by J. B. Beatty
“And he raised me to be proud of my family. The Vikings. Maybe he thought if I had enough pride in my bloodline I could ignore the probability that my grandfather almost certainly hunted little girls walking home from school in the dark, hunted them down and grabbed them, taking them to some dark garage or basement, then raping them and killing them. A monster who destroyed innocence, who made sure that their last memories of life would be filled with horror and pain. A monster who burned their corpses and left them in garbage cans.”
I look at Justin and Maggie. They’re transfixed and don’t look back at me. I’m the one that always wants to hear people tell their stories, but I’m wondering if we’ve gone down the wrong rabbit hole.
RIP continues: “Didn’t he realize that I would look inside that satchel someday? He must have made that choice when he chose not to burn it himself. Maybe he was paralyzed with horror, but in choosing not to take any action, he took the most devastating of actions by leaving it for me to discover. Or maybe he was waiting for grandmother to die, and then he was going to take it to the police. And then when the time came, jobs, life, wife, it all can get so complicated.
“And I get raised thinking my grandfather was, who knows, some Kirk Douglas Viking wearing olive green who gets killed by the last Nazi bullet fired as our tanks moved into Germany. Family pride.
“I thought about taking the satchel in. But then I talked myself into thinking that anyone who remembered or loved those little black girls was already dead. They were already together in heaven. And no one on the police force would even care anymore. Detroit had enough problems. Cold cases from the ‘40s aren’t a priority for a police force that hasn’t processed its rape kits from 10 years ago.
“I burned the satchel. I said a prayer for those girls as the flames rose into the night sky. And I had a big drink. I was drinking a lot then. I drink a lot whenever I think of my family. I had a big drink and I went back inside to watch my marriage fall apart. That was my first marriage. She had no idea what I had burned. She never would.
“A lot more than that satchel went up in smoke that night.”
28→A PROFOUND SILENCE
We race north the next day. And we get there. And that’s all I really feel like saying about the trip.
Now, I know you might be expecting more. In “Walking Dead,” they can’t go more than a few hundred yards without running into some crazyass psychos. In any zombie production, on screen or in print, no one goes 50 miles without major life-threatening incidents. It just doesn’t happen.
But I have already explained that this isn’t a typical zombie situation. No one has been reanimated from the dead. This was just the flu. Kind of a bad, apocalyptic flu, but the flu all the same.
And I don’t feel the need to narrate every step of our journey, one, because I’m busy with other things occasionally, and two, because of the Redundancy Effect. [I made that up, and I’m not sure it’s even an accurate term. I reserve the right to change it later into something more profound and descriptive.]
The Redundancy Effect is this:
We see things when we leave our safe places. We see death in all its horror. That’s the given of road tripping this fall. We’re not witnessing the fall color tour this year; we’re witnessing the many faces of death.
No mile passes without its requisite dose of fear. Maybe we’ll encounter a flurry of bullets from a hidden sniper. Maybe we’ll drive right into another trap, and whether it’s sprung by old guys or pre-pubescent boys, with every passing day we realize that it could be deadlier. If our experience is any indication, there is a Darwinism at work; the dumb ones are dying first, leaving only the clever, the brutal, and the sociopathic.
Maybe we get a flat tire, and have to watch the forest around us carefully while one of us hurries to replace it. Maybe one of the zombies will leap from a roadside ditch. They too seem to be subject to Darwinism. The packs we see are getting smaller; they’re eating each other. We sometimes will shoot one from the truck—off in a field in a small pack—and rather than turn and charge us, the others look on their fallen comrade as a gift from heaven. They fall on the fresh corpse and devour it. And here too, we see that the ones that have survived this long are faster, smarter, and every one of them is starving.
Maybe we will wander across the path of the Humvee boys again. They will have us outmanned and outgunned. RIP says he thinks they’re all of what he calls a “higher power.” Not God, but way closer to having God’s powers than we do. He says he believes the Humvee boys belong to the same organization that is flying the planes and helicopters we sometimes see overhead. At any given time, if they decide we are a threat or an opportunity, they could swoop from the sky and take out our modest 2-vehicle caravan.
Thus, we travel surreptitiously. We follow the dirt roads. And while we travel with each other, mostly we travel with fear. And that’s what I mean by the Redundancy Effect. If it’s always there, why mention it all the time? It would be like narrating our breathing.
29→A HUNDRED OTHER SHADOWY THINGS
Three things worth mentioning about the drive:
Google gives the most direct route as 61.3 miles, but that means highways and towns and pavement. And exposing ourselves to the Higher Power. The dirt road route we map out is 97.1 miles and includes some long detours. We drive fast where the road looks straight and clear. We slow down and get our guns ready any time our visibility is hampered by trees or turns.
Twice we spot healthy old people watching us go by. They try to conceal themselves, but each time we see they are carrying a weapon of some kind. We aim at them, they aim at us. We’re probably both praying that we don’t have to shoot.
Dogs. Haven’t mentioned the fact that Maggie, like any good redneck girl, has a thing for dogs. Her own dog, a retriever of some sort, did not survive day 1. When she has mentioned him, it is with a deep bitterness, almost like she can do without her family, but not without her dog.
Now that she’s not feeling so well, she keeps talking about wanting a puppy. Only, where are we supposed to find a puppy in the End of the World? The dogs haven’t been affected by the flu, as far as we can tell. But they have been affected deeply by the side effects of the flu: dead owners not feeding them being one, the other being zombie owners or neighbors eating them (the fate of my Shannon).
We see strays here and there. Mostly they look scared and scary. Anyone who knows dogs knows that a scared pooch is nearly as dangerous as a vicious one. And most of the dogs we see look like the ones who are big and aggressive enough to fend for themselves in the End of the World. Fluffy little poodles we’re not seeing.
Not far from a small town we are circling around, Brohman—which sounds like it was settled by a fraternity in the early part of the century, RIP spots a dog by the road. “It’s a puppy,” he says, so of course I slam on the brakes. It’s hanging near the edge of a once-mowed lawn of a house that has been burned down. I’m not an expert in estimating dog age, but it’s young with a lot of growing left to do. Old enough to have some legs on it. RIP has to run hard to catch it.
“It’s a lab,” he says. “Chocolate lab. Look at those ribs. Poor thing is hungry.” We open a can of tuna for it, and it practically inhales the contents. Meanwhile Justin is having a fit: why’d we stop, we’re dangerously exposed, we’ve got to make time, what the hell are you going to do with that dog, this could be a trap, etc. The dog eats a second can of tuna. And then we wrap it in a towel and we put it on Maggie’s stomach as she lays in the second seat of the SUV.
“You can’t do that,” says Justin. “The thing probably needs its shots. It could make her sicker.” I tell him that he’s a nurse and he can figure out what shots to give it. Meanwhile, Maggie smiles. The first time we’ve seen that in a while.
As we speed away, I tell RIP that he done good. He nods smugly. “Can’t go wrong with a puppy.”
Behind the wheel, Justin scowls.
30→A CONQUERED FORTRESS
The radio t
ower looms above the forest. RIP and I hike in the last quarter mile slowly to reconnoiter the situation. We stay in the woods, maybe 20 yards away from the road. We didn’t see much activity in the last few miles. A few places that looked like they might have been occupied. Most are empty, though.
I try to walk like I imagine the Native Americans did. I can’t go two steps without making a twig crack. RIP is a little better—he’s got some actual hunting experience. Finally, we see the gates. We didn’t really expect gates—that didn’t show up on Google. There’s a rusted padlock and a chain keeping it all closed. Inside, a cinderblock rectangular building at the base of the tower. And a small house, not much more than a shack. But it has a large one-car garage next to it. One of the garage windows is busted out. Curtains are drawn.
“Looks empty,” I say.
“Not good enough. We need to know,” says RIP. He’s right. He’s been right all day. We work our way around the compound, looking to see if there’s an opening in the fence. Barbed wire is strung along the top. This is not military grade security, though. This is keep-the-local-high-school-kids-from-having-drinking-parties-here security. We find a spot where RIP can climb the fence without being in the line of sight of any of the windows in the house. There’s one window from the cinderblock building that looks out on him. I watch it like a hawk, the safety on my gun turned off.
He gets over and creeps to the building. He tries peeking in the window but he can’t see anything. He works his way to the front. I follow on the other side of the fence, staying down, so I can cover him. He creeps under another window and slowly tries the door. His rifle is on his back, his handgun is ready. But the door is locked. Then he walks hunched over to the house and peeks in the window there. He studies the view carefully. Feeling confident, he stands straight up and tries the door. Locked. He looks around, then puts his shoulder against it and pushes hard. It lurches open. He disappears inside.
It seems like forever. I am jumping at every squirrel noise in the woods. I am replaying in my head every possible zombie ambush scenario that could come up here. Dusk approaches, which I think should be so gradual a process that I wouldn’t note it so suddenly, but there it is. It wasn’t there before.
Finally, RIP steps out. “Clear,” he says. “It’s been clear for a long time.” He walks to the garage, looks in the broken window. Then he pushes in the door on the side. Moments later, the main garage door swings open. He reveals an old truck with a snowplow attached.
He goes back to the cinder block building. Somewhere, he has found a key. He opens the door, saying “Ta-da!” He still has his gun raised. He disappears inside. I keep thinking the squirrels in the woods are readying an ambush. They’re giving me the freaking creeps. Eventually, he steps out. “It’s good. It’s very good. Get the others.”
I step out of the woods and I jog down the long dirt drive, carrying my rifle at the ready. Our rides are where we left them. Justin is standing in the road with his rifle. “We’re good,” I say. “Let’s go.”
At the gate, RIP has tried several different keys he found inside and nothing works. “Hammer? Chisel?” I find a hammer and a crowbar in our tool stash. He pries the lock open without doing any pounding. “Let’s try to avoid unnecessary noise,” he says. “At least till we meet the neighbors.”
We pull in, shut the gate, and wrap the chain back up so that maybe it can keep out a kindergartener tonight. Then we explore.
The garage: old rusty tools, shovels, and the truck which doesn’t look like it’s been used in a decade. Mice are living in the seats. RIP says he knows engines, but he’s not a miracle worker. He shakes his head like a doctor giving a fatal diagnosis.
The house: doesn’t look like anyone has stayed here in recent memory. No food, no blankets. A bedframe with a bare, stained mattress. Some papers and maps, like the folks in charge had the occasional meeting here 15 years ago. The fridge makes groaning noises when we plug it in, like it’s either working or dying.
The cinderblock building: it’s the nerve center. There’s a control room for the radio station. The equipment appears ancient. RIP points out a new thing, maybe a router, that’s attached to a few big wires. “That’s it,” he says. “They don’t have to have a DJ up here anymore. Probably haven’t had to do that in years. With this they can do it all remotely from the college campus.”
There’s two other rooms and a rather large and sparse bathroom. We try the faucet and it works. There’s a shower that’s stained orange from the well water. The hot water doesn’t work. Pipes lead to another level below.
A concrete stairway leads down. We find a light switch that illuminates a tiny bulb above. We find a much bigger open room. Furnace and hot water heater in the corner. Both are electric, and RIP sets to work getting them going.
There are metal utility shelves with a few old boxes. Parts. Nothing of much interest. What does interest us is the metal door. It’s locked tight and we can’t tell where it would lead. “There shouldn’t even be anymore building in that direction,” says RIP slowly, hands on his hips as he studies the layout.
We decide the place will be safe to spend the night. And we can make it a lot more safe with a little work. We begin moving in.
Maggie says she wants to carry boxes, but that lasts about one trip. We set up one of the rooms for her. Tomorrow we will find a nice bed for her. She took one look at the mattress and quickly said, “No f’ing way.” So it’s sleeping bags on the floor. Justin will stay in there with her to keep an eye on her, medically speaking. I will stay in the other room with RIP.
“How are you doing?” I ask her as we are shutting down for the evening.
She keeps her eyes on her puppy, who is playing tug-of-war with her over one of her socks. “I’m doing great, Arvy.”
“Got a name for him?”
“I think so, but I need to sleep on it before I announce it. Don’t want to jinx things.”
Top priority tomorrow will be getting Justin to the lab so he can process her blood test. RIP will go with him, while I stay behind with Maggie. If I can, I want to get past the locked door in the basement.
31→HOISTING IN THE GOODS
RIP and Justin leave at dawn in the pickup, taking along plenty of firepower. They claim they’re not on a shopping trip, but I give them a list anyway because they might end up with some time on their hands. And we have needs. These needs:
-beds (3)
-mattresses (4)
-blankets/quilts/flannel sheets (lots)
-floor lamps (the place needs more atmosphere)
-wall art (not priority, but would be nice)
-vet: distemper/rabies shots, puppy chow
-drugs (more heart drugs for RIP & whatever Maggie needs)
-vitamin C (because with no fresh fruits or veggies, scurvy could get real)
-chainsaw
-2x4s
-heavy metal brackets (to create a door barricade)
-chocolate (priority)
-backup heating system (wood stove?)
-new padlock.
-bells for alarm on fence
-large screen TV
-toilet paper
I could go on, but Justin seems perturbed and RIP slightly amused. “It’s not a shopping trip,” Justin says again.
“I don’t expect you to go out of your way for anything. Just, you know, if you see anything on the list.”
“I hear you,” says RIP. Justin glowers.
They leave and I shut the gate behind them. That leaves just me and Maggie and the puppy. It could be a nice morning. But it’s kind of not. When Maggie gets rolling some mornings, it’s like she knows she only has a few hours of energy to work with and so she has to make me as miserable as possible in that time so that over the course of an entire day it averages out to a shade more than mildly irritating.
She unpacks boxes, cleans shelves, sweeps corners, and when she stops to play with the puppy (whom she has named “Homer”) she delegates freely and constantly to
me. Not that I don’t want to help, but this all evokes my least pleasing memories of my mother and the way she doled out household chores. What I would rather be doing is trying to pick the lock on the mystery door downstairs. That’s not happening any time soon, because Maggie has plenty of ideas for home improvement.
When I start to see a glimpse of free time, she then starts in on the fact that I don’t know how to clean a gun properly. Or improperly, for that matter. “It’s essential. Every day you should be cleaning any gun you’ve fired. Otherwise you are going to end up with a gun that jams when you absolutely can’t afford to have it jam. And then you end up dead. Fucking dead. Which is going to trash the rest of your life.”
“Not to mention ruin my weekend.”
“Don’t even joke,” she says. “You have a responsibility to all of us to take care of that kind of shit. And to learn to fire a gun as good as anyone. There’s bad people out there and I won’t always be around to bail you out.”
She gives me an impatient lesson on how to break down my rifle. How to clean the chamber. How to scrub the bore. It’s not very interesting. My eyes wander outside the window. Or toward whatever Homer is chewing on. Anything but the task at hand.
I see movement outside the fence. I glance up, look carefully. Get up and check some of the other windows. Nothing. I get on task and lube and reload the rifle.
32→DELIVERANCE
When the guys get back, I ask Justin what the tests showed. “Results,” is all he says. RIP has me help him unload a few items that they picked up; they knocked over another pharmacy, so plenty of boxes of drugs. Plus snacks and vitamins. And bourbon. Lots of bourbon. RIP likes bourbon.