Grants Pass (14 page)

“
Take? Like
from the old man?”

“
Yes.”

“
But, what
if they are willing to trade?”

“
That
doesn’t happen anymore, Ryan. We’re the only good people left in the world.
It’s just going to be me and you. But, we’ll need to get more supplies if we’re
going to survive all of this. We just need to stay strong until things get
better.” He looked at the bottle in his hand. He had drunk nearly half of it.
Satisfied, he corked it and set it down beside him. “Now we should get some sleep.
We’re going to leave early tomorrow morning.”

****

We left before the sun rose the
next day. Brett was already packing up the truck before I woke up. I was only
awake for five minutes before I was back in the passenger’s seat and we were
driving away.

“
What were
you reading last night?” Brett asked, after driving an hour in silence.

“
What?” I
asked. I had been completely absorbed in the landscape around us.

“
The book,”
he replied, “which one was it?”

“
It’s a
fantasy story. It’s called
The Griffin Rider
. The story is about a boy
who finds the last griffin in the world.”

“
What does
he do with it?”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Well, he
found the last griffin in world. That means it’s extremely rare. He could sell
it for millions of dollars. They’re big creatures, so he could even train it to
defend him. He could do anything with it. So, I’m wondering, what did he do
with it?”

“
He
befriended it.”

“
Oh,” Brett
said, and he drove on.

****

It wasn’t before long that we saw
a car in front of us. It was an actual car, a small sedan of some Japanese
make. Once again, I was told to wave down the car.

The vehicles were soon stopped with
our truck parked right behind the car. My brother pulled out my father’s gun.
He checked the magazine, making sure there was a full clip. He then put the gun
back together and shoved it into his waist belt.

“
Hello,”
called out the driver.

“
Hello
there,” my brother called back, approaching the car. I was leaning out the
window, watching what was going on.

“
Are you
interesting in trading?”

“
That
depends, are you going to Grants Pass?”

“
Sure am.
I’d be daft if I wasn’t. It’s supposed to be the only safe haven.”

“
Really
now?” my brother asked. “That’s too bad you won’t get there.”

Brett pulled out the pistol and
fired into the window. I could see the flashes bounce off the inside of the car
and the driver twitch as the bullets pierced him. My brother fired until there
was blood splattered on the windshield, and finally shoved the gun back into
his belt.

“
Come on,
Ryan,” he shouted, starting to walk back to the car. “Let’s see what he had in
his trunk.”

But, before I could even put my hand
on the handle, the backdoor of the car swung open. It smashed right into
Brett’s legs, knocking him to the ground. I could see a man get out of the
backseat. He must have been resting under a blanket, for a blue cloth fell off
of him as he stood up. The man was wielding a shotgun.

It took the man the same amount of
time to cock the gun as it did for Brett ready his weapon. I saw both go off. A
splash of blood flew out of the man’s back, right behind his heart. He started
to fall. Brett, however, got a more gruesome wound. The man had been aiming for
his face, and he had aimed true.

My eyes snapped shut at the sight of
my brother. He was dead, instantly killed by the shot. There was no doubting
that.

There was nobody left but me along
the road. There was nobody else alive. There was nobody to protect me.

I could do nothing but curl up in
the seat of the truck.

****

“
Kid?” It
was the first word I heard as I woke up.

“
Wha—?” I
started. I couldn’t finish the sentence. Realistically, I couldn’t even
identify where I was.

“
Kid, are
you okay?” My eyes focused on the speaker. It was a woman. She seemed
middle-aged, and it looked like she had been walking for hundreds of miles.

“
Kid, are
you okay?” she asked again.

I shook my head. I remembered what
happened now. My father and my brother were dead. I was far from ‘okay’.

“
What
happened here?” the lady continued. I noticed that there were a few other
people behind her. They were investigating the bodies.

“
They shot
each other,” I said quietly.

“
Did you
know any of them?”

“
Yes, my
brother.”

“
Oh, god,”
she stammered, stepping back a little. “I’m sorry. Do you have any other
family?”

“
No, my
father is dead.”

“
What about
your mother?”

“
I never
knew her.” I could feel tears start to well up.

“
Well, kid,
do you have a name?”

“
Yeah,
Ryan.”

“
Well, Ryan,
I think you’d better come with us.”

“
Where are
you going?”

“
To Grants
Pass. It’s one of the few safe havens in the States.” Then, the lady’s face
switched to a frown. “Or at least what used to be the States.”

I sat in silence for a few moments,
pondering it all over. I made my decision in only a few seconds.

“
All right,”
I replied. “Just let me say goodbye to my brother first.”

As I walked over to my brother’s
corpse, the group of adults was already starting to take supplies from our
truck. I leaned over Brett. I let a few of my tears fall into his body. I knew
he had only wanted to protect me. He wanted to try and take my father’s place, and
now I had neither of them.

 
I noticed
the pistol lying next to his hand. Without thinking I shoved it into my waist
belt.

“
Carrie,”
shouted one of the men rummaging around the truck. “Look what I found!” The man
held my book,
The Griffin Rider
, in his hand.

“
Literature
will be worth a lot soon,” Carrie nodded. “Put it in the safe.”

“
I found a
few others, too.”

“
Put them
all in.”

“
Those are
mine,” I stated, standing up.

“
Sorry,
kid,” the lady said. She frowned as she spoke. “I’ve got a theory that things
like books are going to be quite valuable soon, whether fiction or non-fiction.
I don’t want them to get destroyed.”

“
But, my
father bought them for me.”

“
I’m sure he
did, but there are better uses for the books. You will see what I mean later.”

“
I want my
books back.”

“
Kid, that’s
not going to happen.”

“
I want my
books!” I yelled. Before I knew it, my father’s pistol was in my hand. I fired
off the last of the bullets. I saw the lady and the other adults collapse to
the ground. The man with my book was the last one to fall.

Silently, I shoved the pistol into
my belt, just like Brett would have done.

Once again I was alone. Though, this
time, I knew no one was going to protect me.

Hopefully I would be able to get one
of the cars to start, but that was a concern for later. I made my way over to
the man’s body. He was staring into the air with open eyes, a small stream of
blood flowing out of his chest. I ripped my book from his fingers, wiped the
blood from the cover, and started to read the precious words. I would go to
Grants Pass like Brett wanted me to, but for now, I needed to escape.

Brett was right: I was one of the
few good people left in the world.

Biography

Scott Almes

Scott Almes currently resides at
the University of Pittsburgh underneath a stack of calculus and physics books,
trying his hardest to get a degree in mechanical engineering. When he’s not
trying to learn the mysteries of gravity and flux, he enjoys movies and
reading.

Generally, he prefers his books
smart and to lead him to places that he’s never been, but his movies simple
enough to give his mind a break. He also thoroughly enjoys the suburban
equivalents of adventuring, even if it means a backyard campfire, a simple trip
to his friend’s cabin, or an 80 mile journey to the nearest IHOP. He has been
told that he has the ability to find humor in whatever life throws at him, and
he agrees with that statement.

Afterword

I wrote this piece to explore how
younger people might react to an apocalypse. In this story, there are two boys.
The main character is too young to be left alone, and his brother is just of an
age where normally, he’d be looking to start his own life. This story is a
thought experiment imagining how these two boys would react to the world
changing at such a critical point in their lives.

Rights of Passage

Pete Kempshall

I missed it the first time, my
eyes sliding across it like it wasn’t there. I wondered about that later, why I
didn’t register the sight immediately. For a while I convinced myself it had
been the salt wind making me squint, but to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have
noticed it even on a clear, still day. I think my brain had simply removed it
from the list of possibilities — it was like walking into your back garden and
bumping into a T-Rex.

Even when I did spot the white cloth
billowing out past the Palace Pier, my mental gears continued to grind for a
few seconds…then finally they meshed, and I was running.

“
Woah,
someone’s had their spinach.”

Diane’s words were carried on a rush
of warm air, redolent with the aroma of carrots, onions and pepper. In defiance
of its nervous churning, my stomach rumbled.

She had her back to me, stirring the
pot over the fireplace, and hadn’t bothered to glance around when I’d come
through the door like a charging elephant. After all, she didn’t need to look
to know it was me, just like I didn’t need to see her face to know she was
smiling.

When I didn’t answer she turned from
the fire. “Sorry. That was stupid of—” Her voice tailed off at the sight of me
pale and panting: I could read the thoughts flashing across her face. The
dread. “Oh God, you’re—”

“
No,” I
gasped quickly. “Not that. Boat. Out past the pier. I think it’s going to the
marina.”

The flames from the grate caught in
Diane’s eyes, glinting. “Fucking hell.”

When the little port where I lived
started going from metaphorically dead to actually dead, I knew I would be the
last man standing. Irony demanded it.

My problem meant that I’d been alone
for years essentially, even amongst family and my few friends. So if anyone was
going to be able to cope with the disappearance of every human on earth, I
thought it would be me.

Truth was, I couldn’t survive on my
own. And I knew I couldn’t stay at home, not with…not with them upstairs. So it
was clear I had to leave. I had to find survivors.

West towards Brighton had seemed the
best bet. The other way along the coast was Eastbourne — legendary seaside
dumping ground for old folk — and I couldn’t imagine anyone had survived there.

I’d never learned to drive. I was 17
at the time and had been legally entitled to start lessons for months, but it
just hadn’t seemed like a priority, not then. Now I had the freedom of the
roads, I just wasn’t confident enough to try. A little voice kept asking me
what the point was in surviving the plague just to lose control of a car and
veer off Telscombe Cliffs.

So I borrowed a bike. “Borrowed” —
that was the actual word that popped into my head, like there was someone I
could give it back to when I was finished. It belonged to the man next door —
he’d been insanely proud of it, all lightweight this and gears that. I like to
think he’d be happy someone was taking care of it.

Tiredness was still a big problem
though. Fortunately there were towns all along South Coast Road, with
convenience stores for food and clifftop pubs to rest in. After a while I even
got blasé about the various occupants I risked disturbing every time I entered
a building. Frighteningly, I was becoming desensitized.

But even with the frequent rest
stops, fatigue pulled at me like quicksand. The more I struggled against it,
the stronger it held. The intervals between rests grew shorter and shorter, and
what should have been a reasonably quick journey stretched on into days.

By the time I reached Brighton Marina
I was fit to drop. It would only have taken a short while to get to the town
centre, but I knew I simply wouldn’t make it, not before nightfall.

Besides, there were worse places to
stop. The marina complex had shopping facilities and a cluster of homes — once
fashionable and expensive — and that meant food and shelter. Plus, taking the
slip road from the clifftop meant it was literally all downhill to get there.

Except that somewhere between the
top of the road and the bottom, I passed out.

Looking back, I was lucky to wake up
at all. If they’d found me first, I’d have been an easy meal for the wild dogs
out scavenging for food every night. But I did wake up, tucked up in a bed so
tightly that I immediately thought of hospitals. My side ached and my legs felt
raw. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know it was road rash, didn’t want to
look and confirm it.

Despite my closed eyes, I felt the
shadow fall across me. I opened them — just for a second before passing out
again — and when I did it was to brilliant light streaming through auburn hair,
and a smile that gave the sunshine a run for its money.

“
Morning,
tiger. Sleep well?”

We took the bikes, hoping to make
better time. Despite the wind off the sea doing its best to unsaddle us, we
managed to coast down the marina road as the yacht slipped past the breakwater.
While our eyes had been off it, someone had furled the sails, and now the sleek
white vessel was chugging on its engines.

“
They’ve got
fuel,” Diane remarked, her eyebrows raised. Another rarity.

Whoever was at the wheel was spoilt
for choice for places to tie up. Almost all the seaworthy vessels berthed at
the marina had vanished in the early days of the plague, sailed out to sea by
panicked owners — or desperate thieves — in the belief that if they could just
get offshore, they wouldn’t get infected.

Except that by the time they sailed,
they already were.

Many of the boats moored out to sea
had since broken loose of their anchors and come back in on the tides.
Shattered fragments had been washing up all down the coast from Rottingdean to
Seaford for months. Against the odds, the anchors of two large yachts had
continued to hold... They could still be seen off the coast at Saltdean,
silent, floating tombs.

Diane and I dumped the bikes and
padded silently down to the waterfront, keeping low as we went. Crouched behind
a wall I could make out a figure steering from the back of the ship, gently
nosing it into place before jumping onto the jetty with a mooring rope. It was
hard to make out details at that distance — I guessed it was a man but the
weatherproof clothing gave the figure a bulky androgyny that would only be
decipherable closer up. One thing leapt out at me, though.

“
Check out
his belt.”

“
Yeah,”
Diane murmured. “What do you think?”

“
Can’t see
anyone else on board.”

“
They could
be below.” She paused. “But if there was anyone else, wouldn’t they be helping
to tie up?”

She had a point. The sole sailor was
clearly struggling with the ropes, and while some assistance wasn’t essential
it would certainly be desirable.

The breath hissed through my teeth.
“Let’s wait a bit longer. At least until we know for certain if there’s anyone
else on board.”

And until we knew if they were
carrying guns on their hips too.

It took a couple of weeks for me to
recover, during which time my savior breezily imparted her life story. Her name
was Diane Platts, she informed me that first morning, popping another round of
antibiotics into my mouth. Final year student of English Lit at the University
of London, down from the city for a family party when the sickness hit. Her
brother was getting married and the whole clan had gathered to celebrate the
engagement. She’d really been looking forward to it.

As it turned out, she’d been forced
to watch her entire family tree cut down in just a couple of days.

Eventually, she’d gone exploring and
discovered a place near the seafront with a working fireplace for heat and
cooking. Better yet, the owners appeared to have vacated so there was nothing
to…clean up when she moved in.

For regular supply runs the marina
shops were the closest to her new home, which is how she’d come to find me. She
raised her eyebrows in mock exasperation as she told me of the trouble she’d
had loading me into a shopping trolley and pushing me home. She had been hoping
to fill up with tins.

When I could get a word in, I gave
her the basics about me, keeping the more colorful details to myself. She
didn’t appear to notice I was withholding anything — she barely stopped talking
for the first two days, flitting around me in a flurry of nervous energy.

So mostly I watched her. Outwardly,
she was no different from the better-looking girls at school, but theirs had
been a cold beauty. They knew they looked good and used that as a weapon. By
contrast Diane’s beauty had a warmth that came from complete unawareness — or
disregard — of her attractiveness.

As I started to recover, I could
also see there was pride in her eyes, stronger with each passing day. My return
to health meant she’d done it; she’d actually saved a life. All those aunts,
uncles, brothers, sisters, all those people she couldn’t help…now at last she
could chalk one up in the “win” column.

I let her believe that. After all,
she did rescue me from a lunch date with roving packs of ravening hounds. But as
far as my physical improvement was concerned…I didn’t feel ready to tell her
she had nothing at all to do with it.

The yacht was securely moored now,
but still no-one had emerged from the cabins. On the contrary, its only
apparent crewman had disappeared below, leaving us nothing to watch except the
boat, bobbing gently in the water.

When he did reappear — and by this
time we could tell it was a he — the yachtsman had swapped his thick rubbers
and lifejacket for a chunky blue sweater, jeans and a ragged baseball cap. All
that remained of his original outfit was the holster, heavy on his right hip.

He jumped nimbly onto the jetty and
strode in the direction of the shopping complex, pausing only to rummage in his
pockets for a cigarette. Sparking up, he walked on.

We slid from cover and followed.

If the yachtsman was at all worried
that he was being watched, he didn’t show it. He sauntered along the dockside
in no particular hurry, smoking happily and stopping every now and again to
glance in a window. We kept our distance, but were still close enough to see
that he was tall — taller than either of us at any rate — and well built. The
active type, it struck me. Outdoorsy.

Finally, he stopped outside a large
chandlery, and gave the door a light push. It swung open unprotestingly, and he
smiled. Shifting his weight to one side, he stuck a hand into the back pocket
of his jeans and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper. To my side I could hear
Diane stifle a snort.

“
God,” she
murmured. “He’s brought a shopping list.”

“
You have
got to try this.” Diane passed her glass across to me, the far rim slightly
smeared from her lips. “If that’s not the best wine you’ve ever tasted I’m
going to start giving you seawater to drink. You’ll never know the difference.”

She smiled broadly. I could see her
studying my reaction as I drank, eager for my enjoyment to parallel hers.

“
It’s good.”

“‘
Good’.”
She rolled her eyes. “‘Good’? I despair sometimes, I really do.”

“
What,
should I spit some in a bucket?”

She stuck her hand out. “Give it
back. Now. Right now.”

I chuckled and passed the glass to
her. She nestled into the huge leather beanbag that marked her favorite reading
place, careful not to spill any of the wine, and opened a thick hardback. Then,
poking her tongue out at me, she directed her attention to the pages.

And so it went. Once a week we’d
loot the shops in the Churchill Square shopping precinct, her looking for
books, me for music. MP3 players were useless now, but I’d unearthed a portable
CD player and some speakers, and there were enough batteries in the shops to
last me a lifetime. I’d let her pick the alcohol — largely because I didn’t
drink much of it myself — and we were set for the week.

Every night we’d sit by the fire,
read and talk. At 22, Diane had a few years on me, had seen some of the world
where I’d seen precisely none. She introduced me to writers, styles and
concepts I’d never heard of, while I introduced her to…well, frankly very
little. But unlike every other woman I’d ever known, despite the paucity of my
own life experience she was still interested in everything that came out of my
mouth.

And every night in a small house on
the south coast, long after I’d come to believe I’d never hear it again, there
was laughter.

“
Jesus
fucking Christ!”

The yachtsman all but dropped the
cardboard boxes he was heaving through the door. We’d watched him position a
trolley outside the shop before making several trips inside, each time
returning laden with goods to load into the cart. We simply waited until he
came out, arms full of goods, and stepped into his line of sight. The idea was
that if he had his hands full of supplies he couldn’t pull his gun on us.
Seeing him standing there, though, I suddenly wondered what we’d do if he just
dropped the cartons.