Desolation a post apocal.., p.10
Desolation: A post-apocalyptic suspense novel, page 10
“This is me,” Shae said, as they reached the car and she unlocked it. Shae popped the trunk and Will gently sat the project inside.
“Cool, well… see ya,” Will said as he turned and began walking back.
“Hey,” Shae called after him. As Will turned to look at her, she hesitated, then flashed a smile at him. “The project is going to be great!”
Will replied, “Sure, as long as you can manage not to wrap it around a tree,” and grinned back.
Shae snorted and stuck out her tongue; a little child’s retort that was somehow cute on her. Then she waved and got into the car.
Will, still grinning, turned and trudged his book bag back across the long parking lot to the school steps. When he reached them, he sat on one of the lower steps, pulled out a novel, and started reading, settling in for a long wait. His Mom wouldn’t be off of work from her second job until eight. He had a few hours to wait, and he was already hungry, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Will was still pondering his predicament when he heard Shae shout from in front of him.
“Hey,” she said. He looked up to see her car stopped in front of the steps.
“You want a ride?” She asked, looking concerned.
“I’m ok,” he said, “My mom will be by around eight-thirty.” He said, even though he had just been dreading the wait.
Shae looked shocked when he mentioned the time and said, “Come on, no need to wait that long. I can get you home, it’s no bother.”
Will stared at her for a minute, emotions warring, then reluctantly got up, stuffed his novel in his bag, and walked to the car.
“Just throw your bag in the back,” Shae said as he got into the passenger seat.
The interior of the car was a kind of dark gray, with cloth seats and typical plasticky American components. It was mostly clean, though there were a few drink bottles in the floorboard.
“Thanks,” Will said, stowing his bag.
“What are lab partners for?” Shae replied.
“Ok, how do I get to your place?”
“Do you know where Five Points is?”
“Sure.”
“Ok, just head that way. It’s pretty easy from there.”
As they drove along, the proximity to Shae, enclosed in a car like this, stirred Will’s hormones. He could smell her, a flowery, slightly musky and distinctly female scent, and his thoughts ran away to imagining the softness of her; her hair, her skin, her breasts. This made him nervous, and he tried to distract himself by looking out the window.
An awkward silence developed that Shae broke up by asking Will about his previous school. Will described it for her, steering clear of the bullying he had been through, and avoiding talking about his parents as much as he could.
Talking about himself like this calmed him, and he began to feel less self-conscious. However, as they got closer, he got more nervous. After some thought, he realized why: He didn’t want her to know how poor he was, and if she took him home, she would.
As they came down the road that led to Will’s home, Will directed her past his long driveway to the house just beside it. This was the landlord’s house, a moderate-sized farmhouse with wooden siding painted a faded white. Shae pulled in the driveway, and Will muttered a “Thanks”, quickly grabbed his stuff, and exited the car.
As he went to shut the door, Shae said “See you tomorrow” and flashed him a 6000-watt smile, stopping him in his tracks.
He sheepishly smiled back and said, “Sure, see you then,” before closing the door.
Will walked about halfway towards the landlord’s house as he listened to her drive off. Then he turned, verified that she was out of sight, and began trudging down the long driveway, through the park to the single-wide trailer he called home.
Chapter 11
Coming up over a hill, a traffic jam pulled Will out of his reverie. Luckily, he was only doing sixty, and he was able to stop in plenty of time. From where he was, he couldn’t see the cause of the trouble clearly, as the cars continued in unbroken lines until they crossed the next hill, roughly a half mile away.
In the bowl-like median, there were deep furrows where cars had turned around to drive away in the far lane, and several stranded cars lay stuck in the center. The dirt appeared dry now, but judging by the splattering of dried mud on the backs of the stuck cars, the ground had been soaked when this jam had occurred.
Despite the foreboding look of the stuck cars, Will suspected he could get his truck across the median and over to the other side. All the vehicles appeared to be two-wheel drive, and besides, it had been muddy and now it was dry.
Still, if he made a mistake, he would be stuck walking for a while. That was potentially suicidal with his bum leg, and he hesitated. Finally deciding he didn’t have many options, he put the nervousness aside and got on with it.
Will realized he didn’t actually know how to engage four-wheel drive, so he opened the glove box, grabbed the owner’s manual, and began searching. It turned out that it was as easy as turning a little selector knob on the dash, so he did so, and eased the truck off of the highway and onto the sloping grass of the median.
He continued slowly, dodging an empty car wedged sideways at the bottom, and climbed up the other side. The truck drove along as if he was out for a Sunday stroll, with zero drama, and soon enough he was on the asphalt again.
Will let out a pent-up breath and switched the truck back to two-wheel drive. Then he drove slowly along in the breakdown lane, monitoring the road ahead. It was unlikely he was going to face any oncoming traffic, but it seemed prudent to keep an eye out anyway.
Occasionally, as he got closer to the next hill, he would glance over at the stopped traffic to see if he saw anyone living, or any reason the jam occurred. He was disappointed in both regards.
At the top of the hill, the reason for the traffic jam became immediately obvious. Down in a long low valley that seemed to continue for miles, he saw a jackknifed semi-truck that was taking up not only the entire road, but whose trailer was actually hanging off the road and wedged solidly into the embankment bordering on the right side.
There was no way to get around it, and a guardrail on the left side of the road divided the median from the roadway. There was a little room between the front of the semi and the guardrail, but not nearly enough to get a car past.
The scene got worse from there. Under the trailer appeared to be the rear end of a car, wedged in with the roof sheared off. It had apparently caught on fire, and the trailer was just a shell of blackened metal struts.
On the other side of the semi were two more vehicles. One was a late model truck, not much different from the one he was driving, flipped on its side, blocking the road. The other vehicle was an SUV that was simply stopped, but with the front right corner caved in.
It looked to Will like the SUV had hit the truck, flipping it, which blocked the road. The semi, on reaching the hill, saw the accident, braked hard, and probably cut the wheel, avoiding demolishing the two cars, but catching the person following him unaware.
Well, on the positive side, the road ahead of the accident was clear, so Will should have no problem crossing back over once he reached the end of the guardrails, about a mile away. He drove on, switching back to four-wheel drive to navigate the median when necessary, and back to two-wheel drive once he crossed the other side.
As Will got the truck back up to a decent pace, a shiver went down his spine. This accident had been here a while, probably days. That it hadn’t been cleared, and he hadn’t seen a single emergency vehicle in the jam, did not bode well for the state of emergency services.
He was a good distance from the city now. He didn’t know if he would call this area rural, exactly, but it was certainly trending in that direction. What if everyone was gone?
He couldn’t let himself think about that right now. Just the thought of losing Shae or Kai sent a sharp rush of fear through him, knotting up his stomach and making him feel jittery. He had taken them for granted a lot, he knew, but he loved them. If they all made it through this, he would make sure they knew that.
As he got up to speed again, his mind wandered back to Shae. How strange their story was; they never really dated; they just fell into being all at once.
They had kept meeting in the library, ostensibly to work on the project, but it was mostly done. They really just hung out, talking quietly and learning about each other.
Shae shared his dark, usually morbid, and always inappropriate sense of humor, so he could always make her laugh.
They discussed their thoughts on school and life; their parents and what they wanted them to do with their lives. They discussed religion: Shae was a Christian, and a believer. Will was not entirely an atheist, or even an agnostic, yet. But he had strong doubts, and she was perhaps the first Christian he had met who seemed to actually take pleasure in having her beliefs challenged.
Will enjoyed this, because there was nothing he liked better than challenging people’s beliefs. He just avoided it because he already had no friends; he didn’t need more help in that regard.
Shae took him home most days, and they talked the whole way, often discussing music and showing each other their favorite songs. Shockingly, they both liked a wide variety of music, and had similar opinions about a lot of it.
Will still avoided having her take him to his actual house. He was still worried, now more than ever, about what she would think if she knew how poor he was. Even on rainy days, he sloshed home, getting soaked.
There was even one day where he had to enter the landlord’s house because Shae was busy changing CDs in the driveway. Will went in like he owned the place - thank God the door was unlocked - and was immediately confronted by the scowling face of old Mr. Hopkins.
Mr. Hopkins was a fireplug of a man, almost completely bald and almost always in a foul mood. To teenage Will, he looked ancient, but adult Will guessed the man had probably been in his early sixties.
“Will Hale,” he said, “What in the hell are you doing just barging into my house? You are lucky I didn’t have my shotgun in easy reach. You might have lost a few inches off the top!”
“Sorry Mr. Hopkins,” Will said, “I just remembered my Mom asked me to tell you that the toilets all keep backing up again and I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
Something was always going wrong in the trailer. His Mom actually hadn’t asked him to do any such thing, but this was the first problem that came to mind.
“Dammit, I told Diane that the septic system’s on the blink again and it’s going to be that way till I can get someone out to look at it. Told her that last week, in fact! Now you just run on and tell her again.”
As Will turned to leave, Mr. Hopkins fixed him with a stink-eye and said, “And the next time you decide you need to barge into my house, Will Hale, do us both a favor: Don’t.”
“Yes sir,” Will said, and quickly made his way out the door. Shae was gone, and Will felt relief flood him as he headed down the driveway home.
Over the next few weeks, they spent most afternoons together in their secluded corner of the library.
One day, as they were discussing religion, Will tried to get a rise out of her, and they got into a staring match. Neither was really upset, or really even cared about the argument; Will was just trolling her, and she knew it. But the fake staring contest continued until it became something different.
Will was unaware of when exactly it happened, but suddenly, he was lost in her eyes.
They were large, slightly almond-shaped, and varied in color from emerald green to golden brown, depending on her mood and how the light was hitting them. Right then, they were vibrantly green, almost an electric green, like a lightsaber in the movies.
This mesmerized him, like a moth to flame, until she slowly closed them, and her head tilted slightly to the left. It was then that Will realized how close they were, and before he could register what that meant, her lips were on his. As they met, a tingling spread out from his lips, and warmness flooded his body. He found his heart was pounding, as this was something he secretly wanted but had no real hope for.
The kiss was soft, gentle, without hurry or feverish passion, but intense none-the-less. After a short while, Shae pulled away looking flushed, and a little surprised, but then broke into a grin.
“Let’s take off,” she said, and grabbed her bag as she rose.
Will, flustered and confused, followed suit, and soon they were out in the parking lot, breathing the chilly Autumn air. They threw their bags in the back of the little car and hopped in, Will feeling a little jittery. As they pulled out of the lot, Shae cut the radio down and said, “Do you know somewhere we can go?”
Will felt a flood of emotions strike him at once. Did she mean what he was thinking she meant? Excitement was warring with fear, but excitement won - just barely.
After a moment to get his brain back on track, he said, “I know an old trestle down by the lake. Kids sometimes jump off of it on the weekends when they are drunk, but almost no one goes down there during the day. I bike down there sometimes because it’s peaceful.”
“Show me,” she said, and he did.
The road leading to the trestle was a gravel-covered dirt road through a thick wood off of an old paved country road. They turned on to it, going slowly, feeling every bump in the road.
Gravel crunched under the tires and made small pinging noises as it bounced off the underside of the car. On the sides of the road, large trees, some pine but most large maples or oaks, stretched as far as the eye could see, and canopied the road with the multi-colored display of Fall.
They had spoken little since leaving the school. They were both nervous, and each lost in their own thoughts and excitement. The closer they got to the trestle, the more nervous and excited Will got. He was so nervous, he didn’t even have an erection; which, unfortunately, made him more nervous.
Slowly they rolled down the long road until finally, after what seemed like hours but was probably only five minutes, they reached the top of a small hill and saw a clearing in the distance. A large area had been swept clean of trees and dusted with gravel as a kind of parking lot. Beyond it, they could see a mound of gravel on which sat well cared-for train tracks. Past the tracks was a thin line of trees, through which you could just make a steep drop-off, with the lake extending to the horizon.
As they got into the parking area, the full scene became clear. To the left and right, the tracks continued on. On the right, they continued through the wood, and were bordered by a cliff on one side, and a small pond which abutted the parking lot on the other. To the left, the tracks continued for a few hundred feet and then joined an old, rusted trestle as the ground sharply dropped off into the lake.
From the parking area, you couldn’t see the end of the trestle, but Will knew it extended for what seemed like a half a mile before terminating on a similar cliff at the far side. Unlike some of those teenagers, he had never jumped off it, but he had stood at its edge and gazed across.
Shae pulled off to the side and parked.
This was his first real sexual experience, and it wasn’t like the books and movies portray it. They didn’t ‘melt into each other’, or ‘become one organism’. They were teenagers, with teenage hormones; none of that was going to happen in any case.
No, the thing Will remembered most, the most pervasive feeling, was surprise. Surprise that she was here with him. Surprise that she was touching him, and him her. Surprise at how she looked, and smelled, and tasted. Surprise at how he felt, and what he was doing. In fact, he was so surprised, he didn’t think he would be able to orgasm. But then he did, and that surprised him most of all.
Afterwards, they cleaned up (yet another surprise; you don’t see that one in the movies), and Shae drove him home. She seemed to have a glow about her and chatted ramblingly while she drove. Will nodded and made all the right noises, but he was in a kind of shock. He was no longer a virgin, and it felt nothing like what he supposed it would. In fact, he felt exactly the same, and had no idea what to do with that information.
As they got closer, he realized he needed to say something, or he may never do so, and he knew instinctively it needed to be done or it would sour their relationship.
“I don’t live where you think I do.”
“Huh?” Shae said, absentmindedly smiling at him, clearly not registering the meaning of his statement.
“The house you drop me off at? That’s not actually where I live.”
Shae looked at him quizzically.
“Just, when we get there, go where I tell you and I’ll show you where I really live.”
Now it was Shae’s turn to be stunned into silence. But she drove on, quiet now, occasionally casting a worried glance at him.
Will didn’t feel like he could say more. Now that it had been done, he felt a sickening dread in the pit of his stomach, and he didn’t trust himself to describe where he lived.
As they neared the landlord’s house, Will said, “See the driveway past the house you’ve been dropping me at?”
Shae nodded.
“Turn there.”
Shae turned onto the gravel drive. From the road, all you could see was a long gravel drive, flanked by cedar and pine trees on either side. The driveway sloped down into a kind of small valley, and then split, with each fork climbing another elevation. Between the forks was a clear patch of land, with spotty grass trying to grow on red mud.
“Take a right at the fork,” Will said.
As they reached the dip and began up the right side, the trees cleared away from the right side, and the park itself came into view. Along the right fork, three old single-wide trailers were lined up, each with a semblance of a yard and their own gravel driveway. Past these was a large gravel cul-de-sac, with four more trailers spread out around it.
