Dead Weight

by Casamassina, Matt

  Zephyr made a mock glance at his watch. “Yup. Right on time, as usual.”

  “The late time, maybe.”

  “Maybe you should spend more time hacking second-rate search engines and less time worrying about me.”

  Trey rolled his eyes. “Pioneering search engines, you mean.”

  “Just because a search engine was last relevant during the era of pioneers doesn’t make it pioneering.”

  “All right, that wasn’t bad. I’ll give you that,” the man conceded. “You’re still a Google-loving bitch, though.”

  “Where we going today? You hear anything yet?” Zephyr asked as he sat down on a bench next to his friend and opened his locker.

  “Nada. Fifteen of us, though. Roderick is on point.”

  Spencer Roderick was a bald Latino man in his fifties or sixties. His skin looked like worn leather and the palms of his hands were so calloused they might’ve been rock. He was also ultra-conservative and easily spooked, which annoyed Zephyr.

  “Short trip out today, I guess,” he sighed.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Thirty minutes later, Zephyr and Trey bounced up and down from the bed of a rusty pickup as it jostled along Santa Monica’s famous 2nd Street. Two more trucks held ten others, everybody armed. Today, they were scheduled to hit a row of restaurants in search of salvageable food or drink and likewise any bars or taverns that might still hold alcohol, which was always at the top of the pedestrian most wanted lists.

  He found nature’s reclamation of the world astonishing. A year after mankind’s near-extinction, the streets and sidewalks of Santa Monica were cracked and freckled with protruding weeds and grass. Windows broken everywhere, some clearly because of vines and vegetation that lay in wait of its chance to thrive again. Much of the foliage was thick and foreign to Zephyr. These days, he saw squirrels, rats, scrawny dogs and stray cats scattered about the grid, which didn’t seem extraordinary. They were always city-dwellers, he told himself, even if their numbers were greater than ever. Deer, however, were not, and when he first glimpsed a doe as it dashed and then leapt across a major thoroughfare, it was equal parts astounding and surreal.

  The streets still held cars. Some sat dormant in front of parking meters that would never be ticketed again. Others were scattered about the lanes, leftover blockades for the new world commuter. And yet many of the roads had already been cleared by Alpha cleaning crews, whose purpose was to tow away the remnants and harness whatever they could.

  The trucks rolled to a stop outside of a mall on 2nd Street somewhere between Colorado and Broadway. Modern, beautiful, more sophisticated than any retail outlet had any right to be, and even a little ostentatious. It was called The Market, and he wasn’t sure if a grocery store was actually part of the attraction, or just a conglomerate of restaurants and shops. There’d likely be surplus either way, and it was large enough that the potential gain was definitely worth the risk.

  “All right,” Roderick said as he hauled himself down from one of the beds. “Team two surveys today.” He pointed to Zephyr’s group. “Get a move on. All five of you in. Start at the base, work your way up. Verify your communications, people. I want status checks every forty-five seconds.”

  He turned to the two other trucks. “You five—take the premises and set up a defense. Look for high-ground advantages— get your snipers there. The rest of you, across the street,” he said and waved them away. This was the typical formation: an equal split of “men in, men on, and men out,” as Roderick defined it. The strategy was sound. Send a small group in to search while another held the defense of the building. The final unit was to be hidden nearby where it could surround and ambush any attackers.

  Zephyr, Trey, Miles, Shannon, and Rudy comprised the scout unit today. Everybody was armed with their rifle or automatic of choice and also carried a handgun on their person. Additionally, everyone wore bulletproof Kevlar vests and tactical headsets, both rescued from the Santa Monica Police Department, thank you old world. Should anything go wrong with the scouting group, all units would break formation and breach the building.

  Trey leaned into him. “Remember,” he said. “If anything goes down, you do what everyone in Alpha would want you to do. Protect me.”

  “Get out of here,” Zephyr said and pushed the man away, but he couldn’t curtail a smile.

  Trey held up his hands. “OK, OK. Just sayin’. Celebrity here.”

  “Your claim to fame has a short shelf life, buddy boy. You better pray the juice lasts for as long as possible or you’ll be out here digging farm systems with the rest of the jackals who can’t shoot a gun.”

  “I can shoot the only gun that matters,” Trey said and grabbed his crotch.

  “Really?”

  Zephyr’s earpiece buzzed. “Focus, you idiots.” It was Roderick. “Your tacticals are on automatic and the whole squad can hear your shenanigans. Switch to manual and stop playing around.”

  “See what you did?” Trey asked after he muted his mouthpiece. “Now the entire group knows you’re not a team player.”

  Inside, it looked like Chernobyl. What was not long ago a bustling marriage of pristine architectural minimalism and high-end boutiques and restaurants now stood in silence, marred and weathered by regrowth, broken and tainted by men. A brown moss covered portions of the floors and ceilings while stretches of ivy wrapped around sculpted statues of half-naked Greek gods and any bannisters it could grasp and choke. Furniture and trash were strewn around in reckless abandon, and inarticulate spray-painted messages adorned some walls, posts, and floors. The place smelled of smoke, mold and rot. It was a sad, haunting display that seemed to embody everything mankind had built and lost in one fell swoop.

  “Jeeze Louise,” Trey whispered, clearly awestruck. “This reminds me of some of the buildings in Detroit after the car bubble burst. It’s… awful.”

  “Sort of beautiful in its own way, too, I think,” replied Shannon, whom neither Zephyr nor Trey knew, as she aimed the beam of her flashlight throughout the dingy expanse.

  Trey shook his head. “Not seeing the beauty here. All I see is a combination of tragedy and horror-movie scary.”

  The mall proved huge and difficult. The power was out, which meant that large portions of walkway were shrouded in blackness. The massive glass dome several tiers higher allowed some light to bleed through, but few rays cast down to the bottom level and when they did, their potency was diluted. They heard dripping water, the occasional beating of wings, and other unidentifiable things moving somewhere from within the murkiness.

  “Hey, it’s Trey. I mean, Trey to Roderick,” said the man into his tactical, altogether ignoring the accepted communication nomenclature, which was Search and Command. “We’ve got a Footlocker here and it looks clean. Shoes galore. Pretty big score.”

  “Food and drink are the priorities, Search,” a voice popped back. “Go ahead and mark it, but let’s stay focused on the task at hand. Forty-five-second status checks, please. Command out.”

  “Should I say roger?” Trey asked. Zephyr couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Rudy responded, ignoring the question.

  The mall had been looted, as if that wasn’t obvious from all the wreckage and graffiti, and yet the plunder was evidently selective, not all-encompassing. Footlocker survived. So did The Gap. The store window wasn’t even broken, which Zephyr found amazing given that people needed clothes and in particular warm winter coats. In contrast, all the jewelry stores were picked clean — another mystery given that not even diamonds were useful in today’s environment.

  “Any damned restaurant is a loss,” said Shannon. “There’s no food here.”

  “Just the bottom floor,” Zephyr reminded her.

  “Command, this is Search. First floor is a bust,” Rudy said to the wider group. “No sign of provisions at all.”

  “Understand, Search. When you’re sure it’s clear, proceed to second level. We have no contact here. Comma
nd out.”

  “Provisions? Just say food, for crying out loud,” Trey whispered, but Rudy ignored him. This was becoming a regular exchange.

  The escalator to the second tier was wet and mossy. The climb up felt squishy and unnatural to Zephyr, who did his best to restrain a grimace, not that any of them could see it. Shannon illuminated the broken display and counter of a Mrs. Fields Cookies which no longer contained any edibles. Meanwhile, a nearby Microsoft Store had been altogether consumed.

  “OK, of course I get the food and I even get the jewelry. But what the fuck with phones and computers?” Shannon asked. “Really?”

  “Electricity still works in some parts,” Zephyr said.

  Trey nodded. “End of the world or not, people gotta have their Internet porn, am I right?” He threw up a hand, waited for a high-five that never arrived, and then continued on. “Seriously though, they’re creature comforts, that’s all. Makes sense to me. I’d loot a phone just to load up some music… if there was actually a single damned unit left in there. They have these battery cranks out in the world somewhere. You find one of those, you can power your music forever, even when the electricity is long gone. Well worth it.”

  They found some cooking sauces, baking mix and bottled jams in a William-Sonoma, radioed it in, and stored the leftovers in their packs. It wasn’t much. A ransacked Chick-fil-A yielded only a warm freezer full of something petrified. They were rummaging through the paltry remains of a chocolate store— they’d amassed four dozen boxes, although Zephyr couldn’t say if any of the treats were still good— when Shannon shushed them.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  “What?” Trey said.

  She raised her finger. “Quiet. Listen.”

  So they did. At first, only the unbroken silence met their ears, but then something sounded from beyond the store. A distant… what? Reverberation? A faint clanging, maybe. Zephyr thought it came from up above and then said so.

  “I think you’re right. Some kind of animal?” Shannon asked.

  “I honestly don’t know. I think we should check it out, though.”

  “Let’s do it,” Trey said.

  Rudy fingered his tactical and whispered, “Command, we’re hearing something, maybe on the third floor—banging or something. Permission to investigate.”

  A pause. Then a voice buzzed back, “Hold on, Search.”

  Here we go, Zephyr thought, and braced for the inevitable. Surely Roderick would order them out of the building now because this was what he always did.

  “OK, Search. You’re clear to explore, but proceed with extreme caution. Firearms at the ready and safeties off, please. Keep your tacticals on automatic. Status checks in thirty-second intervals. You hear or see anything, I want to know about it. I don’t care if it’s a dog farting in the dark, you call it in.”

  “Roger, Command,” Rudy said.

  They were ascending the mossy escalator, itself covered in discarded chairs, tables, and trash, when another noise disrupted the silence.

  “Did you hear it?” Shannon whispered.

  “Sure did,” Trey breathed back.

  It sounded like more banging to Zephyr, but there was something else in there. Less pronounced. No echo or reverb to it. Lighter. Fleeting. It might’ve been footsteps. Maybe. But then again, perhaps he imagined it. He turned to Trey, who merely shrugged.

  “All right, let’s just do this,” Rudy whispered, and started to walk.

  “Search, please keep status checks at thirty-second intervals,” Roderick advised into their headsets.

  “Roger, Command. We are maneuvering through obstructions blocking both lanes of the escalators to the third level. Single file up the right side, which seems a little less cluttered.”

  “Roger. We’re still clear at the perimeter.”

  They made quick work of the barriers, and yet the process was an affront to the senses — one amplified by its polarity to the stillness before them. Zephyr winced at every piece of furniture that they cast aside with loud disregard.

  “Hello!” Trey called out. “If anybody is up there, we—”

  Rudy quieted him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What’s it look like? The whole world can hear us coming, man. We may as well announce our intentions at this point.”

  “Jesus, Trey. You think you can clue us in here before you make decisions that impact all of us?” Shannon hissed.

  He seemed about to say something, thought better of it, and then responded, “You’re right, sorry. It just seemed obvious.”

  Their tacticals popped. “Search, guns up, keep your eyes open, but proceed with contact now that the cat is out of the bag. Trey, we’ll talk about this later. Command out.”

  Trey ignored him and started to call out into the darkness again as Rudy cleared the final table that separated them from the level.

  “Hello! If anybody is up here, don’t be afraid. We’re the good guys!” His words reverberated across the remnants of the domed ceiling and seemed to call back to him. His echoing voice was, however, the only that returned.

  “Well, I guess this explains the mess on the escalators,” Zephyr whispered.

  The top floor was home to The Market Fine Foods Court. Yeah, right, he thought. If your idea of fine food is Hot Dog on a Stick and Tommy’s, maybe. The restaurants ran the gamut of the floor, which was an immense circle. McDonald’s, Zephyr recognized. Pho Tastic Noodle House, Tres Amigos and When in Rome, however, were all foreign to him. A stale, greasy, putrid smell permeated the air and seemed to accentuate this truth.

  “I’m not gonna lie, man. I’m feeling pretty nostalgic right now,” Trey said. “And yes, I’d be all over Hot Dog on a Stick if that shit was open. Haters be damned.”

  From the looks of the court, Trey wasn’t the only one fond of fast food. Every restaurant had been demolished. Obliterated in some cases. Worse than any of the destruction that befell the retailers on the previous floors. The signage remained, but windows were smashed, countertops were destroyed or missing, registers toppled, and more graffiti blanketed walls, tables and floors. The light was thin, and yet he could see into some of those kitchens and they looked gutted if not altogether terminated. Furthermore, big, white and brown splotches of what Zephyr thought must be bird shit bathed the floors and furniture. He looked up and marked the countless penetrations in the once-magnificent dome and thought, all of this splendor reduced to a huge toilet in a year’s time.

  They stayed in formation and canvassed the floor. Occasionally, Trey called out into the environment with promises of peace and friendship, but no more sounds returned. McDonald’s was drained of all food and any signs of life. So too, he thought, was Pho Tastic Noodle House, but someone had wrapped a heavy chain lock around its double-freezer doors, which was promising. The group spent almost fifteen minutes hammering away at it—literally, as that was the only tool in their collective possession capable of the job— and finally broke the lock. When Rudy at last unlatched the chain and tugged the doors open, Shannon gagged and backed away.

  Pretzeled together inside were two corpses, both naked from head to toe, both disfigured and well decayed. Zephyr doubled over and nearly lost his breakfast when it dawned on him that it was those rotting bodies and not petrified food that they’d all smelled.

  “Jesus,” Trey whispered, pinching his nose.

  “Command, we found a couple bodies in a freezer,” Rudy said into his headset. If the revelation bothered him in the slightest, he didn’t show it.

  Two very long seconds passed. “Roger, Search. Come on back. I’m calling it.”

  “Roger,” Rudy acknowledged and motioned them back out of the restaurant.

  Their tacticals popped. “Keep your guards up, Search.”

  “Roger.”

  “What the hell happened to them?” Shannon asked. She looked pale, shaken.

  “Murdered, obviously,” Trey said. “Good grief. What a way to go.”

  Miles, who wa
s a short, bulky man in his fifties, spoke for the first time since they’d started the survey. “Probably some fight over rations got out of control.”

  “Doesn’t explain why they were naked, though,” Zephyr argued. “Or crammed into a freezer, for that matter.”

  Trey nodded. “Whatever this was, it was vicious shit. Someone stripped these people, mutilated and murdered them, tangled them up and stored them away.”

  “Let’s just get back,” Shannon replied.

  “Maybe they were meant to be food,” Trey pondered, ignoring her. “Maybe when they were all done pillaging the place and food ran dry, someone went cannibal on them.”

  Shannon shook her head. “Jesus, Trey.”

  “What?”

  “There’s still plenty of food to be scavenged around the city. I don’t think cannibalization is necessary. At least not yet,” Zephyr interjected. Although, the corpses were pretty torn up, he admitted to himself. It was always possible that some lunatic planned to eat these people. Jeffrey Dahmer lived during an era in which food was abundant, but that didn’t stop him.

  Rudy halted and silenced them. He was peering at the Tommy’s directly across from their position. Zephyr was about to ask what the holdup was when he noticed a thin layer of smoke hanging in the air like some lonesome cloud across the restaurant’s dimly lit kitchen.

  “You see it?” Trey whispered.

  “Yeah. I do now.”

  “What are you—” Shannon began and then stopped. “Oh… shit.”

  “Guns,” Rudy hissed.

  “Search, what is happening?” their tacticals buzzed.

  “We have smoke coming out from Tommy’s, Command. Signs of life here, maybe,” Rudy whispered.

  “OK, vacate the premises, Search. Status checks at fifteen-second intervals.”

  “Roger, Command,” Rudy said.

  Trey, though, had other ideas. He was halfway to the restaurant before the group realized what he was doing.