We found five US soldiers lying neatly in a row. They were dressed head to toe in camouflage, and all had a single gunshot wound to the head. Fresh tire tracks had left deep ruts in the grass.
Dr. Trowbridge knelt down to examine the bodies. “It appears they’ve all been bitten. Some more than once.”
“We shot our own guys?” I asked.
“Why not? Considering they had plans to destroy a whole city full of them. Must have left them here during the retreat.”
“Ya, but they shot these guys before they turned.”
“They are clearly at the mercy of this virus. Wherever they’re headed, they didn’t want to bring the infection along with them.”
Celeste pulled the boots off the shortest of the lot. “This guy is tiny. Look, they’re almost my size.” She removed his pants and jacket and tried them on.
Dr. Trowbridge and I sized up the fallen soldiers, then removed the uniforms of those closest to us in height.
“His would have fit Alex perfectly,” I said, pointing at a skinny corpse.
“He even looks like him,” Celeste added. She stared longingly at the fallen soldier.
“Come on friends, we have to keep moving,” Trowbridge prodded.
I put my uniform on. It was stained with blood, and it smelled like feces. Celeste did the same.
“I can make this fit,” she said, “but it smells like death.”
“Mine smells like shit.”
“These will have to do,” Dr. Trowbridge said. “We can wash them once we find some water.”
I took my uniform off, bundled it up, and threw it in the back of the Humvee. “That thing is going to have to wait until it’s clean. For now, you two can continue enjoying the Royce show.”
Celeste and Dr. Trowbridge followed suit. The three of us jumped in the Humvee and continued bouncing west down the I-70 in our undies.
52.
“Look over there,” I said, pointing toward a wooden roadside sign. “Perche Creek one half mile. We can wash our clothes there.”
Dr. Trowbridge studied his watch. “That’s not a bad idea. We should stay there for the night. Otherwise, we’ll get to KC in the dark, and I don’t think that’s wise, given what we’re likely to find.”
“Fine with me, doc. What do you say, Celeste?”
“I just hope Perche Creek is cleaner than that river. My hair smells almost as bad as those uniforms.”
I turned off the highway and followed the signs to the creek. A short distance down a side road, we came across a drooping one-story building with a tattered tin sign out front that read: Buck’s Charge and Chow. Domed polished metal structures stood out front in a tidy row.
“Is this a gas station?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Celeste said. “No gas though. It’s a charging station.”
“Then that’s a convenience store. With food!”
“That’s doubtful,” Dr. Trowbridge explained. “Remember, there’s nobody living this close to the front.”
“Then why does the sign say ‘open’?” I asked, smirking. “I’m gonna have a look.”
I parked the Humvee out front, grabbed my rifle, and walked up to the entrance. I placed my hands against the cloudy window and peered inside. There didn’t appear to be anyone in there.
Celeste crawled into the driver’s seat and stuck her head out the window. “Hey, Royce, I’ll have a BLT, some Cheetos, and a Diet Coke,” she cracked.
“You’re gonna eat those words.”
I grabbed the front door handle. It was unlocked. I pulled it open and stepped cautiously inside. The store was layered with dust and grime. The shelves by the door were stocked with bubble gum, car air fresheners, sunglasses, and other items we had no use for. I walked down the aisle and found a travel box of laundry detergent, which I picked up. I turned the corner and hit the jackpot. An otherwise barren snack shelf still had two bags of Doritos and a filthy box of Twinkies. My eyes grew wide with excitement. I couldn’t wait to prove my companions wrong. I walked over to pick them up, and was so focused on my achievement that I missed the shadowy figure emerging from behind the front counter.
“Afternoon,” spoke a raspy voice off to my right.
I spun around and raised my gun almost killing the man on instinct. I was so shocked to come across a person instead of a freak that I just stood there. He was an ancient country bumpkin, complete with flannel shirt underneath tattered overalls. His greasy white hair competed for attention with his mangy beard. His eyes were deep set, his skin leathered from the sun.
“Slow down there, fella. This some kinda stick-up?”
“Oh, no, no, of course not.” I lowered my gun. “You can never be too careful these days.”
“Name’s Buck. Nice to meet ya. You goin’ purchase that?”
“What, this?” I held the detergent up sheepishly. “Um, my money is in the car. Just gimme a minute.” I put the detergent on the counter and ran out to the car.
“Empty handed. I knew it!” Celeste said.
I put my hands on the window jam and leaned in. “You two are not going to believe this. There’s an old man in there, and he’s asking me for money.”
“Does he have food?” Celeste asked.
“A little bit, but . . . you just gotta come in and see it for yourselves. I don’t think he’s all there. It didn’t even faze him that I’m in my underwear.”
They exited the vehicle and came inside with me. The old man was still standing behind the counter, humming to himself with a vacant expression.
“Hey there, Buck. These are my friends.”
My companions looked surprised by the state of the shop. They left footprints in the dust as they approached the counter.
“That’ll be fourteen dollars for the soap.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have any money,” Dr. Trowbridge said.
“Then you ain’t gettin’ no soap.”
“Of course not,” Dr. Trowbridge replied. He studied the old man carefully. “To be perfectly honest, sir, we’re surprised to find you here. Last I heard, everyone had been evacuated from this area.”
“Evacuated? Don’t know nothin’ ’bout no evacuation.”
“You know, from the war,” I said.
“I fought in the war—both of ’em. Freed Kuwait and did two tours in Afghaneestan. We didn’t do no evacuatin’.”
“Of course you didn’t. I wasn’t trying to suggest—”
“Did y’all see my pa out there?”
“Who?”
“My pa. He goin’ take me to get a new game for my Nintendo soon as he gets home.”
“Alrighty, then. Say, Buck, is there a bathroom in this place?” I asked.
“Washroom’s out back. This here’s the key. Nephew’s in there, but don’t pay him no mind. Been actin’ funny ever since he came back from huntin’ so I put him in there till he sobers up.”
“Why don’t you just go in the woods?” Celeste asked.
“So much better to use the facilities, don’t you think?” I asked with an awkward nod toward the door. “Come on you two, it was a long drive. I’m sure you could use some relief.”
They followed me outside, and we headed around the building to find the bathroom.
“He clearly has some form of dementia. Most likely Alzheimers,” Dr. Trowbridge said.
“You think he’s a holdout?” I asked.
“Looks like it. Doesn’t seem to mind, given his poor reality testing.”
“Poor what?”
“He doesn’t know what in the hell is going on.”
“Gotcha, doc.”
“We can’t just leave him here,” Celeste said. “He isn’t safe. Not anymore.”
“We can try. If anyone is willing to hop in a car with a bunch of strangers in their underwear, it’s him.”
We stopped in front of the bathroom. A ghoul started growling and pawing at the other side of the door as soon as we came near.
“And that would be his nephew,
” Dr. Trowbridge said. “Here, give me the key. I’m going to open the door.”
Dr. Trowbridge unlocked the door and pulled it open. A whisker-faced zombie in shredded camouflage hunting gear came lumbering out of the bathroom toward me. I jammed the bayonet into his eye socket. He fell right to the ground.
“Hey, you just killed his nephew!” Celeste whined.
“What did you think we were going to do with him?”
“I don’t know. I just feel bad you know, cause now he’s all alone.”
“Better alone and in one piece than torn to bits by those you love. That’s what I always say. Hey, doc, what should we do with this sack of rocks?”
“Let’s just drag him off into the woods,” Dr. Trowbridge suggested.
“Like a serial killer,” I quipped.
“Yes, Royce, just like a serial killer,” Dr. Trowbridge said with a sigh. “Now get over here and help me. The old guy won’t even know he’s gone.”
Dr. Trowbridge and I grabbed the nephew by the ankles and schlepped him back into the trees behind the building. I used the bathroom, and we walked back inside. Our elderly friend was right where we had left him.
“Find er all right?” he asked.
“She’s a beauty, Buck. A white porcelain goddess if I’ve ever seen one. Listen, we’re on our way to Kansas City. Gonna check out the sights. How’d you like to come with us?”
“Can’t.”
“You sure about that? I hear they have a serious selection of Nintendo games and the doctor here is buying.”
“Can’t leave my store. Got customers to serve.”
I took another look at my surroundings as if I might be missing something. “You sure about that, Buck? When was the last time you had a customer?”
“Got customers every day ’cept Mondays. We closed on Mondays. Can’t leave my store.”
“Should we just grab him?” I asked my friends.
A suddenly lucid Buck overheard my query and pulled a shotgun from behind the counter.
“Ain’t nobody gonna be grabbing nobody.”
I stepped back and showed my hands. “You’re absolutely right, Buck. That was just a silly suggestion.”
Dr. Trowbridge stepped forward. “You keep that thing handy, OK? There’s a . . . some other folks out there that haven’t been acting very neighborly. They’re downright rude, actually, and I’m certain they’ll be stopping by your establishment from time to time.”
“Got no manners, you say?”
“They’re extremely angry, and looking for a fight.”
“If it’s a fight they want, it’s a fight they gonna get,” the old man growled. He cocked his shotgun.
We walked back out to the Humvee and climbed inside. I tossed a bag of Doritos into Celeste’s lap. “They were all out of Cheetos,” I said.
“Oh, you didn’t!” she squealed.
“What? It’s not like he’s going to eat them. I got some laundry detergent, too.”
We drove down a bumpy dirt road toward the lake, munching on stale Doritos years past their expiration date. They tasted like seasoned cardboard.
“I feel bad leaving him,” Celeste said.
“I don’t think we had any say in the matter,” Dr. Trowbridge pointed out. “We can always check on him tomorrow on our way back out to the highway.”
53.
I pulled the Humvee up alongside the creek. We leaned back in our chairs, passing the bag of Doritos around and contemplating our fate. The conversation was lively and focused. It was nice to finally have some down time to process the horror we’d endured.
“Do you really think they can beat this, doc?”
“The vaccination will give them a fighting chance. I don’t see how they can overcome this epidemic without it. It’s spreading too quickly, and it’s impossible to defeat an enemy that’s growing exponentially within your ranks. It’s going to be a numbers game, even if the immunity works. You have an enemy that doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep . . . is always in attack mode. If there’s enough of them, and too few of us, all the weapons in the world won’t be able to turn the tide.”
“What they did to St. Louis. I wonder if that’s happening in other cities?” Celeste asked.
“One would have to assume so, at least along the front where there are large concentrations of soldiers. Firebombing St. Louis—that was an act of desperation. It had to have been a last course of action—a dire method to control the number of infected. Let’s hope we can get to them in time to even the odds.”
“I hope we aren’t too late,” Celeste added.
“Ya, maybe we should just scrub these things real quick and hit the road. Why are you so worried about getting to KC in the dark?”
“It’s a natural point of retreat from St. Louis. I imagine they’ve reconcentrated their forces there. In the dark, it will be difficult to determine what state the city is in. If the virus has gotten out of control, they’ll destroy the city, and we don’t want to be in the vicinity when that happens. The fate of our country . . . of humanity . . . may very well depend on our survival.”
54.
“Give me some of that detergent,” Celeste said. “I’m going to see if it’ll wash the stink out of my hair.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said.
I poured some of the powder into Celeste’s outstretched hands, then grabbed the uniforms and my rifle from the back of the Humvee.
“You coming, doc?”
“No, I’m going to stay here and rest for a moment.”
“Suit your stinky self.”
Celeste and I walked down the creek a ways to find some privacy. The small, rust-colored body of water, roughly thirty feet across, snaked through a grove of trees. We came across a stretch where the water was less murky.
“I’m going here,” she said.
“All right, I’ll go find the men’s locker room.”
The creek careened to the right around a small hill covered in brush. I walked past the hill, set my belongings on the bank, and waded out into the middle of the warm water, which reached my waist. I looked in Celeste’s direction to make certain the hill blocked our line of sight. The coast was clear so I slipped off my underwear and returned to the bank. I washed them gently with the soap, wrung them out, and hung them on the bushes to dry.
I dunked the first uniform in the water, sprinkled soap on the areas that looked stained, and rubbed the fabric together as hard as I could. The friction produced a loud scratching sound as it cleaned the soiled fabric. Halfway through the second uniform, I thought I heard something and stopped scrubbing. I looked around for the source of the sound but heard nothing else. I went back to scrubbing. A moment later, I heard something again, and stopped what I was doing. Silence. Then a chilling scream from the other side of the hill.
“Royce!” Celeste screamed desperately.
With no time to waste, I dropped the uniform and ran up and over the hill. I didn’t even realize I was naked, nor did I think to grab my gun. Two zombies in US military uniforms had her cornered in the middle of the creek.
“Hey, hey, you dummies, over here!” I yelled and waved my arms to get their attention, then grabbed a cantaloupe-sized rock at the base of the hill and headed out into the water. They stopped for a moment to look at me but then continued after Celeste, who backpedaled and fell onto her backside in the water. I stormed out into the center of the creek yelling to get their attention, to no avail.
I reached the zombie closest to me before he grabbed Celeste. I held the rock in both hands above my head and smashed it down on the top of his skull. The blow blew open a massive crater in the top of his head. He collapsed into the water. The zombie on the other side of her clutched her shoulders and leaned in to bite her on the face. I held the rock in my right hand, swung it back like a bowling ball, then stepped forward, and unloaded it into the zombie’s chin. Teeth flew in all directions, and the zombie fell back into the water. It started to get up. I raised the rock and smashed it
down on the zombie’s forehead. The creature dropped in the water like a stone.
Celeste sloshed over to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and collapsed sobbing against my chest. I’d never seen her so fragile and vulnerable. She was also nude, and I could feel her firm breasts against my ribs. I rubbed her shoulder and ran my other hand through her hair. Blood from the ghouls clouded the water around us.
“There, there . . .” I whispered softly, “everything’s all right. They’re gone now.”
She cried for a while, then pulled herself together, and asked in a raspy voice, “What happened to your gun?”
“Oh that. It’s up on the riverbank. I, um, I heard you scream so I ran right over. I didn’t want to leave you alone for another second.”
She lifted her head and looked into me like I’d just melted her heart. She grabbed my hand and slid it down her back. She cupped it on her ass and pushed her pelvis up against me. The whole thing took me by surprise. She felt so warm and soft that I was deeply aroused, pulsating against her body.
“Celeste, I have to—”
She placed her finger against my lips then pulled it away and went in for a kiss. Our lips touched for a brief and intoxicating moment. Then I turned my head gently to the side.
“Just wait, I need you to know something. As far as I know, I still have a wife back in California.” Celeste’s expression morphed into hurt and confusion. “If she’s still alive, she’s probably a little shriveled old lady, but she’s my shriveled old lady. I gave a vow, ‘till death do us part.’ I want to honor that.”
Celeste didn’t say a word. Her arms dropped to her sides, and she looked down at the water. She still wore a wounded expression, but something told me she respected my predicament. I didn’t know what else to say. The silence and our nakedness were beginning to feel painfully awkward.
Gunfire exploded in the distance. Then silence, followed by another ear-ringing flurry.
“Dr. Trowbridge,” I said. “Let me get my gun.”
I stomped through the shallow water then stumbled my way up over the sandy hill. I scurried up the bank and grabbed my gun, then returned covered in dirt like a chicken breast dusted with flour. Celeste had put her wet skivvies on and was running with her weapon toward the gunfire. I took off behind her.
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