The March 2015 First Selected Writer is Joseph Rubas
Please feel free to email Joseph at jrubas91@yahoo.com
HOMEWARD BOUND
by Joseph Rubas
Every day for nearly a month, X rose at dawn and trekked the three miles from his makeshift hovel on Andros Street to the downtown business district. He walked warily along weed choked sidewalks, over rusting railroad tracks, down dank allies, and across the traffic jammed turnpike.
Some days, he encountered and hid from other survivors, but on most days the vast city was an empty tomb. The lack of dead bodies never ceased to amaze him; during his entire stay, he saw only five or six, most of them closer to the interstate.
Once on Memorial Way, he turned at the intersection of Broad and West. From there, he could see the distant Mutual Bank building towering into the sky like a glass Goliath. The lobby doors were locked (a yellowed, typewritten sign taped to the glass reading CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE), so he entered through the parking garage. Inside, a darkened stairwell led to the roof fifty-two floors up, and once in the muted sunshine, X sat on a windy ledge and spent gazed endlessly into the hazy distance. There, in the west, misty mountains rose into the heavens. Beyond them was Mayfield.
Home.
Today, with a nostalgic sigh, X made up his mind. He was going to go home. He was going home to die.
*****
That night, Amanda came to him.
It had been nearly a week since she came, and we wasn’t sure if was relieved or horrified when the same old scene started once more.
It was always the same. He was at his daughter’s bedside, looking upon her wan, cadaverous face and holding her near skeletal hand. Once so radiant, she looked now like a corpse. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes were dark; her ribs pushed tightly against her pallid flesh and her teeth looked too large in her mouth. She struggled to breathe, rasping and hacking wetly. When she opened her eyes, they were red and heavy-lidded. “Daddy?” she rasped, and coughed so hard blood spotted her lips.
X, tears in his eyes, squeezed her hand. “Yes, baby,” he stammered, “I’m here. Daddy’s here.”
Amanda blinked and swallowed. “Daddy...?”
“What?”
“I wanna go home.”
With that, she stopped breathing and sagged against the bed.
*****
It was well into the morning when X got started.
From the hovel he had called home for so long, he followed the same route he would to get to the bank building, except when he reached the turnpike, he went left instead of straight. The buildings along the highway were gray and hollow; many of them burnt black and crumbling with decay. Somewhere, a woman screamed, and a gunshot rang distantly out.
Two miles later, X came to a halt at the intersection of 9th and River Road. Ahead, the street crossed over the dirty Kanawha River and eventually bent around a grassy mound. Over a dozen vehicles, trucks and cars, overturned minivans and SUVs, littered the rubbish strewn road, crashed or abandoned in the weeks after the war.
X sighed. He would…
Something growled.
Ripped suddenly from his thoughts, X turned, his heart in his throat.
Behind him, ten feet, maybe less. A dog—scrawny, skeletal—whose fur was mangy and matted.
Its teeth were bared. Its ears were flat.
After the mass die off of the human race, many family pets, trapped inside, eventually starved to death. Others got out. The small dogs, the ones bred for show and companionship, didn’t last. The bigger ones, the German Shepards and the Rottweilers, went feral, and roved in packs.
He wasn’t good with dog breeds. He knew only that this one looked hungry.
X reached for his gun, slowly. The dog barked.
Slowly, slowly.
The dog sprang forward, but X ripped the gun out and fired. The shot went wild, and the dog hesitated.
X fired again.
The dog went down.
For a long time, he watched over the dog, just to be sure it wouldn’t get back up. The bullet had taken it in the chest. It could have missed the vital organs. Eventually, the dog’s whimpering tapered off and its side stopped moving. It was dead.
He crossed the bridge. In some places, he was forced to scramble over the roofs of cars. Every once in a while, he looked back.
Just to make sure.
On the other side of the river, he looked back one last time at the city. It had begun to drizzle, and a thin white mist engulfed the buildings, which loomed forth like ancient mausoleums. In a way, he would miss the city.
He turned and started on his way.
The turnpike meandered through suburbs just as dead as the city behind him. After a while, civilization fell away, and snarled forests rose up on either side. At first, he stopped at every wrecked vehicle he came across and searched it, for what he didn’t know.
He found nothing.
Ten miles west of the city, the road rose steeply, and X stopped; his breathe was short and his sides hurt. It would be dark soon. It was already starting to get dark.
There was a service road up ahead. Maybe he could find a house or trailer to spend the night in.
He left the turnpike, and followed the service road for nearly a mile before coming to an break in the forest. Beyond, a dirt tract wormed into the gloom.
X followed it. In less than a mile, he came to a cabin, a small, boxy structure of dark rotting wood surrounded by hills. He tried the door.
It was unlocked. The inside of the cabin was dark and void, chilly and moldy. He closed the door behind him and stood at the threshold, listening. Aside from the mice in the walls, he heard nothing.
X hunkered down in front of the fireplace, and was instantly asleep.
*****
“Hey, asshole; wake up!”
X came slowly and groggily awake, his mind muddled and his eyes bleary. It was bright. Too bright; almost like electricity.
“Wake up!”
The two words, barked and at the same time growled, cleared the gloom in X’s mind. He opened his eyes. There was light, electrical light.
There also was a shotgun in his face. Double barrels. Wide. Black. Beyond, a man’s face.
X’s blood turned to ice water.
“Get up!” the man spat.
X couldn’t move.
“I said get up. Nice and slow.”
The man, short and beefy, clad in a long-sleeve mossy oak camo shirt, moved back a few inches. The gun never moved.
X slowly got to his feet, his hands raised. “Look, I don’t know what...”
“Shut up!” the man roared.
Behind him was a boy of about fifteen, skinny, buzz-cut, trembling and pale. He held a hunting rifle half-heartedly up.
The man stepped forward. “What the hell?”
X said, “My name’s...”
“I don’t care what your name is! What are you doing here?”
X stammered. “I-I was sleeping.”
“You got anyone with you?”
X shook his head. “No.”
The man looked back at the boy. “You take a look around. Make sure there ain’t no one else.”
The boy began to protest, but the man cut him off: “Now, Boy! I got him.”
The boy hurried out the door, which stood open. They must have come in and seen him first thing.
“What are you doing in my house?” the man asked again.
“I didn’t know this was your house. I thought it was abandoned.”
The man shoved the gun at X. “You’re a liar. You came to steal. Who’s with you?”
“No one!”
The man turned away suddenly, as if he heard a noise. “Paul! You okay?”
Thinking fast, X sprang forward. The man turned into the blow; X aimed for his ear, but the mouth was just as good. Teeth crunched, lips split.
The man cried out and stumbled back. He reflexively pulled the trigger, sending a blast of buckshot harmlessly into the wall. X punched him again, this time in the nose: It shattered like a bagful of glass.
The man went down.
Like a caged animal thrust suddenly into freedom, X leapt wildly over the injured redneck and nearly tripped. Surefooted, he ran for the door.
At the last moment, the boy appeared, winded and wide-eyed. X slammed the heel of his palm into the boy’s nose; the boy collapsed like a sack of jelly.
X sprang out the door; the night was cold and damp. Frogs sang in the brush. For a brief, panicky moment, he didn’t know where to go. Ahead to the right, fifty feet of open ground unfurled before the trees rose up. If he went that way, the redneck would be up and gunning before he was even half way. The same to the left.
Randomly he chose right.
By the time X had reached the sloping forest on the cabin’s western side, the redneck was out and shouting through broken teeth. The land rose sharply up. X scurried as quietly and as quickly as he could, holding onto gnarled tree trunks for support.
“You motherfucker!” the redneck shouted below. The shotgun went off, and then again. The crazy son of a bitch was blasting at random.
But at least they weren’t coming after him. Yet.
*****
For two days and nights, X was too afraid to return to the turnpike; the redneck with the gun and the boy might be looking for him.
The day after the encounter, he found the highway and followed it from afar, never straying past the treeline. At one point he was forced to cross a dry creek bed, exposing himself to passersby. He watched from the brush for nearly two hours before crossing, low and fast.
He made sure he never lost sight of the turnpike.
By the middle of the third day, he gave up and went back to the road; it had been raining for several hours, and the forest floor was quickly becoming a soupy mess. They weren’t following him anyway. If they were, he’d know by now.
It rained that night. X found shelter under an SUV three miles out of Coal City; he was wet, but spared the worst of it.
The next morning, he went on, the horizon forever fluid. For two days his way was unimpeded. Then, late on the third day, he came to a halt.
From Coal City, the turnpike wound through hills and forests. Twenty miles out, it passed through the hamlet of Gordonsville, a collection of once quaint buildings clustered on a wide ridge. Beyond, it crossed the Steel River, a hundred feet below, and disappeared back into the wilderness.
From a distance, the bridge, worn rough and yellow by time, was merely that: a bridge. Closer, however, X saw with a sinking heart that it had partially collapsed: Thirty feet out, a support must have given way, and the middle of it went into the river, leaving the metal handrails on either side whole and unbroken. On the left side, the bridge had collapsed all the way to the railing. On the right, though, there seemed to be a narrow ledge, maybe a foot wide, probably less.
He couldn’t go forward, but he couldn’t go back. He reckoned he could possibly climb down the embankment and cross the river itself, but it was swollen and brown, too fast moving. He’d be swept away.
He briefly entertained the idea of leaving the turnpike and crossing somewhere else on the river, but as far as he knew, the next town over was ten or more miles away. Once he crossed, he’d have to walk all the way back. He could easily add two or even three days.
That ledge…it looked just wide enough…
X swallowed.
It was either that or go down-river.
He went over to the handrail and tested it. It didn’t budge.
He followed the handrail, the yawning maw drawing closer and closer. Finally, he reached the point where the pavement dipped. He caught a quick flash of concrete, metal, and asphalt piled in the river below before looking away.
X turned away from the hole and grabbed the rail with both hands. He shuffled to the side an inch; the pavement was still under him. He moved another. Still under him. He moved yet another, and the backs of his feet were suddenly in mid-air. The ledge stopped just before the peak of his arches.
His grip tightened. He closed his eyes. His heart raced. He moved another inch; loose concrete fell into the river, pebbles, plunk-plunk-plunk.
As if on cue, a sudden gust of wind swept the bridge, washing over his face and threatening his balance. Below him, another chunk of concrete gave way, and his foot slipped.
X held tight, his eyes squeezed shut and his teeth bared so hard they hurt. The wind gradually died down, and he was emboldened enough to continue on, stepping carefully over the new pitfall.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Dontlookdown…
When he reached the end of the ledge and the pavement was whole and unbroken, he fell into a quivering heap and stayed that way for nearly half an hour, trying to catch his frantic breath and quell his queasy stomach.
Calm finally (as he would ever be), he got back up and went on. He didn’t look back.
That night, X left the turnpike at the town of Pine Creek; on Main Street, he found a hotel and went inside. Apart from a dead woman on the floor, it was empty.
He took a key from the pegboard behind the desk and showed himself to his room.
The next morning, he rose early, and watched the sunrise from his window. He thought back to when he and Ashley were dating, and how they would watch the sunrise together after a long night of closeness.
An hour later, X left. In the lobby, he paused, shifted his bag from one sore arm to another, and felt for the gun.
It was in his pocket. Reassuring.
“Hello, Mr. Richards,” a rusty voice said.
X turned so violently he nearly fell over.
A woman was standing in the shadows, the same woman who was dead on the floor when he arrived.
“It’s nice to have you,” she went on. Her voice was gravelly. Dead.
He was too terrified to move.
The woman came forward, into the murky sunlight: Her face was black and blue and bloated. She reached out to him, her hand gray and skeletal, and X fell back.
“Won’t you stay?” she said as she shuffled closer. Again, she reached out, nearer now, so near she could almost grab hold of his shirt.
With a near audible snap, X’s paralysis broke. He whipped the gun out and fired twice: The phantom flew back and fell over an easy chair against the wood paneled wall.
As he fled, he ventured one panicky look over his shoulder.
She wasn’t there. He was losing it.
He left the turnpike for a vast T&A truck stop on a grassy hill. The many buildings were dilapidated and worn, the windows shattered and the parking lot littered with trash. A few cars sat in slots along the facade of the dinner, and a few large mac trucks towered in a far corner.
In the diner, he found several dead bodies piled along the far wall. The stench of spoiled meat was too much for even him, and he fled the building.
Outside, he tried the cars: out of five, only two had keys. The first, a 2010 model Mustang, wouldn't start. The second, a shit-green El Camino, coughed into life one the third go around.
Overjoyed at his luck, X climbed in and closed the door behind him. There wasn’t much fuel in the tank, but enough to get him five or ten miles.
Back onto the turnpike, X switched on the radio. Static. Cruising at ten miles an hour, he dialed up and down the FM band. At one point he thought he heard distant voices, but as soon as they came, they went. On AM, he actually found a station playing a song. “I throw my hands up, they’re playing my song, the butterflies fly away…”
Any good mood that X may have had evaporated like a puddle on a hot day. He forgot the name of the girl who sang the song, but he remembered that she was Amanda’s favorite singer.
“Daddy!” The voice came from the radio. It wasn’t the girl anymore (Mitsy?); it was Amanda, her voice low and hollow. “Daddy, behind you.”
He looked. Amanda and Ashley were in the bed of the car, their rotted faces contorted in hatred.
X screamed, and slammed into an overturned UPS truck.
*****
It could have been two days or two weeks before X left the crash site. His leg was a pulsating mass of agony, but he had to move on.
That night, Amanda came to him again. She wasn’t mad anymore. He shared his beef stew with her, and stroked her hair until he fell asleep. He woke at first light, and set immediately off. The land around him was familiar now. A green road sign announced that Mayfield was twenty miles away.
That night, his sleep was thin and fitful. As soon as the sky showed a hint of light, he packed up and left. Pike Road ran south from the bus station through a stand of tall pines. He followed it past Day Baker's old dairy farm, the reservoir, and Mary Walters Elementary.
At the intersection of Pike and 264, X took a left and trekked a mile through the forest before the road bent and crossed Rock Creek. Beyond the green steel bridge, the road inclined and leveled out. From there he would be able to look out over the town.
WELCOME TO MAYFIELD an old wooden sign said. He didn’t realize that he had broken out into a run until he tripped and smashed his face against the pavement. His brain exploded with agony, but he quickly pushed himself up and went on.
Here it was, here he was, home again!
Suddenly, dying seemed stupid. He was home, in his beautiful Mayfield. Why would he want to close his eyes to the shady streets, the comfortable old Victorians, the soda shop, the historic leg of Main?
X crested the hill…
…and gazed out on a pile of charred rubble.
Mayfield was gone. Not one building stood. Each and every one was burned to the ground. The old theater, the drugstore, the school, the Baptist church, the houses, the town café…all gone.
He fell to his knees. His home, his memories, his life…there was nothing left. No Amanda, no Ashley, no Mayfield
X wailed.
Joseph Rubas is the author of over 200 short stories, several novels, and countless nonfiction pieces. His work has appeared in The Horror Zine; Nameless Digest; The Storyteller; Eschatology Journal; Blood Moon Rising; Dark Eclipse, and others. He currently resides in Florida with his fiancée Brenda and son Jeremy.