At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) Read Free Page A

yelled. His eyes glinted at the idea. We raced to the
garage, lined with woodworking implements. I clutched one of the
several electric handsaws, charged by the sun. “The batteries
should last years, unless the aliens block out the sky.” All at
once, the adrenaline ran dry, replaced once again by fear.
    Years . . .
    How long could we really survive? Video game
campaigns ended when you shut off the application. A Nightmare was
beginning to unfold in my mind.
    A hand landed on my shoulder. I jerked.
Félix smiled. “Let’s just make it to Jacob’s first.” I’m pretty
sure I nodded. His effort to comfort me freaked me out more.
    I tried repeating the energizing motto, but
its power lessened the more I recited it. Félix held up a hatchet,
twirled it around. He eyed it for a long time, then asked, “Why
does your dad have a hatchet when he has all of these saws?”
    “Beats me, my father is a strange one, he
probably used it to chop up wood just for fun.” I searched around,
nothing resembled any real weaponry, then I remembered my neighbor.
“The Troll,” I shouted unintentionally.
    “What?”
    “The Troll,” I repeated. “He has all that
hunting gear.”
    “I’m not going anywhere near that place.
What’s wrong with this stuff?”
    “The range,” I said. My fingers glided over
the sharp teeth of a blade. “None of this stuff has any range; it’s
all last resort gear.” He nodded, he hadn’t thought of that either.
“Best to fire from ten meters than to slice from one.”
    “All right, but if he’s home, we’re
dead.”
    “Uhrm. We’re dead if we don’t go, too,” I
added. “Uhrm.” The thought of leaving the house started to agitate
me, my throat felt as if it would never be clear again. “Uhrm.”
    “You all right? You’re clearing your throat
more than normal,” he observed.
    “Guess it’s not a normal day.”
    His lips moved to one side of his face in a
half-grin. “Guess you’re right about that. Let’s put this stuff in
a bag with some food and get going. Might take us a while to get to
Jacob’s and I don’t want to be out in the dark.”
    We gathered the equipment, grabbing any
spare blades and accessories. My dad’s utility belts proved useful
for stuffing knives into as well. In twenty minutes we transformed
ourselves from scared-shitless teenagers into scared-shitless
teenagers with garage weapons.
    Ready for departure, I surveyed the street
through the peephole. Nothing. I hadn’t heard a dog bark for two
days, and I hadn’t heard a bird since yesterday, but then I wasn’t
listening for them either.
    “Uhrm. Ready?” I rotated so that I could see
Félix.
    He carried a handsaw in his right and a
hatchet in his left. “I wish I were.”
    I nodded and opened the door. Slow and with
caution, at least I tried, but the damn thing sounded off like a
siren, alarming anything within a thousand meter radius with its
impairing creak. An exaggeration on my part, probably, time would
tell shortly.
    I lived at the end of Rhododendron Way,
which hadn’t change much in the last twenty years. In fact,
Bellingham hadn’t changed much. Still relatively small, fewer than
200,000, still considered progressive in its collective views, from
what I understood anyway.
    The Troll was different. I didn’t know why
he didn’t live up north in Lynden, probably would’ve fared better
there, but then again, I knew little about the man. Except that he
favored hunting, boasting an arsenal fit to take down a small
militia on his own. No one on the block had liked that.
    The cul-de-sac presented us with more cars
than the usual Tuesday afternoon. Extra vehicles dozed in driveways
all down the street, probably never to be woken again. We slinked
into the front yard, crouched behind some flowers I had never
bothered to learn the names of, mostly because my mother rattled
them off as if I already knew them. I examined the
neighborhood.
    Dead.
    The same symbol marked all the doors that I
could