The Long Way To Reno (33 page)

I
saw movement to my right, up Liberty, a couple of guys on horseback catching
sight of me. I made a hard right, running, once more,
away
from the
intersection and running down South Virginia. I wanted to scream with
frustration as I heard the sounds of the guys on horseback giving chase.
Cutting across a corner of what remained of the parking lot, I ran onto Court
Street, the looming justice building empty and strangely gothic. The horses
were trying to keep their balance atop of the slippery surfaces, and the men
were communicating loudly to each other over radios that crackled angrily
within the unnatural stillness of the city – I could tell where they were
without even looking back.

I
was too terrified to do so, anyway, sure I’d catch a bullet of some kind in the
face. Huffing and puffing, I pumped my arms and legs as fast and as hard as I
could possibly go, managing to make it to South Sierra street – I figured
as long as I stayed on this side of the Truckee River, I’d be fine. I could
lose them somehow, and not stray that far away from home. With this in mind, I
turned towards the Family Services building.

The
doors opened when I pushed them in, and that bought me some time from those
guys on horses. But glass shattered as they shot in after me, causing me to
duck. I screamed after hearing and feeling something hot pass by my shoulder,
and this caused me to throw myself behind the security stand that allowed
entrance into the lobby of the building. Once I assumed I was okay, hearing
them continuously shout out to others that they had me cornered, I crawled
hastily from the security stand and went for the stairway ahead of me. I
clamored up that, struggling to catch my breath and having absolutely no idea
where I was going to hide. I’d driven past this building all the time, yet I’d
never been inside.

I
heard them clamor into the building after me, so I knew I needed to make this
quick. I turned towards some service windows, and threw myself in that open
slot between counter and plastic. I barely managed to fit – losing weight
helped so much at a time like this – but I dropped back down onto the
floor, scattering papers and desk shit all over the place. Picking myself up, I
went running for the door near the back, opened it, and burst out into more
office space. I had to hide myself fast, so I searched for the best place to do
so – I burst through another door, followed the signs for the stairway,
and headed up.

I
heard them clearing out the areas behind me – they were fast, and they
probably heard my desperate running. I tried to stifle my heavy breathing as I
slammed through another set of doors and ran down an empty hall, unsure of what
floor I was on and what sorts of rooms were around me. I took a metal door in,
the heavy release of the latch ringing out within the silence, and took another
set of stairs down to ground level. I slammed through an emergency fire exit,
coming out onto Rainbow, behind the court building.

Sucking
in air, I ran for the river, thinking I could lose them somehow over there. The
bridge had been destroyed – the theater across the Truckee River was a
crumbled mess, the parking lot garage next to it a pile of rubble – I ran
for the ruined bridge, and managed to cram myself desperately into the
wreckage, to hide myself behind fallen walls of concrete and a black Escalade
that still had people inside. The smell was horrendous, the rushing river
crashing so loudly around the debris and overtaking the silence of the streets
that I couldn’t even hear if the men were still looking for me.

I
looked into the Escalade as I pressed both hands against my nose and mouth. I
looked at the crushed roof, the shattered windows, and the decomposing bodies
of a man and woman dressed in stylish suits. From the looks of it, they’d been
workers at the court. Struggling to catch my breath as quietly as possible, I
hugged my knees to my chest and strained to hear the others’ presence. The
water made the temperature that much colder – it lapped at the edges of
the debris in front of me, rushing against the Escalade’s tires.

I
stared down at this, and waited.

:
:

When
night came, it was impossible to see a thing. My body was stiff as I climbed
out from the wreckage, peering out into darkness so thick and heavy that I
couldn’t even find my way back to the street without reaching out with both
hands and physically searching for obstacles in my path. Enough time had passed
for those people to have lost interest in finding me.

When
it snowed, there was a thick, ringing quality to it that made silence seem like
some breathing thing. There was a heaviness in the air that told me it was
snowing – this made me exhale heavily, knowing that I had to find
somewhere to bed down for the night. I had no idea whether I was looking down
South Sierra, or facing Island Avenue. I sniffled, wiped my nose with my
sleeve, and began walking.

I
bumped into cars on my quest, and finally found a street sign that told me this
particular street charged a toll for parking, so I knew I was back on South
Sierra.

I
stumbled my way onto the sidewalk, and began to walk South Sierra Street,
keeping my ears open and my eyes wide. Despite the length of time, the physical
exhaustion I felt in my journey, I was still motivated enough to walk. I simply
hugged myself tightly and began the silent descent towards Liberty once more.
As I did so, I examined the outlines of buildings around me, recognizing them
by their proximity.

My
movements were the only indication that someone was still alive in this area.
Glass crackled slightly, metal shifted with the cold, and somewhere in the far
distance – I couldn’t tell, due to the echoing – a dog barked something
that wasn’t a panicked bark.

Reaching
California Avenue excited me. I was almost
home
. Being so close to it, I
kept walking. I stumbled into fire hydrants and hidden debris as I did so, but
nothing was going to stop me from reaching my home. Everything that had been a
problem or hitch in my journey so far was nothing, now. And reviewing it all,
as my teeth chattered and body shivered, I had to admit to myself that I was
tougher than I’d previously thought.

In
the warehouse, I thought I’d never make it. I’d cried, I’d cowered, I’d hid and
did things I still wasn’t proud of – but I’d survived many things. I’d
come this far. I’d lived and outlived the situations that had popped up. I had
done things I’d never seen myself do, or had even imagined of doing.

By
the time I’d reached Mark Twain via Nixon, and the silent, dark houses
reacquainted themselves to me, I was overfilled with energy. There was a dump
truck that was overturned in the center of the street, but that was easy to
negotiate. A cat meowed loudly from one of the houses, and I knew it had
belonged to the elderly couple from around the corner – Milly, they’d
called it. A piece of shit animal that always used mom’s flowerpots as a
personal toilet.

Still,
I greeted it joyfully when it revealed itself to me, an orange tabby with a
loud meow that echoed off the emptiness around us. My house was just ahead
– a maintained lawn with brick-lined flowerbeds, with a wooden porch that
had a single bench lined up with the railing. Mom’s windchimes were singing
softly in some breeze, and snow started to fall the moment I hurried up my
walkway.

I
wanted to call out their names in relief, pulling the storm door open and
trying the front door. It was locked, and I ignored the metallic protest of the
storm door as I released it, turning to go to the back walkway. I slammed
instead into dad’s Range Rover, and it took me a few moments to process this.
It was piled high with snow, and parked exactly as he had left it that day I
went to work.

I
stared at the vehicle, feeling both relieved and puzzled that they hadn’t even
used it to escape the First Night. Something tightened and built at the base of
my throat, and I swallowed hard. Ignoring the rising feeling of this
unidentifiable
something
in my chest, I hurried to the wooden privacy
fence, reached my fingers between the thin slit of the gate and the support
beam of the fence, and popped the lock with my finger tip. The gate swung open,
so loudly that snow fell from the trees in the backyard, as if startled by the
noise itself. I pushed through nearly three feet of snow on my way to the
stairs of the back door, glancing over at the separate structure in the yard.
Dad’s study.

The
snow in the yard was high, undisturbed. No one had used this yard in some time.
I stared at the silent addition, thinking of the gun cabinet he kept in there
and wondering if he’d just gathered everything he could that first night and
had taken what he’d needed from there, so that they could live in the house
without – I couldn’t think clearly after that.

Before
I ascended the stairway, I reached underneath the brick layering of the railing
my dad and a friend of his had constructed years ago, finding the key still
nestled between crumbled brick and mortar.

I
unlocked the back sliding door, pushing it open and feeling it catch on the
single metal spike that dad had always kept within the rail – a back up
in case someone picked the lock on the door. I tried to squeeze myself into the
narrow slot of door and frame and couldn’t do it.

“Dad!”
I called out, my voice a shrill scream in the dark. I winced, hearing it echo
– people definitely could hear it, but I doubt they could locate where I
was. I waited, listening to the snow fall. Heard Milly from around the house,
the cat appearing moments later and hesitating at the sight of snow in front of
her.

I
heard nothing.

Panic
welled in me, and I pushed away from the door. Tried slamming it a few times to
dislodge the spike, but it didn’t budge. I didn’t want to break the door, and
called for my parents once more.

I
heard
nothing
.

My
throat felt tight, and no matter how many times I swallowed, I couldn’t
dislodge the lump there. I pushed away from the door, trying to breathe and
think at the same time. The plan to find vaccination papers had just vanished
from my thoughts – everything was still in place the day I'd left the
house, and this told me, somehow, that the papers were useless. I was on
another mission to just
find
my parents. I looked up at the second story
windows, and then rushed down the back stairs, pushing through the snow towards
dad’s study.

The
door was slightly ajar once I reached it, and it took only a push to open it.
In the darkness, I couldn’t see anything inside, but familiarity told me what I
needed to know. There was nothing inside that raised an alarm. It was dead
still and quiet – I walked in, smelling the strong, heady scent that was
my dad, and could, in my mind’s eye, see every detail of the study as if the
lights themselves were on. Book shelves to my left, lining the wall –
metal cabinets beyond that, the gun cabinet sitting atop one of those. His desk
at the back corner, computer, printer, scanner and other electronics sitting
near the back wall. The walls were decorated with awards, his college certifications
– a calendar-schedule for last year’s Wolf Pack football was nearest the
desk.

I
knew exactly what he kept in the room, and where everything was. I strode
forward and went for the desk, pulling open the bottom drawer and withdrawing a
flashlight that worked when I prompted it to. I shined it around, looking for
indications of his presence and the cone of light fell onto the open gun
cabinet atop of one of the sliding cabinets near the door.

I
wasn’t thinking anything as I walked forward to it, nudging the heavy door open
and seeing the various types of ammo, weaponry he kept in there. I couldn’t
even say what sort he had, couldn’t even conjure up a memory of the items that
I knew by heart. All I knew was that a single 9mm was missing, and that was his
standard, everyday addition to his job uniform.

That
lump in my throat grew thicker, burning. I turned away from the gun cabinet and
found what I was looking for – the closet at the back of the room that
kept various items needed for yard maintenance, which included an extending
ladder.

:
:

Metal
clacked hard against brick as I set the ladder against the building, and, after
making sure it was steady, began the ascent upward to my bedroom window. I’d
left it unlocked the night I went to work, but as I climbed up with shaking
hands and a shortness of breath, mind racing, I was hoping to God that it was
boarded over. As I pressed my palm against the window and fought conflicting
feelings of relief and despair, I managed to get it open.