by McBain, Tim
He let his fingertips graze the wall as he plunged his way down the hall. Eventually he felt the protruding trim around the door followed almost at once by the vacancy — the dipped place where the door lay. This was Delfino’s room.
He took a breath. Braced himself for a bout of patience. He had to be extra quiet here. Too much risk of noise. Better to take it slow and get it right.
His hand moved in slow motion, drifting through empty space, feeling for the doorknob. After what seemed like several minutes, he found it. Turned it. Swung the door wide.
Elongated rectangles of light angled in through the windows in the room beyond the doorway. And he could vaguely discern the lumpy shape in the center of the bed before him — this would be the driver. He looked skinnier sprawled on the bed, angular and pointed like his body was all made of sticks.
Baghead stood there in the doorway for a second, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom in this room, trying to figure how best to wake Delfino without scaring the shit out of him.
A little scraping sound got his attention after a second, startled him a little. A rasp. Dry. Like some fibrous root vegetable being dragged over a cheese grater at a slow and steady rhythm. It was Delfino snoring, he realized.
That got him laughing a little bit, mostly silent little puffs of air shaking out of him. And after that, the tension seemed to have drained from the situation. He wasn’t so worried about any of this.
He stepped forward. Walked alongside Delfino’s bed, careful not to trip. Leaned over the sleeping figure a little.
“Hey. Delfino. Wake up.”
Baghead’s voice came out quiet and gritty. A touch louder than a whisper.
Delfino’s reaction seemed oddly delayed. After a second of quiet, his breathing hitched once, and he sat up, gasping.
“The fuck?”
Baghead stood in one area of moonlight, his index finger pressed to the mouth hole of his mask.
“It’s me. I didn’t want to wake the others up.”
“Oh. Oh, hey. What’s up?”
“Let’s get outside, get some privacy. I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah, sure. Let me get dressed.”
While Delfino clothed himself, Baghead headed out, the wood floor groaning as he passed through the hallway. Prolonged whines and whimpers that reminded him of a cranky dog. Not bad enough to wake anyone else, it seemed.
He pushed through the screen door and waited on the little wooden porch. The night air was thick and chilly. It gripped him along the length of his spine, sent a little chill through him. He crossed arms and rocked himself back and forth on the balls of his feet to try to keep warm.
The crickets chirped out in the dark. It sounded like thousands of them lifting their voices in unison. Probably complaining about the cold, he thought.
Delfino came out a couple minutes later. He looked tired, something about the flesh of his face resembling a baby’s just now. A little swelling, it seemed, in his cheeks and under his eyes — something about this looked exactly like a freshly woken infant or toddler.
The driver lit a cigarette. Puffed it once. Asked a question with smoke venting from his maw.
“What’s up?”
“Tonight’s the night,” Baghead said. “I figure better to head out under the cover of darkness. If we leave now, it’ll still be night when we get there. I’ll have you drop me about a mile out from the camp. That’s where we’ll part ways, and I’ll pay you, of course.”
“Damn. For real?”
“For real.”
“You’re going to take the last mile on foot?”
“That’s the plan.”
Delfino sucked on his cigarette hard enough that it crackled once. His face seemed to change every few seconds, a range of expressions coming over his features as his emotions shifted. Surprise. Doubt. Sadness. Skepticism. Worry.
“I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think…. I thought we were sticking together until the end, I guess, brother. Riding this thing out. Seeing where we wound up and proceeding from there. I hadn’t thought about, you know, you going that last little bit on your own.”
Baghead nodded.
“I think it’ll be best this way.”
“I mean, are you sure? You’re still recovering. Couldn’t even walk as recently as the other day. Together we might stand a better chance. Teamwork and shit.”
“Better chance of…?”
“Living, mostly. Survivin’, you know? It’s all the rage these days. Back a few years ago, dying was more popular. Plague was a big fad. Getting ripped apart by reanimated corpses had a moment there, too. But now, the pendulum’s done swung back the other way. It’s straight up surviving that the kids are into. Living on for an indefinite period of time. It’s wild.”
Baghead chuckled a little.
“Yeah, well, no one lives forever. I wasn’t really planning on surviving this one, but if the chance comes up, if an opportunity presents itself, I could give it a whirl.”
Delfino
Rural Virginia
9 years, 40 days after
Delfino’s hands trembled a little against the steering wheel. Nerves, he thought. Worried about Bags, thinking more and more that this whole thing — the whole ride back here and everything else — was a damn suicide mission, that maybe it always was that, and he’d just never sniffed it out before. Well, he was glad that the dark would conceal the little tremors in his wrists and fingers. Thankful for once that the Delta 88’s dashboard lights had died long, long ago.
The car rumbled through the night, headlights slicing open enough of the darkness to blaze their trail. The broken yellow line in the middle of the road reflected back at them, shining bright one sliver at a time.
The gray of the asphalt looked smoother just here, less rough than much of what they’d traversed along their way. This stretch of road was holding up pretty good, all things considered. That seemed right to Delfino somehow, that the last part of the journey would be the easiest. The calm before the big ass storm, he thought.
He knew that he wanted to talk Baghead out of this, one way or another. Reason with him. Talk sense through that damn canvas bag in such a way that it might even sink through the skull beneath and register somewhere in there.
What he didn’t know was what the hell to say. Part of him thought, of course, that Baghead should drop this altogether. Let it go. Whatever bad blood might lie between him and Father wasn’t changing. One of those things in life, the unchanging mess you had to navigate, sort of like the big rocks you had to pick your way through and around. Can’t move ‘em, hombre. Gotta find a way to work with that.
You can’t fix this, no matter what you do. So why fight it? Why waste your time and energy here? Spend yourself here. Just let it go.
But he didn’t figure any suggestions so sweeping would go over well. Better to be strategic about all of this. Better to aim low, something Delfino knew a thing or two about.
If he could talk Bags into letting him stick around, letting him ride along until the very end of the road, he thought he might be able to see the two of them through all of it. He didn’t know why. Just a gut feeling that he could talk them out of trouble when Baghead either couldn’t or wouldn’t. At the very least, he’d be another set of arms and legs in a fight. Of course, physical conflict didn’t seem likely to end in their favor no matter what, now that they were heading into the lair of the enemy. It’d be a few thousand to 1 or 2. Hardly a fair fight.
OK. No more dallying. Just talk now. Let the words come spilling out and fix ‘em up as you go, like you always do.
He cleared his throat. Rubbed at his neck with the tips of his index finger and thumb, as though the words could be loosened with an impromptu massage.
No words came. Shit. He hadn’t expected that.
Wait. Wait. Gotta wet the whistle. That’s all. It was like priming the well pump. You wet the ol’ beak, get it nice and damp, and the words come a-flowing out in a beautiful stream.
> He licked his lips. Took a little breath. Nailed it. Go time.
His mouth opened. Chops parting. He felt the words tickling at his gorge.
Still nothing but wind came out of the big hole in his face.
Shit on a crumpet.
He dabbed a finger at his lips. Found them appropriately juicy. Dang whistle was wet enough, probably more than wet enough, if anything. He’d thought for sure that’d do the trick.
He couldn’t remember being this rattled, at least not when it came to something as natural as talking. It made no sense. Talking was the one thing he was good at, wasn’t it? The one thing he could do no matter what, where, when, how, or who.
Not that he was some brilliant orator who was going to inspire great things in the world with just the right set of words. Hell no. He was just a fella who could fill the time with his voice, his observations. Find the amusing bits and share them. Ask questions that triggered curiosity in himself and others. He could always do that, fall back on it, and now it was gone. Ripped away from him when he needed it most.
Funny what imminent death could do to a person, even when it wasn’t their own.
The headlights gleamed on tree branches and leaves outside. All that foliage a bright green blur along the sides of the road.
Delfino circled back over his thoughts. Questions. He could ask questions. That was one thing he could always do. Like the damn Socratic method or whatever the hell, asking a bunch of damn questions to make his point. Delfino may not be as wise as old So-crates, may not possess generational rhetorical skills or anything beyond an 8th grade education, but he would always be curious. That he had in spades. So use it.
He licked his lips again. Better to err on the side of very moist at this point, he figured. Leave no doubt with the wetness of the whistle. And at last he spoke.
“Mind if I ask you something?” His hands went a little numb on the wheel as he asked.
Baghead’s voice spoke from the darkness.
“Go ahead.”
Delfino could only see the silhouette of the bag against the window, no other details, so he wasn’t sure which way his friend was facing. Something about that was unnerving just now.
“You were joking, right? All that talk about not planning on surviving this one. You were being fatuous or whatever. Or facetious, maybe. I always get those two words confused, but… Bottom line: You were fuckin’ bullshittin’, right?”
Baghead hesitated a second before he answered, taking a deep breath, perhaps really thinking about it.
“I don’t know. You ever plan for something, focus on it so completely, that you can’t really think about what will come after? You can’t. It’s like that one upcoming event is the only thing that’s real, the only thing. Everything else can only matter once that event is over, once it’s done. Well, that’s how I feel about this. I’ll figure out the rest of my life after, if there still is one.”
Delfino shook his head.
“Look, I get what you’re sayin’, but…. Well, I feel like I’d be remiss in my role as a genteel and refined gentleman if I didn’t try to dissuade you of this craziness. You know how it is. Us sophisticates have to do our part to keep the peace, end the bloodshed and what have ya.”
Baghead said nothing, so Delfino rambled on.
“Why go it alone? I could walk in there with you. Tag team pardnas, ya know? Better yet, tag team motherfuckin’ champions. Undefeated.”
“Because you were never supposed to be part of this.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means I didn’t want to drag anyone else into it. Means I want it to stay between me and Father, if I can.”
“But the world doesn’t work that way. I’ve been part of it a long time now. Maybe it’s only been days, a little over a week, but it feels like years, doesn’t it? Too late, dude. I’m here. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Believe me, I’ve tried. Squirted way too much on accident, you know? Got a big wad of it all flopping off the side of the brush, dangling like some weird bodily fluid or something. You go ahead and try any method you can think of, but the goo don’t go back in there. No sir. Not even a little bit.”
Baghead let out a breath before he answered, though Delfino wasn’t sure what emotion to read in the sound.
“Well, you’ve participated. Risked greatly to help me out. That was your choice, and I thank you for it. But now… We’re at the end of the line. The end of the journey. Might not make it back. I don’t want you to surrender to that.”
“Shouldn’t I have some say in what I do and don’t do?”
“This doesn’t feel like the end of your story to me. That’s what I think. I like the idea that you will carry on from here, OK? It’s one of the things that makes me able to go do this, knowing that you’ll still be out there in the world, that Ruth will still be out there. That even if I don’t make it out, the world will carry on. So I’d rather you lay back, keep to your own path. You’ve helped me a great deal, but your services are no longer needed.”
Delfino lit a cigarette, a stray puff of smoke roiling up past his nose and eyes. His nerves were gone, but now he felt a different kind of jitter enter his bloodstream, spread through his body. He was powerless to change Baghead’s mind, and it made him feel antsy.
“I see where you’re coming from, but nothing good can come of this. You just think on that. If our roles were reversed, you wouldn’t let me do this, would you?”
Baghead huffed.
“I don’t know. Hypotheticals aren’t so interesting to me just now. I’m not trying to be a dick about it. It’s just… We’re too close to the camp for that, you know? Too close to the end of the road.”
Delfino puffed on his cig. It felt good to breathe smoke. Somehow, it never stopped feeling good, even as the years and years drained by, this one little tactile habit maintaining its pleasure.
“Well, tell me about your plan at least. Give me something that might put my mind at ease or some such. Anything is better than not knowing nothing.”
“You sure you want to know?”
“Morbid curiosity, my friend. Lay it on me.”
“I’m not too sure about all the particulars, to be honest. I think I can get past the gates. I know some people there. Can call in a favor of sorts. After that, I’ll just see where it all goes.”
Delfino listened carefully to Baghead’s voice. His friend sounded as calm as he’d ever heard him. Maybe there was something to that.
“Crap plan. No offense. I mean, it barely even qualifies as a plan. It’d be like if Thomas Edison’s plan was to ‘invent things,’ you know? That’s not a plan. It’s sort of a very general goal, I guess. Sort of vague, I expect.”
“I feel like I’ll know what to do when I get there. That’s the best I can tell you.”
“Yeah, well. My mind ain’t exactly eased by that, believe it or frickin’ not.”
Louis
Rural Tennessee
1 year, 55 days after
Lorraine hadn’t spoken a word in 8 hours. Maybe longer.
The sun was going down now. Blushing to something redder as it met the horizon. Louis remembered checking it, finding it almost directly overhead when he’d first noticed her prolonged silence. The way he figured, it had to be at least 8 hours from noon to sunset.
She sat in her seat, looking out at the herd of them milling around out there like grazing cattle. Her expression, mostly blank, perhaps held a hint of revulsion in the way the corners of her mouth bent down. Something pouchy about her cheeks as a result.
He was worried about her. He hadn’t admitted that to himself until something like four hours into the quiet, but now it was undeniable. She was cracking up, wasn’t she? The pressure of this situation. It was getting to her.
Still, he didn’t want to prod.
She was upset. They both were.
And of course she was scared. He was, too.
Her mind, though. Her mind was starting to go a little loopy, he th
ought, and he didn’t want to press her. Not now. Any perceived conflict could only make things worse.
Eight hours without a word. The word catatonic sprang to mind, though Louis knew it wasn’t accurate here. She was still aware of her surroundings, still alert. She was simply mute. A conscious choice.
He leaned into the backseat to grab a jug of water, brought it to his lap, drank. Then he offered it to her, hovering it in the place between the seats.
She didn’t respond. Didn’t look at him. Didn’t blink.
Had she drank during this long silence? He couldn’t remember. She must have, though. She must have.
He hesitated, the milk jug of water now trembling a little between them. He lowered it to the center console and hesitated. Should he leave it there? Leave it within arm’s reach for her to drink when she wanted?
He tried balancing it, letting it go, but it wobbled. Precarious.
He sighed. Put the water back in its place in the back.
He swallowed. A hollow feeling in his chest. He tried to reassure himself, tried to feel good about the notion that they still had enough water to ride this out another day or two, but it didn’t seem to help.
Facing forward again, Louis rustled his hands against the steering wheel, that smooth Polyurethane cool against his palms and fingers. Soothing.
Night was coming on, a prospect both terrifying and a little exciting. The stuffiness in the car would recede as the dark settled, he thought. The cool would seep in, offer them some small kind of comfort.
Still, losing the light would hardly be worth the trade.
Another night of endless darkness. Knowing the dead were just there, on the other side of the glass, even if he wouldn’t be able to see them so much anymore. He shuddered just thinking about it.
He glanced at Lorraine, hoping she might speak finally. Break her silence at long last.
Instead, when she saw his gaze reaching her way, she turned to angle herself away from him.