by McBain, Tim
“Septic shock, and yeah, that’s about the long and short of it. It ain’t a pretty way to go.”
The car fell quiet. Delfino chewed his lip.
He glanced over at Ruth and found her glaring at him, brow all creased in the middle, an angry look that reminded him of an owl somehow. She looked like she wanted to stab him a few dozen times.
“Look, what the hell do you want me to say? I ain’t a doctor. I don’t have antibiotics or nothin’ to help the poor bastard. I mean, hell, it’s not like I want him to die in the backseat of my ride, but I don’t see a lot of alternatives at the moment.”
The girl brought a hand to her mouth, spoke through her splayed fingers.
“There has to be something. What would you do if you were sick like this? Just lie there and die?”
Delfino’s hands squeezed the wheel even tighter, the skin of his palms squeaking against the hard plastic. Those little muscle flexes rippled faster along his jaw.
And then it came to him.
“Alright. Yeah. There might be a place we could take him. Friends kinda. Sorta. Maybe.”
“Sorta friends?”
“Yeah. Well, you know how it is. You burn a few bridges along this road of life. And then you nuke a few more bridges. And sometimes, every once in a while, you kind of drop trou and squat over that nuked out crater where the bridge used to be, dangle your cheeks right over the precipice. Sort of shit all over whatever’s left of it, I guess you could say.”
“So these ‘sorta friends’… I’m guessing you pooped on that one?”
Delfino chuckled before he answered.
“Pretty much. I mean, they used to be friends, but… I don’t know, man. Fuck it. Maybe it’s a long shot, but I figure that’s better than no shot.”
“So we’ll go,” Ruth said.
He looked over to find her no longer staring at him, her eyes now fixed on the road ahead. Lot of dominant language from that one, Delfino thought. Commands. Authority. Probably why she was still alive.
After all the talk of nuked bridges, the car went quiet for a long while. Delfino gritted his teeth, glanced in the mirror periodically to see the extra creases of concern around his mouth.
He studied Ruth out of the side of his eye, found similar wrinkles around her eyes, though he thought hers looked more aggressive than his, more angry than concerned.
Delfino wanted to think of something to lighten the mood, but what? What topic could he bring up that would ease the tension? What strings of words could he find to beat back the slow creep of death from wrapping itself around the figure sprawled in the backseat? What does one say in such times? Is there anything at all?
As if on cue, Baghead rasped a little in the backseat, his breathing going dry and throaty now so he sounded like a cat about to launch a hairball. Delfino tried to stop his mind from conjuring the words “death rattle” and failed, but after just a few seconds, the breathing went quiet again. Perhaps the universe wasn’t completely without mercy.
Again he looked at Ruth. She was swiveled to peer over the shoulder of her seat at the patient in the back.
“He look OK to you?” Delfino said.
Ruth squinted as she examined Baghead further. Leaned her top half into the back. After a second, she plopped back into her seat and shrugged.
“He’s still breathing,” she said. “That’s something.”
Christ. What a grim affair, carting a gangrenous man across the country for no good reason. You knew someone was in a bad way when breathing seemed a great accomplishment for them.
And then Delfino knew what to say. A joke. A joke would break the tension some. Even if it couldn’t shift the heavy load of death off of them, it could lighten this dark scene. It could do some good.
But what joke?
He sifted through his memories, hoping he might find some rolodex of jokes tucked off in some unused corner of his brain, index cards he could quickly skim through to find the perfect zinger for this moment. Instead, he came up blank. Nothing. Which was weird, because he’d heard a million of ‘em, but maybe most jokes weren’t worth holding onto.
He squinted. Tried to force some comedy gag to the surface. One came.
“OK. All right. You wanna hear a joke?”
Ruth nodded, smiled faintly.
“OK, so there’s this penguin on vacation out in Arizona. He wants to see the Grand Canyon, right?”
“What’s the Grand Canyon?”
“You don’t know the… Shoot. It’s this spot where the Colorado river wore a gigantic gap in the mountains, just a big old gorge, I guess you could call it. Massive. A natural wonder or what have ya. Real scenic kind of deal — all that exposed rock face, chiseled bands of red rock for as far as you could see. Breathtaking. Tourists flocked there to check it out, before everything went to hell.”
Ruth nodded again.
“OK. So the penguin, he’s driving his rental car out in the desert, making his way to the canyon. Tumble weed blowing past. Cacti with their arms up. Sand blowin’ and whatever the hell. And the sun is just beating down on ‘im. Blazin’. See, penguins, you know, they’re arctic birds. Used to tundra and shi— stuff. Not suited to the heat. So he keeps crankin’ the AC a little bit higher and a little bit higher. Thankful, you know, for that.”
Delfino dug in his pocket for a cigarette as he talked, brought it to his lips, talked around it.
“When he gets to, oh, about an hour out from the Grand Canyon, a big red indicator light comes on. On the dash, you know? Says ‘oil pressure.’ Not good.”
He lit the cigarette. Took a hit. Exhaled smoke.
“So the penguin, he pulls over. Takes a peek under the car. Sees oil gushing out of the bottom of the engine. Beyond not good. He turns up to the sky. Shields his brow to look at the sun, which is just now getting to the highest place up above. Thing looks evil up there. A ball of fire that wants only to cook him. I mean, this is bad.”
Delfino tucked the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and shook his head.
“He climbs back into the car. Thinks about it. Figures it’s better to drive on. Look for a gas station or something. Hope he gets lucky and finds one sooner than later. It’s pretty damn desolate out there, you know? But sitting still isn’t really an option.”
Another plume of smoke vacated Delfino’s mouth.
“Over the next hill? He’s lucky. There’s a gas station with a full service garage and a shopping plaza or whatever next to it. Has a convenience store, a pizza parlor, and an ice cream place. So he pulls into the gas station. Tells the mechanic about his car trouble and whatever. And while the mechanic takes a peek under the hood, he decides to head over to the ice cream shop, you know? Something cold would really hit the spot.”
Delfino flipped open the built-in ashtray on the dash and ashed his cigarette.
“So he sits down at his booth with a big old banana split…. You know what a banana split is, right?”
Ruth bobbed her head.
“Yeah. A banana and a bunch of ice cream in like a long dish.”
“Yep. Accurate. Long dish and all. Well, he sits down in this booth with his banana split, but he’s a penguin, you know? Gotta eat it with his flippers. Sloppy as hell.”
He gripped the steering wheel between his knees to pantomime eating ice cream with flippers. Ruth giggled at that.
“By the time he walks out of there, he’s got strawberry ice cream smeared on both flippers up to the armpits, got a nice big fudge splotch on the middle of his chest, and he’s got a ring of vanilla ice cream all over and around his beak.”
Delfino smudged his own hand over his mouth.
“He heads over to the garage to check on the rental car, and the mechanic looks over this messy penguin and says, uh, ‘Looks like you blew a seal…’”
Delfino trailed off there. Motionless. It suddenly occurred to him that this was a dirty joke. He was telling a little kid a dirty joke like some kind of complete moron.
After an exte
nded stretch of quiet, Ruth spoke.
“Is that it?”
“You know what? Forget that one. That one is, uh, you know… wrong joke for the moment.”
“Just tell it.”
“Nah. I’m not gonna do that.”
“You’re so weird,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Sorry, I’m an idiot. Let me think of another one, alright?”
He felt the warmth touch his cheeks, more ashamed than embarrassed. Stupid shit, the voice in his head scolded.
He shook his head. Tried to clear his mind, dig back into that damn nonexistent joke rolodex for some clean material. A few other jokes came to him, but all that bubbled up from his memory was more dirty stuff. The one about the old lady with the bad tooth. The one about the man with a penis growing out of the center of his forehead. The one about the hot buttered popcorn. He thought for sure that no appropriate joke would come to him, but then one did.
“OK. OK, I’ve got one. This one is better. A short one. You ready?”
Ruth nodded that fast nod only a small child is capable of, looking more like an innocent little girl than she had at any point so far as Delfino could remember. A tiny smiled danced on the corners of her mouth, quivering like she was ready to laugh before the joke even began.
“What did the spoon say to the plate?”
Ruth thought about it for a second, eyebrows scrunching.
“Fork you?” she said, trying to guess the punchline.
Delfino busted out laughing, almost losing his cig in the process. The thing dropped out of his mouth, but he somehow caught it, snatching it perfectly between thumb and forefinger like a praying mantis snagging an insect out of the air. Some combination of Delfino’s laughing and cigarette tricks got Ruth giggling as well. They just looked at each other, both shaking from the middle out. Belly laughs.
“Dang it. That’s actually way better than the real joke. It’s supposed to be ‘lunch is on you.’”
Delfino wiped the wetness from the corners of his eyes, pitched his cigarette butt out the window, and lit another. Again he chuckled to himself.
“Fork you. I like that.”
And for just one moment, the being creeping toward death in the backseat was forgotten.
Erin
Rich Creek, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
Erin shoved the desiccated pile of bones and flesh off of her. She could still feel the spindly fingers clasping at her clothes and skin, and she couldn’t stop brushing her hands over her arms and chest.
“Did it get you?” Izzy asked, eyes wide.
“No,” Erin said. “But I can still feel it on me. Like after a spider crawls on you, you know?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Izzy nodded, looking relieved. “I hate that.”
She stepped closer and put out a hand to help Erin to her feet. The heap of zombie remains shifted slightly, and Erin leapt back from it, startled. Then she realized it had only been the toe of Izzy’s boot nudging the bundle that made it appear to move on its own.
That had been close. Too close.
Erin’s hand strayed toward her belly again, but she caught herself and clasped her hands together instead.
“Let’s take a quick look around before we head back inside for the night,” she said.
Izzy bent down and lifted something. Light flared suddenly.
“Hey look,” Izzy said. “The other lantern still works.”
Erin opened her mouth to comment on the fact that it must have gotten blown out in the fall and not broken, but then she got her first good look at what was in the bunker.
“Holy shit,” Erin said.
“Yeah,” Izzy agreed.
There was a whole rack of weapons — hunting rifles, pistols, assault rifles, combat knives, two crossbows. A full stack of water storage bricks. Several jumbo packages of toilet paper. Five bottles of bleach. Three gallons of Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap.
“Whoa. Check this out!” Izzy spun around.
She clutched an old rifle in her hands, but there was something strange about it. It was out of proportion, somehow. Elongated. Erin moved the lantern closer and realized it had a long bayonet affixed to the end.
“It’s so long,” Izzy said, poking the end of the blade. “This would be great for like, roasting marshmallows. You can have your sweet rifle in one hand, your s’mores in the other hand in case you get snacky. Ready to rock.”
Erin snorted as she set the lantern down to pry the lid off one of at least two dozen five-gallon buckets. Inside, she found duct tape, toothpaste, blankets, garbage bags. The next bucket contained batteries of various sizes. Yet another was filled with first aid supplies — meds, rubbing alcohol, peroxide, bandages.
Izzy moved over to the two floor-to-ceiling shelving units.
“Dang. This guy was, like, the master prepper.”
Erin stepped forward. The shelf on the right was entirely filled with food. Giant tins of canned corn and beans and soup. Massive burlap sacks filled with grains and beans and flour. A bag of split peas had been torn open and dry peas crunched underfoot as they inspected the goods.
“Doesn’t look like he even ate any of the food,” Izzy pointed out. “Aside from that bag of peas, nothing’s been opened.”
“Well, he’d obviously been infected before he bricked himself up in here.”
“Oh. Right…” Izzy chewed her lips. “But why would he do it? Seal himself in here with all this stuff if he was already infected, I mean.”
Erin shrugged.
“Maybe he thought he could outlast it somehow. Or maybe he was trying to protect his family from himself. Who knows?”
Erin’s eyes scanned the rows of meticulously prepared goods. This guy had clearly gone to a lot of trouble building and planning the whole thing, and in the end, all he’d really done was prep himself a tomb.
“I guess there’s a chance he didn’t know what would happen to him. He might have been infected early on before anyone knew what that meant and thought his best shot at surviving was to lock himself away until the craziness outside settled down. Or maybe he was just straight up in denial. I think some of these prepper types had a fantasy that being prepared would mean they’d be guaranteed survival. But all it takes is—”
Erin had turned to study the second shelf, and what she saw made her lose her train of thought entirely.
“Jeezum motherfucking crow,” she said finally.
This second shelving unit held boxes and boxes of ammunition of every kind. Rounds for every caliber weapon in the bunker, plus birdshot, buckshot, and slugs for the shotgun.
Izzy squatted down and jostled a container on the floor-level shelf.
“Rifle powder…” she said, reading one of the labels. “What’s that for? Cleaning the guns or something?”
Erin moved the lantern closer and stared at the tub.
“No way.”
“What?” Izzy asked.
Erin sidestepped her way through the narrow gap between the shelves to the farthest end of the bunker. There was a tool bench with an array of presses and vices and calipers and a scale. Erin set down the lantern to inspect them.
“Yes!”
Izzy appeared behind her.
“What is all this stuff?”
“That,” Erin pointed at a device clamped to the workbench, “is a reloading press. For making cartridges and shells by hand.”
Izzy’s eyes squinched down as she considered this.
“So… we can make our own bullets?”
“Yep.”
“This is pretty much our best haul ever, huh?”
“Oh yeah. No contest.” They’d found food stashes on par with this a few times, but never this much ammo. “I think we should leave most of the food this time around and focus on the ammunition and reloading gear. That’s more important than more canned goods. In a few days, we’ll bring the big trailer up and get the rest.”
They moved back toward the ladder, and Izzy took both lanterns in h
and while Erin climbed up. She’d just hoisted herself onto the bottom rung when Izzy tugged at her pantleg.
“Erin. Look.” Izzy moved the light closer to the nearest wall.
There were marks on the wall. Scratches and what looked like smears of blood. It was a moment before Erin realized what they were.
Claw marks.
“I wonder if those are from before or after he turned,” Izzy said.
Erin shuddered, not wanting to think about it.
“Come on,” Erin said as she began to climb. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Louis
Tennessee
1 year, 53 days after
The car drifted in slow motion. Suspended in the murky liquid. Fully submerged and slowly sinking.
Waiting to hit bottom.
The quiet was overwhelming. The water blocked out all sound. Muffled it. Smothered it. Closed its black wetness around the vehicle, around them. Cupped them beneath the glass of the windows like grasshoppers trapped in a jar.
Then the surging rapids encroached. Churned around them. Toward them. Made little kissing sounds where the water fluttered against the cracks between the doors. Trickling into every crevice to weigh them down, Louis knew.
The front end crunched against the bottom at last. Made a sucking sound. Squishing into the mud. The tires touched down a beat later, rocking the vehicle.
Fuck.
Louis slid his hand to the door handle. Some instinct to bail out flailed in his chest. Panic ordering him to yank the handle, bash his shoulder into the door. Flee. Escape.
But it was probably too late for that, some rational part of him knew. The pressure of all that water would pin the door closed. He could strain against its might, but opening it was probably already impossible.
He remembered that you were supposed to lay down in the seat and kick out a window in such cases. Escape the sinking vehicle that way. He pictured himself lying back, both legs flaring outward, shattering that sheet of glass. He could do that, if it came to it, which seemed seconds away from their reality.