Ryan Westfield - Final Chaos

By the end of seven days, the house looked completely different. As if it had never been cleaner.

Every surface was dusted and polished. Every single bottle and piece of trash had been taken outside to the shed in the same trash bags that they’d brought their gear in. Some of the glass bottles were saved, since they might be useful in the future.

All their gear was neatly organized according to use and frequency of need.

Everything was in its proper place.

Now it seemed there was nothing to do but wait.

There was still no sign of the Carpenters.

It wasn’t until the eighth day that something happened.

That morning, Aly was up early. She hadn’t been able to sleep well the night before, finding herself tossing and turning through nightmares. So she’d dragged herself out of bed a couple hours earlier than normal, just when the sun was starting to poke out over the trees.

Jim was already up as well, making coffee in the kitchen, even though it wasn’t his watch shift.

“Nothing?” she said.

He shook his head.

Things were still a little tense between them. They’d agreed to a sort of truce. No more arguing. No more fighting. But they hadn’t resolved whatever it was there issues were.

They’d had to spend plenty of time together, and not just in the cleanup. Jim had insisted that she and Rob learn how to fire and handle a firearm.

Since they spent as little time outside the house as possible, most of the firearm training took place right there in the living room.

Jim had showed her how to empty and load his revolver. Then he’d taught her a couple different grips, helping her find the one that she preferred. He’d taught her how to hold it with both hands, with her hands well away from the cylinder and the hammer.

She’d learned that when the gun fired, pieces of lead and other matter could discharge sideways, burning her hand.

And the hammer, well, it was good to keep out of the way of that.

Jim had taught her and Rob that they needed to first work on simply holding the gun still as they pulled the trigger as fast as they could.

It’d taken her a couple days to get that down.

Since they didn’t want to waste the ammo they had, or draw attention to themselves, they limited their actual outdoor practice to a couple shots here and there.

“Want some coffee?”

“Yeah, two scoops,” said Aly.

Jim shook his head. “Rations. Remember?”

Aly groaned, but said nothing.

Suddenly, the front door flung open.

It was Rob, who’d been outside patrolling the property.

“You’ve got to see this,” he said.

They followed him outside unquestioningly.

From where they stood in the driveway, they could see something off in the distance. It hung over the trees, far away. At first, to Aly’s sleepy eyes, it looked like a huge dark cloud.

But it wasn’t a cloud.

It was smoke.

A huge pillar of smoke, rising high into the sky.

It was intensely black. Dense and thick.

“What is it?” said Aly.

“It’s the start,” said Jim. “They’re burning buildings now.”

It was the answer they’d been waiting for. It was the sign from the outside world.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the one they’d been looking for.

Behind them, a noise startled them.

It was the unmistakable sound of rubber tires crunching on the gravel.

Aly turned to see a beat up old pickup truck speeding towards them down the driveway.

Aly froze. Her eyes got wide. She felt paralyzed by fear.

The pickup was getting closer.

Only mere feet away.

She could see the driver’s face clearly through the battered windshield.

Jim’s strong hands grabbed her and pulled her out of the way.

He pulled her hard, and she fell down, her face hitting the gravel. Somehow, in the process, Jim fell too. She must have tripped him accidentally or something.

Someone screamed out.

Was it Rob?

Had he been hit by the truck?

The pickup shuddered to a rough stop just an inch from him. He’d jumped back, but not quite far enough. He was lucky not to have gotten hit.

Three men vaulted over the side of the pickup bed. Their boots hit the gravel hard. They moved fast.

Both doors of the pickup were thrown open. Two people stepped out.

“Stay right there,” shouted Jim, from the ground, where he’d fallen. He had his revolver out, pointed at the man who’d stepped out of the driver’s side. “Hands in the air.”

“Boys?” said the pickup driver. He nodded back at the three men who’d jumped out of the bed. Rob noticed now that they were all young. The youngest was probably eighteen, and the oldest couldn’t have been older than twenty four. Each held a rifle, which they now raised. “If I were you,” said the driver, his voice cracking as he spoke. “I’d put that gun down. You’ve got to recognize when you’re outgunned.”

Slowly, Rob put his hands into the air over his head.

The driver was a tall, lanky man wearing loose clothing. A woman, who must have been his wife, walked slowly around the front of the pickup. She was equally tall and thin, with long tangled hair.

The younger men had pimples on their faces and long, greasy hair. They wore ill-fitting clothing.

“What do you what, Carpenter?” said Jim.

“Turns out we’re running out of food. And as you can see,” he gestured over to the billowing smoke off in the distance. “It’s going to be tough to get it from anywhere else.”

“It’s not like the supermarkets are open,” said his wife, her pale thin lips twisting up at the corners in an approximation of a smile.

“So what we’re going to have to do, we decided, is requisition some food from our friendly neighbors.”

“Why should we give you anything?” said Aly, her voice full of anger.

“Well, if it comes to it, we’re going to take it.”

Rob’s mind was racing. He knew that if they lost their food, they might as well be dead.

Without moving much, he looked each of the Carpenters up and down, trying to find weak points.

The young ones had rifles. That was obvious.

The patriarch of the family, Mr. Carpenter, had a long knife worn on his belt. But he didn’t have a gun in hand or visible anywhere on his person.

The wife and mother didn’t seem to be armed.

But either of them might have had guns hidden.

Rob had his in a makeshift holster attached to his belt. Aly and Jessica had helped him fashion it out of some pieces of rubber they’d found. It was held together with plenty of duct tape.

Maybe he could reach his gun.

He’d learned from Jim and Jessica how to fire it properly.

But he’d still only actually fired it three times.

It wasn’t like he was an expert shot. Far from, actually.

He didn’t actually know if he’d be able to hit anyone.

And three rifles pointed at him made it a huge risk.

Where was Jessica? Was she sleeping through all this?

“So what’s it going to be?” said Mr. Carpenter. “What do you have for us? I hope you’ve got some nice juicy steaks in a cooler in there. I’ve been having a strong hankering for some good red meat.”

“You’re not going to get anything from us,” said Jim, speaking in a loud, commanding voice.

“Jim!” hissed Aly. Both of them were still on the ground. “They have guns!”

Jim ignored her.

“What my wife isn’t taking into account is that we’ve got three men inside. All armed. So you’d be fools to make a move on us. You’ll never get back into that truck alive.”

Mr. Carpenter laughed. A big, disgusting laugh. But his eyes showed his suspicion that what Jim said was true. His eyes cast across the windows of the little lake house, looking for some sign that there were three armed men hiding inside.