by McBain, Tim
By the end of the first week, the worry had let up some, though. It had to, he figured. Even the most anxious parent couldn’t maintain that level of trepidation forever.
Everything became normal after a while. The worst things and the best things alike had a way of turning mundane, started floating beneath the radar of your notice in time, fading into the background to be forgotten, taken for granted, merely endured. It was one of the best and worst aspects of being human, he thought. A great gift and a terrible curse all at once.
He’d zigzagged back through Ohio now, looting and scavenging and rooting around for baby supplies. He scoured the atlas, sort of checking off a list as they worked their way through the state. He targeted small towns, flipping to the back of his Rand McNally to check out population numbers. Stopping in the small towns all across the state. Places he’d never heard of like Pioneer, Denison, Cambridge, Sugar Creek, Wooster, Findlay, and so forth. He figured the largest cities would have been picked pretty clean by now. Too many people still knocking about in your Clevelands, Cincinnatis, Columbuses, Daytons, and the like. Too many people.
And his plan paid off. Baby formula seemed in relative abundance, which he thought strange. But then maybe babies were among the least likely to make it. That thought sent a shiver down his spine, so he pushed it away, didn’t let it return.
He and Lorraine had already looted some formula back before all of this, had a couple cans of it stowed in the trunk of the car, ready to roll as soon as if became when. In the two weeks since the girl’s birth, however, Louis had built up a six to seven month supply of the stuff. He found a case of cans in the backroom of a Dollar General in Montpelier, Ohio — a full 24 cans, comprising almost two and a half months worth alone. The rest came by ones and twos, usually tucked out of sight somewhere, way in the back of the grocery store shelves or hidden under the cardboard and paper garbage strewn about these ravaged buildings. In any case, it was nice to have that cushion built up, to know that the baby would have food for a while yet.
Diapers, on the other hand, he was a little low on. The convenience of disposable diapers no longer waited for him at every corner store. No Pampers. No Huggies. No Luvs. No Pull-Ups lurking down the road.
He often used whatever fabric he could find, tied in a strange wrap around the kid’s middle, and scrapped it once it was soiled. He had neither the time nor the supplies to stop and wash shit out of an old Motley Crue t-shirt in a stream or something every time the kid crapped. Better to toss the loaded things in the woods. Keep a pee-pad for dogs as a layer of protection on her car seat.
Besides, most any house along the way had a supply of shirts and other fabric pieces that could work for the time being. Eventually, if they settled down somewhere, he’d figure out something better. Legit cloth diapers that he’d wash, maybe.
It was hard, he thought, to think that far ahead. Even next week seemed a flimsy thing just now. Nothing inevitable. A mere possibility. Not something he could entirely count on. So he didn’t waste a lot of time pondering it.
They rolled down the road now, onward to the next town. Alone on the highway save for the occasional broken down heap on the side of the road. Some of the rotting cars still contained corpses going frail and black, the sun beating down every day to shrivel and cook them down that little bit more.
Rayne cooed in her baby seat. He looked over his shoulder, found her eyes bright as always, pounding a little fist in the air.
The kid vocalized now and then, but she didn’t cry as much as he’d expected. She really got going maybe twice a week, little body quivering, face going veiny and red with her sobs, and that sucked, but he’d figured it’d be every night or something. Most of the time, she just wooed out single syllables, neither whiny nor happy sounding. Almost more like a sound a baby bird would make than a human.
And now Louis remembered again. The aftermath playing in his head.
The thinning corpses surrounding the car had cleared the rest of the way out that night after Lorraine died. The universe finally showing them some small mercy.
The dark had been so strange, clutching this tiny baby in his arms, the sweltering heat in the car only slowly dying back under the black of night. And the shifting and scraping and shuffling outside played on and on. The dead things writhing just beyond these panes of glass surrounding them, even if they couldn’t see anything just now.
He didn’t really notice the thinning of those sounds. Didn’t really recognize their absence until sometime around dawn. It clicked all at once. There were no sounds outside. Not anymore. How long had they been gone? He didn’t know. Almost didn’t believe his ears in the moment.
But the light rose up from the horizon, vanquished the awful night, and he could see that they were alone here, at last. The empty land stretched out in all directions — signs of the flood still present everywhere. Fallen trees formed tangled messes of deadfall they’d have to navigate, especially to get back here with a fresh car. He knew he’d need to do that, to load all of their things out of this one to take going forward. All the gas, food, water containers. These were too valuable to leave behind.
He’d buried Lorraine only after he’d taken care of all the rest.
The new car he’d looted from a farmhouse a few miles down the road. He could get it to within 100 yards or so of the other car, and after many trips on foot, all their possessions were loaded within.
Then he’d found a spot in the woods there near where the end happened. The earth still black and wet, a little muddy, from all the rain. It made digging a grave easier, he thought, for the most part. The soil was a little heavier, maybe, but the ground was soft. Workable.
He gouged a nice deep trench here. Worked up an incredible sweat doing so, the muggy air clinging to his skin, making his t-shirt stick to his back. He hoped it was deep enough that she could rest undisturbed, and he thought it was. She deserved that, even if it meant little to her or anyone else at this point. It just felt right.
And he scooped the body out of its spot in the front seat of the car. Floppy and heavy and smelling vaguely like vomit. Rigor mortis must have passed already, which surprised him. But he’d slept not at all. Had lost track of many aspects of reality. Wasn’t sure how much time had passed while he wandered off for the next car, cared for the baby and so forth. Days, it must have been.
He dragged the body out through the weeds, tangles of foliage snagging and grasping after her all the while. The plant life agitated, shaking with its greed for her.
He nestled her down into the hole. Folded her arms over her chest. Closed her one eye that’d peeled open along the walk here.
She looked peaceful, more than he’d expected. The skin of her face slack. Not pleasant, but at ease to some degree.
He shoveled some of that soil and spilled it over her. It’d dried some in the time since he’d excavated it, its black giving way to dark gray. And flecks of its dark spotted her face now, the spots growing in size and coverage as he spooned on another load.
Back to the earth. That’s where she was going. She’d fertilize this little piece of land. And the cycle would continue. The world would move on.
Death creates life that way. Always has. Always will.
Baghead
Rural Maryland
9 years, 40 days after
At the bottom of the steps, Baghead found a hallway. The door straight ahead, partially open, led into a bathroom. The two doors to the left were closed, presumably bedrooms. The hallway opened up to the right, a large living area there from what he remembered. Yes. This would be the place with the big TV mounted on the far wall, the set of black leather furniture slowly going white in places as it wore thin and cracked. It was too dark down there just now to confirm any of this with his eyes.
He stood. Pondered the layout a moment. Tried to remember which bedroom was more likely to be Father’s, though he didn’t think anyone else was here now. He was almost sure of it.
A stirring in the big liv
ing space caught his attention. A deep metallic groan — perhaps the shifting of a box spring under a mattress — immediately followed by a peculiar scraping.
Baghead drew the handgun from his belt. Pointed it toward the place the sound came from. So this would be where it all went down.
Light flared in the darkness. The head of a match bursting into a brilliance that died back to its tiny flame. The light moved, disappeared a moment, and then he could see that it’d lit a lantern. The glow grew, the little wheel next to it squeaking as it fed more oil to the flame.
Father’s face took shape there next to the orange ball of light, first just half of it, then the full visage emerging from the darkness. He looked old. Haggard. Wrinkled and craggy and jowled beyond his years. Father’s body only seemed to arrive a few seconds after his head, the delay somehow adding an eerie effect to the scene.
“Long time, no see,” Father said, smiling. Then his eyes looked down at the gun in Baghead’s hand, and his smile faded to half its original power. “I suppose you’re here to kill me, huh? Well, that ought to fix everything. Set the world right again, at long last. The hero slays the villain, and they all live happily ever after.”
The room had been rearranged since Baghead’s last visit. The bed lay in here now, before the TV. That probably spoke to the rumors Bags had heard about Father’s poor health, that he was mostly bedridden. Feeble. He must lie in here and watch TV all day — mostly inert like Deirdre had suggested.
The leather sectional still sprawled in the other corner, now stitched together in places by duct tape — silver tendrils veining the fading black exterior where it was falling apart. The love seat and recliner must have broken down in time, the stuffing coming loose where the cow’s skin broke down to nothing. Surrendered, at last, to time and wear — just as we all eventually were.
The TV itself was nothing special by old world standards. A low end model LCD screen, maybe 50” or so. Maybe less. Most of them would have been zapped, though, by the EMP. That made it a rare enough find to become a figment of legend, regardless of its position at birth — a rags to riches electronics story.
Father reached for the nightstand, his hand stopping short of the table.
“Don’t shoot,” he said, smirking at Baghead. “Not yet, anyway. Just going for a smoke. I’ve been trying to cut back, but… Well, you can see my predicament here. Harder to worry about cancer with the barrel of a gun in your face.”
Another match scraped and popped, a fresh gleam blooming from the red chemical tip, staining the wood black almost right away. He brought the flame to the end of his cigarette and hit it. Exhaled smoke a second later as he shook the match out.
“I deserve it, you know,” Father said. “Death, I mean. I deserve it, and I know it. That much is true. I’ve done some terrible things.”
“I thought you were going to say that you talk too fucking much.”
Father chuckled out a little smoke.
“That, too. The reasons to execute me are plentiful, I suppose. I’ve benefited from injustice. Lied. Lived like a king off the suffering of the many.”
“But?”
“Hm?”
“Seems like you’re leading up to a ‘but.’”
“You were always a sharp one, sharper than I knew back then. The truth is, despite my flaws and my many trespasses, my death will only bring about only more death, more suffering, more loss.”
“How do you figure that?”
“There’s bad blood between some in our camp and some in the Sovereign Cities. Bad enough that I’m probably the only one keeping us from war, ironic though that may seem to an outsider, a particularly clear-eyed one at that. I admit I want peace, in part, out of selfishness. What does it benefit me to tie up resources, both physical and political, in battle? But those among my flock in favor of a violent solution — the true believers — only seem to be growing in both number and resolve. Sometimes I think it’s more a matter of when than if, even if I do hang around a while yet.”
He tapped his cigarette in a small glass ash tray next to the bed before he went on.
“That’s why I issued the order for your death. Once I saw the situation for what it was — me the unlikely voice of reason standing between war and peace — I thought it best to tie up that loose end roving around out there, the pain in my balls publishing my life story unbeknownst to my flock. I appreciate the indirectness of it all. Makes for a better story, for one thing, but it kept me in the clear. Not sure what the people here at camp would think, honestly, if they knew the full story — Decker to Jones to Father — but I do believe my political enemies could use it against me, use it to get me out of the picture so they could get on with their preemptive strike sooner than later. It was nothing personal. I’m sure you understand that. Just like what you’re doing here isn’t personal, is it?”
Baghead adjusted his grip on the Beretta. He wanted to reply, but his tongue seemed attached to the top of his mouth with rubber cement. What would he even say?
Would he claim that it wasn’t personal? Would he revel in telling him that it was personal, that he hated him with all his heart? Could both be true at the same time?
Would he tell him that this was for Lorraine and Ray and everyone else? Or was it better to say nothing? Not a single word. Just squeeze the trigger, let ol’ Beri Sue do the talking for him?
The lantern spit a couple times, the flame lurching in its little glass dome, and Father reached over to turn it down a tick.
“Gives you an interesting choice, yeah? Sort of philosophical, you know. You have to ask yourself: are you more of a pragmatist or an idealist? Is the gun in your hand half empty or half full, so to speak?”
Baghead licked his lips. Considered the words just spoke, the demeanor of the one who spoke them. The man’s line of reasoning seemed clear. Sound. Truthful. Father wasn’t lying when he laid the scenario out. Bags had even heard a bit about this impending conflict in some of the journals and letters, the long simmering feud between the bikers and the cult people seemed ready to boil over.
Still, Baghead’s finger trembled against the trigger. He’d come all this way to change something, to do something. And now maybe it was the wrong thing. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe the cycle of vengeance and violence never ended until someone stopped, someone skipped their turn at seeking satisfaction through spilling blood and maybe, once in a while, it helped. Maybe staying one’s hand was the first step toward a better world.
Or maybe not.
“You want to be successful in this world, in this life, you’ve got to give the people what they want, give them something they understand,” Father said. “That was what changed everything for me, realizing that, really grasping it. Once I saw how the world kind of fell at Ray Dalton’s feet it came to me, right? He seemed a grifter to me and a fairly obvious one at that. Hell, he’d been charged with fraud and everything, stripped of his church, of his flock. And yet, the people in camp loved him, revered him. Worshiped him.”
He hit his cigarette. Let the smoke roll out of his nostrils.
“And something in that clicked for me. It dawned on me that throughout all of human history, mankind has sought after messiahs. Whether it was Jesus or Elvis or Gandhi or Kurt Cobain. They sought saviors. Lords. Magical creatures. Humans to deify.”
Another puff on the cigarette. Another plume of smoke coiling around his head.
“I suppose it raises an interesting question: Are we coded to look for that because there really is, was, or will be a messiah? Or is it just another quirk in the randomness spilling out of our subconscious minds? Another flaw of the human imagination. Another meaningless whim of the archetypal lens through which we see the world.
“So I put on the messiah hat. Played the role. Gave the people something to believe in, something to put their hope and faith in. And it occurred to me that my power wasn’t fake. Isn’t fake. It exists, even now, in the hearts and minds of my followers, the same as any other kind of f
aith or belief. That’s the only place faith can exist, you know? Once someone holds a belief in their heart, it’s as real as anything else.”
He crushed his cigarette out in the ash tray. The cherry hissed as it touched the glass.
“And now I find, to my endless surprise, that I use this role to do good in the world. To keep the peace. Which, you know, spirals us back to the crux of the matter. Baghead’s choice. What to do, what to do? It’s a stumper, ain’t it?”
He smiled. Eyes piercing the empty space before him.
“You start your life trying to do what you think is right. I think we all do that.” His voice was soft now. His eyes pointed down, still staring hard at nothing. “But somewhere along the way, you get going down a track, you get to barreling forward, some momentum seeming to carry you somewhere of its own volition. And maybe one day it occurs to you that there’s no right thing to do anymore. There’s maybe a series of choices, but the right and wrong of it have blurred, have lost much of their meaning. Then what do you do?”
They were quiet a long moment, Baghead’s tongue still wriggling against the roof of his mouth as though itching to speak.
But no. No more words.
Fuck it.
He stepped forward. Forearm flexing. Finger squeezing the trigger.
The muzzle blazed. Popped. A little flame licking out from the barrel.
And the blast echoed off the walls in this small space. An incredible crack that seemed to shudder around the room.
And the gun jerked in his hand. A firm tug. Something aggressive in his grip, fighting him a little. He clenched it tighter.
Squeezed the trigger again.
Again. Again. Again.
He kept squeezing the trigger. The sharp sounds trying to split open this little room with sheer volume.
The frail body jerked on the bed. Flailed. A floppy thing in motion. Slack. Drooping. Sagging. As though most of the bones had been removed from the torso.