Tales of Junction

by Davis IV, John L.

  “Well, uh, guess I’ll see you around then,” Bill said. He hitched his pack higher on his shoulders and took off at a fast walk toward the old station and diner.

  Without turning, Mitch waved a hand over his shoulder at the new arrival.

  4

  Filler watched as the girls cleaned tables, kept the stew cooking, and did various chores. From time to time he would disappear into his office, only to pop back out later to once again watch the women as they worked.

  He was leaning his hefty bulk against a wall, watching, wiping sweaty hands on an old hand towel he carried at all times when he heard the bell over the front door chime.

  As the person was backlit by the bright sunlight, Filler could only make out a silhouette until the door closed and his eyes readjusted to the normal dimness of the large dining area.

  “Well holy shit, look what kind of ugly the cat drug in, if it ain’t old Hollywood fuckstick himself.”

  “Hiya, Filler. Been awhile. I wish it was longer, but I’ve got business out this direction.”

  Filler filled the room with a booming laugh, his belly shaking. “Wish it was longer… Ha! Well hell, Billy-boy, business is why I’m here. That and the occasional piece,” Filler said as he swatted one of his working-girl’s asses as she walked by.

  “Fucking prick,” the girl mumbled as she made her way back to the kitchen, which only made Filler’s grin even bigger.

  “I see you’ve developed better interpersonal skills with your employees, Filler,” Bill said.

  “Ha, yeah, they all hate me, like I give a flying shit in a high wind. Come on in and sit down.” Sit down came out sounding like one word, sidown. “You want something to eat? Got a pot of hot stew on.”

  “It’s not the same pot you had on last time I was in here is it?

  With a chuckle Filler said, “You just can’t get that Hollywood funny-man movie star out of you. Might have to beat it out if you ain’t careful there Billy-Boy.”

  Bill Robb looked at Filler for a moment, a darkness beneath the half-lidded eyes said much.

  Filler stopped chuckling, watching the man before speaking again. “Eh, hell, Bill, we’re good, you and I. I like you, so how about I get you some of that stew, on the house.”

  “You don’t like anybody Filler, and we both know it,” Bill said with a cocked grin. “But, you and me, we do go back a bit, don’t we?” Bill rubbed two fingers across the scar several times. Filler took the hint.

  Usually Filler would have bellowed for one of the girls to get Bill his stew. Instead, he walked toward the kitchen himself, wanting a moment away from his old “friend”.

  Everyone owed Filler for something, except for Bill Robb. Bill was the only person Filler was obliged to for anything.

  Filler sat a large bowl of steaming stew on the table, maybe with a bit more force than intended as some splashed over the side onto the nicked and faded tabletop. “You said you had business out this way. What kinda business?”

  Bill took several bites of the dark, slightly bitter stew before answering. “I’m heading into the city.”

  No matter how many years he had spent on stage and screen, Bill could not have ever hoped to replicate the look on Filler’s fat face.

  “Cities are suicide, Billy! Even the craziest Sscavs stay the hell outta the cities!”

  “Everything is picked over. There’s hardly anything left out there, except in the cities, mostly because everyone’s terrified to go in them. There’s fuel, food, guns, ammo, you name it, just waiting for someone to come get it, Filler.”

  “Everyone’s terrified to go in them for a fuckin’ reason, you bat-shit crazy asshole!”

  Bill spooned cooling stew into his mouth, enjoying the feeling of filling his belly, even if the stew wasn’t the gourmet food he used to eat off the smooth stomachs of naked women. “There are zombies everywhere, Filler. Just happens that more of them inhabit the cities. If a guy can find a way in and out without getting too much attention, well, that person would be one very rich man by today’s standards.”

  Filler coughed into his hand, his fleshy face turning red for a moment. “You’re just full of understatements aren’t you, Billy-boy? Cities are still packed full of the dead. No one’s been in to thin them out. Hell, I’m not sure you could thin them out.”

  “Somebody’s gotta try, big man. That’s just what I’m going to do, try a city. If l come back, you and I could really make Junction something special, Filler, like we thought way back when. If not, well, at least it was fun while it lasted.” The heavy sarcasm in Bill’s tone was unmistakable.

  Filler sat quietly, letting his thoughts turn over what Bill was saying. Standing up and taking the now empty bowl, he said, “Listen, you do what you got to do, Bill, but I still think it’s a damn bad idea. It’s on you though, so what the fuck do I care? Not a shit, that’s what. You make it back with some good stuff, we can deal. Other than that, all I can say is good luck and don’t get your ass eaten by a pack of runners, or do, I don’t much care. Even though that’s most likely what’s gonna happen.”

  Bill nodded at Filler. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, big guy. Now, you got anyplace I can catch up on some rest?”

  Scowling, Filler said, “Yeah, there’s a couple empties out there. Take this, so folks know it’s all legit.” Filler dug into a pocket, removing a worn index card with the word’s “Rented by Filler” scrawled in a shaky script. He passed the card to Bill Robb and stomped off to the kitchen without another word.

  Bill smiled at the wide back of the man he had once saved from a pack of Sores, enjoying the fact that Filler never once mentioned charging him for the hovel.

  5

  Bill Robb, a.k.a. Billy Robbins, once the third highest paid comedic actor in Hollywood, and star of a handful of box-office smash hits, including the wildly hilarious dark comedy Grandma’s Funeral, tossed fitfully in his sleep. Low moans emanated from deep in the man’s chest; his body twitching as if pricked by unseen needles.

  His nightmares were brutal, violent affairs that often left him covered in sweat, exhausted and emotionally drained. The horror that sleep sometimes brought could be overlooked as a side-effect of the world he now lived in, except for the fact that he had been having them since he was a teenager.

  Billy Robbins had pushed back against the horror of his nightmares, and by extension, his life, with humor. Eventually that humor had taken him up on stage, then in front of the cameras.

  Though the nightmares still came after his success, he found it much easier to cope, especially when he had enough drugs in his system to overload most people’s circuit boards.

  He had been clean for just over three years when the dead rose up to eat the living. Yes, he still had nightmares, but after everything he had seen when escaping Hollywood, his bad dreams were just that, bad dreams, no longer affecting him quite the same way.

  It was difficult to be as disturbed by night terrors when real life was the very definition of true horror.

  Tossing the flimsy blanket to the side, Bill sat up in the cot, shaking his head, flinging sweat out in a salty halo.

  “Fuuuuck…” He slurred, reaching for a bottle of water on the floor. After a long drink he tugged out a battered pocket watch, one of the only things that survived his hurried exodus from the hills of stardom and cocaine.

  Thumbing the wheel on a cigarette lighter he lit a stub of candle, checking the time by the flickering flame. “Four forty-two,” he muttered, “Screw that.” Before clicking the cover shut, he glanced at the thin letters engraved on the inside. Laugh it up, Son. I’m proud of you. A gift from his father just after his first small film role, the watch was the final tie he had to his old life and the family he had loved, even if he forgot about them until he needed a place to go after rehab for far too many years.

  Bill stretched out on the cot, hoping he would drift off, even if just for a while. There was no one to pass the time with at this hour, and per the rules of Junction, the gates w
ould not be opened before daylight.

  Just after the sun slipped over the top of the make-shift wall, Bill Robb pulled away from Junction in a battered old VW Beetle he had purchased from Filler for handful of assorted antibiotics, a skin mag, and an unopened bottle of Glenfiddich 18.

  The VW was a rattle-trap, more rust than car, but it ran. Having wheels would save at least a week of walking. Finding fuel was always a concern, which made the Beetle especially nice, since Filler had converted it run on alcohol he distilled himself. There were several gallons included, tucked safely in the space under the hood.

  Bill kept the car wide open, steering with practiced hands around stalled and weather-eaten hulks, slowing only when he was forced to skirt a snarl of wrecked vehicles or a pack of funkers that blocked the roadway.

  Few automobiles traveled the roads these days, with gasoline being so difficult to find. Any place that had stored fuel was emptied within the first few years, making gasoline and diesel fuel a premium trade item. Most gas was now going bad anyway, having sat for so long; even treated gasoline.

  In recent years he had seen several vehicles that had been converted to run on wood gas puttering down the road. It was a fantastic idea, with the exception that wood gasifiers tended to explode if not carefully tended, and they were slow, since the wood gas would burn off quickly if the throttle were opened wide. A steady, slow pace worked best.

  The countryside reeled away behind him, as the cracked strip of highway stretched for miles, leading him to the hell of a city overrun with the dead.

  With no one to harvest them, many of the fields had gone to seed. Corn, soybeans and many other cash crops of yesteryear grew wild throughout the Midwest, tablesful of wild food waiting to be picked and eaten. Except people were afraid to come out this far, especially to work fields where a zombie could appear out of nowhere.

  “So much wasted food. Wonder how we could harvest that shit,” Bill said to the windshield.

  Hours later the city came into view in the distance. One of the benefits of the fall of mankind was air far clearer and cleaner than the few survivors could remember.

  Abandoned vehicles began to clog the roadway the closer he drew to the metropolitan area, forcing him to slow to a crawl.

  The city he now drove to, like all of them, was now a city of the dead. Full of those that couldn’t or wouldn’t leave, dying in their homes and on the streets. He stared out through the windshield, watching the skyline creep closer. He knew he would have to navigate the suburbs before reaching the city proper, where he believed there to be everything from gun stores to food distribution warehouses packed with goodies.

  Everything a man could want was waiting, if he could get…

  Bill shouted as the car was rammed from the left side, rocking on aging springs. SlamSlamSlam came rapidly, before he could turn to see the pack of runners bouncing off the car, faces twisted in blind hunger. He grabbed his pistol from where it lay in the passenger seat.

  Bill’s mind ran through different approaches to the situation, discarding each before settling on a daring plan, but one that would be less likely to draw further attention from the hordes of dead waiting out there.

  Returning his pistol to the seat beside him, Bill counted five runners coming at the car. Over and over they charged, keeping the car rocking. He knew how they would react to anything he did.

  Instead of cowering inside the car, picking them off with the noisy handgun, Bill slid over into the passenger seat, reached back across to the driver side and quickly cranked the window down.

  The first zombie dived in arms first, reaching for the soft meaty morsel inside the hard shell. Bill gripped a large bone-handle hunting knife in his left hand with the heavy blade protruding from the bottom of his fist. Reaching with his right he grabbed the left wrist of the dead thing, pulling hard, dragging it further into the car.

  With wicked speed the blade snapped out, disappearing into the creature’s face all the way to the hilt. Bill jerked, twisting the blade inside the head, reveling in the snapping noises of the skull fracturing.

  The zombie now lay limp, more in the car than out. One of its companions leaned in through the window, over the top of the other. Bill lashed out with the knife again, pushing deep into the eye socket, spearing the soft brain tissue behind it.

  Two dead runners lay partially inside the car, leaving three outside, still slamming into the vehicle, bashing at it with clawed fingers.

  As Bill watched one of the zombies began to slide around the rear of the tiny car, leaving the other two to bash at the small rear side window.

  Turning to face the passenger window, his back to the two dead zombies, Bill rolled down the window about four inches and tapped lightly at the glass.

  Hearing the tapping, the runner took two long strides and thrust its arm through the slit Bill had created. Pushing the arm up to prevent the grasping fingers from twining in his hair, he reached down and spun the hand crank as fast as he could. The window slid smoothly upward in its frame, biting into the flesh of the hungry thing’s upper arm. Bill continued to push pressure on the window crank, forcing the edge of the window up until it pressed against the bone, pinning the arm in the window.

  The zombie’s fingers continued to flex, trying to reach the man inside. Bill watched, his knife poised, ready to strike, but the creature tried pulling out its arm instead of pressing its face to the narrow space as he expected.

  “Well, fuck you,” he grumbled.

  Bill spoke softly, hardly able to even hear himself over the clamor the three dead things were making. The zombie trapped in the window opened its mouth, blackened teeth snapping.

  “Yeah, yeah, I hear you, jack-hole. Stick your face up against that little gap there, and let me spike you, you nasty bitch.”

  During the first days, in his escape from Hollywood and all the time he had spent wandering the wastelands of the dead that America had become Bill had seen enough violent, gory deaths to inure him to the nastier side of things.

  The sight of the zombie pulling its arm from the window, most likely to try for a better reach, was truly disturbing. With excruciating slowness, the arm retreated through the window, peeling everything, skin, meat, every bit of flesh from the bone as it went. The denuded bone grated against the window, a hollow vibration rising up that sent chills through Bill from head to toe.

  “Uh uh, no way, shit-ball.”

  The meat of the zombie’s arm bunched up at the wrist, preventing it from pulling completely out of the car, the flesh hanging down over now-useless fingers like a long glove turned inside out. Cringing, Bill set the knife down beside him and reached up, grabbed the hand and pulled. The zombie was unbalanced, smashing face first into the doorframe, stripping away flesh from its already tattered lips, exposing the teeth. Reaching down with his other hand, Bill cranked the window down just far enough to let the dead thing’s face inside the gap sideways, snatched up his knife and slammed it nearly to the hilt in the center of its forehead.

  After tugging his blade free, he pushed the zombie away, watching it tumble to the ground. The knot of flesh around its wrist caught in the spot where the window and the doorframe met, hanging up, not allowing the fully dead zombie to fall away.

  “Well, shit.”

  Bill cranked the window down until the arm finally pulled free with a stomach turning slorp.

  The two remaining dead had stopped hammering at the window and were now watching Bill as he readjusted inside the car. Both opened their mouth and emitted a high, keening wail.

  “Ah, shit.”

  More would come soon, if they were nearby. “Gotta get my shit outta here.”

  Outdistancing the two runners wasn’t possible. The roadway was far too crowded, and he was facing into the city. If they trailed him, eventually he would have a full-blown horde of every mutation of the dead in the city on his tail. He had to kill them, and quick.

  “Ok, bastards, up close and personal then.” Reaching into his pa
ck, Bill removed something heavy, with deeply scarred leather surrounding it. Flipping the item open, he slipped it around his wrist, and slapped it shut. Clicking the two small drawbolt catches closed, Bill held up the leather wrapped iron gauntlet and smiled.

  Moving with haste, he opened the passenger door and stepped around the car hoping to get to the runners before they moved toward him.

  Both zombies turned to him just as he came around their side of the car, the first lunging in. He allowed the arms to grasp at him, thrusting the gauntlet out as the head came forward. With a clack, the teeth crunched down into the leather, stopping at the iron beneath.

  Bringing up the blade, Bill waited until the companion zombie was pressed into the back of its partner. Their weight and unbridled force pushed him backward. They were far hungrier than he.

  Bill jammed the blade down, leaving it in the head of the dead that was still latched onto the gauntlet. He now carried its full weight on one arm. The remaining zombie bit at his hand just as it was coming off the knife handle, missing by less than an inch.

  “Fucking prick. I got one for you too.”

  Bill had another blade sheathed on the other side of his belt. Unable to reach it, he pawed at the velcro pouch he kept his multi-tool in. Tugging it out, he flipped it open with one hand, revealing needle-nose pliers.

  The weight of the one still latched onto the gauntlet dragged his arm down, his bicep burning from holding it up. Faking a grab for the knife with the hand that held the open tool, Bill caused the other Zombie to snap forward, teeth clacking on empty air. He lunged, the tip of the pliers burrowing into the temple of the last zombie.

  He could see the violence fade from milky eyes as it fell away, taking his tool with it.

  It took him a moment to remove the dead thing from the gauntlet; its teeth were still firmly clamped on, even in death. Yanking free the multi-tool he dived back into the car and shoved out the stinking bodies, wasting not a single second. He drove for another two miles before pulling the car into a copse of trees just off the highway, swearing at the rotten smell the dead had left in the car.