The Broken Places

Those last moments replayed in Pacer’s mind as Wyatt continued onward. He wasn’t sure how long he had been reminiscing, but he now realized that he already began to miss his girlfriend. What he should have been doing was paying attention. Wyatt had driven them a little too far east.

“We need to turn north for a bit.” He called over Wyatt’s shoulder. 

“There looks to be road we can turn onto up ahead.” 

Seeing that the road in question was a dirt road with a lot of loose gravel, Pacer decided to take over the driving. 

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just want to be careful,” Pacer told him when they switched again. 

“I understand.” Wyatt was actually relieved. As much as it was fun to pilot the bike across roads that were still in decent condition, it was tiring on his nerves when things got tricky. Driving over rough gravel would have been terrible for him. 

It wasn’t much later after the switch when Pacer noticed the bike’s power getting low. He also spied some clouds developing on the horizon. He figured that if they came across a good spot to take a break it would be worth it to stop for the night. Give the bike a chance to recharge by solar, and maybe hunt some small game for a decent meal. 

With the peak of the afternoon behind them, Pacer was trying to get his bearings and remember if there was a good spot nearby to settle for the night. They passed a number of small hamlets and villages that were likely completely abandoned since the pandemics, but occasionally a small group or family will hunker down and hideout amongst the homes long since looted and ruined from disuse. Sometimes they’ll succeed and carve out a life and livelihood from the remnants the small communities, other times they’ll fall victim to the nomadic and aimless clans of wanderers. The trick is to be self sustainable without attracting attention and being able to defend your claim on borrowed land that was bought and sold—originally stolen.

The service road on which they drove took them towards one such hamlet now. It was a collection of about a dozen houses, a few barns, and an old convenience store. Most had broken windows and doors. Faded paint or vinyl siding that was torn off by winds or other means. Trees and shrubs had exploited the buildings for shelter and exposure to sun. Nothing looked habitable any more. 

“This looks like a place from one of those old zombie movies.” Wyatt whispered. 

Pacer had slowed their pace while passing through. Aside from the crunch of the wheels on the dirt, it was eerily quiet. Some of the doors that still remained had symbols painted on them.

“Look, that’s for the Dead End fever. It must have taken out everybody here who was left over from the plagues.” Pacer remembered parts of stories some of the elders had told. 

“Probably why no has come back to live here again.”

“Yeah,” Pacer was assessing each building he could see. There was one near the center of it all that was two stories and still had some windows intact. He turned down a street to take a closer look.

“A-are we staying here?” Wyatt’s grip tightened on Pacer’s shoulders. 

“Maybe..” was all he responded with. 

The bike was flashing a little red LED on its gauge cluster. There wasn’t enough power to make a getaway if needed. If there was indeed no one here, then that house was the most strategic one for a chance at spotting anyone on the approach. Regardless, Pacer was wary and alert. 

They stopped on the street in front of what was a large manse. Now, standing this close it was obvious that the building next to it had been a church—burnt to the grown and nearly overgrown with a multitude of weeds and shrubs. Beyond it was an old cemetery. 

“Creepy,” Wyatt offered. 

“Yeah,” Pacer nodded. “It’s perfect.”

“What?”

“I mean it. There’s obviously nothing here that’s useful except as shelter. And that’s what we’re here for, just one night. And in case someone comes snooping we have line of sight to almost everywhere else here.”

“Okay, but…” Wyatt waved towards the cemetery. 

“Well, if we go much further this bike will be as dead as anything that’s in there. I need to find a place to park this thing while there’s still light in the sky.”

On foot now, with Pacer walking the bike and Wyatt flanking him a few feet away, the boys approach the big house and find their way around to the back and behind to the space between the house and the small graveyard. There was a modest storage shed as well off to the side. The space was full of tall grass and weeds but otherwise mostly unobstructed from the sky. Pacer brought the bike over to a clump of bushes and flipped the seat back and from under it he pulled out a solar panel that fanned out to catch sunlight. 

“I think that should catch the last few hours of daylight.” Pacer looked up and shielded his eyes with both hands.

Still shirtless, and with his arms raised, Pacer’s bare torso seemed to have a gravity of its own. Wyatt’s eyes fell upon his lean frame and was trapped by the generous sheen of sweat that shimmered in the sunlight. Aside from the dark tufts under his arms and the hair on his head, the only other body hair visible was barely a suggestion of a treasure trail just below his navel. 

“We might still get three solid hours.” Pacer turned and adjusted the angle of the solar panel, the slight ripple in his back muscles mesmerized Wyatt as he gripped the mechanism and repositioned it carefully. “And maybe with a few hours in the morning, we should be good to keep going tomorrow.”

Wyatt managed to pry his eyes away by focusing on some of the gravestones in the background behind Pacer. Most were eroded and crumbling, some covered in moss and vines. 

“Let’s check out the spooky house!” A hand clapped onto Wyatt’s shoulder startling him. If he wasn’t reddened by embarrassment before, he was now. Pacer seemed oblivious to it though. 

There was a rear entrance and as they approached the door it was slightly ajar with the wood of the doorframe cracked near where the latch would have caught. The crooked stone stairs leading up to the door were covered in leaves and dirt which cracked and crunch under the weight of each step. A strange earthy scent seemed to get stronger the closer they got. It was mixed with musky, stale aromas, and a slight metallic smell like rusting iron. 

Pacer tried the door and it moved a couple of inches begrudgingly. He pulled again harder and nothing. Pacer moved over to allow Wyatt to get in close beside him to get a solid grip.

“Give me a hand.” 

Together they strained and the door started to give way. Once the door finally moved enough for them to gain entry, they tentatively stepped inside. The space inside was noticeably cooler than outside, and years upon years of decay hung in the air like an invisible fog.

“Doesn’t look like this place was looted much.” Pacer remarked glancing at all the furniture throughout the rooms. Nearly all of it was left how it must have been, when the place was occupied. The only change would have been the layer of dust on everything and the dirt and leaves blown in through the windows that had broken. 

“It would depend on what you’re looking for,” Wyatt mused aloud. He opened a few drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. They weren’t empty, but they contained less than he had expected. One of the cupboards had a dozen or so tin cans, but the labels were mostly gone leaving the bare metal to accumulate rust. 

The rest of the common areas were sparse, but still functional and presentable had everything been maintained. The floor creaked with every step they took, punctuating the silence of the place. Down the hall there seemed to be smaller rooms; an office, a storage room, and a bathroom—all of which had nothing of interest or value. 

Wyatt checked the drawers of the desk in the office and found the typical items that he knew wouldn’t amount to much. He glanced at some of the books on the shelves along one wall and saw that most of the titles were centred around religion and faith. 

The bathroom also had a few things, including some first aid supplies. Pacer was the one that snatched those.

“Wanna check out upstairs?” 

Wyatt followed Pacer back to the main stairs in the foyer. Treading lightly, the two eased up to the second floor, hesitating every time the house creaked with their passage. They opened a door at the top of the stairs and it was a small and sparse bedroom. The room next to it was the same.

“What was that?” Wyatt heard something coming from the end of the hall. He and Pacer both froze on the spot and strained their ears. After a few seconds, Wyatt heard it again. It was hard to place what the noise sounded like. 

Pacer motioned to approach slowly. Outside the door at the end of the hall, each pressed up against opposite walls they let a few more minutes pass by.

Nothing.

Pacer slowly reached for his knife and unsheathed it from his belt and with his other hand and gripped the door knob firmly. They looked at each other apprehensively. When he twisted slowly the latch clicked loudly and Wyatt twitched nervously stifling a gasp in his throat. 

Again, that strange noise on the other side of the door, somewhere. 

Wyatt thought for a moment it sounded vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place it. Pacer slowly pushed the door inward attempting to be silent yet the hinges on the door did not cooperate. They were rusty and did not move freely. After a few seconds of pushing the door as it groaned creaked Pacer suddenly raised a foot and kicked the door.

The door swung open, begrudgingly—its audible objection rising to a shrill metallic schreech—revealing an empty room. The door hit something and reverberated with an unnerving cackle of a sound. Pacer lunged forward and grabbed the door solidly to restore the silence. 

“Heh…” Wyatt bit his lip to keep himself from chuckling. The sight of Pacer outstretched holding onto the door right after the door literally laughed at them was comedic. But then the wind blew in through the window and cause the blinds to shudder and rustle with the air movement sent Wyatt into a giggling fit. 

Pacer glowered at him, still caught up in the tension of the moment. He relaxed and found Wyatt’s bubbly laughter infectious enough to allow a chuckle. 

“Ok, it’s not that funny!” Pacer admitted, still smiling. 

The room was a spacious loft-style bedroom complete with a large bed, a wide dresser with various personal item atop it, and a small desk in one corner and a sitting area in the other. In fact, it was one of the chairs that the door had hit when Pacer kicked it in. Wyatt tested the door against it and the door emitted a lesser version of its laugh. 

“Stop.” Pacer told him, this time frowning.  

“It turned out to be nothing at all.” 

“I know,” Pacer walked over to the window and peeked through the blinds. The room had a great vantage point. Behind the bed creaked loudly.

“Well, this will do nicely!” Wyatt patted the bed beside where he had sat down. A puff of dust billowed out from where his hand smacked the thick bedding. 

“Let’s check out the rest of the house before you go getting any ideas, ok?”

“I just mean that this is an actual bed, like a full bed and everything. We just sleep on a mattress on the floor.”

“We?”

“Yeah, me and Chancey.” Wyatt saw the look and Pacer’s face and immediately added, “It’s not like that. He’s my best friend!”

Pacer walked back out into the hallway and started checking out the rest of this floor. The first room they had skipped was likely a work room of sorts. It was larger enough to be a bedroom but it had a lot of strange tools that Pacer wasn’t familiar with. Across the hall had a large wall hung screen that had fallen and cracked. There was a long sofa and some other electronic equipment. He was checking out some of the wires and cables when from the corner of his eyes he saw and heard Wyatt stomp down the hallway. 

“Be care—” Pacer started a warning. 

“Fuck!” 

The tone of Wyatt’s cry gave Pacer a shiver. He rushed from the room and ran up to where the blond boy was standing in the now open doorframe of the upstairs bathroom. He shoved past the taller boy’s shoulder and gazed upon a gruesome sight.

The bathroom was mostly in the same state as the rest of the house, except that in the large claw foot bathtub was a long dead corpse—mostly skeletal. Pacer spotted some remnants of flesh and hair and the unexpected find kept his eyes fixated for a moment. 

Wyatt’s breathing snapped him out of the morbid trance. He looked up at the boy and his face was blanched.  Pacer squeezed into the room and blocked the sight from his widened blue eyes. 

“Wyatt!” Pacer placed his hands on the boys chest and shoved him back into the hallway. Backwards a few clumsy steps and then Pacer shut the door behind him all the while trying to get Wyatt to regain his focus. 

“Wyatt,” Pacer held his face in both hands and forced Wyatt to regard him, though his eyes looked at him they didn’t see him. His stance faltered and he guided the youth down to his knees without hurting himself. 

“You’re in shock, Wyatt. Just take a deep breath, okay?”

Pacer exaggerated deep breaths and placed Wyatt’s hands on his chest. He kept the breathing exercises going and eventually Wyatt began to mirror him. 

“I’ve never,” Wyatt’s next words were swept away with tears. His focus started to waver again. 

“It’s ok. Just look at me and breathe.” Pacer let the boy’s swell of emotion take him and his own eyes began to well up with tears. 

“It’s okay.” He let his hands fall to Wyatt’s shoulders just as they shuddered with sobs. Wyatt struggled to look away but it didn’t matter anymore, the tears completely blurred his vision now.

“You’re safe,” Wyatt hear Pacer say as his arms slid around him, embracing him tightly in spite of the relentless sobs wracking his body. Pacer was now gently cradling the back of his neck and lightly petting the back of his head. As the peak of emotion hit him, Wyatt latched onto Pacer and reciprocated the embrace. 

The next words were soft in Wyatt’s ear, spoken with tenderness. 

“I’m here.”