmoving, crouched in the bushes, for ten minutes before he decided to move on.

Heading north, there was a long curvy road that ran up a large hill, towards Valley Forge Park. Beyond that, there was the King of Prussia Mall, which at one point had been the largest in the country. Maybe it was the third largest now. John couldn’t remember, not that it mattered much anymore.

John followed the road, staying parallel to it. He moved through backyards, keeping as far away from the houses as he could. If he made sure to follow the road, there wasn’t a chance that he wouldn’t be heading north. That was an advantage given the cloudy sky.

John didn’t stop to eat or drink anything, even though he was hungry and thirsty. He knew it was important to get as far away from the suburbs as possible while he still could.

Up ahead, there were two possible routes. John could cut through Valley Forge Park, where George Washington had camped out for a winter with his men, avoiding the British who had occupied Philadelphia. Or he could cut through the mall and surrounding area. There were houses around Valley Forge, but there were also huge swathes of open land that he could hide out in. It could be a good place, but then again… who knew what could be waiting for him there in the woods.

John remembered going to Valley Forge as a kid with Max. They’d somehow gotten hold of some fireworks that were illegal in Pennsylvania. Maybe a friend had bought them on a family trip or something. John couldn’t remember now, and it didn’t matter anyway. But he thought about it as he walked, and tried to remember. The memory wouldn’t come. Another one of those lost moments. Seemed appropriate for a lost civilization.

Or almost lost. John wondered if there’d ever be a chance to rebuild. So far, things had gotten so far out of hand so quickly that he didn’t see how it would be possible. At least not for a long, long while.

Valley Forge was only about fifteen miles from Philadelphia, far enough away that it had given Washington and his troops a safe haven. The way the landscape had worked, they would have seen the British coming from miles away. But that was long ago. What had been farmland then had been developed.

John’s other option was to cut through the King of Prussia Mall area. Its advantage was that there weren’t many homes there. That could cut the risk of exposure—the fewer people there were the less likely John was to be seen.

There were a lot of stores in the King of Prussia area. That meant a lot of goods. John knew there were hiking and camping stores. There were probably plenty of people who’d had the idea to head to those stores in search of things to help them survive. Maybe the rogue militia was there. Maybe there were other dangers John hadn’t even considered.

He had a little while to decide. The road was long. His shoulder was killing him. His back ached too, from the weight of the pack. The hoe helped as a walking stick. He was able to transfer some of the weight of the pack onto it with every other step.

There was a rumbling on the road. The sound of engines. Someone was approaching.

John crouched down behind a large rose bush. He was in the backyard of a stone home. It wasn’t unusual for homes in the area to be 200 years old or more, and this one could easily have been that old. It was nicely maintained, with a tidy garden. There weren’t drawn curtains on this home, and there was no vehicle in the driveway. Likely, the occupants had left.

John briefly considered whether he should break into the home to hide out for the coming day. He didn’t know the time, but if he had to guess, he would have said it was about three in the morning. There were still a couple good hours of hiking through the night. It was better to get farther away than to stay here. But it wasn’t like the rose bush was the greatest hiding place.

John waited too long making up his mind. Before he knew it, the sounds were closer than ever.

They must have been trucks. Large, heavy trucks. He felt the rumbling beneath his feet.

To John’s horror, the trucks stopped somewhere nearby. He couldn’t see them. The house was blocking the way. He could hear them, rumbling, the engines clearly idling. The engines cut off, leaving silence.

Then came the shouts. Orders being barked out. Brusque and crude.

Gunshots, loud, in quick succession.

Horrible screaming. Calls for help.

The truck engines started again. John heard the trucks driving off.

It had all happened so fast. John barely had time to process it all.

He knew he should stay behind the bush. But the cries for help continued. The soldiers, or whoever they were, seemed to have left in the trucks, leaving behind their victims.

John stood up. He had a choice. Did he move on, cutting through the next yard, or did he go address the screams?

He thought of Lawrence, who had died in his arms. John didn’t know whether Lawrence’s insistence on helping people had been foolish or not. He’d thought it was, and he’d convinced Lawrence to leave the city. That was what had gotten him killed. Then again, he surely would have died had he stayed…

John walked to the road, working his way through the tidy gardens that lined the side yard of the old stone house.

Across the road, there was a woman in the front yard. She bent over a man who lay on the ground.

“Help me!” she yelled, spotting John.

Why did she think John was someone she could trust? For all she knew, he could be someone who wanted to further harm her and her family.

John didn’t know why, but he rushed across the street, setting his backpack down to bend over the man.

The woman had tears streaming down her face. Her hair was tangled. Blood was on her hands from holding the man. He must have been her husband. And he was dead. There wasn’t any way to save him. His eyes were open and he wasn’t breathing. He lay still on his back, blood all over his torso. The spurts of gunfire had torn open his chest and stomach.

“I’m sorry,” said John. “He’s dead.” It felt strange stating the obvious.

“He can’t be dead, he just can’t.”

There was nothing more to say. John didn’t need to convince her that he was dead.

John put his arm around her shoulder. He didn’t tell her that everything was going to be OK. He couldn’t bring himself to utter those words.

“I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”

“He was your husband?”

She nodded. Her face was red and blotchy from the tears. Her body was shaking. John tightened his arm around her, pulling her close to him.

Maybe he should have moved her away from the corpse. That was what people did sometimes after tragedies, soothing their emotions by removing them from the body. She was staring into her dead husband’s lifeless eyes. The body was a reminder of the horrors that had just passed, and the horrors that would pass. John didn’t see the point in shielding her from reality. Sooner or later, they’d all have to face it.

“What happened?” said John.

“They came,” she said, between sobs. “Yesterday. They came yesterday. They wanted food and… John wouldn’t give them what they wanted… They said they were being nice… They’d give us one more day… I pleaded with him, but he said we’d die without it…”

So her husband was named John as well. What a strange coincidence.

“You don’t have any food?”

“None,” she said, shaking her head. The tears still hadn’t stopped and her body still shook violently. “They took everything… Everything…”

Comforting her wouldn’t do any good. She could come to terms with her husband’s death and she’d still be dead soon enough without food.

“Do you have any family around here? Children? Any friends?”

She shook her head.

It was all too common not to know one’s neighbors. John remembered his own situation back at his apartment in Center City, the apartment he’d never see again.

John had become somewhat desensitized to death and violence. That didn’t mean that he had no reaction whatsoever to the dead body on the ground in front of him. It just didn’t hit him hard like it should have. Truthfully, it barely hit him at all.

But while his emotions had become blunted, something else had changed in him. John had always looked out for himself. He’d looked after his own money, his apartments, his clothes. He’d had his own best interests in mind, and no one else’s. He’d mocked Lawrence’s attitude, and had brought Lawrence along only to serve his own ends.

It wasn’t like now he was going to try to go and save the whole world. It was impossible. But maybe while trying to save himself, he could help one single person. This woman, who’d lost her husband. Why didn’t she deserve a chance?

“Come with me,” said John.

“What?”

“I’m getting out of here,” said John. “I’m heading north. My brother has a farmhouse. I’m sure he’s there, with the whole place set up with everything he needs. I don’t know if I’m going to make it up there. But at least there’s a chance. Come with me. Maybe we’ll make it out of here.”

She just looked at him. Her sobbing slowed down.

“You’re going to die here,” said John. “Without food, you won’t make it. And the militia will keep killing, even when it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think many will survive here.”

John didn’t know what to expect, whether she’d say yes or no.

Finally, after a long pause, she nodded her head silently at him.

John stood up and offered the woman his hand.

Taking her along would have its risks. But John would be lying if he told himself he was only doing it as some type of selfless sacrifice. Sure, he wanted to help her. But that self-serving part of himself still did exist somewhere inside him, albeit in smaller quantities than before. Two people instead of one definitely had its advantages. It meant one person could keep watch while the other slept. It meant two people to fight, not just one.