The World Itself Departed

by J. B. Beatty

“Pop-tart?” Maggie holds out the mangled box.

  He shakes his head and says, “No thank you. I would take some coffee if you have some.”

  Mom usually makes the coffee, but I think it’s my turn. “Give me a few minutes.” I head into the kitchen.

  When I return with three hot cups I walk slowly to avoid spills. Lord knows the carpet has had enough stains lately. Maggie is interrogating O’Reilly.

  “Mrs. Palmer and you two. And then, of course, all the kids.”

  “That’s it?” she says in astonishment.

  “Well, I haven’t exactly been in a position to check thoroughly. But I called all the numbers I could in the neighborhood. Louise answered. And then there were a few houses that had kids who survived. But I don’t know how long that’s going to last.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Well, they’re kids. Most of the neighborhood kids I’ve seen are panicking and trying to run. They have no idea where to go. So many…”

  “So many?”

  “Yes, so many have been… attacked. It’s horrifying. Never in all my time have I seen anything as horrific as this. The carnage, the screams.” He shook his head, his pale skin seeming to sag on his face.

  “How have you stayed safe, going out on the streets?”

  O’Reilly looks at her as if he’s deciding just how much he can trust her. He smiles in a way that only turns up the corners of his closed mouth. “I haven’t,” he says. “Staying safe isn’t part of my mission anymore. I have emphysema. And prostate cancer. And my dog, Nellie, died a few weeks ago. My wife’s been dead for years. My only son’s a piece-of-work politician, and my grandkids don’t know who I am. Even if I get torn to pieces by those monsters, it sure as heck beats dying with an oxygen mask on my face at a retirement home.”

  Maggie’s eyes glow. “That’s kind of sweet,” she says.

  “Maggie!” I cannot believe she just said that.

  “Fearless,” she says. “You don’t have a damn thing to lose.”

  O’Reilly smiles and shakes his head. He inhales deeply from his oxygen tubes.

  “Did you kill all those zombies in front of our garage last night?”

  “Zombies?” O’Reilly says slowly, as if he’s trying out the term. “I never thought of calling them that. I don’t watch those shows. I think they’re just stoked up meth-heads. Yeah, I shot them from my living room.”

  “Pretty good shooting.”

  “It’s like riding a bike.”

  “I don’t know if they’re Meth-heads,” says Maggie. “My friends don’t do meth. It ruins their teeth.” She turns to me. “Remember Aaron Domstettler? Yeah, he learned the hard way.”

  Turns out O’Reilly, though he looks like hell now, did some serious soldiering in his time. “When I was a kid I did a lot of hunting. Learned from my grandfather, since I didn’t have a father to speak of. When I got out of high school, I joined the Marines. My first airplane ride was to Korea to fight the Chinese.”

  “You saw action?” I ask.

  “Only a lot. Spent about a year with a forward unit. Saw a bunch of my buddies die. If I had a nickel for every time I pulled that trigger… Eventually I was pulling sniper duty a lot, even though I never went through the training program.” He takes a deep pull of oxygen and shakes his head. “You do what you have to do, you know?”

  Maggie sits across the room from him in a chair. I sit on the rug. “What happened after?”

  “I ran into my dad. I hadn’t seen him in years. When I was a kid on the farm, he had me and my brothers doing all the chores. He would only help when he was sober, which wasn’t too often. When I was 9, I was driving the tractor. We did what we could. Sometimes the Hutzwillers pitched in—they owned the place next-door. I think Mr. Hutzwiller might have been sweet on my mom. I know he felt sorry for her.

  “She had to work at the hair salon in town and later on she started waitressing at Aunt Betty’s too. She was the only one to bring money home. Dad never did. We didn’t make much from the farming, I think probably because we were just kids going through the motions and we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. My dad wasn’t even there most of the time. He was spending what little money we had at Long Tom’s. He’d start drinking first thing in the morning. He would have saved some money if he was a stay-at-home drunk, but he was a social guy. He did most of his drinking at the bar—didn’t mind paying the mark-up.

  “One day dad never came home. I was 14. I was the oldest. The man of the house,” he laughs. “I did what I could until I was old enough to join the Marines, then I made sure Mom got all of my pay. That was the only option I had. College wasn’t there for people like me.”

  Maggie jumps in with, “You said after the war you ran into your dad.”

  “Getting there. I’m getting there. So before I got discharged, the Marines sent an item to the local paper, I guess. Talked about a trapped platoon and how a sniper picked off enough of the Chinese so that they could retreat safely back to where our lines had been pushed. They said I shot 27 of the enemy but I think they exaggerated. Anyway, they give me a medal and sent me home with some bullet fragments in my thigh. I had to use a cane for a few months. And the bus drops me off in downtown Shiawassee… You don’t remember that, do you?”

  Maggie and I look at him quizzically.

  “When the bus used to come to Shiawassee. Probably stopped in the 60’s. Anyway, the bus drops me and my duffel and I make my way to Aunt Betty’s thinking I’m going to surprise my mom. It’s just a block from the corner, but I have to go past the Long Tom. And who steps outside then with a cigarette in his mouth—the old man. Must have seen me coming. He steps into my path, blowing smoke. Says, ‘Well, look at the war hero.’ I didn’t know what to say. He’s the last person on earth I wanted to see. I’m sure I probably said hello, because the Marines had drilled that politeness into me.

  “I look straight at him and I say hello, and he says, ‘You don’t look all that tough to me. You don’t look like you could kill a lame dog, let alone an enemy soldier. But heck, they were just Chinks, right? Not like you were fighting real men. I bet I could even take you, you cripple.’ And he gave me a shove. I almost fell. I looked like a fool catching myself and getting my weight back on my good leg.”

  “I hope you fucking decked him,” says Maggie.

  “The Lord God knows I wanted to. But I was tired of fighting strangers. And he was a stranger to me. I just stood up straight and walked past him. We brushed against each other and I could feel his hate as he blew smoke at me. I never saw him again. He died a few years later. Probably cirrhosis or something. I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  “Did you see your mom that day?”

  “Oh yeah,” he smiles. “She was working herself to the bone. She was glad to see me, but I could tell she was sick then. She had a cancer and it was eating away at her and she was still waiting tables. No insurance back then. She worked herself to death so she could take care of my brothers and sisters. She passed about five months after I returned. I had been hoping that he would die first, that she didn’t have to die but could instead live in a world without him for a while, where she didn’t have to work so goddamn hard for every little thing. People talk about retiring to Florida or somewhere like it’s some sort of God-given right. They don’t seem to realize that there are people who never get a day off and have to work until their dying day. That was my mom.”

  “Wow,” I say, because I’m so good with words.

  “I never left Shiawassee after that. Worked at the mill until it closed. Got my brothers and sisters all out of the house and to college. Even the two girls. I didn’t get married till they were all taken care of. One became a dentist.” He pauses and takes another deep breath, touching the tube going into his nose as if to be sure it’s still there.

  “When the mill closed I worked security at a few places. Sometimes I carried a gun but I never touched it. Then after I retired and Miriam died, I started with guns again. She n
ever liked guns. And I wasn’t wild about them either, but as things started to fall apart in our society and the liberals started taking things away, I figured I better have some around for a rainy day.”

  “Damn liberals,” says Maggie and she seems really angry.

  “...Taking our guns away,” I add. Luckily she doesn’t see me roll my eyes.

  “Sure as hell is a rainy day now,” says O’Reilly.

  “Damn straight,” Maggie says, standing up. “We were thinking we’re going to make a run for it and try to find someplace safer. Arvy and me. Do you want to come? Seems like you know your way around a trigger.”

  O’Reilly smiles and closes his eyes for a bit. He even looks like he’s about to fall asleep. But then he blinks them open and says, “I’m all set up here. It’s a good house I’ve got. And I’ve got everything I need to last a long while. Even have extra oxygen tanks. You probably don’t have room for all my baggage in your truck… Plus, them tanks are explosive. No. I’m going to stay put. For better or worse, this has always been my home. My last day’s going to be here.”

  He struggles to get up and finally rises. “I’m going to have to find that old cane one of these days,” he says. “The problem is I just don’t have enough hands as it is.” He grabs his oxygen tank and starts rolling it to the door. “Good luck to you to. I hope you make it. I hope you can save some kids on the way. The kids have it bad with this thing. They don’t seem to be getting the flu. But they’re not getting any easy breaks, either… Taking care of the kids, you can never go wrong in the Lord’s eyes.”

  We stand and Maggie opens the front door, scouting the street as she does so.

  “Can you give me some cover as I cross the street?” O’Reilly says.

  “Damn straight,” she replies.

  “Oh and…” he turns to face me. “I would’a given you candy any other day. Should have just asked. Just not on that damn Halloween, you know?”

  “Got it,” I say.

  Maggie steps outside and helps O’Reilly back to the sidewalk, her head swiveling left and right. “All clear,” she says.

  The old man slowly makes his way back home, rifle in his right hand, while the other pulls his oxygen.

  8→CREATION’S FINAL DAY

  “W

  e need to load up. Make some plans and head out as soon as we can,” she says.

  “That’s quick. I kind of thought we would be fine here for a while.”

  “And we probably will be. Until we’re not. And I want to leave before that happens.” Maggie walks into the kitchen. “What kind of food do you have that will be good to travel with?”

  Of course, I have no idea, because Mom pretty much took care of me in a very dedicated way. I never actually shopped for food in my life, beyond buying garbage at 7-11. “There’s a bunch of stuff in the freezer,” I offer.

  Maggie looks at me in a way that speaks of both pity and confusion. “You know I drive a Chevy pick-up, right? Not a refrigerator truck? Frozen food, perishable food—that won’t really work so well out there in Crazyland.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Maybe you can show me where the canned food is? And stuff in boxes?”

  “Gotcha.”

  And so that’s how we started packing up our escape kit. All the canned and boxed food, even the green olives, went into plastic tubs that we jammed into the back of her pick-up.

  “Pickled palm hearts?” she asked, lifting the can up to the light as if to see through it.

  “My dad,” I explained.

  “Huh.”

  We also found sleeping bags, a camp stove and a tent.

  “No fucking way we’re taking a tent,” declares Maggie.

  “It’s never been used,” I say.

  “Going to stay that way,” she insists. “Use your imagination a little, Arvy. Do you want to go to sleep behind a thin breathable made-in-China nylon fabric, or behind a cinderblock wall? In world filled with ‘flu victims’ that want to eat us?”

  I look at her. Those eyes are on fire. I nod. “Gotcha.”

  We also grab some tools, a prybar, rope, flashlights and batteries. And as she tears through the bathrooms for some female stuff, I look at all my various treasures in my room. Approaching the situation from a purely utilitarian standpoint, I can’t think of anything that I really need. I grab a laptop and all the phone chargers I can, because maybe those things will work if we don’t regress too much as a civilization in the coming days.

  I find a picture of the four of us from last Easter. I take it out of the frame and slide it into the laptop case because it’s kind of big.

  Jackknife. I find my old knife from when I was a Cub Scout. I think back to all the survival things they taught me in scouting. Actually, all I remember is that our leader must not have been into that sort of thing because we only made birdhouses. And little wooden cars for the Pinewood Derby.

  “Got everything you need?” she says from the doorway of my room.

  “Umm, I think so.”

  “Well, be sure, because you’re probably never coming home again.”

  “That’s bleak. Wow. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

  Maggie rolls her eyes. “I probably can’t spell ‘apocalypse’, but I know it when I see it.”

  9→WE CANNIBALS MUST HELP THESE CHRISTIANS

  And we roll. In movies and TV shows, this is the idyllic portion of the narrative where we escape the horror, weaving our way along rolling roads through verdant farm country with a cool soundtrack—I would actually name songs, but if I look at this a year from now I’ll probably think they’re all stupid. Along the way, there are sparks of romantic tension and she starts seeing me in a new light when the breeze catches my hair just right. And so on, until we run into more additional horrors, each more unspeakable than the last.

  Yes, there’s no way around it, we are on the roller coaster ride through the new post-apocalyptic zombie wonderland.

  Only, things happen that just aren’t in the script that’s running through my mind:

  1)We pass through Curtis, a little town to the west of Shiawassee that we have only bothered with for their breakfast diner, which features oversized omelets. The whole freaking town is on fire. Literally every damn building. Not that there’s many, perhaps 15. But every single one is roaring flames. We see no people at all there.

  2)Several miles past that, we go by a small dairy farm. And out on the lawn in front, not far from the porch that is festooned with American flag bunting, a pair of zombies are pouncing on a small child. “Holy shit,” Maggie says, and we veer off the road toward them. But by the time we get there she has stopped thrashing. Maggie pulls the truck into a U-turn so that she can shoot the two cannibals from her window. We drive on and she doesn’t talk for a dozen miles.

  3)We try to drive through Stockbridge and we run into a couple of packs of zombies. They chase us. Not too tough to evade in a truck, but we encounter a half-finished road block and have to go up on the lawns and bump our way through a row of garbage bins. Previously Maggie had said she would save ammo and not bother to shoot every zombie, but she stops after the barricade, checks out the scratches on her truck, and sprays the whole pack dead with her AK-47. “Motherfuckers!” she says, emphasizing the second part. After that, she says we’re going to start avoiding towns.

  4)Along a dirt road, we see a house and someone has painted “help!” across the front of it. Maggie slows and looks at it suspiciously, then drives past.

  5)Then she turns around and we stop in front of the house. We stalk around it, with her shouting “Anyone home?” and I stay close to her, holding my little gun. No one’s home.

  6)We stop at a crossroads gas station. No one is there but a zombie cashier who seems unwilling to climb over the counter. Maggie says, “You kill him.”

  “What?”

  “You need to pull your weight. Now shoot this ugly, lifeless sack of shit.”

  “I’m really not…” I mutter, backing aw
ay.

  Then I see she’s pointing her gun at me. “It’s you or him,” she says, and she seems quite serious.

  So I shoot him after I figure out my safety, and it’s really hard until it’s over and then it seems like it hadn’t been that hard at all.

  He’s dead. But more importantly, so is my fantasy of growing romantic tension with Maggie on this road trip. If this were a movie, that scene would have played out entirely differently.

  7)Maggie starts filling up the truck. It’s pay at the pump. I say, “Your card worked?”

  She says, “No, but your mom’s did.”

  8)We see a group of six or seven children walking across a farm field. A couple of them appear to have rifles. We slow down and yell, “Hey!”

  They run away from us toward the woods.

  “Rude,” says Maggie.

  9)We come to the edge of a town—I think it’s Williamston. We creep under a freeway overpass—no sign of traffic.

  “There it is,” she says, and we drive up to the Taco Bell.

  We don’t see any zombies in the area, but we go inside and find a heck of a mess. Former customers. Then two employees greet us and Maggie downs them both. Their uniforms were blood-covered before she shot them. Plus, they were howling in guttural tones which seemed a bit unprofessional.

  Maggie heads into the kitchen as I keep an eye on the neighborhood from the dining room. I hear her talking:

  “No, no you don’t. Get away from there. Come here. Come on, Come on.” I hear clattering and banging in there, but I’m keeping my eye on the road. I do not want to be trapped in a Taco Bell by a horde of zombies.

  “Oh you miserable fucker!” she says, and she opens up with way too many bullets to kill one Taco Bell assistant manager.

  She comes back to the dining room, wiping some of the blood that splattered on her.

  “All I wanted was about 20 ground beef tacos. I figured I could make those myself with no training. I mean, I don’t know how to make a triple steak burrito right, but a simple goddamn taco I should be able to handle. And that stupid fucking manager—she’s already covered with blood and she’s diving into the ground beef and woofing it up with her mouth as if it’s a basket of brains.”