Filson snorted in disbelief.
“I wonder if they regretted that decision when the aliens showed up,” he said.
“No tellin’,” Cornelius said. “Anyway, after the hydroelectric plant to power the grow lamps for when our rations ran out, he loaded the rations themselves—enough for a thousand people for five years. He didn’t know what he was preparing for, mind you, but he also didn’t know fifty thousand people he wanted around him during and after an apocalypse like the government did in the sixties.
“So when the big day came, Meryl and I were the first ones there since we lived close. Oliver sent me a text message on my phone—that’s how we talked back then—telling me to just leave one port open until the rest got there, so I did. I pulled out a ‘240, loaded the belt, and told your Grandma to hide back in the visitor center where it was safe.
“The only problem was that the next person to show up wasn’t Oliver with Evette and children in tow. The next person on our list to show was Josh Kulas, and he was walking down through the parking lot with a bag on his back right behind a family of six—a mom, a dad, and four kids.”
Cornelius’s face wrinkled for the second time that day as another ghost came back to haunt him.
“I told the dad to stop at the entry, but he told me he needed to keep his family safe. ‘I understand that, but you’re not doing it here,’ I told him. He kept coming, and Josh was too close for me to shoot. I’d never shot anybody before, and the thought of hurting those kids— Well, I grabbed the bat with my name and Ollie’s name engraved on it, and I told the dad to back up, to get out of the entry, or he’d be sorry. He pulled out a revolver, but I was all adrenaline at that point, and I hit his arm with the bat. His wife came at me, and I shoved her down. I yelled at Josh to get on the gun, and he finally snapped out of whatever had turned him stupid since he’d just been standing back and watching this unfold. The dad charged at me, and I shoved the end of the bat into his stomach. The mom tore a chunk out of my leg with her teeth from the ground, and that’s when I got mad. I swung down and hit her in the arm I think. I hadn’t even knocked the wind out of her husband, so he came back at me too. I swung at him with everything I had, and smashed his face with the bat. That’s his blood you see there. One of his kids screamed and came at me too, but they were small enough I could just shove them out of the way.
“The wife got up though, while I was distracted by the kids, and knocked me onto the ground. That’s when—”
Cornelius stopped talking for a moment, and swallowed. He shook his head slowly, trying to rid the thing from his mind.
“That’s when Josh opened up with the ‘240. He’d been in the Army before he was an accountant, so I guess once he got behind the gun he started going by muscle memory again, and the wife and kids must’ve looked like little green pop-up targets to him. They were— Well, anyway the dad wasn’t dead from where I smashed his face—he was just laying there blind in a pool of blood from his nose, making this terrible high-pitched screaming sound, so I picked up his revolver and saved him from having to think about his dead wife and kids any longer than necessary. It’s what I’d hope somebody’d do for me at that point. Then I dragged the bodies away from the sally port, got on my own gun, and hoped nobody else would show up before the rest of the ones on our list.”
“Did they?” Thursday asked. “Did others show up?”
“Yeah,” Cornelius said after a moment. “A lot. I lied before. That’s not just the dad’s blood. What did we know about setting up entry control points anyway?”
“But your life boat is yours, Grandpa,” Filson said. “That’s what you’ve taught us. The packs have no right to our gardens. Family first, right?”
Cornelius nodded.
“Small comfort in hell I imagine,” he said, as a tear finally grew brave enough to run down to his wrinkled chin. “Take the bat, Thursday. Oliver will remember it, if he’s still alive.”
~~~
The bout of nausea and vomiting was short-lived, and Thursday reminded himself that the balloon’s sender seemed more interested in starting him on his journey than actually killing him. His nose bled periodically over the first two days, until he felt somewhat light-headed and took an extended nap. He wondered, as he lay on his cot, how many other balloons had been released. How many others would face probable death in the pack-infested wilds to avoid almost certain death at home? He wondered—if he even made it close to Seattle—how many others he would meet as their paths converged.
“I’m packed,” Filson said on the fourth day. He set his flamethrower on the floor, and Thursday noticed a woven bag of styrofoam hanging from his pack.
“I figure gas won’t be too hard to find along the way, if the highways everywhere else are as clogged up as ours with junked cars,” Filson explained. “Anyway, the foam’s light.”
Thursday picked up his crossbow and wiggled each of the bolts in the attached quiver, making sure they were secure in their slots. He’d packed more bolts in a second quiver on his pack, and hung Grandpa’s Louisville Slugger in a canvas sheath on the other side.
He looked around the minimally furnished bunkroom—Spartan, but home nonetheless.
“I wonder if I’ll ever see this place again,” Thursday said.
“You will,” Filson said. “Survival’s in our genes.”
They walked out through Gate 1 into the broad semicircle toward the statue of Barbaro and his jockey, frozen in bronze as they won the 2006 Derby.
Thursday waved to Clark on the balcony, and Clark waved back with his longbow. The very tops of the famous Twin Spires peeked over the roof behind him like two horns.
“I’ve never seen them from this side,” Thursday said, and he walked around the outer wall to see them fully.
Something caught his attention, and he stared at the Spires, trying to make it out. There was a thing flapping against their glass. It seemed confused, lost.
“What is it?” Filson asked.
“I thought it was a bird at first, but it looks more like a bat.”
“In the daytime?” Filson stared at it for a moment. The thing flapped angrily, attacking the Twin Spires in a blind rage. “I think you’re right. That’s not a very good om—”
He didn’t finish the word. He just waved awkwardly to Clark with his flamethrower before they turned to walk north.
~~~
“I thought we would’ve have seen the packs by now,” Thursday said ten minutes later. They’d traveled out of sight of the crossbows and longbows that offered cover fire from the Downs, and both were ready for a fight.
“I just wish we had horses,” Filson said. “For all the talk of being the horse capital of the world, not many seemed to stick around when the aliens showed up.”
“Eaten, probably,” Thursday said. “One of the books I read said the Queen of England raised her horses near Lexington, where the other race track was—Keeneland, I think. There are probably some that survived by going wild between here and there.”
“Well I’m starting to hate this rig. I think you lucked out with weapon assignments.”
“I’m younger,” Thursday said. “Little brothers always get the lighter weapon.”
Weeds grew over and through the cracked, upturned remnants of what had been Fourth Street.
A feral dog yowled from inside a nearby house, and metal clanked against metal from another.
Mixed scents of feces and decaying flesh clung to the houses, and Thursday was suddenly glad for the organization inside the Downs. He’d never heard of a tragedy of the commons, but he instantly understood the concept.
Cicadas chirped from unseen recesses, and a thousand flies buzzed around the houses full of death and fertilizer that would never reach the soil. Vines grew up and through buildings and windows, covering the untended hulks in a green shroud.
Filson motioned for Thursday to stop moving, then pulled him into a shadow as quiet footsteps scuffled from the street, followed by the sound of a stone skip
ping against the pavement.
As they crouched in the shade of a broad oak with vines circling its trunk, they watched a scrawny girl in rags kick a rock down the street. She focused intently on it, kicking it with one foot, then skipping ahead and kicking it with the other.
She stopped abruptly, turned to look at the place where they were hiding, smiled, and waved at them.
Then she kicked the rock again, skipped down the street, and was soon out of sight. Filson listened to her stone echo against the pavement until the sound, too, was gone. Then he motioned to Thursday that they should continue.
Thursday kept his eyes to the rooftops and the glinting broken glass, searching for threats as they moved ahead. Filson spun on his heels periodically, checking for animals and people in their wake.
They emerged from the neighborhood into what Grandpa Cornelius had penciled in as the University of Louisville on a crude map.
“Cardinal Boulevard,” Thursday read on a sign. The sign’s post was bent nearly ninety degrees over the rusted skeleton of a car, its tires nothing more than shreds of cracked and withered rubber. Inside, the clean-picked ribs and spine of a human skeleton sat propped above strips of blue denim with more bones inside them. When they got closer, Thursday noticed a skull in the passenger seat. The front of the car, where an engine might have been, had a huge hole in it, as though some unstoppable force had eaten straight through the spark plugs, battery, alternator, and everything else around them—all the way from the hood to the pavement below.
“Swarm,” Thursday said, gesturing with his head to the hood of the car.
“Yeah,” Filson said. “The skeleton too, from what Grandpa said. They eat flesh and electrics—said he only saw it one time to know better. This car might’ve only been here a week if somebody had stabilized gasoline hidden away. Bones’d be stripped clean either way.”
They moved past the car, but both of them stopped again.
Something had changed.
“I don’t hear dogs anymore,” Filson whispered. “It’s gotten a lot quieter since we went under the train tracks.”
“The vines, too,” Thursday whispered. “They’re not as thick on some of the buildings—like somebody cut them away from the windows and inside.”
“I don’t think—” Filson started to say. He looked up as a glass bottle fell from a window above them. A rag burned at its opening. Filson pulled Thursday out of the way, and they barely cleared the flames when the Molotov cocktail hit the pavement.
Filson tugged Thursday’s shoulder, and they darted into an alley on the other side of the street.
“I guess we found the packs,” Thursday said. “Looks like they know where to find gasoline too.”
Filson picked up a rusted garbage can lid that leaned against the brick wall of the alley. He struck it once with his fist, and flakes of rust fell away, showing holes in the lid.
“What’s that fo—” Thursday started to ask.
Another bottle fell from a window directly above them. Filson held the rusted lid at an angle over his head, and shoved the bottle away from him when it hit. The Molotov cocktail burst in the street, spilling flames close to the alley’s entrance.
“The alley dead-ends,” Filson said. “Can’t get cornered. Street’s no good either.”
He used the nozzle of his flamethrower to clear away the broken glass at the bottom of a window behind them, opposite the building the last firebomb had fallen from.
He knelt, and Thursday stepped on his brother’s knee to boost himself through the window frame.
A third Molotov cocktail fell from above just as Thursday cleared the window frame, and Filson deflected this toward the entrance as well—effectively keeping anyone from rushing in from the street.
“I think they’re trying to funnel us,” Filson said. “They’d probably be throwing more if they really wanted us dead out here.”
He handed the rig through the window to Thursday, then hoisted himself over the window ledge into the building.
Thursday was already shoving the broken remnants of furniture against the door while Filson strapped his pack on once again.
“We might be able to hold out in here,” Thursday said, “depending on how many there are.”
A crash came against the door as soon as he said this, and a face appeared in the window next to it.
Filson sprayed the window with napalm, and screams erupted from outside.
“You’re dead!” a voice yelled, as another crash started to splinter the door. “You like fire? Well you’re gonna roast slow and alive over our cook-fire tonight!”
Thursday spun, and noticed a scrawny kid climbing through a window. He fired a bolt, nailing the kid through the back and into the drywall. Hands shaking, he pulled the string back and loaded another.
“Get your bolt,” Filson said. “We’re going to need every one. We’ll have better chances on the roof.”
Thursday nodded, put a foot on the kid’s shoulder, and pulled his bolt free. The kid wheezed as blood frothed and pooled under a sucking chest wound.
“Come on,” Filson said, charging up the stairs.
They raced, adrenaline freeing them from the notion that their bags were too heavy to sprint up flight after flight of stairs. Thursday heard the sound of the door crashing in below them over the sound of his feet pounding the steps, and knew he wasn’t moving nearly fast enough.
“The roof,” Filson said. “It’s just one more flight.”
Thursday nearly breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the last flight and found a vertical door, rather than a ladder leading to a hatch. Filson turned the knob and found it open. Thursday kicked it shut again after sprinting through.
They’d emerged onto the roof, which was cluttered with ventilation ducts and machinery for them to use as cover while they shot anyone that came through the door.
“We can,” Filson panted, finally allowing himself to be out of breath. “I think we can—”
Something burst against Filson’s back. Cold wet liquid splashed onto his neck and shoulders. He turned, and this time saw the white, cylindrical balloon-like object that burst against his chest.
“It smells like...alcohol,” Filson said. “Why would—”
Thursday raised his crossbow, but one of the things hit him in the back as well. More came, and Thursday made out an arm and a tiny face, darting out from behind one of the ventilation ducts to hurl one of the balloon-things at him.
In seconds, they were soaked.
The door opened, and Thursday turned.
A shaved, bald head peeked through the crack. Jaundiced, cracked skin bordered rheumy eyes and sunken cheeks.
“Molly?” the yellow face called. “Molly dear, are they ready?”
“Aye,” came a tiny voice from behind a duct.
A scrawny form with frizzy hair appeared, and Thursday recognized the girl they’d seen kicking the rock earlier. She held a white balloon in her hand, and she tossed it at Thursday. He held up his crossbow to block it, but the thing burst against the stirrup and splashed in his face.
The cool alcohol—cooler for some reason than water—soaked down into his collar.
The yellow face became a yellow man, shirtless with tattered athletic shorts over his legs. More bodies came through the door—six in all—all hungry and sick-looking, as though they’d consumed nothing but liquor and human flesh for months. In their hands, some held wrenches or table legs. One held a dinner fork. Only the yellow man had a knife—one that looked quite sharp.
Filson and Thursday backed away from the group, and found themselves in the midst of not only Molly, but three other children who’d been pelting them with the balloon-things.
“You know, before the invasion, I think all people did was drink and screw,” the yellow man said. “We’ve found more shelves full of liquor and racks of rubbers than anything else in this town. I think they forgot about them things when they started grabbing up all the beans and bullets they could find. We
save the liquor for drinkin’ of course—most of it don’t even burn. But the same places with racks of rubbers have the alcohol that ain’t good for drinkin’—the iso-purple alcohol. That’s what you both just took a bath in, friend, so I wouldn’t recommend lighting up your little torch there.”
“What do you want?” Filson asked. “We’re just passing through. We don’t have anything of value.”
“That looks a lot like the flamethrower that roasted Squiddy,” the yellow man said. “I watched you murder my friend from your rooftop. All we wanted was a little food, and you couldn’t share?”
Thursday’s pulse was pounding now. He knew that with the crossbow he’d only take one of them at best before the others closed in. He reached a hand back, felt the Louisville Slugger’s grip, and pulled it from the sheath. Grandpa had made it through worse. So would he.
“We just want to pass through,” Filson said. “My brother here is sick, and—”
“Sick?” the yellow man said. “We got sick people, starving people too. I bet your clan’ll give up some food in return for your brother when we bring him back to the wall.”
“We could teach you to farm,” Filson said, “to grow your own food, so you didn’t have to scav and eat your dead.”
The yellow man looked at him for a long time—stared at him, hard.
“You think you’re better’n us, don’t you, ‘cause you’ve never tasted man-flesh? We ain’t dumb—we know history too. We know your kind crawled into a cave while ours stayed up on the surface and fought just to stay alive. You’re soft—you got fancy weapons and good health, but you ain’t suffered enough to be truly strong.”
Filson said nothing.
Thursday felt a breeze pick up, and the smell of alcohol weakened as its vapor was carried away.
“I’m going to tell you a secret, son,” the yellow man said. He walked right up to Filson, tapped the flat of his knife against his hand. “You want to know how I survived all this time?”
Filson looked him in the eye, trying to see the gears turning in the man’s bald, jaundiced head.
The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist's Guide to Louisville: a novella Page 3