by Dixon, Chuck
Jim Kim sipped fresh air as he dropped his sights. He felt Smash relax behind him.
A string of popping sounds rose over the engine rumble. The man in the parka was firing controlled bursts at something on the other side of the span. He swept right, then left, then moved the rifle to take isolated single shots.
Slinging the rifle, the man turned. Jim Kim was startled by the full-face mask the man wore. It bore the visage of a human skull. Jim Kim couldn’t help but flinch. He felt the man’s eyes on him from within the twin black holes of the mask. It was only his imagination. The distance was too great, and Jim Kim was unmoving and invisible in the deep shadows.
The man climbed back down into the cab. The big plow shuddered as the truck dropped into gear and trundled down the highway.
The walkie squelched. “Coming back,” Caz said.
“All three?” Jim Kim said, voice hoarse.
“All of us. And dinner.”
Caz skinned the buck to hang in the cold, dry air of the garden center. He cut a thin strip of raw shank meat and checked it for worms before he tossed it to Wendy, waiting anxiously at his feet. The dog practically inhaled the blood-rich flesh.
Mercy warmed herself by a kerosene heater and told Jim Kim what had happened. Smash was up in the rooftop shack.
“I seen that plow before. Or maybe one like it.”
“You told us,” Jim Kim said.
“That driver heard us. We got ourselves hid in the brush.”
“He wasn’t shooting at you?”
“He picked off the stinkers. They turned away from us when he stopped on the road. Otherwise, he’d of seen where they were heading. Right where we were lying in the sumacs on our bellies.” She fought down a shiver that came from something deeper than a chill.
Caz stripped off vinyl gloves as he walked to them.
“I’ll let it hang overnight and quarter it,” he said, fanning his hands over the heater’s top vents.
“Then we can eat it?” Jim Kim said.
“Naw. Have to get the wild out of it. Let it marinate a few days in apple juice and some of those scallions you grew,” Caz said.
“Gamey otherwise,” Mercy said with a squinch of her nose.
“I hope you can explain that to Smash. He’s already talking about Bambi burgers,” Jim Kim said.
Neither Caz or Mercy smiled.
“They’re going to have their radar up,” Caz said, crouching to run a hand down Wendy’s side.
Jim Kim swallowed. Mercy studied the incandescence flickering in the belly of the heater.
“That driver heard my rifle. He’ll say something to the others,” Caz said.
“They’ll be back around this way,” Mercy said with a deep frown.
Caz only nodded.
60
DeeDeeKatt U there? :>)
SoKoBang Yes
DeeDeeKatt So, what’s for dinner?
SoKoBang You first
DeeDeeKatt Spaghetti sauce on stale crackers :>P
SoKoBang Funny. That’s what I had :>D
DeeDeeKatt Ha ha Seriously, bro. What was for dinner?
SoKoBang Deer steak with mustard sauce and peppers
DeeDeeKatt U are shittng me :>O
SoKoBang That’s what we had
DeeDeeKatt We?
SoKoBang …
DeeDeeKatt I thot u were alone. Like me
SoKoBang...
DeeDeeKatt U there?
SoKoBang There’s 4 of us
DeeDeeKatt Like ur family?
SoKoBang A friend and 2 people we met
DeeDeeKatt U r lucky
SoKoBang For how long?
DeeDeeKatt Longer than me. Cold here. Can’t get warm. water froze.
SoKoBang I wish I could help
DeeDeeKatt is it cold there?
SoKoBang Yes.
DeeDeeKatt snow?
SoKoBang It snowed last night
DeeDeeKatt same here. R u close?
SoKoBang …
DeeDeeKatt Its OK. I get it. u don’t know me.
SoKoBang…
DeeDeeKatt can u tell me your name?
SoKoBang Jim
DeeDeeKatt Ella SoKoBang Nice to meet you
DeeDeeKatt Sure
SoKoBang…
DeeDeeKatt got to go. CU
SoKoBang OK. Bye.
61
Two days passed before there was any new traffic on the interstate.
Smash was on second-day watch in the lookout shack when he heard the pop and whine of high revving bike motors approaching on the overpass.
He keyed the two-way twice and stepped back into the shadows away from the viewport. The radio squelched twice in response. He keyed three times, their preset code for “stay put.” He pressed down on the key, holding the radio out so the mike could pick up the engine sounds off the highway.
The guard wall hid the riders from view when they came to a stop about where the plow truck had been parked. A blue cloud of exhaust rose in the cold, still air. Pipes rattled as they gunned the bikes to keep the engines revved. One of them dropped into a bup, bup, bup rhythm just before a man climbed up on the guard wall. Smash put the cup of the 30X to his eye and sighted the rifle on the leather-clad man standing, swaying for balance atop the narrow wall. He leapt into focus. A woolen mask and mirrored Ray-Bans covered his face. The leathers were fringed. Silver rings flashed on his gloved fingers. A big, blocky revolver hung from a holster around his hips. There was a beaded scabbard on his belt. The broad-bladed knife had a long staghorn handle. A killing weapon.
He crouched atop the wall, looking at the ground below. He’d see nothing but fresh snow that covered all signs of Caz’s, Mercy’s, and Wendy’s passing two days before. The guy raised his head to scan the landscape. He removed the sunglasses to study the back of Tool Town.
Smash made himself freeze in place, the scope unmoving as the biker scanned the roof. A cold sweat sprang up on his spine. There were footprints in the snow on the roof, a clear sign of where Smash had walked outside to take a piss. Furrows made by his boots led to a patch of yellow snow. He sipped air and blew it out slow the way Caz had taught him, fighting the urge to hyperventilate. That would make for a cloud of expelled breath that might be visible as it escaped through a viewport.
The guy on the guard wall stood up and replaced the Ray-Bans on his face. He turned back to speak to someone out of Smash’s sight. Someone on the road surface. Smash could see the wisps of frigid carbon dioxide wafting away from his mouth as he spoke. The guy turned back, drawing his handgun from the holster. Smash held his breath, lowering the rifle to where the crosshairs jiggled on the man’s chest. He fought to keep his arms level, but they shook with a will of their own. The image was flat, squashed to two dimensions by distance. The guy held the revolver in two hands and made a grand gesture of raising it over his head before bringing it down, down, down.
Smash’s finger tensed on the trigger. He remembered to let his breath out slow and force the muscles in his shoulders to unbunch. The guy on the overpass continued his downward arc until the barrel was aimed at something below the level of the span. He fired three times. Two figures draped themselves over the top of the wall to watch whatever the guy in fringed bike leathers was shooting at. Three more shots and he lowered the gun to his hip, pumping a fist once. Whatever he’d shot at was a score. An errant gomer or some unfortunate woodland creature.
It was either the sun glare off the snow or the guy’s angle of vision. He hadn’t seen the boot prints where the snow was mashed down on the roof. The curtain wall around the roof hid the prints. The trees would conceal the Coachman parked against the wall near the loading dock.
Smash watched the guy in leathers casually snap open the revolver, spilling spent brass. He reloaded the revolver with shells off his gun belt before hopping down out of sight to the highway surface. Bikes revved high, sending a new column of exhaust over the span to be torn into cirrus strips by the winter wind.
It
wasn’t until the bikes were well away, their engines a distant howl, that Smash remembered to take another breath.
Smash stayed on the roof until nightfall. After the gang on the overpass left, he heard more engine sounds out on the surface roads north of the store. Scattered gunshots as well. He radioed down to Caz, who told him to stay put and keep his eyes and ears open.
All through the afternoon and into the dusk, it sounded to Smash like a systematic search was being conducted in the neighborhood around the big-box mall. The sounds of bikes and trucks rose and fell as they rolled unseen up and down the streets of the residential area on the other side of Western Avenue. As the sky grew dark to the east, Smash could see the roving glow of headlights cast through the trees.
The gomers down on the lot became restless. A good number of them dropped to crawl out of the snow in order to free their trapped legs. Some of them broke femurs in the process, the bones gleaming white through skin. Unmindful of the fractures, they scuttled across the snow toward the noise and lights. They clawed the snow, dragging themselves across the lot away from Tool Town. Gunfire erupted with more frequency as the glare grew brighter and the rumble of motors escalated. Some kind of squat military truck, set up high on big fat tires, rolled out of the trees. A big bank of lights illuminated the lot like a night game at the stadium. Gomers were caught in the glare, arms waving like those dancing tube men outside of car dealerships.
Smash ducked out of sight. The bright lights would catch his silhouette in their beam. He squatted in the shack, remembering to snap off the space heater so its orange glow wouldn’t be seen. He barely heard the tinny voice coming through his earbud over the crash and pop of guns from the lot.
“—going on, Smash? You hear me?” It was Caz.
“Guys out front, shooting up the place,” Smash whispered.
“Repeat. Louder.”
Smash repeated it as loud as he dared. “Get eyes on. Tell me what you see.”
Smash hugged the wall and slowly unbent his waist to bring him eye level with the sill of the viewport facing the lot. He narrated what he could see below.
Men were up atop the truck, standing on the roof, firing rifles and shotguns at the gomers, who were obliging them by gathering in droves.
It was a turkey shoot. The men shot and reloaded at the dead, closing in a futile effort to get at the living meat that was in sight but out of reach. They clawed at the big, knobby tires as if to climb them toward the men laughing and shouting above.
Bullets came down in a hail described by green tracers. The rounds tore into gomers, flinging them to the snow, which was turning into pink slop all around the truck. A second vehicle crunched over the snow, horn honking to alert the shooters to its presence. This was a pickup with a plow front end that swept gomers aside to send them twisting through the air. The pickup was lifted high off the ground and had a twenty-foot whip aerial. A real cracker war machine. The plow end caught crawling gomers, decapitating them before the fat tires trundled them into greasy mush in the snow cover.
Above the roaring engines, shouting men, and rip of automatic fire rose a rhythmic pumping noise. Smash realized it was music coming from speakers in the monster pickup. It was a song his grandma turned up whenever it came on her car radio: Bad Company.
He did his best to give Caz a blow-by-blow color commentary, but all he got for his troubles were more questions.
“How many are there?” Caz said.
“I don’t know,” Smash answered.
“Count them,” Caz barked in his ear.
As he levered himself up to take a headcount, a hatch opened at the rear of the military truck. A half-dozen guys leapt out onto the snow. They wore thick, quilted winter jumpsuits with bands of duct tape wound around the sleeves and legs.
“They stole my idea,” Smash whispered to himself.
The men carried axes, sledgehammers, and machetes. They reminded Smash of Vikings as they went to work on late-arriving gomers who’d missed the free-fire action. One dude even wore a steel mask strapped on his face.
The Viking crackers hammered and sliced and bludgeoned gomers, using roundhouse swings that most often connected with skulls. Even over the driving guitars out of the speakers, Smash could hear the audible wet pops of craniums exploding when hammers drove into them.
He watched, bathed in a fresh lather of sweat despite the zero temperature, as the crew bashed the converging mass of gomers to the ground and finished them off with bludgeons, blades, and bootheels. In the end, all of the gomers that had wandered this lot in endless laps for the past six months now lay motionless and truly, finally dead. The Vikings high-fived as the gunmen atop the truck pumped their fists and howled. The men on the snow glistened with gore. They removed face masks and goggles to catch bottles of beer thrown to them from their buddies on top of the military truck.
Party time in the apocalypse.
62
Smash counted ten men and estimated at least four more still inside each vehicle. Maybe more. They were all young and all white, and some of them looked like they hit the gym. A lot. Nobody in this crew was going hungry.
One of them, the guy in the steel mask, turned his way. The guy ran his eyes up and over the front of Tool Town. Smash couldn’t help but duck out of reflex.
“Shit,” he hissed. Caz had warned him about movement.
“When you’re on overwatch, you don’t move. Ever. When you move is when you can be seen,” Caz had told him over and over again.
Smash held his breath, listening.
“Smash. You there? It’s gone quiet.” Caz in his earbud.
“They’re having brews,” Smash said after swallowing a few times, making spit to wet his tongue.
Caz asked for clarification.
“They killed all our gomers. They’re drinking beer. They’re like jocks. Assholes of a high order.”
“Are they leaving?”
“No. I can still hear them.”
“On my way up,” Caz said and cut off.
The crew in the parking lot had reboarded their rides by the time Caz reached the roof. He crawled to the curtain wall along the front of the store. Head tilted, he levered up to expose one eye over the snow atop the wall.
The trucks moved away toward Western Avenue, black shapes against the combined nimbus of their headlights.
Caz rose to scan the lot. Nothing moved. He remained stationary, moving his eyes only. The snow was churned to filthy slush by the fat truck tires. Gomers lay singly and in heaps, shrunken stickmen splayed on the snow in their own congealing, freezing pools of juice. Hundreds of them in a rough circle about where the trucks had been, the eye of the storm of gunfire.
He moved low back to the lookout shack to join a shivering Smash seated on the wood-slat floor hugging the rifle.
“They’re gone?” Smash said.
“Yeah. But they’ll be back,” Caz said.
“We need to leave here, and we need to leave now,” Caz told the group in the great room of Gomer Manor.
“After we built all this? We just run away?” Smash said, voice rising an octave.
“They’ll be back. This time they were on a hunt, but they saw this place. They’ll come back to scavenge, and they’ll find us here.”
“So we fight,” Smash said.
“You don’t understand the nature of the threat. This wasn’t some roving band passing through. They’re in charge. They own this territory. We need to get out of their reach.”
“Shit!” Smash said.
“Do we take the RV?” Mercy said.
“No. We need to do this quiet. We need to do this smart. We’ll take as much as we can drag or carry and leave the rest behind,” Caz said.
“What about scorched earth? Why leave these fuckers anything?” Smash asked.
“Set fire to this place? That will draw them right down on us. We need every hour of lead time we can get,” Caz said and looked at the three glum faces. Smash looked like he was fighting back tears.
“It’s a shitty deal, all right? But it gets shittier in a hurry if those assholes come back and we’re still here,” Caz said.
“He’s right. We’ll find someplace else,” Mercy said.
“What do we need to do first?” Jim Kim said.
63
Wendy loped ahead into woods beyond the interstate overpass. He rolled in drifts. He made furrows in the snow with his nose, hunting scents. Caz whistled low to remind him to stay in sight.
Mercy insisted on going along with Caz. She walked behind, toting her shotgun and a backpack filled with food. Caz carried a ruck of tools as well as a battery charger (Aisle 6) and the M4. The snow on the ground showed no sign of human passage, dead or otherwise. There were deer, rabbit, and raccoon tracks, but nothing else. The blanket of white was a comfort.
The first part of the plan was to cut through the fifty acres of woods and find a surface road they could follow. There they hoped to find homes or businesses and a working vehicle they could use to put distance between them and the rovers. The woods provided cover and allowed them to move away from Tool Town without the exposure of using the streets.
“How’d this happen?” Mercy asked, trotting to catch up to Caz.
They were across the creek and moving up a slope.
“You mean the gomers?” Caz said, bracing himself against a tree to watch Wendy standing atop the ridgeline, snout raised and nose twitching.
“I mean, some kind of gang or militia or whatever the hell taking over a whole city. Where are the cops? Where’s the Army?”
“Cops went home to protect their families. The Army went where the government told them to go.”
“Where’s that?”
“Forted up on Army or Air Force bases, maybe.” Some of the rovers could be cops or deserters, but he didn’t say that to her.
“So, when are they coming to help us? To set things right?” Mercy asked, moving up the slope in Caz’s wake.
“You sound like a taxpayer,” he said.