Behind Our Walls (2 page)

"So how long?"

"I'd say April. At that point, if there are any last snowstorms, it's usually melted by the next day."

"What if more people wander by before then?"

"I don't think they will. This road is pretty isolated, just a two lane blacktop and there isn't much around in terms of other towns, so we probably won't see that many people coming out this way."

"But what if we
do
?"

"We'll have to re-evaluate."

Rowen reached to his right and grabbed the atlas. On the map of the US, he had taken a marker and scribbled over most of the eastern and western states, leaving about half of the country in the center as the only regions that were likely safe from fallout.

"We're about as far away as we can get from either radiation zone," he said as he looked over the map again. Sophie wondered if he thought he would find new information if he stared at it long enough. "It would be nice if we could find somewhere more permanent. This will work for what we need right now but it's too exposed to be used in the long term."

Sophie nodded, but she found her attention drifting, pining for the feel of a hot cup of coffee in her hand. That wasn't coming back any time soon.

"We'll find somewhere," Rowen said. She nodded and looked up at him, wanting to think that he was right, but on the inside fearing that the day would come when they would look back on this and wish that they had been more grateful for what little they did have.

-3-

Sophie pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned back against the wall, listening to the wind howling outside. It was snowing for the third night in a row and the snowdrifts against the back wall now made opening the door impossible. At least with the snow outside, she could feel comfortable that there would be no one walking past that could discover them.

Except, was that the sound of snow crunching underneath boots?

She shook her head and banged it against the wall behind her. Light exploded around her and helped bring her somewhat back to reality. It was below freezing and the middle of a driving blizzard. No one would be out in conditions like this. They would end up dead before morning.

The walls groaned from the building settling, or possibly from someone walking across the roof. There was no way anyone could have gotten up there, but she certainly couldn't ignore the possibility. She caught sight of her foot, creeping out and ready to kick Rowen out of his slumber so that he could protect her from whoever lurked up there. At the last minute, her reason won out. There was no one on the roof. She heard the groaning sound again and this time she almost called out, clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound and reign in her panic. From the other side of the station, she heard a groan and watched as Corrine shifted slightly in her sleep. Sophie shifted her gaze back up to the ceiling, sure that something was about to bore through from the outside and descend down on them.

Her eyes burned from being open for so long. She couldn't remember the last time she had gotten a good long stretch of sleep. It should be easier in here. They had plenty of supplies and for the most part, the comfort of relative safety. The worst part was the cold, but after a while even that became tolerable. Still, her mind would not stop or slow down enough to accommodate any restful moments.

Sophie's head snapped up as something collided with the front door. It could have been debris, knocked around by the wind but it sounded like someone banging an open palm against the door, yelling over the wind to try and find out if anyone was in here. Maybe they were getting ready to break in. Maybe this was how she was going to die, on the floor of a dirty gas station with a dumbfounded look on her face.

"Are you okay?" Rowen's slurred voice came from underneath the paper thin blanket he had stretched over himself. She looked down at him and shrugged. He was already breathing heavily anyway, it wasn't like anything she said was going to get through. She just had to toughen up and try to sleep.

Still, when she pressed an ear to the wall, amidst the wind and the snow outside, she could still hear the hushed sounds of people talking, laughing and carrying on out there in the storm. They were talking about her, about the things they were going to do to her and her family once they got in here. It was only a matter of time before it was going to happen. They were going to break down that door and it would all be over.

Sophie reached up, took one of her earlobes between two fingers and pinched as hard as she could. Burning pain shot through her neck and she bit down on her arm to keep from crying out. Still, the voices subsided into the background of the storm as if they had never been.

She was alone.

They were alone.

The world out there was barren, and she couldn't be hurt by the grumblings and movements of the long dead, trying to shake her out of her sanity. She had to be stronger than that. She
was
stronger than that.

All she had to do was keep telling herself that.

After all, they only had maybe two more months left to survive in this tiny little building.

She was strong enough.

-4-

Sophie walked back into the station to make sure there was nothing else left behind that they could use. She had only been outside for fifteen minutes, but the smell which she hadn't been aware of until now made her double over, close to being sick. They had lived in this building for months and from the odor, it could have been much longer. She supposed that this could have been as good a defense as any, had anyone actually tried to break in.

James was already out of the parking lot and trudging up the road, bag slung over his shoulder as he stared off into the distant horizon. He didn't bother to look back and in that moment, Sophie wondered if he even cared about any of them. Corrine moved to walk off after him, Adam following close behind. Corrine paused long enough to throw a quick, spiteful look back as they moved out, sending a clear message that should Sophie choose to follow or not, it made no difference to her.

"God damned child care," she said as she picked up her bag and made her way towards the road, Rowen walking alongside. She looked up at him, that patient look on his face that centered her and also made her want to put her fist through it. "You know that if you hadn't been here to help me through this, I would have probably ditched their asses a long time ago."

Rowen smiled as he looked down at her. "No, you wouldn't have."

Sophie shook her head and looked off across the fields around them. She didn't like encouraging his belief that he knew her so well, even though this often seemed to be the case. "I'm just trying to say thank you, idiot."

"Fair enough."

They walked in silence for several minutes.

"I'll give you this much," Rowen said finally. "If we had tried to tough it out in that gas station much longer, we might have ended doing ourselves in from some kind of monoxide poisoning."

He was trying to disrupt the awkwardness, but she shifted her attention as she looked up at the other three. Her sister, the husband-to-be and her father. It hadn't been that long since she had counted at least two of those as being firmly on her side, a core part of her being. Now she found herself lost in her own reality, fallen to pieces inside of this world, already reduced to ash.

"You've got to give them time," Rowen said, noticing her glare. "I know how frustrating it is, but they can't keep this up forever. Eventually they have to come out on the right side of this."

She snorted, a laugh that felt cruel, even to her. "You clearly haven't been paying enough attention to my sister's moods. And whatever she feels, that piss-ant that she's picked to spend the rest of her life with will feel the same. I can promise you that."

"I know it seems that way, but eventually they'll recognize what you're doing for them and—"

"But what
am
I doing for them? Really?" Now she turned to face him. The others didn't bother to stop or slow, but she knew that they weren't going to be getting very far. "Seriously, what have I done that's so great? Doesn't feel like much from where I'm sitting."

"Well, they're all here, aren't they? Better than a lot of people can say. And what exactly do you think you could have done differently? It's not like there's any such thing as an emergency siren for when the government is about to collapse. Or to give you a heads up that the military is going to go crazy and try to create command authority over the public at large, or that—"

"I know. I just feel like we've been making mistake after mistake. My mother..." This time she faltered and tried to cover the sob that rose from her throat with a volley of fake coughing.

Rowen didn't answer at first, looking at something over her shoulder as he tried to collect his thoughts. Sophie glanced up the road, and saw that James was looking back at them, although the act seemed merely obligatory.

"You know," Rowen said, "I constantly think about things and how everything fell apart. How it all seemed so harmless. Little hiccups. Problems here, issues there. None of it suggested where we might be headed, or what could be waiting for us. If someone had told you what was going to happen in a few months, you would have called them insane. But, next thing you know, the President is getting whisked off into the protective bunker and before anyone can even really figure out what that meant, nuclear bombs are going off all over the world."

"I was there too, Rowen."

"My point is that even if you had had a crystal ball, what exactly do you think you could have done? Frankly, I don't see how our situation could be any better. There are dozens of ways they could be worse, though. You think I don't beat myself up, everyday? I can't tell you how much I'd give for a few more minutes with my girls, for the chance to try this all over again."

It occurred to her how little she really knew about him, despite having been in such close quarters over the past year. It had likely been luck, coming across him along the side of the road that day. She didn't know what she would do without him, but there were still moments when she caught herself wishing that she knew more of his story. She looked up and saw that the others had become tiny specks on the horizon. They resumed their walk, increasing the pace to try and catch up. After a few minutes, they found that the rest of the group had come to a halt, just short of a fork in the road.

"We want to go up that way," James said, pointing to the left. Sophie looked up, noting that the pavement came to a halt after about a hundred yards. The dirt road went up and wound its way into the hills.

"Why?" Sophie asked. All she could imagine was sore knees and backs after leaving the concrete behind.

"The main road is too dangerous," James said. "Besides, there might be somewhere up there we could stay for a while."

Sophie looked up at Rowen and could see the same concern in his eyes.

"Okay," she said, "but don't you think that we could be putting ourselves into more danger if we end up walking onto someone's property? What if you spook someone who's already barricaded into their farmhouse and they come after—"

"We're going up this way," Adam snapped at her. She shifted her glare towards him, furious at his need to insert himself into every argument. She was tired. Tired of playing the parental role for all of them and she suspected that the votes were against her. As tempting as it was to walk off and leave them behind, the prospects of letting them go on their own made her shudder in apprehension. She nodded at Rowen.

"Fine," she said. "Let's get moving."

-5-

The sun was almost completely out of sight, the last tendrils of light chased away by the whiplash of night. They trudged up the road, now going up at a steep incline. Tall trees flanked them on each side. Corrine and Adam were in the lead, with James lagging behind, half heartedly. Sophie and Rowen followed along in silence. She felt like they were just ascending up and up, until the road would dead-end and they would be left trying to find their way back down in the dark.

"We need to stop soon." She tried to use a level tone of voice to avoid inciting a rise out of the others. "Even if we're just sleeping along the road at this point, we can't be wandering around when we start to lose light."

She noticed Corrine and Adam speaking as they slowed to a stop. Turning back, they made their grand proclamation. "We can stop here. There's a clearing down a ways from the road where we can camp."

Sophie managed to stifle the immediate urge to retort. The fact that Rowen had the most experience and survival skills made their show of bravado absurd. She looked off into the forest around them and shook her head. There was no point in arguing as it would just make things worse.

"Fine," she said.

"I'll get everything set up." Adam's voice seemed to suggest that they should all be bowing down and scraping for his magnanimous generosity. "Corrine is going to go ahead and scout for supplies."

"You don't—" Sophie forced herself to stop, pinching the circulation out of her nose as she struggled to keep control. This was still just a long excursion for them. "You shouldn't go off on your own," she said. "We have no way to stay in touch and we have no idea who might be up there."