The House by the Lake: A Post-Apocalyptic Novella

Also by Robert Paine

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The House by the Lake: A Post-Apocalyptic Novella

The House by the Lake

A Post-Apocalyptic Novella

By Robert Paine

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

Copyright © 2016 Roja Publishing.

All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

Table of Contents:

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1

In many cases, it’s not going to matter how prepared you are - circumstances win out. If you find yourself on the fiftieth floor of your business firm when Mother Nature starts ripping holes in herself, how many cans of Spam you have stored is irrelevant. None of it matters if you can’t survive the circumstance.

TEOTWAWKI by Shane Wallace

I wrote that three years ago. I must be fucking Nostradamus, man, because truer words have never been spoken. Apparently all I know how to do is write. Charlie knows this and I’m starting to believe him. He’s fourteen and wears his angst like a bullet wound. He thinks his old man is pathetic. He must. He hasn’t said a word to me in the eighty-seven miles we’ve covered since getting out of dodge. Maybe he’s still just in shock.

We’ll be at the lake house soon, guys.

My voice sounds quivery and high, very loud in the silent interior of the car. The steering wheel is slick with sweat and the car has the distinct locker room odor of spent adrenaline. Every curve and abrupt stop sends another canned good or jug of water rolling in the cargo space. We packed in a rush and did not secure our load like we should have. Sometimes things get overlooked when you’re focused on staying alive. Who would’ve thought?

Three months ago, I submitted a manuscript to my publisher titled The Road to Hell. I never thought I’d be traveling that road myself. It took me no time at all to pen the narration and theories in that book. Theories being the key word in that sentence. Theoretically, I know how to survive the end of the world. Theoretically, I am the man entrusted to protect my wife and son through this mess. Whatever this mess is. No one is entirely certain yet. We all have, wait for it...theories. Well, we have some undisputable facts but they haven’t proven so far to do us much good. Friends and neighbors are still being slaughtered left and right.

Get down! Now, Katherine!

A scream tears from her throat as she pitches herself down and to the left, the gearshift digging into her neck. The bullet flies from the gun in a brief blast of orange fire and ricochets off the hood. I floor the gas.

Goddamn sniper in the median. I see the sun glint off of his scope as he lines it up for another shot. I thought once we got out of the city, we would be safe. Our city. Stupid thought. I guess it’s not ours anymore, truly. It had become impossible to tell a neighbor from an enemy within a day or two. As we passed through the town square, people filled the streets and sidewalks. Every face wore expressions that ranged from angry to confused to aimless. Everyone seemed interested only in exchanging ammunition or getting to an item before someone else did, whether they needed it or not. Looting began pretty much immediately.

I’ll never understand that aspect of human nature. Disaster does not give you the license to steal. Like children on a playground, the people’s first instinct was to say mine. I don’t know why I expected things to be any different. Wishful thinking, I guess. I just wanted to go. I needed to go.

Katherine sits by my side, as she has for sixteen years, God bless her. Charlie, sweet, angst-ridden Charlie, rides in the back. But, back to the undisputed facts: multiple bombs hit the East Coast. We don’t know from where, and we don’t know why. Ports and small cities lining the seacoast were demolished and countless shipments of goods were sunk. We still haven’t heard an accurate body count and we don’t really want to.

Back in the present, I swerve around a man staring at his bloodied hands. There’s not a thought in that head. His face seems vaguely familiar to me but my one-track mind prevents me from figuring out why. Who knows what the man has seen or done? I don’t know, care, or stop to find out. I have only one mission.

Bug Out.

I’m scared shitless. I write about survival; I don’t actually do it. I’m just like most people. I enjoy electricity, running water, food arranged in neat rows on grocery store shelves, a nice, warm cup of coffee every morning in my clean, functioning kitchen. I don’t enjoy being shot at close range and seeing my friends turned into enemies. But, man, this is it. I have to survive now. For Katherine and Charlie. I can do this. I stop worrying and just drive.

Mockingbird Lane was basically untouched at dawn as we rolled out with the Land Rover loaded. We had it stocked with provisions for sixty days: sleeping bags, clothes, first-aid kit, flare gun, two hunting knives, two adults, and one teenager. At least I did that much. That’s more than most people. I was prepared to feed us for a few weeks when the shit hit the fan. A rosy rising sun lit our quiet suburban street. Everything looked so organized and peaceful, at first. The lawns in the neighborhood were showing the first signs of overgrowth, but compared to the scene in the city and closer to the coast, our neighborhood was plain old serene. But the wolves are circling. Wolves dressed in desert tan fatigues with one million grains of sand in their untrimmed beards. Wolves dressed for war.

Graffenfield Lake sits in the center of three hundred acres of pristine pine forest. I used to fish her with my dad a million lifetimes ago. Twenty-four fathoms deep at her heart and roughly two miles across the widest point, the lake is an absolute stunner. But today, as three weary travelers peel into her drive kicking up gravel, she becomes a sanctuary. We passed only six other vehicles on the interstate: I counted. Of the six, only one attempted to assault us. Pretty good, I’d say. It was slow going besides that little scare.

Near Barstow, a crude roadblock had been set up. Railroad ties had been nailed together to a height of nearly four feet and dragged into place by two semis. The structure blocked all four lanes of traffic. The semis would have been sufficient because they were still in place. I rolled past the cars. Driving on the shoulder of the road, I could see into all of the windows. Every single driver and passenger appeared to have died of gunshot wounds. How many people had to descend on this stretch of road to murder these people as they sat defenseless in their cars? A man hung from the open passenger door of a Camry, blood pooled on the asphalt below his head. The seatbelt held him in his rolling grave and the Toyota emblem would stand as his tombstone.

Charlie loosed a whimper from behind me.

Don’t look, bud.

I can’t help it. We’re so close.

I caught his eye in the rearview. My child should not be witness to this. Nobody should, for that matter. But least of all my boy.

A small metal sign marks our turn-off. Seminole Lane. Lane is a generous term for this narrow strip of a trail. The Land Rover bumps and trips over the rutted, rain-washed mud and Katherine folds her arms tightly over the expanse of her belly. Right. I forgot to mention that. Amnesia has always been a side effect of terror. Katherine is seven months pregnant. I glance at her and slow to a crawl that’s probably even rougher on her weary body. I put the right front wheel on the shoulder such as it is and the pine needles lash the body of the car with a threatening hiss. Kat gives me a crooked half-smile and I smile back, briefly.

Dad!

I brake. An inch from our front bumper stands a six-point buck twitching his nose. He appears unperturbed by our presence as he chews cud and sniffs the air. I estimate his size as he turns to lope away into the thick woods. We are about to be swallowed up by those same woods.

Wow, he was frickin’ huge, Charlie says.

He has hunted for the past three buck seasons with Kat’s brother, his ‘cool’ uncle Nick. The guy even bought him his own rifle, a neat little 270 Remington complete with a scope that used to stand butt-end down in the corner of our front closet. I always liked the secure feeling of having it in the house, right there at the ready. I’m a theoretical survivalist I guess. I’ve never even shot a gun in real life. Oh, I’ve written page upon page about the appropriate times to use a gun in a survival situation. In the moment though, every second seems like the appropriate time to use a firearm.

I shiver as the russet colored trees close over the car and pitch us into an artificial dusk. These are the final two miles to our cozy cabin on Lake Graffenfield. We pass them in more silence.

Do you remember the first time you saw the Wizard of Oz? When it flips in an instant from shades of grey to the dazzling splash of Technicolor? It is kind of like that every time the dark little lane spits us out at the cabin. The claustrophobic trees open up onto the clearing that is our yard. It still gets me, every time.

Well, lady and gentleman, we are here.

I needed to say something. The relief in reaching our destination was almost too much to handle. Nausea hit me for the first time since we left the atrocities of the city behind us. I throw open the door and vomit on the ground. Very little comes out. Loss of appetite is apparently another pesky side effect of abject terror. This terror wasn’t sudden, of course. It has gathered like a slow-rolling storm cloud in my gut for the past two weeks. The first Army tanks trolled our neighborhood, knocking on doors and asking vague questions a little over two weeks ago. Then Port Richmond blew up and they gave up the interrogation. A little busy I guess.

I wipe the corner of my mouth and look back weakly at my family.

You ok, Shane? Katherine asks.

Yep. All right, gang. Let’s see how this old place looks.

2

I glance up at the glaring white sky and watch the jet stream of a small plane cut through a rising plume of black smoke. The world is burning down and we are the kindling. We’re fighting a war we didn’t start and all I want is to keep my family safe. I hope my book knowledge will be sufficient because it’s official. The proverbial shit has hit the fan. It has spun in every direction and no one is safe. Wolves don’t give up their prey easily.

Despite a substantial layer of dust coating everything inside the cabin is in good shape. We bring in our duffels and sleeping bags. One case of water. Sheer exhaustion drives us to leave everything else in the car for now. We settle in to our transient home.

How ‘bout you, Ween? You ok.?

Katherine looks at Charlie with tired eyes. He looks at his feet and nods, shaggy hair falling in his green eyes. Ween. When Charlie was three, he was obsessed with Alice in Wonderland. I thought it was a little too girly for my boy but we watched it seemingly on a loop at our house. He loved to pretend he was the Red Queen and demanded we call him that. Only in his three-year-old vernacular it came out more like, I da Wed Ween, off wif hims head. The nickname stuck.

Charlie walks over to his mother and wraps his arms around her shoulders so gently it hurts me to watch. I see his sobs but don’t hear them. He’s a small child again to me in that moment and the weight of responsibility drags me down. He’s a full head taller than Katherine but he rests his forehead on her shoulder and cries. Don’t let adolescent machismo fool you; a mother’s gravity pulls even the strongest of us back home in our weakest times. I left them alone and went to set up the bedrooms.

Mistake number one: leaving the food in the Land Rover overnight.

We are apparently not quite as alone as we thought. Sixty days of food, gone. In an instant. I had even left the door unlocked for the bastards, apparently. Why not make it as easy as possible for them, right? Oh well. It’s probably a good thing. I’d have pissed my pants if I’d heard breaking glass in the middle of the night. Thieves in the middle of God’s green nowhere.

So you’ll hunt. It will be okay. We won’t starve. The pantry is stocked for at least four days, and we have fresh water. It’s okay, Kat said as she rubbed my neck.

Over the years, Kat has learned to think like a survivalist too. She is my main sounding board for book ideas and my first editor. She probably has learned just as much as I have over the years.

‘We’re gonna be here for a lot longer than four days, babe."

"You’ll hunt."

That settles that.

The next morning breaks cool and mild. With my eyes still closed, I wonder if there is coffee in the pantry. Probably mistake number two: not taking immediate stock of our resources. I’ve got to get better at this or my son will be proven right. Maybe I need to tape a few pages of my old books to the refrigerator. The pages list exactly what to do in a survival situation. I wrote the damn things, so why can’t I remember them now that chaos and fear are knocking on my door? I have to unrattle myself.

There is loose-leaf paper on my small writing desk in the corner of the bedroom. I grab a few sheets and stumble still half-asleep to the kitchen. I write.

What we have:

6 cans tuna

6 cans each small kernel corn, green beans, and blackeye peas

3 bags of rice

1 (24 roll) pack of toilet paper, the good kind

1 large bottle of canola oil

3 bags of beef jerky

3 industrial sized jars of peanut butter

1 medium sized can of coffee, not the good kind

1 (24 bottle) case of water

Assorted boxes of long stale crackers and cereal

What we don’t have:

Everything Else

I hear the front door open with a sucking sound and startle a little. It’s only Charlie. His navy blue eyes bore a hole in me from under the hem of his ragged black toboggan.

Good morning.

Morning, son. What are you up to so early?

Scoping out the place for signs of that deer we saw. I found a tree stand about half a mile from here - was gonna climb up it but it looks a little rickety. Do you know where I’m talking about?

Yea, Uncle Nick built it. It should still be fine. It’s not very old. We can check it out tomorrow if you want to.

You getting up at dawn? That’s the best time to hunt.

Sure. Of course.

I hold back a sigh. The undercurrent of disdain and uncertainty in his words cuts me. I shouldn’t have to prove myself to him, but an immature, angry part of me needs to. Be the bigger man, be the bigger man, I tell myself a few times. Charlie walks past me to the hallway and picks up his rifle. I notice for the first time that he’s slung the bigger, more powerful 30.06 over his shoulder for his trek this morning.

Here, you can use my gun. It has less kickback so you won’t hurt yourself.

That little shit.

I can only stare at him and clench my fists to keep from shaking him. Thank God Kat walks in and the sight of her little round belly waddling toward us makes us both smile. I let the dig slide this time but I have had it with his disrespect. Our world is upside down and inside out and yet