Note: This story basically came out of nowhere. I wanted to write an unconventional pairing because I am tired of convention. I wanted to break free from the usual settings and themes overused in what's been written already. That's not to insult what has been written, I'm just bored with the usual stuff. I opened up Word and after deciding on a pairing, I had to decide on a story. Comedy and puff pieces have been done. This is something else entirely and it all poured out over the course of a few hours. I hope you like it and appreciate the unconventional pairing and the considerable change of scenery. I am very interested in what reviews will have to say. If you looking for a happy JAM story, you might want to turn back now. For those intrigued enough to continue...
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The car died and coasted to a stop in a motel parking lot on the far side of Des Moines. They couldn't go around the city because they would lose too much daylight and so they made a final, desperate push straight through the city, swerving around abandoned cars sitting atop crumbling tires, their windows spider webbed and the blown out glass glittering in the last fading light from the west. She sighed when they finally rolled to a stop and Jim put the car in park and needlessly removed the keys.
"It was nice while it lasted," she remarked. They had found the car a week ago in a locked storage unit in the back row of a complex of them on the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio. After walking across almost two states, it was a welcome switch.
"Yeah. I'm sorry, Erin," he said. He knew it wasn't his fault, but Jim was sorry anyway, now that they had to resume walking. He scratched his beard and checked their backtrack through the review mirror. Nothing behind them except the distant city and a dark smudge of smoke spreading overtop of it. Camp fires and God knew what else. She reached a hand across the center console and slid her warm fingers through his where they lay in his lap.
"It's not your fault. Besides, nothing wrong with a little exercise," she smiled. After all of this, she still smiled and it still made his breath catch in his chest. He found himself smiling back and with his other hand, he squeezed her wrist lightly. They didn't need exercise. Both of them were getting to be too thin.
"Okay. We should probably get the car out of view. I'll push."
He opened the door and stood in the glare of the setting sun, pulling his sunglasses down over his eyes. Jim spat into the dust and stood looking around, the .45 he clutched hanging at his side, hammer cocked and safety off. He walked out into the road and looked first behind them, then ahead. Running parallel to them, three quarters of a mile away, was Interstate 80. Most of the road gangs and highwaymen still traveled main roads, if they traveled at all. These days, gas was hard to find and getting harder. Turning to face the hotel, his eyes traveled slowly over the front of it, starting at the little office on the far left and down the whole length. Only two of the six doors had been kicked in. None of the windows, save the big plate glass ones in the lobby, were knocked out. Cracked, sure, but not knocked out. The motel wasn't visible from 80, so it had been left essentially untouched. They would be fine for the night. Still, the car should be hidden.
After setting the safety and tucking the pistol down the front of his jeans, Jim placed his hands on the trunk and got down low and slowly the car started to roll. Erin steered it around back and out of sight. On the backside of the hotel, there were an additional six rooms. After she had put it in park, Jim leaned against the bumper, sweating and catching his breath. She popped the trunk and got out.
He stood watching as she leaned into the passenger window and retrieved the shotgun and a nylon bandoleer of shells. She jacked the pump back a half inch and made sure it was loaded and set it on the roof as she snapped the bandoleer around her waist. It hung low on her hips. Her hand closed around the pistol grip of the scattergun and she stood looking at him. That glimmer in her eye that he fell in love with what seemed like years ago hadn't died yet. Her lips turned up into a small smile and with her free hand, she brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. Jim was starting to believe that that glimmer would never, ever die. He closed the distance in three strides and put his arms around her and kissed her, long and gently, for a few moments. They parted and he went back to the trunk and lifted the lid and brought out one of the rifles. Jim ejected the magazine and checked its load, then pulled back the charging handle to see if a round was chambered. The dust cover clicked open on its spring when the bolt moved and he saw the dull, brass glint of a round in the chamber. He replaced the magazine and, tucking the stock of the weapon tightly into his shoulder, turned towards Erin.
"I'll check the front rooms, you check back here?"
"Sure. But let's go to the office first and look for keys. I'm not a big strong Jim, so I can't kick doors open," she said. He smirked as he followed her around the side of the building. They hugged the wall and stopped when they reached the corner. Erin clicked the safety of the shotgun off and Jim did the same with his rifle. A slight nod of her head told him to go first. He rolled his eyes at her and as he passed, she elbowed him gently in the ribs. Jim successfully fought the playful urge to retaliate and stepped up to the corner, taking a few deep breaths.
Quickly and quietly, bringing the rifle into a ready position, he stepped around the corner and stopped, knees bent, eyes scanning in front of him. Jim forced two quick bursts of breath through his teeth, a quiet "tsst-tsst" signaling her to move. A half second later, she stepped behind him, covering their rear. She stepped closer until they were almost back to back and when he felt her hand touch his ass quickly and then retreat, he began to move forward toward the office. They moved fluidly, in tune with each other's positions and movements and reaction times. They knew each other inside and out and they had done this many, many times before.
Stepping over the threshold of the blown out window, they entered the office, the glass crunching beneath their boots. Less than a minute and the small lobby and the two tiny rooms behind the back desk were cleared. Jim stood with the rifle half lowered in the lobby and stared out into the setting sunlight, watching for movement. A moment later and Erin was at his side, shotgun tucked underneath one arm as she divided the keys up.
"Here are yours. Are we going to stay in the front or the back?" He took the keys from her and put them in the side pocket of his jacket, the weathered, dark green canvas rustling softly as he thought.
"We better stay up front so we can watch the road. Better safe than sorry, right?" He never made any decisions for them on his own. Erin always had a say and if she didn't agree, they thought of another way.
"That's what I was thinking. Don't want any zombies sneaking up on us," she joked. He played along.
"Pretty sure we've been over this: this is not that kind of apocalypse. We haven't seen a zombie yet and soon we'll be halfway across the country," he teased. She tsked him.
"The absence of evidence is not the evidences of absence," She said in singsong, bobbing her head as she did so. He smiled and nudged her.
"Alright, alright…zombies are still a maybe. Let's get the rooms cleared and get inside before it gets too dark. And I don't need to say it…" he trailed off, waiting.
"But I like when you do," she said.
"…but just keep doing it the way we do it. It works and we're superstars at it," he finished. Erin stood on her tiptoes and pecked his cheek.
"That's my boy! Love you."
"Love you, too." They were less on edge as they parted ways, but they were still alert, still primed for the unknown and the unknowable. Everyone still left standing in the world learned pretty fast the benefits of being careful and alert. With so very many who hadn't learned the important stuff returning to the loam, it was lethal not to learn quickly.
Jim stopped halfway to the first room and took off his boots, as he knew Erin would have also done. When he was down to his filthy socks, he moved silently forward. With his back pressed against the wall and the rifle again tucked into his shoulder, he reached out slowly and tested the door knob. When it didn't give, he slowly and quietly removed the appropriate key from his pocket and inserted it into the knob. After testing to get the proper turning direction, he kept his left hand gently on the key and slid his right index finger into the trigger guard of the rifle until it rested on the trigger. Jim took a deep breath and in a fluid motion, turned the key and the knob, pushed the door open and whirled and crouched low in the door frame, rifle pointed into the dimness of the room. His left hand, elbow braced on his knee, clutched the forward grip of the rifle and his right leg was pushed out to the side, balancing himself. A practiced position to go along with a practiced motion.
He pushed off and moved into the darkness and quickly cleared the bathroom, then moved on down the line of rooms.
When he was done, he retrieved his boots and met up with Erin by their now useless car. All of the rooms were empty. With that out of the way, the next topic was what, if anything, the other had found. The beds were all still neatly made, so they weren't short blankets or pillows. Erin set the shotgun on the hood of the car and stepped forward, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet.
"I found soap! And shampoo! Look," she held in her cupped hands four small, flat bars of soap and four tiny bottles of shampoo. She leaned in and, kissing him hard, put them in the pockets of his coat. Jim kissed her back, brushing her greasy hair behind her ears with both hands, the rifle now abandoned next to her shotgun. As they kissed, the pistols tucked into the front of their jeans pressed together and, reminded of the work left to be done, they reluctantly parted.
"Now if we can just find some water, we can banish the Grease Queen," Jim teased. Erin made a face and then raised her nose in the air, indignant. He picked up the shotgun and rifle and, with effort, tucked them under one arm and then went back to the trunk. With his free hand, he closed a fist around the drag handles of the two heavy ballistic vests, laden with rifle magazines. Erin picked up their second rifle and the lighter of the two hiking packs. They went around front and picked out a room and set the gear on one of the double beds.
Leaving her to unpack what they would need for the night, Jim went back to the trunk and awkwardly shouldered both the remaining hiking pack and a smaller backpack and picked up the case of bottled water. On top of this, he balanced a cardboard box with extra cans of food. The food and the water had been scavenged from an empty farmhouse they came across just after they had finished speeding through Des Moines. He deposited this in the room, where Erin was shaking the dust out of the comforter and sheets of the other bed, and went back to the car and got their assorted roadmaps from the center console. Tucking them into his back pocket, he went from room to room, stripping the beds of blankets and closing and locking the doors as he left. He brought the whole wadded mess into their new room, where a candle was now flickering in the darkness. They would need the blankets tonight. By his estimation, it was sometime around the middle of November and without any lights or heating in the entire country, the nights were long and freezing.
"I'm going to go check the office to see if there's anything we can use. Want to come?" Erin asked brightly.
"Sure," he said, turning to her from where he was inspecting the dark, thick motel curtains. She pulled her pistol from the front of her jeans on her way out the door and he picked up the twelve gauge and followed her.
She was, in a way, his leader, his boss. Not in the usual sense; they were a partnership, but she was now his world in its entirety. He lived every day for her and awoke beside her in the half-light of morning and knew that if, God forbid, he ever lost her, he would have no reason to go on, no other reason to keep himself alive or to continue on toward their final destination, toward California. In this sense, she dictated his actions without ever even knowing it.
Months ago, one night while talking about the things they had lost personally and that everyone had lost, collectively, she commented that she had never been to California and would likely never see the Pacific Ocean. The sadness and resignation in her voice stirred something inside of him and the next day, after laying beside her in the darkness unable to sleep, he suggested that they should go. She was simultaneously incredulous and giddy and hugged him so tightly he couldn't breathe. He knew then that if he ever lost her, he would put one of their guns in his mouth and follow her into the darkness. She'd do the same for him. It was unspoken between them.
In the office, in one of the back rooms, they found two empty water cooler jugs, big and blue and as dry as the layer of dust that coated them. Erin pouted, but in the other room, in a desk drawer beneath a pile of trash, they found a Hershey bar and a bottle with a good two inches of whiskey left. Kicking through a pile of trash in the corner, Jim discovered a packet of cigarettes, still sealed, and a pack of AA batteries. He put all of their treasures into his pockets and picked up the two empty water jugs. Erin shot him a questioning glance, but he just raised his eyebrows, smirked, and said nothing. Shaking her head, she rifled through the papers on and around the front desk and, after a few moments of searching, came up with a disposable lighter, half filled with fluid. They went back to their room.
While she readied the cooking gear, he stood in the bathroom, staring at the small bath tub. After a long time, he walked out into the candle light of the other room and grabbed the two plastic jugs.
"Are you going to play me a song? Are you in a jug band now?" When she smiled, she had dimples which raised her cheeks which in turn made her premature crow's feet crinkle and become even more noticeable. He thought that he had never seen anyone more beautiful in his entire life.
"Behind the dumpsters out back, the parking lot slopes down. There might be a ditch with some water for that fancy new shampoo you've got," he said, checking the chamber of his pistol.
"Ooh, be still my heart!" she pressed a hand to her chest and fluttered her eyelashes at him. Shaking his head in amusement, he walked out into the darkness and, after letting his eyes adjust to the moonlight that peeked through the clouds, made his way back behind the motel, to the dumpsters.
There was indeed a ditch at the end of the lot, but it had soaked up the recent rains and morning frosts and had been transformed into a pit of thick, dark mud. Jim bit his lip and thought. Finally, with one foot in the grass and one foot on the pavement, he paced the length of the lot. When he reached the far corner, he stopped and squinted, peering through the moonlight into the trees. When he turned around, he spotted a dirty, white five gallon bucket against the side of the hotel, underneath a downspout. He had missed it in the daylight because it was tucked into a corner near the office and had been partially concealed by some pieces of aluminum siding that had blown in from who knew where. He saw it now and moved quickly. He saw it was filled almost to the brim with water that was starting to ice over slightly at the edges. Jim kneeled and set the blue jugs to the side and palmed the film from the top of the water. Once it was cleared away, he grabbed the pieces of aluminum siding with one hand and the bucket handle with the other and went back to Erin.
Erin sat on the bed and alternated between looking at the brimming bucket sitting next to a stack of firewood they had collected and watching Jim work. He used a knife to pry off the grate of a heating vent near the floor and then set it aside. Next, he bent and stomped the aluminum siding pieces so he had a rough bib to ferry smoke from the fire into the ductwork and more or less out of their room. He put the bib into place after cutting away the carpet from the concrete floor in a 4 foot half circle around the vent and positioned the grate so it could be used for cooking.
He stood back and admired his work as Erin stood and gutted a spare pillow and together they used the stuffing and small twigs to prepare a cook fire. Once the fire was going, Jim made one last trip outside for two large rocks.
"What are those for?" Erin asked.
"For heating your bath water," he said, moving into the bathroom. She excitedly followed him as best she could, carefully carrying the bucket. Erin sat in rapt attention as Jim stopped up the tub and emptied the five gallons into the small tub. After every bit was emptied out, the water was about four or five inches deep.
"How are we going to heat it?" she asked. She loved watching him solve problems. After all they'd been through together, she still marveled at how his mind worked. As she watched, he grabbed a metal trashcan standing next to the sink and put the two heavy rocks inside and then sunk it into the tub. He exited and came back with wood and more of the pillow stuffing. After cracking the bathroom window, he started a fire in the trash can that would slowly warm her bath water.
They went back into the main room and, in the candlelight, cooked canned beans and Vienna sausages in small tin pots as the wood smoke hung heavily in the air. They sat side by side and sipped from bottles of water as the room warmed. Occasionally Jim would get up and stoke the fire in the bathroom and check the temperature of the water. When their food was steaming in the pots, they dug their spoons out of their packs and ate in silence. They each felt the warmth of the other pressed against them and neither felt the need to talk.
After dinner, Jim blew on the coals of the cook fire and coaxed it back to life and with the flickering flames casting dancing shadows on the walls, he cupped his hands and peeked out between the curtains into the moonlight. The road was empty and there wasn't a light for miles and miles around them. The world was dark and cold and largely empty, but they were warm inside the motel, with a small fire and full stomachs. He stepped away and made sure the curtains were closed, then dropped to the floor and stuffed two pillow cases into the crack underneath the door. He was pretty certain that no light was visible from outside. When that was done, he and Erin moved the heavy wooden dresser up against the door, leaning it at an angle and digging the legs deeply into the carpet to lock it in place as best they could.
They checked the bath water and found it to be almost steaming. Insisting that she could wait a little longer, Erin sat Jim on the edge of the bed and gently tipped his head back. With a pair of child's safety scissors, she trimmed his growth of beard and cut most of the shag out of his hair. She liked a little shag, so she left a little. The entire time, Jim's eyes were locked on her, watching her brow furrow slightly in concentration and her teeth worrying her bottom lip as she worked. When she was done, she stood gently stroking the sides of his face as they gazed at each other. After a while, they went into the bathroom and she stripped naked and carefully removed the trashcan from the tub and sat in the water.
He knelt at her side and together they laved hot water over her pale skin. Jim trailed his hand down her side, careful not to tickle her, and counted the ribs visible there. She was so skinny it made his eyes water and something catch in his throat and he had to clear it. He tilted her head back and pulled her hair out of the lose pony tail she wore it in. He smoothed the greasy strands and she closed her eyes and he carefully scooped handfuls of hot water through her hair, added shampoo from one of the little bottles, and then rinsed it out. Erin stood from the tub and dried herself with a towel. Jim undressed slowly and watched goose bumps spring up all over her body and her nipples harden from the cold as she started to shiver. She dressed in a different pair of relatively clean clothes as Jim sank into the water and they repeated the whole process with him.
They pushed their dirty clothes down into the soapy bathwater and kneaded and twisted the dirt out as best they could, wrung them out over the tub and hung them up to dry. Jim piled blankets onto the empty bed and Erin stoked the fire. They sat in front of the fire wrapped in a sheet and in the considerable warmth of the room, they split the Hershey bar and drank the whiskey and, though neither of them had smoked before the world had fallen apart, they smoked some of the cigarettes now, coughing and spluttering at first, simply because they might be the last people on Earth to ever smoke a manufactured cigarette. They finished the whiskey, which made them a little light headed, and he gave her the rest of his chocolate, which she ate slowly, with her eyes closed in concentration, memorizing the texture and taste of it, filing it away for later remembrance. When she was done, she wiped tears from the corners of her eyes and leaned her forehead against his and they sat there for a long time like that, holding onto each other with a desperate strength. They smoked a final cigarette, stripped, and climbed under the blankets.
Erin curled up into his arms, her body pressed against him and her warmth leeching into his skin. The rifles and the shotgun were within reach of both of them. She cried quietly every night. As tears tracked silently down her face, he would run his fingers through her hair and kiss her forehead and Jim would cry with her. Both of them were always overwhelmed with relief that they had made it through the day.
Each day was a struggle, yes, and some days were worse than others. Some days, they had to kill men together. Everything they did, it was always together. But at the end of the day, always, relief that it had passed and they were still breathing, still able to reach across and feel the other's warmth. They were still able to press their ears against the other's breast and hear the steady, hypnotic thrum of the heart that beat on, beneath the flesh and bone.
Every night, he would get her to stop crying by repeating a promise to her.
"You are my whole universe. I belong to you. If I go first, I'll wait for you there, on the other side of the dark waters. Be with me now. You are mine and I will kill anyone who touches you."
She always stopped crying. She always smiled at him and kissed him, slow and deep. Every night, she would sing to him before they fell asleep.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away."
Post-script: I apologize for any errors in this writing, but it was all written in a blur in one sitting. Sorry for any mistakes. This has been inspired by Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon and Cormac McCarthy's The Road, two of the greatest books I have ever read. And, of course, by The Office.
