Hell's Requiem: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Read online

  Tom quickly squeezed off two shots, both finding the tree trunk that the little man was using as cover. The action was completely reactionary, as the shots weren’t meant to hit him, just make him stop.

  Or perhaps his chauvinism had not yet died with the old world. He glanced at the woman and boy, who were cowering behind a closer tree, and felt a small sense of protectiveness toward them. He hadn’t felt that in years.

  Mostly he was angry that this little man was firing on his property, near his gate, and needlessly wasting so much ammo.

  Little Man didn’t seem too surprised though, and amazingly, fired another round, this time directly at Tom, before he ducked again behind the tree.

  Tom hit the gravel, almost immediately gaining a site picture from his prone position. He fired a shot at the only body part visible from behind the tree: the man’s foot.

  The little man yelped, dropped his rifle and hobbled away in the other direction, through a thick stand of trees blocking Tom’s ability to fire off another shot. If only the little man would run down his private drive, he’d give him a full measure of the pain he deserved. When the world ended, so did Tom’s compassion for other people, especially someone taking a shot at him.

  “Oh, thank God you came along when you did,” the woman sang out in a frail but determined voice.

  The melody of her words had a strange familiarity to it.

  Hell’s Requiem Playlist, Track 5

  Song/Artist: Heartbreaker by Pat Benatar

  Keywords: right kind of sinner; inner fantasy; heartbreaker; dream maker; love taker

  02

  The woman tentatively approached the gate, clutching the little boy in front of her, almost as if to shield herself from Tom.

  Tom had no intention of shooting them, especially after saving them, unless they also proved to be a threat. His gaze and rifle remained pointed in their direction.

  Her hair was a tumbleweed tangle of blond; the boy’s, equally tussled, was dirty-red. Their clothes were soiled and torn in places. They were a stark reminder of what was happening outside of his ranch, a world he was somewhat insulated from since he rarely ventured outside of his property’s fence-line.

  A forced smile clung to her façade, practiced but necessary. The boy flashed a similar beam.

  “That’s far enough,” Tom bellowed.

  They froze, their smiles sliding easily off their faces.

  “Show me your hands,” he said, not as loudly this time.

  Their arms shot up in unison.

  “Now turn completely around, slowly.”

  He watched them spin around on the balls of their feet. The little boy grimaced a little, like they were participating in some game he didn’t want to play. To Tom, this was no game. No one had ventured his way in more than a month. Anyone who did now was suspicious, regardless of the circumstances.

  There was a hard and fast rule when it came to his property boundary: if you crossed it without permission, you’d be shot. Of course, this rule was mainly set up to protect his family. Now what did the rule protect? His loneliness? They certainly didn’t look like a threat.

  When they were once again facing him, he commanded, “Now walk to the gate and stick your arms through it, all the way to your shoulders.”

  They did exactly as they were told, pushing their arms through the one-foot aluminum blocks that made up his gate.

  “Thanks for saving us, Mister,” the little boy said in an Opie-like voice, with a raspy grate to it.

  Like most things, it reminded Tom of Drew, just a little bit. Flooding his mind were the long-forgotten mental pictures of the day Drew had his tonsils removed—he was several years younger than this boy then. Drew had begged for ice cream. It was that same hoarse voi—

  “Yes, thank you for saving us,” the woman said. “That man had been chasing us and shooting at us for miles. We were just lucky to have stumbled upon your place.”

  Tom didn’t answer. He just glared at the woman.

  A parade of red flags marched down his mental Main Street: how could Little Man shoot so poorly? “Shooting at us for miles?” It was a carbine, which held maybe seven rounds. And why was he shooting in front of his gate? With his nearest neighbor over a mile away, and the nearest town much farther, it seemed hard to believe that these two just happened to “stumble” onto his property with a rifle-toting man chasing behind them.

  But stranger things had happened. He looked up to the heavens for confirmation of this. But the glare of the midday sun hid any auroral light he could now expect to see each night.

  The woman and the boy waited stoically for his next command, their arms consumed by the recently repainted black gate. The boy yawned and looked exhausted, or was it boredom?

  Deciding it was safe to take the next step, Tom unlocked the gate and pulled on the opposing side, the one they weren’t connected to, just enough so that he could slide through.

  He walked behind the woman and hesitated. “I’m now going to check you for weapons,” he announced.

  “We don’t have any.” Her answer slipped out like the frightened cackle of a blackbird. Perhaps it was her realization that this wasn’t a request.

  He slung his rifle around to his back and then declared, “If you move, I will kill you with my knife.” His Ka-Bar Army survival knife was sheathed to his right side, less than a second from deployment. He didn’t think he’d have to, but he didn’t want them to doubt his conviction.

  “We won’t move, I promise,” she said, her pitch fluttering even more now.

  Tom started with each of the woman’s arms, covered by a tattered over-sized oxford, probing for anything that might be taped to her wrists or arms or armpits.

  Nothing.

  Then he felt in and around her hair for anything that might be used to stab him. The knots and dirt made this difficult, so mostly he patted her head and neck.

  Nothing.

  Then he felt down her shoulder blades, and back, and worked his way around her waist and up her chest, being very careful to go around her breasts—he still held some sense of civility, even if others didn’t. Other than the underwire of her bra, he felt nothing underneath.

  Finally, he felt again around her waistband and then down her backside and legs to her ankles, and then back up to her groin.

  She was clean.

  She turned slowly back to him, letting her arms come to rest by her sides, and she looked up to him with a sly smile. “Now that you know me intimately, shouldn’t we be introduced?” she said, almost with a giggle, like he had tickled her. But he couldn’t help feel like she was the one doing the tickling.

  “I don’t need to know your name,” Tom quickly replied. He felt hotter than normal and stuck one of the twigs from his pocket into the slit of his mouth and started to chew.

  “So who do I thank for coming to our rescue?”

  “You don’t need my name either,” he muttered.

  “Fine. Can we at least have some water?”

  The inevitable question hung in the air, like a bright sign mounted in front of him, blinking a demand for an answer.

  Just say, no! he thought. What can they do, accuse me of being mean?

  It was what he needed to do. He needed to follow his steadfast rule. The one he didn’t need any more because his family was gone.

  He chewed more vigorously on the twig.

  “I’m kinda thirsty too,” said the boy.

  He had no one to protect. No one to look after, except some plants and himself, not that he did either well. Maybe he could break one of his rules.

  He tossed another glance at the boy, who looked exhausted, and then at the woman. Beneath the dirt, she looked pretty. Then he saw her leg. A small cut across her shins dripped a trickle of blood.

  That would get infected if she didn’t clean and bandage it correctly. And he couldn’t very well send them back out after saving them, with the tiny man perhaps prowling around still.

  “Yes, you can have some wa
ter. Walk with me up to the house.”

  Both their faces lit up, but neither seemed genuine.

  03

  Everything inside him told him that he was making a grave mistake, but he didn’t want to listen to his inner logic. He was lonely and these two seemed helpless enough. So he offered them the common courtesies—at least, they were common before the Event.

  He let the boy wash off the chaotic grime that covered him like an old, moldy blanket. And while he waited, the woman peppered him with questions he ignored.

  When the boy emerged from the bathroom, trailing watery footprints and dirty towels, he looked like a different person. And in a way, Tom couldn’t help but see his own boy in this one. Maybe it was the bright red hair; maybe it was their similar ages. But for the first time in years, he allowed himself to long for his boy. When he felt the woman’s heavy glare, Tom choked back his tears and looked away and led them to Drew’s room.

  He offered the boy some of Drew’s clothes. “They were doing no good in storage,” he told them. They’d been laid in neatly folded piles, organized into banker’s boxes in the closet. The first couple of years after Drew’s death, Tom would sometimes pull the clothes out, like certain memories he’d also boxed up, and scrutinize them. Then he folded them back up and put them in their place, where they’d gather dust until the next time he’d open that wound back up again. They’d been sealed for a long time. Perhaps it was time to open them back up.

  The boy chose shorts and an NRA T-shirt that demanded, “Hands off my guns!” He said little, though he often flashed Tom an unnerving smile. Each time, Tom felt a rush of guilt at having let the boy and his mother—he had assumed the woman was the boy’s mother—enter into the house that belonged to his long-gone family. He walked out of the room and left them.

  The woman ushered the boy into Drew’s bed, left mostly untouched in the years since his death. The young child slipped into the covers. Tom’s attention, as it always did when he wandered by Drew’s room, fell upon the toy soldiers arranged so neatly on top of the blue four-drawer dresser. It was a battle scene of Drew’s own design. Tom had left each piece exactly as Drew had left them. Occasionally he’d dust them off, always returning them to their proper places, exactly where he had found them. He’d studied them so many times, he could arrange them perfectly with his eyes closed.

  That’s why he noticed a few were askew, and two of the soldiers were missing.

  The woman was standing in front of Tom now, waiting for him to move out of the doorway. He turned away from Drew’s room, putting his back to her for the first time, and padded back down the hall.

  She continued with her questions, while he searched for the few pieces of clothing left behind by his wife: Was he alone? Did he have any neighbors? Did he have lots of supplies? Did he hide them? Where did his water come from? Could she take a shower too? Each question was posed with an expectant smile, and a bat of her lashes. Again practiced, but welcomed just the same.

  And yet, guilt tore a deep and ragged hole inside of him.

  The woman sauntered into the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack. He stood a few feet away, unable to avert his eyes.

  She slid out of her filthy clothes in full view of him. Tom wanted desperately to turn away, but it had been so long since he had been in the company of a woman, much less one not wearing clothing. In spite of the dirt rings around her neck and arms, the gash on her shin, and her filthy ankles, she was a sight for his longing eyes.

  She flung a slight knowing glance at him before she stepped out of view into his shower. Almost instantly she yelped a muffled cry—he’d forgotten to tell her the water was unheated.

  Feeling wholly uncomfortable standing where he was, he padded over to his living room couch, still in full view of the bathroom door and sat, waiting. The ragged pit of guilt opened up farther. It was the first time he longed for anyone since his wife left him.

  Within a few minutes, she emerged in tight shorts—one of the few things left over from his wife’s hasty exit—and a button-down shirt of his. The shirttails were tied up high, revealing most of her midriff. Her pale belly playfully blinked at him as she slunk over in his direction, obviously taking pleasure in his gaze. She’d left the top of the shirt unbuttoned and revealing. And he allowed himself to peek at that part of her body as well.

  Tom was confident his wanting looks were desired by her as well, but he didn’t know if it was reciprocal or just part of an act. More red flags that he purposely stomped on.

  The questions continued: Could she have a drink? How did he survive all alone?

  The bittersweet aroma of Nivea—his ex-wife’s favorite soap—followed her when she took a place next to him in the love seat.

  Tom burst from his seat, his heart pounding. He hesitated and then marched over to a point just off the rug that spanned the living room. Reaching down, he pulled the corner of the rug inward, revealing a hatch in the floor. He snatched a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the inset hasp and yanked on it, pulling open a doorway, which was now erect and pointed at the ceiling. Tom disappeared behind it, his footsteps creaking below the floor. There was a clink of bottles, and then a rumble of his boots before Tom bounded out, slammed the hatch closed, locking it back up, and then returned the rug back to its normal place. He darted to the kitchen, clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand, and returned with two glasses in the other.

  They shared a drink, his first in many years, before she excused herself to use the toilet. She returned and filled their glasses, bending over to do so. His eyes hung on, just where she wanted.

  During their friendly banter, she tossed glances at the holstered weapon on his hip. Eventually, she pleaded with him to unholster his Sig and put it aside, because, “All guns scare me, especially after... Well, you know,” she said.

  Like all of her requests, he relented, even though he knew better.

  Two more times she rose from her seat beside him, acting nervous. Each time, she tentatively peeled open the drapes, anxiously gazing outside. He suspected she was afraid that Little Man would make a comeback. When Tom asked her what was wrong, she only said that she was just nervous, but he made her feel safe.

  She knew precisely which buttons of his to push.

  It was only when she rose somewhat abruptly that he realized he was feeling woozy—probably because he wasn’t used to drinking anymore. But then when he tried to hoist himself up off his couch, he knew right away that it was something more, dropping hard to the couch’s edge. He clung to an armrest to stay upright, feeling the whole living room move. It was only then that all the red flags he had seen but summarily ignored flashed back at once in his mind like fireworks during a Fourth of July parade climax. It was a summation of his stupidity, or negligent desire, or... He just couldn’t focus anymore.

  He knew in an instant what was going to happen next, feeling almost calm that it would all be over soon enough.

  He watched her as if from a foggy nightmare. One where he was incapable of doing anything but being a witness.

  She unlatched his front door. A giant man and the short man he had shot at earlier barreled through, with guns drawn. He instinctively reached for his Sig, but it was no longer where he’d left it. She had taken it when he wasn’t looking.

  Three shots rang out: two hit him square in the chest and one in his side, knocking him off the edge of the couch onto his living room floor.

  Just before he passed out, he heard them speaking.

  “You get everything we need?” a beefy voice asked.

  “Yep, he sang like a canary. He has months’ worth of food in a locker beneath the floor. The keys are on him.” The woman’s words stung him more than the bullets from their guns.

  “What do you want me to do with the body?” a higher-pitched male voice asked.

  The woman's final words, his consciousness fading further, told him everything. “I don't care. I think he dumps his trash out on the side. Toss him there so he doe
sn't stink up the place.”

  She had played him so well.

  As a set of beefy hands dragged him through the front door—he had hammered in its nails with his own hands—and down the wide front steps, also leveled by him, a song slipped out of his memory into his conscious mind, before it too started fading away.

  She’s a heartbreaker. Love taker.

  Pat Benatar's words couldn't have been more appropriate.

  The giant man tugged at Tom’s arms with a grunt. More of Tom’s consciousness gently slipped away.

  Finally, it will be over, he thought. No longer would he feel this pain which had plagued him for so many years.

  But something else happened before everything went black. Tom wondered for the first time in a while about his wife. He allowed himself to remember her again. His last thought before the blackness took over was of the curls of her auburn hair. She would twirl them around her forefinger endlessly, especially when she was nervous.

  The grim crevasses of Tom’s mug opened up. Letting go of his usual restraint, his facial lines formed a rare grin. His eyes watered, but for once, they were tears of joy.

  He embraced this final memory. It was a good one to end on.

  04

  16 years earlier

  Unexpected accidents can often lead to one of life’s epochs.

  It was only after the crash that Tom thought there couldn’t have been a more inauspicious song to have ushered meeting one’s future bride than Don’t Fear the Reaper. Yet at a Blue Oyster Cult concert, that was the actual song playing when Tom literally ran into Mimi.

  They were both hurriedly going in opposite directions, trying to get seated before the end of the chorus to their favorite BOC song. Each had surreptitiously balanced multiple beers on outstretched arms, hurriedly attempting to bring them back to their respective friends. Tom zigged to his right, while Mimi zagged to her left, and somewhere in the middle they converged.