quickly now, whether Wormwood ever makes it here or not.”
Rudy supposed that was true, though it was shocking to hear it from Bud.
“There aren’t going to be any more peaceful trips into town to pick up supplies,” he continued over an angry sputter of static. “From now on it’s going to be dog eat dog out there for the last scraps on the shelves and then the situation’s going to go from bad to worse.”
“How so?” Rudy asked, not certain he wanted to know the cold specifics.
“Well what do you think’s going to happen when we can no longer run down to Safeway or 7-Eleven for a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk because the lines of production and distribution are no longer moving? We’re going to start
Rudy shook his head. “They won’t last long,” he said numbly. “Not if what you say is true.”
“Bank on it. I read somewhere that the average supermarket carries roughly three days worth of stock at any given time,” Bud mused, his voice strangely faraway. “Of course that’s assuming an average rate of consumption… not apocalyptic panic. I’d say that you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find anything on the shelves worth stealing come this time tomorrow.”
Rudy gave the point serious consideration.
“Maybe we should send a party down to the corner 7-Eleven right now,” he suggested, “while there’s still something to get?”
“That’s an idea,” Bud allowed, his voice breaking up and coming back together. “Can’t say if it’s a good one or not. After Chicago, all bets are off.”
“Perhaps a quick trip, while people are still in shock…” Rudy thought aloud. “Just three men and all we can fit into one vehicle.”
“Sounds a bit cold and mercenary when you say it like that,” Bud commented, “but I guess that’s what it’s going to take to survive in this brave new world of ours. Who did you have in mind?”
“Myself,” Rudy immediately proposed, “Mike Dawley and that four-wheel drive of his? and that’s about as far as I’d gotten.”
“What about
Rudy hesitated. “No offense, Bud, but I can’t see you running in and out of the store with a full case of canned food in your arms. I think that perhaps someone younger…”
“All right, all right!” Bud relented. “Point taken. Can’t say it does much for my pride, but I suppose that’s the way it is. I’d just be baggage.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Rudy said.
“No, but it’s the truth,” Bud exhaled, letting go of his wounded pride. “If it’s a young man you want, then I’d suggest Keith Sturling. He’s got a broad pair of shoulders, looks like he could plow a field with them; being in the Guards, he’s probably fairly handy with a rifle too. Want me to call him?”
“Do you think he’d do it?”
Bud laughed. “I think he’d knock both you and me down for the chance.”
Part Two
A TRIP TO 7-ELEVEN
1
“Ready to roll?” Mike asked, looking something like a SWAT commander in his black turtleneck and baseball cap. The baseball cap was on backward, advertising Nike sports equipment to Rudy in the back seat, and there was a heavy day’s stubble darkening his face in the rearview mirror. His eyes and teeth, by contrast, seemed to glow in the faint green wash of the dashboard.
Keith was dressed in his National Guards fatigues, which Bud had suggested, speculating they would lend him an air of menace or authority if there was trouble along the way. He sat in the shotgun seat with a rifle propped casually against his leg, as if he were well-accustomed to its weight.
Rudy himself, leaning forward in the back seat, looked more like an accountant or an insurance salesman they had picked up along the way. A man who would count out bullets and present them with a bill once they were finished for the evening.
And despite Chicago, despite everything they’d seen on television, there was no question but that they’d get back to Quail Street safely. For all they’d discussed, it still felt like a halftime run for beer and cigarettes; the only difference was the guns, and those simply clung to them like the odd parts of a dream. Like going to town in their underwear; at some point they would realize this and laugh out loud, embarrassed.
As the car began to move Keith gripped the barrel of his rifle to keep it secure. Rudy sat back and waved to Aimee, who was watching from the Dawley’s front door with Mike’s wife Pam and pretty Naomi Sturling. They looked worried in the harsh glow of the Cherokee’s headlights, all three of them, and as shadows further inside, Rudy saw his three children behind the lingering silhouette of Shane Dawley, who had just been instructed how to use Rudy’s scope and rifle.
Keith and Naomi, both still in their early 20’s, were renting the house on the other side of the Dawley’s and had yet to have kids of their own. They’d lived on Quail Street all of five months now.
Rudy glanced back at the Hanna’s through the rear window as they backed out of the driveway. The house looked well-lit inside, but somehow cut off as well, the curtains drawn against the night as if the world could be held at bay by a pleated arrangement of fabric. He’d phoned Larry to tell him what they’d had in mind and to ask if the Hannas needed anything, but the phone rang and rang, as if that too were a kind of solution.
Bud and Helen Iverson watched at their picture window as they rolled past, raising their hands to wish them luck, but the Navaro house, last in line and facing the Sturlings, looked shut up and dark, as if they’d gone away on vacation. The porch light was burning over the welcome mat, but the windows were uniformly gray. All that was missing was a pile of rolled-up newspapers huddled against the door.
Rudy gazed through his shadowy reflection, wondering if they’d gotten scared and run off. Bud said that he’d tried phoning Don earlier, about the same time Rudy was making his calls, but no one answered. He added that the Navaros had family in the area; somewhere out past the cemetery on the Hudson Extension, if he remembered correctly. Perhaps they’d gone to be with them instead.
Mike slowed to a stop at the T-shaped junction of Quail and Kennedy. There was no traffic coming from either direction. “Looks like a quiet night,” he commented, signaling left, turning east onto Kennedy, the lights of town glowing no differently over the treetops than any other night.
Rudy gripped his brand-new shotgun as the Cherokee accelerated down the hill. It smelled like oil and freshly-minted pennies. He patted the pockets of his jacket for the extra shells, assuring himself they were still there.
He hadn’t even had a chance to fire it yet.
God willing, he wouldn’t on this trip either.
2
“How are you doing on gasoline?” Rudy asked.
Mike shifted his grip to see the gauge. “Got plenty, almost half a tank.”
“I’d fill it up if I were you,” Rudy advised, their eyes meeting in the rearview mirror. Mike nodded.
