AFTER

by Kelly, Ronald

  Trixie giggled, her cleavage blushing with embarrassment. "Aw, Waco… you big ol' flirt you!"

  Lady Bird reached over and clamped her hands over her son's ears. "Mr. Waco! Please use some discretion. There are innocent young ears present at this table!"

  "Yeah, buster!" said her husband, joining in. "So watch your mouth!"

  Waco picked up the magnum, thumbed back the hammer, and fired at a sugar shaker sitting in the middle of the circular table. Bits of glass and sugar showered everyone sitting there. "I can shoot a cuckoo bird just as easily as a wart hog," he told husband and wife. "So if you don't want to leave this kid an orphan, I suggest you put a cork in it right now."

  Mr. and Mrs. Anderson grew silent. Lady Bird took her palms away from the five-year-old's ears.

  "Is the cowboy and the lady with the big hair gonna screw again?" piped Bratzilla.

  "Yes, dear," said his mother quietly.

  The rest of the meal continued without criticism or gunfire. Then Trixie spoke up. "Oh, oh… there was something important I needed to tell you?"

  "What was it?" Waco wanted to know, aware that he was wading into treacherous waters just asking.

  "I don't know… let's see…"

  "The President called and said he was sending Air Force One to pick us up for Sunday brunch tomorrow morning?"

  "Really?" said Trixie, wide-eyed. "That sounds like fun!"

  "Sugar, I'd open the top of your head and massage your brain, but I didn't bring my magnifying glass and tweezers with me," Waco told her wearily. "Now just think for a moment and it'll come to you."

  "Some forms of hypnosis can help short-term memory loss," T.P. told them. "I could try to apply some techniques I know and extract the lost data from deep within her subconscious."

  "It'd be like diddling a black hole in space… damned dangerous," Waco told him. "No, she's a big girl. If the Egyptians could build the pyramids, then Trixie can pry loose a thought or two."

  It took the beautician a couple of minutes, but she finally remembered. "Oh, I know… the water's off again."

  "Damn it to hell!" grumbled Waco. "Not again! Those heartless bastards!" The Fortress's water supply was controlled by a central valve, which, unfortunately, was located in the basement of the train station at the other end of Main Street.

  "I reckon they got pissed off because you gunned down the Duck," T.P. told him.

  Waco glared at him. "You think so?" The Texan sat back in his chair and belched. "That means it's straw-drawing time."

  "Not again!" snapped Numb Nuts. "I don't think it's fair that you have to take someone with you every time. Remember what happened to Taylor last time."

  Waco thought of the black factory worker from Mississippi. Taylor had been a good man – a veteran and loather of bullshit – cut of the same working man's cloth as Waco. But he'd gotten careless during their last water run. A Nutjob dressed up like a spaceman had split his skull with a fire ax. Damned shame. Taylor was the only one of the bunch he could really connect with on an intellectual level.

  "It was Taylor's time, I reckon," Waco told him. "It's only fair that everyone gets their turn. Hell, look at me. I have to go every time. If I didn't, none of you would survive longer than two minutes!"

  The rest of them grew silent. They knew he was right. The ex-Marine was the only one of the six who possessed the expertise to survive a Nutjob attack. If they went out into the open alone, they would be slaughtered within a matter of minutes.

  Waco took four toothpicks from a holder on the table. He turned his back and broke them off into different lengths. Then he offered them their choice, the ends protruding from between the fingers of his fist.

  The four adults picked their toothpicks. A second later the verdict was read.

  "Hey, Daddy… you got the short one this time!" said Bratzilla excitedly.

  Numb Nuts didn't share his son's enthusiasm. "Shut up, junior," he snapped.

  "Don't worry, hoss," Waco assured him. "I ain't gonna let those loony-tunes kill your sorry ass."

  "Thanks a lot." Anderson tried to hide his fear, but it hung around him as heavily as the cloying odor of his Old Spice cologne, which he used frequently and rather abundantly.

  "We'll hit the ground early," he told him. "Daybreak more than likely. If the Nutjobs have been up partying all night long, we could be in for an easy run. Ol' Annie Wilkes was a heavy broad. They could stick an apple in her mouth and have a helluva luau."

  "You watch my ass, cowboy, and I'll watch yours," said Numb Nuts. "I'm not asking for any favors."

  "Don't worry," Waco assured him seriously. "We'll make it just fine. Just you wait and see."

  That night, lying in bed with Trixie sleeping nearby, Waco considered how he had come to be where he was, and how he had hooked up with such a band of losers.

  In another life, before the Burn, he had been Travis Harvey, an ex-Marine who had done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and had returned to his hometown of Waco, Texas. He was married to Linda, a payroll manager for an oil corporation, while he was a mechanic at a local gas station. They enjoyed a good, stable life together, despite his temper and tendency to drink a little too much. They had one child, an eight-year-old boy named Johnny. Johnny was Travis's pride and joy. Never a weekend passed that they weren't fishing, hunting, playing touch football, or riding four-wheelers.

  Tammy had been out of town on business – in Corpus Christi, in fact – when the Burn took place. Travis had discovered the next morning that a nuclear device had taken out Dallas, completely scrubbed it off the map.

  Amid the chaos, the refugees migrating to Mexico, and all the bad dealings he heard tell about, Travis had wanted to head to the coast to find his wife. That was just the kind of man he was… hit the road, armed to the teeth, and danger be damned.

  But the boy prevented him from acting recklessly. He was afraid of what might happen to Johnny if they wandered from their property a few miles south of Waco. So they stayed there and waited. Travis worked on some old junkers in his garage, just to pass the time, while Johnny sat on the porch and watched the highway, searching for his mother's white Toyota Camry.

  Four days later, he saw it. It didn't look much like Tammy's car. The white paintjob had been blistered away and much of the tire tread was melted. Johnny jumped off the porch excitedly, yelling for his father. Travis left the garage just as the car veered off the road and landed, nose-down, in a ditch. When he wrenched the door open, he knew that it was a miracle that Tammy had made it home. The left side of her face and body was severely burnt and the other side was pockmarked with bleeding lesions from radiation poisoning. She had smiled up at him as he gently carried her to the house, telling him that she was glad to be home. Travis had never cried in his life, not even as a child, but at that moment he cried like a baby. When he laid her down in the bed they had shared for twelve years, most of her blonde hair had fallen out on her pillow.

  From what she could tell him between bouts of unconsciousness, Travis learnt that a bomb had gone off only a few miles from Corpus Christi, blasting out the window of her hotel room and setting the bed clothes and curtains aflame. Amid the back-flash of the detonation, she had reached her car and escaped the city. It was the long journey home that had tested her tenacity for life and her will to see her family one last time. Tammy had fought off carjackers twice with a Taser Travis had given her for self-defense. She had been raped by a gang of escaped convicts south of San Antonio and narrowly escaped with her life as they slept. Near Austin, Tammy had traded her wedding ring at a fill-in station for a tank of gas.

  Still, she had almost never made it back home. Her left eye was blinded by the blast and she grew sicker and sicker every mile she drove. By the time she was twenty miles from Waco, she could hardly see three feet in front of her and had trouble staying awake. But she had made it and, in Travis's mind, that made her as brave and resourceful as any soldier he had served beside on the battlefield.

  Tammy lasted for five da
ys – two days in and out of consciousness and three in a coma. After her death, Travis and Johnny had buried her beneath a pecan tree in the field out back. Both grieved her death, but it was the boy who took it the hardest. Many a night Travis woke up to find Johnny's bed empty and searched the property to find him lying on the mound of his mother's grave. He began to refuse food and his weight began to drop. Travis knew if he didn't do something fast, he would be digging another grave beneath the pecan tree.

  One night, over supper, he asked Johnny a question. "If we could go anywhere in the world, where would you want to go?"

  Johnny didn't have to think twice. "The Happiest Place on Earth."

  Travis understood why he had picked that particular spot. Their trip to Florida had been one of the happiest times of their lives. In his mind's eye he could picture Tammy and Johnny, a few years younger, laughing and smiling as they rode ride after ride.

  They had packed Travis's Ram pickup with provisions and every gun he owned, then headed east the following morning. They did okay until they reached a rest stop off Interstate 10 just west of Mobile. Travis had gone into the restroom to take his morning shit, leaving Johnny in the truck with his .44 Magnum. When Travis had finished he returned to find that some crazy

  Cherokee in war paint had gutted and scalped his son right there in the parking lot. The Indian had raised the .44 toward Travis, but the ex-Marine had moved in swiftly and opened his throat with the blade of his K-Bar. Afterward, he had buried poor Johnny in a grove of maple trees near some picnic tables, then decapitated the damn redskin and left his head on a signpost as a warning that he would never let anyone get the drop on him again. He had arrived at the rest stop as Travis Harvey, but left as a bitter hard-ass known only as Waco.

  Although he had no idea why, he continued onward to central Florida. Maybe it was to put as much distance between himself and Texas as possible… or maybe it was to fulfill a wish that his son had never gotten the chance to live out. Outside of Tallahassee, Waco had come across a family being terrorized by a gang of black-clad vampires in Alice Cooper makeup. The Texan had brought the attackers down with the .44 within a matter of seconds. When he had asked the Andersons where they were headed and the little boy said "The Happiest Place on Earth!," Waco had agreed to accompany them there. By the time they reached Ocala they had picked up Trixie Bass, Thomas "T.P." Rawlings, and Emery Taylor. All three had been heading for the same place. Soon, a wagon train of three – the Anderson's minivan, Trixie's VW Bug, and Waco's truck – was headed down Interstate 75 for Orlando, dodging burnt-out vehicles and radiation-mutated alligators the size of Cadillacs.

  When they finally reached the theme park, they were surprised to find that they were the only ones there. The place was completely deserted. Waco had hotwired a boat and the seven had crossed a lagoon to the main park.

  Stepping onto Main Street was like crossing through the Pearly Gates. They had the Happiest Place on Earth all to themselves.

  At first life there had been idyllic. There was plenty to eat and plenty to do. Waco and Taylor discovered that most of the rides were connected to backup generators, to prevent accidents should the power go out while they were in operation. They hooked everything up and, soon, were enjoying themselves from morning till sunset. They considered setting off nightly fireworks, too, but decided the less attention they drew, the better. Even Paradise could lose its luster if there were too many neighbors to share it with.

  They lived like that for four months. Not a care in the world. Then one Saturday morning, Paradise quickly turned into Hell.

  Waco was making a security run along the outer perimeter, when motion drew his attention across the lagoon. He had trained his rifle scope toward the ticket booths and saw four big Greyhounds parked at the curb, disgorging dozens of lunatics, some still wearing hospital gowns and loosened straitjackets. Apparently, someone had emptied the cells of an asylum somewhere and they had all chosen the Happiest Place on Earth as their destination. Waco cussed under his breath as ferries and monorails full of the criminally insane made their way to the 107 acres of heaven that he and the others had claimed for themselves for so long.

  Waco had rounded up the others as quickly as possible and they had barricaded themselves in the upper regions of what they now called the Fortress. Funny that something as lovely and magical as a fairy tale castle could become a fortress of defense during the most dire of circumstances.

  After that, Waco and the others were pretty much prisoners in their own Utopia. When the Nutjobs had discovered their presence, there were constant attacks against the Fortress. The only advantage Waco and the others seemed to have against the lunatics was the absence of firepower in the Nutjobs' arsenal. While they came armed only with clubs, knives, and swords, Waco met them at the door with his .44 Magnum, the Mark V, a Mossberg twelve-gauge, and a compound bow that could put an arrow completely through a man from an eighth of a mile away. It wasn't long before the Nutjobs, led by chain-smoking Annie Wilkes, knew their limits and found other ways to torment the occupants of the Fortress. One way was dressing up in the costumes of the theme park characters that had once been a fixture of their cherished memories. Another was shutting off their water supply from time to time, forcing them out into the open.

  It was during Waco's last trip to the water valve beneath the train station that he discovered another gruesome fact about the Nutjobs. Not only were they lunatics, rapists, and murderers, but they were also cannibals. He and Taylor had entered the basement to find no one around and almost thought that their latest mission had gone without a hitch, when a Nutjob dressed as a cartoon spaceman stepped out of the shadows and buried an ax into Taylor's head, splitting his skull from scalp to neck bone. Soon, they were coming out of the woodwork with carving knives and forks clutched in their fists. Some reached Taylor before he could, ripping away chunks of flesh with their fingers and teeth. Waco blew them away with the Mossberg, determined that his friend wouldn't end up on a Nutjob's dinner plate. He shouldered Taylor's body and, like a medic carrying a wounded grunt, toted the big man the length of Main Street, back to the Fortress. The Nutjobs had nearly overtaken him, but had been driven back by shots from the Weatherby stationed from a tower above. It didn't matter that T.P. couldn't hit the ass-end of a killer whale. The Nutjobs didn't know that and quickly retreated to their subterranean lair… until it was time to attack again.

  Lying there in the darkness, smoking a cigar he had fashioned from cured palm leaves, Waco wondered why he had let Taylor's death hit him so hard and turned him into an asshole of a redneck. After that day, his respect for the others had dropped rock bottom. And in turn, their respect for him had dwindled, too. He knew he intimidated them with his brash behavior and insults and that they were afraid of him, although they pretended not to be.

  He thought of how they had disposed of Emery Taylor's body and it made him sick to his stomach. Folks gotta survive… one way or another.

  "To hell with all this soul-searching shit," he told himself. "Time to hit the hay."

  He ground his cigar out in a souvenir ashtray, then, snuggling amid Trixie's naked curves, drifted off to sleep.

  The next morning, Waco and Numb Nuts unbolted a heavy wooden door and left through a side entrance of the Fortress. It was early in the morning. The sky was still dark, with only a hint of an approaching sunrise in the east.

  Waco was armed with the Magnum and the compound bow, while Anderson toted the twelve-gauge, loaded with double-aught buckshot and lead slugs.

  The two stood in the circular courtyard for a moment, taking in their surroundings. The Victorian shops along Main Street looked dark and threatening rather than quaint and picturesque. The train station seemed to stand a mile away, when in actuality it could be reached in a matter of minutes.

  "Waco," Numb Nuts said in a low voice, "I know I act like a blowhard sometimes, like I'm not afraid of anything… but to tell the truth, I'm scared shitless."

  A half-dozen smart-ass
insults came immediately to the Texan's mind, but he dismissed them. "You know something, hoss… so am I. It'll keep you sharp and on your toes, though. Just follow me and watch my back, and I'll get you back to your family in one piece." He hesitated for a moment, then reached out and shook the car dealer's hand. "Do you trust me?"

  Numb Nuts looked the lanky man in the eyes and nodded. "Yes… I do."

  "Then come on," Waco told him, taking point. "Keep in the middle of the street and watch the sidewalks for movement. They could come out of nowhere at any moment. And watch the sky. Those big-ass prehistoric sea gulls might dive-bomb us, too."

  Anderson looked toward the dark Florida sky and ducked his head out of habit. The radiation from the bombs had turned the gulls into dangerous scavengers as big as a bald eagle. Once, one of the monster gulls had swooped down and tried to carry off his son. They had actually gotten airborne a dozen feet or so, when Waco brought it down with a shot from the Mark V. Luckily, the boy's fall was broken by the canopy of a snack cart.

  Waco looked back at the Fortress and spotted T.P. on an upper balcony, Weatherby in hand. He saluted the nerd, and T.P. waved back. Motioning to Numb Nuts, he started down the street toward their objective. The car salesman pumped a shell into the breach of the Mossberg and followed.

  They made the length of Main Street without incident. Where are the crazy bastards? wondered the Texan. Are they gonna attack in the basement…like they did with Taylor? He reached to his belt and felt three flash grenades hanging there; ones he'd made himself out of cleaning chemicals, baking soda, and gun powder from some of the fireworks they had liberated from the storage sheds across the railroad tracks.

  "Keep sharp!" whispered Waco. He shouldered the bow and shucked the .44 from its holster. "We're almost to the train station. We'll go down the stairway, back-to-back. T.P.'s covering us from the Fortress, but ol' Four-Eyes can't see worth a damn in the dark, so we've gotta depend on ourselves to pull this off."