by Dixon, Chuck
Doe and Mercy moved more cautiously here. They used shadows and cover and clung to the front of long blocks of row houses. Their eyes scanned for movement from the dark of doorways and alley openings. There were more terminated stinkers here scattered on the streets and walks and in piles at intersections. In places, they had been crushed beneath tires to a lumpy gelatin spread in obscene puddles on the asphalt. Mercy was grateful for the chill in the air. These streets must have reeked in the summer months.
“How far?” Doe hissed.
Mercy crouched and shielded the light of the phone’s screen with her hands. She used a thumb and index finger to zoom in on the map. The blue dot was two grids west and one north. A street marked Tillotson Avenue.
“Three blocks,” she said.
“You okay?”
“I will be when we find the RV.”
“Nothing to it,” he said.
“But to do it,” she said.
39
“You see that column of smoke from the city?” Smash said from his resting place on a chaise by the pool. He was back from a five-mile circuit run. They were doing their daily runs now without Caz nagging them. As much as the boys hated to admit it, the exercise was good for them. If nothing else, it was something to do.
“It started last night,” Jim Kim said from between rows of plants. He was filling a shopping cart with peppers and cucumbers
pulled from bushes in the raised beds.
“Looked like it was from near the arena,” Smash said.
“That’s what I thought.”
“What would start something like that?”
“Don’t know. That lightning storm two nights ago? Maybe there’s still gas in the mains.”
“We’re blind in here. We don’t know shit about what’s happening even five miles from here.” Smash rose from the chaise.
“Caz says we have to be ready for anything.” Jim Kim tossed Smash a banana pepper.
“How can we be ready for anything? That’s bullshit. We need intelligence. You can’t prepare without intelligence.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Jim Kim said.
“About what?” Smash nipped the end off of the sweet pepper and chewed.
“You’ll start arguing with me.”
“Tell me, Jimmy.”
“No.”
“It’s the internet, isn’t it?” Smash said in mock amazement.
Jim Kim didn’t answer. He pushed the full cart toward the store. Smash trotted across the garden center after him.
“It is! You’re talking about the internet again!” Smash said, catching up.
“It’s still up!” Jim Kim said with some heat.
“No fucking way!” Smash brayed.
They’d had this back and forth since back at the condo when the cable went out, taking their internet service with it.
“You can’t bring down the internet. It was designed to survive global nuclear war. It’s self-replicating. As long as there’s one server left, it’s still up,” Jim Kim said and pushed through into the store toward his canning center.
“You think AOL is still up? That Yahoo and Microsoft are still there? Let’s have Amazon send us the new Halo and a case of Bud then!” Smash said, jogging backward before the cart.
“I’m not talking about internet service providers. Most of them will be down or crashed. But the net is still there.”
“Like hope and change and Jesus?” Smash said, waving his fingers in the air with an eye roll.
“Tool Town would have its own intranet. Its own network. I’ll bet that’s still live through their satellite feed. This whole building is a wi-fi hot spot. The signs are all over the place.” There were signs around the store featuring Tool Town’s cartoon mascot, an ant in a carpenter’s overalls and painter’s cap, letting customers know that free wi-fi was available.
“Waste of time.” Smash snorted.
“I say it’s worth it, and I’m going to power the routers in the store office and get us back in touch with the world. What’s left of it.”
“You tell Der Fuhrer about this?” Smash’s nickname for Caz.
When the Marine wasn’t around, of course.
“I don’t need permission.” Jim Kim brought the cart to a stop at the tables he had set up for canning. Stacks of cased Mason jars stood by the propane grill he used to boil water and blanch vegetables.
“And what good is the internet to us? You going to go on Facebook? What’s going to be on there? ‘Today I ate my neighbor for breakfast. Plan on spending the day aimlessly wandering in search of human flesh. LOL?’”
“We’re not the only ones left. There’s other people. Maybe people we know,” Jim Kim said, turning his face away from Smash to drop peppers into a tub filled with clean water.
“Like who? Who do we know? Is this about that girl you thought was interested in you? The one with the buck teeth in Basic Accounting?”
Jim Kim whirled back on Smash. Face flushed, lips pressed tight.
“Okay. Okay. Play with the wi-fi. Fine,” Smash said. The two-way on Jim Kim’s belt trilled twice. “That’s Caz. It’s my turn in the OP,” Jim Kim said.
“Okay. See you,” Smash said. Jim Kim walked away into the store without answering.
In the shower, Smash replayed Jim Kim’s arguments in his mind.
“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid,” he said to himself, fists against the shower wall.
Jim Kim was missing his family.
40
“It’s in here somewhere,” Mercy said and ran ahead.
Doe followed her along a high fence running around a lot behind what looked like a factory building. Ten feet of cyclone fencing topped with another three feet of razor wire loops. A screen was attached to the interior of the fence; a lattice of vinyl strips. Whatever was on the other side was invisible from the street.
The sidewalks and street were strewn with remains, old and more recent. Skulls crushed or holed through. Black and crusted exit wounds. Some corpses with no heads at all.
She stopped to put her face close to a narrow gap in the strips. A lot with vehicles parked in neat rows. The building beyond was dark. A three-story brick structure with some kind of smokestack rising black against the stars.
“I don’t see the RV. The signal says it’s here,” she said as Doe caught up.
“We need a way in and a way out. Climbing the fence is not the way,” he said.
They moved low, following the fence around to a gateway. There was a guard shack inside. A sign informed them that this was municipal trash for the steam plant. An industrial incinerator. The rolling gate was made of steel, vertical bars set too close together for Mercy to wriggle through. That didn’t stop her from trying. Doe gripped her arm and pulled her back.
“And what am I supposed to do if you get yourself in trouble? Stand out here and watch?” he hissed.
She crouched on the sidewalk with the shotgun across her knees, head on a pivot for stinkers. Doe worked his picks in the brass padlock that secured the loops of a thick steel cable in place.
“Lock’s on the outside,” he whispered as he tinkered.
“Yeah?”
“Means they locked something in, not out.”
“And that means?”
“I don’t know. Just making an observation,” he said and smiled as the lock hoop slid from the barrel with a double snick. He slid the steel cable from its place, and together, they tested the gate. It slid open on rollers with little noise except for the rattle of the strands of barbed wire strung atop the gate. Once inside they rolled it closed again. Doe replaced the steel cable and lock but left the lock hanging open.
The signal was so close now that the locator app was no good to them. The RV was somewhere here in plain sight. They trotted between rows of cars and trucks, looking over the tops of the vehicles for the high profile of the Coachman. The cars were not wrecks. They looked operable. Many had cargo strapped down on their roofs. More were packed with belongings. Li
cense plates were from states a day’s drive in any direction all around the city.
A sound of shifting gravel brought them to a stop. Doe pressed Mercy back against a camper top on a pickup. He dropped low to peer around the truck’s fender. Two stinkers were moving along the lane. Both male. Both naked. Their skin had an oily sheen. Neither moved like the stinkers Doe was used to seeing. They moved faster, heads high and alert. Guard dogs. Doe felt a cold weight in his guts.
He turned to Mercy and placed a finger to her lips and the Browning to his own. They moved through the gap to the next lane. Doe looked back to see the two hunting corpses pass by without seeing them crouched in the dark between vehicles. The stinkers moved out of sight at a half trot toward the end of the lane.
“I see it. The RV,” Mercy said in a hush.
Doe leaned out to share her vantage. The Coachman was in a row at the back of the lot, rear bumper against the fence. He reached into his pocket and removed his key ring, keeping it clutched in his fist to prevent jingling. He found the key to the RV’s door and removed it from the ring and clamped the plastic cover between his teeth. He gently prodded Mercy forward.
They moved, ducked low, along the empty lane toward the row of vehicles lined up against the fence line. A scuff at the end of the lane behind them. Long shadows cast on the gravel to their right. Two stinkers approached along the back lane on a direct course for them. The pair, again both male, large, and buck naked, raised their heads and came on at a stumbling trot. They were faster by half than any dead Doe and Mercy had run into before.
Mercy reached the door of the Coachman first. She handed the shotgun to Doe.
“Give me the key!” she said, eyes wide.
Doe stood in the narrow gap between the RV and the van parked close next to it. Mercy worked the key in the lock and pulled the door open. It banged into the side of the van blocking passage between the two vehicles. She cast an eye around the interior of the Coachman. It was empty. No sign of struggle. No sign of blood. The trapped air still smelled of Mom’s cigarettes.
The shotgun boomed once. Twice. Something slammed against the side hard enough to rock the RV on its wheels. The door slammed closed, then opened again. Doe tossed the shotgun to the floor and dropped inside. Mercy stepped over him to pull the door closed, turning the lock in place. Hands hammered on the outside. The door shook in the frame.
“Fuckers are greased up like pigs. Somebody lubed them. Couldn’t get a hold,” Doe said, rising to his knees, his left arm hugged to his belly.
“Jesus, Doe,” Mercy said. Thick gobbets of blood, black in the moonlight, shone on the linoleum.
“They picked ones with the best teeth,” Doe said with a smile through the wince. The lines around his eyes were deep.
Lights came on outside, turning night to day. The hammering grew louder from the doorway. The door was shaking, the thin steel banging loose in the jamb.
“Put the key in the ignition for me,” Doe said, standing and fishing in his pocket with one hand until he found the ring. Mercy took it. He shouldered by her and sat in the driver’s seat. Mercy found the key and turned it while Doe pressed the accelerator down.
The engine ground three times before it grumbled to life. Through the big front windshield, they could see hands sliding on the bottom of the glass. They left trails of grease.
“Set yourself down and belt in,” Doe said. He placed the palm of his shaking left hand atop the steering wheel to work the gear shift. His ring and little finger were gone. Bitten or torn off, leaving an angry open gash down to the heel of his palm.
The RV jerked forward and came up against resistance. The hands on the windshield disappeared. The hammering on the door stopped. Doe worked the shift into reverse and slammed them back against the fence, then into low to rock them forward again. The front leapt up as the wheels rode over an obstruction. The Coachman banged its front end into cars on the other side of the lane and came to a bumpy stop. The hands commenced striking the walls of the RV all around, growing in volume. The door vibrated under the assault.
A new sound reached over the metallic percussion created by the stinkers.
Motor noise. High revving engines closing on them from somewhere out in the bright light coming through the windows.
41
Doe backed and filled, backed and filled, gunning the big camp bus back into the cyclone fence with all the speed and weight he could muster. The steering wheel was slick with blood. He maneuvered it as best he could by using the cuff of his jacket against the curved surface. His right hand worked the shift arm.
He could feel the rear striking a post behind them. Foot pressed to the accelerator, he raced forward once more. Mercy was thrown into her straps on impact with parked cars. Then thrown back as the RV reversed at top speed on a bouncing course over the bodies of stinkers fallen beneath the wheels.
Sudden beams of light streaked through the shadowed rear of the Coachman. Someone was firing a weapon at them. A cabinet door exploded off its hinges. Plastic dishware tumbled loose. Dust swirled in the crisscrossed strings of brilliance growing in number behind them. Somewhere, glass shattered. Semi-auto fire from more than one shooter.
Doe stood on the accelerator now. The wheels ground against the weight of the fence post, filling the cabin with smoke. Mercy felt the rear of the Coachman rise sharply then fall. In an instant, they were free. The RV slewed at top speed through the fence and onto a street where it spun to broadside a row of dumpsters. It dragged a long section of fence with it. The chain links raised a plume of sparks off the asphalt. Bits of vinyl stripping wicked away in all directions. The floor canted as the RV tipped radically before dropping back onto its shocks.
Mercy watched through her window. Brighter lights stabbed out of the stadium, brilliance bathing the lot from the light towers. Stinkers stumbled through the new gap in the fence. Some were entangled in the razor wire and moved like drowning victims to free themselves. Then all swung out of view as the Coachman straightened and raced down the street.
She shifted her view to the big side mirror. It had been holed by a bullet but still offered her a fractured view of points of light following them away from the lot. A burring whine rose in volume behind them.
“Bikes. Guys on bikes,” she said. “How many?”
“Does it matter?”
Mercy unbuckled and staggered back into the RV to get a dishtowel from a drawer. The floor bucked and swayed under her. She dropped to all fours to crawl to Doe’s seat and pulled herself up the back. She leaned over him to wrap his hand as best she could to slow the bleeding. Her cheek against his, she could feel the sweat beading his skin. He was shivering as if with cold.
“Sorry, Mercy girl,” he said.
“About what?” she said, tying the corners of the towel over his hand.
“Not finding your mama. Raquel.”
“I’m glad we didn’t find them here. Means they’re still alive somewhere. We’ll find them.”
“You maybe. Not me,” Doe said, his voice husky with pain.
“Bullshit,” Mercy said and clung to him as the RV swayed.
“Buckle yourself back in now,” he said.
“Bullshit to that too, cousin,” she said and, picking up the shotgun from the deck, stumbled back to the bedroom.
She knelt on the bed to reload the shotgun. She used the butt to knock the blinds down from the window. The headlights of the following bikes stabbed through the glass. Five bikes going full out. The RV was on a straight run of road gunned to the max. Still, the bikes were closing on it.
She stood spraddled on the bucking mattress and trained the shotgun on the nearest rider. The buckshot blew the Plexiglas pane out in a single piece. The load of pellets was a clean miss. It startled the rider enough to make him compress the brakes and sent him into a lethal ass-over-head tumble. Another biker swerved and fell into a long slide, winding up against a curb. A bike stopped for the fallen rider to climb on and ride bitch.
Mer
cy pumped and fired to send a skein of wild shot out behind them. The remaining riders bored on but kept their distance. They appeared insect-like, heads in helmets with dark wraparound visors. The tandem rider stood up off the seat behind the man bent over the handlebars. He held something black in his hands.
A stuttering white flash and the bedroom of the RV was filled with flying lead. Mercy rolled to the floor, face pressed to the carpet. The paneling splintered to shards and dust. Insulation drifted down from ragged holes punched in the ceiling. The metal shell of the Coachman rang like it was under a violent hail storm. The lights through the rear window grew brighter. The growling of the engines grew louder and rose in pitch.
In the lull of gunfire, she leapt to the window and stuck the shotgun out at the nearest bike. It was racing up on them, not thirty feet in the rear. The rider bent low over the bars.
A full charge of double-ought took the rider in the chest and flung him from the saddle.
The tandem riders swerved around the fallen bike that was spinning on its side along the asphalt like a top.
Mercy was thrown flying against a wall. The shotgun spun from her hands as she bounced down onto the mattress. She crawled across the floor, hands hunting until she found the comfort of the wooden stock once more. The RV jinked again, and she rolled over the floor to come up hard against the bathroom door.
Mercy scuttled over a mess of scattered dishes, silverware, and other kitchen detritus spilled from cabinets and drawers. She reached Doe, who was hunched with his arm over the wheel and his good hand locked in a grip with his unmoving gaze cast forward. He was pale, the color drained from his face and red eyes circled with gray flesh. The gauge lights took on a crimson hue from his blood splashed across them. Out the front windows, the headlights washed back and forth over wrecks and debris as Doe swerved to find the path of least resistance. They had no destination except away from the pursuing bikers.