Conflicted Home (The Survivalist Book 9), A American [top android ebook reader TXT] 📗

its true form. I thought I’d have a hard time picking it out amongst all the other cars. But as soon as I saw it, I knew. I slowed the truck a bit to get a better look. The doors were open, and it was covered in dust and grime, impossible to see into the windows. But as it slowly passed, I could see in the open driver’s door for an instant. There was nothing to see. Other than a memory of a day long ago.

A thin smile cut my lips as Sarge’s Hummer veered onto the same off-ramp I had walked down. When the litter-strewn parking lot of the truck-stop came into view, I saw the lowboy tractor sitting and wondered if the old boy ever made it back. The store had been abandoned for a long time, although it looked as if it’d had plenty of visitors. How many people had wandered into it to pick over the leavings of the countless folks before them?

It was like watching a film of my past as we turned onto Perry Highway. It wasn’t long before I could see an intersection coming up that I couldn’t forget. As we passed the run-down store, I could still see the old men playing dominoes and the kids running around. There was no body lying there, not that I expected to see one. I’m sure someone loved Gold Dollar and came to collect him. That made me think about the entire ordeal. I killed a man and never heard another word about it. But then, he was only the first. There have been many others since. It was a disturbing thought.

This trip was odd. Like Scrooge being guided by the ghosts through Christmas-Past, I too was touring memories from the beginning of our apocalypse. While things looked so much the same, they also looked different. The steady indifferent march of time and nature applied layer after layer of crap, crud and corrosion upon the memories until one day they would no longer resemble what they had been on that day. Vacant were the places, giving no indication of the people and the interactions between them. Some, life and death. Nothing would remain. Eventually, even their memories would be consumed by the steady progression of time.

I was refilling my cup with cold coffee when we passed a store that was like every other one we’d passed. The parking lot was filled with windblown trash. But this one had a memory attached to it. The memory of an old pickup and a fat sow in the bed. That meant James and Edith’s place was coming up. It brought up several emotions at the same time.

Happiness at the thought of the old couple. And sadness about what could have happened to them. I decided to find the answer to that question. Picking up my radio, I said, “I need a piss break. Let’s stop at this little house up here.”

Sarge’s Hummer slowing to a stop told me he agreed. I left the truck idling in the road, afraid to shut it down in case it might not restart. An irrational sort of fear that took on a deeper meaning in today’s world. Taking my rifle, I got out and started towards the house.

“Where you going?” Dalton asked. “You look like a man on a mission.”

I nodded at the house. “I know the people that live here,” I replied. Dalton looked at the place, then back at me. I took another look and corrected myself, “that used to live here. I just want to check on them.”

Dalton walked with me and asked, “You come through here on your walk home?”

“Yeah. I stayed a couple days with them. They were really nice folks. Reminded me of my grandparents.”

I stopped at the edge of the driveway and looked at Mandy’s house. Dalton was in tune and asked, “What happened over there?”

“I stuck a hatchet in the top of a guy’s head on that porch.” Dalton didn’t reply, but started walking towards the house. I followed him around the little fence that separated the two houses.

The yards were overgrown, the grass up to our knees. It was obvious no one had been here in a long time. We stopped at the edge of the porch where the blood stain was still quite visible. Though now it was just a large black stain that could have been caused by anything.

I looked at the front door and said, “In the bedroom back there, I shot his partner in the face. He was trying to rape a young woman. She had two little kids they’d locked in a closet.”

I stepped up onto the porch and paused at the open door and looked in. Closing my eyes briefly, I could hear the flick of the Zippo and smell the cigarette as it caught. The couch I’d slept on was still there. Though it looked much worse for wear now. The house was littered with the possessions of one’s life. All the things we accumulate during our time on this planet, scattered and, in many cases, broken.

We walked through the house. Stepping over and around things that had been inspected and discarded as either useless or not worth the effort to whoever had come through here. I wondered how many people had been through the place since I left it. I didn’t go into the bedroom. But I stopped at the door and looked in. The room had a musty smell of mold that assaulted the nose. The wall was covered in black mold in the same pattern brains and blood had left. Dalton looked over my shoulder into the room. It was obvious to him what had happened. “Well played,” he said as he stepped back.

We went outside and stepped through a hole in the fence. Someone had pushed it down instead of walking around it. The door to Edith and James’s house was open as well. Dirt, leaves and other detritus blown in by