Joseph Love: Kill Town, USA

“We have to walk,” I said.

Audrey threw open her door and marched alone through the snow.

I hoisted the pack and carried the Winchester in my arms. We quickly found it easier to walk in the ditch. Better footing.

I adjusted the rifle, setting the safety and advancing the sight by a millimeter. I opened and closed the chamber, deliberately exaggerating every movement of the bolt.

“Do that again.”

“Do what?”

“That noise you just made.”

“This?” I slid the bolt back and forth.

“Yeah. Do it again.”

Click. Slide. Click.

“I like that. You should do it every few minutes.”

Click. Slide. Click.

“I have some whiskey if you want. It’s good for your nerves, too.”

“I’d like that.”

I handed her the flask from my back pocket. She drank it like water.

A loud crash came from the woods beside us. We stopped and glared into the darkness. Our breath swirled furiously around our heads. The moon circled the earth a million times. Our hearts pumped enough blood to fill Lake Michigan. I held up the rifle and aimed into the darkness.

“It was a tree falling,” I lowered the rifle.

I turned and walked. Audrey stayed behind.

“It was just a tree,” I yelled. She caught up with me and held onto the shoulder strap under my right arm.

Click. Slide. Click.

WE FOUND THE MIDWAY MOTEL A LITTLE AFTER MIDNIGHT, an empty reception desk, no lights, and the parking lot a bare white sheet.

“We should take a room and just let them charge us in the morning,” I said.

“I don’t think anyone will be here in the morning.”

“Of course.”

“Let’s go to the office,” Audrey said. I followed her to the large glass window where we gazed into darkness.

“We’ll just camp out in there.”

“No, there should be a peg board with all the keys. I think. Shouldn’t there be a bunch of keys inside?”

“I hope so.”

I swung the muzzle against the tempered glass. The rifle bounced back. I swung harder and the glass exploded, creaking and sizzling as it fell at our feet.

The lights did not work. The switch flapped up and down uselessly. The moonlight washed everything in white dust. We found the keys in a plastic bin on the counter. The key to room 205 sat beside the box on the counter.

Room 205 smelled like wet paint and semen. All utilities were out. The only sound in Room 205 was the occasional pop of the ceiling straining under the weight of the snow. We peeled off our shoes and wet clothes and collapsed on the bed. I stuffed the sleeping bag under the blankets and crawled inside. Audrey followed. I placed the butt of the Winchester at my head. The smell of gun oil was pleasant. It put me to sleep.

Audrey startled and jabbed me in the ribs. My arm was slightly numb.

“I heard a car door,” she said.

I opened my eyes.

We listened. I heard nothing.

“I don’t think so.”

“Shh. I hear crunching.”

I heard the muffled squeak of snow outside. It was so faint I don’t know how she could have heard it over the blowing wind.

I got out of bed, my collar cold from sweat. I pressed my hands to the window. There was a rusty GMC with a dozen lights parked in the middle of the lot. A fat man carrying a spotlight and gun inspected the rooms as he passed.

I slowly turned the deadbolt and set the slide latch.

“I don’t trust him,” Audrey whispered behind me.

I released the latch.

“Please get your gun.”

Carefully, I stepped away from the window. I picked up the rifle and smoothed out the sheets on the bed.

“He’s climbing the stairs.”

I pressed myself against the door, and Audrey disappeared to the bathroom. In the stillness, I heard the soft, fuzzy conversation from the fat man’s radio.

His light filled room 205. I felt like a fish in an aquarium. Dust floated between the window and the bed, bathed in the hot yellow light. The light lingered, every breath loud as a train. He spoke into his radio and passed to the next room.

I lowered the gun. Slowly, I set the safety and shuffled to the bathroom. We fumbled awkwardly as I stepped over Audrey, our limbs unbending. I sat in the tub and pulled her to me. We sat with our legs hanging over the side, our feet resting on top of each other.

“Do you think they found the truck on the interstate?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think he’d do if we went out there?”

“We can’t go out there.”

“So we have to hide?”

“I don’t know. Yes.”

“You’re still not telling me something.”

She picked up her leg and crashed it against my shin. “It’s a quarantine. They’re doing it in several counties. They issued it today, but it’s not official. These guys just took over, you know?”

“Vigilantes.”

“Something like that. Watts didn’t want to bring Daddy to the shelter. I had to make him drive out there.”

“The shelter?”

“They made a whole compound. A place for families, a command station, a warehouse for rations.”

I grabbed the Winchester. It was like ice.

Click. Slide. Click.

I closed my eyes and listened to the groaning roof. When the roof on our house collapsed one winter, Dad just wanted to leave it. But I climbed up there and patched it. I didn’t know a thing about roofs. I figured I just had to think like water. Water always goes downhill. Water replaces air. Water takes any shape it pleases. I fixed the roof. It didn’t look good, but it kept the water out.

I thought I could do Dad that way. Think like him and be sad like him so I could understand how to keep his sadness away. But it doesn’t work like that. I wasn’t a depressed person. The way Dad was, his sadness built up until he couldn’t handle it. I realized Dad was gone shortly after the episode with the roof. There was just too much sadness and Dad collapsed under it.

Audrey woke up early, just before sunrise. She yawned and squeezed my thigh. Her fingers dug under the muscle. Her breath curled out and away in a silver puff.

“You want coffee?”

She nodded.

I set up the camping stove on the bathroom floor. By then, I only had half a liter of fuel left. The blue flame flicked and bent and I set the kettle over it. I poured Audrey’s coffee first. She cradled the tin mug in both hands and breathed in the steam.

“We need to find food,” I said.

“We should get going and find a path through the woods or something. Not on a road. They have plows and convoys.”

We were slow that morning. I was sore from sleeping in the tub. The pack was heavy and dug into the sores on my shoulders and hips. I cringed, but I cinched up the straps and hefted the rifle.

When your body burns and wants to stop, you tell it to shut up and you press on.

The tracks left by the fat man’s truck were gone that morning. An extra foot of snow covered the parking lot, piled up on the concrete walkway in meter-high drifts. We crossed the interstate via the overpass. Halfway across, we stopped and stared at the roadway. A large white ribbon stretched for miles. Untouched, soft and pure. It was the Arctic.

We hauled through the woods a good two hours before happening upon a mini-mart made of mortar and hand-hewn logs. Its metal roof bowed from the weight of the snow.

We stopped near the edge of the parking lot and examined the empty fields around us. No barns or houses, no road signs, no intersections. It didn’t look to have been raided.

Up the road, we heard the trembling of an engine. Then, a plow appeared. It was a yellow rig with spinning amber lights. Snow belched from its nose. Audrey and I took a detour around the mini-mart and headed for the dinky garage next to it. We went in through the bay door and weaved through bald tires, oil drums, and engine blocks. We crouched behind a Chrysler on jacks, two wheels removed and the brakes dismantled. The rumbling convoy shook the air. They were upon us. I took Audrey down the steps to the oil pit.