Status Epilepticus

It steals from me. It steals the experience of epilepsy itself. It steals other memories too.It steals memories of my youth, steals the memory of my dying great grandmother. And with those memories goes something integral, something that was mine.

Of course, I've got books published by the doctors, forums published by the afflicted, and websites compiled by the earnest to replace what is stolen.

The complex balance of the electrical system in the brain may be tipped in several ways. Head trauma or lack of oxygen during birth, or brain tumors, genetic conditions... and so on. Any of those things, plus many more, could be the reason that I am epileptic.

Epilepsy has stopped me from doing some things in my life that I wanted to do. I find it difficult to believe that my life, my will, my freedom are so obviously framed by something so ephemeral.

You might wonder how something so slavering, painful, convulsive, repulsive, and physical as a seizure could be ephemeral. I can’t remember anything about any of the seizures I’ve had. In that sense, the disease is a story that others have told me about myself. Enough people tell you a consistent enough story enough times, and you believe them, even if you have no way to observe the thing that they are telling you about.

And if you are somewhat of a rational person, you make up observable datum to assuage the faith that you have in that story that they keep telling you. All this is to simply say that the reason that I have epilepsy is because they tell me a story about myself that I believe utterly without question.

But it took me years to believe it.

There is no good metaphor for what a seizure is. Yet I will provide one anyway. Imagine a giant computer central processing unit, the size of the ocean. Now imagine the energy of the sun converted with 100% efficiency (or as close as the laws of thermodynamics would allow) into electricity. Now dump the electricity through the CPU. It would be an apocalyptic wave of burning electrons. That's what a seizure is, when you bring it back to human scale.

It’s always easier to believe in something if you have seen it in other people first. And that’s how it happened to me. When someone has a seizure, everyone has a seizure. They have a way of convulsing the patterns of everything around them. As if the seizure in one tiny part of the brain triggers a larger seizure, which triggers a larger seizure, which triggers a brain wide seizure, which triggers a social seizure.

One afternoon, my dad walked in from the back yard, with a pinched look. He walked over to mom, and whispered something urgently to her. Immediately, my brother and I picked up on the panic.

He had taken the dog, Patches, an English Springer Spaniel, out in the back yard, and the dog had begun to behave oddly. They discussed, openly whether the dog had been bitten by a spider, or poisoned.


Then they made my brother and I go to our rooms, while they dealt with the dog. As an inquisitive child, I couldn't help but pester my mom to get her to tell me what had happened. She didn't understand what had happened to the dog herself, which made it easier for her to withhold information.

What had happened was that the dog went out to urinate, laid down on the ground, and then stiffened so violently that he smashed into a tree several yards away. His legs pushed straight with such force, that from a supine position, he hit a tree. Then he laid at the base of the tree, foaming at the mouth, making demonic noises in his throat and lungs, with his eyes rolled backwards, shuddering into the epileptic gaze.

A year or so later, with the dog turned into a rug with Phenobarbital, they had a thought they had a handle on the situation. Yet Patches began having a seizure while I was laying on the couch, him right beside me. I asked if I could remain downstairs. They told me a little about it. They said that he would be very disturbing to watch. He hit the far wall so hard that it shook a picture off. We turned off the television, my brother ran upstairs, and I sat there, fascinated, and observed.

On the evenings when the dog had more than one seizure, my dad would drag Patches into the garage, for sanitary reasons. He would sometimes spend some time with the dog, riding out the worst of it, and sometimes, he would simply let the dog go it alone.

Dad walked in from the garage one night, with a pinched look. He walked over to mom, and whispered something urgently to her. Her eyes widened. I saw him walk out of the house with a .22 rifle. He was crying. He had spent too much time in the garage that night.

The next morning, he put the dog to sleep. He told me, after I came home from school, that the dog had to be put to sleep because he had had 24 seizures that evening. The family sat around the table, and everyone cried, including him. I sat there, fascinated, and observed.

Why is my brain like Patches's brain?

2.

I've been convincing myself that I am not epileptic for a decade. The intervals between my seizures have been long enough that I could convince myself that I was not going to have another one. That I was not epileptic.

It is somewhat likely that I've been having seizures in my sleep since I hit puberty. That's part of how seizures work. There are three ways that seizures can develop, and one of them is during puberty. Yet my parents can’t recount me ever having one until the one I had in public. So my first was on a school bus.

I fell asleep on the bus one day shortly after I had gotten my license. I shouldn't have been on the bus, but behind the wheel, except for the fact that I was a nightmare on the highways. My concentration on the road could be compared to cats chasing marbles.

I was listening to The Cure, Disintegration, and I remember a fat black girl sitting down beside me. She had a white shirt on. I didn't say hello when she sat down.

It must have scared the shit out of her, when I began to... have my seizure. I would like to talk to that girl, since she was probably one of the few people who could tell me what the beginning of one of my seizures looks like.

I only have seizures when I am asleep. Two kids, Shabnam Islam, and James whose last name I don't remember, pulled me off the bus when the bus driver finally realized she had an emergency on her hands.

I imagine the black girl beside me must have been terrified when I began to spasm and foam at the mouth. She screamed, and pushed herself out of the seat, and into the aisle of the moving bus. The driver shouted at her to sit down. The girl stood in the middle of the aisle, and stared with fascination, as I collapsed into the floor, my backpack falling on my face, obscuring the twisted mouth, the open eyes, rolling back white, into the epileptic gaze.

Someone shouted at the driver to stop the bus. Kids pushed themselves out of their seats, as they jostled one another trying to scope the horror. The situation shifted into spectacle, into emergency. It took the driver a minute or two to find a suitable place to pull over. By the time the bus was no longer in motion, neither was my body. My face was dumb, not twisted, but lifeless.

The two teenagers pulled me off the bus like a young Adam and Eve, watching the effects of the broken world on humans.

I don't know what I remember. I've been told the story so many times, what I have in my head might be reconstruction entirely composed by what others have said.

It must have taken quite a while for the ambulance to come, and get me loaded, interview the teenagers, and drive me off to the hospital. It must have been enough time for the school to call my mother, and for her to drive across town to get to me. She road in the ambulance with me through the hospital. It only makes sense that what flashes of memories I have are a recount of the situation through her eyes, not mine.

He kept telling the paramedics that he was cold. They had to remove his shirt in order to attach electrodes to his body to get a sense of how his heart was beating, so that they'd be able to give data to the doctors once they got him to the hospital. When they removed his shirt, they had to hold him down. He punched one of the doctors just below the left eye. It was a surprising punch.

The man he hit was gentle. Some people get instantaneously angry. The paramedics said that post-seizure victims are sometimes violent like that, as if they don't understand what's going on. Or perhaps as if they had reverted to some deeper, animal understanding of their contexts.

Then they got me into the hospital. I had some of the procedures that they did to me the first time done to me later, in a second round, when they were determining the extent of my epilepsy, so I have some idea what the tests were like. Essentially, they do everything they can to make you have a seizure while you are attached to a machine, just to see what your brain waves look like.

The EEG, or Electroencephalograph, is a machine that records brain waves picked up by wires taped to the head. Electrical signals produced by brain cells are recorded as wavy lines by the machine. Brain waves during seizures look like earthquake reading. They look much like what the body does during a seizure. They look terrifying.

On the other hand, an abnormal EEG is not that dramatic. On a normal day, say while I'm at work, if I had those electrodes attached to my head, the reading would come back abnormal.

Then after the hospital had their data, I was released. I went home, and stayed home from school for a few days while we determined that I was not going to continue to have more seizures. We knew nothing.

My mother said that she knew that I was epileptic, that I would continue to have seizures, sure beyond doubt. She said it was because of the way I acted, that I had been acting increasingly erratic up until the day of the seizure. Yet she is unable to pinpoint any single action. I slowly regained memory, and consciousness, and began to function normally again afterward.

I thought that there was something different about me as well. I had been prepared for the idea that there was something wrong with my brain, because I’d been having catastrophic migraines. But I didn't think it was epilepsy. I thought it was genius. It's funny how people tangle these things up, make them more palatable for themselves, hang on to sickness.


3.

To me, the abnormal EEG reading, with it's minor waves, is more terrifying than the seizure waves. It means that the epilepsy is really a symptom of something else. That seizures are not a symptom of a disease called epilepsy, rather epilepsy is a symptom of something wrong with the way your brain is built.

Something is wrong with the way that my brain is built.

I am sane. I am generally happy, with hard streaks of moroseness. I am normal. Yet I am not sure that the moments of my incompetence are due to the human condition.

I can't remember how many seizures I have had. Which makes sense for two reasons. The first is that I am rendered unconscious by the seizure.

That's not true for all seizures, just the ones you see in movies. Unfortunately, the ones you see in movies are the ones I have. The idea you might have of a seizure, a person flopping on the floor, foaming at the mouth, biting off their tongues, and rolling their eyes in the back of their heads, is called a tonic-clonic generalized grand mal seizure. That's me all over it. Except for the fact that it only happens to me when I sleep.

The second reason is because all the time markers around the time of the seizure are typically obliterated. I am usually semi-conscious for some time afterward. I used to think that it was a couple of days until I returned to normal. Now I don't think that that was, or is the case. Perhaps my first seizure was more profound somehow than the others that followed it, and it did require a few days. Perhaps it is perfectly normal, on the other hand that I don’t sharply remember the days following my first seizure. What are the chances that I would have a catalogue of memories for any given two days in my whole life?

I believe that I am typical. I think that I don't remember anything at all for twenty minutes, to an hour after the seizure, which is what happens to most victims of a seizure of the kind that I have.

Oddly though, It seems to have erased certain, albeit minor portions of my memory. Those holes in my memory speak to me the way the Marianas Trench speaks to marine biologists. I spent time fiddling with the absence of memory the way your tongue is magnetized to a loose tooth.

No one slept with me, until my fiancé got pregnant, so after that is the only real record I have of my epilepsy. My wife has had to witness every one of the seizures that I have had since we got pregnant. What she must go through during every seizure is a metaphor for how we got pregnant.

She is laying in bed, having the dreams of youth, and beauty, freedom, and fearlessness, when she is wrenched from her sleep with the inexorable strength of death’s hands. They are my hands, flopping in the bed, my throat constricting, my tongue disappeared, my eyes white on white on white, no pupil. Every time, she is convinced that I am dying. It is a much more terrible burden for her than it ever will be for me, no matter what angst I feel about my inabilities to guarantee my ability to provide in the future.

I have no warning symptoms in the slightest. Some people say that they have a feeling like they are going to have a seizure. Like an apocalyptic curtain hung over everything. Like the feeling you might have if the sky suddenly turned an angry purple at noon. For me, I often deny to my wife that I have had a seizure, when I regain consciousness afterwards. I feel like I should know if something like that happened to me.


4.

I am surprised at how powerfully I don't want to know what's wrong with me. I have been denying that I was epileptic for a decade. I wanted it to go away. I wanted it to be larger than it is as well, something grand. What an irrational thing to think.

I didn't have my second seizure until much later.

I hated the kid I was rooming with for the first semester at Bridgewater College. During the second semester, I moved into a friend's dorm room, on the other side of the campus.

He had already taken the bottom bunk, and I liked top bunks anyway. I hadn't had a seizure in two years, and there wasn't any way for me to know that I usually had seizures in the spring and fall.

I had a dream one night that I had fallen off the bunk, in the dark, and hit the table near the bed with my hip. I didn't know that it wasn't a dream, because I was waking up from a seizure. I woke up in the morning, still on the floor where I had fallen from the top bunk.

I had bruised my hip pretty badly on the table. If I had broken it, I am sure my roommate, who was there, sleeping in his bunk below me when I fell off, wouldn't have done anything any differently.

I asked him some time later why he didn't help me, or what he'd heard. He'd said he thought I was masturbating in the top bunk, because I was shaking the bed and breathing heavily. He said he didn't hear me fall and hit the table. He said he had no idea I was having a seizure, just that he was very embarrassed.

I had told him ahead of time that I was possibly epileptic. That they had told me that I definitely was because of the abnormal EEG.

The neurologist I was going to at the time said that it was extremely probable that I had a seizure that night. It doesn’t tally up with the rest of the seizures that I had in subtle ways. The second seizure gave me plenty of room to both milk the concept of epilepsy for the uniqueness it introduced into my life, and to deny any need for me to take the medicine that my neurologist was prescribing.

Yet I began to wonder if there was something profoundly wrong with me.

My eyes hurt. All the time. Especially my right eye. When I fall asleep at night, it's usually very quickly. I suspect that I don't close my eyes, especially my right eye, when I fall asleep. Other people have confirmed that I sleep with my eyes open. Do I sleep that way because something is wrong with my brain?

I shake my feet all the time. I am hyperactive. I don't mean that I have ADHD, or had to take Ritalin when I was a child. I mean I move around too much. My wife constantly reminds me to stop moving. It worked great when my children were small, because children like to be subtly moved, all the time, it keeps them quiet.

When I was younger, in my teenage years, I may have had some kind of mental problem. I feel like I am the only sane person in a desert of insanity some times now. I wonder if either one of these situations was due to my epilepsy.

I used to cut myself. Epilepsy?

I was sitting on the bleachers, watching the girl's heat in the fourth cross country meet of my eighth grade year, talking to a friend of mine. He was laughing with me about a game show he had made up. Suddenly, the light changed. It became sinister, green, too bright, sickly. I turned to tell him I had been poisoned, but I couldn't see his head, or his left hand, they were missing, and it seemed like I could see right through him. Then, the pain in my temporal lobes gripped me much in the same way that a bald eagle swoops and buries his talons inside a wriggling fish. I vomited on his shoes. He got the coach to call my parents, and the hospital.

My dad talked his way out of the hospital scenario, and took me home. I crawled from the front door to my room, and turned off all the lights, vomiting the entire way, unable to speak except in horribly garbled words. They appeared in my mind perfectly fine, the words. Yet my mouth was tragically, terrifyingly unable to form anything. The pain tore me to shreds while I lay there. The thought of death was not strong enough to pierce through the agony. Nothing was. A pain that left one absolutely no wiser than one was before. That was my first migraine.

If epilepsy is the tipping of a bucket full of electrons across the dense spider web of the brain, what do those tidal waves of electricity that I cannot feel, and have no warning of, have anything at all to do with my debilitating migraines?

I am no hypochondriac. I believe that I am largely healthy and sane. I don't get colds. I don't get headaches. I like to run 10k races. I swam competitively for many years. I thought I was going to be a marine biologist, before my first recorded seizure prevented me from ever learning SCUBA.

Yet every single strange thing my body does, from intensely dizzy spells, to spinning in my bed after a drunken party makes me wonder, is all the shit that's wrong with me related to my epilepsy?

Until writing this, I had no clue that this disease, or state, or whatever it is, pervaded my life like a giant octopus, pushing tentacles into a jar.


The only sinister creeping issue to me, the one that matters, is that no one knows why. My neurologist did not tell me why. It wasn't that he had some compelling reason not to tell me. It wasn't a power trip, to watch me squirm under the strain of coming face to face with the void of our vast lack of knowledge. It's that he was squirming, maybe even harder than me, too.

Yet, standing in front of a chasm of no understanding, I know something. I am certain that the stories are true. I am certain that I have epilepsy, though I have less evidence about being epileptic than I have about the existence of God.

The evidence that I have ever had a seizure amounts to a picture of my brain taken during an MRI, a EEG readout with spiky graphs drawn in red, and a feeling of being dumbed. That something has been taken from me. Something that was mine, some part of my brain that has been wrested from me by the hands of an electric disaster.

His Halo

By Josh Thomas

His hair is haloed in the sun slanting through the woods. We’ve been quite lost for the last fifteen minutes. He doesn’t quite know how bad lost can be, but he scented that we were going the wrong way. There has to be a word that I said, a shoulder movement that gave my slight fear away.

“Dad,” his high voice was sharp and tight, “Are we gonna find the way back to the car?”

“Of course, son, there’s no way we can be truly lost in a park in the daytime. See the sun through the trees? You know your cardinal points right? Which was is west, Jonah?”

“Well, is it that way?”

“No, it’s the direction towards the sun when it sets.”

“Oh, no, dad, the sun is setting? We’re gonna be out here in the dark?! Oh, no! Dad, dad! We’re gonna be out here in the dark?”

“Whoa, whoa,” I flipped him forward off my shoulders. His legs had gotten so long that he had to bend his knees so he didn’t kick me in the face. Still the flip went smooth. We were well practiced at the little flip off the shoulder move.

I looked him in the eye, while he descended instantaneously into full panic mode. He brought his hands up to his chest like a nervous rodent. He began sobbing uncontrollably.

“Hey, now, stop. Stop it. Dammit son. Stop.” It took me a second to fight down the equally instantaneous wave of anger that wrenched my jaw-muscles taut. And there we were in an ancient cycle. His insanity was fueling my equally insane anger.

And that’s what crushes me until I can be crushed no more. How could I be so angry at someone so close to me, is this what I am finally made of? The smallest parts of me that can be broken down contain this mote of pure fanatical animal mindless hatred. And so it is with you. This is the heart of everything, every bad thing.

The Simple Trap

1.

As the ziptie began cutting into Karl’s wrist, he twisted in the backseat. He attempted to break the plastic band quietly. He was grinding his teeth and his skin. The zip tie was 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.

“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. He was still trying to find some weak millimeter in the plastic. Trying to think of a way out. Anything.

“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.
Karl’s shadow was faint on the ground. He asked the question that was most on his mind,

“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.


2.

Karl watched the signs pass, many still legible, slumped in the back seat. It felt wonderful, after being forced upright, when his wrists were bound. He took off his glasses, and tried to clean them. It failed, he could still see the smudges, blurring things a little, so he pulled his hair back in a curly, short pony tail, and settled. They had driven past Charleston, down in its long valley, to a sign that said Amma and Clio. They drove around a huge pot hole right in the middle of the exit ramp.

“It hasn’t gotten worse than the last time I was here. That was four years ago, before the war,” Darryl said, shaking his head.

“Not surprising. This is West Virginia,” said Karl.

“The last time I drove down these back roads, my wife and children were alive. It was just after Scott and his wife Lena had their third daughter.”

“Scott?” said Karl.

“Scott is my former brother in law. He’s got guns,” Darryl said, glancing in the rearview at Karl. “I have a plan, Karl. I’ve got a couple plans. And now we’re here. So, can you help me? I understand that you might have some reasons not to help me. I know what happened at the Greenhouse was tougher for you than perhaps anyone. I didn’t know what else to do. Everything was out of control. But I’m gonna need you. We’re gonna have to cooperate. God, I’m sorry, Karl.”

Karl took a deep breath, his mouth open for a long moment, but then he closed his mouth, crushing molars together. Chemicals. They were following the tiny winding gravel along a creek. Karl saw a trailer in the distance.

“Where’d you get that picture?” Karl asked suddenly.
Darryl flipped down the visor, and pointed. This had been one of Luke’s cars. Suddenly the car was crushing Karl.

Darryl pulled the car into a gravel patch next to the trailer, and got out of the car. Karl wished he was back in college, sitting in a lecture hall, sipping a bottle of water. He would have graduated in the fall semester. That was a year ago. More. This was now August. He opened his door. It was cold under the trees.

Standing in the short driveway, Darryl expected Scott, his dead wife’s brother, to sort of jump out of the trailer. Their car had crunched into the driveway, surely enough noise to alert these backwoods boys that somebody had arrived unannounced. But there was no welcome wagon. Karl saw the worry written all over Darryl’s face.

Karl watched Darryl ring the doorbell. A woman opened the door. She was wearing an old tee-shirt that said “SCREW THE YANKEES”, and sweatpants, but she was the most beautiful thing Karl could remember ever seeing. She was big, tall, and Scandinavian. She had freckles, and blond curly hair, like a halo, cropped short along her jaw line.

“Oh, fuckin’ Christ,” she said, then leaned back inside the house, and shouted for Scott.

“Lena,” said Darryl. He stuck his hand out. She looked at it.

“Look, I’m not sure it would be real good for y’all to stay here. I mean, I’m not sure why you’d want to,” he said. His wry smile rose, then faded.

They were sitting around a little table in the single-wide trailer. Scott was pushing his chair back, raising up the front of the seat, flexing his legs, his shaved scalp pressing against the wall.

Karl rubbed the red welts on his wrists. The movement drew Scott’s eyes.

“And what the fuck happened to him,” said Scott, nodding his head towards Karl.
Karl looked at Darryl. Darryl looked at Karl. A long silence filled the room.

“Well, he bound my wrists with a ziptie,” said Karl.

More silence.

“Ya’ll can’t stay here. I don’t know what’s been going down, why you’re here, nothing. I can’t see why you think I’d let you. Damn, it’s just arrogant for you to come here bringing your bad shit riding up behind you,” said Scott.

“Look, Scott, we can provide protection and food. We got something you need. We got nothing following us. And I got something better even than that if you would let us stay a night here. I’m going to buy a night here with you with something you want,” said Darryl, wringing his hands under the table.

“What could you have that I want?” asked Scott.

“I’ve got a dime-bag for you if you let us sleep here. Let us talk to you. Let us in. A whole dime-bag,” said Darryl.

“Let me see it,” Scott said, narrowing his eyes.

“No. Let us stay. I give it to you in the morning,” said Darryl.

“I can’t believe you smoke,” said Scott, shaking his head.

“Scott, I never touch the stuff. But it trades for a lot these days, and… Let us stay. That’s all I’m asking,” Darryl said. At the end, his voice wavered just a hair.
Karl glanced at Scott, and thought he saw the dawn of a smirk.

“You must think I’m a real son of a bitch. Man, I’m not really gonna turn you out to the bears. I never really liked you, but you’re family, more or less, yeah?” said Scott, leaning forward, smiling like a dog. “But let me tell you what. You bring down any kind of trouble, something bad coming after you, whatever you’re traveling this far for, and I’ll field dress you, then turn you over to whoever is interested. You got me?” Scott laughed.

“You got nothing to worry about, just gain. I got a little plan I want to let you in on. That’s why I came here. I knew this would be the only place where my little plan might have a chance of working,” said Darryl. He was a little giddy with relief.

Karl was wondering what Darryl had up his sleeves. He was beginning to wonder if Darryl intended to set up another grow house like the one they had on the outskirts of Richmond. The thought made Karl’s mouth clench even harder. An annotated list of why it wasn’t going to work quickly compiled in his mind. But he didn’t say any of that. He just said, “I’m Karl, by the way,” and Scott crushed his hand, nodding his Mr. Clean skull.

“Scott, we’ve been up for about 24 hours. I am in need of some sleep, badly. Would you let us sleep here?”

“Course man. But the kids have the only spare room in the house. You guys won’t mind sleeping on the floor in here would you?”

“No, no, that sounds wonderful.”

“Hey, Lena, would you get out the old sleeping bags?” said Scott.

A few minutes later, Lena laid two ancient sleeping bags on the floor in the middle of the living room. Heinous smell expanded in the room. Darryl looked up at Karl, shrugged his shoulders, and grabbed one.


3.

They slept through the next morning. There was no breakfast waiting for him when Karl rolled himself off the couch, and pulled his hoodie back on. He felt horrible.
Scott clanged through the front door, having heard Karl get up and yawn.

"Morning sunshine," he said.

Karl looked up at him through his internal morning fog with squinty eyes.

“Look,” said Darryl, still lying on his sleeping bag, “There was one thing especially I was wondering about. You still got any guns? Because you don’t got enough trigger fingers here. The last time I was up, you had six semi automatic weapons or more. You didn’t sell them all did you?”

"Christ, man, where you just asleep?" said Scott.

"No, I've been awake for some time now. I figured I would take the time to think things through. And the gun question came to mind. I meant to ask you last night."

“I got them guns still, man. In fact, if Lena will get off her ass for a second, I’d show you where they were. You might need ‘em sooner than you think, and you’re right, I got more guns than bodies,” Scott said, moving towards the couch.

Lena shifted off the couch, and Scott laid his hand on one end of the back of the couch. “Mind giving me a hand,” he said.

Karl was standing, wondering whether they had any coffee. Vain hope. Scott was motioning him to help, so he moved to the other side, and said, “What exactly you want me to do? Sliding it forward?”

Scott demonstrated that he was going to tilt the couch forward. When they lifted it off the ground, Karl realized the front legs where hinged to the floor, and the pea green carpet had been torn out from underneath the couch. Scott knelt stiffly, and stuck a stubby finger in hole, and opened a door in the plywood. Scott pulled out guns, stacking them against the underside of his couch. Karl stood there, staring at the fluffy little bags of spider eggs attached to the corners of the underside of the couch, watching the armory pile grow.

“So which one you want, man?” asked Scott. He was looking over his shoulder at Karl.

“Which one is easy to use?” asked Karl, keeping the hesitation out of his voice.

“Well, none of ‘em really. It doesn’t really matter, just pick what looks nice.”

“I don’t know. I’m choosing the gun that’s gonna kill me. I don’t know.” Karl said.

“Pistol then? May I cordially recommend the Sig Sauer 9 millimeter, compact edition?” Scott’s scorn rang off the plywood.

As Scott handed Karl the gun from the pile, he had a hard time moving his hand to accept it. He felt like it was going to lunge and bite him. He composed himself, and wrapped his hand smoothly around the grip.

“Sure, man, sure. Got an extra clip?” said Karl.

“In case of extra bad guys?” said Scott.

“All right, never mind. It’s cool.”

“Just ribbing ya. They’re over in my bedroom, with all the ammunition, if I can find the goddamn lock.”

“You got a lot of experience shootin’ folks?” Scott was looking at Darryl.

“No, not really,” said Darryl.

“Well, that’s a shame, could use some old vet or something.”

“Nope, I was a gardener, not a fighter,” Darryl said.

“But you have seen some fighting, sure, right?”

“Well, yeah, I guess,” said Darryl. Bright florescent light washed over his face. His skin looked translucent, pockmarked.

“I saw him shoot a man once,” said Karl. He watched Darryl out of the corner of his eye. Darryl’s constantly anxious look didn’t change a bit.

“Awesome. Did he kill him?”

“Hell no,” spit Karl. He could see the muscles in Darryl’s jaw clench. Success.


4.

“Lunch is ready, if you like canned pork and beans,” said Scott. He sat down at the table, and it shifted under his weight.

“That’s good. Karl, you like pork and beans?” asked Darryl.

“I’ve gotten to know them,” said Karl. He tried control his little frown.
Karl and Darryl followed Scott over to the little table. Karl shoved his 9mm gingerly into his pants. It fell out of his jeans as soon as he sat down at the table. It clattered across the floor, spinning a little before coming to a silent stop. Every fiber of interest in the room was suddenly fused to the black plastic and metal, still as a painting on the floor.

In the silence, Karl heard Scott’s children playing in a back room. One of them screaming at another, fighting over a toy. Fuck, they had kids.

Suddenly Lena got up. She uttered a quick laugh.
Karl watched her reach into the cupboard, while studying the wood lines in the table top. While her shirt pulled up over her belly, he removed the gun from the floor and placed in on the table.

Scott looked at it, shaking his head, smiling at Karl. Lena pulled two cans out of the cupboard.

“Scott, I’ve got a little deal for you,” Darryl said, when Lena put a plate in front of him, and then one in front of Scott, “What if I said we can set you up with crops man, real crops. And I mean edible stuff, not just weed.”

“Ain’t no crops gonna grow in West Virginia man, its way too cold. First frost, and most plants die, man.”

“That’s why we are going to grow all kinds of varieties underground, in a series of cellars. We’ve done it before. We know what we’re doing. We just have to get it started somewhere. What do you think about that?”

“Man, you are just full of ideas aren’t you. Thanks for that too. That’s what we needed, around here, exactly what will help us survive. Some more fuckin’ ideas. Well, what’s the risk, man? I mean besides you,” said Scott.

Darryl shifted in his seat. “There’s no real risk. Much less risk than if we were planting outside. We can control the climate easily underground.”

“I’m listening. There gotta be some downside. There’s always a downside,” Scott said, leaning forward intently.

“Well, if you, if you feed us up front. The deal would be that you feed us while we tend the crops, then you get a full third of the share, until we leave. After that, you get to keep what’s there. I’ll teach you how to keep this whole thing moving right along before we go, if you still want us to vacate after we get the ball rolling,” said Darryl.

“For what it’s worth, I think that sounds like a pretty good idea, I mean, somethin’ like that might actually have a chance of workin’.” Lena said.

“Well, I’ll take that into account, but I still gotta think this all through. We gotta do whatever’s the best for the family and all,” Scott said.

“Yeah, but this could mean you wouldn’t have to spend most of the fall sitting beside deer trail. You could even get to know the kids or something,” said Lena.

“I said I’d think about it.”

“You give us three months, the tools to excavate some cellars, and we get you sustainable crops.” Darryl paused to think for a split second. “Most plants take a long time to grow. Except tomatoes. In the right heating conditions, they are relatively fast. Do you like fresh tomatoes?”

“Hell yeah I do,” said Scott. The words came out clear despite a mouthful of the gooey hotdog.

Karl pondered Darryl’s rhetorical sleight of hand. They might be staying with Scott for a while after all. There was no better place Karl could think to go on the fallow planet. He noticed that his hand was resting on the gun on the table. And it was shaking a little. He withdrew it under the table, at a moment when everyone was paying attention to food.

“Okay then, imagine that. You feed us for two months, and then everyone feasts,” said Darryl.

“Two months?”

“We’ll help feed ourselves, but we gotta dig somewhere around here. You got a springhouse or something by the creek.”

“In fact, we do,” said Scott, with a small smile, “In fact, we do.”

5.

After lunch was over, the plastic plates scraped off and cleaned, and returned to their plastic bag, Scott led Darryl and Karl down to the springhouse. They walked down across the browning yard, towards the creek. They crossed the road, and then down the bank by the creek that ran down the length of the road.

Karl saw that the clasp on the door was twisted and dented. Darryl put his hand on the door, and pushed, but found that it swung outward. He opened the door, and Karl saw three steps down, into deep black.

The doorjamb seemed to bend a little to Karl. Must be the dim sun, the steel clouds, he thought. He looked up at the sky, at the shiny clouds. No sun for more than a year.

“Just walk down in there. With the door open, you can see well enough,” said Scott.
But Karl didn’t follow Darryl down into the spring house; he stood in front of it, clenching his jaws. He swallowed a rubber ball in his throat. There was enough room for the two of them, among the shelf – lined walls. Shit.

“Can we pull the shelves out of the back wall?” Darryl shouted out at Scott.

“Yeah, sure man. Sure ain’t anything down here worth preserving at this point.”

“I can’t believe nobody’s tried to raid this yet,” Karl said, looking right at the twisted latch.

Scott said, “What? Well, they did. I should have slept out here every night. You’d have seen the broken glass on the floor, if you were in there.” He gestured towards the door with his forefinger, and contempt.

Karl picked it up like a magnet, and took a step towards the door. Then he stopped again. Darryl rustled beyond the door like a fox in leaves.

“You need me down there?”

“Yes, Karl. Come down here for a second, help me get this shelf,” said Darryl.

“All right, well, I’m going to go see if there’s anything in the trap line. Would’ve gone out a lot earlier, but then again, y’all came along,” said Scott. He turned to walk back across the road to the trailer.

Karl put his hand up against the doorjamb, and looked down into the mouth of the cellar.

6.

“So how much did you get done today?” said Scott, “I got three rabbits, don’t know how those bastards survive out there. Guess the fuckin’ animals are all doing a little better without us.” He shook his head.

They were all sitting in the living room, a few steps away from the kitchen. An old TV sat on a lazy-susan in the corner, blank, a mirror. Karl could see himself in there. He looked terrible. Suddenly pictures of Australian rabbits with myxomatosis slid through his mind.

“Not enough. We’re figuring we can probably grow enough food for a year with about 6 to 10 acres underground,” said Darryl. He was staring at his hand, doing some last minute calculation.

“Jesus Christ, man. How you planning on doing that? That’s like the whole underside of our yard,” said Scott.

“We’re going to be careful. I mean we can do this a little at a time. All we need right now is about quadruple what you got in the little cellar,” said Darryl. He caught Lena staring at the dirt caked on the bottom of his boots. “Oh, I’m very sorry, Lena.” He took them off, and put them out side. Then he opened it again, and put them inside. Scott chuckled.

“We were talking about doing it in chambers. And we’re going to need timbers to shore the thing up as we go along. We’ve got the shelf material,” Karl said. A sense of dread had built in him over the last five hours of digging. He didn’t know if they were going to be able to do this after all. The logistics, this tightening in his throat, the thread of raw skin around his wrist that was like a live strong bracelet, it was all wrong.

“What we need to do by tonight is set up some test plants, set up a bunch of different varieties, and let them settle. Of course that won’t be a real big temptation to anybody, but we were thinking we should set up some kind of watch,” said Darryl.

“We?” said Karl, snapping his head up, “I mean, shit I have no idea what’s going on here. Why don’t you let me in on these things before you just tell us all what we’re going to do.” He saw himself standing in front of the dark door. The thought was repellant. He shivered, finally, hard.

“Look, I’m just telling you, we’ve got to set up these plants,” Darryl looked at him funny. “If we do that, someone is going to have to guard them tonight. There are thieves who already know where this godforsaken place is –“
Karl interjected, “It’s not like whoever took the first preserves plan on coming back for seconds, it’s not like preserves grow.”

“So you’re willing to take the risk of losing most of our seeds?” Darryl’s voice was rising, “Did you think about that, Karl? Karl, what’s going on with you? Do you even know where the seeds are? No you don’t, do you, you ungrateful –“

“Whoa there boys!” Scott said way too loudly. It startled Darryl to silence. “We ain’t gonna do that shit. That shit don’t help nobody. I mean, I’ll throw my weight around. This is my house, and I ain’t having none of that. We’re gonna have some semblance of order, or ya’ll gonna get the hell out.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little bit, hon?” said Lena, she was sitting in a la-z-boy, facing the blank TV.

“No, no, it’s cool,” said Karl, “It’s cool man, we weren’t really arguing.”

“All right, I’m just warning you, we gonna nip that shit in the bud. I don’t know where you came from, or what kind of history you brought with you, but you can leave that history at the door, or at least don’t show me none,” explained Scott. He had his hands on his thighs, gripping them as if he was about to spring up.

“All right, look, Darryl, you gonna take the first watch? Are we gonna do it by night, or shift?” said Karl, pretending to relax. He shifted his shoulders around.

“I think we should do it by shift, Karl,” said Darryl, he was rubbing the back of his neck, looking any way but Karl’s, “And I’m gonna need to be planting the samples. You know I have more experience Karl, and this is just too important. And I don’t think we should ask Scott into the rotation, at least not yet.”
Karl looked up at Darryl, an intense little smile chiseled on his face. He nodded his head a little.

“Well, what about me?” asked Lena.

“You really think you can get across the yard with a bunch of gun toting hungry folk shooting at you?” said Darryl.

“You must not know my wife,” mumbled Scott, smiling.

“Well, I think I can probably do it as well as you or Karl,” said Lena, smiling, “Scott on the other hand? Well, he’s a bad motherfucker.” Karl laughed loudly. Everyone turned to look at him.

“So okay… Okay, you’ll relieve Karl. You’ll get in there, change with him around 11:00 tonight. I think Karl should take the first samples we can get planted with him, as soon as possible. What do you think, Scott?”

“I think we should give him a rifle to go with that nine,” said Scott, “That is, if we think he can handle it.”

“Oh, and one last thing. I saw the potbellied stove in your neighbor’s yard. That would, um, be perfect for getting that climate right for tomatoes,” said Darryl.

“I guess that’s what you were widening the door for earlier. Great,” said Karl, “just great.”

7.


The only light falling on Karl’s face was the skull glow from the stove. They had managed to haul it all the way from the neighbors shed to the spring house. They slid it across the whole yard, opening two long scars in the grass, like a giant arrow to the cellar. Karl imagined it showing up on satellite imagery, a television show. God he missed theatres, like a missing tooth. He noticed he was wringing his hands. He put them down beside him.

There were a few of the samples sitting in the dirt beside him that Darryl had managed to toss in the car, back at the greenhouse, that were already germinated. It seemed to Karl as if the little tendrils were crawling towards him in the wavering orange light. It was already too warm. He peeled off his coat.

Jagged chills ran down his spine, over and over again, at ever flicker, every scraping rustle through the forest around him. He had never felt so outside of the orbit of humanity in his life. It was as if he was going to die of loneliness, of the feeling of being so ultimately unfamiliar. He thought of cosmonauts, set adrift; he thought of angry animals, seeking his prey-smell, just outside the door. He thought of chicken, and of sex.
And then, he thought of his father, and the pool of blood he had been laying in, when he saw him last.

He’d done well so far, keeping that image suppressed. He had closed the door in his mind every time it threatened to surface in the car. Keeping it back was damming a lake. The whole scene flooded his mind, in surprising detail, vibrant, as if to make up for the dark in this hole he was buried in.

Karl let the whole scenario wash over him, like a tepid bath.

They had a good thing going; the only good thing among the waste after the world began to cool precipitously. Luke had noticed some of Darryl’s produce on the barter market that had sprung up after the wars.

It was that simple. Luke had connections with everybody, as a bartender. He was a market facilitator after the wars, getting the right thing for the right person, for a price.
The food Darryl had been growing in the old greenhouse was perfect. Plus Darryl hated leaving the place. He had real trouble with any people. The apocalypse was part of it, but Karl suspected epic disaster wasn’t the sole cause. Lucky Luke; otherwise, Darryl might have traded it through other means.

And then somebody had the bright idea to get Karl involved. Luke wanted to make sure his cash cow, Darryl, was properly under his power. What better way than to send the son. As soon as he got involved, essentially as Darryl’s gopher, he saw what the real opportunity was.

Karl had almost left his experiments die in the biology lab at the Richmond college, and the ones at his house had long since become something less than scientific. But there were a few samples of the best strain of cannabis sativa that he had ever grown left over, still alive in a fish tank, a few stalks and a five year old gecko that should have been dead. Years ago, he started growing strains, and originally, he had strongly disliked the taste. It had grown on him. He still liked to think of himself as the Pot-leaf Mendel.

They started to grow on Karl’s insistence. It made sense to him. The country had been addicted to psychological drugs at the dawn of Armageddon. What better way to supply that need than with a little ganj, right? Little galang goes a long way when you’re getting paid with gasoline, eh? He remember saying those words to his dad, dismissing the arguments about what the rival militias might do to get a hold on that kind of production.
And his father, he had been right and wrong. Darryl called him down to the greenhouse, to deliver 12 pounds. The biggest haul they’d ever had. But there was no 12 pounds. Darryl shot Luke in the belly with an ancient .22 pistol. Then he leaned over and apologized. Karl saw it play over and over, Darryl leaning over, pained look, the thread of saliva.

Then the guys walked in, all wearing the stinking catholic rosaries. It sort of sunk in. Darryl had betrayed Luke to the Rosaries. And of course, the Rosaries took the opportunity to kill both Luke and Darryl off.

That’s what all the shooting was for. By a fluke, Darryl was in the only corner that was distant from a door. Darryl was shouting something, and then Karl was tackled to the floor, and his hands bound behind his back with a ziptie. Darryl held him to the floor with his knee.

It had been a simple double cross. Why hadn’t Darryl missed that in all his overwrought planning? Why couldn’t he have seen it coming?
Karl wondered what time it was.

He lifted his head up before he had registered any sound. Then he heard the cars roll up like all Armageddon. It wasn’t that they were driving fast. It was that they hadn’t seen cars the whole way up to West Virginia. They were still miles away, when he heard the first crunching of gravel beneath tires. A list of names flew through his mind, a list of the possibilities, some options, a bit of psychology. He realized that at some point, he’d picked up the thirty-ought-six, and he was gripping it as if to keep the crunching tires away by dint of hand pressure alone.

It struck him as a true indication of his own will. Suddenly, he knew that he did not want the cars to come, no matter what. He knew he was going to burst out the doors, and attempt to shoot at the tires, and the engines, but not the windshields. Could his father be alive?

Karl stood up, and pressed his shoulder to the door. He had to pee, suddenly. The cars were so far away. He wondered if he could make it to the house without them seeing him. Was that the right course of action? What time was it? Would Lena be walking across the yard, coming to relieve him? He cracked the door a hair, and attempted to look down the road. He was looking into flat black, like a new blackboard.

Then he saw headlight reflecting, bouncing along from a great distance away. But he had gravely misjudged just how far they were. He wondered if the rest of the people could hear the cars too. It was very possible that they could not, he thought. That was why they needed him.

Karl was caught in the headlights of the Jeep and the CRV when they came crashing into the Scott’s clearing, his little hilltop. He couldn’t see any of the people in the car, but he dove out of the way, to the left, rolling down a few feet towards the creek.
He tried not to breathe as the jeep in front pulled an e-brake. The car ground to a halt in the gravel, not a dozen feet away. He picked up a handful of rocks and threw it into the trees behind him, as three men leapt out of the jeep, and another two with a young woman in the Subaru. He saw them turned their heads. He realized it had been a terrible idea.

One of the rocks hit a tree, but the others landed in leaves, nearly noiselessly. He imagined the sound as a glowing arrow pointing back to his location on the sod. They had certainly seen him regardless. The men turned on their flashlights, beams like railroad ties of light, bludgeoning the darkness.

A few moments later, a bent silhouette clambered out of the jeep into the grass.
Hs face was pressed against the wet, cold grass. He had left his coat inside the cellar, and the cold had already begun feeling up his bone marrow. He stayed rigid, knowing they’d shoot him. They’d shoot him over and over. In the day light, he’d be able to see them, they were so close. He wrestled with the urge to find out whether the man struggling to stand up was his dad. Suddenly, a flash light beam spotlighted him. Problem solved.

“Hey, hey! Who the fuck are you? Are you okay?” asked his dad, Luke. A wave of relief washed over him. He was surprised. His voice sounded exhausted.

“It’s me dad. It’s Karl.” He rose to his feet.
Someone turned on the trailer floodlight. Karl was blinded for a few seconds. He shielded his useless eyes with his wet sleeve.

“Stop right there, freeze…you bastard,” said his dad.

“You know, that’s a funny thing for you to say,” said Karl. There was a hint of laughter in his voice. He lowered his hand. He notice his father was clutching his stomach. He looked terribly old haloed in the bright light.

“You had me killed. I mean bastard when I say it. I got something for you. Don’t fucking move, son.” Luke spit a bullet into his hand. He held it up. The small piece of brass and lead glimmered in the light. “This is yours, son, take it back.” He snapped the bullet at his son. The bullet hit Karl in the hand. He grabbed his right hand with his left, cursing and spitting. Two or three of his Dad’s men were yelling for him to freeze.

He felt like the damn thing had burst a blood vessel, one of the big ones in the back of his hand. It occurred to him, that relatively speaking that must have been a lucky shot. He wondered for a brief second just how much slower the bullet was when it hit his hand, than when it lodged wherever his father had retrieved it from.

“You might as well have pulled the trigger yourself,” said Luke. It sounded like he was wincing from the effort. “Hit me in the stomach. Sure Darryl thought he got me back there at the greenhouse. Sure he thought the Rosaries would have let him stay there. But they didn’t. They been indebted to me since two weeks after the apocalypse,” Luke had both hands over his belly, as if holding his organs in place. His voice was getting weaker, but he continued. Karl noticed that Luke’s entourage were all wearing rosaries except for the woman.

“Did you know that? No, you didn’t. He thought he was betraying me for whatever fucking honorable reasons, and you fucking helped him every step of the way.” Luke walked over to his son, and slapped him across the face. Karl fell on the ground, a trickle of blood where his dad had opened up his eyebrow a little. It shocked Karl, with the finality: it seemed like it might be the last that the big man might have in him.
One of Luke’s men had to wrap his arm around Luke’s ribcage to keep the old man from falling. The rain was already mixing with the blood, getting it all over Karl’s face. “I’m not going to fucking kill you, but I’m putting a bullet in Darryl’s face. Where is he?”
Karl didn’t respond.

“Look, Karl. We’ve had our problems, but” said Luke. He swallowed. He pushed the man holding him up away. “I didn’t want it to be like this though. You’re my son. I love you. I just can’t let this go down. You betrayed me. Now you gotta earn the right to be my son again.”

Karl laid there on the ground for a second. Darryl had bound him up, in the back seat of the car, didn’t stop to let him be carsick, and that’s not even considering the thousand indignities he’d put Karl through when they were establishing the greenhouse. His eyebrow throbbed.

“Fuck you old man,” said Karl, who was crying, “You don’t know, but I had nothing to do with any of this. I can’t seem to escape this shit though. You might as well just fucking shoot me.”

Luke’s old face cracked into a grin, slowly. It grew like plants in a dark cellar. “You know I’m gonna shoot you, all familial sentiment aside? Why did you have to,” he shot Karl in the arm, “say something like that.”

Karl screamed into the grass and mud, and rivulets of rain moving towards the creek. He screamed like a rabbit in a steel trap, high, animal, ululating. It echoed like it was bouncing down every declivity within fifty miles, repeating, perfectly harmonizing with the continuing original. It didn’t sound like it was coming from where Karl was lying on the ground, Luke standing over him, haloed in flashlights.

He could feel his mind shutter into shock. He heard his father turn, and mumble something to one of the other men. Someone tried to pick him up. He felt bones shift. He screamed in such a way that the man let him lie there.

As soon as they got him off the ground, the shattered arm hanging there, Darryl kicked open the front door. But nobody was standing in the light from inside. Suddenly a twelve gauge belched from the bottom right corner of the door.

Three of the men had guns in their hands, and they ducked behind the jeep. Karl could see where they were shooting because of the holes that opened up near the door. There was no chance that Darryl had survived the first volley. It looked like at least five bullets would have passed through where he must have been lying on the floor to shoot through the door like that.

Silence descended into the little valley. One of the men opened up hatch of the jeep. Karl fell onto the ground, writing in a pool of agony. Two of the men picked him up and roughly tossed him onto the floor. He could smell the stink of their rosaries.

Automatic Kalashnikov fire perforated the noise of the rain. Both men were blown off their feet. Karl tried to lift his head. An odd clearness descended on him. Philosophy and chemicals. He couldn’t move. He tried hard to breath calmly. He wanted to see who was dead, where Scott was shooting from.

Everything was silent. Burned gunpowder bent up his nostrils. And then it stopped.

8.

It was pretty clear to him that he had lost a lot of blood. He knew for certain he was dying, and kept saying so over and over again. Lena kept telling him otherwise. He was lying in Scott’s bed. The bed smelled like ancient old spice. He was alive nonetheless. Nobody else in the whole world, he had seen the bodies. Just Lena, Lena’s children and him.

“I’m out,” he thought, and though he couldn’t smile, the thought crossed his mind.

Well tunnel dug

Before the war, on Darryl’s last day of work, the elevator plummeted into the storey below the basement, doors sliding closed. He hadn't noticed immediately. He was walking across the lobby of the building, carrying the last box from his cube when he heard it hit bedrock. He turned around slowly. Light bounced dully from the skylight off his buzz cut.

These things, they happen. Darryl had expected this sort of thing. He had three flashlights; a lighter, an extra cell phone, a walky-talky, and three cartons of triple A batteries, along with four water bottles, and some trail mix in an airtight, UV bag in the box in his arms. On the outside of the box in sharpie pen, he had written ‘work: survival’ on a strip of duct-tape.

The contents of that box weren't the reason he had gotten fired, directly. But those contents were the reason his wife had packed her van, buckled in the kids, and driven back to her parents' farm.

*

The car was on its last legs oil wise. They had brought about 15 gallons of gas, when they left Virginia. Gas vapors have driven them half mad, and Darryl was clenching his teeth audibly, sitting in the back seat.

‘You think we're going to make it? I know it will be within 15 miles or so,’ Sandra said. Her tan hair was nearly touching the ceiling in the car they had picked up on the way out of Richmond. She had been a math professor. She had a thing for the architecture of plant life as well.

‘I guess it depends on how well the road punks are taking care of the patch work,’ Darryl said, ‘is the toll still edible?’

‘You gonna ask that every sixteen seconds?’ said Juan. He was younger than the other three. Good mechanic, shrewd thinker, black hair, dark skin.

‘Yes, I am. How do you expect to get out of it if we don't? We got about 10 minutes by the signs before we have to give them the food.’

‘Chill out, man, chill,’ Juan said.

Darryl saw movement between the woods and the road to his right, a fish-flash.

‘Deer!’

Carl's hair surged past his face as he mashed the breaks of the green Taurus station wagon into the floorboard. They smashed through a little deer. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Darryl screamed at him. His voice came out at a feminine octave.

‘Shit man, I just was swerving, I saw him, I swear I did.’

The station wagon was rolling to a stop, in the gravel on the side of highway. There were not any cars on the road.

Darryl leapt out of the passenger seat, into the open air, without even a lawn mask on. That was, in certain areas, a great way to develop some forms of cancer rapidly.

There was blood on the grill. There was fur lining the little open areas between the light lenses and the body of the car. The front right quarter panel looked like construction paper, wrinkled.

Carl was not as good a driver as Darryl was. Darryl was cautious. Darryl was very cautious. Darryl planned avenues of advancement. Darryl thought of every possible scenario. He thought of what he was going to have to do in that scenario. It might have made him a slow driver, but he was comfortable that way. He was not comfortable, bordering on insane, any other way.

Darryl tilted his head back, and cussed a few times at the sky. Then he took his watch off, and threw it into the deep ditch beside the highway.

‘You know why I threw that?’ Darryl asked.

‘No,’ Carl said.

‘I threw it because we just fucking lost time. We can't be on these roads after dark. It's 11:30 now. With no trouble, it takes five hours to get to Charleston from Richmond. You think it'll be dark at 5:00 tonight?’

‘No, dude.’ said Carl.

‘You willing to be getting shot on that?’ Darryl paused, vein throbbing in his forehead. Suddenly he turned towards the ditch, out of Carl's face.

‘Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to get heated up, man. I just don’t know what to do. We’re probably not going to make this drive. I’m not sure.’

‘Dude, its cool.’

‘You think so?’

‘I think it’s worth a shot. You said it’d be easier to defend ourselves in West Virginia.’

‘It probably would be. It’s just been so difficult protecting all these goddamn seeds, Carl.’

‘I know. Look, man… why don’t you just drive. Maybe we can trade some of the seeds for some Dramamine or something on the way.’

‘You know how unlikely that is? Just estimating like a 2.3 percent chance.’

‘I’d rather do this than have you fucking freaking out on me, kay?’

‘Yeah, sorry. I’m cool now. We’ll fix this,’ said Darryl.

‘We won’t fix this. You know that. We might do a little better at best, get something to grow, but look around man, there’s a whole lot of shit dying out there. It’s just too cold.’

‘Alright. Alright. I’ll drive until you can’t stand it anymore, then we’ll switch.’

‘Get back in the car quick,’ said Carl.

‘We don’t really know how much the glass keeps out radiation. You know that. At least we can look forward to some interesting genetic mutation, eh? Split the species and all ‘that,’ said Darryl.

‘You need a plastic baggie or something,’ Sandra said to Carl as he got in the back seat.

‘Hell yeah I do.’

‘How bad is it,’ she asked, twisting around in her seat to look behind her.

‘You'll find out in a minute,’ Carl said.

Darryl slammed the driver's door closed.

‘Why’d you throw that watch?’ said Sandra.

‘We ain’t making it in this car. We lost crazy time. I guess it just made sense to throw it.’

‘It didn’t make any sense at all,’ she said.

‘Well, fucking help me find some fucking drugs then.’

‘That’s the whole idea,’ Juan said.

They made it about two miles, before the front right hand tire started whining.

‘Oh, no. The tire is going to explode,’ said Darryl.

‘You sure?’ said Juan. The tire exploded, taking the wheel well with it. It felt like the car had taken mortar fire. It shifted to the right, and ground to a halt at a crazy angle in the gravel.

‘Awesome. Now what?’ said Carl. Then he retched, and threw up in his shoes.

*
They had knives, each of them, somewhere in their clothes. They had to leave most of the precious seeds in the car. They had to walk together, for protection.

‘Fair chance that there's something to drive in the town off this exit,’ said Darryl, ‘Lot of cars sort of just left where they ran out of gas.’

No shit, thought Juan.

They found a Nissan Altima, in useable condition. It hadn't been there for long, about 300 yards from a dry gas station.

‘Must have been desperate, gas ran out 6 months ago or more.’

They walked over to the car, and filled the tank all the way up. Darryl popped the trunk, and stowed the empty gas containers.

‘Let me drive, Darryl. I can't throw up again.’

‘Nope.’

‘Dude, let him drive,’ said Juan.

‘You selfish bastard. How dare you suggest I should let him drive? We've got more than one man's deficiencies riding on us getting there. Now I don't want to hear another goddamn word about it. I am going to drive this, or you can try and kill me. But I would ‘strongly advise against that.’

‘After all this shit, you bring that up again?’ said Juan.

‘We need to go right now,’ said Sandra, ‘Four cars,' she pointed off in the distance to the east.

They all jumped in the car, slammed the doors, and sped off. Carl put his heads in his hands, and threw up again into the plastic baggie he had. He looked up at the back of Darryl's head.

*

Somewhere outside of Charleston, they parked in a parking lot beside an ancient store that said Bodean’s on an old rusty sign.

‘Amazing how quickly nature takes over again,’ said Darryl.

‘You know how many time’s I’ve heard that in the last year?’ Juan said.

‘Well, hopefully, your bro or cousin or whatever shows up soon. We gotta start digging if we’re going to get this stuff planted, right?’ said Sandra. She was sitting on the hot hood, kicking her feet.

Darryl watched Carl’s hand on her thigh for a moment. It seemed like such an odd thing to do. There was no reason Carl should feel like the other two needed to be reminded that she was his. She wasn’t his. She could never again find a use to be anybody’s, not for long, not like it used to be.

They needed re-population with as much genetic diversity as possible. If everybody didn’t know that yet, then they were going to be getting into a lot of trouble. Could have been just a dudes hand on a hot chick’s thigh, he reminded himself.

They waited in the parking lot for an hour and a half before Darryl’s Ex-wife’s brother, Cory, showed. They didn’t seem him walk up, since they were standing at the bottom of the hill he walked over. They were hungry, thirsty, tired, and cold, and they had about enough gas to roll the Nissan down to the declivity between two mountains Cory had fortified his trailer.

‘Originally, trailer was 20 miles further back into the holler. I had to haul that shit up myself. Ain’t too many people starved around here, so there was some who died a cancer, but not too many, like I said, not too many,’ said Cory, who was pressed against Carl in the back seat.

‘Into the what?’ said Juan.

‘The holler, my holler,’ said Cory.

‘That's what they call this sorta narrow valley between two mountains. Kinda like a neighborhood in other states,’ said Darryl.

‘So you hauled you're trailer? You got a truck at still works?’ said Juan.

‘Nope. Don’t you think I’d be driving it? Your friend here smells like a bad night in a cheap bar.’

Carl looked up from his bag at the large bald man sitting next to him, and said, ‘So how’d you ‘haul’ it, like you said, without a truck, man?’

‘It doesn’t take too much to convince a bunch a people to do something when you got the only easy food in miles,’ Cory said.

‘You think this one was raided?’ Darryl asked.

‘It’s been over a year, Darryl, yeah, I think it’s been raided. In fact, that was my easy source of food. That and the fields we harvested, before it got too cold.’

‘Well it's time to get to planning,’ said Darryl.

They all filed in through the sliding back door to the modified trailer. It led into a steel foyer that had eye slits, and holes to slide a gun barrel through. Then up some stairs, and into the actual trailer. They could hardly fit standing up.

*
‘So, food?’ Carl asked.

‘Got seeds,’ said Darryl.

‘Can you shoot?’ asked Cory.

‘I shot a black powder rifle in Boy Scouts during the two weeks I was in it,’ replied Cory.

Cory pulled the couch forward, so that it tilted on its face. Underneath was a slide in the floor. There were seven or so rifles down there, and boxes after boxes of ammunition. He reached in, and picked up a Kalashnikov.

‘Take it,’ he said, and pushed it towards Carl.

‘All right, we gonna shoot some gooks?’

‘No but if you weren't such a college liberal pinko, you'd know that that gun is what they would have been shooting you with,’ Cory said. He laughed. It eased the sudden tension.
‘And we're gonna get some food with that thing, so I hope you're only bad at hunting, and not considerably worse.’

Everyone believed them when they said they’d be back soon. There had been a recent up spike in deer in the area. They were finding secret sources of food in the cold. When you woke up in the morning it was like a deer nation.

Meanwhile, the other three had been drawing up methods of excavating three cellars underneath the trailer. There was a coal mine just a mile down the road, and they figured they could square off some rooms in the coal mine, gather up the florescent lighting, and reattach the mine to the remnants of the electric grid.

‘If we can hack the grid, then we just might be able to get something to grow down there,’ Sandra said, ‘the only concern I have is that we have to ensure nobody ever sees us going in and out of the mine shaft.’

‘That’s where the real work is going to be, you know,’ said Darryl.

‘You think you’re gonna dig a tunnel all the way to the mine?’ Juan asked, ‘You couldn’t do that before the warming, man.’

‘I don’t know about that. I’ve been looking at these topo maps over here. I think we just might be able to pull this off really well. See, we can start digging in the side of the hill, where all those trees our, about six feet under the roots of those trees. The trees will help hold the soil above us. We just need some four by fours, or the equivalent thereof. It’ll be easy to do the digging, it’s the collapsing that’s the main issue.’

‘You bet it is.’

‘Damn, dog. You’re into this aren’t you,’ said Juan.

‘Man, I spent too much time thinking about survivalism not to be prepared for some shit ‘like this.’

‘You believe in revelation, man?’

‘I don’t think I really need to believe in anything at this point, right? I mean, hey, we’re living in a dying world, and who knows if the nukes worked? We got ten years to balance the ice age if it worked. If it didn’t, well I’m going to be the last man to die.’

‘Like you can prevent yourself from dying through sheer willpower,’ Sandra said.

‘Stuff that legends are made from.’

‘Stuff that terrorists, religious fanatics, and extremely mentally ill people like you are made from.’

‘Why don’t you shut up, Sandra,’ Darryl said, ‘I don’t want to hear you talk about it again, Sandra. You got me, Sandra.’

‘Darryl. Get a hold of yourself, man,’ said Juan.

‘Dammit,’ he said. He smacked himself across the face. Then again. He turned away. He reached into his pocket, pulled out some ancient cigarettes, and lit one.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Well that ain’t good enough,’ Sandra said, ‘You could be normal if you wanted to.’

‘Yeah, that’s why we’re in a 'holler' in West Virginia trying to grow food to trade it for drugs, because this is all a big charade I’m pulling. It’s all grand theatre. The house lights’ll come up any fucking minute, yeah? Yeah?’

‘Look, all right. Why don’t you just give us something to do,’ Sandra said.

Darryl seemed to take a minute to think about it. He looked though the steel slats over the front window.

‘Wonder how long it’ll take till somebody makes a go of this place,’ he said.

‘Not too long,’ said Juan, ‘What I’m wondering is whether that piece of shit over there can ‘deflect a bullet.’

‘Cory said yeah,’ said Sandra.

‘He might just know too,’ Darryl said.

‘Yep. He’d know if he’s been here for more than a year,’ said Sandra.

‘We’ll I guess that’s more than cold comfort, eh,’ said Juan.

‘You ain’t getting you’re ass shot in the bottom of a grocery store,’ said Darryl.

‘Well, it was the only good place to sleep.’

‘Hell, I’m not blaming you,’ Darryl said. Then he laughed.

‘All right, then, so what’s the plan?’ said Juan.

‘I think I’m going to get a shovel and see if I am just gonna have to start blasting my way into the side of the mountain.’

‘All we’ve got is a two foot drill bit, and TNT. But Cory’s got a pile of that, so we can blast if we have to. I just have no idea what I’m doing with it. Sandra is going to hit up the shed for plywood, 4x4s, 2x4s, whatever you can get you’re hands on. Then I’m going to work the rounds between the three of us, and we’re going to make some 4x4 ‘timbers. We got the wood.’

‘You really think we can get the tunnel done before we start planting.’

‘Honestly no. There's a lot to do to get the mine we scoped out yesterday ready, but it'll go much faster than the tunneling.’

‘Then what are we doing this for? I mean, we're going to be bringing major equipment into that mine, surely somebody will see us.’

‘Probably. We can't prevent that, but we can dig a tunnel to reduce the chance in the future, provide an escape route, and worst comes to worst, defend these few acres from‘marauders from the tunnel, even if they outman us three to one.’

*
Three weeks later, the only light between the pillars in the mine was the skull glow from pot bellied stoves they'd wrestled down the service elevators. The glow illuminated Carl's cot he'd brought down with him, once he realized how difficult it was to keep all the stoves alive.

Tendrils of tomatoes wriggled in the twilight like tentacles. It smelled like manure. Carl had time to think. It was bad.

This is the future? These pipes pushing coal smoke into slag pits so no one would see? Hydroponics plants we're staving off from the cold? How did I draw the short stick, thought Carl.

Carl heard shifting at the main tunnel entrance. Sound bounced and fractured. His AK-47 clattered as he picked it up. Only Semi-auto, but that was American law, right, he thought.

‘Carl! Turn the goddamn lights on!’ yelled Darryl.

‘Heh, it's you!’

‘Where's the breaker again?’ said Darryl.

‘Can't believe its daylight already.’

‘Turn the lights on, man, it's my turn.’

‘I mean I can stay, if you want. I don't mind.’

‘Jesus Christ, you're crazier than I am. Don't make this thing collapse on your way out.’

Suddenly rows of florescent lights flickered to life over Carl's wrinkled brow and clenching jaw.

‘Yeah, time to go.’
*

Darryl turned at the wall where he was digging. He was 152.6 yards into the mountainside. He might hit the mine at any point.

‘I need more water. That's what I need,’ he said aloud to himself.

He wondered whether Sandra could hear him all the way outside the tunnel, if it had a megaphone effect or not. Self-control keeps us human, he thought. He wondered for an instant where he'd picked up that tripe.

As he shuffled along, pushing the shop-light, and cord in front of him, he checked each cross strut as he passed. It looked like the 16-pennies were holding. It didn't help his mind in the slightest.

At the 17th cross brace, most of the way out, he notice three of the nails had worked their way out, about half way. Plate tectonics and earth shifting images flashed through his mind. He put one hand up on the brace, released the hammer from under his belt, and attempted to drive the first one in.

His giant safety glasses landed on the ground beside him. He cursed. Dirt cascaded into his eyes. He shifted backwards, from were the dirt was falling. His foot shifted the post behind him with the pressure, pinning his foot to the wall.

Lizzie, Cory's wife, and her children, who survived the depopulation, were blowing bubbles in front of the trailer when the tunnel collapsed. She was wiping bubble slime from her black hair. She turned and looked.

Juan burst from underneath the trailer, where he'd been excavating a third cellar for future crop storage.

‘What the fuck was that? Did you feel that?’ he yelled at Sandra, who was tying a sickly cow to a post that was eventually going to be a barn.

Juan saw where the dust was rising from the collapse.

‘Holy Christ! It collapsed, man! Sandra, it collapsed. Grab a shovel! Shit!’ He pelted down the lawn, and across the creek to the tunnel entrance, spade in hand.

Sandra grabbed a shovel and sprinted behind Juan.

‘Where's Darryl, Juan?’

‘He was in there, in the hole.’

Sandra stood in front of the narrow cleft, like a stream gulley with a ragged edge, open to the sky for 32 yards. Juan pushed passed her and ran down into the defile.

‘Hope that sonofabitch is dead,’ Cory said, walking up to her.

‘Yeah, you got any hospitals still open, Cory?’ asked Sandra.

‘If you like civil war era healthcare, then yeah, we do,’ said Cory. He smiled at her and walked passed her up the hillside, ‘Think we should organize this excavation a little better?’

She followed him up the side of the hill, looking down into where it collapsed.

‘How was Darryl moving all the fill?’ asked Juan when they got to where he was digging.

‘Wheelbarrow. Betcha can't guess where that shit is now, huh?’ said Cory.

‘How was he even pushing it in here?’ muttered Juan, his shoulders were nearly touching the walls. The sod was just above head level.

‘Dunno, but I do know that you still got all them buckets, Juan. Go get 'em. We can get the kids and Lizzie out here, get 'em moving factory style.’

‘Look, man, I don't know... we got a limited time span here,’ said Juan.

The gallows grin dropped from Cory's face. He pulled a Smith & Wesson SW990L Pistol from
The back of his belt loop. All the sunlight that was left in the holler attached to the gun.

‘Get the fucking buckets,’ he said.

Juan's gaze tracked from the barrel to Cory's eyes.

‘Whoa, man. What the... okay, man,’ he said.

He backed down the declivity slowly, palms facing Cory, until Cory turned around, towards Sandra and let Juan see him put the black thing back under his jean shirt.

Sandra swallowed; she turned the shovel point in the ground.

There was a long silence.

‘What would you like me to do for now?’ said Sandra.

‘We could jump down in there and start digging,’ he said. He eased himself in, and then helped her down.

‘Wider than it needed to be,’ he said.

They heard Carl running up the gravel driveway. They kept digging. They didn't even turn around when he started yelling inquiries across the yard.

‘We don't got time,’ Cory said to no one.

‘Dude, did you guys feel that?’ said Carl.

‘Darryl's dying in this tunnel,’ Sandra said.

‘What??’

‘Care to help Juan bring the buckets from the cellars over here? And would you get my wife to bring the kids out while you're down there?’

Carl nodded, turned, and jogged back to the trailer.

They found the top of a camouflaged helmet fifteen buckets later. Sandra hit it with her shovel. The sun was setting. The helmet was pinned to the dirt by one of the crossbeams.

‘Holy shit, it's him,’ said Carl, grabbing the fifteenth bucket from Juan, ‘told him this would happen.’

‘Shut the fuck up, Carl,’ said Juan.

Juan got on his knees, and wrapped his hands under the beam. He pulled up. Dirt shifted.

‘You sure you want to do that?’ said Cory, standing with arms akimbo, from where he switched to supervisor mode after the Hispanic got back.

Juan froze. Then he tore the beam upwards out of the ground. Dirt cascaded backward, down the slope of the beam.

Darryl was mostly freed from the soil. He lay there motionlessly, like a plaster cast.

‘You check if he's breathing now,’ said Cory, looking at Carl.

‘Kay.’ He shifted past Juan, who was hoisting the beam onto of the sod, and bent over Darryl's face.

‘He's breathing. He's got a lot of blood coming out of this cut, man, but he ain't dead’ Carl said.

Sandra exhaled audibly.

‘Well then dig his ass out quick,’ said Cory, ‘Let's get his fat ass out of there. Juan, you grab him under the arms, pull him out. Can't do too much more damage now, and if his neck is broken, this'll be worthless anyway. Carl, jump out. Run down to the store at the end of the holler with one of the kids. Buy medical supplies, needle, thread, alcohol. You two get down to the fortress and clear a table for this fucking lug,’ he was looking at Sandra and Lizzie.

Carl nodded, and ran off, dirt smeared across his face. He turned halfway across the yard. ‘What are we paying with?’

‘You got four packs of ramen noodles in there. That'll buy you everything you need. Now fucking go, you're gonna kill him. Run your ass off,’ yelled Cory.

Cory watched Sandra as she ran towards the trailer, Cory's 'fortress'. He cocked his head to the side. The last of the sun light colored his goatee.

‘Hey Juan?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘She pregnant already?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You?’ asked Cory.

Juan just laughed.

*

Lizzie pushed up the sleeves of her giant sweater. She pinched together the skin on Darryl's forehead, and he winced. He attempted to lift the bottle of Jack to his mouth, without being able to see it, and poured a splash on his chin. Cory snaked his hand in the tangle, and removed the bottle.

‘God,’ Darryl moaned.

She drove the needle through the pinched skin, knot in the fishing line holding.

‘Ah! Why are we doing this! Oh God that hurts,’ Darryl said.

‘Infection, mostly. And don't want to scar your pretty face,’ said Cory. He laughed.

There was a silence punctured by the sound of the needle sliding through Darryl's skin.

‘The tunnel is seeping water at the end,’ said Darryl, almost evenly.

‘Who cares man,’ said Carl.

‘I'm going to finish it,’ said Darryl.

‘Really,’ said Cory, who cocked his head to the side in the cramped trailer.

‘We're in big trouble,’ said Sandra, ‘We gotta figure out what we're going to do next now. The tunnel is obviously a wash; we're going to have to bring food in and out of the mine. And manure.’

‘Frankly, I can't believe nobody's stumbled on our little operation up to this point,’ said Lizzie.

‘How much would it matter, really,’ said Juan.

‘It would matter. We'd have a battle on our hands. I mean, like a fucking battle,’ Cory said.

‘We have to reduce our chances of getting caught. We have to finish the tunnel, and connect the west branch of the mine to us here at the trailer,’ said Darryl.

‘Dude, you think you're going to crawl in there with your leg like that?’ said Carl, slowly.

‘Yeah, yeah I am, Carl. Soon as I get sufficient binding for my leg.’

‘It looks awful, Darryl. You may have fractured it,’ said Sandra. She looked down at the brown carpet in the kitchenette.

‘We can't keep stopping for these little things,’ said Juan.

‘My kids ain't staying hungry forever,’ said Cory.

‘Darryl, listen, I'd try to appeal to your sense, but I guess you don't have any. I don't know what's wrong with the chemicals in your head, but you're going to take my place, permanently, in the mine. You're gonna mess this up, man.’

‘Carl, look at me. I'm prepared for this shit in ways that'd never. cross. your. mind. You get me? You don't tell me what the fuck I'm going to do, son.’

Cory cocked his head to the side, and leaned back from the table.

‘It ain't like that, dude. I'm not trying to let you start something. We know what you want. You thought you were top dog. Well you're not. We're all screwed equally here. We're failing with the food. The tunnel collapsed. I'm probably dying from chemical poisoning from the mine. Eventually, some group will attack us here. We're screwed man. Screwed. And now, you gotta listen to all of us.’

Carl had his head in his hands. He pushed back from the table, and started to walk towards the door.

‘Carl, you're not going to survive this. You're just so fucking laid back,’ said Darryl.

Carl suddenly turned around and back handed Darryl across the face. Tiny blood and spittle droplets arched across the room, slow in the sunlight.

Darryl put both hands up to his mouth, we he caught the balance of his chair. Everything was still. Sandra's mouth was a little black O. Juan had his hand wrapped around a ceramic mug. The needle hung from Darryl's head on the invisible fishing line, like magic.

Cory stood up.

‘You weren't prepared for that now where you,’ said Carl, ‘I need you to hear me through that chemical fog in your brain.’

He was slowly backing toward the door, waiting for someone to lunge at him.

‘You bastards. I didn't want to use drastic measures. But you're all making mistake after mistake. You can't crawl with that leg. Sandra's already three month's pregnant. Cory's going to shoot somebody. You hear me now? I'm not going back into that fucking mine ever again. We gotta have each one of us fully functional, just to keep this thing alive, to survive the next ten years, and we're already losing, man, losing.’

Cory had his back to the door. He looked Darryl in the eyes. Then he pushed out of the door, into the dark. The creek burble rose and fell, as the door opened, and then closed.

Darryl and Juan stood up.

‘Get that fucker back in here,’ said Juan, moving toward the door, ‘He gonna tell somebody.’

Cory slammed his gun on the table. It made a loud clattery noise. Everyone turned towards him.

‘This is my land, my house. You sit down.’

Darryl kept standing. Juan sat down.

Cory looked Darryl in the eyes. ‘Don't do this,’ he said, ‘I will kill you. I will keep order here. You should know that. Now I’m gonna walk out that door. Now I don’t give a shit what you do, ‘cept if you follow me, I’ll shoot you in the face, okay?’

He got up and walked through the door.

‘Oh my god, he's going to shoot Carl. Where the fuck are we? What's going on?’

Seconds passed. They heard muffled voices.

The echo of nine gunshots slammed into the trailer.

They heard a final tenth shot.

‘Oh my god,’ Sandra said. Terror shivered down her voice.

Lizzie heard her daughter scream, and she darted into the back room.

Sandra heard her say, ‘Its gonna be okay, girls, things are going to be just fine. We're gonna make it through this okay, we're gonna make something good here, honey, I promise, we're going make it through, baby, okay?’

Sandra looked down at her belly.