In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel by Edward M Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page B

the car-seat and carried her to the front
door.
    Oh shit.
    She did not have a key to the
cabin. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that – but even if she had,
there was nothing she could have done and she would’ve come here anyway, so she
tried to think.
    I can break a window. That’s my
only option.
    She carefully deposited Liz on the
bench that everyone sat on to remove their snow boots before coming inside. She
walked around the cabin looking for the best window to break. She circled
around and returned to the porch from the opposite side of the cabin and
realized that the best window was the one right there in front of the porch.
    Once again she mentally chastised
herself for being stupid, and then she forgave herself again. How would she
know which was the best window for breaking in to her parent’s cabin? She had
never viewed the windows with that question in mind before. Okay, now she
needed to move Liz again.
    She put her daughter back in the
car-seat, started the engine and left it running to keep the car warm. She
found some large stones and brought two of them to the window, and feeling like
a vandal, she threw one at the big pane of glass, wincing as it shattered and
sounded like the loudest thing she’d ever heard.
    She looked around, expecting people
to come out of nearby cabins to see what was going on, but no one did. Most of
them were used as vacation getaways and were empty in the winter unless the
owners came to ski.
    Tori had made a jagged opening at
the bottom left side of the big picture window that was nowhere near large
enough for a person to fit through. She threw the second stone, aiming higher
and to the right this time.
    More of the glass broke and fell
mostly inside the house. Now she had two holes in the pane and decided she
needed to break out an opening manually. The stones had done part of the job
but now she needed a stick. A short while later she had an opening she felt she
could safely carry Liz through, so she returned to the car to get her and found
the car and the car-seat empty.

Eleven
     
    Carl was dreaming that he was in a bar fight, surrounded by
angry women. They threw bottles of whiskey and beer at him, but none of them
struck him - his reflexes were too fast. But they were moving in closer. He was
going to have to do something more than just duck and swerve to defend himself.
    He picked up a pool cue from the
table beside him and swung it left and right, testing it and warning the women
off. They continued to creep toward him. He swung at the closest woman and felt
the reverberation at the base of the cue when the other end connected with her
head. She went down, but the others kept coming, although a little slower now.
    Carl was ready for them. In fact,
he was eager. It felt good taking one of them out and he looked forward to
dropping the rest. He grabbed another cue from the table on his left, turned it
so that it was vertical and then let it slide through his palm until all but
eight inches had passed through, then he gripped it tight. He thought that had
to have looked cool.
    Now he felt fully prepared for battle.
A small, angry brunette rushed him and he swung both sticks toward her head.
They both struck at the same time on opposite sides and she dropped to the
floor.
    Two women broke off from the still
slowly advancing group with the intention of flanking him. He whipped his head
to the left and to the right, keeping an eye on both of them. He thought, “I
can take ‘ em . But I need to take a piss first.”
    He raised his hands in the air,
looking like he was going to use the pool cues as spears. This was not his
intention – he was communicating the wrong thing. He dropped the spears so he
could make the correct hand signal, holding one hand in the air horizontally
while placing the other beneath it vertically. He rapidly tapped the fingertips
of his right hand with the palm of his left.
    “Time out! Time out, goddammit. I gotta take a