Antimony and Lead
by Jack Vivace
Copyright 2012 by Jack-a-Dreams Press
Love is not the last room: there are others
after it, the whole length of the corridor
that has no end.
-Yehuda Amichai
Antimony, Utah, February 2013
We hid in the bunker for two weeks without even thinking about looking outside. We feasted on the perishables, prayed, read books and sang songs. But when the radio broadcasts stopped and we realized no one was coming, it got lonely fast. We waited for word to come – a week, two, three.
They don’t tell you what it’s going to be like when they sell you the giant cans of soup mix and the hand-cranked radios. We talked about what might be going on outside, keeping our voices down so that we didn’t scare the kids. We didn’t know if it was safe outside, we didn’t know exactly how much had collapsed.
The kids could tell something was wrong anyway. Emma wouldn’t stop crying no matter how much Ruth held her, and Micah screamed to go outside until I thought we would all be deaf. Joseph complained of headaches and wouldn’t stop hitting the others. Sariah talked to her dolls, but grew quiet when we spoke to her. I started to think that we couldn’t just stay here.
With even the radio out, our husband argued, there was every reason to believe most of humanity was dead. That the plague still raged, maybe even airborne…
In the end we took a vote. My sister-wives and I argued that the risk of dying was better than the risk of outliving the human race. He didn’t agree, and wearing him down was hard. In the end he conceded that one of us should go out first, and the rest would wait.
As the youngest wife, I was volunteered. It made sense, since I didn’t have any children yet, but there was still cold fear in my spine as I went to the door.
I stepped outside, and my husband slammed the door shut behind me. I didn’t know yet that I would never see them again.
Outside Antimony, Utah, March 2013
He wouldn’t let me back in. At first I thought he was just waiting some arbitrary period – 24 hours, 48, 72. Until he decided it was safe. I investigated the houses we’d left above ground; I looked for the neighbors.
If the neighbors were still alive, they didn’t seem to be answering any more than my husband was. I spent the first night in my old bed. The second day, I was hungry and I knew all the pantries had been cleaned out in the houses I had access to. There was still no answer when I knocked on any of the other houses.
Maybe we were the only survivors. Maybe my husband had been right, and everyone else was damned.
I grabbed my bike and rode toward Main Street. I ignored the long-cold car crash, resisting the temptation to stop and look at the bodies.
There was nobody visible in the Minit Mart or the grocery or the hardware store. The sliding doors of the grocery store had already been broken, and I stepped inside gingerly, looking out for large pieces of glass. I started toward the canned goods.
“There ain’t much left, but you really ought to ask before you take it.”
I panicked and froze as the barrel of a shotgun came around the endcap of the aisle, followed by its owner. I recognized him – Saul was one of the few who spoke to me kindly when my husband brought me back – but I wasn’t sure whether that was cause to relax.
“Lacey! Lord almighty, Lacey, I didn’t figure to see you here. I know your husband always bought plenty of bulk.” The end of the gun dropped toward the floor and he rushed toward her. “Did something happen? Are the kids sick?”
“As far as I know they’re fine. Lonely, I guess.”
“As far as you know?”
“They- he put me out. We wanted to see if anyone was left alive, but he won’t let me back in.” I didn’t understand why my voice was shaking so much. Saul put his arms around me, and I realized my hands were shaking along with it.
“Do you need company?”
“No,” I sighed. “I’m sure they’ll let me in sooner or later. They just want to wait and make sure I don’t have the plague. For the safety of the kids.”
Saul helped me pack up some cans and crackers and fruit juice so I’d be okay back at the house, and he told me to be careful and come get him if I needed anything else.
Back at the house, I checked the gun locker. I thought my husband had taken all the guns, but there was an older hunting rifle and some ammunition for it. I wondered if he planned to use it once it was safe, if it was ever safe.
I kept circling back around to the bunker, but I was waiting longer and longer between check-ins. The solitude had become a relief, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit it. I read books. I drank juice and grilled canned veggies on the charcoal grill until I ran out of charcoal.
I yelled for Saul first thing when I went back to the store. He didn’t answer right away, and I went to see if there was any charcoal left.
“Lacey, just the woman I wanted to see,” he said when he finally turned up.
“Why?”
“I’m leaving town,” he said, and gestured to his ancient pickup in the parking lot. “I rounded up enough gas to get to Provo, maybe even Salt Lake City. Come with me. I could use someone to ride shotgun.”
I thought I was standing still, unsure what I wanted, but my body was moving and before I knew it I was at the edge of town, and then I was outside it. I felt like I could breathe again, in the passenger seat with the hunting rifle at the ready. I’d never driven so fast and I’d never felt so dangerous.
Not that it was really dangerous– I kept telling myself that. There was no one on the road. There was no movement at all. It was just the apocalypse, right? How bad could it be?
UT-50
I wasn’t really expecting trouble on the drive. I hadn’t seen anybody but Saul since my world ended, after all. But the road was blocked by ruined cars and impassible just before the junction to get on highway 50 and keep going north.
“Figures there was an accident at the one place on the whole highway you can’t just drive around,” I said, looking at the twisted guard rails and the drop on either side. It wasn’t deep, exactly, and we could go around, but something about it bothered me.
“I feel like I’m being herded,” Saul said as he threw the truck into reverse and looked for a good place to pull off. “You ready to use that rifle if you have to?”
The truck began bumping along the desert rock. I rolled down the window. “You think I’ll have to? What do you think’s out here?”
He didn’t get to answer before the first shot came through the windshield.
It missed, thank God, and Saul slid down in his seat and punched the gas pedal. I looked around desperately, hoping to find the shooter, but nothing stood out against the blank scrub.
I saw a flash of movement moments before the second shot came through the windshield. Enough of the glass was broken out that I could fire forward, and I aimed at the movement I’d seen. I took all four shots, my shoulder screaming in pain from the recoil, but it wasn’t until I went to reload that I realized it hurt more than it should.
“Grab my gun, it’s faster,” Saul yelled as I pulled the hunting rifle back. His was already loaded, so I swung it over his head and out toward the same spot. Nothing moved as we sped around and headed back toward the highway.
“Shouldn’t we go look?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “It could be another trap, and if you got them then there’s nothing we can do.”
“I want to make sure,” I told him. “If nothing else, I don’t want to leave him to die slow.”
“They would’ve left us,” Saul shook his head. “But you’re right.” Again he put the truck in reverse. There still wasn’t any motion, but as w
e pulled up, I could see that there was a rough shelter and an ATV carefully tucked behind the rock outcrop.
The shooter was dead- I’d only gotten two shots into him, but one went clean through the artery in his neck. There was a small array of luggage, presumably things he’d taken from the other people who’d tried to take the same path to Salt Lake City.
“I’m sorry,” I told him as I shut his eyes.
“Are you bleeding?” Saul asked. “Dang, Lacey, why didn’t you say something?”
I blinked at him, having almost forgotten the pain while I was distracted. “It’s not that bad.”
“Let me take a look at it,” he insisted, and I offered him my shoulder. He pulled at the torn sleeve of my dress, tearing a large enough hole to see through.
“Looks like he just grazed you,” Saul confirmed. He grabbed a shirt from one of the bags laying around and tore a strip from it to wrap my shoulder.
Just as he was finishing, I heard a buzzing noise in the distance. “More of them?”
“Let’s go,” Saul said. I raised his shotgun toward the sound, but they were far enough off that I didn’t think they could see much of us yet. We got in the truck and Saul sped back onto the highway. I winced at the rough road but knew we had a ways to go yet.
“Still think we’ll get there before dark?” I asked him.
“God willing, yeah. I’ll get you there.”
Provo, UT, March 2013
At first I thought it was just the sunset that made it look like Provo was on fire. Then again, I’d been trying to sleep