Dead Reckoning

by Tom Wright

“I mean, last thing I remember I was walking along the road, and the next thing I know I’m here.”

  “No, I mean what do you mean you don’t know?”

  I explained to them why I didn’t know what they were talking about, how I had been at sea for two months, out of contact. I pleaded again for the woman to finish untying me.

  “We found you in the ditch,” said the woman. “We brought you here in hopes that…” her voice trailed off. “Oh, I don’t know what we expected.”

  “You needed help, and you thought maybe I’d help you. Is that it?”

  She nodded remorsefully.

  “You thought tying me up and holding me prisoner would put you in my good graces?”

  “No. No. We… We just don’t know what to do,” said the woman. “We couldn’t just leave you there to die, and we couldn’t trust you.”

  Apparently satisfied at my sincerity, she untied my hands. The older boy remained vigilant but kept the gun lowered. I sat up and rubbed the tightness out of my wrists and flexed my muscles.

  “How bad is it?” I asked. “I mean out there.” I pointed randomly, having no sense of direction but knowing which way was out.

  “Ok, you’re free. Now get out!” said the boy.

  “Jimmy!” snapped his mother. “He seems ok. Come into the kitchen,” she said.

  “Mother, I don’t think that’s…”

  She raised her finger, and he stopped talking immediately.

  Still feeling light-headed, I walked gingerly out into what she called the kitchen in what appeared to be in a barn. Dust kicked up off the dirt floor as she walked and the ribbed wall of uncovered studs provided little barrier to the cold. An old wood stove sat in the corner with firewood stacked next to it and a pot on top. The blackened wood stove looked as if its fire burned on the outside, and its flue extended through a rough hole cut in the roof.

  The younger boy skittered over to a built-in ladder, vaulted up the rungs with monkey-like dexterity, and peered back down over the edge. Jimmy leaned against a chair and watched me suspiciously but he held the shotgun pointed toward the ground. The woman immediately set about to filling a coffee pot and placing it on the stove.

  “All we have is warm water—no coffee,” she said, embarrassed.

  “That will be fine,” I said.

  “What has been going on around here?” I pressed.

  “Well, see for yourself,” she said indignantly, motioning about the room. “This is what it has come to. We’re living in our barn. A few weeks ago, my husband went out to look for food and get some help. He hasn’t come back yet, but we’re still expecting him at any moment.” She glanced at the little boy and then looked at Jimmy in much the same manner she might have in order to silently forbid him from casting any doubt on Santa Claus.

  “A few days later, they showed up.”

  “They?” I questioned.

  “Yes, the zombies. That’s just what we call them since they have no souls. But they’re not real zombies, you know, actual living dead like in the movies. They go around capturing and killing people and God knows what else.”

  “Luckily, we were out here working when they showed up and were able to slip into the woods before they found us. They looted our house and then burned it down. Look, see?” She opened a sliding window in the barn, and it was dark out.

  “Well, you could see it across the way if it were light out.”

  I glanced at the wood stove again.

  “They haven’t been back, probably because we’re way out here and they think there’s nothing left.”

  “So there is only one band of them?” I asked.

  “We don’t know. It’s the only one we’ve ever seen. One band could rule this whole island, you know? There were at least twenty of them.”

  “So what else is out there? What else has happened?”

  She sighed. “I don’t even know where to begin. It all started when this virus began to spread around the world.”

  “Yes, yes, I know about that. I know everything up to the point where someone set off the e-bomb. Oh, and I know that there was a nuclear war. Were there any strikes around here?”

  She explained that they never saw any evidence of nuclear strikes around there. Her husband, Dan, was a line repairman for Whidbey Island Power, and he made the same assumption we had when the skies clouded up for good. It was bad at first, but the real trouble came after the e-bomb. The lights went out, and people packed up and headed off to God knows where. Police drove up and down the roads telling people to stay in their houses and that marshall law had been declared. They heard that the military took over on the mainland. Most people, including them, became afraid to go out because of the virus, the police, and because of what might happen next. They just hunkered down on their property to wait it out. They had been hunting and fishing, but it wasn’t enough. When they ran out of food, Dan had to go out for help. He left and never returned.

  “Speaking of which, do you want something to eat?” she asked. “I was fixin’ to cook up the rabbit that Jimmy caught before you woke up.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I lied. I was actually starving but didn’t have the heart to take any of their food. “I have some food in my pack,” I said. “You’re welcome to some.”

  “Oh we couldn’t,” the woman started.

  “Mom!” cried Jimmy.

  “Well, maybe just something for the kids. I’m all right.”

  “Your backpack is outside,” yelled the little boy.

  “Go get it, Kevin,” said Jimmy. Kevin raced down the ladder and out the door.

  “So, you don’t know anything about the shape the country’s in?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Once the power went out, nothing worked any more. We haven’t seen anybody alive since the zombies—until now. And it sounds like you don’t know anything either, so I guess we’re all in the same pot.”

  Kevin returned with my backpack.

  “Listen,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “You see a clock around here?” asked Jimmy sarcastically.

  “Sun went down about two hours ago,” said the woman as she frowned at Jimmy.

  I remembered my solar powered watch and pulled up my sleeve to find an empty wrist. I looked at Jimmy accusingly, but Kevin looked toward the ground and kicked at the dirt.

  “Kevin?” queried his mother.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out my watch. He handed it to me without looking up.

  “I’ll deal with you later,” said his mother.

  “But I thought he was de...”

  “Never mind,” she snapped.

  My watch said 8:30 pm.

  “Listen, I have to go find my family over near Langley, so I can’t help you now. But…”

  Kevin howled: “See, I told you he wouldn’t help!”

  “No, no, no. You didn’t let me finish. I will try to come back here when I find out about my family. I will really try, but I can’t promise anything. I don’t know what’s going to happen—only that I intend to try. But if something better comes along, don’t wait for me.”

  “You don’t have to,” the woman began a controlled sob.

  “I know I don’t, but I’m not sure how many good people are left. You seem like good people. What is your name, anyway?”

  “My name is Karen, Karen Blackman. This is Jimmy, she said pointing to the older boy. And this is Kevin.”

  I told them my name. “I am glad to meet you. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”

  “We do too,” said Karen. “We’re really sorry about tying you up, but we just didn’t…”

  “I know,” I cut in. “I understand. I’d have probably done the same thing in your shoes.”

  I opened my pack, pulled out three of the MREs I had taken from the boat, and placed them on the table.

  “Just add hot water,” I said.

  “No really,” said Karen. “Two is enough.”

  “No it isn’t. I don’t need
them. I still have two days’ worth for myself and my family. Please just take them.”

  I also took the granola bars I stole from Paul’s house from my pocket and placed them on the counter. I took out my knife and picked up a slick piece of wood. I scratched the address to Paul’s house on the board.

  “This is the address to an old friend of mine. He’s dead, but he’s got a couple of weeks’ worth of food in his cupboard if you can get over there. It’s only a couple of miles, down at Bush Point. I didn’t see anybody along the way, so if you stay off the road, it should be pretty safe.”

  Jimmy propped the gun against the wall and came over to me. His face softened, and he extended his hand.

  “Thank you, mister,” he said. “Thank you so much. I’ll go over there tomorrow.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “And, you know, you don’t have to be afraid of everyone. We’re not all bad people.”

  He smiled apprehensively and then nodded.

  Kevin ran up and hugged my leg.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  He held up four fingers and said: “Five.”

  “Do you know how to tell time?” I asked.

  “Yep, when the sun goes down it’s time for bed.”

  “You’ll learn,” I said as I stuck my watch into his hand.

  I turned to leave.

  “I should look at your head,” Karen said. “I’ll put the boys to bed and look at your head. I feel like it’s the least I can do.” She ran her finger down the collar of her blouse and hooked it on the first clasped button. Jimmy looked away, embarrassed. Kevin stared at us oblivious. “You shouldn’t go out at night,” she continued. “Just stay the night and I’ll get you fixed up….for all your trouble.”

  My left thumb instinctively traveled to the inside of my ring finger and began working the gold ring over. “You don’t have to,” I said, pretending to have missed the overture. “You really don’t. I will come back if I can—to help you.”

  I opened the door and stepped out.

  “I hope you will,” she said, as she closed the door.

  21

  Whidbey island, wa

  I walked carefully through the dark and found the road. Once on the pavement, the going became easier. I’d heard that people who lose one of their senses experience compensatory increases in the others but had never experienced it. However, practically blind due to the pitch blackness, I felt as if I had super hearing. I noticed many things I might have never heard before: the clicking of a single bug deep in the bushes, a dog barking miles away, a slight increase in the wind coming through the trees. I had no idea until that night, that you could actually hear rain changing to snow—the tapping sound of the drops became more intermittent and hollow as flakes began to outnumber them. Once the change to snow was complete, all sound dulled and faded except the ticking of snowflakes hitting the shell of my coat. As a meteorologist and attentive observer, you might think I would have noticed that before.

  Normally, it gets lighter out when it snows at night. Snow is a very effective reflector of light and usually amplifies any ambient light. But in the virtual absence of light, the opposite can be true, and the heavy snow allowed me to experience total blindness firsthand. I didn’t care for it. Afraid of bumping into something, I walked slowly and carefully down the road. I came to sense the crown of the pavement and managed to stay roughly in the middle of the road thanks to that single practice of civil engineering.

  Just as I began to feel comfortable and increased my stride, I ran into something solid. Luckily, I hit it just right and only bloodied up my shin before falling onto the hood of what turned out to be a car. I felt my way along the vehicle and then to an attached trailer. The combination smelled faintly of cheap barbeque.

  I trudged on through the growing cushion of snow, which froze my feet but helped my knees. The snow came down harder and began to make a sound discernible over the ticking on my jacket and crunch of snow under my feet. The wind picked up, whipping the fat, stinging flakes into my face and up under my hood. I veered to the ditch and felt along for an evergreen tree. I found one and tugged at one of the branches, but it wouldn’t come loose. Dragging it probably wouldn’t cover my tracks anyway.

  Light came earlier than usual because of the snow cover. I reached highway 525 and turned right toward Freeland. Now able to see and given the increased danger of travelling on the main north-south route of the island, I kept mostly to the shoulder and close to the safety of the woods. To conceal my tracks, I walked in the ditch when practical.

  I crested a hill, and just on the other side, a road led off to the left. My heart skipped as I noticed a man standing motionless next to the stop sign. I dropped to a squat and drew my gun. My right hand shook as I held the pistol, so I slowly reached over with my left hand and steadied it. Butterflies raged inside me.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Hello?”

  The man just stood there. I yelled at him again, but he ignored me.

  I stood up and approached carefully, my trembling gun hand trained on him. I got within about ten feet of him and finally noticed snow on his hatless head. Then I saw the rope around his waist and around the sign pole.

  I walked up to him and pushed his arm and touched the hole in his forehead. He felt like fossilized wood. His feet and legs had been gnawed at, post-mortem judging by the lack of blood. Severe exposure made him look ancient, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty five. He stared straight ahead, a ghostly statue guarding the intersection. I don’t know why I tried to close his eyelids, but they wouldn’t move.

  My curiosity exhausted, I walked on, keeping my gun drawn until safely out of sight.

  The snow fell more heavily as I walked. There was a burst of snow that dumped an inch very quickly, then the snow stopped and the wind picked up from the south. Within an hour or so, the snow began melting from the road. While it had been light enough to see for two hours, it hadn’t made it out of twilight. By late morning, the snow completely melted off the road, so I went back to walking on the pavement in an effort to dry out my feet.

  I stopped and filled my canteen with snow and placed it under my coat. I didn’t care much for the foul water that resulted, but it didn’t seem to harm me. I walked on.

  I reached the top of another hill just in time to see a vehicle coming over the next hill toward me, lights still on. I scrambled into the bushes to wait for it to pass. It crossed my mind to flag the vehicle down and see if they knew anything. But I was afraid they knew too much, so I stayed put.

  About a half mile before it got to me, the vehicle stopped. I could see that it was some sort of van—like one of those hotel shuttles. There is a hotel still operating? A man got out and opened the hood of the vehicle and looked inside.

  Damn it! They’re broken down. Now I’ll have to walk through the woods—and quietly. That was just what I didn’t need. I decided to get closer so I could see what they were doing.

  Just then a small person, perhaps a woman, came out of the door and began running up the road. Her long hair whipped as she ran, and her adequate bosoms flopped violently under the threadbare undergarments she wore. The man under the hood raised a large stick and pointed it at her. I saw a flash and then a puff of smoke. The woman dropped into a heap in the road. A couple of seconds later, the crack of the rifle reached me and echoed through the woods. I slipped deeper into the forest and started picking my way south, quietly.

  It took me half an hour to travel the half mile to the van in the thick underbrush, and another fifteen minutes to close the final hundred yards on my belly. I passed the heap in the road and stopped to take a look. Definitely a woman and not well cared for—and shot in the back, to boot. Her head was turned toward me and her eyes stared.

  I quietly moved to approximately even with the front of the van. I saw seven other women sitting on my side of the van, sullen and fearful. The other woman was probably better off heaped in the road than still in the van. I didn’t recognize a
ny of them, which would have been a relief, except that that is like being glad that a tornado struck your neighbor’s house instead of yours.

  The women sat obediently, staring straight ahead, apparently without much thought of going the same route as their dead counterpart now cooling in the road, a hundred feet to the north.

  I looked back down the road at the dead girl and then at the girls in the van. I thought about my wife and daughters and fought against emotion. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my balls crawled again as I realized what I must do.

  The only sounds were of the man tinkering in the engine compartment and his labored breathing. Then he suddenly seemed pleased with himself. He stepped down, backed away from the van, and went around and got back inside. Remorse crept over me. He tried the ignition, and it started. He got back out and came around to close the hood.

  I drew my gun, ejected the magazine and looked inside—still full of bullets. I don’t know why I would have thought otherwise. I replaced the magazine and quietly pulled back the slide and looked down inside as a bullet shifted upward and into the barrel. I had never fired at a human being. In fact, the only shots I’d fired in years were a couple of practice shots from the RY. I was skeptical whether I could even hit him. But even if I missed, he’d duck for cover, and I could easily outrun that fat slob. I’d never have been able to live with myself if I didn’t try.

  I lifted the gun, braced it with my left hand, and drew a bead on his chest. I knew not to go for the head except a point blank range—too small a target and much higher chance of missing. With the rifle in his left hand, he reached up and grabbed the hood with his right, exposing his chest to me fully. I lined up the sights and squeezed the trigger.

  The gun kicked much less than I expected, but the sound stunned me. All external sounds ceased as a loud ringing rose in my ears. The spent shell casing tumbled end-for-end in front of me and passed slowly through my field of view.

  The fabric of his overalls tore open just under his armpit. He slumped forward and then staggered backward in slow motion and fell to the ground on his back. His arms flew over his head as the rifle cart-wheeled just out of his reach. A red circle formed on the side of his chest and then grew and then began to drip onto the pavement.