Dead End

by Howard Odentz

  Maybe they wouldn’t even notice we were gone for a little bit.

  Wishful thinking, I guess.

  How we ever managed to get Newfie, Sanjay, Andrew and Poopy Puppy from the breakroom without waking the adults was an absolute miracle. I guess they must have all been wiped. After all, everyone but my dad and Aunt Ella had fought off some sort of Necropoxy cure that made them sick before making them better.

  They needed rest. We were kids. We didn’t.

  As the rain assaulted the ceiling overhead and lightning lit up the sky, we all slipped out of the front of Walmart.

  Then Jimmy reached through the little gap we left between the glass doors and spun the locks on the bicycle chains. He tugged on them a few times.

  “Good as gold,” said Jimmy.

  Sanjay, Prianka’s autistic brother, who was probably smarter than all of us put together, said, “Gold is Au on the periodic table.”

  “I know that one,” I blurted out a little too quickly. “The first thing we had to do in Chemistry this year was learn all the abbreviations for the elements.”

  Sanjay looked at me like I was a well-meaning chimp. If it weren’t for his ability to remember virtually everything he had ever seen on the Internet, or absorb books like a sponge, we would never have made it this far.

  He opened his mouth and said, “You’re my Boron-Uranium-Dysprosium.”

  Say what?

  Prianka burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  She smiled at me. “He just called you his B-U-DY using the abbreviations on the Periodic Table.”

  I guess I was. “You’re my Batman Uranus Dipsy Doodle, too,” I told Sanjay.

  Prianka snorted. “Yeah,” she said. “I’d like to see how you would have done on that Periodic Table quiz.”

  Meanwhile, Jimmy reached through the gap in the door one last time and fingered the locks on the bicycle chains. “They’re good locks,” he said. “They’ll be fine. Poxers won’t get in.”

  Sanjay made a grim face and began an epic lecture courtesy of his mega-brain.

  “Good locks are case-hardened, which mean they have a hard but brittle outer layer that protects a tough, soft, inner core. Savvy thieves know that even good locks are flawed. Nearly any material, including steel, becomes less flexible when it’s very cold. Although it doesn’t lose any tensile strength—defined as how much force is needed to break it—the loss of flexibility makes it less tough.”

  “Uh huh,” said Bullseye flatly.

  Sanjay continued. “When cooled to negative thirteen degrees Fahrenheit with canned air spray, which is usually the compressed chemical difluoroethane, even the toughest of locks will become brittle enough to be smashed open with a hammer.”

  We all just stared at Sanjay. Finally, he blew a gust of air out of his mouth, shook his head, and stepped in front of the doors. Then, facing them, he spread his arms out wide and chanted a spell right out of one of my aunt’s fake witchy books:

  “By north and south, by east and west

  By earth and fire, rain and wind

  Protect this space from all ill will

  And those who try to enter in.”

  Sanjay said the chant three times over, waving his arms in intricate patterns like a modern dancer. When he was through he said, “So mote it be.”

  He turned and glanced at the rest of us, all blank-faced.

  “Oh,” I said. “So mote it be.”

  We all murmured the same thing which meant absolutely nothing to us.

  “So mote it be,” he repeated and then sidled back up against Prianka.

  Okay then. I guess if the locks failed because of savvy burglars carrying cans of difluoroethane, the magic hidden in my aunt’s collection would save the day.

  Or not.

  “I feel like such a muggle,” murmured Jimmy.

  “Muggle,” squawked Jimmy’s pet crow Andrew as he sat on his shoulder.

  “Woof,” added Newfie, and I guess that was the last word on the subject.

  Meanwhile, outside the safety of the store, the rain came down in buckets. We all stood under the huge metal awning, grim-faced. I didn’t want to get soaked, especially because there was a little chill in the air, but we didn’t have a choice.

  I was just about to take a deep breath and step out into the rain when my sister said, “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “As much as I’d love to see you get drenched,” she said, “use this.” Trina pulled open a bag she was carrying, rummaged around inside, and pulled out a pile of compact umbrellas—the kind where you press the button on the handle and they shoot to full size.

  She handed one to each of us, saving a bright pink one for me.

  “Pretty,” I said as I held it up with two fingers as though it smelled. “Anyone want to change colors with me?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Jimmy.

  I sort of didn’t want to say it because I was trying to be good, but the Tripp Light that lived inside my head opened his mouth before I had a chance to stop him.

  “Come on,” I heard myself say. “Pink is for girls.” As soon as I heard the words aloud I knew I sounded like a major tool.

  Despite the rain, I think you could have probably heard a pin drop.

  Finally, my sexist blunder was punctuated by another lesson from Sanjay, the boy wonder. He held Poopy Puppy against his ear with one finger up in the air, urging me to shut up and wait because the stuffed dog had something important to say.

  After a moment he pulled Poopy Puppy from his side of his head and said, “No, it’s not.”

  I blinked a couple of times. “Say what?”

  “According to an article published in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1918, pink is the generally accepted color for boys and blue for girls. Pink was considered to be a stronger color, while blue suggested a more delicate and dainty sensibility. In 1927, many of the major department stores like Filenes and Marshall Fields urged parents to dress their boys in pink. The styles did not change to a more unisex color code until much later in the century. Poopy Puppy says so.”

  I closed my eyes and turned to Prianka. “Since when did he get to be such a chatterbox?”

  Prianka smiled. “He’s comfortable with you,” she said. “Go with it.” Then she narrowed her eyes into teeny, tiny slits. “But for what it’s worth, my umbrella’s a pretty blue. Do you want to switch? It goes so nicely with your eyes.”

  Bullseye twittered a little bit, and Andrew made a clucking sound.

  “You all suck,” I finally said and pressed the button on the pink umbrella that Trina had handed to me. It bloomed like a rose.

  Then, without waiting, I skipped off alongside the Walmart toward the corner of the building with my oh-so-manly pink parasol shielding me from the rain the whole way.

  3

  THANKFULLY THERE weren’t any poxers in sight, not that we would have been able to see one coming between the darkness and the rain.

  The minivan that we left parked in the back of the building smelled like a mixture of smoke, wet dog, and my bedroom back at home. I was used to the stench of my own filth, but mixing it with the aroma of the forest fire and Newfie’s huge, black coat, made the whole effect a little nauseating.

  “Oh my,” murmured Jimmy when he opened the back door. “Now there’s something you don’t catch a whiff of every day.”

  “That’s gross,” said Trina. She was clutching the handle of her umbrella with her shoulders hunched, as though she wanted to make herself small enough that not a single drop of rain would fall on her.

  Double-fisted stress eating was definitely not going to help on that front.

  “Poxers are more gross,” said Prianka, which was totally true.

 
“I don’t mind the smell.” Bullseye shrugged and pushed past Jimmy. “There are a lot worse things in the world.”

  Bullseye was right. There were a lot worse things in the world. I could probably spend all day listing them and not even scratch the surface, so I gave it a try.

  “Let’s name them,” I said as I opened the front door, folded up my pretty pink umbrella, and got inside. “A is for ‘Apocalypse’ because that’s what Diana and her people have given the world.” I turned to Prianka who had climbed into the passenger’s seat after shooing Sanjay into the way back, accompanied by Newfie and Andrew.

  “I’ll play,” Prianka offered without skipping a beat. “B is for ‘Badirchand Boyfriends.’” We had already established that the ‘b’ word was Hindi for ‘idiot.’

  Bullseye giggled.

  “Cute,” I said. “Real cute.”

  “Sometimes,” Prianka smiled then shot her hand out and grabbed my fingers. “Sometimes badirchand boyfriends can be very cute.”

  Jimmy turned to Trina. “My turn,” he said. “How about C? C is for . . . ‘Copters.’”

  “That’s cheating,” cried Bullseye as I turned the key in the ignition.

  “Like in ‘Helicopters’?” I said. “I think we should give it to him.”

  “Fine,” pouted Bullseye, but he wasn’t really pouting. He was actually sort of into it. Through the rearview mirror I could see the vague outline of his shadow in the gloom, leaning forward, probably mentally calculating out the next few letters until it was his turn and he could come up with something amazing.

  Of course that never happened because nothing ever happens the way we plan. As I pulled the knob for the headlights Trina said, “D is for ‘Dead People.’” Her voice went up a little as she pointed straight ahead. “D is for ‘Dozens and Dozens of Dead People.’”

  Through the downpour splashing against the windshield, I could see a whole gang of poxers huddled in a dead mass. My sister was right, there were dozens of them. I’m not sure where they had come from because Trina and I, along with Randy Stephens, had cleared the parking lot yesterday. Yet, there they were behind the Walmart, all standing in a tight circle.

  There were big ones and little ones, all shapes and sizes, and all staring at us through the pelting rain, with their gross hair matted to their heads, and their vacant dead eyes focused on the van.

  “I am so bored with dead people,” Trina said as she absentmindedly reached down into the mess of bags that she brought with her and pulled out one of our essential poxer-killing kits. The bag was filled with matches, lighter fluid, paper, and one of those big lighters that are usually sold by the candy at checkout counters.

  “Hey, babe?” said Jimmy. “I don’t think fire and water mix.” Jimmy pointed to the blurry, swirly mess sloshing across the windshield. To punctuate his statement, a bolt of lightning lit up the sky and a boom shook the car because the storm was close—really close.

  I felt the blood drain from my face.

  I was praying that I didn’t just see what I thought I saw, but I knew that all the praying in the world wouldn’t make it so.

  “Oh no,” I breathed. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Prianka said.

  My breath was caught in my throat and I was hoping I was dreaming. I slowly reached down and pressed the button for the high beams. A huge cone of light exploded, illuminating all the poxers . . . and military fatigues. A familiar wave of stress threatened to roll over me.

  “There,” I whispered, still gripping the wheel with both hands.

  There were rifles strapped to the backs of a couple figures wearing uniforms.

  Was it some of Diana’s soldiers? Did they follow us? Had they been hiding behind the Walmart this whole time, among the dead, waiting for the right moment to strike?

  Then a companion thought sidled up next to that one and scared me even more. Had Diana found us already instead of the other way around? If she had, would she even listen to reason when we tried to explain to her that she didn’t have to do anything to us because she had already created super immunity?

  A cold sweat popped out on my forehead.

  “Crap,” I swore.

  “Chill,” said Jimmy as he reached forward and put his hand on my shoulder. I almost jumped out of my skin. “That’s just a couple of ROTC kids.”

  “ROTC. ROTC,” chirped Andrew.

  “ROTC,” said Sanjay, whose hands were holding his ears. Thankfully he wasn’t screaming like he usually did when he saw poxers. I guess he was getting a little over the dead, just like the rest of us. “Reserve Officer Training Corp. ROTC students are like other students, but also receive basic military training. Students participate in regular drills during the school year, and extended training activities during the summer. Some of the training that is offered to cadets in the Army ROTC program includes Airborne, Air Assault, and Mountain Warfare.”

  “What about dead ROTC dudes?” said Bullseye, because the guys wearing the fatigues with the guns strapped to their backs were really, really dead.

  I was both spooked and relieved at the same time.

  Spooked, because after clearing the Walmart parking lot yesterday more poxers managed to congregate; and relieved, because none of Diana’s soldiers were around.

  “What about them?” I said as the fear left me and was immediately replaced by a twinge of irritation in my voice. “Once they’re dry, I guess they’ll burn like everybody else.”

  4

  “JUST BACK UP,” Trina said from the back seat. “The poxers will follow the van, and then we can lead them out on the street or something. No harm. No foul.”

  So that’s what I did.

  I backed the minivan out from behind Walmart, spun around in the parking lot, and slowly led the parade of poxers out onto the main road and back the way we had come.

  I drove at a medium stagger until one of the dead reached out and slapped its palm against the back bumper.

  Andrew cried out, “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead,” and Newfie just rumbled way down deep, like the sound of distant thunder.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Trina leaned forward, one hand gripping Prianka’s headrest. “Do you think we could speed it up a little? I feel like a carrot on the end of a stick.”

  Jimmy grimaced. “That’s exactly what we are,” he said, which was the honest truth.

  I looked at my side mirror. I couldn’t even see the Walmart sign anymore. We had driven far enough away that the road had curved a little and Walmart was gone.

  “I think we can leave the poxers now,” said Prianka.

  A funny feeling prevented me from pressing down on the gas pedal. What if we left and all the poxers decided to go back to the Walmart parking lot? Worse, what if they tried to get inside? Of course that opened up a floodgate of more terrible worries. What if the helicopter people came back and found the adults? What if something even scarier happened?

  Aliens.

  Bigfoot.

  My thoughts wouldn’t stop jammering away, and I almost considered turning back. Instead, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Going backwards wasn’t the answer.

  We had to keep moving forward and we had to be brave.

  Dorcas was brave. She was about the bravest old biddy that I ever met, and if I were half as brave as she was when I got old, I would be able to count myself as a badass just like her.

  “For Dorcas,” I whispered. No one heard me—not really.

  “What?” said Prianka.

  “Nothing,” I said as I cleared my throat and slowly pressed on the gas pedal. The van lurched forward and the mob of poxers that had been following so closely behind us that we could practically smell them disappeared.

  After a moment Trina said, “Do you think the dead will go
back to Walmart?” It wasn’t exactly the best thing to say to me, and my anxiety about leaving the adults reared its head one last time. I opened my mouth to say something, but Prianka reached one soft hand over and put it on my knee.

  “The adults will be fine,” she said. It was a declaration of fact, not just wishful thinking. Thankfully, Trina took Prianka’s statement at face value.

  “If you say so,” she said and leaned back into the crook of Jimmy’s muscled arm.

  Just then, the rain ramped up and suddenly it wasn’t just raining anymore. Little balls of ice began pelting the car. It was hail. I had seen hail before, maybe once or twice, but it was still a novelty. None of us said anything as the tiny pellets hit the windshield and the roof, and littered the ground with frozen rain that wasn’t sleet or snow, but something even weirder that you only ever hear about on television.

  “Wow,” said Jimmy as Trina nestled into him and stared out the window. In the back seat, Newfie continued to rumble like a very soft, old engine, and Andrew cooed nervously.

  The sky lit up again, and for a moment I thought I saw helicopters hanging in the clouds like vampire bats, waiting for the exact moment to swoop down on us and suck our blood dry.

  I knew that was stupid. I knew I was just seeing things.

  After all, everyone knew that vampires weren’t real.

  Just zombies.

  Thankfully the hail stopped after a minute or two. I was relieved. I don’t think any of us were prepared for bad weather yet. In another month or two the snows would come. What was going to happen to us then? Massachusetts wasn’t exactly known for being balmy. Short of huddling around campfires like cavemen, none of us knew how to ride out a New England winter without all the creature comforts we were accustomed to having.

  As for staying in Walmart, the gas tanks were only going to last for so long, not to mention the food, and then things were going to get mighty nippy.