by Dixon, Chuck
“Jim Kim is going to pop some microwave popcorn.”
“You have Ferris Bueller?”
“Naw. Don’t have that one,” Smash said.
“Too bad. You guys enjoy your movies. I’ll walk post,” Caz said.
Once summer ended, they planned to drywall the interior of the house and carpet the floors. Caz suggested they’d need a heat source as well once the weather turned colder. He would work out how to vent it. They could also plumb themselves a shower room with an in-line water heater so they wouldn’t have to shower outside in the garden center during the winter. Jim Kim suggested a kitchen addition. He read up on canning and wanted a dedicated workspace for preserving the vegetables they were growing.
Now isolated in a box within a box, Caz suggested they divide their days into watches. No more than two of them inside the house at any one time. At least one of them would walk post, watching the entrances and doing regular roof patrols to check out the surrounding environment for trouble.
And there was evidence of trouble out in Gomerland.
The Army trucks and loudspeaker cattle-calls ended when the warm months of summer came. For a few weeks, it was stone quiet around the Stores at Wellington.
Seated in lawn chairs on the roof, Smash and Caz enjoyed the night breeze under a full moon. The pop and roar of a motorcycle engine rose, whining from somewhere in the distance. It grew in volume, drawing closer. A dozen or more bikes going full throttle down the raised interstate that ran behind Tool Town. The bikes were invisible from where they sat. They could see the glow of headlights, beams slashing the dark as the riders weaved between the gantlet of abandoned wrecks up on the six-lane.
Caz and Smash listened for the bikes to come off the next exit ramp two miles to the north. They didn’t. The rumbling train of bikes kept on until the span of the overpass was dark and silent once more.
“We’re exposed here on the roof. We need to set up an OP,” Caz said.
“Oh pee?”
“Observation post. Someplace we can watch without being seen.”
The following night they hauled block to the roof through the trap. Smash and Jim Kim mixed mortar that Caz pulled up in buckets. He built a block enclosure around the trap door. On each face of it, he left view slits that allowed an observer to watch the surroundings from concealment. The following night he set a steel security door into an opening. He also attached a sheet metal roof and painted the exterior of the block a tan color to match the brick of the store’s façade. It was a rough construction. But from the lot, the OP would look like it had always been there. The enclosure also made the trap door more secure.
Caz worked quickly and quietly. The only sounds were the clink of block on block or the scrape of a trowel. Not enough noise to make the gomers shifting around on the lot to take notice. He stopped the work a few times when he heard something far away. A rhythmic thump from somewhere in the direction of the city. Caz stepped to the edge of the roof to listen. It was music. Something with a lot of bass. Whether it was live or recorded, he couldn’t tell. The city stood white in the moonlight against the sky. Tombstones against a black velvet night. No lights were visible. He couldn’t determine where the music was coming from. A new sound joined the beat. Gunfire. Sporadic at first then growing. The music cut off as though a plug was pulled. The crack of guns continued for a while. Caz recognized the bark of AKs on full auto. The guns died away, leaving the night quiet once more.
Caz found the boys at the house watching a movie. On the screen, a pair of marionettes were having sex.
“Off your asses!” he commanded.
“What the hell, Caz?” Smash said, sending a bowl of chips flying from his lap.
“You two are sitting here watching puppets fuck and stuffing your faces while we have a shit-storm brewing out there,” Caz said, snatched the remote from Jim Kim’s hand and snapping the TV off.
“What is it?” Jim Kim said, alarmed.
“You’re even making my dog fat,” Caz said, face darkening. Wendy was lapping up spilled chips from the floor.
“We’re compromised. We need to push your car out from under that fire ladder,” Caz said.
“Now?” Smash said, standing.
“Right now.” Caz walked from the house, and the boys followed.
They exited through the back door of the store. No gomers were in sight. The remains of the bagboy still lay at the foot of the steel steps. White bone poked through the folds of the supermarket smock.
Wendy danced around their legs, pleased to be outside after months inside the store.
It took under a minute to put the Sorento in neutral and shove it clear of the fire ladder. The car rolled to a stop against the chain-link fence at the back of the lot. The boys turned to run back to the store.
“Stop,” Caz said.
Smash and Jim Kim froze mid-stride.
Wendy’s ears were up, his nose poked in the air and sniffing.
Caz unlimbered his rifle and raised it to traverse the front sights along the hedge of sumac fronds beyond the fence.
A low growl grumbled in the back of Wendy’s throat.
“Gomers?” Smash hissed.
“That’s not her gomer growl,” Caz said. He raised his rifle sight, peering through the 10x scope mounted atop the action.
Up on the guard wall of the interstate, a single figure stood watching them. A silhouette. A man with a rifle or shotgun in his hands. He watched them directly, not moving. The weapon was held against his body and not aimed at them.
Caz sighted on the man’s center mass. The man stood a while longer before hopping down from the wall and out of sight onto the roadway.
“Shit just got serious,” Caz said.
33
Mercy woke up first. She left the truck to go back into the house, where she found that there was water pressure. She took a cold shower, washing her hair and scrubbing three days of grease and blood off her skin. She found a toothbrush still in its wrapper and brushed her teeth using the remnants at the bottom of a bottle of mouthwash. She was still tired, but being clean was more of a restorative than sleep.
There was a lot of dried blood on her clothes. Using a hairbrush, she scraped her jacket and sneakers clean as much as she could. Her t-shirt was black with it and smelled like raw chicken. She tossed it in the trash along with her sweat-yellowed panties. She found a long sleeve pullover three sizes too big in a jumble of clothes left in the dryer. Tucked in and sleeves rolled up it would do. It was clean, anyway. A forgotten tub filled with folded sweaters on a shelf in a closet. The people ran off in the summer months. Mercy set the tub down in the laundry room. There were socks in the dryer. No kind of underwear in her size. She’d go commando for now.
In the kitchen, she found Doe at the table, putting tuna on crackers for their breakfast.
“No mayonnaise,” he grumped.
“Poor baby. Coffee?” she said.
“There’s some instant. No way to warm it up.”
“I’ll make it if you do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Take a shower, cousin,” she said, making a pew face and waving a hand in front of her face.
Mercy had cold coffee ready when he came back to the kitchen, scrubbed and wearing a t-shirt he found. She laughed at the colorful letters on the front of the shirt. Don’t Hassle Me. I’m A Local. When she recovered, she noticed that he’d shaved his head bald.
“What’s this about?” she said, running her fingers through the bristles.
“Gives those stinkers less to grab onto. You need to cut your hair too, girl,” Doe said, wincing at his first sip of coffee.
“Guess so,” Mercy said and twiddled a strand of her shoulder-length curls between her fingers. She hunted in the kitchen drawers until she came up with a pair of scissors. She dropped them to the table by his hand.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
After he finished a rough blunt-cut of her hair, they packed up to leave. Doe left nothing lo
nger than four inches. Mercy ran her hands over her head and was glad there was no mirror in view. There was a gold-colored knit cap hanging from a hook by the door. She pulled it tight over her head.
They filled as many bottles as they could find with tap water and loaded them into the truck alongside the dirt bikes. They packed boxes of anything else they thought they might be able to use. Kitchen matches, knives, assorted tools, a can opener, sheets, towels, the rest of the instant coffee and an Indian pattern blanket. And the tub of sweaters.
Doe rolled the garage door open and Mercy inched the truck onto the drive. It was full-on night. They’d slept the day away. The street was empty in either direction. She slid over to let her cousin get behind the wheel.
“Where’s the dot now?” he asked.
“Up in the city. It’s not moving.”
“Their battery’s holding. Thank God for small favors.”
“But ours isn’t. We need to recharge and real soon.” Mercy held up the phone to him. The battery was well below half capacity. Near empty.
“We’ll find a store on the way to the interstate,” he said and gunned them off the drive.
There was a rack of carded recharge sets at a Circle K. A stinker was crouching by the Redbox dispenser out front of the store and rose to step toward the truck. The guy was dressed like a farmer in a blue work shirt and overalls. His arm was gone below the elbow. Maggots spilled from the ragged stump as he waved it toward them. Doe capped him in the head with a point-blank shot from the Browning. There were more stinkers stumbling on the roadway. They turned at the sound and altered direction.
Nothing else much of use was left in the Circle K. The place was fogged with the dumpster stench of rotting food. Doe snagged a drum of coffee creamer and a bag of gummi worms that remained, remarkably, still sealed. He also pulled a gimme cap from a rack by the register. It was blue with the Superman ‘S’ symbol on the front. Mercy plugged the recharger into the cigarette lighter in the dash. The stripes on the little battery images rose and fell, rose and fell like a pulse.
Doe did a three-point turn in the lot that sent the nearest stinker flying over the trunk of a Toyota. He clipped a second one on the way off the lot; a hipster wearing skinny jeans and a pair of amber-lensed Oakleys askew on what was left of his face.
The pickup blew down the road toward the interstate. He bumped over the concrete median to switch into the oncoming lane. They needed to avoid the mash of abandoned cars and trucks lined up all the way onto the southbound onramp curving ahead to the right. Mercy looked through the glass as they ripped by. The access ramp was packed tight all the way to the yield lane, where a semi was overturned. The trailer had been twisted by some incredible force. The steel was burnt black and flaking. From the rust and sun-bleached finishes on the double rank of cars, she knew that this tableau of motionless metal was months old. Doors gaped where they’d been left open by fleeing drivers and passengers. A school bus lay turned on its back on a grassy swale along the roadway.
Whatever happened here went down at the start of the panic.
She was looking at a graveyard.
Doe navigated down the oncoming lane and around meandering stinkers and abandoned cars to hook a left up onto the northbound ramp. The ramp was cleared down the center. On either side, wrecks were pressed against the guard rail or scattered in the weeds beyond the shoulders.
Up on the raised surface of the interstate, the six southbound lanes and both shoulders were packed side to side with derelict cars and trucks long ago forsaken. A parking lot five cars wide and miles and miles long. An endless serpent of cold dead steel and dust-dulled glass unmoving in the early morning gloom.
The northbound lane was cleared in the center as though a great beast had plowed aside the stalled machines. A broad swath was cut along the middle of the road creating an open path between furrows of vehicles shoved into one another or crushed against the guardrails. Something had rolled through here and brushed aside every obstacle. That explained the slow progress of the GPS signal they were following.
Doe brought the truck to a shuddering halt. He opened the door and stepped out. Mercy leaned out her open window, looking back the way they came.
Behind them, the northbound lane was as crammed with dead cars as the southbound. The open lane began at the exit ramp and led north.
“The riders. The crows. Had to be. They did this. Made a way for themselves,” Doe said.
“How?” Mercy said.
“Some big ass sumbitch of a machine that just bulled a lane clear for them. I don’t know.”
“We going to follow?”
“I don’t know,” Doe said and got back in the truck, keeping the door open and one foot on the running board.
“We damn sure won’t miss them going this way,” Mercy said, dropping back into her seat.
“Once we commit, there’s no way off except the exits.”
“So?”
“We don’t know what we’ll run into farther along.”
“This is the fastest way,” Mercy said.
“Fastest way into trouble too,” he said and pulled the door shut.
They sat looking at the river of asphalt stretching before them between high banks of battered metal.
“Fuck it,” Doe said and put the truck in gear and drove north down the canyon of steel.
34
Smash and Jim Kim lay on the cool concrete floor in front of the paint department. They were sodden with sweat and gasping for air. They’d completed almost four circuits around the interior of the store. Caz measured the course. Four circuits was a mile. He wanted them to do twenty a day.
“He’s trying to kill us,” Smash said. He held his hands pressed to the stitch in his side.
“He’s trying to make us into Marines.” Jim Kim’s legs were aflame from protesting calf muscles.
“Make us his bitches, more like,” Smash said.
The steady clop, clop, clop of Caz’s boot soles were coming toward them from cleaning supplies. They struggled to their feet and trotted toward the turn at lawn care.
“Move your asses!” the jarhead called as he lapped them once again. Wendy loped behind, tongue lolling. Caz turned to slow his pace, trotting backward before them. He called back a cadence as he vanished into the shadows between skylights.
“I don’t know but I been told
Recon Marines are mighty bold.
You see us coming, better step aside.
Last ones didn’t.
Last ones died.”
Smash fell out in the middle of the seventh circuit. He dropped to his knees and puked his guts out.
“Clean up on aisle three!” Caz sang out as he jogged past.
“Son of a bitch,” Smash growled to himself before rolling onto
his back. He only stirred when Jim Kim lapped him.
“If I have to do this, then you have to do this,” Jim Kim gasped as he trotted by.
Smash got to his feet and stumbled back to jogging pace. Spent after twenty laps, the boys dropped into the pool fully clothed. They’d done the final rounds in a daze of pain, heads swimming.
“Tomorrow’s run will be easier,” Caz said, leaning on the pool wall to speak to Smash and Jim Kim. They were panting with open mouths, faces red from exertion. Caz had run twice the circuits they had and looked like he could run ten more.
“Tomorrow?” Smash wheezed.
“Every day. Playtime is over. If we want to keep this place, we need eyes open and bodies ready. Rest up a while and get something to eat. You have weapons training this afternoon.” Caz jogged away.
“Why are we doing this?” Smash whined when he knew the jarhead was gone.
“We have to carry our weight, Smash. We need him more than he needs us.”
“It’s like gym class every day. I hated gym class. And who died and made him Hitler? Guy can’t even tell a boy dog from a girl dog.”
“I know Tool Town was your idea. But Caz was here first. If he told us t
o leave, we’d have to do it.”
“You think he’d shoot us if we don’t do what he says?” Smash said, brows knit with concern.
“I think he’d shoot us to feed his dog,” Jim Kim said and lowered his head beneath the water, blowing bubbles as he sank.
35
The little blue dot remained stationary as their red triangle closed on it over the course of the day. The double yellow line whipped back and forth on its way beneath the hood of the Ford. Clouds of flies pelted the truck in a filthy sleet. The wipers turned the insect deluge to a brown-green smear on the windshield.
Doe wore a pair of cheap shades he found in the glove compartment. They were women’s glasses with slanted lenses and little silver cats at the corners.
“You look stupid,” Mercy said with a head shake.
“I happen to think I look sexy,” Doe said.
Mercy made duck lips.
“You think Raquel has the phone on her?” Doe said.
“More like she hid it in the RV somewhere.”
“Her battery’s got to go dead soon.”
“My phone will remember where the last signal was. That’s how the locator app works,” Mercy said, eyes hypnotic on the screen.
She kept her gaze away from the walls of the wrecked vehicles racing by either side of them. There were bodies in those mangled cars. Each time she looked, she’d see some ruin of a human form crushed within the metal shells. Some of them still moved, animated by whatever infernal force kept the stinkers moving when they should be still.
The roadway ahead was stained with the remains of stinkers crushed beneath whatever machine cleared the path. White shards of bone littered the way ahead. The tires made a crunching noise like driving on a highway spread with rock salt.
To drown out the road sound, Mercy snapped on the radio and played with the dial. Fuzzy static and the shrill droning of some kind of government alert signal. An automated broadcast occupying a frequency abandoned long ago.