“Them mens.”
“Them mens, what men, Lonnie?”
“Them mens what keep the monster, mens,” he said, gasping. We gave him some water. It was becoming clear that Lonnie was a little slow in the mind and we might not get much out of him. We started using snow to clean the blood off him as we asked him questions.
“Do you mean the men in the black truck? Those men?”
“Um-huh. They got a black truck. That’s what they took me and Keeshie ins.”
“Who’s Keeshie?”
“My sister. I was suppose to take care of her, but they was too big, too many. They took us in the truck and put us in the nets.”
“Nets? Why did they put you in the nets, Lonnie?”
“So’s the monster mens could chase us.”
“Where is Keeshie now?”
“She gone, she gone,” Lonnie cried, his entire body shaking. “The monster men finally caught her in the net. Now she one too.”
It took us a while to get Lonnie quiet. Like a little child, he suffered the discomfort of fighting back his sobs when we told him he needed to be quiet or the monster men would be coming for us again. He fell over to his side and buried his face in the snow to muffle his high moaning and blubbering. I desperately wanted him to stop, but I knew he needed to get this out.
She pointed to a spot on his back and pulled a glow stick out of her pocket. After snapping it with her thumb, she shook it up and let the chemicals inside come to life. Holding it over Lonnie’s back, it revealed that there was a large tear in the sweater and under it was a bloody wound with a tooth sticking out of it. Lonnie had been bitten. I’d liked him too.
“Lonnie, Lonnie, sit up. I need to talk to you about some things and we don’t have much time. You’ve been bitten.”
The poor guy’s eyes got wide. He looked from her to me and back. He started rocking back and forth, hugging himself and looking at the sky. “What’s the date?” he asked.
“The nineteenth,” she offered.
“Six days till Christmas. You think I’ll know it’s Christmas when I become a monster mans? Do you think they know it’s Christmas? Do you think Keeshie know?”
“Lonnie, it’s November,” I said.
“No, it’s not. He’s right,” she interjected. “We’re six days from Christmas.”
I looked at her dumbfounded. How could I lose a month? My mind got stuck on this for a moment and I had a hard time getting back to Lonnie.
“The Lord’s birthday. I want to see the Lord’s birthday,” he rambled on to himself.
Looking at me trying to absorb the fact that I’d lost a month, she said, “We’ll go over this later.” Turning to Lonnie, she tried to comfort him. “Honey, I’m sure you will. We’re going to do everything we can for you to make sure you see it. You have to answer some questions now. Can you do that for me?”
Absently he shook his head yes. “Lonnie, honey, why were you in a net? What were they doing with you?”
“There was these treadmills with the monster mens on them and we was hanging in the nets in front of the monster mens so they’d chase you. Sometimes they catch you like they did Keeshie. Then they put her on the treadmill and she chases someone else.” He shuddered.
“Was she chasing you in your net?” she asked. He nodded. “Did she catch you, Lonnie?” He nodded again. “Then what happened?”
“They lowered me to put the collar on so’s I could go to the treadmill. But I fought ’em and runs away.”
“That was very brave of you, Lonnie. Where did you run from?”
Down the street near Roosevelt, we heard the rumble of the black truck’s engine and the crackle of its tires on the snow-covered roads. It was moving slowly, but not slowly enough. They’d be here in moments. “There’s blood over here, he turned up Gaines,” we heard a voice shout. The truck’s engine surged, and a man wearing boots and shorts with a heavy coat stepped into the glow under the streetlamp. He was a block away and his head was down, but I knew who he was. He wore a flat-top haircut and a long, pointed red beard that came down to his chest. I remembered seeing his picture now in the meth lab house just down from Ashley’s house. He was scum. As I thought these words his head popped up and he looked straight at me, as if he heard my thoughts. “There he is, and he has friends,” he shouted. The black truck roared around the corner and stopped next to him. Lonnie started crying and I couldn’t think of anything other than “How the hell does that bastard wear shorts in this weather?”
“We can’t take them. We’re not ready,” she said.
“What about Lonnie?” she shook her head. She was right, he was dead anyway.
“Split up, rendezvous?” I asked. The big red-headed guy started running up the street towards us. The big burly black guy with the scruffy beard who was standing in the back of the truck the day they dragged the body behind them jumped out and started running behind him. The truck revved and started moving towards us as well.
“North spot,” she said and gave me a quick kiss before standing. “I love you.” And she took off running. I wasn’t much further behind her. Like a fire escape plan where you pick a safe spot to meet after everyone gets out of the house, we’d picked weeks ago four rendezvous spots. Each of us would take a different path to get there and we gave ourselves two hours to do it. We thought there might be some time needed to hide and evade zombies or pursuers. Since we were in the south of our old kingdom, we’d head to the north rendezvous spot. We didn’t want to go straight to the base house or our tent home on top of the Safeway. We didn’t want to lead anyone directly to us anywhere. So separately we’d make our way to safety. At the corner of Gaines and Twenty-Third she went east and I went west.
I could hear the truck gaining speed. Behind me I heard a gunshot. I knew Lonnie was dead. I’d learned several rules from monster movies over the years. One of them is never look back, and I didn’t. As soon as I turned onto Twenty-Third I was running with everything I had. I cut through yards; I leapt over fences and scrambled through bushes. Always the truck seemed to be too close for comfort. When I stopped it stopped, as if it had this demonic ability to follow and find me wherever I went. In my head, I could hear Stager’s voice laughing, “Run, rabbit, run.” Fuck you, Stager! At one point, I was crouching down behind some holly bushes with my shirt covering my nose and mouth trying not to breathe out huffs of steam. The holly bush was sticking me in a thousand places but if I was hidden, I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of finding me. The black truck just sat there on the road. Engine idling, the driver opened his door and pulled out a spotlight powered by the cigarette lighter. He shone it on the ground and started following my tracks to the holly bush. When the light rested on the bush I prayed to God I was hidden well as it lingered. Then the light went to the other side of the bush and searched the ground.
The light came back and was shining in my eyes. “I know you're there. You have to be there, the tracks don’t go any farther, so you're there in the bush, aren’t you? Just staring at me. Wondering what to do next, am I right?” I knew my best hope was to cause doubt in his mind and do nothing. Hopefully he’d think he made a mistake and give me an opening to run. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and moved to the other side of the truck, my side of the truck, and leaned on the fender. From where I was I could smell the smoke and I had a wave of nausea and started sweating. “Why don’t you just come on out? It’s inevitable that eventually I’ll catch you. Who are you, anyway? One of those pesky kids playing Robin Hood, or are you this Cowboy I’ve been getting more and more pissed off at?” From the outline of his form from the light I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it. His spiky hair, the leather jacket. I knew he had a small soul patch on his chin and a gold chain around his neck. He was the leader of the black truck people. “Don’t feel like talking, that’s ok, because I don’t give a fuck what you have to say.” He reached into his leather jacket pocket and pulled out a gun and I sneezed.
There was no use t
rying to hide now. I sprang to my feet and ran around the side of the house. One shot rang out and I heard it strike the wood of the house. The truck roared again behind me and I knew he was driving again. We were now on my old street and I felt I had the advantage. I knew the alleyways, the streets, and the houses. I knew most of the old owners and I knew the next block had an empty house that was open to the elements. The truck slid around the corner, passenger window down, music screaming from the speakers within. I ran up on a porch as a shot from the truck went wide and struck the brick wall. He was shooting while driving. He’d have to go slow if he wanted to hit me, at least that’s what I told myself.
At a full run, I covered my face with my arms and crashed through the bay window of the house. I rolled onto the floor and cut my hand on the broken glass as I came to my feet and ran blindly through the house. I flung the back door open and grabbed a dishtowel from the kitchen sink on my way out. I heard the chain link fence that lead to the backyard crashing open and I turned on my heels, running through the house again. I leapt through the broken window and lost my feet as I landed on the slick porch outside. I fell into the holly bushes lining the front of the porch. I knew it wouldn’t take him long to realize what I’d done and I didn’t think I could make it to the empty house where my feeble plan of escape still waited to be formed.
But, there in front of me was the entrance to the crawlspace under the house hidden by the bushes, so I went to it and popped it open, then shimmied inside and replaced the cover. Something told me not to stay near that thing so I looked around until I saw another light and started crawling to it. I was almost there when the entrance cover behind me opened. I stopped and hoped that all the obstacles I’d crawled over this far would be enough to shield me from his sight. It must have been, because he fired three rounds under the house and listened. I pretended I was dead just in case he could see me in the darkness. An eternity later, the little door shut again and I thought it was funny that this stone-cold killer would take the time to replace the cover to the crawlspace.
A few moments later the little light that had come in through the vent opening went dark and there was a scraping sound behind it. He was trapping me under the house. I slowly made my way to the other light I saw from the far side of the house. I must have been ten feet away when it went dark too. He was sealing me in for good. “Hope you die in there, motherfucker,” I heard his muffled voice say.
I laid my head down on the cold earth and relaxed. I thought I’d stay here for half an hour, then try to get out. I knew I had some tools and I might be able to get out easily, but I needed to give him time to go away. I tried to stifle a cough and curled into a ball while I tried to stop the bleeding of my hands and my side where the screwdriver went through me. I fell asleep as the adrenaline wore off.
ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 25
ZWD: Dec. 20.
I get a lesson in meth lab economics as I burn up with fever right before I burn to death.
I woke up coughing, burning up and shivering in pitch-blackness. It took me several minutes to remember where I was. When I tried to sit up I hit my head on the joist of the crawlspace. I couldn’t see any sign of light anywhere. I panicked. I crawled towards what I thought was the direction of the opening I’d seen earlier, but I ran into a wall. My hands were hurting from the cuts and I vomited once and crawled through the puddle because I got turned around when I tried to puke away from the wall. Then I turned back, I thought to the wall, but it wasn’t there. I reached out in all directions and felt nothing. Sweat flowed into my eyes, not that they were doing me any good in this pitch-blackness, but the salt stung my eyes. I started to panic again and had to stop and calm myself. The rich dirt scent under the house wasn’t helping me at all, but it did feel good and cool against my face.
I don’t know if it was five minutes or five hours that I lay there in the dark. The coughing was making my chest hurt and the smell of dirt was making me nauseous. I couldn’t believe I was lost under a house. You know when they say “Go to your happy place,” that was lost too. I finally had enough presence of mind to pull my shirt collar over my nose and that helped some. Smelling my own funk was decidedly better than the dirt, but not by much. I needed a bath badly. The vomit that was drying in my shirt where I’d crawled through it was surprisingly better to smell than the dirt.
I knew there were two ways in here and all I had to do was pick a direction and crawl, knowing that eventually, in this finite space, I’d run into one. After an eternity I made it to a wall and started tracing my way around the outskirts of the house, knowing I’d come to one of the openings.
Above me I heard thumping as if someone was moving around in the house. Something crashed to the floor and shattered, then the thumping continued. I debated whether or not I should call for help; after all, I didn’t know who was up there. If it was a zombie trapped in the house, I didn’t really have much to worry about. If it was a human, then it was a matter of friend or foe. Should I call out or not? The thumping stopped some distance away from me; a gun was fired, followed by what I recognized as the sound of a door being kicked in. I’d kicked in enough doors that I knew that sound, even muffled through the flooring. There was another gunshot and then there was silence.
I heard heavy, deliberate steps walking through the house. They paused, I was guessing at each room seeing if it was occupied, then they continued through the house. They faded once, probably to check the upstairs, and then came back. At one point, they were directly overhead. I tried to stifle a cough, but wasn’t too good at it, and I heard laughter from above. There were three distinct thumps from a boot and then more laughter. I now knew how fish felt when I thumped the glass.
Something dripped on the back of my neck. I wiped it off and sniffed. My heart raced as I realized it was gasoline. That fucker was drenching the house. He was going to burn it down with me under it! I started crawling faster along the wall of the foundation, feeling my way for the vent. Pipes from the house plumbing blocked my path, too high and too low to crawl through, so I was forced to follow them around and back to the foundation wall.
He walked leisurely around the inside of the house. I could imagine him grinning to himself. The smell of gas got stronger. I finally reached the elbow joint for the large PVC pipe of the plumbing and the smaller copper pipes of the water line. I wasted no time getting around them, ripping my pants on a nail as I went; I was bleeding from that too.
I knew he was there, he knew I was here; I made no attempt to hide my coughing now. It was getting harder to breathe with the gas fumes. I had to stop several times for a coughing fit. I was crawling in sprints as fast as I could. I couldn’t keep my shirt over my mouth and nose while I was crawling and the smell of the dirt, although it made me nauseous, was better than the gas. Goddamn, how much gas was he using up there?
Finally, my hand hit the foundation wall, quickly followed by my head. I was moving that fast, what can I say? The small hole where the pipes for the water ran into the house had a small space around them where the PVC pipe went under the ground. I stuffed my nose as close to the small opening as I could get it, also shoving it into a spider web. But I didn’t care, I was breathing in clean, sweet air. I thought because of the pipes, I was somewhere at the back of the house or at the side near the back. The crawlspace opening had to be near here somewhere.
With the foundation wall on my left, I started crawling as fast as I could. I had to stop almost immediately for another coughing fit. My eyes started watering and my nose was now running. After each cough I was breathing in the dirt from the crawlspace floor, which made me cough more. The smell of gas wasn’t as strong here at the wall, a small mercy because it eased my panic a bit. I rolled over on my side, my back leaning against the wall, and rested my head on the dirt and closed my eyes.
In that moment of “calm,” my mind said to check my pockets and see what I had that would get me out of here. The first thing I felt and pulled out was two or three of the
lighters I normally carried in my jeans pocket. I almost lit one of them so I could look around. I swear, my thumb was on the flint wheel ready to strike it when I remembered the gas. I shoved that back in my pocket and found the keys to all the houses we were in and out of regularly. I had a few knives clipped to my belt, one Phillips, and a glow stick, along with a few other things.
I knew I had the glow stick, but after being chased by madmen, burning up with fever, and vomiting while being forced to hide under a house, I really wasn’t thinking straight. I snapped the stick and shook it vigorously. The yellow-green glow came to life and revealed several things around me. The first, I was leaning into a giant spider’s nest and was surrounded by dozens more hanging from the floor joist. As much as I’d been crawling around under here, I was sure I’d pissed more than one of them off and probably had dozens of spider bites by now. I was just too sick to really care. The second thing the glow stick revealed was that I wasn’t that far away from the crawlspace entrance. Five feet ahead of me was the first pool of vomit next to the wall, and three feet beyond that was the little metal door. As I looked at it and cursed myself, I started to crawl towards it, and a light flashed across the slatted air vent. Outside, someone was moving something out of the way.
“Hey, cowboy, you in there? Haha, I know you are. Where are you going to go? You know James? James says you’re a warrior. He says you’re dangerous. I disagree with him. I think you’re just a pain in my ass. A cowboy who thinks he can somehow make the world right, like it was.” There was a knock on the little metal door. I thought I should do something to try to make this to my advantage, so I put my mouth in the crook of my arm and answered him back.
“I can’t hear you,” I said. “You sound muffled.”
“What was that, cowboy?”
“I said it’s hard to hear you. What did you say?”
To my great relief, he opened the door and the rush of cool air did a lot to clear my head. I didn’t realize just how much the gas fumes had gotten to me. I stuffed the glow stick under my belly so he couldn’t see where I was.
ZWD: King of an Empty City Page 23