James Hunt: Broken Roads

Tears hit the dusty floor, turning the grey ash into black. Mike wiped his eyes, causing a smudge to smear across his cheek. He retraced his steps the way he came, afraid of disturbing the burnt shrine that was his home.

The rest of the neighborhood wasn’t in much better shape. Smashed windows and broken doors lined the street. Bullet holes peppered the fronts of homes. A breeze blew trash littered on the ground, piling it in different spots.

Mike glanced at the Beachum’s house and the two crude grave marker set up in the front yard. He thought about leaving Bessie’s body where she fell, but when he saw the cold, stiff corpse across the lawn, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. No matter what she’d done she wasn’t always bad, just at the end. He buried her in the front yard, along with her husband’s scorched body.

Mike pawed the bandage on his arm as he walked back to Nelson’s house. He could still feel the heat from the fire burning through. He looked at the once well-kept lawns and houses now in shambles. The neighborhood he came home to from the steel mill for the past twenty-five years lost to despair and betrayal.

“What happened to us?” Mike asked.

The question was quiet, meant only for him, in the graveyard of 24th Street. It had only been a week since the EMP blast. Everything from simple modern conveniences like phones, laptops, and tablets to life sustaining utilities like water and power, were gone. They were back in the Stone Age.

The front door to Nelson’s house was open. Nelson’s home remained fairly unscathed after the neighborhood turned on Mike and his family. If it weren’t for Nelson, he would have burned along with his house.

Two backpacks sat next to the front door when Mike entered. They’d gathered what they could from the abandoned houses. There wasn’t much left, but they had enough to make it Mike’s cabin in Ohio.

The pounding upstairs grabbed Mike’s attention. He walked up the stairs, looking at the family portraits on the wall: first days of school, vacations, holidays. The last picture Mike saw before watching Nelson bang his fist on his son’s door was a family portrait of Nelson, Sean, and Katie, who never made it back from downtown Pittsburgh the day of the blast.

“Sean, we have to go,” Nelson said.

Nelson jiggled the handle.

“Sean, open this door.”

“No!” Sean said.

“We talked about this, Sean,” Nelson said.

“We can’t leave without her,” Sean said.

Mike noticed the dark circles under Nelson’s eyes, the stubble thickening to a beard on his face. It took Mike all of last night to convince Nelson they had to leave. There wasn’t anything left for them here and if he wanted to him and Sean to survive they had to leave.

Nelson pressed his left palm to the door, the contrast of the gold band around his finger against the blue paint.

“Mom would want us to go.”

The door flung open. Tears ran down Sean’s cheeks. The room behind him was messy. There were toys on the hardwood floors, his bed unmade, and piles of dirty clothes.

“She wouldn’t want us to go. She’d want us to stay here and wait for her to come home,” Sean said.

Nelson knelt down and scooped his son up in his arms. Sean threw his arms around his father’s neck, burying his face in Nelson’s shirt.

“It’s okay. Shhhh. It’s okay,” Nelson said.

Nelson’s voice cracked, a tear rolled down his own cheek. Nelson set his son back down and brushed the hair off of his forehead.

“Mom loves you so much, and the thing she would want the most is to make sure you’re safe. It’s not safe here anymore. That’s why we’re going with Mike. Okay?” Nelson said.

“But if she comes back how will she find us?”

“We’re going to leave really good directions for her. Right, Mike?”

Mike looked Sean’s tear soaked face. What he was asking the two of them to do was hard. He was asking them to leave their home, to leave their mother and wife, to leave all they knew on a chance to survive.

“Yes,” Mike said.

“Now, get the rest of your stuff ready. We need to leave soon,” Nelson said.

Nelson kissed Sean’s cheek and set him back down on the ground. Sean disappeared back into his room, gathering a few more toys. He patted Mike on the shoulder.

“I appreciate you taking us with you,” Nelson said.

“Of course.”

“It’s just hard on him, you know?”

“What about you?” Mike asked.

Nelson’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I’m fine.”

Once Sean had finished packing his bag, Nelson and Sean moved all of the furniture in the living room into a circle. They placed a few rations of food and water in the center, hoping that if Katie were to come back to the house the formation of the living room would catch her attention. Mike wrote down the coordinates of the cabin and left a map tucked under the supplies.

“Let’s go,” Mike said.

They’d packed their rations. They’d said their goodbyes. Now they walked down 24th Street toward the highway. It was a three-day walk from Pittsburgh to Mike’s cabin in Ohio.

Mike’s fingers reached for the pistol on his right side. He felt the outline of the gun, making sure it was still there. The fire had destroyed all of his weapons and supplies, but he’d found the 9mm pistol tucked away in a closet of one of the abandoned houses they ransacked yesterday in preparation for their journey.

Every time Mike busted through a locked door, pulled open a drawer, or opened up a cabinet that wasn’t his he felt a stab of guilt shoot through his conscious. This wasn’t his house. These weren’t his things. He hated every minute of it. He had no right.

No right? This neighborhood that turned on him and his family had no right to threaten them. They had no right to try and take what was his. Mike closed his eyes, wrapping his mind around the one solid thought propelling him forward. He had to get to his family.

“Dad, you think mom will be able to find us?” Sean asked.

“Absolutely,” Nelson answered.

Mike watched the Nelson and Sean walk together, holding onto each other. If it hadn’t been for Nelson he’d be dead. Nelson pulled him from the flames, risking his life and never seeing his family again. Would he be able to do that? If the choice between saving Nelson or being with his family was presented to him, which path would he go down?

When they turned onto highway 60, the sun peaked over the Pittsburgh skyline behind them. A breeze swirled trash and dust across their feet. They weaved in and out of the abandoned vehicles along the road. It was an endless parking lot.

“Look at all of them,” Nelson said.

“Keep an eye out for any older models, prior to 1980. They won’t have any microprocessors in them and wouldn’t have been affected by the EMP.”

“That’s how your family got out? Because of the Jeep?”

“Yeah.”

Mike thought about the once a month weekend trip where he and his family would go to get away from the city, enjoy the outdoors, and prepare for what was happening now. He reached into his pocket and felt the outline of the pocket watch that belonged to his father. His dad gave it to him when he was a boy. It was the only piece of technology he owned that still worked. It was as steady and reliable as the man who gave it to him.

The gears grinded in the Jeep. Ulysses threw the shifter into third gear. He pressed the clutch and weaved in and out of the massive blockage of cars along Highway 60. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the smoke rising from his son’s house behind him.

Ulysses shifted his eyes from the smoke to his grandchildren in the backseat. Freddy clutched his sister, Kalen, in the backseat and the two of them held on to each other. Ray sat next to them, his rifle propped up against his shoulder.