Return from the Apocalypse Read online

  Return from the Apocalypse

  By Blake Pitcher

  Book content, cover design, and cover photography

  © 2016 Blake Pitcher

  To all the kind people who have read and supported my writing.

  Thank you.

  This story is a work of complete fiction. Any similarities to anyone, ever, are purely coincidental.

  Contents

  PART ONE: North

  Chapter 1: Freeze

  Chapter 2: Melt

  Chapter 3: Splitting Wood

  Chapter 4: An Evening in Germantown

  Chapter 5: Coincidence

  Chapter 6: Elliston

  Chapter 7: Interrogation

  Chapter 8: Intervention

  PART TWO: Pony Express Man

  Chapter 9: Revelations

  Chapter 10: The Two Sisters

  Chapter 11: Vision

  Chapter 12: The Chieftain

  Chapter 13: Embarking

  Chapter 14: River Run

  Chapter 15: Hyenas

  Chapter 16: Pony Express Man

  Chapter 17: Ambush at the Moonshine Sadie

  PART THREE: The Heart of the Freedom Republic

  Chapter 18: Life or Liberty

  Chapter 19: Subversion

  Chapter 20: Assurances

  Chapter 21: The Protégé and the Penitent

  Chapter 22: The Hunting Trip

  Chapter 23: Clarity

  Chapter 24: Plans made and broken

  PART FOUR: The Return

  Chapter 25: Fort Davis

  Chapter 26: The Plan

  Chapter 27: Charge of the Light Brigade

  Chapter 28: Savior

  Chapter 29: Into the Wasteland

  PART ONE: North

  Chapter 1: Freeze

  So this is how it begins.

  Moisture on the floor. Ice along the old brick wall. Roger peers up through the rectangular frame of the basement window that opens to the street. From his angle, he can see the smoking roof of the fast food restaurant, warmly lit by the still reaching flames. Fat flakes of snow swirl and bombard, suicide into the heat.

  The snow piles up along the window’s sill, threatens to cover it completely.

  But perhaps that is for the best.

  “I wouldn’t get your face too close,” says a man who steps up behind Roger. “Those lunatics are liable to do just about anything right now.”

  As if to confirm the man’s statement, screams and laughter echo into the basement through the thin plate glass.

  “It’s the goddamn Nitro assholes. That and a case of cabin fever. Never seen a snowstorm like this in Ashland. Not since it mattered, anyway.” The man, a Pony Express rider, crosses his arms and frowns. “Late March blizzard after a long, lean winter and this is what you get. Desperation. Riots. And a bunch of looters from Nitro.”

  “What the hell is Nitro?”

  “It’s a place,” says the Pony Express rider, “you wouldn’t take your kids on vacation.”

  “How long do we wait?” Roger thinks of the last five days in the basement, the longest of the trip. Getting so close, then this. The worst of it yet.

  “Until the snow stops, or it buries all the assholes outside.”

  “It feels like it’s never going to stop.”

  A tentative knock at the door, and a bearded face with bits of snow frozen to it looks in. His black eyes survey Roger before he beckons the Pony Express rider to the door.

  “I got a visitor,” says the Pony Express rider. “My contact from across the bridge just rode in.”

  “Out in all this?” Roger glances at the window.

  “Rain or shine,” says the man. “Fire or snow. I’ll be back.”

  “With some food?”

  The Pony Express rider laughs.

  Roger settles into a wooden chair and pulls a burlap shawl tighter around his shoulders, placing his hands into his armpits and leaning forward. Cold emanates from the concrete floor and crumbling brick walls. From inside himself. The last candle stub died yesterday, as his hands prayed around its struggling flame. Although he can’t feel the wind, its whistling and wailing bite his eardrums.

  Boxes of dance apparel are stacked around the small room with two doors. The room is part of a maze that meanders beneath a downtown block. The basement, like surrounding Ashland itself, is a mish-mash of confused parts, soulless remains of a blander time. Roger can’t comprehend the true size of the space that spreads out underneath a series of buildings including an old dance store and a movie theater. He was led in through a makeshift door through the casement of a foundation and along a series of narrow hallways. Others were here, sheltered by the Pony Express network, human packages in transit. His caretaker would check on them from time to time, but Roger had yet to see a face.

  The storm has to let up soon, Roger thinks. It must.

  Shadows and footsteps pass by the window, reminding him of his precarious situation.

  How many more sunless holes must he hide in? Roger recalls his trip north, aching rides between basement safe rooms. Deserts by day and villages by night. Avoiding population centers, or what was left of them. Burned out cars and darkened windows. Ashland was so close, the belly of the still-forming New Union, or so he was told. Sure looked like more of the same from down here.

  Not knowing was the worst of it. Esther, his wife, was out there, waiting. He had sent instructions to have her meet him at Germantown. Only ten miles from Elliston, it was a long way, even in the relative safety of the Pony Express escort. Safety. Roger laughs as he hears the echo of another gunshot. What safety?

  The second door creaks. Rusty hinges protest against the cold and oxidization.

  Roger watches it closely.

  Yes?

  A young face peers from behind the partially open door. His skin is pale, but he has bright eyes.

  “Hello,” Roger says.

  The boy doesn’t answer, but doesn’t leave, either.

  “You can come in,” Roger says, “or not.”

  The boy slips into the room and eyes the piles of boxes, and then Roger.

  “Go ahead, kid. They aren’t mine. Don’t think you’ll find much other than dresses, though.”

  Baggy jeans held up by a tightly cinched belt. Too-large boots. Uncut hair feathers out from under a black knit cap frosted in snow and against cold-reddened cheeks. He cautiously approaches the boxes and examines them, before rifling through and dropping items not meeting his unspoken qualifications on the concrete floor, until he finds a large, gaudy necklace. He handles the costume jewelry carefully, touching the fake diamonds and inspecting the clasp.

  “Not sure it’s the right fit for you.” Roger jokes, wanting to talk to another human, but feeling awkward.

  “It’s for my mom.”

  “She’ll like it.” Roger searches for something to say, something to fill the pause. “You just arrive?”

  “Hey—” The Pony Express rider’s voice cuts through the air. “You don’t belong here.”

  “He’s alright,” Roger says.

  “Alright until he waltzes into the wrong room with the wrong person,” the Pony Express rider says. The kid is already back through the door, necklace in pocket.

  “How many people you got staying here?

  “Too many.” The man walks over to the second door and latches it. “Ashland is a hub for passengers on our network, being on the river and its proximity to the New Union. Between the weather and now this riot, things are getting backed up.”

  “The guy with the beard— he’s a rider, too?”

  “You’ll get to know him pretty well. He’s taking you across the bridge and on the last leg of your journey. Once the snow st
ops these Nitro woodchucks will be long gone and you’ll walk right over the bridge and into Ohio. Unless the locals get real uptight after all this crap. They might not want anyone crossing.” The man sighs. “In that case, you’ll push east for another crossing. But I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

  “After that it’s smooth sailing. Still be dangerous, but not insanely dangerous. The worst is behind you.”

  “Thank God,” Roger says.

  The Pony Express rider laughs.

  Chapter 2: Melt

  The hope that is close is not yet real. The snow underfoot clings to the warming ground and the hooves of the horse. The final stretch is a return to the familiar, a return to what has become a surreal version of itself.

  Dry desert heat is replaced with a reluctant melt. Water drains from granular snow on the ground, drips from withering icicles on the branches.

  Roger and his most recent Pony Express escort approach the valley from the high ground. It’s greener below, although bands of white still swath the fields. Beyond the bands of brown and white, Germantown waits like a miniature tableau.

  The rider pulls up next to a collapsing farmhouse, inhaling smoke from his hand-rolled cigarette through his downturned lips. “You know your way from here?” The question is more of a suggestion, the way he says it.

  Roger does know the way. “Yes,” he says. “Been awhile.”

  “This is where we part.” The rider stares out at the valley. “I have a message that needs to get to Elliston and it can’t wait.”

  “I can walk it,” Roger says, although his legs argue otherwise as he dismounts and feels them wobble beneath him. The vibrations of the journey have settled into a permanent numbness, a bowlegged feeling that just won’t go away. “It’s all downhill from here, anyway.”

  The rider is already spurring his horse onward and away.

  Germantown is still several miles away, but Roger sees smoke rising from tiny chimneys and is heartened. Esther is down there, somewhere. In one of those little houses. His legs feel springier and his calves immune to the aching.

  The air is crisp, but walking keeps his blood flowing and his extremities warm. Each step downward he imagines the temperature growing milder.

  The hill eases away into a sweeping valley, where the road pulls up to the town. Up close, the rough edges are apparent. The wear of a decade has taken its toll on the community and its buildings, illustrated by makeshift roof patches and partially stripped structures, some collapsed.

  A wall surrounds the village.

  That’s new, Roger thinks.

  The wall is as makeshift as everything else, a composite of wood scrapped from collapsed buildings and wire, some barbed, rising about ten feet tall, and encompassing the inhabited part of the village.

  Welcome to Germantown: The County Seat declares a sign Roger remembers, from years before. The paint is faded and someone has cut out the shape of the county from the center of the sign, an odd polygon formed by the gerrymandering of a past civilization.

  A teenaged kid watches the gate with a potshot .22 rifle slung over his shoulder. He blows a long, low whistle as Roger approaches.

  “Slow up,” the kid calls out, taking his rifle into both hands. “What’s your business?”

  “I’m expected,” Roger says. “Traveling in the care of the Pony Express.”

  “Don’t see no Pony Express.”

  “He had somewhere to get to.”

  “You got a commune pass?”

  “I don’t what that is,” Roger says.

  The kid is grime and suspicion. “Yeah, okay.”

  “I’ve come a long way,” Roger says, feeling lame.

  “You some kind of Roughie?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Sure you don’t.” The kid spits. “We’ll see, I guess, if you think you’re coming in here.”

  Two men, both thin and wiry, join the kid at the gate. One short, one tall. The short one takes charge like he’s used to doing it. “What’s your business?” he asks Roger.

  “I’ve travelled with the Pony Express, from… a long ways. My wife is here, I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Esther.”

  The man looks sideways at the second man and back to Roger. “Haven’t heard of her.”

  The two men escort Roger, leaving the kid to his post at the fence. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk more comfortably,” says the short man. “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Roger.”

  “Welcome to Germantown, Roger,” the man says with a wry chuckle. “I’m Mayor Sully, and this here’s Fred.

  “At your service.” The man’s companion laughs a dry laugh.

  The men lead Roger downtown where rusting parking meters tilt haphazardly in front of crumbling brick storefronts. Some buildings have collapsed entirely, while others have crudely painted signs hanging over their entries. One such sign reads “The Kathouse” in dripping yellow paint. A woman’s face watches from behind the cracked glass of an upper window.

  “Hasn’t changed much around here,” Roger glances up at the woman, and then at the two men, feeling nervous.

  The men laugh their dry laughs.

  “Here we be,” says Sully. The red-bricked 1800’s courthouse rises up before them at the corner, as solid looking as ever.

  “Old building is a good building,” says Fred. “Probably got another hundred years in her.”

  Inside, Roger is led to a small office room where the two men sit down in beat-up office chairs and point to a third.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Sully says. “You say you’ve been to Germantown before?”

  Roger sits in the chair, and a puff of stale air wheezes from its fabric. “It’s been a while. Ten years.”

  “Before everything went to hell.”

  Roger nods.

  Sully reaches into a desk drawer, which makes Roger even more nervous, but simply pulls out a battered flask and takes a slug. “Want some?”

  Roger doesn’t, but accepts anyway. The small swig he takes burns his throat. “Quite the kick.”

  “Strong shit,” says Sully. “One of Germantown’s fine local products. Crafted from organic wood chips.”

  “I can still see, so that’s good,” Roger says.

  “Probably twenty-twenty, now.” Sully’s expression takes a serious look. “So Roger, where’ve you been all this time?”

  Honesty or fabrication? A little of both is probably wise.

  “Back when it all happened, I was working down in Texas,” Roger says.

  “Woo-eee,” Sully says, like a cowboy. “Ain’t that a haul.”

  “Took me ten years to get back,” Roger says.

  Sully looks at Fred whose weathered face is as expressionless as before, then back to Roger. “Tell me Roger, are all these stories I’m hearing about some White Texan true?”

  Roger chooses his words deliberately. “I don’t know which stories you’re talking about, but the White Texan, he does exist, if that’s what you mean.”

  Sully licks his lips. “You ever run into him?”

  Paranoia swells in Roger’s mind as his chest tightens. As if Maddox had tentacles that reached all the way north, even to Germantown. “It’s a big state,” he replies as evenly as possible. “Haven’t had the pleasure.”

  “It’s true he’s got some giant army of cutthroats and slaves that’s taking more and more territory?”

  “Yeah, it’s true.”

  “These reports come back, and it makes people nervous. Oh, the big evil White Texan’s gonna come up and murder us all in our sleep or something. Just a lot of hype to get us to fall in line under the New Union.” Sully takes another draw from the flask, his eyes glassy. “Oh, we’re a good commune, he continues with a note of disgust, “but that doesn’t mean we like it. We value our liberty to do as we please. Not like them Elliston pricks with their ‘steward,’ falling in line like a bunch of
sheep.”

  “Damn sheeple,” Fred says with disgust.

  “They still make the walk to come visit our establishments.” Sully winks. “Ain’t too good for that, are they?

  “This New Union business, yeah, we signed the charter, we signed on, but not for all this militia bullshit. You hear about that?”

  Roger shakes his head.

  “Big old evil White Texan’s gonna come murder us all with his ghost army, so we’ve got to contribute men to some militia, they say. You’d think Stranger Sun never came out to play, God forbid, like everything was just like the old days. Next they’ll be asking us for taxes and giving us mandates and all that old-world bullshit. Fuck ‘em.”

  Roger sits quietly, not knowing how to respond to Sully’s rant. “I’ll drink to that,” he says, looking to Sully’s flask.

  Sully’s eyes light up. “Atta boy.”

  The wood spirits kick and scream their way down Roger’s throat, but Sully seems appeased, happy even.

  “This disaster’s been the best thing to ever happen for guys like us, the ones that step in and take charge. There’s opportunity at the end of the world, for those that can keep their heads.”

  Sully clasps his hands, resting them on his belly. He stares at Roger, either deep in thought or losing his attention from the liquor. “So,” he says, eventually, “your story is that you’ve come a hell of a long way for a woman who isn’t even here.” Sully looks slyly at Fred. “Now ain’t that a bummer.”

  “My wife’s name is Esther,” says Roger. “You sure you haven’t seen or heard of her?”

  “I guess I know who’s been to my own village.” Sully’s close set eyes harden. “But I’ll humor you. Is she pretty?”

  Roger hesitates. “Yes.”

  “Is she tall?”

  “Taller than some.”

  “What about her eyes?

  “Blue.”

  “Do they like to look up at you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Sully laughs his hoarse chuckle. “Ample bosoms?”