by Chris Lowry
Second was beer.
Always those two first.
Then a dime bag to last out the week, and back then, if it was a stressful week, a nickel bag on the weekend. It sounds like such a tiny amount now, $10 and $5, but the minimum wage at the time was just over $2, so you're talking working more than half a day to smoke a joint in the morning and one at night, sometimes two.
That makes no sense to me?
But while high, and maybe even sober, Mom was California Dreaming.
She was a part of the free love generation and shared much in common with Jenny, Forrest Gump's lifelong love from the movie.
Same Alabama upbringing, same trip through the foster system.
A lot of the same bad choices, or if I'm not being completely judgmental, just choices that in retrospect seem bad.
Who can blame her, right?
She was just a kid when I was born. Nineteen. With no life skills and little more life experience. How could she be expected to do a great job raising children?
Except I see it every day now with almost all moms.
It's tough to do a good job with children because of society, because of beliefs, because of impossible to reach standards imposed by media looking to sell advertising space to companies.
It's crazy.
But more on that in a moment.
Let's get back to Mom sitting on the couch, blazing up a doobie while we watched Three's Company and Love Boat on a Tuesday night.
She would talk about California.
We should move to California.
California was great.
The Sunshine State is where all the good things are, it's the land of opportunity.
I wonder how life would have turned out had her car not broken down on the way out West.
Which brings me to my belief system.
I was brought up in an environment where CA was the answer to most of life's problems. I visited when I was eighteen, moved there at twenty, and again at twenty-six.
I left a city with a population of 38,000 and drove straight into LA and a population of around 9 million at the time.
There was a city of homeless people camped out on the sidewalks, bums everywhere, lots of immigrants (my limited exposure to immigrants prior to that time was a ton of Cuban refugees housed in a military camp in Fort Smith. I'd never seen them but they were on the nightly news).
I don't know if you can even call it culture shock.
It was different.
Different from what I expected, and different for what I thought might happen.
The streets did not flow with milk or honey and no one was waiting for me with a book that had all of the answers in it.
There was just another walk through the woods with just my thoughts.
And a branch I picked up in case I stumbled across a straggler Z or felt eyes on me from the trees.
But the tree frogs and insects hummed like it wasn’t the end of the world and I couldn’t help but enjoy the hike.
CHAPTER NINE
I didn't relish the thought of hoofing it fifty miles or so to Livingston.
Back before the Z Armageddon, I'd sign up for fifty-mile races for fun and try to knock them out in twelve hours or less.
Some went over mountain and down in dell's, while most in Florida liked to add water to the mix so you were slogging through muck and moisture up to your shins, always on watch for ever present alligators.
It wasn't a matter of could I do it.
I wanted to save some time.
I angled back for the road, trying to follow the path Mel led us in on.
It would take me back to the road and I'd try to find some wheel to move forward, even if it was a bicycle. Sixteen miles an hour was a hell of a lot faster than three.
I smelled the body before I saw it.
At first, I thought it was a zombie.
The scent of rotting flesh wavered up out of the ground around me.
Then I wondered if it was one of the bodies I suspected Mel of hiding. Not in a serial killer-ish way, but in a survival sort of manner.
She was a woman alone in the woods, just trying to live in a zombie filled world and she deserved the right to protect herself.
I stopped on the side of the trail and tried not to sniff too loudly. The woods weren't quiet though. Insects hummed, and though I couldn't see any birds, I could hear chirping and chatters. Small animals rustled in the undergrowth around me, squirrels or rabbits.
It must be easy enough for her to stock her pot with small game with that much around.
No footsteps though.
No dragging shuffle through the leaves that would alert me to a Z, and the animals I couldn't see didn't seem afraid, otherwise they would scram.
Dead body then.
I tried to follow my nose and thought about Toucan Sam, the Fruit Loop bird leading kids to delicious processed breakfast cereal and even though my stomach was full, my mouth salivated at the thought.
It was gross.
Smelling a dead body and feeling hungry for Fruit Loops at the same time.
I'll never understand the way the brain works.
I found him at the bottom of a tree.
The Z hadn't.
He was clothed in camo gear, an AR-15 nestled barrel down over his shoulder. Both hands were splayed out from his body, a Glock 19 covered in dried blood, mud, and dirt.
The side of his head was gone, as was his face.
He had shoes though.
Some people might be squeamish shucking shoes off a dead guy, but I had just been hungry with rotting flesh, so he wasn't me.
I untied the laces and tried not to gag as what was left of his gooey foot dissolved inside the thick wool socks as I pulled.
There went my hunger.
The second one came off as well, and I debated carrying the thick leather hiking boots until I found stream to wash them off.
But the bottom of my feet hurt.
Rocks and roots and tiny sharp pebbles seemed to seek out the soles and jab them with merciless abandon.
And my stupid feet wouldn't toughen up enough to stand it.
I slipped the boots on over my socks and vowed to exchange all of them as soon as I found replacements, and burn the lot of them.
They weren't big enough.
"Damn it, dead guy," I sighed.
I checked the body and found a knife, then spent a few minutes cutting out the toes of the boots.
Ever smelled stinky feet before? That cloying rotten stench of sweat foot and hard work that stick in the back of your nasal cavity and clings like it was oil?
Multiply that with dead guy smell and that's what wafted out of the boot tip as I sliced off the toe box.
I barely held down the rabbit stew and fought hard for the next boot.
It worked.
My toes hung over the tips of the sole, and there was no way I'd be able to make fifty miles in them, but it worked long enough.
I folded the knife closed and clipped it to the waist of my tattered pants, then stripped the body of rifle and pistol.
There were six shots in the handgun, eight in the magazine rifle and no more on the body.
Maybe that's why he decided to waste one in the woods. No more ammunition and he didn't feel like fighting the Z.
Or maybe he was bit.
I didn't know the guy's story, but he was one more gift on the trip walking through the woods.
That's the thing with willpower I think.
I shouldered the weapon and walked with the pistol in hand, finger on the outside of the trigger guard.
If you just keep going, everything changes.
Always move forward.
That was my motto running. That was my motto when I was going through divorces and on the long dark nights when I curled up on the floor in the townhouse by myself and cried from missing my kids so much.
Suck it up buttercup and get after it.
Keep moving forward.
So, I did
.
CHAPTER TEN
I didn't find a bicycle, but I guess it was the next best thing. A big fat tire three wheeled ATV that looked like a workhorse from the 80's at the bottom of a ditch on the side of the road.
I flipped it over and heard gas slosh in the tank.
"At least I hope it's gas," I said aloud.
I couldn't tell by the tracks leading out of the woods, but I wondered if my armed and rotting rescuer who owned the boots I now wore had rolled off the road, injured himself and crawled into the trees to die.
Too many potentials for that story to track down.
I focused on starting it instead. Gas, check. At least half a tank.
Tires had air. No visible damage, other than a lot of mud around the engine housing.
It was a crank start and there was only half a handle. The other half was snapped off, leaving a jagged sharp edge of plastic.
I covered my palm with my sleeve and gave it a pull.
It coughed.
No sputter, no turn.
I tried again with the same results.
Maybe I'd still have to hunt for a bike, I thought and squatted to examine the mud caked mess under the gas tank.
My knowledge of engines extended to gas, spark equals go.
Anything beyond that and it entered the realm of science fiction or magic. I knew what was supposed to happen on principle, but that didn't mean I knew how to make it work.
I found a toggle switch marked on, flipped it and gave the starter cord a pull.
The engine puttered once, twice and coughed itself to life.
I shook my head and climbed on board.
The old ATV throttles were just thumb switches. I pushed it forward and the machine moved ahead. Brakes on the left, a brutish metal plate that locked up the left rear tire, with a clutch on the right, simple three up.
After a steep learning curve, I was cruising along at a steady twenty miles per hour, listening to the knobby tires thud on the blacktop.
The sputter of the muffler was going to attract attention, be it Z or someone else.
But with half a tank and a good speed, I figured I'd make it to the city or close enough.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Livingston, I presumed.
Without a map, it was hard to tell, but the signs were there.
Literally, I was parked by a green sign on the side of the road that said, "LIVINGSTON CITY LIMITS."
My presumption was correct.
The ATV had done good service to get this far, and I bet I had enough gas to putter through town while I searched.
But the noise would give me away and turn my whole get there in stealth mode plan to crap.
I hopped off and rolled it past the sign, hiding it behind a house just in case.
For me, it was always about just in case.
It's why I closed doors on buildings I had stayed in, or tried to at least. What if I came back that way, what if I needed it again.
The what ifs could pile up quick.
I slung the rifle around into my hands, checked to make sure the safety was off, and began jogging forward.
That lasted all of ten steps.
The boots I had modified made moving fast impossible. I sat down, shucked them off and regretted it.
After a one-hundred-mile run, feet stink.
It just can't be helped.
The average foot drops a cup of sweat per day into a hot wet environment. Add running to that and it's ten times worse. It's a breeding ground for the bacteria that causes the smell.
This made runner's foot smell like honeysuckle.
I gagged.
Gagged again.
And wondered how the hell I could sneak up on anyone with the miasma of dead flesh hanging around.
The boots had kept it contained, but now it was spreading, and I'm not sure what laws of physics caused it, but the stench drifted right into my face no matter which way I turned.
There was only one solution, so I shuffled toward the town to find a house.
The first house was on the left, a small wooden bungalow structure. The front door was open and I was glad I didn't have to kick it in.
There wasn't any water in the place.
Even the back of the toilet was dry.
The second place was the same.
As if someone went house to house and drained it dry, even the water in the pipes. Not a drop to be found.
No food in any either, and most of the contents stripped.
I was in the tenth house and spied a shed in the back yard.
It was empty too, but through the dust covered window in the back wall, I saw the fence.
Granted, most of the communities that were built by survivors were surrounded by fences. It just made sense, otherwise there would be errant Z wandering through the streets hunting for brains to munch.
No one wants to be a mid-afternoon snack, so good fences made good neighbors as far as zombies were concerned.
This fence was a triple threat.
Literally three layers of fencing across a road. The first level was eight-foot hurricane fence on the closest side of a wide road.
The second layer was ten feet high and ran along the yellow center line and the third was fourteen feet and mirrored the curve of the blacktop on the far side.
I went around the back of the shed and studied it.
It ran as far as I could see along the road in either direction.
Someone had put some thought into the design and construction. The road was natural dead space and the three layers of metal made a clear picture of the other side difficult since the metal didn't line up.
I followed along the fence line as it stretched beside the road and passed a street sign.
Bradford Drive.
I kept going until the buildings become more commercial. There was a grocery store on the inside of the fence that looked whole, but everything on this side was burned or dilapidated, open to the elements.
The fence though, was well kept. Steel pipe reinforced each section in four-foot gaps, driven into the ground and covered in concrete for two feet.
Solid.
Like I said, someone was thinking about the design, and it was made for defense. Z weren't getting through.
I doubted a car could get through with the way the concrete sleeves were on the poles.
An intersection loomed ahead and I could make out the entrance.
There were two gates, a nice medieval design that I couldn't recall the name for as I stared at it.
My mind kept thinking a sally-port or sally forth, but it was basically an airlock system.
One gate opened, and you stepped into a tunnel.
It rolled back on squeaking wheels while I stood there.
An invitation.
I stepped inside.
When that gate closed behind you, the second would open to admit you to a long, gated walkway.
I noted the holes on top of the tunnel as I waited for the second gate to roll back.
Boots, legs and shadow covered faces stared down at me.
Good defensive positions and they could rain hell on zombies or anyone who decided to try and get through.
The walkway was a good design as well.
The twelve-foot hurricane fence was a maze of poles and metal mesh that turned sharp corners at random intervals and even at one point folded back on itself so that anyone walking through it was approaching the inner section of the outer wall.
Any attackers would be exposed running the gauntlet and easy to take down.
There was another closed and locked gate at the end of the couple hundred yards long fenced walkway, an armed guard waiting to let anyone through.
I stood staring through the wire and gave him a nod.
He nodded back and smiled.
"Welcome to Flotsam Paradise," he said in a fair imitation of Chris Tucker's character in the Fifth Element.
I couldn't help but smile back.
"We green?"
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His smile grew wider and he chuckled.
"Super green."
But he didn't open the gate.
He waited for a man to saunter out and join us. He was tall and lean, a square crow looker if there ever was one, gangly arms, knock kneed legs. His pants hung off a thin waist, and his shirt draped over bony shoulders, flapping in the wind.
It looked as if a strong breeze would pick him up and he could glide over the town behind him.
His eyes were intense, even though he wore a relaxed and easy expression, mild curiosity woven under arched eyebrows.
"Mel said we should meet."
Mel had a radio in her barn, kept hidden from me. She must have called ahead and let them know to expect me.
"We shared a visit," I said.
If they didn't open the fence, I wouldn't make it back to the gate. Even if I made it to the first one, they could still stop me there or in the tunnel.
Again, I marveled at the design.
"Robert, let our friend in," the square crow stepped back.
I saw his right hand go to the back of his waist as the other motioned Robert forward. His left hand. It looked injured, almost like plastic.
The guard pulled a padlock key from around his neck and worked the lock with a metallic clang. He swung the gate back with one hand and kept the other on the handle of the clean AK-47 cross strapped across his chest.
"Come on in," Robert invited.
Square crow took another step back as I stepped through and Robert closed the gate behind me, clicking it locked again.
I don't trust a man who wears white shoes.
There's really no place for a seersucker suit in a post zombie apocalypse world, but damn if he wasn't trying to pull one off. Meticulously tailored, hemmed so the break across the tops of his polished patent leather loafers was just right.
I'd seen a few suits back in my corporate days that cost thousands of dollars from Italian boutiques out of Miami.
This was not one of them.
It was as if it was an act, and he was trying.
I used to call it an affectation before the fall. Now I wasn't sure what to say about it.
"Nice suit."
"You like? Just something I picked up from the department store downtown. I think it adds an air of gravitas to my position."