Slowly We Rot

by Bryan Smith

  Noah idly wondered whether there might still be money in those registers. As best he could tell, the registers were all closed and showed no signs of having been tampered with by looters. Given the worthlessness of currency in the wake of the apocalypse, this was not a surprise. He might not have given the matter any further thought, except that he then remembered the single crumpled dollar bill in his hip pocket, the one he’d taken from Patrick Brasher’s wallet. Thinking about it inevitably brought his thoughts back around to Linda. He’d never told her about his encounter with her husband’s reanimated body. At first he felt bad about this, wondering if it had been a mere lapse or a kind of passive cowardice. But he consoled himself with the certain knowledge that nothing good could have come of telling her about the incident.

  He redirected the flashlight, aiming it in front of him as he continued deeper into the store. A glimpse of movement somewhere in the wide aisle up ahead gave him a brief start. There were several display bins lined up down the middle of the aisle—more shiny lures for dead impulse buyers—and whatever had moved was now hidden behind one of them. But then he caught another glimpse of movement and shifted his flashlight in time to see his sister flitting around between the various bins. The way she kept appearing and disappearing made her look like some kind of strange shadow creature. As he watched her, she grabbed an item from a display and tossed it into a shopping cart at the side of the aisle. The object made no discernible sound as it dropped into the cart.

  Noah stepped closer for a better look at the contents of her cart. The object that had landed without a sound was a large package of toilet paper. That was a good find. They’d run out a while ago, making do since then with rags. The cart was already half-full with other things as well.

  One thing confused Noah.

  “How do you mean to transport all this shit? Just push this cart down the highway?”

  Her reply came from the darkness: “How else?”

  Noah frowned. “Shit, I don’t know. I do know that would get tiring as hell after a while. And sooner or later it’ll break down.”

  Aubrey shrugged and disappeared into the women’s clothing section.

  Noah continued down the wide main aisle to the back of the store, where he encountered the electronics department. The first thing he saw was the circular customer service desk with its glass cases of cell phones. One of the cases had been smashed open and was empty, but the others were undisturbed. He saw a wide range of what had been some of the most coveted gadgets before the end of the world. All useless now. As were the computers, printers, and video game systems lining the shelves behind the help desk. More computers had been swiped than phones, probably by overly optimistic types with an irrational faith in the ability of the Internet to survive the end times.

  Noah turned away from all this and continued down the wide aisle that ran parallel to the back end of the store. It took him past the largest part of the electronics department. In this area, a vast assortment of flat-screen televisions were mounted on the rear wall. The array of black screens made him think of the one back at his mountain cabin. He’d spent so much lonely time staring at the thing, often imagining scenes from his favorite movies playing on it. Sometimes when he’d gotten very stoned and done that, his cannabis-enhanced imagination made him feel as if he’d watched an entire movie. In reality, all that had happened was that his mind had turned inward and become absorbed in vivid memories of films he used to like. When he wasn’t stoned, the television had been nothing more than a useless piece of boring wall decoration.

  At this point, however, it’d been weeks since he’d last gotten high, which was why he had no immediate explanation for the event that made him come to an abrupt halt and turn toward that wall of dead televisions. He stared at them for many long moments, hardly daring to breathe as he tried to convince himself he hadn’t seen what a part of him was sure he had. After all, he’d caught only the most fleeting glimpse of it in his peripheral vision. Given his prior train of thought, it was logical to believe his mind had played a trick on him.

  The screens remained dark and the illusion did not recur, which was a huge relief. While thinking about his old way of entertaining himself back at the cabin, one of those screens on the back wall had seemed to light up, displaying a scene from a movie made before Noah was born. The image had been of a young Clint Eastwood on horseback. Clint was wearing a hat and a poncho and had a lit stogie clenched between his teeth.

  The image was there and gone in the space of about a second.

  The notion that his mind had deceived him was the only logical explanation. The illusion aligned neatly with things he’d been preoccupied with today. Things that, in addition to his cabin memories, included the western novel tucked in his back pocket. So it wasn’t a big leap to believe his mind had conjured an image from High Plains Drifter or some other old Eastwood western, along with an illusory perception of it appearing on one of these screens.

  Just as he was about to resume his exploratory circuit of the store, that same screen in the middle of the wall lit up again. The image was the same, Clint Eastwood on horseback riding at an unhurried pace through the center of a corrupt Old West town. This time it did not immediately go away. Noah swallowed with difficulty and shivered as he watched the familiar scene unfold. He felt cold in spite of the oppressive summer heat, which until now had been just shy of unbearable here in the depths of a huge building with no working air-conditioning. There was no sound, but he could hear the voices in his head.

  After watching the scene for at least a full minute, he took a look around, hoping to see Nick or Aubrey approaching, but there was no sign of them in the shadow-cloaked store. Noah reluctantly allowed his gaze to return to the wall of screens. The movie was still playing and the light from the screen was bright enough that it lit up a good portion of the electronics department. This detail unnerved Noah as much as the fact of the movie itself. He had a hard time believing a mere hallucination would be so realistically rendered.

  He contemplated calling out to Nick and Aubrey. His hope was that the illusion would vanish once they appeared, but he resisted the impulse for a couple reasons. For one thing, say the supposed illusion did vanish. If he then tried to explain what he’d seen, they would think he was crazy. It would be the end of being taken seriously on any level. Also, if he continued seeing what was on the screen while they did not, it would mean something had gone terribly wrong with his brain.

  He sucked up his resolve and turned away from the screen, seeing it go black in his peripheral vision. He started down the wide aisle again and did not glance back, fearing the illusion—or whatever it was—would recur yet again if he did so.

  Soon he arrived at the sporting goods department, where a voice called out to him. “That you, Noah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come here a minute.”

  Noah followed the sound of Nick’s voice and found him in a narrow side aisle. Like Aubrey, he had a cart with him and had loaded it up with an array of items, including aluminum baseball bats, a toolbox, some rolls of duct tape, two pump-action shotguns, and several boxes of ammo. On the bottom rack were two cases of bottled water in shrink wrap. The shotguns surprised him. He’d been sure the first looters through the door would have taken all the firearms.

  Nick was currently examining an assortment of home hardware items hanging from metal pegs. Noah couldn’t see what use any of them would be to people hiking thousands of miles across the country. Then again, that applied to a number of items already in the cart.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “What’s with all the random shit?”

  Nick stood and tossed two packets of long ten-penny nails in the cart. “I’m just gathering a lot of stuff to pick through later. Once we get back outside, I’ll sort through it all and decide what’s really practical to bring with us. A lot of it, maybe most of it, will get tossed aside.”

  “Like th
e baseball bats.”

  “Maybe not. Bats could be a good alternate way of taking out slower-moving dead things.”

  “It’d conserve ammo, I guess.”

  Nick nodded. “Exactly. Anyway, I see you don’t have a cart. You should get one. But first how about we check out the pharmacy together? It could be locked down tight and I might need your help breaking into it.”

  Noah had no objection to that. They were on the verge of heading off in search of the pharmacy when a chillingly familiar sound stopped them cold. Somewhere in the darkness someone racked the slide on a pump shotgun. In the next instant, Noah realized he’d heard more than one slide being racked at the same time. There were currently at least two, perhaps even three, shotguns aimed in their direction. Then came a secondary realization. The slides had been racked for one reason only—the intimidation factor. These people, whoever they were, wanted to scare them, not necessarily kill them outright. In a situation like this, of course, that was subject to change.

  Nick raised his voice to bark out a question: “Who’s out there?”

  Before a reply could come, Noah reached absently for the strap of the rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Stop right there, son,” came a deep, resonant voice. “Move even an inch again and you’re dead.”

  Multiple bright beams came on out there in the dark. One was trained right on Noah’s face, forcing him to squint against the glare and turn his head. His heart was doing a stuttering double-time beat as surprise gave way to terror. And yet a calmer part of him was thinking the beams of light made good targets. He had not yet taken his hand away from the strap of his rifle. And now that hand curled more tightly around the strap as an itch to tug the rifle free and start firing became almost too strong to resist. To his left came a nearly inaudible sound of Nick taking a shuffling step in the direction of the cart.

  A firefight seemed imminent and unavoidable. Noah’s terror continued to mount, but now it was joined by a primal excitement and he realized a part of his psyche—a possibly somewhat unbalanced one—couldn’t wait for the shooting to start. The one thing that tempered the urge was his dismay at how easily these people had crept up on them. For Noah, there hadn’t been the slightest sense of enemies approaching until those slides were racked. It suggested a level of stealth that was eerie bordering on inhuman.

  Nick took another shuffling step toward the cart.

  That resonant voice boomed out again. “You don’t seem to be comprehending the situation. There are guns trained on you from every direction. You don’t have a chance in hell against us. This is your last warning. Drop your weapons and gear and get down on your knees.”

  Noah was inclined to disregard the warning and take his chances in a firefight. He didn’t know anything about these people, but the vibe was sinister. He had a strong feeling bad things would happen if they surrendered. Maybe this guy was right. Maybe they really didn’t have a chance in hell against them. But he figured they might as well go down fighting.

  Then, however, he realized he hadn’t heard a peep from Aubrey in a while and that was extremely odd, unless she’d spotted the intruders early on and was lying low to elude them.

  As if the unseen speaker had read his mind, he called out again from the darkness. “We’ve got your girl, son. Pretty little thing in a black dress, right? She’s outside. If you want to see her again, you best do as we say.”

  Noah took the rifle from his shoulder.

  “Easy, son.”

  He knelt carefully to set the weapon on the floor. Then he removed his utility belt and pack and set those down, too. He heard Nick mutter a curse before also beginning the process of disarming.

  Then they both got down on their knees and waited.

  37.

  A group of several men converged around them from out of the darkness. The claim of guns being pointed at them from every direction had not been a bluff. Noah now knew he would have been cut down within seconds if he’d tried to use his rifle. It was also clear these people were seasoned and well-practiced stalkers. In addition to encircling them without making a sound, they were somehow able to subdue Aubrey and spirit her out before she could raise the alarm.

  “You assholes better not have hurt my sister.”

  A hand snapped hard across his face. “Mind your mouth, boy. You’re in no position to make demands.”

  Other men knelt behind Nick and Noah and bound their wrists with lengths of rope. They were then jerked to their feet and patted down. A hand went into Noah’s rear pocket and plucked out the slim paperback he’d tucked away there. After a moment’s perusal, the man searching him flung the book into the darkness. Now he would never know how Shadow Rider ended. He added this to his rapidly growing list of grievances against these people. He vowed there would be a reckoning for that, just as there would for the rest of it.

  The pat down was finished within moments and they were pronounced unarmed. This appeared to satisfy the apparent leader, a short and slightly-built man in dirty dungarees and a gray knit shirt. He had a bandanna around his neck and wore a brown vest open over the shirt. This was the same man who’d slapped him moments ago. Noah studied his incongruously mild-looking expression with interest, already imagining how it would feel to kill the bastard.

  They were marched through the store at gunpoint and soon arrived at the glass-strewn lobby. It was still afternoon and Noah had to squint against the bright sunlight as they continued through the lobby and out the entrance. But relief swept through him when he saw Aubrey. Her hands were bound behind her back. A tall, bearded man with a weathered-looking NYPD baseball cap tugged down tight over a probably bald scalp had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at the back of her head. Someone had shoved a gag of some sort into her mouth.

  Noah wished he could communicate some kind of reassurance, but the means of doing this eluded him. Any gesture of reassurance would have amounted to a lie anyway. Their captors hadn’t said much yet, but their body language conveyed a clear message. These were ruthless, aggressive predators. There was no hint of compassion in their flinty eyes, only malicious intent.

  Most of the men were youngish, in their thirties or early forties. The one exception was an older man with an enormous gut that strained a dirty white shirt. Red suspenders held up grungy brown trousers. Wisps of gray hair peeked out beneath the brim of a black derby hat. Propped on his shoulder was a wooden baseball bat. Several sharp spikes protruded from the fat end of the bat. His only other weapon was a revolver in a holster at his hip. He sneered when he took note of Noah’s scrutiny.

  “The fuck you looking at, boy?”

  Noah grunted. “I’m not real sure. Some kind of sad, old clown, I think.”

  The older man lifted the bat off his shoulder and took a step in Noah’s direction. “You laughing at me? How about I perforate your smartass skull? We’ll see who’s laughing then.”

  The short man in the vest stepped between them. “That’s enough of that, Hal. This is a matter for the Judge.”

  At the mention of this Judge person, much of the intensity seeped out of Hal’s red-faced expression. He backed off and the bat’s handle returned to his shoulder. “Well, that’s fine, then. Hell, you should’ve said so in the first place.”

  In his head, Noah instantly added a capital “J” to this “Judge” person’s title. It was clear he was someone who commanded respect among these men. Noah almost wished the one called Hal had put some spikes through his skull. The odds of the Judge being a mercy-minded individual seemed slim. He was probably a sadistic opportunist who’d seized the reins of authority after all the people formerly in charge in Henryetta were killed by dead things. The dozens of bodies hanging from power lines on the way into town were probably there on his say-so.

  The man in the vest propped his rifle on his shoulder, inserted two fingers in his mouth, and let out a piercingly loud whistle. Soon Noah heard a dim clatter that grew steadily louder. In moments riderless horses emerged from behind a building
on the opposite side of the street. A second group of horses harnessed to a long wooden wagon trailed behind them. A lone man sat in a driver’s perch at the front of the wagon. The horses all came galloping across the main road at impressive speed.

  The riderless horses reached them first. As they drew near, Noah noticed they were all saddled and bridled. Some of their captors immediately mounted the beasts, one of which whinnied loudly as its rider climbed atop it. In the next instant it dropped an impressively large pile of steaming shit on the parking lot. The horse-drawn wagon rolled up to a stop close to the loose knot of men and animals moments later. The short group leader briefly conversed with the man sitting in the driver’s perch of the wagon.

  Then he started issuing orders.

  “Get these thieving shitheads in the wagon. We’ll be going straight to the Judge. Hal and Scott, you ride with them and make sure they behave.”

  Hal’s ruddy features arranged themselves in a leering expression that made Noah’s skin crawl. “You got it, boss.” He took the bat from his shoulder and looked right at Noah as he waved it at the wagon. “After you, ladies.”

  The comment elicited chuckles from the other men. Their amusement deepened the despair gripping Noah. He was positive no one among them was even a little interested in treating them with basic human decency. He nonetheless felt compelled to make a last ditch appeal to the leader. “You in the vest, hold up there a minute. You’ve gotta listen to me.”

  The short man had been about to mount one of the remaining horses. He turned away from it when Noah took some steps in his direction. “You’ll hold your tongue if you know what’s good for you, boy. You’re on thin ice as it is.”

  A strong hand gripped Noah’s shoulder from behind, stopping him cold. “Just listen a minute. We’re not thieves. We’ve scavenged for supplies in I don’t know how many empty towns just to be able to keep going. That’s all we were doing here. If we’d known there were still people here, we would have done things differently.”