“I can see that,” he replied. “Mind putting that thing away?”
She stuck it back in her waistband and studied him. Even several feet away he towered over her, with long, spindly arms and skinny legs that recalled the branches of trees in winter. Amber had referred to him as “The Mantis.” He stood with a noticeable slump, a habit perhaps born of a lifetime of being taller than everyone else. His hair, once black but now shot through with gray, poked out from beneath a Duke baseball cap. The Mantis had survived the apocalypse.
“It’s nice to see somebody,” she remarked.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and squeezed his shoulders together, nodding. He was so narrow, she could have flipped him upside down and used him to break into cars. “Nice ain’t the word,” he said. “I about had a heart attack when I saw you. Where’s Amber?”
“Home,” she said. “We were camping. We came back yesterday and everybody’s gone.”
“Welcome home,” he said. “Deep Shit Creek.”
She pursed her lips and shrugged.
“You seen anybody else?” he asked.
“You’re the first.”
“Well, goddamn.” He sighed and slumped even further. Clyde lived alone, she remembered. Mike said he had been married three times, but none of these unions had produced children. He spent his days collecting his military pension and hanging out at the American Legion hall. He had no one to mourn. His life, she reflected, had been lonely even before this happened.
“I was drunk off my ass,” he said.
“Come again?”
“That’s how I made it. When those things came knocking, I was passed out in my living room. Folks always said the drink would kill me, but it sure saved my shit this time. Isn’t that something?”
“It is.” She turned and looked at the rest of the store. Sunlight from the great glass windows penetrated halfway down the building’s length, slacking and fading down at the first break in the rows of neatly-shelved goods. Then the shadows took over. The camping section was in the back, of course. Everything she needed, back there in the dark.
She wondered if vampires slept during the day.
“What happened? How is any of this even possible?” she asked, turning back around.
Stepping out of the doorway, Clyde walked over to a stack of bagged insecticide granules and sat down. He shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “These bitches just…took over. I don’t know where they came from; it’s like a fuckin’ plague or something. The rage of Jesus H. Christ. First night, we lose power, internet, phones. We also lose about three quarters of the population. Twenty thousand people, gone like that.”
He snapped his fingers.
“Next morning, I sober up and wake up on my floor. It takes me until about two in the afternoon to wander outside to find out exactly what the goddamn fuck is going on with all my utilities. None of my neighbors are home, and I mean, like, none. I try driving over to your place to look for Mike and he’s not there, either. So I just cruise around.
“About two thirty, I come down here to see if anyone knows anything. There’s a crew of guys boarding up the jail, and I say hey, what’s going on, and they say, somebody in there got bit and now they’ve all gone over. I ask, bit by what? Gone over where? They tell me to either get a hammer and help or shut the fuck up and go on because they have to get this done before the sun goes down. I’ve never really been one for hammers and nails, so I shut the fuck up and go on. Go around to the front of the courthouse and I see them doing that.”
He jabbed his finger at the storefront, at the bodies hanging across the street.
Heather breathed through her nose. Her stomach crawled. “Who are they?”
“Them? Queers. The ones they could find, anyway.”
Heather’s skin tingled. “Who’s ‘they?’”
“Everybody who made it through the first night.”
“Everybody?”
His homely face was somber, expressionless. He shrugged, as if the answer was of no consequence. “Shit, I don’t know if it was literally everybody, but it was a lot of fuckers out there. They were like, this is the Lord’s doing. Pretty damn convinced of it, too.”
Heather thought of her grandmother’s Bible, open to Isaiah. Mike had been reading it.
Clyde laughed then, actually laughed, like he’d made a funny joke. What’d the man say when the horse walked into the bar? Hey, you see those queers get lynched in front of the courthouse? Hee hee hee. “Ain’t that some shit? You got vampires running all over, getting into people’s houses and biting this and biting that and these folks say hey, this looks like the work of that God we’ve been worshipping. But who knows, right?? Maybe they were on to something.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Serious as a motherfuckin’, cock-suckin’ heart attack. This is some shit, Heather, this is some crazy-ass fucked-up shit. I mean, have you seen what’s happened to people? Have you seen one of them?”
Pain in her belly, her throat. Pain all over.
Mike.
“I have,” she said softly.
“Then can you understand why some people might think hey, this is biblical. Must be the vengeance of the Lord. And why not? Why wouldn’t He be pissed off? We’ve been running all over killing people, torturing people, robbing people. All of us, every damn one of us is in on it. And morality? Shit. No such thing anymore. Men not only lying with men, but men marrying men and the government blessing it! I mean, what the fuck?”
He shook his head, which rotated on the spindle of his neck.
“So maybe they were right. Maybe God said like Janet Jackson, maybe God said, what have you done for me lately? Jack shit, that’s what. And maybe He got sick of that. Maybe He said fuck this bullshit, we’re going back to the basics. We’re writing us a new chapter in the Bible, because obviously these assholes forgot a few things. Maybe He did.
“But look, I didn’t have shit to do with that out there. I came down the street, I heard them yelling, I saw this shit going down and I got out of there A.S.A.P. I’m a single man living alone. For all I knew, they’d get it in their heads that I’m one of these queers and string me up, too.”
The day just beyond the plate glass window lit him from behind. Shadows covered his narrow face, making it difficult to read his expressions. His head seemed to have sunken even lower between his narrow shoulders. His long arms dangled idly at his sides. He had never looked more like a mantis.
Please tell me this is not the last man on Earth, she thought.
He looked back over his shoulder at the bodies hanging across the street and coughed. He reached into his pocket and removed a handkerchief into which he hawked something she was glad she couldn’t see.
“Anyway,” he said, “what brings you down this way? Surely you’re not planning on re-seeding your lawn or doing a tile backsplash at a time like this?”
“Camping supplies,” she said. She turned and looked into the dark heart of the store. She wondered if she’d have to go back there, or if she could talk Clyde into doing it. “We’re going to make a run to Fayetteville, see if the army’s got anything set up at Fort Bragg.”
“Who’s with you?” he asked. “Are you alone?”
“No, I’ve got Amber.”
“You guys haven’t found anybody else? It’s just you?”
“Just us,” she confirmed. It was dark back there, too dark, but she could still see the racks on the wall at the very rear of the store. Off to one side, the door to the stockroom stood closed, motionless. If she got too close to that door and there was something hiding in there…
Suddenly, a different thought pierced her skull.
Ask him how he knew they were gay if he wasn’t part of the mob.
She froze.
“Heather?” he asked.
She reached for the Ruger as she turned, but she found that he’d moved right up behind her. And before she could ask, say or do anything, his closed fist smashed into her face and m
ade speech impossible.
9.
She couldn’t have been out long. She awoke moments later on her face, draped over the stinking bags of insecticide at the front of the hardware store. Someone was unbuttoning her jeans. Unzipping them, jerking them down.
Clyde.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, panting. “Gonna fuck you both, you and her. All day and all night.”
Hands invaded her underwear, fondled and squeezed her buttocks. The side of her face a numb slab of meat, her head swam as she tried to piece together what had just happened, what was happening now. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. In the upper corner of the store, a security camera stared at her with a sightless eye.
Her Ruger lay on the floor beside another stack of bags. Out of reach.
“You’re mine now. Both of you.”
His profane fingers closed into fists and he jerked her underwear down to mid-thigh, with her jeans. It had felt warm in the hardware store there in the sun coming through the window, but now the air was cold against her bare skin. The hands kneaded and fondled her backside for a moment and then pulled away.
She heard a zipper.
No. No, this is not happening.
But it was happening, it was. She had come downtown to get beef jerky and batteries and now she was getting raped on top of a gardening display.
No. No.
“Gotta warn you,” he gasped behind her. “I’m not gentle.”
Those rude bony hands reached between her thighs in search of something that was not theirs. When his skin touched hers, an electric shock suddenly coursed through her body and she jerked to life. In a single motion, she whirled around and drove her elbow into his face.
His nose exploded in a shower of blood and he fell back. He fell on his butt, his erect penis pointing at the ceiling like some sorry little twig, his eyes open wide in surprise. Something moved in the shadows behind him, but Heather paid it no mind. She fell sideways. Her legs mermaid-useless within the bindings of her jeans and underwear, she scooted along the floor until her right hand closed around the Ruger’s grip. She brought it to bear just as Clyde struggled to his feet.
“YOU BITCH!” he screamed.
She leveled the gun at him, his face in her sights. “Don’t move,” she said.
“My fugging NOSE!” Blood poured from his face and splattered his shirt. He sounded like he had a cold.
She was barely aware of the floor beneath her naked bottom. “Move and you die.”
He looked down at her, blinking.
And then he smiled.
Suddenly conscious that she was laying on the ground with her private parts exposed, a small part of her wanted nothing more than to cover up so that Clyde—so that no one—could see. But the rest of her held the Ruger steady.
“You can’t shoot me,” he said. “I’m the last man on Earth. There’s no one else.”
“Don’t move,” she repeated through clenched teeth.
“Put that gun down.”
“Clyde…”
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to do this. It’s the way of things. Adam and Eve, right?”
He took a step forward.
Heather squeezed the trigger.
A flash and peal of thunder, and a neat round hole appeared on Clyde’s left cheek a split-second before the back of his head disappeared. Something dark and red splattered on the ceiling tile.
He fell backwards. This time, he didn’t get up.
She held the gun on him for several moments. When he didn’t move, she stood and laid it atop the bags of fertilizer while she pulled up her underwear and jeans.
Something moved at the back of the store. She snatched the pistol and aimed it towards the shadows, barely visible in the back. Three of them—one tall, two short. She couldn’t see their faces, but something inside of her head told her she was looking at Jack Walker, the proprietor of Revolution Hardware. And his children; she had seen them in here working alongside their father when she came to buy supplies before. They had come here after turning, or they’d been here when it all happened. And they remained here because…
The storeroom. The storeroom has no windows, and it’s dark. They like that.
They didn’t move. She glanced down at Clyde, lying there in a pool of slowly-spreading blood in that space where the sunlight began weakening and giving way to the darkness beyond. She recalled that time Mike had hit a deer with his truck on base up in Norfolk. The military policeman had asked him if he wanted to keep it. Mike had declined.
They want him.
“He’s all yours,” Heather announced. The Walkers, shrouded in darkness, didn’t move. It took her an instant to understand that they hadn’t been waiting for her permission; the light was simply too strong up at the front of the store, even where Clyde lay.
But it wouldn’t remain that way indefinitely. As the day dragged on, the shadows here would lengthen, creep forward.
And when they did that, the Walkers would claim Clyde.
She hurried out of the store.
10.
Outside, the sun poured the light of science and rationality upon downtown Deep Creek. Barely a hundred feet away, the bodies swung. Ropes creaked beneath their weight.
Take care, they said. Vampires aren’t your only enemies.
True, Heather realized. Cheap bread couldn’t have gone stale as quickly as the remains of modern society had disintegrated. If she and her child were to survive this, she would need to reevaluate her plan. A lot of road lay between Deep Creek and the army base at Fort Bragg; they couldn’t count on every live person they met along the way being helpful. With the police gone and the courthouses deserted, the rule of law existed only in the memories of survivors. Without its protection, the strong and numerous could simply take what they wanted.
“We need to stay put,” she whispered. “Ride this out. Let help come to us.”
And what if help doesn’t come? The bodies asked. What if there is no army anymore and the next people you meet are armed marauding freaks a la Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome who decide to make a little harem out of you and your daughter?
“Then I’m going to kill a lot of fucking people,” she growled to the silent air.
And before the air could answer, a voice behind her asked, “Who’re you going to kill?”
She jumped. The boy standing in the street behind Heather looked about Amber’s age but could have been even younger. His wispy blond hair rose and fell in a breeze that kept the bodies behind her swaying from their creaking ropes. He glanced up at them momentarily before looking back at her, a white Chevrolet pickup truck idling quietly behind him.
She removed the pistol from her waistband and pointed it at him. She wouldn’t let her guard down twice, boy or not. He raised his hands.
“Easy,” he said.
“Stay over there.”
“Okay. No problem. I can do that. Just don’t shoot me, okay?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I came to cut them down,” he said, gesturing with his head at the bodies. “I got a ladder in the back of my truck. I was going to climb it and cut them down. Cover them up. There’s a tarp under the ladder. Go ahead and look.”
Hands held up, he backed away and to the side as Heather approached the truck. She threw a glance into the bed.
A ladder. A tarpaulin. A toolbox.
“Look, lady,” he said, “I get it, okay? I totally understand why you’d be a little, I don’t know, paranoid. It’s all good. But seriously, I just came here to cut these folks down so I don’t have to see crows pecking at their frigging eyes every time I drive by.”
“You have something to do with this?”
“No,” he said with an emphatic shake of the head. “I just want to cut them down. It’s the right thing to do.”
He squinted at her. “What happened to your face?”
She reached up with her left hand and felt her cheek. It felt raw, tender. “How does it look?”
“You got a bruise coming up.”
“You should see the other guy.”
His eyes fell to the pistol in her right hand, which she still hadn’t lowered.
“Man bring his fists to a gunfight?”
“Something like that.”
He bit his lower lip and breathed slowly. “He deserve it?”
“He did.”
“Okay, then.”
They stood for several long moments, the boy with his hands in the air, Heather with the pistol pointed straight at him. He didn’t try to move.
“Can I put my hands down?” he asked finally.
“Why’d you sneak up on me?”
“Why did I drive up behind you in a pickup truck, get out and stand here while you ignored me? I don’t know. I guess I thought you were frigging deaf. You were acting like it. Until you started talking to yourself.”
He looked up at the bodies. Then he looked back down at her.
“I’m putting my hands down,” he said. “You can shoot me or whatever. But my arms are getting tired.”
He allowed his hands to fall. He wore jeans and a baggy hooded sweatshirt, but if he had any weapons concealed he didn’t reach for them. Heather kept the gun on him.
“Why don’t you just go on?” he asked. “Go back to your car, wherever that is, take off, let me do my thing. How does that sound?”
It sounded logical, and had she an ounce of sense she’d have done just that. But for some reason, she didn’t want to leave the boy.
“My husband will be coming along any minute. He’s in the Navy. He’s a SEAL. Special forces.”
“I know what the SEALs are,” he said.
“I was in the Navy, too. Shore Patrol. I’m trained in armed and unarmed combat.”
“Good for you. For real, can you go on and take that gun with you?”
She sighed and lowered it. Then she stuck it in her waistband. He looked down at it but didn’t move from where he stood.
“I’m Heather Palmer,” she said.
“I’m Justin Lesner. Are you from here, or are you—and your husband—passing through?”
The Last Days of October Page 6