by Jason Offutt
“It’s okay,” Jenna said. “I think I need a hug.” Doug stepped close to Jenna and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her soft, but firm body gently onto his, the smell of her hair flooded his nostrils like a drug. She pressed back, squeezing into him, and ...
“Hey,” Terry yelled from atop the hill. “Look at what I found.”
Doug’s eyes painfully swung from Jenna’s gentle, freckled face, her caring smile, and green eyes, to Terry holding an armload of movies and leading a skinny guy of about thirty carrying a DVD player. “What the hell?”
“Who’s that?” Jenna whispered, her breath soft and warm.
“I don’t know,” Doug said. He stepped out of the embrace, and turned toward the two men. “But I don’t like it.” He motioned toward Terry. “Get over here.”
Terry skipped down the hill into the park, the man behind him walked slowly, surely, mechanically. “What’s up, boss?”
Doug rested a hand on Terry’s shoulder. “Who the hell is that?”
“That’s Arnold,” Terry said.
“Arnold?”
Terry nodded.
“Where did you meet Arnold?”
“In the video store. He was standing there watching ‘The Terminator’ on one of the TVs hanging from the ceiling, and I just walked up and stood next to him,” Terry said, giggling. “And guess what? He didn’t move. It’s like he didn’t even notice me. Then I said, ‘Hey, buddy. You got a dead cat in there, or what?’ And he said, ‘Fuck you, asshole.’ Ain’t that the best shit ever?”
No. It’s not. “What are you talking about?”
“The dead cat/asshole thing, it’s … well, just listen to him talk,” Terry said, turning to Arnold. “Conan. What is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies,” Arnold said, his words heavy with a fake Austrian accent, “see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
Terry turned to Doug, grinning like a monkey.
“What the hell is he talking about?” Doug asked.
“I have no idea, but everything he says is all from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies,” Terry barked, a laugh coming from deep inside. “Can we keep him?”
July 8: Kansas City, Missouri
Chapter 15
The amusement park sat as dead and silent as a corpse. Not that Karl expected to see the wooden Timber Wolf roller coaster shaking across its 4,260-feet of track, but the radio said there was a survival shelter at Worlds of Fun; hand-painted signs on Interstate 435 led him there. Karl had been to the amusement park as a child, all he survived was the Tilt-A-Whirl; the Timber Wolf made him puke. He pulled the Porsche into the parking lot near the main gate and stepped out, a .44-caliber pistol strapped to his waist. He’d left Jenna the .38 he’d found in the upstairs closet of the Peckinpa’s home. He hadn’t thought of Jenna since he climbed into the charcoal Porsche and crept down the hidden gravel lane back toward the highway. That skinny, auburn-haired girl with her ninth season of “Friends” bitchiness was better off left behind. Even if she’d been hotter than a Victoria’s Secret model wrapped in bacon, another week of her and Karl might have shot her himself.
Some amusement park ride he didn’t recognize from his two decades ago visit loomed over him as he wound around the choked mess of cars, trucks, and motor homes filled with moldy bodies at the head of the parking lot. He walked through the ticket booth, pimple-faced high schoolers long gone from their posts. Nothing moved in the park.
“Hello?” he yelled into the bright, summer, Kansas City, Missouri, sky. Nothing. No caws from birds, no barks from dogs, no screams of people from a horror movie, and no laughter from humans in an amusement park. Karl wandered from the park’s Americana section with shops, car rides, and arcades, to the Scandinavian section with Norse names like Viking Voyager, and Finnish Fling. The designers of Worlds of Fun wanted this concrete and steel maze to represent all the continents, sprinkling Europe next to Africa, which butted up to Snoopyland. Karl never was sure where Snoopyland was on an actual globe, but as a boy he loved it. “Hello?” he called again. An arrow and the words “Survival Shelter” spray-painted in red on the asphalt that covered the park led Karl toward a concert hall his parents had dragged him into for a 1950s musical revival simply because it had air conditioning, and summer in Missouri was goddamned hot. Karl ran toward the building and threw open the doors.
The smell pushed him back outside. Karl dropped to the pavement; vomit streamed from his mouth like his body had turned on a hose. Death. Worlds of Fun was death. Karl wiped a tendril of vomit from his lips and fought to catch his breath. The bodies, all the bodies. “Fuck this,” he hissed and spat onto the hot pavement. Karl knew he had to look again, to make sure no one was alive in there. He slowly pulled open the metal door and stepped inside.
“Hello?” he screamed into the building, his voice echoed throughout the hall. Makeshift beds scattered the stage where some wannabe actor had portrayed Elvis all those years ago. Blankets and clothing spread across many of the red velvet-covered seats that stretched into the darkness. The smell of death and soil was heavy here; the smell dragged Karl back to Wal-Mart in Harrisonville, bodies scattered the stage in bloody lumps, their moldy chests ripped open by some sort of growth, like they were impaled on corn stalks, just like Kelly. The rows of stalks pointed toward the ceiling some kind of demon harvest. The bulbous knob on the stalks had all burst, scattering yellow clouds of spores over the interior of the auditorium. Someone had spray-painted “Gone to Omaha” across the back curtain. Shit. “Hello?” Karl screamed again. He froze; something moved.
Karl took a step forward on shaking legs. A body lay in a festering gray lump across the theater seats, the threads of the fungus consuming it laced into the red fabric of the cushions. The two-foot tall stalk, its pod swollen tight, bobbed on the end. It stopped as Karl stepped close, then turned toward him, the bulbous knot leaned forward, pointing at him. Karl staggered back outside, the door slamming shut behind him as he heard the pod pop. Good God, it knew I was here. It attacked me. That fucking thing attacked me. This is no shelter; it’s a damned science experiment. Karl bent, hands on knees and vomited again; what was left of the Dr Pepper and Ding Dongs in his stomach splashed across the asphalt and splattered onto his shoes. Oh, God. He tried to catch his breath, then he heard something he thought he’d never hear again. A car horn blared in the direction of the parking lot.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, the taste of vomit in his mouth. “Holy shit.” He bolted upright, the sudden movement made his head swim. “Hey,” he tried to yell. “Hey. I’m here. I’m here.” Karl took a deep breath and stepped his pace to a fast walk, nausea slowing him. The horn honked again. This time Karl heard a voice, too.
“Hey, assholes,” a woman’s voice shouted. “Anyone here? This is a goddamned shelter, isn’t it?”
Karl lurched out of Scandinavia back into Americana, the front gate twenty feet away. The woman honked again. “Don’t leave,” Karl whispered, then shouted. “Don’t leave.” He saw the woman before she saw him. Holy shit, she was hot, but there was something else about her. This woman looked hard; she could hurt people. He stopped and stood behind a long dry lemonade stand, pulled the .44 from the holster, shoved it down the front of his pants and untucked his shirt to cover the bulge. As a man stepped out of the woman’s car, a 1990-something Chrysler LeBaron, and talked to her, Karl released the buckle on his gun belt and let it drop to the pavement. No chances. No chances at all. Karl couldn’t hear what the man said, but the hard woman smiled, pulled him toward her and kissed him deeply. Karl relaxed and stepped away from the stand, painfully aware of the powerful handgun wedged next to his testicles. “Hello,” he yelled toward them. The woman’s head shot toward him and she waved him over. “What’s your name?”
“Maryanne,” the woman cooed, looking at Karl in long glances like he was on an IMAX screen. Karl glanced at the man, his face unnaturally pale in the summer sun. “Where’s the goddamned shelter?”
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“Gone,” he said, looking back at Maryanne, her bright blue eyes blazing in the late afternoon sun. “Nothing but dead bodies here. The survivors have gone to Omaha. At least that’s what they spray-painted on the wall back there.”
Maryanne grinned. “Omaha? Who the fuck wants to go to Omaha?” The man forced a laugh. Karl could tell he was scared. “You ran into anybody?” Maryanne asked. “Anybody alive?”
Karl started to mention Jenna, but didn’t. Not worth mentioning at this point. He shook his head. “No. Not for a month or more. You?”
“Yeah,” the man spoke for the first time. Karl would later find his name was Darryl, not that it mattered. “Saw some old guy at Kauffman Stadium sitting in the rain watching a baseball game on the Jumbotron.”
“Is he here?” Karl asked, looking around, suddenly more uncomfortable by someone he couldn’t see lurking around this heart attack of cars. “Is he supposed to meet you here?”
“No,” Darryl said slowly. “He’s nowhere.”
“Well, where …”
Maryanne whipped a rifle from the back seat and drew a bead on Karl’s face. He stepped back, his breath frozen in his chest, the heavy weight of the pistol that sat on his junk seemed miles away. Maryanne said, “Click, boom,” then grinned, and lowered the barrel of the gun toward the pavement. “Shot him,” she said. “Put him out of his fucking misery. He was obviously crazy. He was sitting in the fucking rain watching a thirty-year-old baseball game. He’s better off where he is. Lying in a pool of nachos.” She laughed, the sound pierced Karl’s heart. It wasn’t Jenna’s giggle, Jenna’s annoying giggle. There was feeling in that giggle. This was a soulless cackle. Maryanne motioned toward the car. “We’re going to Omaha. You coming?”
Karl stole a glance at Darryl; a bead of sweat ran down the side of the man’s face. He was scared, Karl knew. Damned scared. He felt he should be, too. Darryl nodded at him nervously. At that moment, Karl knew if he said no, he’d have a bullet in his back before he could make it to cover.
“Sure,” he said slowly, forcing a smile. “We’re all going the same direction. It’ll be safer if we’re together.” He motioned back into the park hoping that maybe, maybe she’d let him get to the Porsche, then he’d be free of this woman. This crazy, crazy woman. A vision of him reaching into his pants, coming out with the .44 and blowing this woman’s head off flashed through Karl’s mind, but it died there. Something told him she knew he was thinking that. She still held the rifle and could take him out before he got the pistol past his pubes. “I’ll just go get my car. It’s in the back parking lot.”
“No,” Maryanne said, all humor, if there was any, gone from her voice. “There’s plenty of room in here. If there’s anything in your car you need, every day in America is Black Friday without the crowds. You’ll be okay. Now, let’s move. I’m getting jittery.” Darryl stepped toward the driver’s side door, but Maryanne stuck her hand in the middle of his chest. “Not now, baby,” she said. “The Cowboy’s going to drive.” Then she turned to Karl. “Let’s see what you got, big man.” She tossed him the keys.
Maryanne fell asleep in the backseat of the LeBaron about five minutes down the interstate, cuddling her rifle like a lover. Karl stole a glance at Darryl. The man was a wreck. Crescent moons of darkness cupped the underside of his eyes; his hair long and unkempt, days of just-graying stubble covered his chin. And the man was thin; too thin.
“I got a Snickers bar in my shirt pocket,” Karl said, his voice in the front seat of the convertible caused Darryl to jump. Karl tried to smile, but thought it might look like a grimace. “I’ll give it to you if you’re hungry?” Silently, Darryl put up the palm of his right hand and shook his head. Maryanne snored from the back seat.
“What’s her deal?” Karl said in a whisper, leaning close to Darryl. “Why’d she pull that gun on me?” Darryl sat silently, staring ahead.
“Hey,” Karl said slightly louder. “I got questions.”
Darryl shook his head, reached into his front pocket and pulled out an ink pen, then grabbed a Taco Bell napkin from the floor of the LeBaron and wrote in blue block letters: “She knew you were there. Shut up. She will kill us both.” Darryl’s hands shook as he held the note where Karl could see it, but was hidden from Maryanne’s eyes, her bright blue all-seeing eyes. His head twitched. Karl didn’t know what this guy had gone through, but he didn’t want to know. He just wanted out, but he might not have a choice. Darryl crumpled the napkin, stuck his arm out the side of the car and dropped it onto the interstate, watching in the side mirror as it fluttered onto the shoulder, and away from Maryanne’s watch.
They drove forty-five minutes in tense silence until the lights of St. Joseph, Missouri, covered the darkening horizon.
“Let’s pull over here,” Maryanne said from the backseat, startling Karl and Darryl. “Let’s find a motel room and some whiskey. I need to get fucked up.” Karl pulled the LeBaron up to a convenience store and started to hop out, to walk calmly into the front of this building, smiling all the way as he ran the fuck out the back. Maryanne’s cold voice stopped his thoughts. “No. Not you, Cowboy,” she cooed, draping an arm around his shoulder. “Go, Darryl. Get me something good. And popcorn. Bring me some popcorn, something for dinner, get some Bic razors, and a ‘People’ magazine.” Darryl slowly released the door latch, stepped from the car and slunk into the store.
“You pump gas,” she told Karl. “Pump it good.”
The next two hours burned itself into Karl’s mind. By the time he finished filling the LeBaron, Darryl came back to the car with a half-gallon of Jack Daniels, a pint of Jim Beam, and a fifth of Evan Williams, four big bags of Barrel-O-Fun white cheddar cheese popcorn, a frozen box of microwaveable White Castle Hamburgers, and a stack of shitty gossip magazines. Maryanne hooted as he dumped the armful of booty into the backseat and they drove to the nearest motel. With anywhere to choose, Maryanne told Karl to pull into a Motel 6; she wanted doors on the outside.
“Let’s eat and get drunk,” this blond maniac screamed, laughing like teenagers do at Will Ferrell movies. They got out of the car, the usually humming traffic on Interstate 29 below them, gone. A deer walked slowly across the road, nibbling at grass in the median, as they grabbed the booty and busted into a room. Karl didn’t remember much about the night. Maryanne took a shower and shaved herself bare. Karl thought about running then. He pulled the .44 out of his pants and looked up to see Darryl holding Maryanne’s rifle level with his head.
“Put that away,” Darryl said quietly, but forcefully, any fear that had been in the man was gone. “Now’s not the time. Put it in the drawer next to the Bible. She won’t find it there. Wait until she’s asleep. Then we can do business.” Staring at the barrel of the gun, Karl slid open the top drawer of the desk and sat the pistol on top of the Holy Bible, hoping like hell he wouldn’t need to smite anyone before he could get it back.
A microwave oven in the room she chose, 126, “right next to the ice machine,” made the hamburgers somewhat palatable, and the popcorn was still crunchy, but it was the whiskey that raked terror across Karl, his gun across the room, and a madwoman next to him. The drunker Maryanne got, the louder she got.
“Where you from, Cowboy?” she said to Karl, a half bottle of Evan Williams between her smooth legs, the pink Bic razors not leaving a scratch on them. Maryanne sat on the bed naked, munching popcorn. Jenna had looked like that girl in high school nobody noticed, but might look hot if she took off her glasses and let her hair down; Maryanne looked like a Playboy bunny. Jenna just annoyed him, but she hadn’t threatened to kill him. It wasn’t the last time he wondered if he’d made a mistake leaving her.
“I’m from Vinita, Oklahoma,” he said, trying not to sound nervous. He didn’t tell her he’d been a car dealer; nobody likes a car dealer. “I almost went to Dallas, but I decided to go north. Lucky me, huh?”
Maryanne grinned at him through a mouth full of straight, white teeth, eyeing him with the cold eyes of a p
redator.
“You bet your sweet ass,” she said, spreading her legs and moving the bottle of Evan Williams, grinning as Karl’s eyes moved to look at her. “You want some of that? Well, you have to earn it.” She took a pull from the bottle and sat it on the motel’s bedside table. “Strip down, boys.” When Karl looked, Darryl was already naked, his jeans spread across the TV. Holy shit, his cock is huge, ran through Karl’s head. He knew why Maryanne kept him around.
“Lay on the bed,” she ordered Karl who thought about throwing a punch to the side of her head, and getting out of this madness, but something stopped him. The looming idea of death at the hands of this maniac, and the desire to see what the fuck else was going to happen. Maryanne hopped on top of his legs, grinning. “If you can show you’re a good boy like Darryl, you can do things to me, Cowboy.” They drank whiskey until he finally passed out.
Karl’s eyes painfully crawled open at sunrise; Maryanne’s naked, nearly perfect body sprawled over his legs. In the meagre light that filtered through the motel curtains, he saw something that chilled his soul. The pants Darryl had draped across the TV were gone, the drawer with his pistol lay open, and the motel door sat ajar. Karl looked around, only with his eyes for fear of waking Maryanne, but he could see Darryl had bolted with his gun. That lucky bastard was gone and Karl was alone with this psychotic bitch. Fuckenheimer.
July 8: Allenville, Missouri
Chapter 16
Sweat rolled down Craig’s face as he pushed the red Craftsman lawnmower across the yard, the steady hum of the motor filling the air for blocks. The sweat formed a dark stain on his shirt and his breath came in hard, deep bursts, but the exercise felt good; it was nice to get out of the house; besides, he didn’t want his lawn to look like the Posey’s next door. Disgraceful. Just disgraceful. The mower hit a hidden rut and the front tires stuck, shoving the handlebar into Craig’s stomach. He stopped, smiled and wiped his face with a sleeve, the sweat left the sleeve dark and damp. Yes, it felt good. So would a bath, but the town’s water stopped running; the faucet didn’t even hiss anymore. Nope, no pressure at all. A few dark clouds sat on what little of the horizon was visible through the trees that shaded the neighborhood. It might rain tonight, Craig thought. I’ll set out the wading pool and have a bath tomorrow.