Looking out from my lonely room.
Okay so it’s not just my room because we’re all in here and there are no windows so technically I can’t be looking out. Don’t get all semantic on me, it’s the apocalypse.
Dolly was standing in the dim light at the bottom of the stairs. The sound of someone rattling the doorknob upstairs had dragged me from my slumber. I sat up and Dolly turned and put his finger to his lips. Whoever was upstairs continued to rattle the doorknob as if a locked door somehow confused them and then, they knocked. Dolly looked at me with a slight smile and mouthed the words, “what the fuck?”
When we didn’t answer, we heard them talking about whether they really wanted to search the whole town or if they should just go back and tell Kurtz that there was no one here. They walked off, their voices getting quieter the further away they got. Dolly went silently up the stairs and stayed against the wall as he peeked out a curtainless window.
“They’re gone.” He said, as he came back down to the basement. “Can you believe they knocked? What kind of idiot knocks in the apocalypse?”
“A very special kind of idiot.” I said.
Tiki sat up and said, “What are you guys talking about?”
“Idiots.” I told him.
Stuffy pulled off the sleeping bag and said, “There were idiots here?”
“Yeah.” I told him. “They knocked on the door.”
“What kind of idiot knocks on the door in the apocalypse?”
“A very special kind of idiot.”
Dolly began packing things up. “Let’s get out of here. Did that guy say something about someone named Kurtz?”
“Maybe he’s the leader, and we didn’t kill the right person.”
Por woke up and said, “I heard them talk about a Kurtz person, but no one seems to have ever seen him. They said he stays in the downstairs vault at the hotel and never comes out. They seemed scared of him.”
“We’ll just have to kill him when the time comes.” Said Dolly.
We packed up the carts and lugged them up the stairs. Dolly went out first to make sure the idiots had left.
“We’re good up here, they must not have lingered long enough in the corporate team building workshop to learn about clearing a house of enemy combatants.”
“Are we enemy combatants?” Asked Stuffy. “I’ve always kind of wanted to be an enemy combatant.”
“You’ll have to settle for being an enemy idiot.” Said Dolly.
“Why do you always have to squash people’s dreams.”
“I guess it’s just what I do. I’m a dream-squasher. Come on. We’ve got miles to go before we sleep, and I’m not sure if I want to find out what kind of person this Kurtz is.”
We headed out. It was only around 90 degrees, so fairly cool. The desert air was clear, and it took us most of the night before we finally left the lights of Las Vegas in the past.
We had decided to cut up on the 395 and then head west on the 50 near Lake Tahoe. There were still a lot of little towns along the way, and places in the sierras might still harbor life. After our last encounters with humans, we weren’t too excited about seeing any more of them, but it might be unavoidable.
Humans, can’t live with them, can’t shoot ‘em in the head. Or maybe we can, because all the rules have changed.
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I keep reading these chapters every week for my podcast as they are now more relevant than ever now.
I believe I might be a dream-squasher too