by Bobby Adair
I instantly knew what they were. They didn’t know what I was. Not yet.
Instinct took over.
I raised my pistol and fired twice. Two heads exploded with twin bangs, seemingly louder than my pistol had ever popped before. And for no reason I could think of, I asked myself, ‘Why headshots? Center of mass, you dumbass! That’s where you aim.’
The bodies were still falling, and Amelia was already pushing me toward the door, panic tensing through her strong little hands. “Run, you idiot!”
I don’t think she had cause to call me an idiot, but I didn’t think about that until later when I was deciding whether to be pissed about it or not. In the end, I chalked it up to elevated emotions. No biggie.
As it turned out, Amelia, to her credit, had pushed me all the way through the door, stumbling over the bodies of the two Shroomies as we went. I caught an eyeful of sunshine and was holstering my pistol, raising my rifle, and jogging into the parking lot as Amelia rushed past me, willing to lead. I was ready to follow.
“Run as fast as you can, old man!”
I tallied that barb up to panic as well as I ran after her, crossed the parking lot, and sprinted up a side street. We were a few houses down when I heard the cries of the Shroomheads pouring out of the Walgreens.
From another direction, I heard more spore-twisted throats howl.
Amelia ran between two houses and vaulted over a sagging cedar-board fence before she disappeared into somebody’s backyard. She was moving like a decathlete deer with an Olympic medal, and I was huffing and puffing to keep up.
I made a racket trying to emulate her move over the fence, but I’m nearly twice her weight, not to mention the age thing. Boards broke, most of the fence fell to pieces, and caught me in a tangle as I rolled over splintering wood and exposed nails trying to get into the back yard.
“Shh!” Amelia told me from her hiding spot just around the back corner of the house. She cocked her head and listened. She pointed toward the Walgreens. “At least five that way.” She cast a finger into the neighborhood. “Ten over there. Maybe more.”
I nodded, hearing the sounds, knowing there were already too many after us. “You know another safe place?”
She rolled her eyes and ran.
January 10th, fourth entry
We happened upon a well-worn Shroom trail through the overgrown backyards, and Amelia followed it, running at full speed. Curving past a pile of rusting patio furniture, we sped through a gap in a fence and around a burned-out house.
We crossed a street without pausing to look, and tore through a passage between two houses, back on the trail.
The hungry voices of the Shroomheads seemed to grow more distant, but another bunch of them started in howling off to our right, not far away. Amelia glanced over her shoulder with worry twisting her pretty young face.
She stopped against a brick wall, beside a big AC unit. She listened and looked toward the street.
“We should split up,” I told her. “You’ll be safe. I can—”
“Don’t.” She didn’t leave any room for negotiation. “We stay together. Do what I do. Stay quiet. Stay close.” She looked me up and down. “I won’t go too fast.” She pointed southeast. “There’s a target that way. Maybe a half-mile. If we get split up—if—meet me there. Around back, there’s a ladder up to the roof. The first four-lane, north-south road you come across will take you right to it.”
“Lead the way, boss.”
We ran across the street and down through some overgrown front yards, hidden from the road by the carcasses of a dozen burned-out cars. Amelia followed the Shroom path to the left just before a big house sitting on a corner lot. We tromped through what at one time had been a beautifully terraced and landscaped backyard. From the top terrace along the fence, she jumped through a gap in a scraggly hedge to get to the next yard over. I went through and tumbled to the ground, nearly three feet lower.
Amelia, thankfully, was already on her feet and out of my way, standing as still as a tree, staring at the back of the house.
I rolled out of my tumble, feeling GI Joe proud of myself to have come up on a knee with my weapon still in hand. Damn good thing it worked out that way.
Across a lagoon-sized pool, half-full of green water and floating limbs, a dozen Shroomies stood among the remains of the patio furniture and flower pots, surprised into paralysis.
I didn’t need Amelia’s permission to figure the only way out of the situation. “Sorry, shit suckers.” I pulled my trigger and emptied a magazine as fast as I could aim. Maybe half my rounds missed. Enough of them found meat and bone, and in the few seconds my thunderstorm took to play out, all of the Shroomies who’d been living in that house were dead or down on the concrete deck on the other side of the pool.
Scanning for more targets, I dropped my empty magazine and popped another in, seating it just in time to shoot two more Shroomheads coming out of the house. “Time to go!”
Amelia ran.
Through the ringing in my ears, I heard the howl of the Shroomies who had started the chase, all juiced up on a double-dose of fresh enthusiasm.
We tore across the street at full speed, cut between two more houses, and got back on the Shroom path.
Amelia cast worried looks to the sides as we came to gaps, and stopped full at every blind turn.
“No need,” I told her as I panted. “Just run.”
“We won’t get that lucky again,” she argued.
“This was their territory,” I told her, referring to the Shroomies I’d just killed. “I’ll bet it was.”
She nodded as she ran.
“The nearest Shrooms in front of us,” I said, “will be from the next territory over. Probably across the big road.”
Amelia dashed up the trail and followed it as it turned to the right.
Between gaps and on the cross streets, I saw the north-south main road she mentioned. Behind us, it sounded like we were increasing our lead on our pursuers.
“With any luck,” Amelia panted, as we paused before crossing a pretty wide neighborhood road, “they’ll find all those Shroomies you shot. Maybe stop for lunch.”
“With any luck.” I barely had enough breath to put the sentence together, but I cocked my head at the road to let her know I was ready to push on.
She smiled and sped ahead.
January 10th, fifth entry
We had put two more blocks behind us when Amelia stopped running. We were in a stand of pines divided by a steel fence, black and dusty, but sturdy like it might stay for another hundred years, keeping two backyards separate for neighbors long dead.
Amelia listened.
I did my best to control my breathing so as not to interfere. Still, my raspy wheezing drowned out all but the loudest Shroomheads.
“I think we shook them,” she said.
I nodded as I leaned over and put my hands on my knees, supporting all the weight of my ammo and supplies.
Amelia’s attention settled on me, evaluating me from toes to nose. “We’ll go quiet now. Slow. Will you be okay?”
Fatigue made my machismo too hard to prop up. “I’m not used to this.”
“I know.” She took a long look at the nearest house. It stood two stories tall, every window broken. “We can go in there if you want. Take our chances.”
With my breathing settling down, more Shroomhead howls came to my ears. “No. Lead on.”
January 10th, sixth entry
We could have been anywhere by the time Amelia stopped again. We’d crossed a dozen streets. Crawled through shrubs and dodged past countless rusting autos. She waved me forward to look through a hedge which was keeping us hidden.
I bulled through into a gap that was plenty wide for her, but too small for me.
Through the bushes, I saw a field covered in brown grasses and weeds standing tall among burned-out cars, a dumpster, and an overturned tractor-trailer. On the other side of the field stood a big-box, tilt-wall behemoth of a store—a
Target Super Center. Most of the red plastic covering on the ten-foot-tall sign letters had broken away. The roll-up doors on the loading dock looked to have been blasted open. Black scorches, large and small, spread across a wall pocked by bullets. The charred remains of a Humvee sat on blackened rims near a doorway with a missing door.
“Jesus.” I’m eloquent when I’m surprised.
“They made a stand here,” said Amelia. “When things got bad at the end.”
“Did it work?” I asked, trying to guess how long the people inside held out against their attackers, wondering how many Shroomies and desperate normals died here.
“Impossible to say.” Amelia’s eyes never stopped moving. She was scanning for any bitey-monster-bastard who might possibly be looking this way when we crossed the field behind the stores. “This place was empty when I found it. The Shroomies had long since cleaned out the corpses.”
She pointed at a ladder leading up to the roof. A cage meant to be locked over the ladder to keep it from being climbed by the unauthorized hung open, probably frozen in place on rusted hinges. “We’ll take that up.”
Before I had a chance to express my reservations about going to hide on a roof with one way up and one way down, Amelia was running again.
What could I do? I followed.
Crossing the field, we were off the path immediately. I tripped twice on junk overgrown in the grass at my feet, but only fell once. Amelia did little more than glance back to make sure I hadn’t injured myself into immobility. We reached the ladder without catching any attention.
Before climbing, she ran a finger over the few lowest rungs, testing the accumulated dust for evidence of hands and feet having recently been on the ladder. I guess she was satisfied with the result. She climbed the creaking metal and hopped onto the roof.
I followed her up, eliciting louder groans from the anchor bolts and aging welds.
Once up top, she peeked over the parapet wall to see the path we’d followed across the field and into the backyards of the last row of houses we’d passed.
I said, “I don’t see anything.”
She nodded but continued to look for followers.
Leaving her to that task, I turned to scan the roof. Big HVAC units dotted two acres of worn, white roofing. I’d seen plenty of those from this perspective. What I hadn’t seen before was a roof turned into a battlefield. No other explanation accounted for the debris, the scorch marks, the stains, and shreds of clothing flapping from pieces of metal here and there.
On the backside of the Target, a squat bunker sloppily welded from scraps of metal filled one corner. A similar structure stood catty-corner across the roof on the front, overlooking the parking lot. Each appeared to be bigger than my house. Both sported rifle ports enough for dozens of shooters.
Crouching as she ran, Amelia led the way toward the bunker at the front. “Step lightly if you can. In case any of our friends are in the store below.”
I tried my best not to stomp.
We reached the bunker in moments. Amelia went straight to a door I didn’t realize was there until she yanked on an inset handle. Hinges squealed so loud I feared we’d attract the attention of every Shroomy in the area.
“I need to grease that,” she told me by way of an apology.
Hunching over to follow her inside, I received a noseful of ash and old death as my eyes adjusted to the dim light slanting down through the gun slits. She closed the door behind us with another screech.
“This is it,” she told me. “It’s safe.”
The floor was covered in trash and hidden things soft with rot. Empty cans and bullet casings lay everywhere. Broken glass sprinkled through it all, making any thought of sitting or kneeling a dangerous proposition. Bent over like I was, not able to stand straight up beneath the low ceiling, apparently unable to get on the floor, I decided I hated the place.
Amelia crossed what I quickly realized was one of several rooms inside the bunker. She stepped through in interior doorway to a room at the corner of the building, so two sides concrete. At least the first three feet was concrete. Above that, the walls were extended with steel cut with gun slits facing two directions, some toward the parking lot in front of the store, the others with a view over the roof of the attached strip center.
Thankfully, any debris that had been on the floor had been shoveled out into other parts of the bunker, leaving the floor clean, as much as that word can be used in a world decaying under the grind of time. A cot sat along one wall, as did a sagging bookshelf stacked with canned goods.
“This is your place?” I asked.
“One of them,” she told me. “I stay here when I’m in this part of town.”
“Do you move around a lot?”
Amelia checked the cot’s mattress for nesting rodents and biting insects. “As much as I need to.”
January 10th, seventh entry
I lay along a wall beneath the front-facing gun slits. Pieces of glass duct-taped in place over the openings let the light in but kept the wind out. I adjusted my backpack, trying to find a soft spot for my head. “You’re sure we’re safe here?”
“They don’t come to this place,” said Amelia, rolling to her side on the cot to look at me. “Almost never.”
“Somebody cleared out the bodies.” How long the battle raged between humans and monsters, maybe normal people against other normals, or bandits, or however bad people labeled themselves, I could only guess at.
“They’ll do almost anything when they’re hungry,” said Amelia. “Now there’s no food. They avoid it. I think a lot of them were killed here. In their way, they probably think it’s bad mojo.”
I wasn’t comfortable on the floor. I missed my thin mattress back in Bunker Stink.
Misinterpreting my squirming, Amelia said, “We have three exits. The door we came in through, another leading to the roof over the strip mall, and one down into the interior offices. Even if they come for us, they seldom coordinate in groups big enough or smart enough to cover all the exits. We’re safe here.”
“I saw one of those big hordes last fall after I first came out.”
“You’re gay?”
“I didn’t come out of the closet,” I told her before seeing her smile and understanding she’d just made a joke. “When I first came out of the bunker.”
“How many,” she asked.
“Thousands. Moving through.”
“The rogue herds are pretty big, but you don’t see them like you used to. Food is getting too scarce to support groups that big. Mostly they’ve settled into territorial clans like the ones that live in the elementary school across from my parents’ house.”
“So it’s that way everywhere?”
“Mostly.” Amelia’s face told a different story.
“What aren’t you saying?”
“The downtown area is different. I haven’t been able to make sense of the Shroom social structure. Thousands and thousands live there. They aren’t divided into territories. I can’t figure out how they sustain themselves. I can’t imagine they’re still scavenging food from grocery stores. Those have been empty for years.”
“And we have to cross through that?”
“We’ll skirt the area as much as we can,” she told me, “but the downtown horde ranges out into the suburbs when they get the urge to do it. So, you never know when you’re going to come across them. That’s one of the reasons we’re going to try and cross in the dark, to avoid contact.” Amelia took one of her slow diagnostic looks at me again. “You should try and sleep.”
“I am trying.”
“We have a long night ahead of us. We’ll go slower, but when we stop in the morning, we want to be as far from downtown as possible.”
I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes, coaxing the fatigue of the morning’s efforts to turn into slumber. Every gust of wind against the bunker’s creaky steel brought to mind visions of hungry monsters, scratching to get inside. Each passing thought turned to counting the
howls of hungry Shroomheads chasing us through the suburbs. Light shining through the gun slits was too bright. I saw its glow through my closed eyelids.
A question came to mind, so I asked it. “How many times have you been through downtown since the collapse?”
“When was the collapse?” asked Amelia.
“You know.”
“Was it when the first case was reported? When the TV stopped broadcasting? When the radios turned to white noise? When the water stopped running? When the police disappeared?”
“You’re being mean,” I told her. “Let’s say, the last two years.”
“A couple times a year.”
“To check on your aunt?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
Amelia didn’t answer, so I rolled over again and looked at her. “Is it the same reason you have safe houses on every corner?”
“You exaggerate.”
“You evade.”
Amelia sat up, fluffed her thin pillow, and leaned against the wall, obviously wanting to avoid answering.
“What is it you don’t want to tell me?”
“I’m looking,” she blurted.
“For?”
The first hint of vulnerability showed in her eyes, and she turned away from me.
Crap.
I raised three girls through high school. I’d seen the look before. I’d stepped on too many mines not to know when I’d trodden into the land of tender feelings and secret anxieties. Mostly with my girls it had to do with a boy or some social thing with the other girls at school. On academics, they kept level heads. In that, they were each more pragmatic than me. Dad mode came out of habit. “Do you want to talk about it?”
In the sideways light, I saw tears glassed over Amelia’s usually hard eyes. She asked, “Do you ever think about what’s out there?”
“Besides a crumbling world full of monsters?” It was an obvious question with an obvious answer. Amelia didn’t give me an answer, though. So, I told her, “I’ve spent two years alone in my bunker. I’ve been out for maybe five months now. I’ve thought about it a lot. What’s out there, I mean. Are you asking about other people?”