Dating After the End of the World - 6

I switch my headlights off and pull the truck to the side of the road, rolling to a slow stop before I kill the engine. The sky is black, and the moon is a mere sliver, but the stars are plentiful and bright. Having lived in the city the last ten years, I actually forgot they existed.

My dad’s property is off to the right, completely fenced off with a thick barbed wire coiling itself around the top of every square inch of the perimeter. I still remember installing that damn thing, and the palms of my hands hurt just thinking about it. At the far end of the property, a couple of dead biters are tangled in the barbed wire. Must have gotten snared in it and then starved to death, or someone here put them out of their misery.

I softly close the truck door behind me and sling my backpack over my shoulders. My ring slightly glimmers, catching my eye, and I stare at it for a moment before deciding to take it off and pocket it. It’ll be easier to pretend Nate didn’t exist, rather than having to explain to my dad that my fiancé, the one he never knew about, ditched me in the middle of an attack. If I told him, I think my dad would go out and kill him himself, if he’s not dead already.

The night air is cold, so I pull up my hood and shove my hands into my pockets. My shoes crunch over loose gravel as I walk to the long steel gate at the end of the driveway. The old man’s added barbed wire to the top of that too, so there’s no climbing over it. I remember where he hid the spare key, and hopefully, it’s still there.

Standing in front of the mailbox, I do an about-face, walking six paces forward, fifteen to the left, one back, nine to the right, seven forward, and two to the left. The numbers mean something to only my father and me. The ground is covered in rocks, all made by nature except one that sits right between my feet. It’s smooth as an egg in my hands with a small crack right in the middle. I slide the two halves apart, revealing a small silver key. Bingo.

I lock the gate behind me and glance up at the long driveway that cuts through the flat grass and the woods beyond it. From the road, you can see a yellow-and-white, two-story farmhouse, but no one lives in there anymore. It’s a dummy home, an idea of my dad’s, and only used for storage. There’s a three-story house nestled back in the woods, undetectable to those passing by. But I know it’s back there, because I helped build it. My father’s property also features a cabin, a crop field, multiple gardens, a sniper tower, and several other outdoor buildings for storage and defense purposes. I haven’t been here in a decade, so who knows what else the old man has added. A plethora of backup generators and solar panels allow the whole compound to run off the grid. It’s quite impressive what he and I accomplished, now that I think about all of it, and up until six weeks ago, I thought it was a waste of time. Turns out, I was very wrong.

I start up the gravel driveway, nervous to see my father again. I wonder what his reception will be. Happy and relieved to see I’m alive or upset for all the time I stayed away? For all the years we didn’t have. For all the memories during my early adult years that I kept him from experiencing. I’m his only child, so every experience I withhold from him is something he’ll never get back. Despite all that, I know his reception will be the former because he’s my dad and time apart hasn’t changed that. But still, I feel nervous as the moment approaches, or maybe it’s not nerves. Maybe it’s guilt or even a little bit of anger that he was right.

It’s eerily quiet tonight. Not even the cicadas are buzzing. Perhaps they know the world has ended and there’s no point in attracting a mate now. A lone coyote howls in the distance, but it sounds more like a cry for help than anything else.

The driveway seems to darken as I reach the thick woods at the top of it. Up around the bend, there’s a clearing, and that’s where my childhood home sits—well, part of my childhood. I lived in the house near the road until the age of ten. Before . . .

A twig snaps behind me, and before I have a chance to turn around, I can feel what must be the barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of my head.

“Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,” the man says.

I close my eyes and breathe in slowly through my nose, thinking back to this exact same scenario on this exact piece of land. I raise my hands to show that I’m not a threat. But it’s a lie. He just doesn’t know it. In a flash, I spin around, ducking a foot or so before grabbing the arm of the person holding the gun. I twist their wrist and pinch the nerve pocket leading to their fingers, forcing them to lose their grip. The gun drops into my free hand, and I stand tall, turning it on the person I now instantly recognize. In under seven seconds, I disassemble the pistol, ejecting the clip and removing the slide, before handing it back to him.

“Don’t ever point a gun at me again, JJ,” I say, pulling my hood down so he can see who I am.

He’s got about eight inches on me and sports a full beard and a dark head of hair cut short.

“Oh my God!” he says, wide-eyed. “Case, you’re alive!” My cousin wraps his arms around me, practically lifting my body off the ground as he squeezes me as hard as he can.

“Unfortunately,” I say, not sure whether I’m referring to the state of the world or being back here, or both.

“I can’t believe it. How’ve you been?” he says, releasing me from his embrace.

“Not great. Everyone I know is either dead or pointing guns at me.”

“Yeah . . . sorry about that. I didn’t realize it was you.” JJ reassembles his gun and slides it back into his shoulder holster.

“Just don’t let it happen again.” I smirk and punch him in the shoulder.

“Oww!” he says, rubbing the spot where I hit him. “I thought for sure the city would have made you weak.”

“Then you don’t know nothin’ about the city.”

He chuckles. “I suppose I don’t. And now I never will.” A somber moment of silence lingers as the gravity of his statement settles in. How many millions of people have died over the last couple of months?

JJ breaks the silence. “Your dad is gonna flip when he sees you.”

“Is he pissed at me?”

“Are you kidding, Casey? He’s devastated. We looked for you for the first few weeks every chance we got—that is, until it became too dangerous. He figured you would have headed here when everything went to shit and that somehow, something went wrong, and you must not have made it. My God, I haven’t seen him this sad since . . .” JJ trails off. “You know.” He pulls his lips in and glances down at his boots.

“Yeah, well, I was safe in the city until I wasn’t . . . so this wasn’t my first-choice destination until it became my only option.”

JJ lifts his head and cracks a smile, patting me on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re home, and I know everyone else will be glad too.”

“Who’s all here?”

“Actually, quite a lot of people.”

“Really?” I’m surprised at this news. I figured my father would have hunkered down and limited the number of individuals he could trust to have around in a situation like this. Plus, more people means more mouths to feed, which will deplete his supplies faster. Did he soften in my absence?

“Yup. Follow me. You’ll see.” He beckons with his hand.

JJ and I walk side by side up the driveway and then snake through the woods on the trails my father carved. The brush isn’t as tame as it once was, with branches reaching across the path toward one another, trying to entwine their limbs. JJ calls out in advance to warn me of them, but several still end up slapping me across the face. A reminder that nature is far more relentless than a city will ever be.

The real house comes into view, and it’s exactly how I remember it. Three stories high with pale-yellow siding, white shutters, and a wraparound porch. It looks like a normal home, and at one point, it was. The wooden chair set beside the front door rocks slowly with the shadowy outline of a large man seated in it.

“Hey, Uncle Dale,” JJ calls out. “Look who I found.”

The chair stops suddenly and the shadow stands. Heavy work boots thump across the porch, boards creaking under the weight before a motion light is set off, illuminating the shadowy figure. His dark hair is speckled with gray, which continues into his thick beard. Despite being in his fifties, he’s still built like a brick shithouse, complete with broad shoulders, a barrel-shaped chest, and a towering stature. I step out of the woods and into the light so he can finally see who JJ found.

His eyes immediately fill with tears, as though he has found something he thought was lost forever.

“Casey?” His voice cracks like he can barely say it.

“Hi, Dad.”