Zero Nine Eight One F Thirty Read online

  “Thought you were dead." A woman, sitting at a table across the room, eyed Gaits with skepticism as she sipped a tall glass of water and cradled his shotgun in her other arm. She had cuts across her forearm and the backside of her hand, the blood caked and stuck to her wedding ring. Her hair was disheveled and there was dirt embedded around her pale green eyes, though she still projected a hint of farmland innocence. She was beautiful in a way that Gaits couldn't quite understand. He didn’t care for it.

  Gaits stumbled up from his stool and staggered towards her. “Lady, give me the gun.” She pointed the barrel at him and he stopped in his tracks.

  “Tell me your story,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Your story,” she repeated.

  “Look," Gaits said, "if you need food or liquor or something, take it.”

  “Company," she said. “I need company.”

  Gaits understood the need for company more than any other man alive. He longed to feel whole again, but Hannah’s company was the only one he’d keep. Maybe others found the need more transferable.

  “What’s your name?” Gaits asked.

  “Ellie.”

  “Okay, Ellie. I’m Travis. You want company? Alright. Okay.”

  “McNamara.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My last name…it’s McNamara. Just figured it would be nice to share my full name.”

  “Travis Gaits,” he said, appreciating the social ritual.

  He went behind the bar to fix up another old-fashioned and looked at her, offering. She declined and sipped her water. Your loss, he thought. She had a peace about her. A stillness he used to see in Hannah. A quietness that held power over his soul.

  “I won’t say a word about your choices," Ellie said. "Tell me the story. When it’s over, you’ll never see me again.”

  “And I get the gun back."

  “You get the gun back.”

  Gaits moved back to the bar stool and rubbed his thumb against the perspiration on the glass. He wasn’t sure if she meant it, but the effort was clear. He kept up his show of resistance for another moment, but he knew that he’d already caved.

  Gaits began to speak, fumbling through his words. They came slowly at first, but as Gaits built up his confidence they suddenly broke through, like a man timidly setting out across a frozen lake and crashing through the ice. Gaits wondered why it had been so hard to do with Hannah. Suppose the ice was thicker then. Suppose the weight was less.

  Gaits told Ellie about Omaha. She had been on the other side of town when it happened. They both reveled in it a bit, recounting the horror but slapping badges of honor on themselves for living through it. Gaits glossed over the details of when and where he found his wife. He focused instead on the moment he realized that the person who had killed her could still be around.

  Gaits took a sip of his drink and set the glass down, his hand clenching tight as he recounted what came next. "I just knew," he said. “I knew he was still there. He had to be there. Because I had to kill him."

  HELL

  Gaits cradled Hannah, biting his lip as he shook in the freezing cold night. He traced the fields. He didn't want to move, but there was no time to stay beside her, and Gaits ran inside the house to the upstairs closet and loaded up his shotgun. Then he heard the sound of an engine outside.

  Gaits sprinted down the stairs and ripped open the front door. He saw a brown SUV and took off towards it like a man possessed, vaulting over the porch stairs and hitting the sidewalk at full stride, the shotgun held upright in his hand like a sword. A searing cold wind rushed past Gaits’ face as he ran, assaulting his eyes and blurring his vision, but Gaits refused to blink or shift focus away from his target until he hit a patch of stray ice and toppled head first into the thick snow. Gaits thrashed wildly for a few seconds until he found his gun in the powder, then scrambled to his feet and caught a glimpse of a man through the SUV’s windshield.

  He was wearing a heavily stained tan coat. His hair was thick and matted down, and blood flowed from a deep gash that was etched across his forehead. He turned his face toward Gaits, his beard pressing against his coat collar. He opened his mouth wide and curled his tongue along the front of his teeth.

  Gaits lifted the shotgun and the man threw the truck into reverse. The wheels struggled to gain traction for a moment before finally pulling backwards off the property. Gaits fired at the truck, reloaded, and then fired again, the fury mounting in waves as he barreled through the snowy drive towards his own car. He got in and took off after the SUV.

  Gaits tracked the man as best he could through the relentless blizzard. He followed him from Mueller Road on to Westerly, then down Hampton until he took County Line Road Six West. They were headed for Omaha.

  Gaits fixated on the SUV’s license plate as it faded in and out of sight, catching one letter at a time as the two cars swerved down the icy road.

  Zero…

  Zero Nine…

  Zero Nine Eight One F…

  He couldn’t make out the final digits. The SUV began to pull away; Gaits accelerated harder and did his best to hold his course steady as he tried one final time to get the license plate number. A few seconds later, the SUV faded into the white hell of the night. Gaits sighed.

  Zero Nine Eight One F Thirty.

  For the first time since the bar, Gaits felt his pulse slow. He took a short breath that turned into a deep, soft yawn. He reached over the passenger seat and placed his hand on the shotgun.

  You’ll find him in Omaha, Gaits told himself. Zero Nine Eight One F Thirty...

  It was late now and dawn was not far off. To think he’d just wanted to knock off a few at the dive bar and find rest before another day on the road. The snow streaked a hypnotic white glow across the windshield and Gaits fell into a daydream. A memory of Hannah.

  He thought of the first week of summer that one year in high school, of the party out past the Lancasters’ farm with a full keg and freedom. The whole school was there and had taken over the night.

  Gaits had been chatting up a girl he’d met at the party. He couldn’t remember their conversation, but he remembered Hannah, sitting on the grass not far from them in a circle with her girlfriends. At one point, one of her friends leaned over and said something that made Hannah smile. It was nothing special in the moment, but it had stuck with Gaits long after the party ended. He had always wondered if Hannah had left the party thinking of him too.

  The image of Hannah on the grass at the exact moment when the smile broke across her face remained clear in Gaits’ memory. Over the years, he’d gotten her to smile, and when she did, he always thought of when he’d seen it for the first time. God, how he wished he could have seen it once more.

  Gaits was seven miles from Omaha when his car began to struggle, the wheels grinding through the snow, slipping in and out of traction. The highway became less discernible save for the intermittent mile markers that still peeked out above the accumulating snow. Gaits lost his patience and accelerated once more. The car slid again as he approached a turn, and this time Gaits couldn’t bring it back. He jack-knifed across the road and slammed into the side rail.

  Gaits released the brake and pushed the accelerator, but the wheels spun in place and dug themselves into the snow. He threw the car into reverse and back to drive to rock his way out, but he made little progress. He finally gave up, cursing and slamming his hands against the wheel. Gaits stared out the window as the windshield wipers shifted back and forth like a metronome, his thoughts following in sync.

  You can make it on foot.

  Wait out the storm.

  It’s only six miles.

  Stay and wait.

  Gaits pushed open the door and a furious swirl of snow and wind rushed into the car. He stepped out and pulled himself along the side of the car toward the trunk like a climber hugging the side of a mountain. He’d left his winter gear in the trunk a few weeks back. Gaits grabbed it, shielded his eyes, and struggled his way ba
ck into the driver’s seat. He put on the coat and swapped out his shoes for the boots. He cranked up the heat and warmed his hands and face. When he’d had enough, he pulled on his gloves. The fear grew. Stay, stay, stay. Then he remembered Hannah in the field. Gaits snatched the shotgun and flew out into the wild.

  The night was unforgiving, the kind of night a man should spend at home next to a woman and a warm fire. Gaits’ steps came slow and soft as the snow deepened with each moment. The blizzard whipped hard across his face, a driven, fierce assault piercing Gaits’ skin and forcing its way between the hefty layers of coats and shirts. Every minute or so, he switched the shotgun from right hand to left, tucking the free hand inside his coat and balling his fist to regain sensation and dexterity. It did little of either, but if Gaits was going to pull the trigger, he needed at least one hand without frostbite.

  An hour passed and Gaits could no longer find the road. The mile markers became his only path to Omaha, small white protrusions against a white landscape, the dark purple sky providing little help with distinguish anything from anything else. With each step, he wondered if he was still on County Six, or if he had wandered off into the countryside.

  Gaits eventually noticed what looked like a sign in the distance and began to move aggressively towards it. He cleared off the encrusted snow and ice and breathed a sigh of relief. Mile 106. Five more to Omaha.

  Gaits went past mile markers 105 and 104 before the blizzard picked up and he lost his sense of direction. He turned in a circle and scanned the landscape, hoping that mile marker 103 would somehow come into view, but it didn’t, and by that point, he had spun himself around so much that he no longer knew which way he was going.

  Gaits pulled out his phone and powered it up, hoping some sort of signal remained so that he could find his location on a map. The LED flashed on. He pulled off a glove and poked at the screen with a numbed finger. A satellite image popped up on the screen, but a split-second later, the battery icon turned red and the phone screen went dark.

  Terror crept in. Gaits stumbled toward what he could only hope was Omaha, his legs slow to respond and his heavy breaths shifting into low, painful grunts. A gust of wind caught him from behind, propelling him forward faster than his tired muscles could handle. They gave way and Gaits dropped into the soft white powder with a thud.

  He’d heard about freezing to death——the initial sting from the cold, pointed and sharp, gradually becoming a creeping inward numbness as the body shuts down limb by limb. The mind holds on a bit longer, slipping into hallucination to cover the truth of what lies ahead.

  That was the moment Gaits was looking for: the moment where he’d slip in and out of consciousness and the lucidity of the experience would slowly sweep him away, and the comfort of the blanketing white snow would be a prelude to his life after death, a life where he hoped he’d be with Hannah once again.

  DAYLIGHT

  Gaits didn't see a white tunnel when he faded away. It was dark, but it was peaceful. He wasn’t scared.

  He walked, unable to see a foot from his face. It was warm. His shotgun was no longer with him, and he now wore a clean pair of jeans and a button-down shirt that Hannah had bought him for summer nights when they’d stop by the country diner or Wes’ Tavern for a few drinks. "I’ve married a man of style," she’d say to him. Gaits would smile, because he knew he wasn’t. But he’d still wear the shirt any time she asked.

  Gaits kept walking and that was when he heard her voice, a siren song that sent him running through the black. A light peeked out from somewhere in the distance, creating a burnt blood-orange-hued horizon that began to move in a beautiful smooth rise. The light flowed across the landscape, shifting the color to a flowing streak like someone had unleashed a waterfall of gold. Gaits watched in awe as it all came to life, and then he saw Hannah in the distance. She smiled.

  A wolf howled and Gaits shot upright, his desperate breath forcing air into his lungs. He cleared the snow from his face and eyes. The storm had receded at some point during the night. In the distance, a narrow sign covered in snow shimmered in the sunlight. Mile Marker 103. Gaits struggled to his feet and turned away from the rising sun. He began walking towards Omaha, his steps heavy and lethargic, his breath a sparkling mist evaporating in the forgiving morning air.

  Time mattered less in the rising light than it had in the draining dark. Fate had allowed him to survive the night, and Gaits believed it would allow him to find the man who had killed Hannah. For the first time since Gaits could recall, he felt hunger. He spent a moment thinking about the gas station by the motel, about the dollar coffee he’d grab in the morning to get on with the day. He longed for it. A stale, chocolate-covered donut alongside it. Maybe two. He deserved two.

  A flash of light drew Gaits’ eyes away from the road as he passed Mile Marker 103. A trash can lay abandoned, half-covered in snow, a lost remnant of the violence from the night before. It was dented and disfigured, and it made Gaits think of Omaha, of the panicked people shattering windows and raiding convenience stores. They had probably already gotten everything worth taking. Maybe a chocolate-covered donut was too much to hope for.

  Gaits left his thoughts when he spotted a bulky shape a few hundred yards in the distance, too big to be a road sign. A car. An SUV.

  He approached it carefully, easing each step softly into the ice-crusted snow and pointing the shotgun straight at the rear window. He listened for movement inside the car. Nothing. Maybe it was empty and Gaits was playing a game without a target. The wind died out and then he heard it.

  Click click…Click click…Click click…

  The hazards were flashing. Gaits hadn’t seen them through the snow. He tightened his grip on the trigger and synced his steps to the rhythm of the hazards. Click click...Click click...Click click...Gaits froze. He heard shuffling inside the car.

  Click cli——

  Gaits blasted straight through the rear window, a cloud of snow and ice exploding around him. He fired again, quickly reloaded, and fired twice more to make sure anyone inside was dead. He looked in and saw a body slouched over in the seat. He rushed to the front of the SUV and ripped open the door to find a girl’s body, strapped in and lifeless. Gaits stumbled backward, then scrambled to the back of the car and scraped the ice off the license plate.

  J Seven L Seven Four Twenty-One.

  Gaits ran back to the girl, hoping that maybe he’d just grazed her or that she’d gone unconscious from the shock and there’d still be a chance to revive her. He unbuckled the seat belt and shook her softly.

  “Hey…can you hear me?"

  Her body refused to move. Gaits touched her skin——it was cold. Freezing cold. And pale beyond pale. Perhaps she’d been dead before he got there. He checked the backside of her seat. Cold skin. Warm blood.

  Gaits dropped to his knees, drunk with horror, and stared at the girl. He reached out to her, hoping that somehow she’d reach back. When she didn’t, he pulled his arm back to his side. A sick feeling rose up inside him, and he turned and vomited into the snow. He stayed there for several minutes, hunched over and gasping for breath.

  Eventually, Gaits collected himself and turned his attention back to the girl. He wiped tears from his eyes and leaned towards her. “I’m sorry——” Gaits’ words caught in his throat as he noticed the boxes and laundry baskets in the backseat, packed full of textbooks and clothing with IOWA written in big letters across the front. She was a college girl, on her way back to school after a long weekend with the folks.

  Gaits looked closer and saw a framed picture of the family dog, and a tin of homemade cookies with Mom’s handwritten recipe taped to the top. A roadside emergency kit, with a handwritten set of instructions from Dad. And slung across the back of the seat, a large hoodie, much too big to be hers, with a white and red gothic design stitched across the front. A skateboarder’s. Her boyfriend’s.

  Gaits hoped the entire family had been taken by The Flood. The boyfriend too. That it happened quick
. That they didn't waste time searching for each other, terrified, in despair. That they were swept away before they even knew what happened and found each other in whatever place came next.

  But what if they hadn’t?

  Gaits got up to his feet and made his way to the passenger side of the car. He spotted a cell phone plugged into the cigarette outlet. He ripped it from the cord and the screen lit up. Messages. Phone calls. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Gaits pulled up the call history and found the most recent entry, from about an hour before. Dad.

  Gaits dialed. Had it been Hannah, he would have wanted to know.

  SHOTGUN

  Gaits’ story drifted away into silence as he took another sip of his drink. He thought about all the daydreams that had come through since the day that Hannah died. There was no way to shake them off, no way to live and not feel them as lost artifacts beyond recovery, projected in his mind each and every day as if they were the cure, as if Hannah would be right back at home if only he’d leave the bar and go to her. Nightmares.

  “There was a moment,” Gaits said, “where I wasn’t sure what kind of man I’d become. I wasn’t sure I could continue on to Omaha. And even if I did, I wasn’t sure I’d ever come back.”

  “Did she…feel any pain?” Ellie asked. “The girl that you…”

  “I don’t know,” Gaits whispered, his voice softening the blow. “I was in shock. I think. When I left her father the voicemail, it was…mechanical. Descriptive. I just provided directions to where she was based on what I saw. It was…”

  “Logical,” Ellie said.

  “Just trying to make some sense out of it.”

  “Or trying to distance yourself from what little sense it made.”

  “I know that man will never forgive me for killing his daughter,” Gaits said, sipping his drink. “I just hope he was able to find her.”