“You got work here that ain’t been gettin’ done,” he said. “Stop lookin’ at me like I stole your pecker, boy. Hell. I’m doin’ you a favor. It’s not like you was any damn good. You’re as worthless at football as you are at every other damned thing. I’m savin’ you from embarrassing yourself anymore. You belong here, workin on this farm, not lollygaggin’ around a football field.”
A lifetime of black eyes, bloody noses, and bruised arms had driven home to Clay that you didn’t question and you never, ever defied. Monday morning before school he turned in his gear.
His mother saved him- his poor, sweet mother. Long before Clay came along his father’s black soul destroyed any personality or humor she possessed. She walked through her days blank-faced with faraway eyes, and she sometimes jumped a little when his father yelled or made a loud noise. When Clay asked his father for the tax documents he needed to fill out the financial aid forms with his college applications, the man laughed loud and long.
“College?” he said, still laughing. He took a long pull of his beer and wiped the foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand. “College,” he said again, leaning over to chuck Clay’s brother on the arm.
His brother laughed along with him.
“What college would want you around, boy? You ain’t fit for college. You’re fit for swampin shit and pilin’ hay. They got shit and hay at college?”
He waited thirty long seconds for a reply; Clay just looked at the floor.
“That’s what I thought. You throw those papers in the trash and then go clean the barn. And you best never talk like you’re better than me again, boy. I’ll shit in your hat and make you eat it.”
Clay threw the forms in the trash and cleaned the barn.
Two nights later a gentle but persistent pull on his arm woke him. He opened his eyes and saw his mother standing there. She turned on the little lamp that stood on a milk crate next to the cot he called his bed.
“The light,” he said, his voice trembling.
“He won’t notice the light. He was up until two, tying one on with your tosspot brother. Those two could fall into the sun and not wake up, the shape they’re in.” There was an intensity in her eyes he had never seen before. She held a sheaf of papers in one hand. She took a shaky breath and offered them to him. He took them and thumbed through the first few pages. It was his financial aid forms, retrieved from the trash and filled out in her neat handwriting. He looked up at her in wonder. A huge tear teetered in the corner of her eye for a moment, then spilled down her cheek.
“Clayboy, you’re my baby, and I’ve loved you with all my heart since the day you were born.” Clayboy was her private nickname for him when he was little, one she only used when they were alone. “You’re sweet and gentle and smart as a whip, and you have a good heart. That’s why he hates you, because you are all the things he’ll never be. I could never help you. It’s important you know that. If I’d taken up for you, even one time, he’d have killed one of us.” She was crying hard now. “That’s what he’ll do if you stay here. He’ll kill you. Kill you outright, or wear you down and never let up until the you that’s inside you, the things that make you who you are, are gone. And then you might as well be dead.”
Clay was dumbstruck. He had never heard his mother talk like this. She’d never given an opinion about anything that he could remember. He assumed this is what it would feel like if the family dog sat up one day and started discussing religious philosophy.
“For the address, I put down a post office box in town. Here’s the key. Make sure everything goes there. He mustn’t ever see any of the mail. According to those papers, you can get enough money to go to just about any college you want. So you pick one out, get yourself accepted, but never mention it to anybody. Not even other boys at school. If you tell a friend and he tells his daddy and his daddy tells your father, he’ll kill us both. For real kill. Don’t say a word and when the day comes, you go. And Clay.” She looked him level in the eye, grasped both his hands in hers. “You must not come back. Ever.”
Now he was crying too. “What about you Mom?” he said, feeling despair.
She cradled his head in her arms and held it close to her breasts. “I’ll be fine. He’s my husband- my place is here. But not yours, Clayboy, not yours.” She put her hand into the pocket of the threadbare robe she wore and pulled out a wad of cash. “That’s my egg money that I’ve put way over the years for just this moment. There’s a little more than $800 there. I wish I could give you more but I can’t access the household accounts, and he watches those like a hawk. That’s enough to get you where you decide to go. So you go, and get you a job, and do well, and get a degree, and don’t you ever come back here.”
They cried together, and she hugged him close until their tears dried.
The last thing she said to him was “Don’t dare talk about this before you go.”
Clay left and didn’t return. He sat alone in his dorm room over holidays. During the summer when the dorms shut down, he slept on a cot in the back room of the bar where he worked and showered at the YMCA. Those were the times when an argument raged inside him. Should he go back as soon as he got his degree and shove it in his father’s face? Or wait until he had worked long enough to achieve some stability- a home, a wife, maybe a child- and go back, take his mother by the hand, and take her with him? He spent many nights fantasizing both scenarios. Before he had a chance to play one out, the outbreak occurred. He didn’t know the situation back home on the farm. His family might be alive, might be dead, might be creepers. He wouldn’t bet on them being alive.
He knew one thing for sure. He would go back one day, after they’d put down the last creeper and a state of normalcy existed. Or after Will got them settled somewhere. He’d get even stronger, and continue to study the dead and how to fight them. Then he’d say his goodbyes and head southwest. Maybe see if Coy or Andro wanted to go with him. If not, he and Brianne could head out alone. They’d had each other’s backs this long- she was the one thing he could count on in this world.
Sometimes as he drifted off to sleep a new fantasy played out in his head. One way or another he’d get back to the farm and find his father had turned. As sleep closed in around him he thought about how he’d put the man down. The only thing he knew for sure is it would be slow, and Clay would look him in the eye the entire time.
It took three days to get Tempest’s symptoms under control. The first medicine they tried caused her skin to blotch up with angry red welts and gave her muscles spasms. The next one worked and her fever inched lower, then finally broke. It took two more days of broth and soda crackers before she returned to normal. She was skinnier and pale, but back on her feet and her appetite had returned.
Over the five days, they put down fifteen creepers that shuffled close to the house. Will led them on a scavenger trip once a day, looking for food. Food, always food, Will thought. Their rations ran low to the point of peril.
Will, Jiri, and Danny stood in the backyard of the brick house. Will could tell it was a pretty yard before the outbreak. It was long and sloped, with an array of five big oak trees to block the summer sun. An above ground pool and a playhouse took up space in the middle of the yard. Weeds and grass grew over the remains of landscaped flowerbeds. Will imagined the parents sitting on the deck with a bottle of wine in the evening, watching as their children swam and played below.
But the outbreak occurred, and instead of the pastoral scene Will imagined, he watched Coy and Sally romp in the waist-high grass, with Stebbins bumbling along behind them. The golden retrievers made remarkable progress since the group took them in a little more than a week ago. The dogs had filled out and their coats had developed a polished sheen. The dogs ate remarkably well, making the rounds at meal times and getting tidbits from everyone’s plate. Coy looked for dog treats at every house they scavenged. Throughout the day, he tossed them a steady supply of Milk Bones, Beggin’ Strips, and Pork Chomps. In addition, every day at da
wn Coy and Sally slipped into the woods behind the house. They’d return a short while later a squirrel, rabbit or opossum that Coy would gut and clean. He would toss the organs to Sally, then cut the meat into strips he alternated between the two dogs.
“Damned dogs eat better than I do,” Will grumbled more than once.
The progress Coy had made with Sally in just a few days amazed him. She would come, sit, stay and heel, all with hand signals. Inevitably, a couple of people objected to having a dog in camp. They complained that her barking would draw creepers right to them. As it turned out, Sally hushed on the command of anyone in the group, and Coy needed only to give her a particular look to quiet her down in mid-bark. Stebbins, on the other hand... Coy said the adorable fluffball was too dumb to learn, so he distracted the pup with a handful of Kibbles when it started to yap.
Will pulled his attention away from the dogs and looked at Jiri. “When do you think Tempest will be ready to travel?” Though an English professor by training, the big Czech had taken on the role of unofficial group doctor- a fact that scared him to death, he confided to Will.
“Now that she’s eating regular food, it would be best to give her three days to get her strength back and have her in tip-top shape.”
“Three more days. That’ll put us twenty days out here and we’ve made twenty miles. A mile a day.” He gave a bitter laugh. “My Grandpa can make better time than that, and he’s dead. It’s no fucking wonder we’re running out of food.”
Jiri raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders, his what are you gonna do? Gesture. “You’re right. Our progress hasn’t been the best. We’ve had serious setbacks almost every day, though. Four days walking through fields and climbing fences, almost a day just to get across the interstate, over a week here with a sick child, most of a day to the storm. It adds up. It’s not like we’ve been dawdling on purpose.”
“On the plus side,” Danny said, “now we know we can drive to Buffalo. Maybe further. That will save us a three-day walk, at the least. And who knows? Could be we’ll find out we can drive the whole way.” He peered at Will. “I don’t usually have to lay out the bright side for you, boss. What’s up?”
“Food, that’s what’s up. Like always. Food. We’d better be able to drive straight through because in about three days we’ll be back to eating whatever we can scavenge during the day. And whatever he can rustle up for us.” He nodded in Coy’s direction.
Danny gave him a wan smile. “That’s the way of the world now, Will. They ain’t building any more refrigerators or stocking any more grocery stores for a while. You find what you can today and eat it today. Find tomorrow’s food tomorrow. Move fast or die.”
Will’s hand slashed through the air in front of him. “I do not accept that! There’s got to be a way a man can grow his food, raise his food, provide for his family. Because if there isn’t then what’s the point?”
“Life, Boss. That’s the point. To stay alive for another day.”
“Why?” Will’s hard, flinty eyes bore into him. “Why live another day? To always be on the run, to forget what it feels like to have a full belly? To live in constant fear of your wife or your boy dying? And I don’t mean at the hands of some monster that has no place in God’s creation. I mean from a scratch on their arm that gets infected or an allergic reaction to a wasp sting. I’m talking about emergency room shit, man. Things you didn’t use to think twice about- you’d go to the ER and get fixed up in a few hours. You remember when Jack Lamonica's appendix got infected?”
Danny nodded. Jack grew corn on 1100 acres near Will’s place. Or used to.
“They took that sucker out through his belly button, and he didn’t spend one night in the hospital. Do you know what I’d do if you got appendicitis, Danny?”
Danny shook his head.
“I’d kill you trying to cut it out myself, or put a bullet in the back of your head to put you out of your misery. I refuse to settle for that life. You guys want to know something? If we get to this marble place and it isn’t anything like what George described, then I’m taking my wife and my son, you, Danny if you want to come, and anyone else that wants to and I’m heading down the road.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know. Kathy’s mountain or an island in the Pacific or the middle of the fucking desert. Somewhere where I can keep my people safe and fed, and take care of them. That’s livin’ Danny. Not scrambling around day by day, hoping you won’t run out of food tomorrow or get a compound fracture of your arm the day after.”
“They’re decaying,” Jiri blurted.
Will studied him, waiting for him to go on.
“Have you noticed? When this thing first started, the creepers looked human- something was very wrong with them but most times when you saw one, it looked like a human being. Look at them now. They’re rotting, chunks of flesh are falling off of most of them. It’s easier to drive a knife through their skulls than it used to be.
“They’re getting slower and dumber too. That little stunt at the pharmacy? We could never have pulled that off six months ago. They would have been all over us. There is a noticeable degradation in the ones that have been around the longest.”
“What’s that tell you?” Will asked, fascinated. He’d had a vague feeling that something was different about the creepers. Hearing Jiri put it into words had a galvanizing effect on him.
“Well, it tells me whatever caused the dead to come back to life didn’t also end the decomposition process. These things continue to decompose, even as they’re rambling down the road. If that’s the case, then it’s inevitable at some point in the future they’re going to hit a tipping point.”
“Tipping point?” Danny asked.
“Yes. A point where there are more creepers degrading to the point where they are no longer a threat each day then there are new creepers turning.”
Will couldn’t help but laugh at the slack-jawed expression on Danny’s face. “I don’t think he’s following you, Professor.” Truth be told, Will wasn’t sure what Jiri was driving at either, but he wasn’t about to admit it.
“This would be so easy to explain if I had a spreadsheet,” Jiri mumbled. After a bit of thought, he tried again. “Sooner or later we’ll get to where every day there are 500 creepers that turn into rotted piles of jelly; they are easy to avoid and dispose of. At the same time, there are only fifty new people turning each day. So the creeper population is decreasing by 450 every day. That’s the tipping point- when more creepers are taken out the population each day than are being added to it. And as time goes by, the spread gets bigger- 1,000 being removed and twenty being added, 10,000 and ten, and so on. Until that magical day when so many creepers are jelly that nobody gets bitten anymore.”
Will nodded, understanding Jiri’s point. “How long might that take?”
“There’s no way to guess. Right now, the creepers are still incredibly dangerous, and I haven’t seen one were even close to decomposed enough to not be deadly. It could take years, decades even, before it’s safe to let our guard down, even a little.”
“Still, maybe someday...” Will couldn’t help but sound hopeful.
“Probably someday,” Jiri corrected.
Will blew out a breath. “Fantastic. Someday we may not need to worry about the dead. Until then, I’ll keep worrying about keeping us fed.”
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
Will got his dander back. For several days he stayed grumpy and morose over their lack of progress and unending food shortage. Or, ‘acted like a moody little bitch’ in Danny’s words, though he never uttered them within Will’s earshot. But their achievements over the last day and a half brought him back around to his usual self.
He had split them into four groups, everyone but Coy, Sylvia, and Tempest. The latter two stayed back at the house, for obvious reasons. Coy went out each morning to hunt and fished all afternoon. Will wanted everyone to get as much protein as possible before they returned to the roa
d. He sent two of the teams to look for food, and the other two after dependable transportation. Two teams searched highway 32 in both directions, one on each side of the road.
The scavenging went well. In a double-wide not far from the camp house, Tara found three cases of tuna.
Will was taken aback. “What kind of guy lives in a trailer house and buys tuna by the case?” he asked with a wrinkled brow and befuddled expression.
“The kind who has three kids, works at a grocery store, and is stealing from the job with both hands,” Tara answered.
He cocked his head and looked at her through narrowed eyes. “And just how do you know all that?”
“There was a smock from Albertson’s Grocery hanging from his bedroom door. One bedroom had a bunk bed and another bedroom a day bed, with paintings of the kid’s names on the wall. And I can’t prove he stole, but come one- the guy had the tuna, a case of Tuna Helper, a case of grape juice and a Kraft Mac-N-Cheese, every bit of it still in the boxes. It doesn’t take a genius to know he wasn’t running that shit through the checkout counter at work.”
Becky whistled in admiration. “Damn girl, nice police work.”
Tara shrugged her shoulders. “I like to make a game out of it when I scavenge. See what I can figure out about the people who lived there.”
Casandro gave a loud cough. An emotionless rock most of the time, he leaned toward Tara with shining eyes and slightly parted lips. Will thought he looked as if he might vibrate with excitement, or spring a huge erection for the group to see.
“Did you get the grape juice?”
“Nah. Two of the bottles burst- it had gone over. Sorry, big fella.”
A quick look of bereavement passed over Ando’s face, then it returned to one devoid of emotion.
Will suspected he would be sick as shit of tuna before long, but it was a healthy food and perfect for on-the-go. So, he readied himself to a week of tuna on crackers with every meal.
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