by Jason Offutt
The Freightliner cab loomed ominously over her as she got off the bike and grabbed the handrail to pull herself up to the door. Visions of the driver ran through her head, dead on the thin mattress in the sleeper section of the cab, blood crusting his face, his chest burst open, and mushrooms growing throughout the cab like it was the Thailand jungle. Was he still there? Nikki wondered. Dead, rotting, waiting for me? Or, she realized, the door may simply be locked. Nikki looked into the driver’s window, flicked on a flashlight and looked inside. The cab, the bed, were empty. She exhaled deeply and tried the door – it was unlocked. Okay, Holleran, when’s the luck going to run out? she thought. The door, unused for weeks, moaned softly as she pulled it open and slid into the driver’s seat. The light from her flashlight dashed throughout the cab; a pistol sat between the seats.
“That luck’s not going to run out anytime soon,” she said softly. Then Nikki locked the doors, crawled into the sleeper bed and fell quickly to sleep, cradling the newfound weapon next to her like it was a teddy bear. And for the first time since death took her family, her friends, and her world, she slept soundly.
Nikki woke later than her now normal “up with the sun.” She turned on the convenience store electricity long enough to microwave two cheeseburgers, filled a plastic bag with salt, pepper, mustard and ketchup packets, and Double Bubble, and headed north. The first green highway sign on the road read:
Council Bluffs – 122 miles
Clarinda – 60 miles
Exeter – 5 miles
She sat on her Harley at the foot of the road sign, chewing gum, her right foot on the pavement helping balance the bike.
“Next stop, Exeter,” Nikki said, more to hear a human voice than for any real need. Nikki hadn’t heard another voice since she’d left the Banker to the hungry teeth of the dog in Savannah. She pulled the Freightliner driver’s pistol from a pocket in her cargo pants and did something that hadn’t occurred to her before; check to see if it was loaded. Five bullets. Five bullets for a chain junk-on-the-walls restaurant waitress who’d never fired a gun. Not even enough bullets to practice. I’m either lucky, she thought, or fucked.
Nikki spat the spent wad of Double Bubble onto the highway and took off slowly, the farm fields on either side of the road, corn and soybeans growing full and green. The fungus didn’t hit the plants, just people. Birds seemed unaffected, as did deer and pastures full of cattle. She smiled. I guess cows didn’t need antidepressants. Nikki once thought of releasing the cattle from their multi-acre cages, but the thought of topping a hill and finding a 1,600-pound beast in the road terrified her. Sixteen miles later, it was something else.
The sign, “Exeter: Population 2,859,” lay on the ground, the wooded posts that once held it up blackened and burned. Nikki turned the Harley from the highway onto the Main Street of Exeter, the ground of the town black, all the buildings levelled by fire – some of the debris still trailed white smoke into the sky. Mass electricity overload? Arson? Act of God? Nikki drove slowly through the streets of town, the occasional black, smoking tree stood next to a foundation, or a crumbled chimney. “What the hell?” she whispered. The entire town – a town that once held almost 3,000 people – was gone. It was just gone. Except the church.
Nikki knew she should just punch the accelerator, and leave a streak on the ash-covered pavement as she sped out of this dead town. Staying would be a mistake. Still, there was the church, untouched, its steeple jutted toward Heaven like a giant thumbs up. The only structure that survived the unforgiving wall of hungry death, eating everything it touched, was a holy place. A haven? A sanctuary? A morgue? She put the bike in gear and slowly pulled through the ash-covered streets of what was once a town. The church, a tall brick building as most Midwest churches are, regardless of denomination – fire and brimstone Southern Baptist, or mellow, grape juice Methodist – stood near the town square. That much of the town was still identifiable. Most of the upper floors of downtown businesses, wooden frames betraying the weakness of their red brick fronts, had collapsed, but she could still make out the courthouse. These places were dead. The church might still be alive. Somebody might still be alive.
Smoke from smoldering debris drifted past her in brief puffs. The fire had raged through town recently, eaten everything it could eat and now took its last breath. But why hadn’t it eaten the church? Nikki hoped for a miracle. She stopped her Harley in the street in front of steps that lead to the big, wide wooden doors.
“Why didn’t you burn?” Nikki whispered. She stepped off the now-silent bike and ascended the concrete steps.
The big, wooden front doors opened with a long, low creak, the ominous sound nearly explosive in the darkened narthex, the gray interior of the church punctuated with yellows, reds, greens and blues from sunlight that streamed through the stained glass. The angels on the glass looked sad. She stepped slowly toward the sanctuary, the great, lofty ceiling and dark wooden pews that had probably been a third full on most Sundays stretched before her. “Hello?” Nikki said, her voice cracking. She coughed and tried again, louder. “Hello?” Her voice echoed uncomfortably in the darkness. The sound that came back was even more so.
“My child,” a deep, gravelly voice said from the area of the altar. “You’ve come. You’ve come for salvation.”
A movement. Nikki stood in the back of the sanctuary as a black mass rose from a chair beneath a huge wooden crucifix. Nikki gasped. The pistol sat heavily in the right pocket of her cargo shorts. Her brain screamed at her to take it and blow the fucking brains out of whatever was coming at her. As the mass grew closer, walking into the light from the stained-glass windows, it became, as it always was, a Preacherman, his black robes enveloping him. The Preacherman, unshaven for weeks smiled an honest smile and spread his arms.
“I’m so happy to see you, my child,” he said, his voice smooth, comforting.
Fear and tension rushed from Nikki, and she was able to breathe again. Although she hadn’t stepped into a church since her mother died, a man of God stood before her, and that meant comfort.
“Hello, Father,” she said, her voice in a whisper. “I’m happy to see you.”
The Preacherman’s smile grew larger. “As I am to see you,” he said. “The Day of the Lord has come. As with Noah, our Father has cleansed the world of the unclean, the impure. We are saved, my child. We are pure. Rejoice.” The Preacherman motioned for Nikki to sit on the deep red cushions that lined the oak pews, and she sat, the thought of grabbing the pistol in her pocket and blasting his brains out gone. Nikki sat on the pew, the Preacherman slid slowly next to her. “Where are you from?” he asked.
From? From? The shock of this town, this man, of her dead father squirming in his plastic body bag, flooded her mind. She found it hard to grasp the answer. “St. Joe,” she finally said in a whisper. “I’m from St. Joseph.”
“Do you have anyone with you?” he asked. “Or are you alone, like so many of the Pure are?” Nikki could only nod. The Preacherman smiled an understanding smile and nodded with her. “Exeter was gone, empty,” he continued. “Despite my faith in the Lord, this town was full of unrepentant sinners. Satan and the pharmaceutical devils who brought upon our world the Piper, the Ophiocordon, the fungus drug, took them all, then the Beast took the town by fire. This town is cleansed by fire.” The Preacherman’s voice rose to a preaching cadence, his hot, putrid breath pushed against her face like a sewage leak. She gagged. “Their sin cleansed by fire.” Then his voice grew quiet. “Forgive me, child. This event, this Biblical event has weighed heavily on me as well.” He smiled again. “Would you take communion with me?”
Sweat began to run down Nikki’s back. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with this man. But she couldn’t answer him. The Preacherman stood and walked to a table before the alter. Had he been waiting for me? she wondered.
“Come,” he said gently. “Come and share in the blood and body of Christ.” Nikki didn’t know why she stepped slowly toward this man. She wan
ted to run, to jump on her motorcycle and scream out of this blackened town. But she couldn’t. This man was a preacher, a man of God, and he wanted to care for her. She walked to the table and knelt. The Preacherman picked a small communion wafer from a tray and put it on her tongue. “And he took bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave unto them, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” Then put a simple clay cup to her lips, the smell of cheap merlot, not grape juice, swam through her nostrils. “Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you,’” the Preacherman droned as Nikki drank, a sudden flush of warmth and a wave of dizziness spread over her. “How do you feel, my child?” the Preacherman asked, his voice suddenly loveless, dark. “Do you feel repentant? Do you feel saved?”
Wow. That wine’s hitting me awfully fast, she thought. The room grew darker, and the Preacherman smiled, the flicker of candlelight dancing in his eyes. It wasn’t a bad smile, but it wasn’t a good smile either. Nikki had seen that smile before on Patrick Bostich. Patrick Bostich always smiled like that; he probably smiled like that the night in seventh grade when he killed his family in their sleep. Nikki never saw Patrick after that, except on the front page of the St. Joseph News-Press when he was sentenced to life in prison. It was a crazy smile.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered as the room spun into blackness and she dropped unconscious on the floor.
Nikki slowly awoke to hundreds of lighted candles filling the sanctuary, her panic dulled by whatever the Preacherman had used to drug her. What the hell happened? She scanned her immediate surroundings, not moving her head. Nikki lay naked on a table underneath the huge wooden cross, her hands bound by ropes, but her legs were free. Something moved to her right – the Preacherman. She suppressed a gasp as he walked slowly, purposefully toward her. Nikki slid her eyelids closed, leaving slits to watch this bastard who’d kidnapped her. Yellow candlelight flickered across the Preacherman as he ascended the carpeted steps to the altar, his robes loosely swung from his shoulders, the black cloth open down the front, scabbed-over crosses decorated his chest and thighs.
The Preacherman raised his arms toward the ceiling and bellowed, “The Day of the Lord is at hand.” Whatever peaceful sanity his voice had greeted her with was gone. “You have given me, my Lord, this pure soul, to save this Earth with goodness, and righteousness. As Noah sought to rid this world of the wicked, so does this child. Thank you, my Lord.” The Preacherman stepped to the table, and flashed a serrated kitchen knife, probably used to carve ham for holiday church dinners. “But first, let me carve unto her your holy mark, so sinners will know to bow before her.” When the hot, sweaty fingers of his left hand twisted around her ankle, and the knife rose in his right, Nikki jerked back her left leg and thrust it forward, and crushed her heel into the Preacherman’s face. The crunch of his breaking nose filled the sanctuary. The Preacherman lurched back screaming, blood spewed from his ruined nose. His left foot stepped off the altar and he tumbled backward, knocking dozens of candles onto the sanctuary carpet.
“Fuck you,” Nikki tried to scream as she struggled off the table, but it only wheezed from her dry lips. “Asshole,” she whispered and found her wrists bound by a rope he’d strung under the table. The Preacherman grunted as he tried to stand, flames from candles grew across the floor around him. Nikki flipped the table with a crash and pulled the rope over its upturned legs.
“Jou ’ezabelle,” he spat through the blood from his crushed nose. “Jou vill burn.”
Nikki grabbed a lit candelabra standing next to her and tossed it at the Preacherman. “You will first,” she said, moving on rubber legs. Flames that grew in the sanctuary lit the room with an eerie, dancing glow. Her clothes lay in a pile on a pew. She limped toward them, the drug still swimming in her head.
“Jou ’itch,” the Preacherman screamed.
Nikki collapsed over the pew as she reached toward her clothing, her head slapped against the red cushion. As she pushed herself up with weak arms, the dark form of the Preacherman loomed over her.
“’itch,” he bellowed.
Numb fingers wrapped around the pistol in her shorts pocket. She pulled it out and fired wildly. The Preacherman screamed.
“Fuck you,” Nikki wheezed, the pistol dropped from her fingers and landed onto the carpet with a soft thud. She didn’t bend to retrieve it. “Fuck you.” She stumbled up the aisle, the Preacherman wailed in pain behind her. The light of growing fire flickered through the sanctuary as Nikki nearly fell into the narthex. Standing at the door to the outside, to freedom, Nikki grabbed a flagpole bearing the white Christian flag emblazoned with a red cross, and stepped into the night. She jammed the flagpole through the door handles, cutting off this exit from that crazy bastard.
“Burn,” she whispered, then hobbled to her Harley and drove away from the church, away from the first person she’d trusted since her father died.
July 10: St. Joseph, Missouri
Chapter 18
Arnold sat in the cab of Doug’s pickup like an uninvited party guest. Jenna squeezed close to Doug, freeing less than an inch between her and Arnold. Terry sat in the passenger seat, his right arm resting on the open window, a beer between his legs like he didn’t care a stranger who spoke like Arnold Schwarzenegger was wedged between Doug and Jenna staring straight ahead like, well, like a robot. The four rode in silence north from Platte City, the destroyed gas stations long behind them, only an occasional dead car sat on the side of the road. Doug expected to see more vehicles as they approached St. Joseph, a town of about 75,000. Did no one try to flee? Or did people just die too quickly to try and escape? As a large, green road sign grew closer on the east side of the highway, Terry bounced in his seat.
“Big town ahead. Let’s live it up,” Terry hooted and tossed his empty beer can out the window.
“The sign said ‘St. Joseph,’” Doug said. “What kind of living it up are we going to do in St. Joseph?”
Terry thought for a minute. “I don’t know,” he said, cracking open a warm beer.
“Do you even know anything about St. Joseph?”
Terry nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Pony Express.”
“Anything else?”
“Uh, no.”
“How about Jesse James?” Doug said, seriously considering taking one of Terry’s beers, even though it was only 10 in the morning. It’s the Apocalypse, you wake early, you start drinking early.
“The guy from ‘Monster Garage?’” Terry said. “Didn’t he cheat on that Sandra Bullock?”
Doug shook his head. “No, you moron, not the guy from ‘Monster Garage.’ Jesse Woodson James, the fucking outlaw. He was murdered here. Jesus H., Terry, you wouldn’t know if the president had come from St. Joe.”
“I’m not into politics,” Arnold said, staring at the road before them. “I’m into survival.”
Jenna looked at Arnold as she reached across him and took the beer from Terry; he didn’t flinch, his expression blank. “Eminem’s from St. Joseph,” she said, turning away from this strange little man.
“No shit?” Terry said, popping the tab of another beer and taking a quick drink before anyone else wanted it. “You think he’s there?”
Doug laughed. “Why the fuck would Eminem still live in St. Joe?”
“Maybe his mother lives there,” Jenna said. “Well, probably not anymore.”
Terry laughed.
“Your levity is good,” Arnold said. “It relieves tension and the fear of death.”
Nothing roamed the streets of St. Joseph when Doug pulled his pickup off the interstate and onto Highway 6 that cut through the business district. Cars that hadn’t moved for weeks stared at them from parking lots and the middle of the street as Doug pulled slowly through town. Black traffic lights sat dead while they drove through town, and the Dunkin’ Donuts, well, wouldn’t you know it? It was closed. A homemade banner hung across the Highway 6, “The Piper
is death: Ophiocordon is killing you.” Blackening gray blobs dotted the streets and sidewalks, great knob-topped stems grew from what were once human beings. Did an antidepressant do this? Doug wondered. And if it did, how will we ever know? Doug drove with the windows down, hoping to hear some sound of human life. There was nothing. “Well, it looks like the electricity’s gone,” he said, scanning the storefronts. “It had to crap out sometime.”
“Damn,” Terry spat. “And we got all those Schwarzenegger movies. How are me and Arnold going to watch them now?”
Doug sighed and turned the truck off the main street into the parking lot of a building that had apparently been under construction when the Outbreak hit. He pulled to a stop next to a small trailer office and slid the transmission into park. “Come and give me a hand, Terry,” he said. “I don’t think the guys at Lobo and Sons Construction need that generator anymore. You boys can watch your movies.”
“I am humbled,” Arnold said, as Doug and Terry stepped from the cab of the truck. “I am honored and I am moved beyond words.”
Jenna scooted as far away from Arnold as she could until the boys loaded the gas-powered generator into the truck bed. Doug slammed the tailgate home and wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve.
“Damn thing’s heavy,” he said to Terry, breaking into a forced smile. “Kinda like that Penny girl you dated in high school.” Terry leaned on the side of the truck, his forearms hung over the bed. He didn’t smile. Doug frowned. “I was just kidding about Penny.”