Chapter 3: The Prepper
Reca had woken up the next morning to more of the same.
Even though the duo had made it out of the Andistronican Quarter, they found that everything looked quite similar to the scenery back home. Reca had expected some sort of major change at the border. Come to think of it, nothing even marked the boundary between the Quarter and greater Wastelandica- she was only able to tell that she'd left by comparing the shapes of the mountains nearby to those on the map.
Deca was in equal measure glad and depressed that she hadn't come across another Occupant. In fact, since the car last night, nothing had been buried in the sand along their path- if anything was there, it was so far underneath the surface that no trace of it was left.
"Y'know," said Reca, tired of the whistling winds, "Let's go south. To the river, I mean. See if the towns are still there."
Towns seemed like a grandiose description of the settlements. They seemed scarcely bigger than Andistronica, which was, on its own, not quite a settlement. Still, going to the river seemed as good an idea as any. Deca turned south and drove on. And on, and on.
After what must have been three hours, Deca wondered if the river had dried up.
After what might have been five hours, Deca wondered if the units on the map were out of whack.
After what seemed like ten hours, Reca thought she was hallucinating when she saw something blue appear on the horizon.
But it wasn't a hallucination at all. It only got brighter as they approached... brighter, and pointier too.
It wasn't the river after all.
Reca and Deca finally pulled closer to the enigmatic blue object and found that it was a ranch house, idyllic and bright blue, halfway buried in the sand. It looked as if it had been plucked from a pre-aprocalyptic Home Living magazine- purple flower print curtains were partially visible through the parts of the windows that weren't submerged, and a pleasant '422' number plate hung on the door, only slightly crooked. Reca imagined that a 'the home is where the heart is' welcome mat sat below the door, obscured by the landscape. Deca pictured the house with a perfectly-manicured lawn out back and her heart hurt a little. The solitary dwelling couldn't think, of course, but it seemed lonely nonetheless.
The house, as Deca saw it, probably meant that the duo was getting closer to the river (or what was left of it). When they saw which way the water was flowing, they'd finally have a trajectory, and-
Deca noticed Reca at the door to the house and her thoughts about finding the river ground to a halt. "No," she wanted to say, "Don't ruin it. You're about to let sand in!" But she couldn't talk. All she could do was flash, and honk, and fail to dissuade the ever-curious girl from turning the doorknob...
The doorknob stopped with a clink. Reca turned it again, and jiggled it, and then shrugged.
"It's locked," said Reca with a hint of frustration.
Of course.
Deca relaxed and lit up the driver's seat. "Come back," she indicated. Reca usually got the hint, but this time, out of either willful ignorance or rebellious spirit, she kept trying. She gave it a little tug. It didn't budge. She gave it a large tug, and it didn't budge. She gave it a huge tug, and... pop! The doorknob, revealed to be rusty where it intersected with the door, had come off, and the door creaked open just a crack. The house wasn't as pristine as it had seemed, apparently. Deca rolled up to Reca, who was now trying repeatedly to stuff herself through the tiny crack in the door sideways, and turned on her headlights in a futile attempt to illuminate the inside of the house.
With a hefty heave, Reca was finally able to fit through the opening, but the force of the squish launched her onto the floor. Deca knew the situation was outside of her control and flashed her lights once, signaling, "go ahead"- she could at least throw up some sand with her wheels and make for an easier exit when Reca inevitably left. For better or worse, the girl was now on her own inside of the timeless domicile, and even if the door had been unlocked- even if the house wasn't drowning in sediment- Deca still couldn't have fit through the entryway without damaging the doorframe.
Reca's eyes took several seconds to adjust to the dimness. Before she even considered looking around at her surroundings, she spotted a light switch on the wall. The kitchen back home had one of those at first, but it was broken before she even learned to walk properly. It shouldn't have worked- after all, the electrical grid shouldn't have been active, given the condition of the house's surroundings- but she found herself subconsciously reaching up and giving it a flick regardless.
In less than a second, her eyes, which had only just begun to acclimate to the darkness, were met with what now seemed to her like a blinding light.
Miraculously, the switch had worked. Even more miraculously, the inside of the house- or, at the very least, what appeared to be its living room- was in pristine condition. A pink couch draped in a yellow blanket sat in front of a vintage box TV, remote parked neatly on the table next to it. The curtains nearly concealed the fact that the house was buried in sand. A landline phone was mounted next to the kitchen entrance, and photos of a happy family hung placidly on the walls. Reca suddenly felt as if she was trespassing, but steeled herself and walked into the kitchen, which doubled as the dining room.
The door had been tough to open. If someone really was living here, how...?
There was a red-checkered tablecloth held down by a vase of flowers on the dining table. There were dry dishes in the rack by the sink, and an old blender next to the stove. Reca didn't notice any of that, though. Her eyes were drawn solely to the fridge, the biggest fridge she'd ever seen. Was it full of food? Would it be rude to open it up? She wasn't hungry, so why was she drawn to it? Maybe the idea of prosperity in a time such as hers seemed far-fetched, near-impossible.
She grasped the handle with her shaking hands. She almost expected it to refuse to open. On the count of three (counted to herself in her head, of course, just in case anyone could somehow hear), she tugged and it gave way, sending a burst of cold, concentrated air into her face that made her shut her eyes and step back. Even the acid snow back home was warmer than that.
When she opened her eyes, she expected to see a turkey, maybe, some tupperware containers, and at least one casserole. None of those things were inside. Instead there was a staircase on the first steps of which visible, undisturbed ice crystals had long since formed. It trailed down into darkness and she couldn't see the end, even when she squinted and took a deep breath of the chilly air and stepped as close to the entrance as she could without actually going through. She thought about stepping back and exploring the rest of the house- it had to have a bathroom, for instance, which might be interesting- but found herself captivated by the staircase, which seemed as out of place in the house as the house itself had been in the desert.
Her usual breath exercises were rendered useless by the uncomfortable air temperature near the passage, and so she put aside her reservations and carefully started into the darkness.
There was supposed to be a light at the end of every tunnel. Wasn't that how the saying went? She didn't remember, and she assumed her recollection must have been wrong. After all, the room at the end of the staircase was dark as well, darker than the main house had been. There were no windows here. Even if there were, they would just look out on the sand, or perhaps they would look out on whatever was below the sand, if there was anything.
Reca searched for a light switch for all of two seconds before she noticed the breathing.
It was slow, measured, occasionally sputtery. It was distinctively human. It was coming from the other side of the dark room.
All of her worst fears were immediately realized. She was trespassing- this house was inhabited (but what about the door?) and she had just walked into the private, underground fridge-dungeon-bedroom of the inhabitant. What if they were armed? Nobody in Andistronica was armed, except for maybe when they went out to hunt the flesh monsters. She had heard stories about the people elsewhere, though, and how they had bigger threats to contend with, and bigger weapons to contend with them. Would she be construed as one of those bigger threats?
Her desire for answers kept her from running, so she sat down, made herself as small as possible, and waited.
It might have been two minutes, or it might have been two hours, but Reca's breathing slowed, synchronizing with the stranger's rhythm. One breath, another breath... and then the synchronicity fell apart. The stranger snorted to life and threw aside what sounded like a blanket. Reca's eyes darted around nervously in the dark. There were footsteps, and then a blinding light of unparalleled intensity ripped through the room. It cleared. Reca saw the other person for the first time.
He was a man, hair half-grey, with a hint of uneven five-o'clock shadow and bags under his eyes. He looked middle-aged, but Reca happened upon the idea that he could have been a young person who looked way older than he was or an old person who looked way younger than he was. He wore a stained tank top and khaki pants two sizes too big. He held an sturdy hatchet, which he occasionally slapped against his palm, and stared Reca down with an icy gaze.
"I'm sorry," mumbled Reca, smushing herself against the wall as if to somehow avoid being hacked up by the hatchet man. "I'm-"
"Easy, kid," he said, smiling in a warm manner unbefitting his hatchet greeting. "You a kindred spirit?"
"What?"
"You don't think I'm crazy. You musta' really needed my help to break into my house. Tell you what- no one else had the guts! You're here with me, if you wanna be."
Reca didn't really understand, but she nodded at what she assumed was a sign of goodwill. With her buzzing mind finally set at ease (to an extent), she was able to look around the room; it was an iron chamber with no windows and just one door, the one she had entered though. There were massive metal shelves occupying the whole chamber, all of them bursting with supplies- canned food, mostly, but also weapons, fire-starting tools, and communication devices. The only shelf that wasn't packed had a mattress and blanket on it. That must have been where the man was sleeping.
"I bet you heard from the neighbors that I've been going downhill since I left my wife," he grumbled. Reca found it strange that he mentioned neighbors. There were no other houses outside, right? Perhaps they had crumbled under the weight of the desert.
"Well, it's not true. She left me, and she got the kids and the dog and one of the houses. I got the photos. Can you believe that? The photos. Custody of the photos. What a sham."
She had seen the photos hanging in the living room earlier. So the family was his family, then. She wondered if they had survived.
"There's plenty of food to go around. Y'know, maybe if I had done all this early on I wouldn't have just accepted you, just 'cause you broke into my house. Was prideful back then. But now I don't care whether I'm proven right or wrong. Tell me- you the kind of person who cares what people think? No judgement here, I'm just curious."
Reca was unsure what we has talking about, and an odd feeling- as if the man was not entirely sane- came over her. She assumed that letting him continue talking to her- or rather to himself- would give her some answers, and so she grunted in response and waited for him to start again.
"I used to say to 'um- wait until you see that I'm right! But maybe no one will ever see that. Maybe they'll all die first, if NukeCorp does us in. And then there won't be any satisfaction, see? So I realized my motivations were all outta whack. Now I just do things for me. And for you, if you catch my drift."
Reca didn't catch anything, much less his drift, but she nodded nonetheless. Something was very wrong.
"C'mere. Didn't think I'd let ya' stay here without carrying your weight, didja?"
He beckoned her to an enclave between two of the shelves. The floor was obscured by a thick layer of irregular woodchips, and a sawhorse was propped haphazardly against the wall. There was a low rudimentary stool carved from a stump and a 'table' that was really more of a wooden plank draped between the curtain-covered shelves on either side. These were the things Reca recognized, but there was one major item she couldn't identify- it was a sort of wooden elliptical cylinder-ish thing that tapered somewhat towards one end.
Like a mind reader, the man reached for the item.
"This little beauty will be a slingshot," he said. Reca couldn't see it.
"We're gonna need it," he continued. The old stories came to mind about how people outside of Andistronica had big threats to deal with, and she gulped.
"I'm pretty prepared," he said, and he pulled aside the curtain to his left to reveal a massive pile of slipshod wooden slingshots. "Don't worry- we'll be all set."
"All set for what?" asked Reca, relieved to finally get a question out.
"It won't be zombies, necessarily," he responded, not clearing anything up at all. "Cyjann virus aside, you know, NukeCorp might make monsters too. Or, let's say we take the monsters out of the equation-" he spoke passionately about whatever it was he was talking about- "There'll be people. Survivors, other than me, I mean, who come and want to take everything I've worked so hard to keep. And that's not to mention demons."
Reca grew more and more lost with each additional sentence. She wasn't sure what question to ask, and, more importantly, she didn't even know if any question would even result in the answers she needed. She drew a sharp breath and then interrupted the man's tirade with one of her own-
"What are you talking about?" she yelled. "Survivors of what? What is it you're preparing for? What's up with this place? What are you hiding from?"
The man arched one eyebrow as if Reca was the strange one.
"I'm even more confused about why you broke into my house. You tellin' me it was a coincidence? And that somehow you haven't watched the news, or heard people talkin' about how it's comin' soon?"
"What's comin'- I mean, what's coming soon?"
"The apocalypse!"
For all of three seconds, Reca was frozen.
The she turned and ran.
She ran because she was afraid of the deranged man with a loose grasp on reality. She ran because she wanted to get out. She ran because she had been told fantastical stories of places out of time... and she ran because, somewhere in her heart, she wondered if she had been transported back to before Wastelandica became what it was. That was the only explanation, or the only plausible one, right?
The other explanation... that the man had, against the odds, just missed the end of the world... it seemed...
Her thinking slowed to a halt. The sand was still there, spilling in through the door, which now sat slightly ajar. The sound of Deca's wheels spinning sand away was distinctly audible, if muffled. The apocalypse had happened.
Reca found herself with a new burden. She had to tell him. Maybe he knew, but was in denial? No- that seemed unlikely. She had to make sure he knew. She couldn't leave him behind, not with all the canned food in the world.
"So, do you think I'm a nutjob, too?"
There was an air of disappointment to his voice. He hadn't moved from where he was sitting when Reca left.
"Why'd you come back here, kid?" with a chuckle, he tacked on, "Did the apocalypse just happen outside or somethin'?"
Reca gulped again.
"It happened," she said.
He raised his eyebrows incredulously.
"It happened a long, long time ago. Long before I was born. I don't even know how many years ago, but it happened. Already. Sir... when was the last time you went upstairs?"
"I-"
For the first time that day- no, that decade- he was at a loss for words. Memories tugged gently at his mind.
A green lawn, slowly dying.
The sound of footsteps on the front porch, followed shortly by the clicking of suitcase wheels.
A desparate plea-
"Honey," he had said, "you're making a massive mistake. When it all happens, you'll come running back to me!"
"I would run to a million people before you on doomsday," the woman with the curly blonde hair had said, derision in her voice.
"Fine then! Leave me- maybe you'll die before I can say 'I told you so!'"
The woman turned around. Her face was obscured by time, but her expression- one of disdain, pain, and anguish- was as clear as it had ever been.
"You're so damn confident," she rasped. "Fine, then. Go down into your cold little box with your cans and your cot. Wait for the end of the world to happen! Be that rugged survivor you think you are, and put your delusions where your mouth is. You can prove to us that you can survive anything. Do it by never showing your face up here again!"
"You'll see," he replied, acting powerful but feeling utterly powerless. "Everyone will see."
The woman spun on her heel, took her suitcase in one hand, and walked away from the blue house on Iris Street for the last time. He closed and locked the door. He would never open it again, no matter how many times she called and asked.
As it turned out, though, that never happened.
He blinked, eyes foggy.
"What?"
"The apocalypse was a long time ago," repeated Reca.
"What?" repeated the man.
"Look, you can come and see for yourself if you want!"
He reached for his hatchet. The skilled hands that had carved out two hundred custom slingshots were now rattling like jackhammers.
"You won't need that out there," Reca sighed. He maintained his unsteady grip on it, though, and got up, sturdy constitution gone. He stopped at the bottom of the staircase and peered aimlessly upwards. Then, before Reca could cut past him and lead the way, he began to climb them himself.
Reca didn't want to bear the brunt of whatever reaction he had, so she waited a minute, then followed him back up through the house.
She found him again. He was standing, staring blankly through the half-open door at the desolate desert that stretched into infinity in all directions.
She joined him in his moment of silent remembrance. Reca had never seen the area before it was a desert, but by looking at him, she felt like she could almost see the trees, the sidewalks, the kids playing, the homeowners mowing their lawns...
And then it vanished, and the desert was just a desert.
The silence, like the sand, stretched on. Then the man spoke.
"Tell me- how did it happen, in the end?"
Reca thought about how to answer.
"I don't know."
The dreary atmosphere suddenly buzzed with discontent.
"What do you mean, you don't know? You tellin' me that the world went and ended and you don't even know how it happened?"
"Nobody knows what happened, at least nobody I've met."
"Man," he muttered, dissatisfied.
"I'm trying to find out, though," said Reca. "That's why I came all this way. I was looking for the river, the one called Hell River. Do you know how to get to it?"
"There's only one river here, and it's not called Hell River. It's Iris River... but it's south of here."
"Sounds about right."
He stepped back.
"Was there anyone else? On your trip here, I mean."
"No one alive."
He buried his face in his hands. Reca had no way to console him. She couldn't reverse the apocalypse, but...
"We're going south to the river, and then we're following it east to wherever it flows," she started. "If there's anyone else left, we might come across them. How would you like to come along? It doesn't seem like there's much left here for you."
"We're...? You're traveling with somebody, else, kid?"
Deca flashed her headlights and the man grunted, startled.
"It's just me and Deca for now, but there's plenty of space in the back."
Despite his shock, the man appeared to be seriously considering the possibility. Reca wasn't lonely- she had Deca- but she wondered if she might become lonely in the future without another traveling companion.
"No."
Reca almost asked why.
"There's plenty here for me, and nothing out there as far as I can see," said the man. "My cans. My cot. My tools. This place is fortified, I made sure of that. I guess if I hadn't fortified it the house coulda been destroyed and I woudln'ta even known!" He chuckled, but in a deeply sad sort of way.
"And now there's no one to say 'I told you so' to," 'joked' Reca.
"Wouldn't do it even if there was somebody," he responded. "But, that said- if you go on your journey, and you figure things out, and you meet people- you can always come back here and bring 'em to see me."
"Maybe we will."
"I have enough supplies to last a lifetime. Hell, twenty lifetimes. You wanna take a few of the cans with you?"
"Sure. Just a few, though- I don't eat much."
He looked at her strangely and then went back down into the bunker. Deca rolled up to the door and the two of them waited for him to return.
When he did, he was pulling a wagon heaped with a rainbow of cans. Placed on top, apparently an afterthought, was a wooden slingshot and a packet of rocks.
"That's too much," said Reca, eyes as wide as saucers.
"More like too little. This is the apocalypse, remember? You'll need it."
"You've accepted that quickly."
"It's not like much will change for me. I'll still be cooped up in my little icebox, making slingshots and playing chess with myself."
"Well, it doesn't have to be like that anymore."
"I suppose. But familiar is familiar."
Reca couldn't argue with the sentiment.
The rest of the duo's time at the blue Iris Street house was spent in silence, save for the whistling of the wind. Reca loaded the supplies into the compartment that had once been the bedchamber of the camper van and climbed back up to her usual spot on top. She noticed that the man was still standing in the doorway, empty wagon in hand.
"Sir!" she called. "We'll see you again!"
"I won't count on it!"
"You'll see!"
"Whatever you say, kid!"
With those unconventional parting words, Deca steered around the house and started southward once again.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
BrickleB
BrickleB Next chapter, we meet a named character... sort of.
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