Welcome to the End Read online

  RUBBLE AND RUIN:

  WELCOME TO THE END

  by

  JARRETT RUSH

  ****

  PUBLISHED BY

  Six to One Books and Media

  Copyright © 2017

  Another One for Gina

  Because, in the end, they’re all for her.

  ONE

  I scratch a match on the side of the box, and the red tip sizzles to life. I put the flame to the wide wick inside the lantern, praying that the little bit of liquid sloshing in the bottom is oil and that there is enough to light our way home.

  A moment passes then the wick catches, and an orange glow fills the room. This place is full of antiques, just as I’d remembered from a few months previous. Back when everything was normal and I was here to get a lingering sore throat checked out.

  Caroline comes around the corner and hits me in the face with the beam from her flashlight. I turn quickly from the brightness and tell her: “Turn that off. Save the battery.”

  She does then steps closer to look at the lantern.

  “What happens when the oil’s gone?”

  “Oil’s easy,” I say. “Look around and make sure there’s nothing else we need here. Put anything you find in your pack. We’ll go in five minutes.”

  I place the lantern on top of a stack of out-of-date magazines sitting neatly on the table. Caroline goes behind the receptionist’s desk and rummages through drawers. Small pads of paper and a few pens go in her pack then she heads back to the medicine case behind the nurses’ station. She beats the lock with the butt end of her flashlight. The pills and potions inside still go for a price if she can get them out.

  I leave her to her case and move to the doctor’s personal office. The wall behind his oak desk is covered in shelves,. Those shelves are covered in brass antiques, mostly more lanterns and other nautical equipment polished to a high shine. The big prize, though, the thing I want more than anything else here, is on the top shelf: a gas mask with leather straps, metal buckles and tinted glass over the eyes. I pull it from the shelf and stare at it, turn it over and over in my hands. I study the fixtures, investigate the glass.

  There is no practical reason to keep this thing, but it looks so damn cool. I shove the mask in my pack then fall into the large wingback chair behind the desk. My body sinks deep into the quilted leather cushions, and I rub a hand along the arm, closing my eyes and letting my body settle for a moment. Rest. It’s been rare over the last month, when we’ve counted sleep in minutes, not hours. My eyes close; my breath deepens, and I begin to drift off.

  Caroline bangs on the open door and snaps me out of my shallow half-sleep.

  “I wake you?” She smiles.

  “Not quite sleeping yet.” I stand and pull my pack from the floor. I drop it onto the seat of the chair, put two more lanterns on top then push the chair out to the front of the desk toward the door.

  “Really? We’re taking that with us?” Caroline asks.

  I don’t answer, just push the chair past her.

  “Whatever,” Caroline says. “You’re the one who’s going to have to get it down 15 flights of stairs. Hope it’s worth it.”

  “Grab the lantern,” I tell her as we pass it.

  Caroline does and steps ahead of me. She stops at a window and points out toward a neighborhood. “See that fire out there? The one in Highland Park.”

  I move to the window and ask: “Which one?” Dallas is still new to me and considering all that’s happened in the last month, I haven’t had time to learn neighborhoods. Also there are at least a dozen fires burning out there.

  Caroline points again, more precisely indicating a neighborhood not too far past downtown. Or it doesn’t seem too far from this perspective.

  “My dad’s place,” Caroline says and walks toward the front door.

  The casters on the chair squeak their way down the hall. I stop at the door to the stairs and pause. I hand the two unlit lanterns to Caroline then put the pack on my back. I grab the chair by the arms then lift and turn it upside down. The seat rests on my head and the back falls behind me.

  “Let’s go,” I say. Caroline leads the way, the lit lantern painting everything inside the stairwell with its dim glow.

  I take the steps slowly, struggling to keep the weight of the chair over me. Caroline swings the lantern back and forth. I pause on the landing for the eighth floor, putting the chair down and leaning a shoulder into the wall. Caroline takes a seat and spins the chair to look at me.

  “Heavier than you thought, old man?”

  I shake my head. “About as heavy as I expected. But it’ll be worth it. While you all are sitting on milk crates and plastic lawn chairs, I’ll be sitting in that. I’ll be the king.” I smile; Caroline shakes her head. She pushes the chair backward and the casters squeak. A thump follows a few floors down.

  We pause, look at each other. Caroline stands. It’s silent again.

  “Push the chair,” I tell her.

  Casters squeak. Another thump. Then another. They stop. I pull a pistol from inside my jacket. Caroline wraps a fist around the handle of the machete sticking from the top of her pack.

  “I thought this part of downtown was safe,” she says.

  “Nowhere is safe.” I push the chair again and the casters’ squeak fills the stairwell.

  Pained cries come from below, and Caroline backs against the wall.

  “Wailers?” She asks. I nod.

  The cries stop, but I can hear nails scratch against the outside of the building. They’re climbing, scaling the sides of the building to get to the roof.

  I push the chair one last time. The cries return, but this time wailing from above answers their street-level cousins.

  “We’re trapped.”

  Caroline looks to me, her eyes asking “What’s next.” I grab the handle to the door that leads to an interior hall. It doesn’t open. Locked.

  “Back upstairs” I say and start taking steps two at a time. Caroline follows. The wails increase with each foot fall.

  I check the door on nine. Locked.

  Ten, eleven, and twelve. All locked.

  “It’s a security thing,” Caroline says. “They lock from the inside. We won’t get in.”

  Hard nails skitter down concrete steps. Cries come from below. I push past Caroline and back down.

  “Where now?” She asks as I lose sight of her on the steps above me.

  “To our stuff,” I shout.

  I get to eight and two wailers are already there. Two quick shots hit each of them in the chest because they aren’t more than a couple feet away. They scream and collapse. Their brothers and sisters cry out in response, louder now than ever before.

  I look for Caroline. She is coming down the steps three and four at a time, recklessly trying to catch up. Her machete swings wild at her side, a wailer only steps behind her.

  I swing my arm up — aiming.

  Caroline dives to the floor, and I fire again. The concrete above her explodes. Shards and dust shower down. The wailer yells behind her and a talon-covered foot lands next to her head. Another shot and the creature falls. Caroline scrambles to her feet, breath racing. I put two more bullets into the creature’s head for good measure.

  She sits up and pins her back to the wall. Another wailer comes down the stairs, its hollow eyes pinched almost shut by its gaping mouth. Two more are behind it. Before I get the gun up, Caroline swings the machete and draws a gash across the wailer’s chest. Black goo — what used to be blood — cascades down the creature’s front. It takes two more steps then stumbles. Caroline brings the machete down on the back of the wailer’s neck and buries it half deep into the rotting flesh. She struggles to pull the machete from the wailer’s spine
and one of the trailing wailers swipes at her with an open hand. One of the claws catches her arm and slices through her bicep. The machete clatters to the floor.

  A quick shot catches the wailer in the shoulder. It screams out and is matched by what sounds like a hundred similar voices. The wailer tries to lift its arm, but it’s lost function. Another shot catches it square. The thing stumbles backward with two quick steps and falls to the ground taking down the creature behind it too.

  Caroline grabs the two unlit lanterns and throws them onto the stairs behind her. The glass explodes and the smell of oil fills the stairwell. More wailers are coming down the steps when she throws the lit lantern. It breaks into a half dozen pieces and the suddenly loose flame sends the oil ablaze. The two wailers who’d just fallen are also on fire. One is dead. The other quickly dying.

  The remaining wailers retreat up the stairs.

  I reload my pistol and step to the stair rail. The line of wailers starts just a few floors down, and it’s unending.

  Caroline scrambles to her pack and up ends it. The contents scatter across the landing but what she’s looking for somehow rolls to her feet. She grabs the pair of black globes and says a string of words that sound like nonsense. She tosses one globe over the rail and tosses the other to me.

  “Throw it down the steps. Get it as close to the ground floor as possible.”

  She keeps chanting something that I can’t understand. I drop the globe over the railing and watch as it pinballs its way to the bottom floor, all the wailers distracted briefly from the two people up on eight.

  Caroline grabs my jacket sleeve and pulls me to the floor against the wall with her. She doubles over into a ball, and I do the same, interlocking my fingers across my neck like I’ve seen so many kids do in those film strips they showed us in school. There’s a pause then a pair of explosions rock the building.

  The cries and chattering from the wailers stops. Caroline rolls onto her back and lets out a scream that comes from some place so deep inside of her that I don’t know if she realizes that place even exists. She grabs for her arm, but I stop her. I reach into my bag and pull out an old shirt. I tie it tight near her shoulder — a tourniquet. Thanks, Boy Scouts.

  Caroline starts to stand, and I help her to her feet. The burning wailers are giving off enough heat to make us sweat. I pull a canteen off the side of my pack. It’s heavy with water. I pour enough on each of the creatures to give us space to access the stairs.

  Caroline lets her arm hang limp at her side. She whimpers. I drape her good arm over my neck and slip a hand around her waist. We move up the stairs.

  “Hang on,” I say. “We’ll can get you a proper bandage.”

  Back in the doctor’s office I lay her on the couch in the waiting room and go dig through bins and drawers until I find gauze, cotton and a sling. I grab more than I need. I’ll put the extra in my pack to take back to the camp.

  Caroline is sleeping, and I roll her gently to her side. She’s not more than 17, one of those girls who’s all attitude. Completely unaware that all the boys have a crush on her. I move a messy blonde ponytail out of the way of the makeshift bandage that I put on moments ago. Blood rushes back to the gash in her arm and I push handfuls of cotton hard against the wound. I wrap it tight with the gauze. Caroline pulls her arm away out of instinct but doesn’t wake.

  I secure the gauze, drape her arm across her chest, and will let her sleep. We are safe here. I’ve locked the entrance. There are enough dead wailers in the stairwell to keep any others away. Besides, the couch in the doctor’s personal office will sleep better than anything I could find back at camp.

  I walk over to the window and look back out at Dallas. The fires. The river that’s overrun its banks. The buildings that were there a few weeks ago, but are either gone or split in half. My mind starts rebuilding all of it, putting the pieces back together, until what I see is the city I moved to just months earlier.

  Blue skies replace the smoke and clouds that have been ever-present. Warm sun on my cheek replaces the reality of bitter winds. Sounds of traffic fill what was a silent doctor’s office just moments ago.

  I see me on the sidewalk 15 stories below. I’ve just exited Union Station, my train depositing me at the edge of downtown, putting me in Dallas for the first time in 15 years. I have a pack over one shoulder and am dragging a rolling bag behind me. It’s the middle of the day and this part of downtown is mostly empty except for a few vacationers looking for the street where Kennedy was killed.

  I repeat the address of my new apartment over and over again in my head. I’ve decided to walk there to get a feel for downtown and the city and almost immediately regret that decision. Even in the spring, Texas gets hot. It’s more than a few blocks to my new place, and by the time I get there my back is covered in sweat. My hair sticks to the back of my neck. I need a shower and new clothes, but everything I own that’s not in one of my two bags won’t be getting here for at least a couple of days. At that moment it’s on the back of a truck coming from my place out in California, so I’m stuck sitting under a fan in the living room of my new place stripped down to my underwear and letting the cool breeze cause me to nearly shiver.

  Back in front of this window, I ask God to push the cosmic rewind button. To put me back under that fan shivering in my underwear.

  Caroline stirs and calls my name. I step away from the window and back into a darker and cooler reality.

  “Mac?” she says again as I approach.

  “Yeah,” I tell her and touch her shoulder. She turns her head.

  “We need to get back to camp.”

  I shake no. “Not tonight,” I drop to a knee in front of her. “Whatever wailers that your little firecrackers didn’t kill are still out there and probably close by. We are better off here for the night. We’ll go back to camp in the morning.”

  Blood has soaked the cotton and is starting to come through the gauze. I grab the extra cotton and gauze from my pack and rewrap the wound. A tear drops off Caroline’s cheek and wets the gauze. I look up and she wipes another tear from her eye.

  “This hurts, Mac.”

  “I know it does. Let me see if I can find something for that.”

  I dig through the cabinet that Caroline broke into earlier and find some of that doctor-level aspirin. I bring her a couple of tablets and the canteen from my pack. I tell her that this will help her sleep as she swallows both pills. She stretches out on the couch, and I leave her for the night.

  I take my pack with me into the doctor’s personal office and lean up against the arm of the couch. I collapse onto the cushions and pull both boots off. I haven’t been in just socks in days, and I hear my feet thanking me for the opportunity to suck some real oxygen.

  I take long and deep breaths and my vision begins to fade. My body starts to fight off the deep and restful sleep that it needs, and I wrestle with my instincts. “Let it come,” I’m telling my brain. “Let it come.”

  I focus on the ceiling fan above me to keep my mind occupied and think about nothing but sleep.

  TWO

  Caroline is hesitant heading back into the stairwell. She chokes the life from the door handle, her knuckles gone white. I wait for her to push the door open, but she doesn’t.

  I bend and say into her ear: “It’s OK. It’s day time. They are gone. The freaks only come out at night.”

  “Then why are you whispering?” she asks and backs away from the door. “Here. You go first if you’re so brave.”

  We switch spots, and I pause a moment before swinging the door open and stepping back into the stairwell. Evidence from last night’s fight is everywhere. The bodies of the wailers we killed are still on the steps below us, the skin gone grey and the muscles already starting to decay. The number of them, though, is depressingly small.

  We step around what’s left of the lanterns that Caroline threw, and I think for a moment about the plans I had for lighting camp up at night. These lanterns were tall. The glass cle
ar. They were going to create a nice pocket of light. A bit of false security after the sun disappeared behind a ragged skyline.

  The wingback chair is still on the landing, and, it is, surprisingly, undamaged. Caroline drops into its padded seat.

  “Your throne, your majesty.”

  I gesture for her to get up, and she stands. I grab the chair and swing it awkwardly above my head. “Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing left that we need.”

  Caroline heads down the steps in front of me, and we finish the climb down in silence. Back on the street, I set the chair in front of me. I drop my pack in the seat, and the casters squeak as I set it moving again. Both Caroline and I pause. We are waiting to hear the wails even though we know they aren’t coming.

  We begin the walk back to Fair Park and our little camp. People are waiting.

  I can’t hold back the question that I’ve been wanting to ask since last night.

  “That thing that we tossed over the railing, your little homemade hand grenade. What was that?”

  “Something Mama cooked up.” Caroline readjusts her pack to center it better on her back. She repacked it in rush last night. Items went back in haphazard, and the pack bulges at its sides.

  “Cooked up? That doesn’t clarify anything.” The streets of downtown are empty, and it’s more than a little creepy. This is a Tuesday, I’m fairly certain. We are walking toward what was City Hall, entering the heart of what should be a busy business district. There should be cars crowding these streets. I shouldn’t be pushing an executive desk chair along the center line of Akard.

  “It’s a little potion in case we got in trouble.”

  “Are you talking about magic?”

  “Yes, Sherlock. I’m talking about magic.” Caroline is swinging her machete in broad strokes in front of her.

  “Since when did …” I can’t finish the sentence. My voice trails to nothing.

  “Since forever.” Caroline says. “We don’t ever do anything with it. Just something we keep in our back pocket for days like this.”