Alive! Not Dead!

by R. M. Smith

  As we travelled eastward, the destruction of the world remained. I began to wonder how far damage radiated outward after a nuke was dropped. It seemed to go on forever. I wondered if there was something else involved. How could there be so much damage for so far? Was there a massive earthquake, too?

  In Missoula we stopped for fuel. The gas station had collapsed but the pumps were still standing. Instead of using the pumps, Mason quickly siphoned some gas from a couple parked cars on the side of the store. One part of the gas station was still standing. Inside, Mindy and I found a few cans of soup on some pre-looted shelves. All the rest of the food that had been left in the store had gone bad. The cash register hung open. It was full of money. No one had taken the cash.

  We took the soup cans out to Mason and Vera. Mason had a manual can opener. The soup tasted badly, but it was better than nothing.

  It was scary to think that soon all food would be bad. The soup was our nourishment as well as our drink. There wasn’t any bottled water in the store, either. In the back of my mind I wished we would come across a fully stocked grocery store, but I knew the idea was useless.

  Surprisingly, we didn’t see one dead person since leaving Coeur d’Alene. There was wreckage everywhere, and no bodies; not even wild-life. Birds didn’t sing in the trees.

  It took us four days to get to Cheyenne. By the time we got there, we were equipped to camp anywhere. In Billings there had been a hunting store with all kinds of camping goods. Tents, sleeping bags, guns, ammo, kerosene lamps, a flash light, you name it. Mason’s bike was big enough to hold most of the gear behind Vera. Of course Vera wasn’t too happy that Mason had to carry all of the gear on his bike. Mason said he didn’t mind at all.

  We kept our own tent and sleeping bag on our bike. We only used one sleeping bag anyway so it didn’t take up much room. Mindy would lean back on the folded gear when we were on the road.

  Mason said he trained himself to look for the best vegetation to eat while hiking. I ribbed him about it; told him not to wipe his ass with it after he took a shit out there, but he would always come back to camp after scavenging in the woods. He’d bring a few handfuls of mushrooms or berries that we could eat. He would cook the mushrooms on a small grill he picked up in the hunting store.

  Mason was quite the character. He would tell us stories around the campfire every night after dinner. He would tell us about his days in the service as a Navy submariner, the places he’d been, and the people he’d met. He was very anti-government, as well. He told us that he thought this entire fuck up of the world was the government’s fault. He kept referring to a story he heard about some zombie-like virus that had started in Uganda – much like Aids. He blamed the World Health Organization for what had happened. He said it was probably done on purpose to lighten the load of the world’s population.

  Mindy and I got a kick out of him. He never wore a shirt, even when it got chilly on the mountain passes. Vera never told him to put one on, either.

  She smoked a great deal. Anytime we stopped for fuel or a rest, the first place she would go would be into any kind of store to pick up some cigarettes. She was a chain smoker, lighting one after the other, watching us through the smoke as we talked. She rarely said anything. Mason said it was normal for her. She didn’t speak much since her father died back in 2014. Her and her father had been very close.

  We filled plastic bottles with water from open streams in the mountains. We figured the water would be fresh enough to drink – and if we had the MCON virus already, getting it again from the mountain streams wouldn’t add to its effect – or, at least, we hoped it wouldn’t.

  In the four days it took to get to Cheyenne, we didn’t see anyone at all.

  My guess was that the dead hadn’t turned yet.

  Cheyenne was destroyed, just like everything else. It looked like it had burned as well. Everything was charred, almost as if a flash fire had engulfed the town. Most of the buildings and homes in town were burned to their frames. Blackened trees stood here and there, all of the leaves had burned away. Even the grass had all been burned to the root.

  We got to Mason’s brother’s house. It had burned down too. The home stood alone on a large lot.

  Mason dropped to his knees in the remains of the burned black grass. He said “I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry I let you down.”

  Vera put her hand on Mason’s shoulder. She told him it was ok.

  Mindy stood next to me, her hand in mine.

  We lowered our heads.

  Mason insisted on looking for his brother in the ruins of the burned house. While he did that, Vera stood in the yard, smoking, while Mindy and I went back to our bike.

  Mindy whispered to me “Now what are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. We came down here for Mason.”

  She put her head on my shoulder.

  There was a grumbling behind us. A burned zombie was reaching for us. The fire had burned all of the clothes and most of the skin off of the zombie’s body. It stunk. Its skin was charred black. Mindy screamed.

  Vera turned around quickly, almost dropping her cigarette.

  Mason looked up from the ashes, his forehead and chest covered in soot.

  The dead had risen.

  A shot rang out. The right side of the zombie’s head blasted open as a bullet from Mason’s pistol obliterated it. Rotten brain and blood splattered everywhere.

  “That’ll teach you for messing with my people!” Mason hollered from a window of the burned house.

  I asked Mindy if she was ok. She said yes.

  I looked around for more zombies. Down the gutted street, hundreds of burned zombies were walking toward us, hands outreached, burned, blackened.

  “Mason get out here. We need to move!” I shouted to him.

  Mindy and I quickly got onto our bike.

  Vera was ahead of Mason and was already getting on.

  Mason ran out of the house. He tripped on some of the burned wood on the ground. He fell flat onto his face.

  “Dammit!” I yelled. Getting off the motorcycle, I ran over to Mason. The zombies were now entering the yard of the house. There was an excitement in their gargling voices. Mindy started screaming for me to hurry up.

  I yanked Mason to his feet. We both ran over to the bikes and fired them up. Vera was screaming in horror.

  We sped out of the neighborhood, the zombies on our trail. Mindy’s grip on me was very tight.

  At the end of the block, we came face to face with more zombies. Hundreds of them. It looked like an army had formed while we were away. All of them were burned. The skin hung from their arms. The smell of burned flesh was nauseating.

  “Where’d they all come from?” Mason hollered.

  They were coming back to life. Everywhere we looked zombies were shambling along.

  We drove around the large group. Ahead there was an entrance ramp going back up onto the highway. A zombie was pushing out of a burned car along the curb.

  Mason took the onramp. There was a chunk of broken curb in the middle of the ramp. Mason accidentally ran over it. It was a hard jar. Some of the supplies fell off the back of his bike. Vera grabbed Mason around the waist as they went up the ramp, her hair blowing out behind.

  Mindy and I followed. We avoided the curb completely.

  Up top, the road was clear other than the usual destroyed cars and damaged guard rails. We went quickly, speeding away from the burned zombies.

  We kept going south.

  That night we stayed at a motel in Fort Collins, Colorado. We sat together in the lobby, discussing plans for the road ahead. We used candles for light.

  Outside, it was getting colder. The roads were quiet. We hadn’t seen any more zombies since leaving Cheyenne.

  Mason found a road atlas behind the main desk. He was thumbing through it. Vera, of course, was smoking a cigarette. Mindy and I were on a long couch in front of a coffee table covered in magazines. I was sitting, she was lying down. She had her head on my leg
. She was messing with her fingernails as we talked.

  There was a Coke machine in the lobby that we had broken into. We all were drinking warm sodas.

  Mason said “So, where do you want to go?”

  I said “The safest place we’ve been through so far was Billings. No one was there. There was a hunting store. We could go back there, get some more supplies. Find a shack or abandoned house somewhere up higher in the mountains to live in.”

  “Coeur d’Alene was safe too,” Vera said. “It was closer to home. The hotel was safe.”

  Mason took a drink of his soda. “Yes. It was. Or, we could go to the Gulf. We’d have the ocean to fish in. We’d have fresh fish there. There would be beaches to walk on. I always wanted to retire there.”

  “A girlfriend of mine moved to Galveston,” Mindy said. “She always used to text me on Go4 chat. She wanted me to come visit her sometime. She always said it was so nice on the Gulf but I never could afford the trip down there.”

  “That’s one option,” Mason said. “Billings would be ok, too, if you wanted to live on mushrooms and berries the rest of your life,” he added. “There’s no food up there.”

  Vera said “We could go through that mountain of debris in Coeur d’Alene. There would be plenty of supplies in it.”

  “And dead bodies,” I added. “It would probably start to stink really bad after a while.”

  She inhaled her cigarette but didn’t reply.

  “Which one would you choose, hon?” I asked Mindy.

  She got up on an elbow, looked at me and said “Anywhere and everywhere you choose.”

  “I love you, Mindy. I’ll go anywhere with you, too.”

  Mason smiled. “Why don’t you two get a room?”

  “We will soon,” Mindy said smiling. “Don’t you worry.”

  We all laughed, except Vera.

  “Mason, I want to go home,” Vera said. “I want to go back to the place where I was most comfortable.”

  He sighed. “Let’s sleep on it, ok people. I’m bushed. We had a long day.”

  Mindy sat up. As she stood, she picked up a magazine that had been on the coffee table. She said “Hey, here’s an idea…” She was holding Denver Magazine. On the cover there was a picture of one of Denver Colorado’s newest downtown skyscrapers. “What if we stay in the top of one of these buildings?”

  Mason scratched his bald head. “What would we do for food?”

  Mindy said “Surely there has to be restaurants in the top of some of these buildings. I bet they would have a lot of food in walk-in freezers. There would have to have dry goods stored there.”

  Mason said “But the walk-in freezers wouldn’t be working now...”

  “I realize that, but there would be dry goods. If we found, let’s say, a room with a balcony, we could grill food on the balcony.”

  I was smiling at Mindy. I liked the idea.

  She continued “We could climb to the top of the building. I know it would be a long climb up the stairs, but we could lock ourselves in there for a long time. We could block the doors with furniture. We’d have to jam the doors closed so zombies couldn’t get in. Zombies would take a long long time to climb up the staircases.”

  I asked “What building in Denver has a restaurant at the top?”

  Mason said “I’ve never been to Denver. Cheyenne was the furthest east I’ve been.”

  “How about you, Vera?” I asked her.

  “I grew up in Chicago,” she said. “We moved to Worley when I was 16.”

  Mindy was flipping through the magazine. “Here we go. The Trango Tower is Denver’s newest skyscraper. It has a mall, a sky terrace…” She kept reading. “Luxury condominiums…and the top floor has a world class restaurant offering a 360 degree view of the Denver area. So we could eat in the restaurant, cook in the sky terrace, and have a luxury condominium to live in…” she read more. “Has a fitness center...a health spa.”

  Mason said “Sounds great, but you’re forgetting that none of that will even be open.”

  “I was just reading it,” she smiled. “I know it won't be open, but there will be nice rooms and there will be food. Dan, can we go there?”

  “How far is it to Denver, Mason?”

  He flipped to the mileage chart on the back pages of the atlas. “Says it’s about 60 miles.”

  “I say we give it a shot,” I said.

  Mason was looking at Vera who was shaking her head no. He asked her “You don’t want to try Denver?”

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  I said “This could be our best bet for survival, Vera. Who knows what has happened back in Worley lately. Maybe the mountain has moved further this way.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said, suddenly snapping at me. “How could you know? And how do you even know if the building in Denver is standing? It might have collapsed or burned to the ground.” She pointed her finger at me. “Don’t pretend that you know what’s around the next bend, mister, because you don’t.”

  Mindy said “Don’t talk to him that way! He’s only trying to help.”

  “You stay out of this, missy,” Vera said. “Mason, take me home. If these two lovebirds want to go building climbing, then let them go. I want to go home.”

  I said “We shouldn’t separate.”

  “We were separated before we met them in Coeur d’Alene!” she said. “They were alone and we were alone.” She lit another cigarette. “We were doing fine without them.”

  “Vera dammit,” Mason said loudly. “These are good people. We’ve been doing really well as a team with them. Dan is right. We shouldn’t split up.”

  “You go with them, then,” she said. “I will go home by myself.”

  “The hell you will” he stormed.

  “Then take me home, dammit. I want to go home.”

  “Good Lord…ok we’ll sleep on it tonight.” He took her hand. “Goodnight you two.”

  I said “Goodnight.”

  Mindy didn’t say anything. She plopped down on the couch next to me. I put my arm around her. She snuggled closer to me - then she sat forward. She grabbed the magazine again.

  We looked through it together.

  I expected Mason and Vera to be gone the next morning. Surprisingly they were in the lobby. Vera was sitting on the couch smoking. Mason was looking through the road atlas again, and there was this weird but familiar smell that I couldn’t put my finger on.

  “Good morning.”

  “Dan, we’re going back,” Mason said. “Vera wants to go home. If I don’t go, she will go anyway and I can’t have that.”

  I said “I understand. If Mindy wanted to go back to Spokane, I would take her.”

  “But we have a plan,” Mason added. “We’re going to go back to Worley. If things are worse than what they were when we left, we will come back to you. But I want you to do me this favor: if you leave the skyscraper, leave me a note somewhere or something big enough so that I can see it. Make sure I know it’s from you. Use some spray paint – paint something somewhere that I can see. We will follow you wherever you go, but not quite yet.” He smiled. “So…where’s your lady?”

  “She’s just getting dressed. She’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Fine, in the meantime, I went across the street. There was a shop over there, and believe it or not, there were some eggs. They were powdered in a bag, but they are eggs. I fried some up on a pan with some Sprite on our grill. They don’t taste half bad. Do you want some?”

  “Oh yea,” I said. “Sounds great!”

  Mason dished me up a good portion on a paper plate. I recognized the smell then; it was the eggs. The Sprite soda made them smell…different.

  I finished the whole plate. They did taste pretty good.

  …?

  Where was Mindy?

  Vera sat there staring at me. Cigarette smoke rose up her face.

  I said “I’m gonna go check on Mindy.”

  Mason said “Tell her to hurry up. These e
ggs are going to get colder.”

  “Will do.”

  I took the steps up two at a time. The room we stayed in was only three doors down from the staircase.

  The door was open.

  Oh God…

  Mindy…

  She wasn’t in the bed. The door to the bathroom was shut.

  I knocked on it once. Twice, a little harder. “Mindy?” I whispered.

  No answer.

  I kicked the door open. No one was there.

  “Mindy!” I shouted.

  Something bumped out in the hallway. I ran to the door. Mindy was coming out of the room across the hall. I grabbed her and hugged her hard. “Oh Jesus you scared the fuck out of me!” I said.

  She smiled a crooked smile, a little embarrassed. “We were out of toilet paper.”

  “Oh my God…”

  “I’m ok honey,” she said, kissing me. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere without you. Never again.”

  “Well let me go pee. Then we can go.”

  “Ok, and hey! Mason made some eggs for breakfast.”

  “Nice,” she said from inside the bathroom. “Are they coming with us to Denver?”

  “No. Vera wants to go home.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I told Mason that if you wanted to go back to Spokane, I’d take you there.”

  “I love you, Dan”

  “I love you too, Mindy.”

  She came out and kissed me again. “C’mon,” she said, “let’s get some eggs.”

  THE TRANGO TOWER

  Mason’s plan was to go back to Worley. He and Vera would check it out. If things looked ok, they would stay there. If not, they would return to Denver as soon as they could. Vera agreed to this plan. She said she wouldn’t want to stay there if things weren’t good.

  Mason insisted that I take his pistol. He told me that I needed to protect my lady. He said Vera’s shotgun would be good enough for both of them. He also gave me a box of bullets for the pistol as well as the roadmap with a large circle drawn around the highway off ramp that led to the building in Denver.