by Dixon, Chuck
“Because no one is stopping to pick up shit to build a deck when their flesh-eating neighbors are after their ass.”
“It’ll have electric?”
“There’s a whole department for gas generators and a five-hundred-gallon fuel tank in the rental center.”
“What makes the place so…defensible’?” Jim Kim glanced at the list on the legal pad.
“We have cinder blocks, lumber, tools. We can fortify it from the inside. I’ve worked it all out.”
“Looks like you have. This is all post-graduate work for a post-apocalypse lifestyle.”
“That’s what I’m telling you!” Smash struck the tabletop with the palm of his hand.
Jim Kim picked discs of pepperoni the consistency of guitar picks off a slice and ignored Smash grinning at him from the other side of the table.
Jim Kim said at last, “So, how do we get there?”
11
“We’re out of cigarettes and lady things,” Mom said.
Doe looked up from the picnic table where he was showing Mercy how to strip and clean the shotgun.
“And what am I supposed to do about that?”
“You could run on into Harrow. See what might be left there,” Mom said.
“We have no idea what’s going on there,” Doe said.
“Doe’s right. Could be anything happening. Bunch of them monsters. Holdouts with guns. Government. Anything,” Mercy said.
“There’s other stuff we need. Otherwise, we’re going to have to get back on the road,” Mom said.
Doe sighed.
“Take the minivan. It’s quieter. It’s a hybrid,” Mom said and dropped the keys on the table by him.
On his deer hunts, Doe had found a service road that ran near the back of Sleepy Hollow. It led past the water treatment plant out to a residential road that would bring him up on Harrow without using any kind of county or township road. Less chance of roadblocks or ambush that way.
Doe had the key ring he took from the manager’s office. He undid the chain and padlock to open the gate in the cyclone fence to allow the minivan onto the water plant property. He pulled the minivan through and was reaching around to resecure the padlock and chain.
“Hold up a second,” Mercy called, trotting up, the shotgun held by the strap and slung over her shoulder.
“Mercy child,” Doe began.
“You need someone to watch your back,” she said and pulled the gate post from his hand.
“That should be your uncle,” he said.
“Besides, you’re gonna shop for lady stuff ?” she said, skipping to the passenger door of the minivan.
He secured the gate in place again, locking the padlock. He pulled the padlock key from the ring and added it to the collection on his own keyring. They drove into the trees for the service road. “I notice you didn’t mention Bill Tom watching your back,” Mercy said.
“I don’t want that asshole anywhere near my back.”
“Mom’ll drop him soon like I said.”
“In exchange for who, girl? In case you ain’t noticed, your mama’s dating options have become limited of late,” Doe said.
Mercy laughed at that. Doe smiled at her, bobbing his head.
With the electric mode engaged, the mini rolled soundlessly under a canopy of trees down a street lined with three-bedroom singles. Cape Cods, Dutch colonials, and ranchers built decades before. Lawns were untended and high with weeds. A few cars were parked in the street at angles. More than one was a burned-out hulk.
The houses showed signs of either looting or hasty departures or both. Sidewalks and driveways were crowded with debris left behind like a carelessly planned yard sale. Garages and front doors gaped open, left that way by owners who never planned to return. A refrigerator sat in the street, a victim of a last-minute change of heart. Bicycles lay where they were dropped.
Some of the houses were still locked up tight. They watched these most closely for signs of holdouts hidden within.
A mob of black turkey buzzards bobbled their heads toward them from a driveway then returned to the heap of fly-blown rags they were pulling at.
They rode with windows down, listening. Mercy cradled the shotgun and watched for movement along the radius of her vision. Doe did the same from behind the wheel, the Browning on his seat under this thigh.
“I don’t hear anything,” Mercy said low.
“That’s good,” Doe said, head low to scan the sidewalks and lawns.
“I mean not even birds. Or dogs barking,” Mercy said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Shouldn’t there be dogs?”
“Maybe they took them with them.”
“Maybe some. Not all.”
“Okay,” Doe said, either agreeing or wishing she’d stop talking. With the help of the Garmin, they found a snaking path through the concentric loops of residential streets that led to the businesses that lined the county road. Doe drew the mini to the curb on a street that paralleled the main street. On one side was the rear of the row of stores that ran four blocks through the middle of Harrow. To the other side, behind elms and maples, were some bigger single homes and a two-story brick apartment building that looked almost a hundred years old. They sat for a moment simply listening. “You staying or going?” Doe said.
“You’re kidding, right?” Mercy said and opened her door.
“Then let’s go shopping,” Doe said, stepping from the mini and wedging the Browning under his belt tight against his belly.
12
From the roof, they could see the parking lot surrounding the building and the fenced back lot of a shopping center that fronted on the state highway. They counted five infected milling around the lots.
They sauntered and stumbled in a search with no pattern. Heads turned in a slow-motion scan for something to stalk down and eat. Evidence of earlier kills was in sight. They were brown stains on the asphalt now; scatterings of rags and bones covered with flies.
Smash recognized a kid he used to see skateboarding around the complex. The kid still wore his knee pads and helmet. An arm hung from his shoulder by strips of tendons, swung back and forth as he walked. There was a woman in bloody nurse’s scrubs. And a fat old dude who was in his birthday suit. The other buildings and the trees around them obscured their view of the other lots. A very rough census placed the possible number of infected in the complex at forty or more.
Jim Kim was studying statistics and insisted that, barring an unforeseen swarm, his educated guess would hold.
Smash had a plastic tub of car keys in his hand. He matched one of the sets to a Nissan minivan parked on the north lot. He tapped the alarm key. The mini started beeping and blinking. The nurse and the naked fatty were closest. Their heads pivoted. They picked up their saunter to a shamble and began making for the source of the noise. The other three were moving in that direction as well. Another stepped into view from around the corner of Building D, a heavy-set woman in a running suit. She headed for the honking until she tripped over a curb and fell sprawling. Prostrate, the woman continued on toward the noise, crawling on her belly over the asphalt, dragging herself by one remaining arm. Smash depressed the button again, and the mini went silent.
The infected continued toward it for a few paces before staggering to a stop, heads swiveling, trying to recall what drew them this far.
“That’s how we get to your car. We draw them all away to the Nissan while we make it out the south door to the Kim-mobile,” Smash said.
“I guess that will work every time,” Jim Kim said without commitment.
“You know it will!” Smash slapped his roommate’s shoulder. “Let’s go get our shit together!”
13
The Nissan mini’s alarm honked. Beep beep...beep... Its lights flashed. Yellow. White. Yellow. White.
A gaggle of infected clustered toward it until there were more than thirty crowded around the car. More were on the approach.
Jim Kim watched the gathering through
the window. He was sweating buckets in a Gore-Tex parka with the sleeves wrapped in layers of duct tape. His jeans were wrapped the same way. It was Smash’s idea for quick and dirty bite-proofing. They both wore the same protection. On their heads were football helmets they’d found in a sports memorabilia collection in one of the condos they’d raided for food. Smash got Eagles. Jim Kim wore Oakland. In the early spring weather, the outfits were like wearing portable saunas. The bulk of them made it harder to move.
“I think it turns out this plan sucks,” Jim Kim offered. Sweat ran into his eyes from his soaked hair under the helmet. He watched the congregation of clawing and stumbling dead through a window.
“Is all your stuff packed?” Smash said. He was wedging a folder of game discs and movies into a canvas tote next to the Xbox and controllers.
“This was supposed to draw them away from us. I think it’s calling more of them here,” Jim Kim said.
“Too late! We have a plan. Our shit is packed, and we’re rolling!” Smash said. He hefted the tote and a backpack loaded with bottled water and snacks and headed for the door. He held a fire ax in his fist.
“What if my Sorento doesn’t start?”
“It’ll start! Move your ass!”
Jim Kim picked up a claw hammer and followed him.
Down in the south foyer, they had the rest of their goods stacked on a rolling trolley. Smash would open the door and run to open up the car. Jim Kim would follow, pushing the cart. Smash was at the foyer doors looking out through the glass. It was smeared with fingerprints where, over the past two months, infected had tried to get inside.
“Looks clear,” Smash said. He pulled his massive keyring from the pocket of his parka. It jangled with dozens of keys he’d collected over his employment history. He worked through the ring until he found the key he wanted. It fit the padlock clasped in a tangle of steel chain strung between the handles of the twin doors. He tossed the lock and chain aside and shot the deadbolts before pushing the doors open.
Smash held the doors open until Jim Kim had pushed the trolley through and was clear. The minivan was still bleating for attention on the other side of the building. Smash ran ahead, depressing the start button on the Sorento’s key remote. In its parking spot twenty yards away, the little Kia coughed and came to life.
Jim Kim shoved the trolley over the parking lot. He looked side to side as much as the helmet would allow. Out of his limited peripherals, he saw two figures moving by the dumpster enclosure. The signature halting step of the infected.
“I told you this plan sucks,” Jim Kim said, gasping from the exertion after weeks of lying around the condo stuffing himself with junk food.
“We got this. Load the car,” Smash said. He had the doors and trunk open.
Jim Kim slammed the trolley into the rear of the Sorento and began heaving bags and boxes into the trunk. He turned his head to see Smash approaching two figures shambling toward him from the dumpster enclosure. The largest was a beefy guy in mechanic’s overalls. His lower jaw swung loose on a hinge of muscle. The second was a woman in a sundress dragging a greasy train of her own entrails behind her. They both stank enough to make Jim Kim regret that thawed pizza dinner. Clouds of flies swarmed around them in a filthy, buzzing contrail of tiny black specks.
Smash stepped up close and swung at the mechanic’s head. And missed.
Jim Kim pivoted his head around to look for more newcomers, but the helmet was too large and his head turned inside the helmet, blinding him. He tore it off his head and threw it aside in time to see a guy crossing the lot toward him, stumbling over a concrete wheel stop. The guy was barefoot and in his underwear. His upper body was singed like a burnt steak. The whites of his eyes stared lidless from scorched flesh.
“Hey!” Jim Kim called.
Smash was busy. He’d imbedded the ax head in the mechanic’s skull. He had a foot on the corpse’s chest and was trying to free the blade from the bone. The woman in the sundress was closing on him, hands outstretched and grasping. Her mouth worked in a wordless shout.
Jim Kim picked up the discarded football helmet and beaned the underwear guy in the head. The guy ignored it and kept coming. Jim Kim spun left and right, keeping the trolley between them. He looked past the guy who was hissing between lips partially seared shut, to see three more infected coming from between two garage buildings. One was a little girl with her hands gnawed off.
“Shit!”
The scorched guy was trying to climb over the cargo on the trolley, hungry eyes fixed on his prey. His fingers flexed and closed. Jim Kim released the handle and backed away. The trolley rumbled to a halt against the Sorento.
“We have to go! Now!” Jim Kim howled.
“Fuck that. Load the car.” Smash trotted up and drove the blunt end of the ax into the scorched guy’s face, spilling him from the trolley.
The trunk was loaded to capacity. The door would never close on the amount of crap they had stuffed inside. Jim Kim threw the rest of the luggage into the back seat. He glanced back. The mechanic lay unmoving with his skull caved in. The lady in the sundress was now missing a leg and making slow progress as she was hopelessly tangled in a slick welter of her own guts.
“Loaded!” Jim Kim called out.
“Shotgun!” Smash yelled, backing to the Sorento with the gore crusted ax in his fists.
Jim Kim gunned the engine, and they were off into the wilds of their dead new world.
14
They heard the motor sounds when they were in the Walgreen’s.
They had a heap of bags loaded with what little they could find that was of use. Sunscreen, aspirins, gauze, antacids, motor oil, vitamins, some out of date magazines, and, of course, the feminine napkins that were at the top of the list.
No luck with any cigarettes. That particular cupboard was bare.
Mercy heard her cousin’s hiss from two aisles over. She dropped to a crouch and listened hard.
A rising puttering noise from somewhere outside. It grew louder and roared by the storefront. A motorcycle of some kind. It was followed by several more. The windows at the front of the store rattled with the vibration of their passage.
She heard paper rattling and plastic containers being kicked aside as Doe came closer to where she was in the allergy/incontinence aisle. He came around the corner, bent low, head below the top of the displays, and the Browning in his hand.
“They’re going to be coming in here,” he whispered.
They left the bags piled in the shopping cart. Doe took Mercy by the wrist and led her to the stock room in the back and the rear entry door they’d used to get inside. The door opened into a half flight concrete stairwell topped by a Bilco door.
Doe levered the Bilco door open as slow as he could. The bark and cough of motorcycles were close enough to make the steel door hum. Through a gap of two inches, he eyed the street. A guy on a dirt bike zipped by, followed by another.
They didn’t look like part of a gang. They were helmeted and wearing black t-shirts and jeans. He couldn’t see their faces, but they looked young to him. There were tats on their bare arms, but that didn’t mean shit these days when every punk with a couple hundred bucks could get inked at almost any mall. More telling was their armament. The first boy wore a shoulder holster and had a fire ax strapped across the handlebars. The second wore a big sheathed machete on his back in a kind of bandolier.
“We can’t stay here,” Doe mouthed to Mercy. She nodded back, swallowing hard.
Doe waited until the motor sounds lulled. He raised the Bilco door and held it open for Mercy to climb out. They moved along the rear wall of the Walgreen’s, keeping dumpsters and a parked van between them and the street. The motor sounds returned. This time it was something larger coming. An SUV or truck. They crab-walked to the rear of the next store where there was a doorway in a recessed opening. They pressed themselves back as far as they could while a fire truck grumbled past, a pumper with a big bank of lights on top of the cab and sheet
steel bolted all around to offer added protection to the wheel wells. A man wearing a fireman’s helmet and goggles sat stop the firetruck. He held a black rifle across his knees, something military with a fat magazine.
“They’re scouting. Looking for people,” Doe said close to Mercy’s ear.
She didn’t ask why. Didn’t want to know.
He shouldered the door in the recess open. It let them into the bottom of a one flight stairwell. They followed it up to where it ended on a landing with a doorway set either side with a window overlooking the street. Apartments above the stores. The right one was shut tight. The left was open. Doe led, the Browning held up in both hands. Mercy walked close by his side, the shotgun forgotten in her hands as she goggled at the interior cast in the sunlight from the front windows.
It was a one-bedroom and took only moments to sweep. Furniture was still in place in the living room that fronted on the street. Clean and economical. The kitchen was a mess of broken dishes and scattered utensils. Sign of someone fleeing in panic. The bathroom was the same. Unwanted items discarded on the floor and in the tub. Stuff lay where it had been pulled from the closets in a rush. The place was empty.
“Stay back from the windows,” Doe said and closed the door to the hallway without throwing the deadbolt.
Outside, the sound of idling engines and voices was followed by breaking glass.
“What do we do, Doe?” Mercy said through her teeth.
“We wait. This town is picked clean. They won’t stay,” he said.
“What about Mom and Fuller and all?”
“We’ll call them on the cell in a bit. Let me think, okay?”
She sat on a sofa that gave way under her. Sprung springs and tired padding. It smelled of stale marijuana and spilled beer. Doe took up a position by the broad front windows, pressed in a corner where he could eye the street at an angle.
“What do they want here?” she hissed.