Episode 4 — Live Out
Inbroken · Chapter 4
New here? Start with Episode 1A
To John’s mind the drive out to Hugh Godswold’s was a difficult, unnecessary, and expensive waste of time.
For starters, the man had chosen to hide himself away in an abandoned bush shack hidden inside a monstrous overgrowth of stinging nettles and blackberries. That meant pushing their town car over tracks meant for four-wheel drives. John remembered — though he couldn’t quite remember where he remembered it from — an old fisherman joking about how he’d managed to get into a secluded fishing hole full of trout in a town car. The punchline was, ‘Of course you needed a four-wheel drive to get into a place like that, but I had the next best thing: a hire car!’
Then there was the fact Jessie drove Miles — her name for the old red jalopy, based on the obvious pun and her love for the music of Miles Davis — with carefree abandon over any surface including this. John clutched the corners of his seat as the rattling crate bucked and slid.
Avoiding cops was the more serious issue. John could get away with driving out of town as long as he did valuable work helping with food production. And short trips into town for essentials were, at this stage anyway, tolerated, although no one knew how long that freedom would last. They’d have some explaining to do if they were pulled over.
And of course, there was fuel. All kinds were running low, most petrol stations in town had closed; in fact, now he thought about it there was only one left open, run by the Voice and sited next to the DRC stadium. God only knew where they sourced the stuff, although the bigger farms always managed to fill their own bowsers after the first few Changes threw things into turmoil, so presumably the Voice had their own stockpile somewhere as well.
As for electric vehicles, they could now almost be had for the price of towing them away, since Flashing incidents had disabled recharging centres as effectively as they had closed the communication networks, and batteries and parts for them proved even harder to replace than those of their petrol driven forebears.
So, fuel for the general populace came at extortionate rates. Like any other commodity, you couldn’t buy petrol, diesel or just about any petroleum-based product with the old money. You had to have something to exchange for it. In Jessie and John’s case, that was labour.
But nasty rumours circulated that some in town had resorted to trading other things when the family valuables ran out. Sometimes, even wives and daughters, rented or sold outright. No one tried proving the rumours right or wrong and the cops didn’t care. They were too busy just trying to maintain a semblance of order while everyone else worried about their own survival.
No, John didn’t think this trip to Godswold’s was a good idea, in any way. But Jessie always managed to talk him round to her viewpoint. That’s probably because she remembers things, he reminded himself. The thought always aroused sadness and fear in equal measure.
She’d been inside when IT happened. ‘Don’t worry, the memories will come back, I promise,’ she had tried to console him. But it still panicked him to think of all the things that had gone, maybe forever. Was this how dementia worked? Was he descending into the cellar of madness? Many of those affected had suicided by now. And fair enough, too: it was damn hard facing a scary future with no personal history to fall back on for reference to former crises and how they’d been overcome.
They drove past the mountainous blackberry thicket that hid Godswold’s shack to park a little way beyond, just over a small hill and down to a gravel patch that had formed at the bottom of a rockslide. Hugh insisted all vehicles park here; he was careful about hiding his tracks.
Anyone not looking for the actual entrance to the shack would pass right by it; there were many breaks in the thicket that appeared to dead end in more overgrowth a metre or so in.
But one such break actually doglegged sharply left several metres beyond the uninviting entrance and widened into a passably clear access tunnel. Jessie’s trained eye found it quickly and they slipped in, crouched and taking care to tread only on the naturally occurring outgrowths of rock to avoid leaving footprints.
They got to the shack and Jessie rapped on a door that looked centuries old. Curling paintwork suggested someone had cared sometime in the distant past. Nowadays the place looked like some shrivelled ex-farmer sentenced to a slow demise in the old folks’ home; its grimy windows stared dimming yet defiant light into the undergrowth suffocating on all sides.
You could see through holes in Hugh’s door into the front room. Which was in fact the only room, albeit with a decrepit kitchen off to one side where rusty water from an old tank dripped into a metal sink and stained it coppery red.
A double-barrel shotgun slid through one of the door’s gaps and a voice sounded from inside.
“State your business.”
Jessie opened her mouth to answer but another voice inside the shack cut in.
“Ease up, Dylan. It’s Jessie; I know the sound of that car.”
The door opened wide and Dylan the would-be shooter grinned at the visual confirmation. “Jess, good to see you!” He lowered his weapon grinning.
John bristled at Hugh Godswold’s greeting of Jessie — a bear hug and kiss on the cheek. Still holding her shoulder, Godswold turned to John. “And you’ve brought him, excellent!”
John wanted to knock the man’s hand off his girl’s shoulder, and he would have if she’d resisted the embrace. She hadn’t.
But when she saw John’s face, she stepped away from Godswold and slipped her arm inside John’s. “Yes, I brought him. John, you remember Hugh Godswold; and cowering behind the cannon is Dylan De Saunt. Dylan, meet John Bowman.”
A short, pudgy character with grey-streaked, black hair tied in a ponytail came forward grinning. “I’m not cowering, just being careful.” De Saunt’s dark eyes glowed warmly as he pumped John’s hand.
Hugh Godswold tipped his old hippie hat at the brim while he played with some beads strung around his neck. “Yeah, good to see you again, John.”
After a few awkward moments of silence, Jessie broke the ice.
“So, what’s to eat?”
Godswold grinned. “Same old Jessie, always hungry! Take a couch and I’ll see what I can find. Dylan, entertain our guests.”
“You mean my usual dance routine? Not sure I’m up for that.”
“No, don’t torture them, just make them comfortable. And Jessie, you can bring me up to speed with what you’ve been doing.”
“Sure, but there’s not a lot to tell. Same old crap, scrounging for food and fuel and generally trying to survive.”
Godswold clapped a hand over his heart, feigning offence. “Hey, since when did you ever have to scrounge food from me? Anyway, I don’t have a lot of grub on hand but I can scratch up a salad pretty fast.”
John’s eyes had grown icy as the chummy repartee continued; now he snapped.
“We don’t have to scrounge, Jessie works at the DRC, and I work farms for stuff, damned hard I do!”
Jessie leaned over and kissed him on the shoulder. “Of course we do, and Hugh knows it.”
“Yeah, and I know he does.”
John marched over to plop down on the beat-up couch, bouncing up again as one of the broken springs dug into his backside. Godswold snickered.
John glowered as he searched for a way to regain the initiative. As the solution presented itself, he spoke with a mocking smile.
“Anyway, it’s nice to finally see where you live. Love what you’ve done with the place.”
Godswold’s snickering face turned evil.
Jessie strode over and dropped alongside John, squeezed his knee hard and fixed him a frozen smile. He got the message and changed tack.
“So, tell me, how long have you lived here?”
The old hippie’s anger moderated.
“I came in the early winter a few years ago; it was snowing then. A real bitch to get into, even with snow chains.”
So, John thought, this bloke sniffing around Jessie can remember things that far back. Bastard.
“Yeah,” Godswold continued, “it was a shambles then and it’s not much better now. It’s hell getting the renovators in these days.” His head threw back in rocking laughter that dumped his hat to the floor. He spun around and snatched it up, hurriedly swatted it on his leg and crammed it back in place, but not before John noticed the bald patch in the middle of the lank, grey strands. He’d never seen that before; Godswold’s old slouch army hat never seemed to leave his head. Aha, he’s an older dude than I thought. Hopefully too old for Jessie.
“Anyway, as I say it was a wreck. And it’s hard to make things homely out here in the sticks, as you can imagine.”
Imagine? That’s about all I’ve got left! Imagine what it was like, imagine what it will be like, imagine a future where I remember what I was doing last year as well as you do.
Godswold had already begun chopping salad stuff on the kitchen’s battered island bench. He paused to look up at John.
“So, tell us about yourself. Jessie’s told me a little, what can you add?”
John chewed his lip. If Jessie had told Godswold anything much, it would include his lack of memory, that he’d been one of the unlucky many to be caught outside on a day the sky Flashed. He didn’t want to sound stupid but being straight seemed the only thing to do.
“Well, all I recall is living out, just vague memories of the bush. And then Jessie picking me up as I wandered down some road somewhere. It was after the first time I got Flashed, or at least, the only time I can remember getting Flashed. Fingers crossed it will be the only time,” he said with a grimace. “Anyway, Jess took me to her place out in the bush for a while, and then we moved into the edge of town.”
He didn’t want to add, ‘in her house.’ He felt small enough already.
“Anyhow, no doubt Jessie’s filled you in on the details from then.”
She squeezed his hand. “So, John, Dylan here is the local radio star. Dylan De Saunt, the voice of The Voice!”
John’s face lit up. “No shit! I listen to you every day, man, you’re too funny! I’d like to know how you get away with it in a town run by Nazis.”
Godswold and De Saunt exchanged a look.
“Maybe I don’t. Periodically I get, shall we say, taken aside when The Voice think I need to be reminded about some rule of theirs.”
“Admirable resistance, but how come you’re still doing the broadcasts? I mean, a bit of roughing up is one thing, but it seems some of these psychos would go a lot further than that.”
Godswold looked up from the island bench where he was dishing the salad he’d finished making onto plates. “His old man is the town’s Judge, Caspar De Saunt. Dylan thinks he’ll be okay if he keeps things within certain bounds; I’m not so sure.” He shot the judge’s son a dark look. Turning back to John he asked, “So, you’ve been living ‘out’. Where was ‘out’?”
“I’ve just told you Jessie found me wandering along a road. What part of that made you think I know where I’m from?”
He immediately regretted the way-too-strong retort.
“Sorry, it’s just anything that reminds me of back then puts me on edge.” He bit his lip again. “All I know is it must’ve been a long way from where I met Jessie. By the time she picked me up I was half-starved.”
Jessie squeezed his hand again. “And parched! You couldn’t stop drinking water. Remember?” She gave Godswold a pitying look. “Poor boy, he was in a state; all he could do was mumble things like, ‘I lost the way’ or ‘there was a clicking sound and everything just shattered.’ But you’re getting heaps better now, aren’t you!”
“Sure, I can remember most things that happened since that Flash. Just not so much before it.”
Godswold came around and handed out the plates. “So, living out.” He thought about it a moment before asking Jessie, “You got any idea?”
“None at all. I think he came in out of the bush. I didn’t see him on the road as I drove out, but when I came back ten minutes later, there he was.”
John shrugged. “Maybe I just liked ‘Living Out’.”
The phrase animated Dylan De Saunt.
“Hey, Living Out, that’s great! You know, living out of town away from everyone, and it could also mean outliving the townies when the apocalypse comes. Although, I guess it already has, in a way.”
Godswold scowled. “For God’s sake, Dylan, keep your mind off fantasy for a moment. I’m interested in what makes John click, if he can remember that.”
But De Saunt persisted. “No, don’t you see, the slogan for GG — ‘Plant Food, Live Out of Town, Survive’ — it’s always struck me as being a little lame. How about this: ‘Plant Food, Live Out, Pillage the Village!’
Godswold shook his head. “You’re a bloody idiot, Dylan! Although I must admit I like the Live Out bit with its double meaning. We can use that. Anyhow, why don’t you just shut up and get some beer? Our guests might appreciate that more than your humour.”
“Ah, yes, of course. The one thing I hope we can all agree on.”
De Saunt leapt up from the sofa and fetched a bottle of icy beer from a fridge that seemed even more antiquated than anything else in Hugh Godswold’s house. Coming back to the sofa he punched the crown seal cap down on the edge of a battered kitchen divider to remove it.
Godswold looked to the ceiling and groaned. “Sheesh, mind the furniture!”
De Saunt giggled and handed the bottle to Jessie.
“Ladies first.”
Jessie’s eyes narrowed a little at the sexism, but she took a plug on the bottle and handed it to John. “Hmm, nice. That’s about the best batch of yours I’ve tasted, Hugh.”
“Yeah, I managed to get all the ingredients this time. Hops have been hard to come by lately, can you believe it? I guess that’s what you get with large-scale farming: all the hops, plus god knows most everything else besides, were grown in distant places we’ve lost access to.”
De Saunt rolled his eyes. “Here we go, another Permaculture lecture.”
“You don’t have to listen, fool. Others here may be more interested.”
John took the cue; he’d rather listen to Godswold raving than continue their hostilities.
“Yeah, I’m interested. I’ve heard of Permaculture, but I don’t know much about it.”
De Saunt was on his way back to the fridge. “Ah, a captive audience. You don’t know what you’ve let yourself in for, John. So, before you start crapping on, Hugh, have we got any meat to go with this rabbit food?”
“No, not fresh anyway. There’s some old salami kicking around the bottom of the fridge but I’m not sure I’d trust it.”
De Saunt grimaced and closed the refrigerator door. “I’ll pass. Looks like I’m making Buddha happy today.”
He went back to the kitchen divider and began eating the meal with his hands. Godswold fetched another bottle of home brew and sat the other side of John on the sofa. Jessie leaned forward and frowned at him.
“What, no knives or forks? You can’t have run out of them already.”
“Yeah, none that’re clean anyway.” Godswold cocked his head and looked lecherously at her. “You really, really want some, do you?”
John bristled at the lewd quip but this time held his peace. He even derived pride from the restraint. See, you can do this…
Jessie wasn’t known for holding back, though and she managed her own retort through a mouth of half-munched salad.
“Godswold, you’re letting yourself go.”
Hugh laughed. “It’s because I need a little lady to care for me!”
It was one sexist step too far for Jessie. She slapped the plate down on her knees.
“Maybe that’s why the last one left you? Us ‘little ladies’ don’t like having to take care of grownup babies.”
If John had felt out of the group before, being stuck between two of them feuding felt even worse. He tried defusing things.
“So, Hugh, what do you do out here in the bush?”
Godswold’s burning eyes flicked behind John at Jessie before he spoke.
“Well, I don’t go into town much, only when I have to. I pan a little gold when I’m not hunting or working in the garden. I keep occupied. Don’t you want to hear about Permaculture?”
“Oh, sure, sure I do. Fire away!”
It was spoken with an enthusiasm quickly regretted. Dylan De Saunt had been right, the guy was a raving lunatic on the subject. And it didn’t help when Jessie drifted off with Dylan to talk about using his ham radio to find alternatives to living in Dyall’s Ford, leaving John to survive Godswold’s rant. He was trying desperately to be pleasant after his earlier gaffes and listening patiently to the man seemed to work on some level. The old hippie even cracked an occasional smile as he droned on.
Finally, John found a gap when Godswold took a plug on the beer.
“Wow, interesting. Jessie tells me you talk in town about it, I’ll have to get along the next time if I can.”
But Godswold just plopped the bottle back at his feet and picked up the monologue again from where he’d been interrupted. John grew ever more desperate to escape. He was about to fake some excuse when Jessie returned and did the dirty work for him.
“Well guys, we’re off. Dylan’s radio didn’t help much but he’s given me some ideas for if we need to shift out of town and I want to follow up on a couple of them.”
Godswold’s face fell but he rose to usher his guests to the door. “My apologies, I do tend to get on the soapbox a bit about Permaculture.”
John hoped he managed to conceal his relief on shaking Godswold’s hand. Jessie planted a frosty kiss on the older man’s cheek before fluttering a hand of farewell to Dylan.
“Come back soon!” Godswold sounded plaintive and hopeful. “Promise?”
“Sure,” she said without looking back. “Real soon.”
John slipped from the stifling shack into the night. Outside air never smelled this sweet, he thought as they hurried to the car. Or at least, I don’t think it did…
***