HOME?
The dull thud of the crowbar striking the wooden floor echoed repeatedly in the silence of the house. The sound of the impact bounced off the walls and returned, lingering in the air as if to prove the emptiness of the house.
As James slowly slid down the wall he’d been leaning against, he felt all the strength drain from his legs. His mind refused to process the scene before his eyes. On the carpet—right in the center of that beige carpet his beloved mother had so carefully chosen—lay three empty shotgun shells. There was no blood. No body. No signs of a struggle. Only a door left wide open and that acrid, dust-like scent that stung his throat.
He covered his face with his hands. The dried blood, dirt, and the heat of the highway in his palms filled his nose, but James couldn’t smell a thing. Bill burning on the bridge, the pitch-black darkness of the forest, that sickening crack from the man’s broken arm as he pressed the barrel to his forehead... It was all just to walk through that door and hold his family close. Now, however, the burning adrenaline coursing through his veins was slowly receding, giving way to a freezing, bottomless void. His shoulders shook, but not a single sob escaped his lips. It was as if his body viewed even the act of breathing as a pointless effort.
Riley was right there at his side. Her hand was lightly clenched on the grip of the gun at her waist. The young woman’s sunken, sleep-deprived eyes and her face, smudged with grime, looked even paler in the gray afternoon light filtering into the living room. She looked at James. The man who had protected her for days, who had pulled her out of that hell on the highway, now looked like a crumbling pile of stones at the base of a wall.
Riley said nothing. She had seen enough in the past few weeks to know that empty, cheap words of comfort like “They’ll be okay” or “We’ll find them” had no place in this room. If there was one thing she’d learned since Bill’s death, it was that silence was sometimes the most honest answer.
She swallowed. Her throat was raw and scratchy from the dryness of not having had a proper drink in days. Ignoring the ache in her knees, she slowly stood up. The timid little girl from the highway was left behind; the instinct to survive was pumping through his veins with an icy resolve. Someone had to take action, and James wasn’t in any condition to even twitch a finger right now.
Through the open door, the harsh, biting wind of autumn seeped inside. Along with the wind, a few dried leaves were swept into the entryway. Riley stepped toward the door. She cast one last glance at the quiet, abandoned streets outside. The grass had grown tall, and flies buzzed around the neighbor’s overturned trash can.
He placed his hand on the heavy wooden door handle and slammed it shut. He turned the lock mechanism twice. Click. Click. That sound had left the old world and the highway’s nightmares outside, trapping them in the house’s suffocating reality. Riley drew his gun from its holster and released the safety with the tip of his finger. He sensed no one was home, but in this new world, trusting his instincts was a death sentence.
He headed toward the rooms. As he walked down the hallway, he stepped along the edges of the carpet to keep the wood from creaking. First, the kitchen... There was a half-full glass of water on the counter; its surface was covered with a thin layer of dust. One of the chairs had been knocked over, and the pantry cabinet doors had been left wide open. Most of the canned goods were gone. This wasn’t a looting; it was a hasty preparation.
When he returned to the living room, James was still in the same spot, in the same position. In the air, the house’s gradually cooling temperature was beginning to make itself felt. As the sun dipped toward the west, the shadows inside the house lengthened, engulfing the corners in darkness. A faint, rumbling sound rose from Riley’s stomach. Hunger, like a sneaky enemy they’d forgotten for days, was starting to gnaw at their stomachs again. He felt a chill; the straps of his backpack were sticking to his T-shirt, which had been soaked through with sweat and was now ice-cold.
He went up to the bedroom on the upper floor. The bed was in disarray. The closet doors were open; some thick clothes had been hastily pulled out. He took two thick woolen blankets from the bed. His eye caught a dusty frame sitting on the nightstand. In the photo, James was smiling alongside a middle-aged woman and a man. He looked at the carefree, radiant expression on James’s face; it was as if that man and the man crouched against the wall downstairs were two entirely different creatures. He turned the photo face down.
When he went downstairs, his steps were a little heavier. He draped one of the blankets over James’s shoulders, which had begun to tremble. James didn’t even notice the blanket; his hands were still on his face, his breathing shallow and ragged.
Riley placed the gun in his hand on the floor, right at his knee. Wrapping himself in the other blanket, he sat down next to James, leaning his back against the same cold wall. He pulled his knees up to his chest. It was only a matter of minutes before the house would be plunged into pitch darkness, and there was no electricity in this house, no heating, no hot meal...
He slowly leaned his head back against the wall. Staring into the darkness, he murmured. His voice was barely more than a whisper, hoarse and weary:
“We’re here, James. Just... we’re here.”
Darkness crept into the living room like a slow, merciless shadow. When the last faint beam of light inside the house faded from the windows, all that remained was the howl of the wind outside and the occasional creak of the wooden frame.
As the hours passed, the temperature dropped sharply. The bone-chilling autumn frost seeped through the edges of the uninsulated windows and spread across the floor like a sheet of ice. Despite the thick woolen blanket draped over his shoulders, Riley couldn’t stop himself from shivering. With every breath he exhaled, the steam escaping his lips dispersed like a faint wisp of smoke in the pitch-black darkness.
She blinked frequently to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Not a single sound, not even the slightest movement, had come from James, who had been sitting beside her for hours. There was only that shallow, irregular breathing. Riley reached out and felt the edge of James’s blanket; it had slipped off his shoulders, leaving his arms, now as cold as ice, exposed. As she slowly pulled the blanket back up, she brushed against James’s skin. It was a coldness like ice. He didn’t react, didn’t even turn his head. In the darkness, she couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open, but she was certain James wasn’t mentally present in this room.
That man on the highway. A sudden flash of insight struck Riley’s mind. In place of the man who had been about to pull the trigger in the forest—the man who had stared unblinkingly at that savagery—there was now an empty shell. The sole refuge that had kept him alive after Bill’s death was now buried beneath the ruins of his own mind.
A higher-pitched, cramp-like sound rose from Riley’s stomach this time. Hunger was no longer just a sensation; it had turned into a physical pain gnawing at the walls of his stomach. He remembered they hadn’t eaten a proper meal in days. That half-packet of stale biscuits they’d found by the highway felt like a memory from weeks ago. He ran his tongue over his dry, cracked lips. He tasted blood. Thirst created a sensation as if there were a rusty nail lodged in his throat.
“You need to sleep,” Riley whispered into the darkness. His voice sounded foreign even to his own ears—rough and hoarse. There was no reply.
He rubbed his knees to ease the numbness in his legs. He wanted to get up, go to the kitchen, and look for something, but he was afraid that the slightest sound he made in the dark would disturb the silence outside. Besides, he didn’t want to leave James alone for even a single second in this state. He continued to hold the unloaded gun tightly in his right hand. The coldness of the metal seeped into her palm, but strangely, that coldness gave her a sense of security.
Around midnight, the wind picked up. A shutter from one of the houses across the street slammed into the middle of the street with a loud crash and shattered. Riley jumped up, instantly aiming the gun toward the door. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would burst through her ribcage. He held his breath. He strained his ears. Footsteps? A rustle? No. There was only the sound of the wind and rolling pieces of wood.
The barrel slowly lowered. Riley exhaled deeply and leaned his head back against the wall. He was sweating, and where the sweat met the cold air, it felt like needles pricking his back. His eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. Sleep deprivation had begun to play tricks on his mind; he saw shadows moving at the dark end of the hallway, and he thought he heard whispers coming from the floor above. But he couldn’t sleep. Right now, he was the one who had to stay on guard for both of them.
The hours blurred together. Time had lost its meaning in this cold hall, reduced to nothing more than a sum of moments that had to be survived.
And finally, that faint, gray morning light began to appear along the edges of the windows. It wasn’t as if the sun were rising; it was simply the night’s darkness giving way to a hopeless, ashen dawn. The light slowly illuminated the objects in the room, the dusty side tables, and those three empty hives on the rug.
Riley opened his eyes, his neck in excruciating pain. He must have dozed off for a few minutes without realizing it. He sat up in a panic, his hand reflexively reaching for his gun. Then he turned his head.
James was awake. Perhaps he hadn’t slept at all. He had turned his head away from the wall, his eyes fixed on those three empty barrels on the rug. His under-eyes were bruised, his cheeks sunken. There was no pain, no anger, no sorrow on his face. Only a horrific, absolute numbness. It was as if every human emotion inside him had been torn out one by one throughout the night, leaving behind nothing but a breathing, empty machine.
Riley swallowed. The sensation of that rusty nail in his throat had grown even more intense. He tried to stand up slowly, but his legs were stiff, and he nearly stumbled. He steadied himself by holding onto the wall.
“It’s morning,” Riley said, trying to sound casual. “I’ll check the kitchen. We need to find something. Both of us…” He paused. He was startled by James’s eyes, staring at him like a dead fish. “…we need water.”
James slowly turned his neck, like a rusty hinge, and looked at him. It was hard to tell from that gaze whether he even recognized Riley. His cracked lips parted slightly, but no words came out. He simply turned back to the three empty buckets in front of him.
Riley clenched his teeth. He couldn’t just leave him like this, but if they couldn’t find some water and food, this house would be their grave...
Riley walked toward the kitchen, defying the aching heaviness in her legs. With every step, the wooden floor let out a weary groan, and the sound echoed through the empty rooms of the house. A sudden cramp in her stomach forced her to grab the countertop. She bowed her head and took a deep, shaky breath. Black spots were dancing before her eyes.
She pulled herself together. With trembling fingers, she began opening the upper cabinets one by one. Empty. Empty. Just an overturned salt shaker and a dried-up insect carcass in the corner. She bent down to the lower cabinets; the shelves looked as though someone had swept them clean in a hurry, yet thoroughly. Whoever the owners of the house were—James’s family or those who had taken them away—they had left nothing of use behind.
Her eye caught the water heater on the edge of the sink. When she opened the lid and looked inside, she saw there was about two inches of water left at the bottom. The water had grown murky from sitting there for days, and a thin, dusty film had formed on top. In a normal world, this sight would have turned a person’s stomach, but right now it looked like an oasis to Riley. His throat, raw from dehydration, reflexively swallowed, but there wasn’t even any saliva left to swallow.
He grabbed the kettle by the handle and returned to the living room. James was still sitting in the same spot, in the same frozen pose. His eyes were fixed on those three empty cans lying on the carpet.
Riley set the heater down at James’s feet. From the side pocket of his own backpack, he pulled out the last half-packet of stale crackers he’d found in the glove compartment of a car on the highway and had been saving for days.
“Eat this,” Riley said. His voice sounded commanding. “Then you’ll eat this.”
James didn’t react. Without taking his eyes off the empty cans, he murmured in a whisper, almost inaudibly, “Why?” The dryness in his vocal cords caused his voice to crack mid-word. “Why are you even bothering?”
Riley’s jaw tensed. In that moment, he felt something snap inside him. The man he’d hidden behind on the highway, the one he’d expected to protect him, was gone; in his place was a wreck crushed under the weight of the world, ready to give up. And Riley didn’t have the strength to carry a wreck on his back. Either both of them would get back on their feet, or both of them would freeze to death in this room.
She quickly bent down and grabbed James by the collar. She squeezed the fabric so tightly in her fists that her knuckles turned white. As she pulled him roughly toward her, she brought her face just an inch from his.
“Look at me,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
James’s glassy, lifeless eyes slowly met Riley’s.
“Bill was on that bridge… he died screaming in those flames,” the words poured from his mouth like poison. Riley’s eyes were brimming, but he wouldn’t let a single tear fall. “You broke a man’s arm in that forest without batting an eye. For me. So we could survive. Now you can’t tell me all this happened just so you could sit here at the foot of this damn wall and wait to die!”
He let go of the collar roughly. James’s head snapped back, hitting the wall. A dull thud echoed.
Riley stepped back and stood up. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. “If you want to find the ones coming out of that door, you have to survive today first. We have to find food. This house is finished for us. If you keep staying here...“ He gestured toward the empty cans on the floor. ”...you’ll be no different from these empty cans.”
Silence settled over the room, this time heavier, more suffocating. James’s gaze lingered on Riley’s face, trembling with anger. Then, in a very slow motion, he lowered his eyes back to the floor.
Long, endless seconds passed.
Then James’s hand rose slowly. His trembling, grimy fingers gripped the handle of the kettle. As he brought the kettle to his lips, his hands shook violently. He didn’t even grimace as he swallowed that stale, dusty water. When he finished the water, he took the cracker package and began chewing with mechanical, emotionless movements. There was no glimmer of hope in his eyes; nor was there a blazing fire of vengeance. There was only the “Void”...
Riley exhaled deeply and slung his backpack over his shoulder. He picked up the thick blanket from the floor, rolled it up, and tied it to the bottom of his bag. He checked the safety on his own gun and holstered it.
James slowly stood up, using the wall for support. His legs were trembling from having been motionless for hours, but he regained his balance. He tugged at the simple, tattered clothes he was wearing. His face was completely expressionless. As he passed the three empty shell casings on the floor, he didn’t even glance back at them one last time.
Before leaving the house, they stopped in front of the open front door. Outside, a freezing wind was blowing, violently shaking the bare branches of the trees at the end of the street.
James placed his hand on the doorknob. The cold metal burned his palm. He turned his back one last time on the living room behind him, on his shattered dreams, and on the highway hell he had left behind. He pulled the door shut. When the lock clicked shut with a cold, decisive “click,” the last link between James and his old world was locked behind that wooden door...
