Matthew Mark - Dark Days Rough Roads

The walk was slow, but they moved along at a steady pace. They had to stop every mile for a quick break as Dawn’s mom wasn’t used to walking at all. She merely tolerated Dawn’s preparedness, but didn’t suspect it would amount to anything. She kept the gear in her car only at Dawn’s insistence.

There was no way at her age she was riding a bike, she had told her. The pace was a very slow─ two miles an hour. After about five hours they headed into the entrance to Chrysler’s world headquarters where they met up with Dawn’s sister. She had ridden there herself from about five miles away and had been sitting there waiting.

This parking lot was much the same as the county complex. People were either standing around in bunches talking or sitting wherever they could find a seat and talking about what was going on. There were people who kept trying to turn their phones on every few minutes. The site was surreal. This complex sprawled over 500 acres and had over 10,000 employees.

There were thousands of them just standing around like cattle waiting for feeding time. The mentality of the majority of the people was shocking. Just who did they think was coming to help them and when did they think this would happen? Dawn, along with her mother and sister all wondered what they would start to do when it was completely dark outside.

She glanced toward the sky and thought about how clear the stars would be now. No bright haze from parking lots, billboards and buildings scattered across the country. It would be pure darkness, except for moonlight or starlight. “Time to get going,” she said. They got up and started their trek.

Only about four more miles or so and they should be able to make it home about midnight. All three had pistols, all three could at least point and pull the trigger and they felt safe. Walking along, they just had some small talk, took the occasional drink from their water bottles and nibbled on some granola bars to quell their hunger.

They were walking along the roadway, as there wasn’t any real way to reach their street easily and they didn’t want to cut through one of the metro parks next to their neighborhood. They had passed a couple of other folks heading the same way and didn’t say anything to them. One lady asked them if they had any water.

Dawn’s sister pulled out a small 8oz bottle and handed it to her. She also gave her a granola bar and then just turned away and continued walking without saying anything or even responding to the thank you she received. About a quarter of a mile up, they paused to rest again. It was quite dark out now. Very few stars were out tonight.

While taking a quick moment to stretch, a guy walked out from behind some bushes where he had been hiding. He had seen them coming and wanted a bike. He approached Dawn’s sister and grabbed at her bike and pushed her away. Dawn’s mom stepped over and said, “Stop that” and the guy pushed her hard, causing her to fall to the ground. He had a medium sized pocket knife and opened it, exposing the blade.

Dawn yelled at the guy, who turned to look at her and he saw nothing but muzzle flash. It had been a single shot clean through his heart. Dawn’s sister helped her mom up and they all stood there motionless. They didn’t know what to say. Dawn looked down at the motionless man and threw up all over him. She gagged a bit on her vomit and tried to spit it out, but just puked some more.

She walked a few feet away and opened her water bottle and rinsed her mouth out. She was still dry heaving a bit and they moved a bit further away from the body. Dawn said, “We need to go.”

Her sister looked at her and said, “You shot the guy to death.”

“Well,” she answered, “It was him or us, didn’t you see his knife? Let’s go,” she said again.

They started walking again and no one said anything. Dawn kept thinking they should have just let him take the bike. They didn’t know if he would use the knife or not. He had pushed them around though. But was that enough, she wondered. All she knew was her instinct at the moment led her to squeeze the trigger.

They kept walking the rest of the way, which was another mile and half home. They went inside and opened the garage and put their gear and bikes in the garage and then went into the house. They lit up some candles and went to work. They were tired from the walk, but they were also exhausted from the encounter they had just an hour ago.

They placed some large wooden dowels in the tracks of the windows and door wall, made sure everything was locked and closed the shades. They all just fell asleep right there in the living room. They would get up in the morning and finish what needed to be done then. None of the three really slept well that night.

Right around seven in the morning, Dawn jumped off the couch and ran to the front window and looked outside at the racket. Her neighbor across the street had an old Chevy Nova II that he used to take out on weekends and it used to really make her mad. His routine was to start it, gun it a couple dozen times, then leave it running for almost half an hour before he would leave. He had it straight piped for no reason other than the sound, so there were no mufflers to keep it quieted down.

On her weekends off, she preferred to sleep in, but was always woken up early by this. She watched for a few minutes and noticed the guy and his wife were loading up the old Chevy with suitcases and boxes. She remembered Haliday telling her that if they were going to bug out to have everything ready beforehand. If they had decided to take extra clothes, use good old army surplus laundry bags.

The reason behind the surplus laundry bags was that they were cloth, thus they were flexible and with the odd shapes of trunks, they could mashed into the tighter spaces to save room. The shapes of suitcases and boxes didn’t really make good use of trunk and cargo spaces. Too much wasted room in his opinion. She wasn’t about to tell the neighbor that though. Screw him. He probably didn’t have them anyway, but trash bags would work.

All those weekends waking up at six in the morning were for nothing. They looked like they were finished and he closed their garage door and got in the old Chevy. Halfway down the driveway it stalled out. He tried to start it again, but no luck. After a couple of minutes, he got out and opened the hood. He wiggled a few wires, checked some connections on the spark plugs, got back in and tried again, but no luck.

He got outside and was visibly upset and glanced toward Dawn, whom he saw standing in the window. She had the biggest smirk on her face and obviously he saw it. “Oh, is this amusing you?” he yelled. Dawn raised her hand, flipped him the bird and then went back into the living room.

That actually felt good, she was thinking to herself. She couldn’t recall ever giving anyone the bird and used to scowl at Haliday for doing so, which happened quite regularly because Haliday suffered some of the worst road rage you could imagine. On their trips to the ranges, inevitably someone driving along pissed him off. He was quick to salute anyone he thought was deserving enough. A quick toot on the horn made sure he had their attention.

When she walked back into the living room, her mother and sister were sitting there. They just stared at her a bit and she said, “What? They just looked at her some more and she glanced down to see what the problem was. She saw blood droplets all over her clothing and the previous night’s events rushed back to her.

She ran to the bathroom where she flipped up the toilet seat and threw up again. There wasn’t a whole lot to come up, but she still managed to empty her stomach. She grabbed a towel and wiped her face off. She knew this was a natural reaction. She knew it would haunt her for some time, until she learned how to handle it. Haliday relayed a story about what to expect.