by Jason Offutt
Trees decorated downtown Clarinda like it was the setting of a 1950s sitcom. Stacy pulled the Geo to a stop in the middle of the street in front of The Hunting and Sports Shop, a humming vending machine advertising live bait sat out front, although Stacy doubted how live the bait still was. “Hello?” he called into the afternoon, blue jays chattering at him from the tree boughs above him. Stacy turned off the Geo’s engine and pocketed the keys.
“Hello?” he yelled again as he began walking around the square. “Is anyone there?” Fat red squirrels scampered across the sidewalk and into the tall, unmowed grass of the courthouse lawn in front of Stacy before bounding up tree trunks. No response. Stacy sat on a park bench, the growing heat of the young day breaking him into a slight sweat.
What the hell, man? ran through Stacy’s head. Family’s dead, friends dead, Tracie’s dead, Atlantic’s dead, and every fucking person in Clarinda’s dead. Worlds of freaking Fun? Tears started to well in his eyes, loneliness clamping down on him like Vicegrips. What the fuck? Stacy started to wipe tears from his cheek with the back of his hand, but stopped dead still. Something moved. Stacy sat on the bench and watched. A head popped from the red brick corner of what was, until a month and a half ago, a restaurant, unlucky patrons probably right now rotting at their tables, more mushroom than man. Breath froze in Stacy’s chest. It was a girl. She moved, tentative as a mouse as she came around the corner of the building and hid from Stacy’s view behind a brown Ford F-150. This girl was the first person Stacy had seen since Grammy died. He had to talk with her.
She crept around the bed of the truck, not seeing Stacy on the park bench. Her focus was on the Geo, and why not? It was the stranger in town. As she crouched, studying this interloper, Stacy could see her full on. The girl was young, maybe thirteen or fourteen, her greasy brown hair hung around her dirty face like she’d been lost in the woods, and she had, woods of brick and concrete. This feral girl dropped to her hands and toes and crawled six feet from the back of the truck to the cover of a new Cadillac. The girl was skinny, Stacy saw, too skinny; the girl was alone in Clarinda. She had been fending for herself.
As the feral girl hid from his view behind the Caddy, Stacy glided from the bench and loped ten feet to the cover of a big maple tree on the courthouse lawn. He took a deep breath and peeked around the side of the tree. The feral girl hadn’t seen him; her partial shadow unmoving on the pavement behind the car. She was just across the street. Stacy had run track once, long ago, and went to the gym a few times a week, trying to keep in shape. He had to talk with her and he thought if she ran, he could catch her. She was just a young girl, after all. He froze. She slunk around the back of the Cadillac, hiding herself from the Geo, but stepping slightly closer to where Stacy stood. She still didn’t see him. Stacy swallowed, stepped out from behind the tree and spoke.
“Hi,” he said.
The feral girl’s face shot toward Stacy, the stark terror and pain on her face almost dragged tears out of him again.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, taking a step closer, his hands palms-up before him. “I’m here to help.”
She remained for a second in a crouch, just a second, then bolted like a rabbit. “Shit,” Stacy hissed and ran after her. The feral girl rounded the corner of the restaurant for a moment out of Stacy’s sight. He dashed across the street, his tennis shoes slapping on concrete as he hit the sidewalk and followed her around the side of the restaurant. Another street spread out before him, her legs disappeared down the alley behind the restaurant. “Girl,” he called after her. “I’m not going to hurt you. I have food. I want to help. Who else is here?” He swallowed and took a hard breath. “Who else is here?” Stark shadows hid in the corners of the alley, slowly disappearing under the growing morning sun. The girl ran before him, almost to the next street. “I want to help,” he screamed. A stitch bit into his side when he popped onto the next street, the feral girl already three houses down a residential block. Stacy stopped, his hands on his knees and his breath coming in hard bursts; a month and a half away from the gym wearing hard upon him. The girl leaped over a garden fence and disappeared from his view.
“Damn it,” he hissed and stood, the stitch biting deeper, then screamed, “Damn it. I’m here to help you.”
Stacy stood in the street for ten minutes, then twenty. The feral girl didn’t return. She was dirty, alone, and frightened. He wondered what had happened to her. “I’m going to Kansas City,” he screamed into the late morning Iowa air. “There’s a shelter there. A shelter with food and water and bathrooms. Won’t you come with me?” A hawk cawed, momentarily breaking the silence. The girl was gone. He knew she wasn’t coming back. Poor thing.
“I’m going to leave food and water on the street,” Stacy yelled toward the garden fence where the feral girl had disappeared. “It’s yours. I will stay here at my car for one hour. If you want to come with me, hopefully to safety, please come to my car. If not, the food’s yours.” And he walked back to the square. An hour later, Stacy Tracy drove south, a loaf of bread, six cans of tuna, a bag of Doritos, and two-quart water bottles sat in the street in front of the county courthouse. Dark clouds had crept onto the horizon as Stacy started the Geo and slowly drove south out of town. By nightfall, the food was gone.
July 7: Platte City, Missouri
Chapter 14
Rain rattled off the tin roof of the old barn like God was pissing marbles. The barn sat off a rural blacktop highway south of Platte City, Missouri, just close enough to hear if a vehicle drove by, just far enough away not to see it. Doug, Terry, and Jenna snuck into the barn about an hour and a half after they left Johnnyball sitting exposed in that big, lighted stadium that might have been visible from space for all they knew; Doug just hoped Johnnyball had enough sense to get inside, out of the rain. North of Interstate 70, they drove by the amusement park Worlds of Fun, big, homemade signs along the highway reading “Survivor Shelter.”
“I fucking told you,” Terry screamed out the truck window. Doug pulled the pickup off the highway and toward the entrance to the park, the skeletal frames of roller coasters and hulking buildings looking suspiciously abandoned in the cloud-filled night.
“This is pretty dark for a shelter,” Jenna said as they went through the gates. Doug nodded his head, and Terry opened another beer. Cars dotted the vast lots of the amusement park; a random knotted mess of them clogged the park entrance. They avoided looking inside the vehicles afraid of what they’d find; furry gray masses that used to be human bodies.
“Wait here,” Doug said as he stepped out of the pickup and grabbed a flashlight and baseball bat out of the truck bed. Terry and Jenna were happy to oblige. Doug came back five minutes later clutching a piece of notebook paper. “Nobody’s here,” he said, trying not to let the defeat creep out with his words. “The note says the few of them here all went to Omaha. Something about the military or something like that.”
“Are we going?” Terry asked.
“What choice do we have?” Jenna more said than asked because she was right.
That was miles and miles away.
“Hey, there’s a building over there,” Terry had yelled at Doug as they pulled off the highway to wait out the downpour, a slight orange glow on the edge of the storm showing the A-frame building. “Looks like a barn, or something.” Doug pulled down the dirt turning-to-mud driveway. It was a barn, a tin barn with the big sliding door open. The truck’s headlights flooded the inside of the building – nothing moved.
“Oh, thank God,” Jenna said. “I can’t stay in this truck two more minutes. I can smell Terry’s burps.”
“I don’t feel comfortable with this,” Doug said softly.
Terry laughed a loud, drunken laugh. “Nothin’ to be worried about, boss,” he said. “Ain’t nobody out here. Even if there were, they’re going to be up at the Finish Line watchin’ the rest of the fireworks.” They’d stopped at the Finish Line convenience store on the side of the highway to look for food
. Terry wanted to burn it down so he did, although Doug told him since they were trying to fly under the radar someone just might notice a burning convenience store – especially if the gasoline storage tanks blew. Which they did.
“I want to stretch, Doug,” Jenna said. “Please, let’s go in. I’m tired and want to lie down.” Truth is, Doug was tired, too. After all that beer, Terry shouldn’t be up much longer either, but Doug had seen Terry put away a shitload of beer before, then just walk away straight as a string.
“Okay,” Doug said, slightly goosing the gas; the pickup crawled into the barn. The barn was a machine shop, really. Doug felt more at home than he had in nearly two weeks. He hopped out of the truck and slid the doors shut as Terry found the light switch. The lights in the shop still worked, but they only left the tungsten bulbs on long enough to make sure they were alone. Machines sprinkled the shop; a drill press, arc welder, air compressor, a wall of tools, a beer fridge Terry was already fishing around in, and a 1968 GTO, the hood up exposing the giant engine underneath, an engine that would never run again. Doug also saw a Makita power tools calendar. Catalina smiled at him like she knew him. Doug smiled back and flipped the calendar to Marissa. It was July after all.
“I get to sleep in the car,” Jenna said as she stepped out of Doug’s pickup.
Doug nodded. “I guess I can take the bed of the truck.”
“I want to start a fire,” Terry said, dropping a few chunks of wood he’d found in the corner into a pile on the barn’s concrete floor. “I stole some bratwursts from the Finish Line. We could roast them.”
Good lord. “Terry, you didn’t steal anything,” Doug said. “Taking things from dead people isn’t stealing, and since the old guy behind the counter didn’t have a head, I’d say he didn’t care that you took his bratwursts.”
Terry huffed, then chugged at his beer, then huffed again.
“Second,” Doug continued. “We can’t light a fire; somebody might see it.”
Terry cracked open another beer and handed it to Jenna who took a long, slow sip.
“So, we could use some company,” he said, blinking like a teenage girl who’d watched too many bubble-gum movies. “You’re no fun. You never take me anywhere.”
Doug grabbed a piece of wood off the floor of the shop and chucked it at Terry who ducked. The wood clattered on the concrete.
“Come on,” Terry said, tossing a beer at Doug, who caught it in two hands. “Why don’t we want company?”
Doug frowned.
“Because we can’t trust anybody,” Jenna said.
Doug nodded. “She’s right. If anybody’s alive after that Outbreak thing (or the Ophiocordon thing, Doug thought, The Outbreak is a lie. Ophiocordon is death. The Apocalypse is upon us), we have to be careful. You saw the guy without the head at the Finish Line. And before that, do you remember when we saw the chicks,” he said, then paused and nodded at Jenna. “Sorry about that.” She waved him off. “Somebody hanged them at that church over by Olathe, W-H-O-R-E spray painted on their bellies like they were at a football game cheering on the Whores.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You actually saw that?” Jenna asked in a small voice.
“Yes, we did.”
She looked at the two men silently for a few moments. “Then why did you pick me up?”
Doug shrugged. “Because you needed help,” he said, then turned toward Terry, staring at his buddy for as long as he thought sitting and staring at Terry might make him think what he had to say was important. Jenna crawled onto the trunk of the GTO and sat there sipping her beer. “There were a lot of dead people in what I just told you,” Doug said. “I don’t want us to be like them.”
Terry nodded. “I won’t light a fire tonight, Doug,” he said. “But I don’t like cold bratwursts.”
Doug wrapped a dusty tarpaulin he’d dragged from the floor of the shop and curled into the fetal position in the bed of his pickup. He’d had a shitty couple of weeks and it didn’t seem to be getting any better. Before the Outbreak, he’d have bent over the GTO’s engine, and probably kissed it. Today it meant nothing to him. He folded more of the tarp around him, although it wasn’t at all cold, and quickly fell to sleep.
Doug woke to a rumbling stomach. The smell of roasting meat – or, more accurately, roasting meat-like food product – crawled over his olfactory nerves like it wanted to fuck them. The smell of cooking bratwurst was the best sensory input he’d experienced for weeks. Goddammit, Terry.
“Hey, you’re up,” Terry said, grinning like he’d found a really neat prize in a box of cereal. He and Jenna sat on old plastic milk crates eating blackened bratwurst and drinking Diet Coke they’d found in the beer fridge. “Want breakfast?”
“Terry,” Doug hissed. “I said no fires. Fires make smoke, they …”
Terry waved a bratwurst in the air under Doug’s face. “I promised I wouldn’t light a fire last night. Sure you don’t want one?”
Doug grabbed the scorched sausage from Terry’s hand and bit into it. Good, God. Ambrosia, manna, Christmas morning with a bike under the tree, all ran through Doug’s head as the salt and nitrates hit his system like meth. Doug stood as he chewed the bratwurst, then punched Terry in the arm. He didn’t feel any better, but at least Jenna giggled. “What time is it?” he asked, soft, warm light drifting through the cracks between the big, sliding doors.
“About eight o’clock,” Jenna said. “I need a shower.”
Doug stretched his shoulders as he walked toward the barn door. After all the driving and sleeping in the bed of his pickup, he felt like he’d had the shit kicked out of him. But it could be worse. As the Outbreak had finally gone from a monologue joke on The Tonight Show, to a brief news story, to a nationwide panic, to a worldwide panic, to people putting a bullet in their neighbor for a canned ham, he knew the alternative would be a lot worse.
“I’ll take a look outside,” he said, a yawn stretched his face. Barn dust sprinkled the yellow morning light as Doug walked to the doors, scratched the back of his head, and pushed one side of the creaking rolling doors open enough for him to get a good look. “Rain’s stopped,” he said. “And everything’s quiet. Jenna, honey, we aren’t going to find a shower here, but I promise I will find you one. And clean clothes, and someplace safe to stay.”
It wasn’t Platte City. Platte City, Missouri, squatted under a great orange water tower, a truck stop area with what might have been a QuikTrip, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell sat in a blackened heap of rubble. Someone had pulled a Terry and blew the gas tanks.
“Whoa,” Terry said, a giggle dancing at the edge of his words. “That’s messed up.” Doug pulled the pickup down side roads to maneuver around the blast site, much like everywhere else they’d been, people were invisible. A number of cars crowded the parking lot of a Subway, the lights still on, although Doug knew it wouldn’t be long before the utility man shut everything down. But nothing moved. Bodies in fuzzy lumps scattered the pavement. Doug shuddered when he realized he was getting used to seeing them.
“Hey, there’s a park,” Jenna shouted suddenly, pointing a finger out Terry’s window. “Let’s go finish off our brats.”
“Jenna, I think …” Doug started.
“Hey,” she said softly, resting a warm hand on his forearm. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” She giggled. “Wherever we’re going, we might be going there to die. Let’s just have a meal first. Oh, and beer.”
“Shit yes,” Terry said, then stopped, his eyes fixed on something they’d passed by.
“What is it?” Jenna asked, the pickup pulling to a stop on the gravel drive near the park’s first set of benches.
“I just saw a video store with a going out of business sign. I thought they were all already out of business,” he said, opening the cab door, his tennis shoe-clad feet dropping swiftly onto the rocks. “Roast me up one of those weenies. As long as the juice is on, I’m going to catch me some movies.” He hooted and Doug and J
enna watched as Terry jogged up a short hill and out of sight.
“Where’d you get him?” Jenna asked, Doug walking beside her carrying a red and white Coleman cooler filled with German sausages, Diet Cokes, Bud Lights, and a jar of pickled eggs. Terry had found most of that in the shop’s beer fridge along with a half-gallon milk carton full of ice in the freezer. Doug bent and gathered sticks for a fire.
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Terry? Aw, he’s a friend of mine from back home in Paola. He used to work for me at my muffler and brake shop.”
“So, you’re a mechanic?”
Doug nodded. “Yeah. I can fix enough to keep us going.” He paused. “You?”
Jenna slid onto the top of a park bench, and pulled the cooler up with her. She took a beer from the red Coleman and offered it to Doug. He waved her off. Jenna popped the top and took a long drink. She studied Doug for a few moments before talking again, softly. “I’ve never really done anything,” she said. “I’m spoiled. My parents are … well, were, loaded. I body-shotted my way through college, and came out with a liberal arts degree. What the hell was I going to do with that? So, I mooched off my parents until everybody died.” A tear ran down her right cheek. “I haven’t done anything.” Doug started to reach for her, but stopped himself.