Shelter
The sun was harsh today. Rachel wore a wide-brimmed hat to protect her eyes and face from the dizzying rays. The heat was particularly brutal this summer, and she already had two scares from her youngest daughter, Sarah, who had fainted from heat exhaustion. Sarah was only five, and hadn't seen a doctor in three years. She wasn't well.
But they all fainted from time to time. She couldn't let herself worry about these minor incidents.
She worried more about Leona, her ten year old. Leona had been talking to herself, sometimes even working herself into an argument with some unknown person in her head. Leona remembered life before the world's oil supplies had run dry, leaving them helpless as they watched civilization swiftly collapse. She remembered her father while he was still alive, before he had become an inanimate tombstone in their back yard--a large flat rock shoved into the ground, bearing the epitaph Rachel had carved into it with a hammer and a homemade chisel:
"I'll keep them alive."
For the three years since she had first watched everyone she knew turn to barbarism, it had been her job to keep these children alive. It hadn't been easy for her or for them, but they lived. No one else mattered any longer, so long as her children remained living.
Still, they carried scars no child should be forced to endure. Leona not only remembered her father alive; she was haunted with the memory of her father's gruesome death. A family had come looking for food, shortly after the oil crash had begun--a man and his two sons. They were weak and malnourished, and the man's wife had died just days before. Carl invited the family into their home and fed them well that evening. Carl had set a rule to never give out from their already stretched food supply, but seeing the two sickly little boys so close to death had been too great a burden on the charitable man's conscience. He couldn't send them away. That night he talked to Rachel about taking them in, and letting them work on their small farm. With two families, and more boys, they would be able to produce more food, and would be stronger. It would be easier to defend against stragglers.
This became their first harsh lesson in the derangement and desperation caused by starvation. The man went mad in the middle of the night. He was terrified of watching his children die of slow starvation. The next morning while they were sharing a breakfast, he pulled an old rusty steak knife from his pants and gutted Carl before the horrified eyes of Rachel and the children. Rachel always carried a pistol, and within seconds the man was lying dead on the floor, face down in a pile of Carl's intestines. The two boys were screaming, and at the sight of their fallen father soiled in the guts of his murder victim, they ran outside and disappeared into the hills, never to be seen again. Rachel was sure that just beyond the hills on the horizon lay two small skeletons. She no longer cared.
As she scanned the rolling hills that stretched out toward the distant sun, she wondered how many corpses lay just beyond her sight. Had civilization begun anew while she and her children stay deserted in this rural wasteland? Were they still killing one another? Were most of them dead? Were all of them dead? She didn't know. A few stragglers had come her way, leading her to believe at least some survivors remained--but they were thieves and beggars, not fit for asking questions. They could only be dealt with. The little food her and her children managed to piece together for their small meals had to be conserved, and it had to be protected. A woman and two small girls could only grow so many vegetables, and they had no livestock remaining.
She often considered wandering over those hills, perhaps as far as the small city she had last seen as she fled with Carl and her children from desperate, starving scavengers. Those crazed people used to be their friends. They were people with families. They were teachers, police officers, farmers, and parents--now turned mad and ravenous. Rachel understood them. They only wanted to feed their families, and they were desperate. She no longer believed in evil. Yet her empathy only confirmed the danger they all presented. In their shoes, as in her own, she would do whatever was necessary to ensure the survival of her family and herself.
With a town reduced to chaos behind them, they fled to their home in the hills, and had never gone back.
Now, as she stared into the distance wondering what had become of them, she considered crossing the ten miles between herself and what used to be civilization. Perhaps there was hope. Perhaps she could return her children to a life of relative comfort and security.
She shoved the thought aside. It was merely temptation creeping in. If civilization existed out there, why, in the three years they had been confined to this remote prison, had no one come looking for them? No, she was sure civilization had come to an end.
She accepted her new life without joy or sorrow--only her determination to survive remained. There was no room left for anything else.
She turned to look at her daughters, and noticed a movement in the distance between the hills. "You're supposed to be watching that direction, Leona. What is that?"
"I don't know, Mom, I just saw it right when you did. Sarah, give me the binoculars." Sarah walked over and handed her sister the large binoculars. Sarah mumbled something incoherent as she scanned the distant hills. Finally, she spotted them.
"Men, five of them! They have guns!"
Rachel grabbed the binoculars and peered through them. Instantly, she turned and ran toward the house. "Help me put out the food! Be quick!"
A strange concoction of emotions stirred around in Rachel's head: fear of the approaching men, anger at the world, love and sorrow for her children, determination to survive. Most of all, however, she yearned. Here approached five men; It had been a long time since her husband was murdered. At 32, she was still young, and she was lonely. She worried for her children as they would inevitably grow and begin feeling those strange sensations of adolescence--the desire to be with a man, and to have children of their own. It was likely they would never have the opportunity to know a man in the way she had known Carl.
She cleared the table as Leona and Sarah prepared the food. Within moments, a modest feast was spread out across the table--enough for five men to eat their fill. It hurt them to see so much of their short food supply wasted on stragglers, but five armed men were too many for Rachel to defend against. Men with plenty of food before them were less likely to harm them.
Rachel put spoons in the soup bowls, spilled a few drops on the table, tore a couple of pieces from the bread to make it appear partially eaten, and sprung open the back door before they all convened in the small back bedroom. "Ok, they should be here any minute. They're just hungry men looking for food. We're going to let them eat, and by morning, we should be able to come out."
"I hate the shelter, Mommy. I'm scared."
"I know, honey. We still have a few batteries left for the flashlight. If you get too scared, I'll let you use it to look around. Believe me, if I had a choice, we would never go in there--but we can either spend a night in the dark or face five hungry men with guns."
She slid the armoire to the side and pulled open the hidden door behind it. The three of them hurried into the room, shutting the door behind them. Finally, Rachel grabbed the small cord beneath the door that was tied to one of the hind legs of the armoire and pulled it back against the wall to conceal the door.
Within seconds, they could hear the front door crash open. The men must have started running the moment they saw the house in the distance. They could faintly hear the men's voices, but with two rooms separating them, they couldn't make out the words.
"Leona, Sarah, I need you both to be very quiet. You can whisper, but very softly. They're going to search the house to make sure we're not here. We can't let them hear us."
Leona was squeezing her mother's hand. "What if they've come to save us, Mom? What if things are back to normal out there?"
"We can't take that chance, Leona. Five men with guns could do anything they want to us and there's nothing we could do to stop them. All five were grown men, and there wasn't a woman among them. That makes them even more dangerous, honey."
Leona squeezed her mother's neck with both of her arms. "What if they find us?"
"Then we defend ourselves the best we can. Breathe slowly, honey, calm down. They won't find us as long as we're quiet. They'll just think we fled into the hills when we saw them coming. They're not after us. They're after our food. If they can avoid a confrontation, that will suit them just fine."
Leona was mumbling quietly to herself. Rachel rubbed her daughter's head reassuringly. "Leona, please. Not right now."
The sound of footsteps on the other side of the wall quieted them. They could understand the voices now.
The voice of a young man spoke. "What do you think, Dad? Where did they go?"
A gruff voice answered, "What do you think, Billy? What would you do if you saw five men carrying guns coming toward your house?"
"I'd run into the hills and hide until they were gone."
"Exactly, Billy. They're probably hiding in the hills, waiting for us to leave. That's fine, let them wait. We'll finish eating, catch some rest, and then we need to get moving. Just be careful they don't catch us off-guard. Make sure someone is keeping watch outside." His voice swelled in pitch as he called out to the others, "This side of the house is clear! Let's eat!" They stayed quiet as the footsteps trailed off, back into the main section of the house.
They could hear the sounds of rummaging throughout the house.
"I'm scared, Mommy. What if they find the rest of the food and leave with that?"
"Don't worry, honey. They always go straight for the easy food, and then they pass. These men will pass."
She continued to hold her two daughters in the pitch darkness until she heard their breathing become deep and rhythmic. The room they were in had been a closet before they had converted it to a hiding place, and there wasn't much room. They had padded the floor, at least, so it was comfortable enough. Rachel laid her head back and imagined life as it had been before the crash. Slowly, her pleasant thoughts turned into pleasant dreams of her children playing with other children. She dreamed of them going to school, and growing up as the years passed. She dreamed of meeting their boyfriends. She dreamed of Carl--the happiness on his face as his daughters came home from school; the hugs before he left the house; and of the sex at night, hushed so as not to be heard by the children. Her dreams often took this route – as if the past three years had been the dream, and her real life still continued as normal.
Rachel was awakened abruptly by her daughters. "It's daylight, Mom." A small amount of light could be seen at the crack at the bottom of the door. "I'm hungry."
"So am I, honey. Let's go eat."
She stood up and pushed on the door with her shoulder. The armoire squeaked as it slid slowly across the wooden floor, making way for the opening door. She squeezed through the crack and then motioned for the children to follow before pushing the armoire back into place.
The three of them filed slowly and cautiously into the dining room. The food, of course, had been devoured. One of the men still sat at the table, slumped forward with his head resting in the remains of an overturned bowl of soup. A younger man, presumably his son, was sprawled beside him on the floor, his head resting on the leg of his father's chair, vomit still dripping from his open mouth onto his father's shoe.
"Sarah, go find the other three. I doubt they got very far. Leona, I'll drag these into the basement. You can start cutting them while I get a fire started. We're going to have a good meal tonight. It's been a long time."
Rachel wore a sour grimace. "Five of them--what a waste. We can cure some of the meat, but it's too much. Most of it will go bad."
Sarah came running back in, excited. "One of them made it to the farthest hill, Mommy. I can see them all with the binoculars. Do you want me to fetch you the wheelbarrow?"
"Yes, honey. Fetch me the wheelbarrow. We'll have to get them before the sparrows do. I'm not making food for those pests." Sarah disappeared out the door, excited to be helpful.
She looked down at the young man lying in the floor. He was erect--an odd side effect of the poison. She would have that part for herself.