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Chapter 7: The Chariot

It was, I think, about an hour or so before noon, and there were a few clouds in the sky. The air felt like either humidity or rain (or both) was on the way, and the June day was quickly turning quite warm. As we walked, I felt sweat collecting on various parts of my body.

And then we found what we were looking for.

The four of us stood on the cracked and dirty sidewalk, staring at the building in front of us. Like many - if not most - of the city’s buildings, it was empty and abandoned. Like some, but certainly not all, of those empty buildings, it was boarded up. Well, that had been easy to do. There was only a door and a large display window - not much that needed to be boarded up. And yet . . .

“Look at this,” Rex said. Of course, he was the one who noticed the oddity first. My Great Dane friend had a way of noticing things. “Does this place - this building - go all the way down to the corner? It looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“It does look like that,” Ario said, following Rex’s gaze. “And if this place is that big, why does it only have that one window? What’s inside?”

“Julia didn’t tell us?” Gunnar asked. He looked puzzled. He looked at me, then at Ario, then at Rex. We all, one at a time, shook our heads.

“Julia just said to meet us here,” Rex noted.

“Okay,” Gunnar said, with a nod. “I wasn’t paying all that much attention.”

Gunnar looked around, at the empty and eerily quiet street. Then he took a long look at the mysterious and boarded-up building. The stocky Pit Bull was wearing a pair of camouflage pants with the legs cut off below the knees, and a baggy t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. As usual, he also wore his chunky boots, even though they were better suited to winter, rather than summer.

“No second floor,” he observed. “And look how high the ceiling is.”

“And there’s no sign,” I pointed out. “No logo, or sign, to tell us if this was a shop, or what. It’s probably on the door, which is covered by the boards.”

“Yeah,” Gunnar agreed.

“I wonder why Julia asked us to come here?”

The question came from Ario. The Wolf, with his thick, gray and white fur, was sweating in the June heat, and I could see that the underarms of his plain white t-shirt were getting wet from sweat.

“Maybe it’s a trap,” Gunnar said, making a joke. “Who knows? Maybe she’s a witch, like the witches from the Old Stories.” He smiled, having amused himself.

“I doubt it,” Ario said, continuing the joke. “After all, those witches were all human.” And he looked at me, with a wry grin.

It was easy to tease me, because I was the only human in the group.

However, so far, Rex and Gunnar had been the only ones who’d done so. This was the first time Ario had come up with something.

“Are you saying he’s a witch?” Gunnar asked, pretending to be horrified.

“Well, I guess he’d be a warlock. Is that the male version?”

“Warlock would be cool,” I said. “Or mage.” Then I looked at Rex, and noticed his discomfort. “What’s up?” I asked him.

“Sorry,” Rex said. “I just get edgy, being out here in the open.”

It was easy to forget just how dangerous the city could potentially be. Morning, noon, night - at all hours, the city was unpredictable. Anywhere you went, you could be perfectly safe, or you could be in danger. You just couldn’t know for sure which way the wind was going to blow.

“Right,” I said, looking around. “We should get inside. Julia told us there’s a fire escape on the other side.”

We went around the corner, and we noticed that the side had no windows. We went around the next corner, and thus we found ourselves staring at the back side of the mysterious building.

“No windows back here,” Rex noted. “What is this place?”

The fire escape was there. At the bottom of it was a metal ladder that could be lowered down to the street. However, it was nearly all the way up - it hovered above our heads.

Rex, the tallest of us, reached up high as he could, but he couldn’t grasp it. He jumped, sort of, well, it was more like a hop. The fire escape remained elusive.

“Julia said she just jumps up and grabs it,” Ario noted.

“She’s shorter than you,” Gunnar said, to Rex. “You should be able to get it - just take a running start.”

“Everyone’s shorter than Rex,” I said, pointing out the obvious height advantage that most Great Danes had.

“Then again,” Gunnar said, thoughtfully, “I could probably just lift Ario up - just pick him up and lift him up there.”

“Why me?” Ario looked alarmed.

“You’re the lightest, I think.”

Rex took a few steps back, then a few more back, then he ran, fast as he could. At the last possible second, he jumped up. It looked impressive. He caught the metal rungs of the ladder, and then - for a moment - he simply hung, suspended. Then, slowly, he began to haul himself up. It took some time. Eventually, he stood, triumphant, on the bottom level of the fire escape.

He lowered the ladder down to us.

After we ascended, Gunnar hauled the ladder back up.

“That was tough!” Rex said, with an amused grin. “Gods above. I guess I’m out of shape. I didn’t know it’d be so tough to pull myself up using just my arms. I almost started kicking my legs, because I really wanted to use them, to push myself. I don’t know how Julia does that.”

We went inside, where the secret was - eventually - revealed.

First, however, we found ourselves in a small kitchen with stainless steel tables, a deep fryer, a grill, and a large walk-in cooler.

“Okay . . .” I said. “There’s a kitchen, but this can’t be a restaurant. There’s no way a restaurant would only have one window.”

Once through the kitchen, we emerged into the main space of the building, where we discovered . . .

“It’s a bowling alley,” Gunnar said. “Holy shit.”

“Not a very big one,” Rex observed. “Still, it’s pretty cool.”

We all had our flashlights out, of course, by then, and we stood in a loose circle. The beams of the flashlights went hither and yon, shining on and revealing the lanes, the screens that displayed scores, the racks of shoes, everything.

Without windows - well, it had just the one, but it was boarded up - the interior of the bowling alley was as dark as a starless and moonless night.

“Hey, where are all the balls?” Ario asked.

Gunnar erupted in laughter.

“Sorry,” he gasped out, still laughing. “That’s just a funny thing to say.”

“Someone took them all, I guess.”

As one, we spun around.

Julia was behind us, walking towards us with a flashlight held out before her, guiding her way. As usual, she wore jeans and her thin, windbreaker-style jacket. Now that summer truly felt like summer, she had finally stopped wearing the bulky jacket with the many pockets and the hood. However, she did sometimes go out with the thin windbreaker over her t-shirt.

“This is the first time you were able to sneak up on me,” Rex said, a grin of happiness on his face.

We walked towards her, and she walked towards us, and she said,

“No bowling balls here. Why, I do not know. I guess someone took them, but I can’t imagine why. Nothing else here is gone.”

“Bowling party at the end of the world?” I wondered.

“Do you think it really is the end?” Ario asked. He looked curious. Not alarmed, or sad, or angry. Curious. Which made sense. Before the fall, he’d been the inquisitive college student.

My first instinct was to make a joke, but I stopped myself.

“We just don’t know, do we?” I addressed the question to the group, but I was looking at Ario. I looked into his eyes, which had such depth to them. “We haven’t heard anything. Not from the government, not from anyone. Who knows what’s going on in the rest of the country? The rest of the world? All we really know - well - we know what things are like here, in the city.”

I lapsed into silence, and so did everyone else, for a moment.

I hadn’t felt any need to state the obvious. What did we really know? Well, the power had been out since the bombings in January. Folks only had electricity if they had a generator. The cops were all gone, we knew that, also, and most of the folks who’d lived in the city had left as well. Everything had shut down, after the bombings - the survivors who’d remained in the city no longer had jobs, or school, to go to. Rumor had it that the government had collapsed - but was that true? Or rumor?

Was it the end of the world? Or would the world come back?

“Julia,” Rex said, breaking the silence. “What did you mean when you said that nothing here is gone, except for the bowling balls?”

Gunnar snorted with laughter.

“Nothing’s been taken,” the Greyhound replied. “There are a lot of valuable things here. All the kitchen equipment, for one thing. There is a bunch of stuff which folks can either use or trade for other things. And yet, no one has taken any of it.”

She paused, while the rest of us looked around, again, shining our flashlights here and there.

“And there’s a pantry,” Julia said, then. “You’re here so I can show you the pantry.”

“Full of food?” Gunnar asked.

“The pantry’s huge. And stuffed full of canned goods. And you know what’s funny?” In the beam of someone’s flashlight, Julia’s face was alight with amusement. “This place used to advertise that it had a kitchen, so folks could eat while they bowled. Well, the ad claimed that all their food was all made from the freshest ingredients. They lied! It was all canned food.”

She led us to the pantry.

I turned away, when I noticed the brief and intimate gesture - for a moment, Julia’s hand connected with Rex’s hand, and, for a brief moment, the two made eye contact. I focused my flashlight forward.

Row upon row, shelf upon shelf, the pantry was indeed full of cans.

“If we took some of this back to our place . . .” Rex started to say.

Gunnar, I was certain, was pleased that Rex had started calling it our place instead of Gunnar’s place.

“How would we get it there?” Ario asked. He looked at me, as if expecting that I had the answer.

“When would we get it there?” I asked. “During the day, someone will see us, and they’ll either ask where it came from, or they’ll try to take it from us. If we do it at night, well, we know what the streets are like, at night.”

“We could get a car,” Gunnar said. “Should be easy. Oh! Or a truck.”

“Same problem,” Julia chimed in. “Someone will see the car. And they’ll try to take it, or the food, or both.”

“Do we have to decide now?” Rex wondered. “We have food. Julia, you’re sure no one’s found this place?” She nodded. “It’s been about five months since everything fell, and no one’s taken this food yet. So, I guess it’s not like we have to act now.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. I asked Julia if she had any ideas.

“Me?” She looked surprised. “No. I just wanted to let you know about this. I assumed that the five of us would figure out a way to get it to your place.”

“This is a great find,” Rex said, with appreciation. He looked at Julia. “Thanks for letting us know about this.”

“Yeah,” Ario and Gunnar both said, more or less at the same time.

Ario, Rex and I had recently accepted Gunnar’s invitation to move in with him, to share the space. Julia alone had declined.

Ironically, she had started to come around more often. Before the invitation, she had rarely appeared. After she refused Gunnar’s invitation, however, she started to show up nearly every day.

She had, as well, helped us to find (and carry) some mattresses and frames, and she’d offered advice on where to put them. She’d helped us to figure out how to better set up the space.

And now she was letting us know about a nearby food stash.

She was, in other words, becoming part of the group. Who knows, perhaps she did so because of Rex. Or perhaps her solitude was starting to bother her. She’d told us little, so far, about her life before the fall, but she had informed us - more than a few times - that her friends had all left the city after the bombings.

“Maybe we could come here every few days?” Gunnar asked. He looked at me the way Ario had, as if expecting answers. Or maybe he wanted me to support his idea. “And fill up bags, or backpacks, or whatever? Just take a little bit at a time?”

“Someone will see us, eventually,” I said. “Someone will start to wonder why we’re coming here every few days.” That, I was certain, would happen.

“Paranoid, much?” Gunnar asked me, a look of amusement in his eyes.

“Probably,” I agreed. “I probably got that way in the army.”

“You know what I’m wondering?” Ario spoke up. “Why are there so many cans? Sure, that kitchen must have been busy - most likely, every night, folks filled this place up. Still, why so many? There’s no way they’d go through this many in a day, or even in a week.”

“My guess is, whoever owned this place got a discount for buying so much all at once,” Julia said, with a slight shrug. Unlike Ario, she wasn’t much interested in reasons why. “It’s funny that they left it behind. They just took the bowling balls.”

She looked at Gunnar.

Without missing a beat, Gunnar said, “Balls are more important.”

“If you say so,” Julia responded, smiling.

Slowly, I ran the beam of my flashlight over the breadth and scope of the rows and rows of cans.

Julia was right. The five of us would, collectively, figure out a way to get it to our place. At the moment, we had no plan, and no course of action. But, that was okay. We didn’t need a plan yet. We already had food, as Rex had noted.

We would eventually figure it out.

Or, who knows, maybe we wouldn’t have to. Maybe the world would come back . . .

Maybe our new way of life was a temporary one. With four of us taking shelter in the apartment that Gunnar had found - an unusual space composed of two rooms, one a studio apartment and the other a pool. Who knew?

If, on the other hand, the world had indeed forever fallen - well - things could be worse, I knew. We had a good group. I’d been perfectly happy when it was simply Rex and myself, taking shelter together, and I wouldn’t have minded if that had continued. However, this situation - Rex and I having allied ourselves with Julia, Gunnar, and Ario - this was good, too.

We had a good group. We were all folks who came up with ideas, with solutions. We’d figure out how to move this food stash, I was confident. And if the world stayed like this - for a long time? Or for forever? - well - we’d figure things out. Together.