The road disappeared in the overgrown brush but I found my way to the chapel like I’d been there yesterday. It was run-down, but still standing. Inside, the place had been gutted, graffiti’d and stank of piss.
“You been here before?” Jimmy asked. He was readin’ the graffiti, lookin’ scared.
“Used to live in Camp Cypress. With my wife and daughter,” I said.
“You come here after the outbreak?”
“We lived out in the country before. Pretty clean, not a lot of neighbors. Didn’t come till the power grid went down and they rounded everybody up.”
“But you got out before things went to shit.”
I nodded. “Three months before the riots.” I’d seen it comin’ and I was right. But bein’ right about that didn’t help when I was so wrong about so much else.
“I smell smoke,” Jimmy said, moving’ for the door. “Ain’t no brush fire, either. We don’t wanna stay in one of these old firetraps too long.”
“Not for too long,” I agreed. I could smell the smoke, too. But I sat down on the bare floor and started to unwrap the dusty duct-taped garbage bag from the ammo box. My wife hadn’t wanted to leave the camp. She’d begged me to reconsider. But I had been so sure. Or I made her think I was; her and my daughter both. I wasn’t, of course. If I had been, I wouldn’t have buried the box.
