Forever Twilight, Patrick Sean Lee [christmas read aloud txt] 📗

mile.”

“What happened to our plan to go north?” he said.

“LA will wait for us. Besides,” and here I knew I was dreaming…”Besides, Marysville had one or two hundred thousand people. Five of us who lived here survived, five more of you from outside the city limits. And those men! I know Daddy has to be added to the list. There could be others, Peter, right here under our noses.”

“Someone young and male and not psychopathic. Fat chance finding him here.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “Because we’ve been in and out of the city a hundred times. The shelves in the stores are still stocked with canned goods. Undisturbed, except by us. I don’t know why out of those hundreds of thousands only a few of us made it, but it stands to reason that if there were others we’ve never seen…or who never saw us…there would be some trace of them.”

“There has been,” I said.

“What? Everything’s exactly the way it was before the invasion.”

“My mother was buried.”

I didn’t have to go on. My father was alive somewhere. Peter knew it. Maybe after a few days here he left. Maybe he was looking for me! And maybe he’d found some other group, just like Munster and I had, not miles and miles away, but six blocks over, or ten. In our scavenging trips we’d only been downtown, and to a couple of shopping malls nearby. Certainly I’d never make a new home in those places. I would have done exactly what I did if I were someone else. Find a house or a deserted farm. Find a means of transportation…such as the Flamecar was, thank you Munster. I would have found others like me, and started life all over again, somewhere away from the haunting memories.

His shoulders sank, until, that is, he comprehended my total rationale. The beauty of it was this. We could spend a few days right here, close to the farm and the others. In this existence where the odds of finding anyone were scattershot, they were as good as anyplace else. Less dangerous, like Charles had intimated as well. Los Angeles was a huge city, and before the selective destruction of humans—of humanity—it could be a deadly place for anyone wandering into the wrong part of it. Los Angeles and all the bedroom communities north and south of it would keep. We had nothing but time. We had a more important mission here.

“Okay,” he said at last, “we’ll stay…for a few days. Let’s get something to eat and then be off.”

I reached up and kissed him. “Until we’ve looked in every house, and searched every farm we haven’t been to.”

“Yeah, yeah. Every house and farm. You win.”

Momentous Decision Time

 

 

Bottled water and powdered milk. Wheaties and dried strawberries. Dried bacon.

Dried.

Dried.

Dried everything.

No moisture present. That’s what we ate for every meal, every snack, back at the farm. It took some getting use to, but no one had died of botulism or any other bacterial disease over the long months behind us. The bulk of it was actually pretty good, except for the powdered milk. That stuff was gross. I preferred evaporated milk—and there was plenty of that in the food warehouses. Thin with water. Much better tasting than powdered milk mixed with water.

At least all of it was wholesome. Google and Youtube were dead. How long would dried meats and fruits last? We had to look in books that Charles found in the library in town. “…Practically forever…”. All we needed was fresh water, a stove to heat certain of the meats on, a survivalist cookbook, and a little ingenuity in the preparation. Cynthia’s domain was the kitchen…and lately, Lashawna’s, constantly suffering Charle’s rejection and the appearance of Denise.

Butane powered camp stoves for forays that would take longer than an afternoon. Peter and I had loaded two of them—just for safety’s sake if one conked out a week or two into our journey north. The bed of the pickup looked like one of the warehouses the guys had raided over the months. Our world provided everything, and would continue to do so for years. Not only foodstuffs, but clothing—albeit fashion was a thing of the past—and entertainment in the form of CDs and DVDs. Anything powered by battery or electricity was ours for the asking, thanks to Charles’, Peter’s, and Jerrick’s genius in perfecting generator usage and maintenance. Tons and tons of batteries hanging on the racks in every supermarket. All of it ours. Fresh water pumped into the house lines from the well out back. In its simpler way, life was—post-destruction—infinitely better back at the wonderful farm for everyone now. For everyone except Lashawna.

I knew in my heart that we’d eventually find someone for her. Someone closer to her age, unlike Charles. Going to Daddy’s office changed our mission of mercy regarding her needs, but really, only in the direction of our search. What? A year, or even two might pass before we finally located that special person meant for her, but so what? She was only fourteen.

“It’s an adolescent thing,” Charles had told Peter and I one evening out of earshot of Lashawna. “She’ll be fine. Kids always think their lives have ended when puppy love abandons them for the first time.”

Kids. I’d had to think about that. I was only a year older than Lashawna. When that first affection for Peter struck me…well, it was different with him. He had jumped on board immediately. It was so…so, natural-moving. I mean, the way we envision love striking hard, and the result being exactly the way it should be in our fairytale minds.

“You need to let her grieve. Broken hearts are simply a part of growing up,” he’d followed. “For the record, I’m opposed to you going out in search of someone ‘for her’, as you put it. Let her grow up. On the other hand, going out in search of others might be fine, but consider that the farm as it is can only support so many. Do we really want more people here?”

I landed in his face after he said that. “We found someone for you!”

“Whatever made you think I was in need of a mate, Amelia? Denise? She’s a fine woman, but I’m just not interested.”

“We need more people. More friends! We need a real community again, Charles Bentley Baxter! If they can’t live here, we’ll put them on one of the neighboring farms. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live alone for the rest of my life.”

“Go if you must, then, but I have grave misgivings. To say the least, it’s dangerous out there.”

“I have Peter, and he has me. I’m not afraid.”

And so the discussion had ended. Our little democratic anthill. My obstinacy. I was right. I knew that I was.

 

“Do we do the dishes?” Peter asked.

Men. No, just leave them in a pile where we finished with them.

“Of course we do! Boil some water. I’ll take everything to the sink.”

“I was just joking. What a waste of water and time,” he said, rising from the chair.

“If this wasn’t my home, I’d maybe agree with you. It is, though. Besides, there are probably a billion bottles of water out there. We won’t even make a dent in them with what we use.”

“I suppose you’ll want to fold the blanket and make the beds before we leave,” he mumbled.

“I think that would be a good thing. It was wonderful of you to suggest it. How sweet and thoughtful you are, Peter,” I said, dashing across the floor to throw my arms around him. Cheer him up. He could be so insufferable at times; such a grump. But, I so did love being with him despite his moments.

 

“Take the shotgun. I’ll take the pistol. You cover the blocks in that direction,” I said pointing north. “I’ll go south and west. We’ll meet back here at the truck in one hour.”

“We stay together.”

Half an hour had passed since we’d left the house and driven into a neighborhood six blocks away. Nice homes, larger, and with lots more property than my humbler old home on Birch. The homes of doctors and lawyers and business owners. Mom had always dreamed of “moving up” into one of these grander homes someday, but of course that was never to be on Daddy’s modest salary. Sara McKinley and her family lived here. She was a close friend at school. Was. I almost dreaded the thought of going into her two-story brick mansion, and seeing her as a pile of purple-black skin, with a ghoulish look on what was left of her once gorgeous face. Gnawed away by rats.

“Peter, think about it! It will take us an eternity traveling together! I’m a big girl, and I’ll have the pistol. I won’t go inside any of the houses, promise.” A lie. I raised the makeshift megaphone to reassure him. “We can cover so much more territory if we separate.”

“No.”

“Yes. You are such a worrier. Just go. I’m fine. I know how to use this,” I said raising the pistol Munster had given me without a complaint before we left yesterday. “Besides, other than Daddy, I hope, I don’t expect to see anyone else alive. Have a little faith in me.”

I’d stuffed him between a rock and a hard place. He knew I’d win, so what could he say further? He walked around the truck to where I stood, laid the shotgun against the fender, and then he kissed me. Like an, ‘I’ll see you on the other side someday’ kind of kiss.

“One hour. You have your walkie-talkie?”

“Right in my backpack.”

“Okay. Be careful then.” He turned, snatched the shotgun off the fender, and hurried up the short street to begin his search. I watched until he’d crossed the alley separating Glenoaks Avenue where I’d be starting out, and Ivanhoe Avenue a hundred feet away. One hour alone, apart from one another.

Where did you go, Daddy?

I left. When I turned the corner and had gotten halfway up the block, I raised the crude bullhorn to my mouth and shouted, “Hello? Anyone inside?” Had I expected a reply? Not really, and none came. I moved on, covering Glenoaks, turned south on the intersecting street, and then went back in the direction I’d come, shouting into the bullhorn.

Forty-five minutes and ten blocks later, I began to feel the uselessness of the search. This neighborhood was dead, like probably every other we’d scour. I shouted into the bullhorn over and over again anyway, Munster’s pistol in my right hand dangling at my side.

Time to head back.

Not Daddy, Just...