by Dixon, Chuck
“Funny.” She realized he was gigging her.
“They’re probably doing what they do. The President. The government. First, they all made sure their own asses were safe. Then they talk and talk.”
“And we’re all screwed.”
“Shit, girl, this Bird guy you told me about might be the only government we’ll get. Today they’re raising hell. Tomorrow they’ll be delivering the mail.”
“That’s cold,” Mercy said.
“That’s the truth. It always has been,” he said and reached a hand back to take hers. He drew her up beside him on the high ground.
Through the trees below them was a trailer park buried in fresh snow. Beyond it was a four-lane road lined with fast food places, a gas station, and a CVS.
And a car dealership.
Smash and Jim Kim had been left back at Tool Town to gather the list of goods they’d take with them. They were also working to make a travois to carry them. That was Caz’s suggestion. The Indian-style cargo carriers could be dragged over rough ground. They’d carry a bigger load than they could carry on their backs.
It was Jim Kim’s idea to construct them out of PVC pipes from the plumbing department. The two-inch piping was easy to cut, lightweight, and simple to assemble by gluing joints together.
“I don’t know who I’m more pissed at,” Smash said.
Jim Kim didn’t answer. He was busy constructing the last of four travois. Smash was back from loading hand trucks with food, fuel, and clothing. He had his Xbox packed in its carton. Jim Kim saw it but said nothing.
“Am I more pissed at the assholes outside, Caz, or myself for going along with Caz? Who made him king?”
“He had the best idea,” Jim Kim said. “If you have a better idea, we can do that.”
“And he gets the only girl,” Smash said, punching his fist into a case of pretzels.
“All you want to do is bitch,” Jim Kim said, standing.
“This was our dream, Jimmy!” Smash held his arms out like Moses in the Promised Land to encompass Tool Town.
“We’re leaving. Deal with it. And if you’re planning on packing that Xbox, you’d better not let Caz see it.” With that, Jim Kim stalked away into the dark aisles.
“I don’t have to like it!” Smash called after him.
Jim Kim didn’t want to listen to Smash anymore. This was all some kind of real-life roleplaying game to Smash. Nothing since Shit Happened had touched him in any actual way. Smash didn’t lose anything. Had nothing he cared about it. All he cared about was Tool Town, his castle. Being forced to give it up by an actual grown-up had turned Smash into a petulant child.
Even more of a petulant child.
Jim Kim made his way to the office to sit at the computer. He logged onto his account. DeeDeeKat was online. She’d been posting all day. The posts became more urgent as his silence continued.
DeeDeeKatt U there? :>)
DeeDeeKatt Where U at? :>(
DeeDeeKatt R U home?
DeeDeeKatt U r scaring me
DeeDeeKatt You still out there? Plse answr.
Jim Kim tapped the keys.
SoKoBang Things have changed here.
64
Keane’s Chevrolet Auto Mall was relatively untouched. The lot and the road were both an undisturbed sheet of snow. The showroom windows had been smashed in long before, providing easy entry for Caz and Mercy. There were drifts against the display models. Keys hung on a pegboard in the manager’s office. Caz scooped them into a Chevy ball cap.
One set of keys fit a Silverado at the back of the lot. “Like the color?” Caz said as he popped the hood.
“It’s white. It doesn’t have a color,” Mercy said, sliding behind the wheel.
“After the snow melts, we’ll do something about that.”
The truck had a crew cab and a ten-foot bed. It was all-wheel, with a big 350-eight and fat tires. As long as it started, it would do.
Caz attached the leads from the battery charger and flipped it on. He wound his finger in the air. Mercy gave it some gas and turned the key. It cranked and cranked and whined before starting up with a roar. Caz undid the leads and shut the hood. He gave her a “come on” and stepped aside. Mercy rocked the truck free and pulled it into the lane in a plume of white vapor.
They sat inside the cab, letting the battery charge and warming themselves in the heated air pouring from the vents. Wendy sat between them, panting and looking from one to the other as dry, hot air washed over them and fogged the glass.
“You want to pull it closer to the store?” she asked.
“We’ll leave it here. Better that way.” He wiped the condensation from the windshield with his sleeve so he could watch the lot.
“Yeah.”
“We can gas it up when we get back with the guys.”
“Right.”
“Head east or south. There’s farms and stuff out there, right?
You know this area, right?”
“Sure. Family’s been coming here since before I was born. Lots of places to hole up.”
They sat quietly in the gentle purr of the big eight, embraced by the balmy womb of the upholstered cab.
“We’d better head out,” he said, breaking the silence.
“I was just getting warm,” she said.
“Battery’s not going to charge with us running the heater,” he said.
“Shame there’s not another way to stay warm,” she said.
Caz looked at her. She was seated with eyes forward, gloved fingers tapping on the top of the steering wheel.
“I’ll bet Wendy needs to go for a pee,” she said. The dog turned his head at the sound of his name.
“Maybe.” He opened his door and pulled Wendy over him by the collar. The dog leapt down and put his nose to the snow. Caz closed the door again, enclosing them in the snug cab. Diffused sunlight came through the clouded glass.
Mercy slid across the bench seat, their hips touching. He could feel the heat of her through her jeans.
“Tell me you haven’t been thinking about this,” she said, looking up at him, their faces inches apart.
He lowered his lips to hers, drawing her closer with an arm around the small of her back.
DeeDeeKatt Ur leaving???
SoKoBang We have to.
DeeDeeKatt Whre will u go?
DeeDeeKatt Will we still talk?
DeeDeeKatt I don’t want to lose u.
DeeDeeKatt I thot I’d see u someday.
SoKoBang Come with us
DeeDeeKatt I cant
SoKoBang Why not?
DeeDeeKatt scared.
SoKoBang Im only a couple miles away. U could be here before we leave. Theres room. We have enough.
DeeDeeKatt How would I find u?
SoKoBang Do u know western avenue?
DeeDeeKatt Yes.
SoKoBang we’re at the tool town. we’re not leaving til dark.
DeeDeeKatt Thank you.
Jim Kim sat back, a smile on his face. He was about to type a reply when a new post popped up from Ella. It was an attachment. He moved the cursor and clicked on it.
The monitor screen went instantly white. He tapped keys but could not restore contact.
On the screen, an image began to build, assembling itself pixel by pixel, black against a blood red screen.
A raven perched atop a human skull.
65
Smash was shrieking.
“You fucked up, you fuck-up!”
Jim Kim raised his voice. “I know that! You think I don’t know that?”
“What are we going to do? Fuck! You didn’t see those guys! Fuck!” Smash said, face in his hands.
“You call Caz on the two-way. I’m going to the roof,” Jim Kim said, shrugging into a coat.
“Who was this you were texting with?” Smash grabbed Jim Kim by the sleeve.
“A girl. She was—”
“You idiot! You fell for a phisher? This is about you sexting some skank who turns out to be a guy? A big,
scary guy coming with all his asshole friends to kill us?”
“You want me to feel like shit?” Jim Kim yanked his arm back. “I feel like shit, okay? Call Caz. Let them know.”
Jim Kim made for the roof at a trot. Smash kicked down a stack of boxes piled atop a travois. He stood panting through clenched teeth, eyes darting to find a way, any way, out of this moment.
They were threading their way between the drifts between the trailers when the two-way on Caz’s vest came to weak life. It squawked and squelched, Smash’s plaintive voice faint through the interference of the hill between them and Tool Town.
“I told him no open transmissions,” Caz said, turning up the gain.
“Maybe something is wrong,” Mercy said, looking at the sky to the north.
“Repeat. Repeat that last, Smash,” Caz said, mouth to the mike.
Caz winced as the radio let out a piercing trill just as he lifted it to his ear. Wendy turned ahead of them, ears up. Caz pressed the speaker to his ear, trying to make sense of the rambling rant interrupted by bursts of singing static.
Mercy watched his face change and darken as he listened. He lowered the two-way from his ear, his mouth a tight line. He looked in her eyes, and what she saw there was something wild, something fierce. In anyone else, she would have seen fear. In Caz’s eyes, it was more like fury.
“Fight or flight. Up to you,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“What? What do you mean?” she said, searching his face for meaning.
“You say so, and we get as far from here as we can. Or we go back. Your call.”
“We go back.”
He nodded once, unshipped the M4, and headed toward the slope at a run. Wendy bolted ahead, leading them back the way they’d come. She followed, adrenaline running high and fear running higher.
The front lot was covered in an undisturbed sheet of fresh powder from the night before. The carnage was hidden beneath a veil of white. The lowering sun was creating blue shadows, and a painful glare reflected off the snow.
Eyes over the front sights and ears wide open, Jim Kim kept vigil in the lookout shack. There were motor sounds growing louder from the north. Faint at first, they rose to create a sound like the thunder of a distant storm. Vehicles converged down the streets somewhere on the other side of the avenue.
Jim Kim could hear Smash’s transmissions through his earbud. They were answered by gibberish and static. Caz was out of range. A heavy rumble rose from out of sight beyond the bare trees.
A cloud of cottony vapor climbed into the cloudless sky behind the Toys ‘R’ Us. Jim Kim trained the rifle that way, studying the roofline through the scope. The throaty hum of an idling engine and the hiss of air brakes.
He blinked hard to renew focus. He scanned the lot over the top of the gun sights. Pieces of shadow broke away from the front of the TRU. They came over the snow toward Tool Town at a fast trot.
They leapt into sharp focus through the 30X. Gomers.
But not gomers like Jim Kim had ever seen before. These were whole specimens. No decay or visible wounds. They were male and looked young and fit. The only thing that set them apart as gomers was their peculiar shambling gait as they lurched at speed over the drifts.
And they were all buck-naked.
Their skin gleamed with an oily sheen. These were the same as the gomers Mercy had told them about, the ones she and her cousin had run into at the car lot. She compared them to junkyard dogs. That comparison was inescapable. They ran as a pack, heads up, eyes alert for movement. Through the intimacy of the scope, Jim Kim could clearly see the face of one. The gomer was a young black guy with darting eyes and a wrinkling nose.
They were hunting. For him. For Smash.
He thought then of Caz and Mercy, out in the open. Jim Kim keyed the walkie once. Twice.
A squelch came back.
“Caz, if you can hear me, there’s gomers here. Repeat, there’s gomers on the lot.”
Another squelch, then static.
“Gomers coming right for us. Naked and greased up like Mercy told us about.”
Static and squawks.
“You hear me, Smash?” Jim Kim said.
“I’m here, Jimmy! How many?” Smash answered in his ear.
Jim Kim looked out from the view slot. More than two dozen figures loped over the snow in the dying light.
“Too many. You have to run for it. Catch up with Caz and tell them to get out of here.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you once I see you clear the interstate,” Jim Kim said.
“You better be,” Smash said.
“I will,” Jim Kim lied.
66
The flat bark of a rifle echoed through the treetops. “Damn it,” Caz said through his teeth.
He and Mercy were coming down the back of the slope to the creek bed. Wendy had already crossed. He was on the far bank, whimpering and looking back at them with anxious eyes, aching to run home.
“I’m going on. Head back to the truck and wait for us,” Caz said and broke into a run across the frozen creek.
“The hell I will,” Mercy said and followed him toward the dog now charging into the trees.
Jim Kim left the lookout shack to cover Smash’s escape. The gomers were close to the building, out of his sightline. He waited at the edge of the roof, watching to see if any of them found their way around to the loading dock.
The back door banged open. Jim Kim leaned way out to see Smash pulling a packed travois out through the door. He had to turn it sideways to yank it free onto the snow-crusted loading dock. He heaved until it was loose, falling on his ass on the slick surface.
“I told you it’s time to run!” Jim Kim called down to him.
“I am!” Smash said, startled, turning his head to look up.
“What’s all that stuff ?”
“We’ll need it!” Smash called back. He leapt off the dock, dragging the travois after him. Packs bounced in their straps where he had them secured in place under a tarp.
“I swear to God, if you packed the Xbox, I’ll shoot you myself,” Jim Kim hissed.
He watched Smash move to the hole in the fence and struggle to pull the load through. The gap wasn’t big enough. The rods of the travois jammed against the links. The fence jiggled and squealed while Smash yanked on it, only lodging it further.
A gomer rounded the corner of the store to Jim Kim’s right. It was followed by another. They moved low, bent at the waist, heads thrust forward. The clinking sound along the fence line drew them to Smash. Their eyes locked on Smash, trying to pull the travois through the fence after him. It was hopelessly stuck.
“Run!” Jim Kim shouted. He saw Smash release the dragline of the travois and step back, eyes on the trotting figures moving along the fence line.
Jim Kim didn’t wait to see if Smash had listened to him. He trained the rifle on the lead gomer. Through the scope, all was a heaving blur. He sighted over the top of the scope and squeezed the trigger. The fat .308 took the gomer through the shoulder and blew out a section of its back, spilling it against the fence. The second gomer leapt the first. A movement to his left made Jim Kim aware that more shapes were coming around the other side of the building. His next shot took the second gomer high in the skull, blowing off a plate of scalp like a can lid. It dropped to the snow, spilling a crimson spray of brain matter. The first gomer was hauling itself up using the chain links. Jim Kim could see the white gleam of splintered vertebrae through the wide exit wound.
It was out of action.
He swung the barrel to cover three more grease-smeared gomers and got off a shot, taking one through the throat. Its head popped off like a cork leaving a bottle. Headless, it skidded over the snow on its knees. Jim Kim sighted on the one behind the headless corpse kicking out its last in the slush. He let out his breath to put pressure on the trigger but never made the shot.
Rounds were coming from somewhere, pinging loud off the vents of the air
conditioning unit just behind him. He dropped behind the curtain wall as a shower of brick dust rained over him. They had him zeroed.
He lay on his side, watching rounds strike spouts in the snow just beyond his position. The angle told him they were up on the overpass. As long as he was behind the curtain wall, they couldn’t see him.
“Stick and move,” was what Caz had told him. Shoot, then move to another place. Make them guess where you are. With the rifle in the crook of his arms, he belly-crawled along the wall.
They were guessing rather than shooting. The fire was dying off. Single shots landed just beyond where they’d first spotted him. The time to move was now, while they were looking in the wrong place.
Jim Kim rolled to his feet and bolted for the lookout shack. He was up the three steps when the first rounds buzzed by him. He kicked the door shut and tumbled inside.
A quick check of the front lot showed some dirt bikes starting to emerge from the bare trees. They weren’t getting in. They could wait.
From the rear viewport, he could see Smash pelting for the overpass. In a few seconds, he’d be clear of the sumacs. The shooters on the span would be able to see him, but not if Jim Kim drew their attention.
Three figures stood atop the guard wall on the highway. The flashes from their muzzles were like starbursts in the graying light. Rounds hammered the cinderblocks around the viewport. One sailed through the port to spall off the walls.
Jim Kim took a few quick breaths, blew them out, and forced himself to stand. He was well back in the shadowed interior of the shack. The rifle was up and trained on one of the three tiny silhouettes against the ruddy sky.
A bearded face, teeth like dried corn, peered directly at him through the scope. It strobed like a flickering silent movie in the sudden flash from the rifle raised to the man’s shoulder. Jim Kim sipped and blew and pressed down on the trigger.
A shadowy shape dropped off the guard wall into the trees. He jacked a new round. One of the others leapt off onto the highway. The other stood watching his friend plunge into the dark. Jim Kim’s second round bent him double. The man dropped out of sight behind the guard wall.