Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kellen
G uilt doesn’t just nag at me. It wrings its spindly fingers around my throat and digs in, making it hard for me to breathe.
What we did—what I did—was wrong.
I swallow down my unease and cast my eyes over each person in our group. Though somber and quiet, I can tell the supplies have brought forth a little hope in an otherwise dour situation.
It had to be done.
I didn’t hurt anyone aside from probably scaring the crap out of those kids I found hiding and we didn’t take more than we need. This world is on its way out the door. Surely the other survivors there would have done the same if the roles were reversed. There’s no room for the same morality and laws that existed before that wave hit.
So why does the guilt continue to rakes its claws through me?
We haven’t been walking but for a few hours when we come upon the town of Bethune. Much like the town before this one, Stratton, it’s been mostly destroyed by earthquakes. Standing, though, like a beacon among the rubble, is a post office.
Shelter.
Finally.
I herd the group to the small brick building. Unlike the other boarded up businesses along the way, this one was left abandoned. Not many people are into checking their PO boxes during the apocalypse. The front glass is splintered, most likely from the quakes, but otherwise mostly intact.
Aaron tries the front door and lets out a surprised laugh when it opens. He and Tyler go in first to scope out the place. A couple of minutes later, they return to wave the rest of us inside. Because of the many windows in the building, we’re not in complete darkness once we go in, the moonlight illuminating each room we enter.
Relief and overwhelming exhaustion chase away my earlier guilt. We scavenge the small building for anything useful. In the storage room, we find a large supply of box cutters that prove their worth when we start cutting up the large canvas bins. The material is thick and will keep us warm while our clothes dry out as we sleep. There’re also rolls and rolls of bubble wrap that will work for bedding. The best find, though, is the employee break room where there’s a stockpile of noodle cups, packets of nuts, bottled water, and a gas stove that remains usable. It feels like a miracle from God himself.
Everyone splits up to do various chores. Hope, Dan, and Hailey all work together to boil enough water to feed our starving group with the noodle cups while Aaron, Wayne, and Jesse attempt to make beds with bubble wrap. Me and Tyler do our best to tear through the canvas with our box knives. It’s no easy task. Tyler aggressively shreds through the material as though it’s personally pissed him off.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out, the tiredness in my tone making it barely audible.
He makes a scoffing sound. “For what?”
“For upsetting you. We needed the supplies.”
“I’m not upset.” He sighs and then turns to look over at me. “I’m just frustrated with…this.” He throws a hand up in the air and waves it all around as if to imply everything around us. “No matter what route we take, it’s always the wrong one. It sucks. I just wish you had said something to me while we were there.”
“So you could’ve abandoned the supplies?” I ask, my indignation causing my voice to rise. “I had to make a split-second decision.”
We wouldn’t have made it the few more hours to this little town had we not taken what we did when we did. Our group was running on fumes.
“I just…I feel bad.”
Tossing my box knife to the ground, I storm over to Tyler and grip both of his shoulders so I can glower down at him. “And you think I don’t?”
He frowns. “I know you do.”
“Good, because it’s been eating me up since I was made aware of those kids. I’m no thief, Ty, but this new world is harsh and brutal. Sometimes it means that things get a little ugly.”
He sighs again, but this time leans his head against my shoulder. “I know. I’m just crabby and so damn tired.”
My tense muscles relax as I pull him into a tight embrace. “Me too.”
Our mutual guilt dissipates as we finish our task. One day, we’ll be somewhere safe and can go back to being the men we were before all this. Until then, we have to do whatever we must in order to survive.
I wake to the distinct sound of car engines approaching. At first, I wonder if it’s a dream—a hopeful one where the authorities have come to rescue us. Tyler, who was curled against me for warmth, also startles awake, this time at the sound of breaking glass. It’s early morning and the sun is bright, pouring in through the splintered windows, blinding me.
“Someone’s here,” Aaron hisses out.
The thundering sound of many boots stomping through the building echoes around us. A shadow towers over me, blocking the light.
“That’s Jade’s sleeping bag,” a guy with a gravelly voice grits out. “These are the thieves.”
My blood turns to ice as realization sets in.
The people we stole from are here. They went looking for us and found us.
I wipe the sleep from my eyes and scramble to sit up. The sleeping bag in question is covering Hope and Hailey, both of whom stare at the men in terror.
These men aren’t just angry at us for stealing. They’ve come to make us pay. That’s evident in the multiple guns they’ve brought with them, all of which are pointing at each one of us in our group.
“Please,” I start, voice raspy with sleep. “It was me, not the girls. Let me explain.”
The gritty man barks out a laugh. “Hear that, Nate? This pitiful excuse of a man not only wants to take credit but also wants to explain why he took your pregnant wife’s bed.”
Nate, clearly the leader, hocks up a massive ball of phlegm and spits it at me. Luckily, it lands on the canvas covering my nearly naked body. Stripping out of our wet clothes to let them dry seemed like a great idea last night and certainly allowed us more warmth. Now, I’m feeling all kinds of vulnerable and at a disadvantage in nothing but my boxers.
“We thought it was abandoned,” I say, locking eyes with the steely eyed leader with fury flaming bright in his gaze. “Our people were starving and injured. We’d already grabbed a few things when we discovered the hiding children.”
Nate’s nostrils flare. “The only reason you people aren’t dead right now is because those kids are untouched. The only reason.”
I nod emphatically. “We’re not bad people. Just trying to get somewhere safe. I’m really sorry.”
“He’s sorry, Garrett,” Nate says to the other guy. “What’s sorry worth where we’re from?”
“Nothin’.”
Nate’s eyes narrow. “Hear that. Nothing. Your sorry is useless to me.”
“What do you want?” Tyler demands, indignation in his tone. “Like you said, if you wanted us dead, we’d be dead already.”
One of the other guys steps closer to Hope and Hailey, eyeing them with interest. “I see something I want.”
Before Aaron can clobber the guy, Nate grunts. “Knock it off, Ed. We don’t trade in women.”
Ed chuckles as though he were joking. Something tells me if the bigger man wasn’t their leader, Ed would have no problem taking one or both of our girls to make up for our transgressions.
“I understand we’ve messed up,” I say again, hoping for a diplomatic tone. “We can give you back everything we took plus more if you’ll just leave us be. That’s all we want.”
Garrett perks up at that. “Plus more?”
Tyler tenses beside me but doesn’t utter a word.
“Yeah,” I say with a resigned sigh. “We found box cutters, bottled water, nuts, and noodle cups. You can have it all plus everything we took.”
Jesse curses under his breath and Hope makes a groaning sound. I know that’ll leave us once again without supplies, but our lives are more important at this point. We can find more supplies—actually abandoned stuff like here at the post office. I won’t make that mistake again.
“You their leader?” Nate asks, cocking his head to the side, the muzzle of his gun that’s pointed at my face never wavering.
“Yes,” I blurt out, thought it feels wrong.
A real leader wouldn’t have brought his people into this situation. I’m just a broken guy trying to survive. Nothing special. Nothing more.
“Okay then,” Nate says, motioning with his gun. “Get your clothes on. Me and you are going to take a walk to your supplies cache while my men make sure yours don’t do anything stupid.”
Tyler starts to say something, no doubt an argument of some kind, but I cut him off with a sharp shake of my head. Quickly, I rise to my feet and start throwing on my mostly dry clothes. Once I’ve tied my boots, I give Nate a nod and then gesture toward the back.
“After you,” he says with a grunt. “For both our sakes, let’s just hope what you promise actually exists.”
My stomach grumbles hungrily and I wish I’d have thought to separate the supplies in case of a situation like this. Of course there’s no way I could have known. Now I have to give it all up just to get these people to go away.
Again, guilt swells up over me, this time for my own people, not theirs.
I guide him to the break room where the food and water have been brought from the cabinets and set on one of the tables. He eyes it with curiosity but makes no moves to touch it.
“Any of those bins survive?” Nate asks. “Or did you butcher them all for blankets?”
“There’re more.”
“Go get one and load up our stuff.”
Their stuff.
Rather than uttering any words to get myself shot, I make my way into the warehouse part of the building to locate one of the big rolling bins. I push it back to the break room and stop near the door.
“Get it put in there,” Nate says, wiggling his gun from the table to the bin. “I don’t have all day.”
I load the food and water that could have gotten us all the way to Ransom, Kansas, but is now a peace offering for the group we stole from. It makes my gut twist painfully. Each day, my decision-making abilities get worse and more desperate. Pretty soon, I’ll be no better than those people who have tried to harm us at every point from the moment we stepped foot off the boat back in California.
Mom would be so proud.
Thoughts of my mother during this moment have my hunger turning to gut-churning nausea. Bile creeps up my throat and I have to swallow hard to keep the acid in my stomach where it belongs.
Once I’ve completely cleared the table, I turn to look at Nate. “Now what?”
He studies me for an uncomfortably long time and then says, “What did you do before this?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“I ran an acquisition company in San Francisco. Was at the top of the building when the tsunami hit.”
His eyebrows lift. “You were a fancy suit in the city?”
“Yup.”
Nate lowers his gun and a smirk tugs at his lips. “I sold insurance. Owned my own firm. Look at us now.”
Two corporate men turned feral group leaders hell-bent on survival.
“The world’s gone to hell,” I admit. “I just want to find someplace to hunker down and try to survive this shit.”
Nate nods. Then he tucks his gun in his holster. I watch him as he removes several noodle cups, nut packets, and a whole pack of bottled water. “Consider this an undeserved kindness from a kindred spirit.”
I gape in surprise at the small pile of priceless treasure left on the table. “Uh, thank you, man.”
Nate shrugs. “We’re going to leave you people alone. Next time you get desperate, you might not run into other good people like us. The next time might get your men tortured and your women raped. You dodged a literal bullet this time. Don’t let that go to waste.”
Without another word, Nate leaves.
When his group is gone, the sounds of their thundering truck vehicle engines signaling their exit, Tyler rushes into the break room. Upon seeing me alive and in one piece, standing beside some supplies that were left behind, he lets out a relieved breath.
I don’t deserve the fierce hug he gives me, but like the stuff Nate left behind, I gratefully take it anyway.