by Urban, Tony
Her wound had turned bright red on the third day and Trooper insisted they break so he could clean it. She gritted her teeth while he scrubbed with near-boiling water and soap, then slathered half her face in ointment. Wyatt didn’t want to watch but made himself. It was his penance.
Most of the redness had faded away on day five and by the sixth, it seemed to be healing. It would leave behind a horrible, disfiguring scar but at least it seemed like they’d avoided infection and whatever hell that might have brought with it.
The worst part of the journey was the cold. Even though they couldn’t see the ocean from Interstate 95, the effects were all too clear as harsh winds whipped across the highway and cut into their bones. All four of them were bundled up like Eskimos, but the clothing and coats and hats seemed to have little effect against that wind and Wyatt could only hope that moving further inland would alleviate some of the frigid misery.
It seemed like the middle of the day when they paused for a small lunch of canned wax beans and water. Wyatt noticed Seth digging around in a pile of rubbish and watched as he picked up the remnants of a coffee maker. He examined the mostly destroyed appliance, then sniffed it.
They’d enjoyed coffee at the house frequently but none since hitting the road and Wyatt suddenly realized he longed for a cup. He moved to Seth’s side.
“How’s that going for you?” Wyatt asked.
“The best part of wakin’ up,” Seth said with a smile.
“Let me have a whiff. Maybe I can get a caffeine buzz by proxy.” Wyatt took the coffee maker from him and raised it to his nose ready to breathe in that unmistakable, rich aroma. Instead, he retched.
Seth laughed like a hyena. “You are so easy.”
“It’s like week old ass.” Wyatt threw the coffee maker to the ground. The stench from the rotten filter had settled on the back of his tongue and he spit, hoping to rid the smell and taste from his mouth.
Seth continued to laugh and Wyatt grudgingly joined in, although he wasn’t quite as jolly.
“What’s so funny?”
They turned and found Trooper and Barbara packed and ready to go.
“My brother’s a dickhead,” Wyatt said.
“And my brother’s a dumbass,” Seth added.
Trooper shook his head. “That’s not funny at all. Sad’s what it is. And here I am, almost seventy years old, and I’m babysitting a dumbass and a dickhead on a two thousand mile trip. Sad.”
On day ten they abandoned 95 and headed inland, much to Wyatt’s relief. A sign informed them that Chapinville, Massachusetts was ahead and, beyond that, Worchester. Wyatt’s family had rarely left Maine - his father said everyone south of New Hampshire was a Mass-hole - but he was eager to get to a town. More specifically, he was eager to find a building in which to take shelter for the night. And a part of him, a part he didn’t even want to admit to himself, thought that sooner or later they might find people. People living normal lives and doing normal things.
His excitement was for naught. The town of Chapinville had been razed by fire. The remnants of houses and businesses were little more than skeletons, scorched black by an inferno that looked to have taken place within the last month. It isn’t even a ghost town, Wyatt thought. It’s just destruction.
As they passed through the streets, their feet crunched against the charred cinders that were scattered everywhere, like hailstones from hell.
“What do you think happened? Lightening or something?” Wyatt asked.
Seth shook his head. “No way. This was arson. A firebug on steroids.”
“How would you know?” Wyatt asked.
“Look at the foundations. The buildings weren’t all butted against each other, some were almost half a block apart. A fire wouldn’t spread like that on its own. Someone did this.”
That brought conversation to a halt.
They were a third of the way through town when Wyatt saw the body. He’d seen dead people before, mostly suicides whose remains he discovered when they were scavenging abandoned, or what they thought were abandoned, houses. He’d found a dozen or so over the years. The majority died from gunshots. Pistols weren’t bad but once Wyatt found the corpse of a woman who’d used a shotgun and the only part of her head that remained attached to her body was her lower jaw.
One man had been naked in his bathtub, which was stained a rusty brown from the blood that spilled from his slit wrists. Mixed in with the wetness were hunks of rotten skin that had become supersaturated and sloughed off. The two that really bothered him were an elderly man and woman who had hanged themselves from the rafters in their craftsman bungalow. They died holding hands, which might have been romantic, but their purple faces and bulging eyes and tongues robbed the scene of its sentimentality.
But this body was different because it was skewed on a piece of steel rebar and hung over a fire pit. Wyatt wasn’t sure if it was a man or woman because the hair had been burned away and what little skin remained was beyond recognition, just a blackened husk. The mouth hung agape, revealing a maw with a third of its teeth missing. The arms, torso, and legs had been excised of their flesh and muscle, leaving behind nothing but bone and the occasional strip of sinew. The butchering ended at the feet, which were tied together by wire at the ankles.
The wheels on Seth’s chair crunched through debris, getting closer.
“What is it?” Seth called out.
Wyatt spun around, positioning himself between his companions and the human barbecue, wanting to spare them that nightmare fuel. “It’s nothing. Just a calf roasted and picked clean.”
Wyatt strode toward his brother, grabbing the handles of his wheelchair and spinning him away before he could get too good of a look. That worked with Seth, but not Trooper who might be old but still had the eyesight, and experience, to know what lay ahead.
“Let’s move on before it gets dark,” Trooper said.
Wyatt nodded. He let his brother push himself and fell into step with Trooper, behind Seth and Barbara and waited until they were out of earshot.
“You think it was those bastards who broke into the house?” Wyatt asked. “They stunk like smoke.”
Trooper shrugged his shoulders. “Possibly. I’d say the odds are pretty fair.”
In a way that made Wyatt feel better. To think the monsters who had eaten a person were dead and rotting in his backyard. Any relief was short-lived.
“But even if they were, there’ll be others capable of that and worse.”
“That’s not the kind of reassurance I was hoping for, Trooper.” Wyatt tried to smile.
Trooper didn’t. “Most important thing my job ever taught me was to never underestimate man’s capacity for violence.” Trooper watched him, examined him. Wyatt didn’t respond.
“I think it best if we slept in shifts for the next while.”
That was fine with Wyatt. All he cared about was getting as far away from this town as possible before dark, even if it meant sleeping in a field. He didn’t want to be anywhere close to here when everything turned black.
Chapter Eleven
Just before full dark Trooper pointed to a copse of pine trees that lingered a quarter-mile off the highway. They were dead, just like almost everything else, but most of their amber-colored needles still clung to the branches and provided sufficient cover.
They had sat in the cold night, passing around a can of colorless, flavorless chicken and a bottle of water. They’d go to bed hungry, but they hadn’t come across a single item of food since leaving Portland and needed to ration as much as possible because none of them knew when - or if - they might be able to restock.
That wasn’t a concern to Wyatt who couldn’t get the vision of the spit-roasted human being out of his mind. He felt that it was wrong to keep this from his mother and Seth. An unspoken lie. As he debated whether to tell them, Barbara spoke.
“You fellas know you’re not being charged by the word, right?”
Wyatt glanced up, startled by her voice. “What?
”
She gave a wan smile. “The conversation. I’d get more chatter out of a mocking bird than you three.”
“Sorry.” He tried to think of something to say, innocuous small talk to pass the time but came up empty. “Sorry,” he said again.
Barbara grabbed her pack and laid it at the top of her sleeping bag for use as a pillow. “I’m so tired of hearing you say that word, Wyatt. Next time we pass by a library I’m going to steal you a dictionary.”
Wyatt tried looking her in the eye, but he felt his gaze pull down instead. “I’ll do better. I’m just tired.”
“We all are.” She laid down and covered her eye with her arm. “Good night, boys.”
She was snoring within a minute.
“You’re gonna have to come to terms with it,” Trooper said.
“With what?”
“Her face.” He said the words in a flat, unaffected matter, like he was stating something as clearly known as water is wet. “It’s done. And you pussyfooting around it and not looking at her only makes it worse for her.”
Wyatt wanted to respond, but again words failed him.
“I think it made her look badass,” Seth said. “Like the supervillain in a Marvel movie or something. Kind of cool.”
The notion that there was anything cool about their mother’s missing eye and hacked up face made Wyatt’s stomach tighten. He held the can of chicken but had no appetite.
“You gonna finish that or fondle it all night?” Seth asked.
Wyatt handed it to him. “Knock yourself out.”
After swallowing the last bite, Seth unleashed a belch that echoed across the field. He tossed the can away from camp and flopped onto his side. “See you assholes in the a.m.”
Trooper and Wyatt sat in silence for a good half hour before Wyatt spoke. “You want to take first shift?”
“Ayuh. I will.”
“Be careful, okay?”
Trooper tapped the pistol on his hip. “Always am.”
Wyatt laid back and closed his eyes without responding. He felt the weight of the darkness fall onto him and he was out.
Rough shaking woke him from a dreamless sleep.
“Wyatt.”
It was Trooper’s voice, which made sense with how rudely he’d been awoken. Must be time for my turn on watch, he thought.
Before he opened his eyes, he heard the screaming. Any vestiges of sleep that clung to him vanished in a moment. He bolted upright, head snapping to and fro as he tried to figure out what was going on. Who was in pain. Who was, from the awful, shrieking wails, being slaughtered.
Trooper rested his hand on Wyatt’s knee. “It’s alright.”
Wyatt’s panic slipped from a ten to an eight. He realized Barbara and Seth and Trooper were all in camp and unharmed and he managed to steal a few breaths.
More screaming, to the east and close, prevented him from calming down further and he realized he wasn’t alone in his unease. Barbara sat with her knees pulled to her chest, hugging them and holding a pistol at the same time. Seth didn’t look scared, but his eyes were avid and alert. He held a shotgun. Trooper stood, pistol in hand and finger on the trigger.
“How long has it been going on?” Wyatt asked.
“A few minutes. I swear, you could sleep through a tornado,” Seth said.
“I get it naturally.” Wyatt scrambled to his feet, grabbing his pistol and moving to Barbara’s side. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Right mom?”
She nodded but didn’t smile. “Seth woke me so don’t feel too bad.”
He stayed at her side, wanting to be close, to be there for her this time if things went bad.
Another agonized howl ripped through the open field and into their camp. Wyatt realized it originated in the direction of the road and was glad Trooper had insisted they find cover for the night. He reached for a flashlight but, before he could flick it on, Trooper swatted his hand.
“Don’t!”
“Someone’s getting killed out there!”
“All we got is noise. Could be someone in trouble or it could be a trap.”
“A trap?”
“Make a big ruckus, make it sound like someone’s in trouble. Good way to draw out anyone else who might be in the area.”
Wyatt felt his forearms break out in goosebumps. He hadn’t even considered that. And if Trooper was right, he’d been a half-second away from giving away their location.
“Everyone sit down and stay alert. It’s gonna be a long night,” Trooper said.
The screams continued for hours. Even when they stopped, Wyatt could still hear them.
Chapter Twelve
Seth tried to examine his reflection in the metal frame of his wheelchair. His hair bolted out at random angles like a cartoon character that had received a bad electrical shock. He spat into his palm, rubbed his hands together, then tried to mash his blond locks back into place. It was a poor substitute for hair gel, but it sufficed.
“Hell of a night, huh?” He cast a sideways glance at Wyatt who was busy rolling his sleeping bag into a perfect cylinder. It made Seth think of Hostess Swiss Rolls and that made his mostly empty stomach rumble to life. Shit, it was too early for that.
“Yeah,” Wyatt, ever the chatterbox, said.
“Sounded like someone was being skinned alive.”
“Enough,” Barbara ordered through a yawn. “I don’t want to think about that.”
Geez, Seth thought, so touchy. He grabbed the road map Trooper had given him at the start of the trip, careful as he unfolded it as the creases were already threatening to split and they’d barely begun their long trek south. It got dark too fast the night prior, and he didn’t have a chance to mark their day’s journey, something he intended to remedy.
After pulling a red ballpoint pen from his pack, he traced the route they’d taken, then reviewed where they’d been. And then he looked to Mexico. Their progress seemed rather pathetic when compared to the big-picture view, so he tried to focus on the area ahead. The rest of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York.
He didn’t like what he saw, because the map also featured wavy lines that indicated the terrain and the territory looked anything but level. That was the worst thing about being in the chair during this trip, the hills. He did okay on the gradual ones, but anything too steep and he either needed someone to push his crippled ass up or hold on to him on the way down so he didn’t go careening out of control like a kid whose sled hit an ice patch. Neither was fun.
Wyatt didn’t complain about pushing him, but occasionally Trooper or his mom would trade-off. One more than twice his age, the other more than three times… It made him feel about as useful as a flat tire and he couldn’t imagine hundreds of more miles being dragged along for the ride and letting the others do the hard work.
He began to refold the map, a skill that had taken him nearly half an hour the first time he tried, but which he now had down to a science, when he noticed a few small, neatly printed letters beside random towns. T.P. There had been one beside Kennebunk. Another in Lowell. The next was in a place called Kent in Connecticut, and then none until East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
“Hey Trooper?” Seth asked.
Trooper was packed and pacing, ready to go. “What?”
Seth tapped the map with his index finger. “What’s up with the initials you have written here. T.P. That some old girlfriend of yours?” He smirked. “A little jungle love, maybe?”
Trooper raised an eyebrow and stared for several seconds before answering. “Son, that stands for toilet paper. Reminding myself to stock up.”
Well that was disappointing, Seth thought. He continued to refold the map. “You brought toilet paper?”
“You didn’t?”
“Hell no. I’ve been wiping my ass with leaves.”
Trooper nodded. “Now it all makes sense.”
“What?”
“Why you stink.” Trooper unzipped one of his bags, reached into it, and pulled out a roll. He tossed it
to Seth who caught it. “There. Do us all a favor and use it.”
Seth waited for Trooper to laugh, to let on that it was a joke. That didn’t happen. He looked to Wyatt who was now packed and ready to move.
“Why didn’t you tell me I smelled?” Seth asked.
Wyatt narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t want to be the one to say anything…”
Seth was about to lob a comeback, to tell his brother that he didn’t smell like freshly picked flowers either, but he saw the right corner of Wyatt’s mouth tick upward as he held back a grin.
“You suck.”
Wyatt gave up on suppressing the smile. “At least I don’t stink.”
Seth flipped him the bird, then scooted himself across the fallen pine needles to position himself in front of his chair. He checked to make sure the wheels were locked, then bent his knees and planted his feet. Mastering this move had taken him more than a year and caused countless bruises, scrapes, and gashes as he failed and crashed to the floor, but he’d eventually become proficient.
He knew he could ask Wyatt to lift him and Wyatt would have jumped to attention, but doing it himself made him feel more capable, and less like that flat tire. He grabbed the frame of the chair with his left hand and pushed off with his right, flopping himself into the seat.
He looked to see if the others had watched. If they’d been waiting to see if he fell or needed help or just to look upon him with pity, but they were busy going about their own business. And for some reason that made Seth feel like he wasn’t so different after all.
Chapter Thirteen
They were a few miles north of the Massachusetts Connecticut border before they saw other living people. The day hadn’t been different from any other, mile after mile of trudging along in silence under the gunmetal gray skies. They’d paused for a lunch that consisted of tea and stale crackers they’d found a few miles back inside an abandoned shack when Wyatt noticed Trooper’s attention was focused on the road behind them.