by Jason Offutt
He put a hand to his mouth to suppress a giggle. Donnie couldn’t see them anymore because they didn’t want to be seen. He reached for Mother’s Bic lighter she always kept on the end table with an ash tray and a soft pack of Virginia Slims and rubbed his thumb along the sparkwheel, illuminating a few feet of the living room with butane flame. He touched the fire to the blackened braided cotton wick of a candle shoved into one of Grandma Dooley’s brass candleholders, the yellow light danced with shadows in the living room. Donnie picked up the candleholder and walked into the kitchen.
The door to the garage, the door Daddy had used to discover Donnie staring at Vanessa Hagen through the window, opened quietly. A waft of warm garbage assaulted Donnie’s face as he stepped into the garage; doody garbage man. He went to the shelves on the back wall. That’s where Daddy kept a lot of his toys. Donnie sat the candleholder on a shelf and grabbed the propane lantern and tucked it under his left arm. Then he grabbed Daddy’s deer rifle and slung it over his right shoulder. He didn’t need to check to see if the rifle was loaded. It was. Daddy always kept his deer rifle loaded because he never knew when he’d need to shoot a deer, or an asshole. It felt heavier than Donnie remembered, but not too heavy. He grabbed the candle and started to leave the garage, but paused. Daddy’s beer fridge sat next to the door. WWDD? Ran through Donnie’s head and he laughed. What Would Daddy Do? Daddy would have a beer, then sit in front of the window with his deer rifle and wait for something to happen. That’s what Daddy would do. The door pulled open with a click and Donnie stuck his index finger through the plastic ring on a six-pack of Coors cans. But what if Daddy came home? Came home and found Donnie getting stupid? A chill shook him. He stuck the six-pack back in the refrigerator and shut the door. Daddy would be mad.
Donnie blew out the candle and sat it back on the end table where it was supposed to be. The feeble moonlight still illuminated nothing, but that didn’t matter anymore. The lantern ignited with a soft hiss and Donnie sat it on a small table he’d moved in front of the window. If he couldn’t see them, at least they could see him. He felt good about today, about Mr. Grimes, about Mother’s play date and about the parade of good people on the highway. This world hadn’t gone to hell in a hand basket. At least not yet. There was still good in this world and Donnie was going to make sure that good was going to stay. He sat in Mother’s comfy flower print chair with Daddy’s deer rifle across his lap and waited for the bad people to come to his beacon.
July 29: Fort Scott, Kansas
Chapter 6
Andi woke, her mind screaming. The shrieks of the crows, the moans of the things that used to be human, the words of Polo Man. She couldn’t hear Polo Man as she lay on the roof of the Muskogee Motel 6 preparing to blow his brains out. In her mind, their eyes met, although somewhere in her aching head she knew he couldn’t see her. ‘Help me,’ Polo Man mouthed to her in her dream. Andi shot up in the seat of the Army High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, her breath came in short snips, her face slick with sweat. The piercing morning sun – of where? where am I? Kansas? – poured onto her face, forcing her eyes into slits. Andi slowly exhaled. A hangover fuzz filled her head, her mouth as dry as the day after a AΣA party back at Missouri State University. Go Bears.
Then the morning hit her, yesterday flooding fully into her mind. The army, the Fence, the poor man just trying to live. The military had placed soldiers all along the Fence, doing exactly what Cotton had told her to do. A man, a person, needed her help and she’d shot him. She’d shot him dead. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, her voice loud in the vehicle cab. Andi’s hands shot to her face, but couldn’t hold in the tears.
You ever shot a man, Bakowski?
“Fuck you, Cotton,” she meant to shout, but the energy wasn’t there. This wasn’t Cotton’s fault. It’s not mine either, she thought, but knew that was a lie. Andi was the one who pulled the trigger – twice.
Something moved in the driver’s side window. In one smooth movement that sent empty Bud Light cans rattling across the floorboard, Andi pulled her 9mm sidearm from its holster and leveled it at the bullet resistant window. The glass might absorb a shot fired from a distance, but not from two inches. The deer staring at Andi, a wet nose smear on the glass, threw up its ears and stepped back before bolting across the Walmart parking lot and disappearing into a line of trees, its white tail flashing its warning. Four, no five more deer scattered, following Andi’s friend into the thin trees. Andi’s breath came hard. Oh, geez. A click filled the cab as she decocked the sidearm and reholstered it. With the movement in the window she’d expected a bloody, slathering human monster pawing at her, but it was a deer, a deer that had forgotten man was the superior species on the planet. A lot of species had forgotten this fact, probably even man. She wiped a sleeve across her face and sat still in the hot cab of the vehicle for a few minutes until her breathing slowed and the tears stopped. She didn’t have time for this.
Andi had pushed the Humvee in the dark up U.S. 69 that goes (until nature reclaims it) 1,136 miles from Port Arthur, Texas, to Albert Lea, Minnesota. She didn’t go either place. She stopped a few hundred miles north in Fort Scott, Kansas, drunkenly swerving as if every lesson she’d sat through in the D.A.R.E program hadn’t meant a damn thing. But in her stupor, with nothing else on the road but abandoned cars, she knew she had to make it far enough away from that Fence nobody would come looking for her.
So far they hadn’t.
It’s hot. Her hand slapped at the door, reaching instinctively for the button that would lower the window, but it wasn’t there. The windows didn’t roll down, something about safety if the enemy was shooting at you. Apparently, the Army didn’t care if you were hot. Andi pushed open the door, a couple of empty beer cans dropped out and clanked against the sun-bleached asphalt. She wondered, just briefly, what Cotton would do to her if she’d driven back to base drunker than a U.S. senator. Desk job, probably. He’d have his excuse to keep her safe. Safe. What the hell’s safe? The world had come to an end; everyone was just dancing in the mirror. She’d pulled off the highway and into the store lot because a semi sat cold and silent near the back, a school bus between it and the highway. The Humvee fit right in between them, hidden; she was too tired and drunk to run anymore.
Andi reached into the back seat and grabbed an MRE. Through the thick, fuzzy hangover mouth the pizza, the Army’s new menu item – it stays fresh for three years – tasted better than the last steak she’d eaten. When was that? In May at the White Sands Restaurant back home with Dad? These MREs may be the last pizza on the planet. She realized she’d better enjoy it.
Her head hurt. There were acetaminophen capsules in the medical kit, but she wasn’t going to waste them on a hangover. She had food and water in the vehicle, but she also could take care of herself if she got hurt. Uncle Sam made sure his soldiers were ready for anything after the zombie apocalypse, except emergency psychological counseling if you killed someone in cold blood. Andi didn’t know if there was anything to prepare anyone for that, but she did know she’d be okay unless the generous Uncle Sam ever caught up to her. She had to ditch the Humvee – and fast.
Andi stepped out of the vehicle, the morning already starting to heat up. Chirps of birds and the drone of insects were the only sounds to break the morning until Andi unzipped her Army-issue woodland camouflage pants and squatted in front of the Humvee, holding onto the bumper. A hard stream of urine hit the dry pavement, the beginnings of cracks spider webbed under Andi’s boots. By next summer those cracks would probably be home to grass and weeds. Grass and weeds first, comb-over trees five years down the line. How long would it be before everything was gone? She hoped she lived to find out; then again, part of her wanted nothing to do with it.
Andi stood and buckled up. The first leak of the morning is the best. She felt better already. It was 7:50 a.m. Cotton has known she’d been gone for almost eight hours. Fort Scott was three hours north of Pryor; they might be on her tail right now, that is if Co
tton could afford to send anyone after an AWOL private he didn’t want stationed at the Fence anyway. Even then, where would they look? Interstate 44 about an hour north of Muskogee (couldn’t go south. Uh, uh. That was the Bad Lands), went west toward Tulsa and east toward Joplin, Missouri, a half dozen rural highways along the way could have taken her anywhere. But Andi lay passed out most of that time; anyone could have driven past the Fort Scott Walmart Supercenter and not even noticed she was there; the tan and blue building sat nearly a quarter-mile off U.S. 69. I could just camp out here, she thought, but immediately knew that would be a mistake. To be safe she needed to find people; there was safety in numbers. And if she found enough numbers, maybe she wouldn’t have to kill anyone ever again.
***
Andi decided to ditch the Humvee here, behind the semi and the school bus; she didn’t even have to start it; all she had to do was unload the necessary supplies and equipment and wave good-bye. She felt comfortable in the armored truck – who wouldn’t? – but the gas mileage was less than twelve miles per gallon and on the road it stood out like a pimple on prom night. If someone was looking for her, she needed to look like a civilian, which meant different car, different clothes, different hair. Hair? Andi’d never colored her blond hair, always preferring to stick with what God gave her. But she didn’t think God had anything to do with this shitstorm.
Andi slung her weapon over her shoulder and went to the back of the vehicle. There was something she needed; a flathead screwdriver. She slipped it into her back pocket and walked toward the front doors of Walmart. Andi had to find a car.
A gray Subaru Outback sat next to a black Land Rover between the final resting place of the Humvee and the storefront. The owner of the Land Rover, Andi named him Jimbo, was still in the vehicle, buckled into the driver’s seat, pounding the window with raw, bloody hands, the man’s once-human face taught with anger. No. Not anger, hunger. His arms flew wildly when he saw Andi stop to inspect the Outback, his growls audible through the glass as he beat at it furiously with shredded palms.
“I’m sorry,” Andi said softly, the words uncomfortably loud in the silent morning. “I think you’re just into girls in uniform.”
Andi never considered the Land Rover; it barely had better mileage than the Humvee and was filled to the windows with monsters. She needed something she could drive forever on a tank of gas, because getting gas out of convenience store ground tanks nowadays took a little more effort than swiping a debit card. For that reason, Cotton made sure every Humvee in the unit carried a hand pump, but it still took more time than Andi liked to have her back turned to anything. A 1993 Geo Metro, a three-cylinder marvel that could go sixty miles on a gallon of gas, would be nice, but those were more than twenty-five years old and about as spacious as a Matchbox Car. The Outback was a mini four-wheel drive station wagon that got at least thirty miles per gallon on the highway. It would do, for now. Probably had shit music in the CD player though.
Problem One wasn’t much of a problem. If a car was in the Walmart parking lot, chances are its owner was in Walmart with the keys. But how am I going to find them? A car’s not much good without the keys, unless keys didn’t matter. Big Andy taught his daughter more than just how to shoot and skin a deer. She knew her way around a car.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to know this,” Big Andy told fourteen-year-old Andi the day of Grammy Bilton’s funeral, a sad smile hanging off his bottom lip. He held a flathead screwdriver between them.
“Why will I ever need to know this?” Andi asked, wishing she had a Pepsi. Every time they visited Grammy, Big Andy stopped by JD’s Liquors for a six-pack of Miller Lite and Andi walked out with a stick of beef jerky and a Pepsi. Score. They hadn’t stopped at JD’s today; today they had laid Grammy Bilton to rest under an oak tree in South Pointe Cemetery.
“Every day somebody gets stuck in a spot they didn’t ask for, kiddo,” Big Andy said. “This is just in case one day that somebody is you.”
Big Andy leaned into the open window of Grammy’s old Buick LeSabre and slipped his hand around the steering column. “You know Grammy insisted on being buried with her purse, right?” he asked.
Of course, Andi knew. Grammy Bilton always carried her big, flowery purse full of old peppermints and half-used tissues “because the other half is still good.” For her not to have it with her when she went to the great beyond would just seem wrong.
“She left her Buick to your mom and me because you’re going to be driving before you know it,” Big Andy continued. “Well, I think the keys were still in her purse. We can’t find them anywhere.” He reached behind him and pulled a standard flat-head screwdriver from his back pocket, gripping the red and blue handle lightly in his thick-fingered hand. “We could just get a new key, but this thing is twenty-five years old with enough miles to get to the Moon. So, this Andi, is my key.”
Big Andy shoved the blade of the screwdriver into the key slot and jimmied it until something snapped. He grinned and turned the screwdriver; the Buick fired right up. “That a girl,” he said to the dash, then turned toward Andi. “This doesn’t always work, but if you’re in a pinch, try it. It’s easier than trying to hot wire the thing.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Life ain’t the movies, honey.” He paused and rubbed his chin, shaved smooth for the funeral, not the graying stubble Andi was used to. “I’ll show you that little trick some other time. You about ready for a Pepsi?”
Andi nodded.
“Then get in,” her father said, pulling himself from the driver’s seat and standing in the leaf-strewn gravel driveway at Grammy Bilton’s little white house. Andi started to run around to the passenger side. “Hold on honey,” Big Andy said, stopping her in his tracks. “This side.” He patted the top of the open driver’s door. “You’re sitting here.”
What? Really? Andi thought she might throw up and pee herself at the same time. “You want me to drive?”
Big Andy grinned. “You’re fourteen. I should have already taught you. Besides, JDs is only about a mile down the road. You’ll be all right.” He stopped and looked sternly at Andi, crows feet pinched at the corner of his eyes. “But I won’t be all right if you tell your mother. Our little secret, okay?”
Oh no, oh no, oh no. “Yeah,” Andi said and ran around the car toward the open door, slipped on the gravel and grabbed the trunk for balance. Big Andy laughed as he shut the door for his only child, walked around the blue boat and crawled into the passenger seat. It was the first time Andi drove to the liquor store. It wasn’t the last.
***
A man in khaki cargo shorts, a blue T-shirt and leather sandals lay like a sun-dried tomato on the pavement next to the Outback’s driver side door. Andi bent and cringed as she gently eased her right hand into the man’s pants pockets. A melted tube of ChapStick, a pocket knife, lint and seventy-seven cents in change. No keys. Dang it. Cargo Shorts didn’t belong to the Outback. Andi thought he might belong to the Land Rover, but she really had no idea. She also had no idea how she was going to get into the Outback without keys. She reached out and pulled the door handle. The door clicked and swung open effortlessly. Andi smiled. This was small town rural Kansas, of course the door was unlocked. The doors to half the houses in town were probably unlocked; Andi just wasn’t going to open them.
The man’s body was uncomfortably easy to move away from the door; Andi pushed the dehydrated human shell with her feet. A plastic Walmart sack sat nearby; Andi didn’t bother to look in it, she had an entire store ahead of her, besides, she didn’t want to know the last thing this man did in life was buy hemorrhoid cream. She swung the door to the Outback wide, laid her weapon gently on the asphalt, slung her backpack into the car and sunk into the driver’s seat. The car wasn’t as big as Grammy’s Buick LeSabre, but it would do. She pulled the screwdriver out of her back pocket, the blade dirty from use. “This Andi, is my key,” Big Andy had told her before he started the car. It started and Andi never learne
d how to hot wire a car, so she hoped this worked. She shoved the screwdriver blade into the ignition and twisted. Something popped in the steering column and the tool began to turn. Andi held her breath, praying like heck this worked and that this two-month dormant car would– The engine fired. She pinched her eyes tight and smiled, tears leaking from the corners. “Thanks, Daddy.”
The stereo fired with it.
“No stop signs, speed limit,” blared from the speakers, the monster in the Land Rover next door getting more agitated with the noise. “Season ticket on a one-way ride.”
Andi’s fingers fumbled with the buttons as the creature pounded harder on the Land Rover’s window. “Good thing you’re not coming with me,” she said, her voice soft in the hot, stuffy car, “or this would be a long trip.”
***
The Outback slid to a silent halt right in front of the store. The previous owner had Andi’s tastes in music and took good care of the brakes, not a squeak, not a grab. Andi moved the car close to the store because she had no idea what faced her inside. Although with the number of vehicles in the lot (a lot of them pickups. This was rural Kansas), she had a pretty good idea she wouldn’t be alone. Andi stepped out of the driver’s side, grabbed the weapon from the passenger seat and opened her backpack. Each soldier was issued a sound suppressor just in case gunfire might attract the wrong kind of attention. Alone in (probably) hostile territory, any attention was the wrong kind of attention. The sound suppressor wouldn’t work on an automatic rifle forever, but Andi was just looking to live through today.
There were no monsters, and thank God no crows, in plain sight except the thing in the Land Rover, but those undead fungus things could be anywhere. Andi pulled back the rifle bolt. “These are no longer human beings,” Cotton told them the night before deployment. Not human beings. They’re crazy, hungry and dead. How does that work, anyway? The sound of the grunting, snarling human-like beasts, snapping at each other as they ate Polo back in Muskogee, filled her head. They weren’t people anymore. She knew that. They didn’t have loved ones, they didn’t feel pity, they didn’t feel anything. They’re monsters. She pulled a flashlight from the backpack and walked unsteadily to the front door.