by Jason Offutt
“Hey, Terry,” Doug said, his voice gravelly from sleep.
“Just a minute, dude,” Terry said and swung his ass in a tighter circle, then pumped his hips to the left.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Terry shook his penis, zipped his pants and climbed back into the passenger seat of the Toyota. “Pissing a picture of SpongeBob. Didn’t work out so well. Not my medium. I’m a better artist in snow.”
Doug reached to his left and grabbed the seat’s recliner lever, his body screamed in pain as the seat popped up, a heavy weight he couldn’t see pinned to his chest. Fuck you, Ken Gundy. “Where are we?”
Jenna stirred in the back seat. Doug pulled down the rearview mirror; her head rested on Nikki’s shoulder, a hand on Nikki’s right breast. He smiled. It was going to be fun watching them wake up.
“Dawson’s Creek,” Terry said.
What? “That’s a TV show, with that guy who never did anything else.”
“Urkel?”
“No, Vandersomething.”
“James Van Der Beek.” It was Jenna.
Doug looked back into the mirror. Jenna and Nikki both sat straight, Jenna’s hand now nowhere near Nikki’s breast. He’d missed it. “Every Tuesday night,” she said, wiping her forearm across her cheek. “Sue me.”
“This isn’t Dawson’s Creek. What is it?”
Terry sat staring out the front window, the pickup from Mayday parked in front of them, empty. “Not Dawson’s Creek. I think the sign read Dawson Springs, or something. Close enough.” He pointed at the truck. “Where are those new people?”
Doug looked ahead. They were gone. Who cares? We’re all dead anyway. “They couldn’t be too far.” He unlatched the door and stepped out, putting his weight on the car door. The vehicles sat in the lot of a gray building with a blue roof, a yellow sign that read ‘Dollar General’ stretched over two glass doors. The Toyota and the Ford truck were the only vehicles in the dusty lot.
“People must have left town early.” Nikki stepped out of the car. Nothing moved but the leaves on the tall green trees that dotted their view of Dawson Springs. The slight breeze brought nothing to them; no smells, no sounds. The town was quiet as a visitation. Nikki pointed at the various businesses that stretched down the main street; only two cars sat in plain view. She nodded to Doug and turned toward Terry who was just stepping out of the Prius. “Nobody’s here. That’s a good sign, right?”
Yeah. A good sign. Finding people had been the goal for Doug, the only goal. People were supposed to be a safe haven, protection, they were supposed to mean a place to sit back and relax and drink lemonade on the front porch. He’d just killed Andi and probably Donnie with that belief. That Lazarus asshole had exposed Jenna and Terry to Ophiocordon, the shit that started the zombie plague. They might be the dead walking right now. It was all on his shoulders. He shifted his weight on his good foot to look at Nikki, pain lanced through his ribs. If Jenna and Terry died, it was all on him. My fault. My damned fault. People were poison. He didn’t want them anymore.
“Yes, Nikki, it’s a really good sign.”
“I think we should hang out here for a while, boss.” Terry put his arm around Nikki and gently kissed her bruised face. “You two are pretty banged up. I think we could all use a little rest.”
Rest. Yeah, rest. All of the late, great Warren Zevon’s songs sat in silence in Doug’s record collection back home in Paola. ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ played for Doug now. Yep, Warren, if I start acting stupid I’ll shoot myself. I probably should have done that already. I’ve been an idiot.
“There’s a motel just down the road.”
Doug followed Terry’s eyes. Yes, there was. A little two-building mom and pop motel with a tin roof right across the street from the First Christian Church; all the doors were on the outside. “You want to go check it out?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jenna rested a hand on Doug’s chin and turned his face back toward hers. “Shouldn’t we all go together?”
No. I’m not risking your life anymore. Doug shook his head. “It’s a motel. We’ll look at the register before we unlock any rooms. We’ll be fine.”
Jenna kissed him. “Damn straight.”
Sunlight flashed off one of the two glass doors of the Dollar General Store as it opened and Lacy and Walter stepped out. Lacy cradled a handheld shopping basket under her arm, Walter carried a bag of charcoal in the crook of one arm, an aluminum walker in the other. Walter smiled as he saw the group standing outside the car and cocked his head up; the universal small-town wave.
“Looks like they went shopping for breakfast,” Jenna said and reached into the car to pop the trunk. “I’ll get the chairs. If we’re going to eat shit from a box, we might as well be comfortable.”
***
Grilled Pop-Tarts, instant mashed potatoes and Sunny D tasted better than it sounded when Lacy emptied the contents of the basket onto the hood of the truck. The walker was for Doug. “I know it’s not going to work as good as crutches,” Walter said. “But it’s better than nothing. The old lady in the back of the store didn’t need it anymore.”
A sad grin washed across Doug’s face. Yep, most people didn’t need anything anymore. What was grandma buying when the Ophiocordon took hold? Toilet paper? Cat food? Toys for the grandkids? He looked at the light metal walker, designed for geriatrics to shuffle from place to place, two tennis balls slit across the middle were affixed to the front legs. He’d hoped a doctor in Mayday would remove his cast when the ankle was healed. Now he was just going to have to guess.
“Thanks. Let’s hope I don’t need it for long.” The old lady didn’t.
Terry stood from the camp chair and dropped his paper plate and water bottle into the black, Hefty garbage bag Lacy had brought from the store. Keep America beautiful. He reached into the open door of the Prius and pulled out his gun belt, the 9mm snapped into its holster, the clip reloaded. “You ready, boss?”
Yeah. I’m always ready. Doug used the walker to pull himself out of the chair.
“Where are you going?” Walter sat on the Ford’s tailgate, a half-eaten unfrosted blueberry Pop-Tart in his hand. Lacy sat next to him, her arm on his thigh.
“To the motel down the street. Terry and I are going to find us a place to relax for a couple of days.”
Walter hopped off the tailgate. “I’m coming with you.”
Doug shook his head. “No, we can handle it. We need you guys to go back in there and stock up on supplies; everything we’ll need for at least a week.” A week. Did Terry and Jenna have a week? “We need a man in there, or the girls will forget the beef jerky.”
Terry pulled the second baseball bat out of the back of the truck. The first one was still back in Mayday covered in Ken Gundy’s brains. “Ready, boss.”
Really, Terry? Are you ready? For what? Are you worried about the Ophiocordon in your system? I sure as fuck am. Terry slipped the bat into the back seat of the Prius. No smiles. Terry always smiled. Yes, he is. And so was Doug.
***
Brand new black asphalt covered the parking lots of the Dawson Springs Motel. Two long, thin buildings stretched back from Arcadia Avenue, faux brick covered each building from the concrete sidewalk to the level of the doorknob of each white door and gave way to off-white vinyl siding. Each doorknob had a keyhole. Fucking A.
Doug parked the Prius in front of the motel office. Yes, the motel was only a few blocks away from Dollar General Store where the rest of their party was picking up baskets of canned chicken and Tampons, but as Mr. Finch, the high school driving instructor at Paola High School hammered into the class’s brain, always leave yourself an out. Terry pulled Doug’s new walker from the back seat and carried it around the car. He couldn’t get too far away from his out.
A large window framed by forest green shutters looked out onto Arcadia Avenue, the oval red and blue “open” sign dim, probably forever. Terry stood outside the window, his face pressed to the glass. “Nothin
g, boss. The office is clean.” Doug looked down the street, he’d turned off Interstate 69 onto U.S. 62 at 2 a.m., too tired and beaten to go any more; the little town of Dawson’s Creek – damn it, Terry, Dawson Springs – small, quiet and off the Interstate enough anyone following them from Mayday probably wouldn’t find them here. The moon painted the town gray last night as Doug drove into the Dollar General Store parking lot with the Prius’ lights off; the Ford behind him following suit, hoping the taillights didn’t betray them to the evil in that town. There had to be evil. There had been evil everywhere else. But as he stood, leaning against the aluminum walker, its wheels and bright, greenish-yellow tennis balls resting on the dark black asphalt, everything was quiet. No once-human monsters trudged toward them from down the street, or from behind the Dr Pepper machine on the side of the Tobacco Shack next to the motel. They had found no evil here. Not yet.
Terry knocked on the other side of the big glass. He was already inside. He launched himself over the counter, sliding on his ass like a 1970s TV cop across the hood of a car; a bowl of motel matchbooks fell to the floor. He dropped behind the counter, then popped up holding a handful of matchbooks, grinning like he’d just won a prize at a carnival Lucky winner, every time. You want the stuffed monkey, son? Or how ‘bout the commemorative Def Leppard mirror? Terry stuffed the matches in his front pocket. Doug shook his head and walked inside.
The smell of must and disuse permeated the little office, a layer of dust rested over everything, the walls covered in wood paneling and reprints of nature paintings. Douglas Titus Sr. had pulled Mama Titus and Doug Jr. into tiny out of the way motels just like this on every family trip. Mount Rushmore, the Great Smokey Mountains, Dallas for the Great Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Tour, all had wound up at a place like this motel. No Holiday Inns for the Titus family, only places with a good chance of a taxidermied animal in each room.
A rack of keys was mounted on the wall behind the office counter, each key on a key ring with a green diamond shaped plastic key tag, probably with the name and address of the motel on the front. Terry flipped through a ledger on the counter. No computer in this office. Nosiree. This was Mom and Pop all the way.
“Anybody checked in?”
Terry stopped flipping pages and slapped his index finger on the paper ledger. “Yep. Last entry has a check-in date, but no check out. Only one.” He looked up at Doug and grinned. “Tom and Carol Murphy, 14775 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri.”
KCMO. “Welcome home, Terry.”
He turned and pulled a key off the rack. “They’re in Room 27.” Terry dropped the key in his breast pocket and pulled three more off the rack. He handed them to Doug. “Forty-one, forty-three, forty-five.” Terry picked the Mayday baseball bat off the office couch where he’d tossed it and dropped it onto his shoulder. “Why don’t you go air out those rooms for us, boss. I’ll take care of the Murphys.”
Doug started to protest, but stopped. What was the point? He took the keys. “Sure.”
Terry stopped at the brochure rack, grabbed one of each and slipped them into his back pockets before following Doug out of the office.
***
Room Twenty-seven sat facing the Tobacco Shack, a gray building with a sloping blue tin roof, quiet beer lights hung in the long plate-glass windows. That was Stop Two, Terry hoped; Stop One was Room Twenty-seven. Terry wrapped his fingers tighter around the electrical tape on the handle of the chipped wooden baseball bat and walked down the row of open, blank windows; the ten-year-old blank television sets, pressboard cabinets and tightly made beds vivid in the morning sunlight. Room Fifteen, Seventeen, Nineteen. All the window shades were pulled back, the rooms waited patiently for visitors who would never come. Twenty-one, Twenty-three, Twenty-five. Terry pulled the bat off his shoulder and stepped in front of Room Twenty-seven in a hitter’s stance.
The Murphys were home.
Terry’s feet melted into the concrete walkway that crossed in front of the window, his dry tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. Tom Murphy stood on the other side of the glass, his white, glazed eyes looked directly at Terry, then its head turned and it looked into the sky. The zombie shifted its weight from foot to foot, a soft moan vibrated through the glass. Tom’s white Oxford shirt still clean and crisp, his black tie (like he was dressing for a funeral) hung untied on either side of the collar. Carol, poor Carol, lay across the bed on the orange comforter in a charcoal dress, her chest burst open, the stalk of fungus that infected good old Tom – Honey. Honey. What’s wrong? What hurts? I’ll go get a doc– lay limp and spent over the bed.
Terry pulled back the bat, ready to swing through the glass and beat Tom like Nikki had beaten Ken Gundy to death less than twelve hours before, but he didn’t. Zombie Tom just stood there, like Terry didn’t exist. Zombies didn’t act like that. They acted like the teenage girl in the blood-streaked Kearney Bearcats T-shirt out in Western Nebraska. It had come at him as he tried to get into the tractor-trailer to run it and a pack of zombies over. It had wanted to eat him. The monsters at the hospital in Omaha were just like the cheerleader chick. Tom Murphy wasn’t at all. Tom had seen him. This zombie had fucking looked right at him, then turned away. The barrel of the Louisville Slugger rapped softly on the window of Room Twenty-Seven as Terry tried to get Tom’s attention. Tom turned his head toward Terry, considered him with its dead, cataract eyes and turned away.
What is– But the thought died. Tom didn’t want Terry because he was one of them. The Ophiocordon that bastard Lazarus had fed him had changed something about Terry, something Doug and Nikki couldn’t see, but Tom could. See? Or smell maybe, or just feel, like the way a room felt when somebody angry walked in? But Terry knew he wasn’t going to be like Tom, with its shiny white eyes and flesh starting to rot from its face, waiting, just waiting for food to walk by this window. Terry was going to be like dear old Carol, lying on the bed with her chest burst open. Terry wasn’t a zombie; he was a zombie maker. That’s what Lazarus had wanted. How long do I have left before I’m like her? How long does Jenna have? Jenna was a lot smaller than him and the drug had hit her harder. He pretended to sleep while they were strapped to the hospital beds in the high school gym hothouse, but he was awake, painfully listening to Jenna’s moans as orgasms racked her body. That was one of the side effects. Excessive orgasms. Jimmy Fallon made jokes about it on “The Tonight Show.” If that’s what happens, who wouldn’t want to be suicidally depressed? But she didn’t sound like she was enjoying it, she sounded miserable.
“Terry?” Doug stood at the corner of the building, his face pinched. Yeah, dude, I get you. What the hell am I doing? Terry opened his mouth when Tom burst into a flurry of action, slapping the glass with the palms of its long-nailed hands, its mouth pounding open, shut, open, shut. The sudden movement sent Terry back a couple of feet. How long have I been here?
“Well,” he said softly, trying to smile and failing miserably. “I found them.”
Doug walked closer, Tom’s slaps turned into a pounding. That window would go soon. “Are you okay?”
Terry nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine, dude. I got this. Just stay back.” He pulled the key to room Twenty-Seven from the front pocket of his shirt and slid it into the lock. “Here, kitty, kitty,” he whispered as he turned the knob and threw the door inward.
The thing that was Tom Murphy, just some guy from Kansas City here for a funeral, or a wedding, or something, lunged out the door and found the barrel of Terry’s Louisville Slugger crashing into its face. The skull caved in with a sickening sound, like Terry had pulled a Gallagher and smashed a watermelon instead of a zombie. Tom staggered back and Terry stepped forward, putting the bat against the monster’s chest and pushing it back into the room. Tom fell onto the bed, half over his wife and lie still, its ruined skull leaked red fluid onto Carol’s pretty charcoal dress.
“Sweet dreams, guys,” he whispered. Terry reached toward the curtains and pulled the drawstring, the pale blue flower print sealing th
e Murphys in their new home.
***
On the second day in Dawson Springs, Walter and Lacy found Riverside Park. It was close enough to walk from the motel where they’d spent an entire night in peaceful silence, but that would have meant not having an out in an emergency. Doug wouldn’t have that. The vehicles sat under the shade of the thick oak and hickory trees that lined the banks of the Tradewater River, between a two-deck wooden baseball stadium and the main street. Doug, Jenna and Nikki sat in camp chairs, Walter and Lacy on the tailgate of the pickup. Terry hovered over a Dollar General charcoal grill that sizzled with brook trout fillets. A fishing boat on a trailer behind a long silent Toyota 4Runner provided the fishing poles, a nearby garden the worms and fresh tomatoes. Fishing felt good, normal. Doug, Terry and Walter sat on the bank, lines in the water, while the ladies made potato salad with relish, mayonnaise, reconstituted potato medallions from a box of scalloped potatoes and powdered eggs courtesy of the former Hipster owners of the Prius.
Doug lifted himself out of the canvas chair. “Anybody ready for another beer?”
Walter jumped off the tailgate. “I’ll get it for you.”
Doug waved him off. “I’ve got a broken ankle, I’m not an invalid.”
Nikki raised her right hand. “I’ll take one, Doug. Thanks.”
“Terry?”
“Nope,” he said. “I’m good.”
Doug nodded and walked slowly to the river. He hated to admit it, but the walker really did help him get around. He figured it would get him through the next month or two until he could take off his cast and walk on his own again. The beer was another thing. Terry hadn’t had one yesterday, or today. That’s not like him. Something had happened to Terry at Room Twenty-Seven; Doug just didn’t know what and Terry wasn’t talking.
What was left of a case of beer sat cooling in the river. Doug pulled the piece of rope that kept the beer from floating away in the current and lifted a six-pack out of the water. Dawson Springs had enough for them to live here for a while. Food, water, shelter. They’d have to move out of the motel and find someplace with a wood stove, or fireplace come winter, but they could make it. They would make it. But Dyersburg sat in the back of Doug’s mind like a rat, gnawing at his conscious thought. He couldn’t make it stop any more than he could make a rat stop gnawing. He’d have to kill it to make it stop. Laughter broke from the circle of people he’d found himself with and it sounded good. He smiled and walked back to his chair.