the simple trap: 1

As the ziptie began cutting into Karl’s wrist, he wondered if his situation, bound in the backseat of a car, might have its roots in philosophy, or the chemicals that make up emotion. Those chemicals, that philosophy might be the hinges, the teeth, the steel jaws closing down on him.
A wave of sickness crashed over him. “Darryl, stop the car, I’m going to throw up again,” he moaned. He had been violently ill into a plastic baggy on the floor. He had motion sickness whenever he didn’t drive.
Darryl kept his fists white against the wheel. Darryl had thick leathery hands, with calluses. He had been a gardener before the ice age started, before the bombs, before the crops failed, before the little wars.
“Darryl,” he half moaned, “Stop the car, I’m gonna be sick, Da-.” Karl didn’t make it to the end of his quasi-captor’s name. But it hadn’t been the first time he had begged to vomit on solid ground. He had been begging from the backseat for about an hour.
The plastic cutting into his wrists: that was not philosophical.
But in a way, he guessed, it was chemical. He wished he could have chuckled to himself. It would have made him feel a lot better. He couldn’t really move his diaphragm that well with his head between his own knees, sort of aiming at the bag, hitting his shoes.
“Okay, flashlights, batteries, three gallons of gasoline, matches, four lighters, a .22 pistol, five bullets,” Darryl said, running down the inventory of what they had in the car again. Darryl was trying to organize the things they could trade, the things that in his mind would save their lives.
“Darryl, stop doing that, please. You’re going to kill me with that shit. What are you obsessed about what we’ve got with us? Where are we going, Darryl?” Karl’s voice was hoarse. He was having a hard time not thrashing around hysterically in the backseat.
“Karl, it sounds terrible. I’m sorry. It sounds like it hurts, and I very much hope that is not the case. I am trying to figure out what we’re going to do. I have a good idea, but I can’t tell you yet. You know we can not stop though. They are going to catch us before the Virginia border if we do.”
Karl sat up in the seat in the back after some length of silence.
“Darryl, I am going to piss in your backseat. You can drive the rest of the way to wherever you’re going with the smell of piss clouding your mind. That’s choice A,” Karl said. He was furiously angry; he hadn’t considered saying it beforehand.
“Choice B is to cut me loose so I can piss in your water bottle. Choice C is to stop the car. Choice C is clearly the best answer,” Karl said, enunciating every word. He bit his lip, and arched his back against his hands behind him. “I’m just trying to roll with the punches here, okay? But man, I’m losing it back here. I just don’t know. You can’t keep me caged here like this.”
“We’re going to die, Karl. Choice C is death,” said Darryl.
“Is it certain death, man?”
“Well, no, but it lowers our chances of long term survival, don’t you think?” Darryl’s voice sounded like wood.
“There’s something wrong with you, and I’ve got to pee really badly. The ball’s in your court, Darryl. You’re going to have to either cut me loose, or unzip my pants, man,” said Karl, voice tightening with his bladder.
“So, an ultimatum, Karl? All right, we’re gonna stop the car. But we got a little ways to go before we can stop. I know there aren’t going to be that many people on the roads, but it would make sense to pull off on one of the exits. You’ve got to plan ahead,” Darryl glanced back at Karl in the seat, and grey light bounced off his thinning grey hair. He reached up and tapped the side of his head.
“But before we stop, I found this,” he leaned back, reached around the seat, and laid a wallet sized picture of Karl’s dad, Luke, in his lap.
It struck Karl like a blow. Karl recoiled, but he couldn’t pick it up, and it just stared at up at him, smiling a tight, toothy grin. It looked like the picture of a bad man. Maybe it was just Luke’s mustache that made him look like a murderer, like Stalin. He was standing there with Karl’s mom.
“Everyone who wears a mustache like that must be a murderer,” said Karl.
“Not today, Karl. We better just hope he’s dead.”
Karl watched Darryl’s eyes in the rearview. Darryl couldn’t hold his eyes from looking back, checking the rearview, over and over. Karl squirmed in the backseat. .
“I’m pissing now! I’m now pissing in your backseat.” Karl shook the picture off his lap. It fell face down into the plastic baggie.
“No, wait!” yelled Darryl, half over his shoulder, swerving at 95 mph. The car threatened to fish tail. “I’m pulling over now, I’m - now, don’t!”
They scraped along the fence, crunching through the gravel, halfway up Afton Mountain. Karl had not peed himself much, by the time Darryl got around to opening his door. The chilly air hitting his face as he pushed himself out of the door helped him stop the stream.
“Oh Jesus, unzip me, Oh Christ, pull it out, man, you got to.” Karl heard the snick of a knife.
“You die if you run, right? Not by my knife, but hunger,” said Darryl. There was no conviction in his voice. Karl’s hands were free.
The feeling rushed up inside his chest, sparkling in his guts, shivering up his spine. It was glorious. It was like pushing steely jaws back off his neck: the rabbit rises from the snapping metal.
The other side of the road dropped into the Shenandoah Valley.
Karl’s eyes slowly came to focus; he raised his head, while he zipped his pants. He was staring into the gaping maul of death. Where the fog was being burned off by the dim sun, he could make out tiny, distant buildings, collapsing, falling into themselves.
There were many short trees, and a few tall pines, invading like twisted armies, tearing up the perfect lines of farms that used to be. Everything human would be erased within a year. His eyes opened wider. It made him choke, made his eyes burn. He stood there, fog rolling across his feet, and rubbed his bloody wrists, getting it on his hands.
There was no escape from what he was looking at, no way out. All traps, every direction.
“A decade, that’s what science says. We have to survive, just one decade, then, we can set those lines aright,” said Darryl, pointing into the fog.
“What if they’re wrong, man. What if the coast of Africa isn’t enough salt to get the ocean density back up. Where the fuck are we going man?”
“Somewhere defensible and we’ll start all over again. Just you have to come with me, now. We have to get going. Okay?” said Darryl. “If it’s all right, would you sit in the back?”
“I see,” said Karl, and he pulled the door handle.