by Jay Wilburn
I expected Doc to finally say he was Collin Trasker and I was afraid. The word shy echoed in my head. I felt like I had been asked that before, but I couldn’t place it in time.
Doc answered, “I’m a guy who cooks. Our place kept getting hit by hungry people and hungrier zombies. We brought all this stuff because the four of us never planned to go back. You folks are the only people we have talked to outside our building for years. We survived because we are the cooks. We hung out in the kitchen when there was trouble. I survived among some really bad people after the zombies came because I cook better than anyone else and they kept me around and alive because of it. All that other stuff you are talking about … I’ve never heard of any of it.”
Coop smiled through his beard again. Vike chuckled quietly from the back.
“That’s a bold statement, Cook Brown,” Coop said. “Who were these bad men you are talking about? Where are they now?”
“They’re dead,” Doc said. “Like most everyone else. They were gangs like you guys only they didn’t last nearly as long.”
Coop shrugged. “You flatter me, Doctor. You must be one sorry cook though, if all your customers keep ending up dead. We’ve about had our fill of shitty cooks.”
Vike and Hoss both laughed. Vike’s laugh was shrill and piercing inside the slowly rolling truck.
Doc said, “You’re in luck then. I’m the best cook you’ve met since the dead started eating the living.”
Vike laughed again. “Oh, hell.”
Coop said, “As it turns out, you are out of luck, John Brown. We already have a good cook and he has made the best shit I’ve eaten since the grocery stores closed and the graves opened.”
“Is it eye plucking time?” Vike asked.
He slid the knife back up between the seats and turned the point towards Doc’s face in the air. I felt something slick and metallic bubble up in my throat. I tried to swallow it back down without coughing. My hands were shaking even though I was holding them together. My mom had told me to not say a word and everything would be fine.
Doc said, “You need to get rid of the hack you got burning your food now and let me show you how it should be at meal time.”
“Would you bet the life of your little boy toy on it?” Coop asked.
I felt darkness closing in on the edges of my vision.
Doc said, “I’d bet anything on it.”
I had to hold on to my seat to stay upright. I felt sharp pain under the gun barrel in my throbbing head. My stomach was swirling.
Coop actually blinked at Doc’s answer. Vike chuckled again.
“We just replaced our last cook for letting us down in more ways than one,” Coop said.
Vike added, “Yeah, we had to-”
“Don’t,” Coop cut him off.
Vike fell uncharacteristically silent. He didn’t even giggle nervously.
After a pause, Coop said, “We don’t like to let outsiders handle our food much.”
Doc said, “No one does. I’ll taste anything I make in front of you. And whoever you got cooking now, I’ll face him in whatever challenge you want and when I beat him, you can pluck his eyes out for making you think you had the best.”
Vike giggled again and lowered his knife hand. Coop looked at Hoss. Hoss looked away from the road briefly and shrugged. I got that anxious, forgetful feeling again as I watched Hoss driving. I couldn’t figure out what I was missing. Fear was clouding my brain and flashing me back under my bed.
Coop said, “I can’t promise anything, but I’m interested in a life or death struggle over cooking. Loser gets cut up with his own knife. And the loser’s twink, altar boy. You think we can get Old Cuss to go for it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Vike chimed.
Hoss looked over again, “I wouldn’t bet my life on it normally, but I’m about 99% certain he’ll appreciate this.”
“I think it’s time to circle back,” Coop said. “You boys stay real still and settled now. Any nasty surprises are going to be nasty for you two alone.”
***
Coop turned back around in his seat as Hoss sped up leaving the mass of zombies behind us struggling to keep up with the racing truck. Vike took his shotgun back away from Doc’s head and I saw him visibly relax. Bam kept the gun gripped in his leather glove and rested against my head for the entire drive.
Vike brought the purple, pony toy up on Doc’s shoulder again still holding the hunting knife. He used the shrill, high, cartoon voice again.
He said, “Behave yourself, Johnny Bravo, or you won’t be so pretty when I’m done with you.”
Coop sighed, “Damn, Vike, why do you have to be so loud? Did your parents not pay attention to you or something?”
Vike kept the pony and the knife by Doc’s neck as the truck bounced over the rough road.
He said in his normal, loud voice, “They put me in a basket in the river and I was raised by crocodiles. Why do you ask?”
We drove more quickly once we were out of sight of the zombies we had been leading. They took us along a road that skirted the outside of the town and hooked back over the way we had come. We ended up pulling off the road and up a trail that led to a campground in the woods.
There were abandoned campers falling apart in the tall grass. The active vehicles were mostly trucks. Some were armored, there were larger cargo vehicles, and there were pick-up trucks. There were motorcycles with The Riding Dead on the sides and All These Loose Ends. Most of them were loaded on trailers behind the pick-up trucks and strapped into place.
Coop stepped out of the truck and Hoss drove the rest of us on beyond the vehicles. There were a few men walking around. They looked like the ones we had met in our truck. They were all wearing their leathers, but they weren’t all armed. There were no women or children.
We pulled to a stop on the back edge of the camp facing away from the people and vehicles. I didn’t try to turn my head with the gun still resting there. There were a couple paths leading away from the campground between the crumbling campers out near the edges of the field. Hoss turned off the truck and we waited.
Vike reached back up and started feeling around Doc’s sides and pockets again. He tried to reach into Doc’s pants pockets. Doc grunted quietly, but didn’t move or say anything. Vike patted Doc’s leg. I hoped the invisible gunman they called Bam wasn’t going to start feeling on me after all they had said.
Vike said, “What’s that there?”
Doc answered, “Bullets for the .45 you picked up off the floor.”
“Oh, great,” Vike barked, “Take those out and hand them to me slow before Coop gets back and hurry up, please.”
Doc reached in his pocket and pulled them out somewhere between slowly and hurriedly.
“Come on, come on,” Vike said.
Doc reached back with his closed hand. Vike set down the knife and the pony somewhere and held his hand under Doc’s. The bullets clicked as they fell into Vike’s palm. He took them back and let them rattle as they hit the metal floor of the cargo section. He brought his hand back up and felt around Doc’s thighs.
“Is that all of it, Doc?” Vike asked.
Doc answered, “That’s all of it.”
“What do you guys want to eat tonight?” Doc asked.
I just wanted to sit quietly while we could. Vike smoothed down his long mustache with his thumb and forefinger.
Vike said, “I wouldn’t worry about that just yet. We’ve got a process and you ain’t through it yet. If you’re apt to take advice, I wouldn’t talk much unless you’re asked a question and I wouldn’t talk much then either. If they decide to let you live for a while, don’t be cute with Old Cuss or most anyone else. He won’t appreciate it from you. Don’t be smart around Coop in front of Old Cuss. If you make him look bad, he’ll have to cut you up to make up for it. You hearing me, Doc?”
Vike flicked Doc’s ear with his forefinger. Doc flinched.
He answered, “I hear you. Why you helping us out like this?”
<
br /> There was a long pause. I could see Vike look at the man behind me. Hoss turned his head to glance back, but didn’t say anything.
Vike said, “If you’re half as good as you say you are, I’m interested to see what food tastes like when people are cooking for their lives. If you aren’t that good, I’m going to be the one that will have to help you both out of your skins. I guess I’m rooting for you, so I only have to slice once instead of twice.”
“We should probably stop talking for now, Vike,” Hoss said facing forward. “We don’t know what they’re going to decide.”
“Oh, what do I care?” Vike said leaning back out of my view. “Someone’s going to die no matter how this works out.”
A shadow passed over me from the window on my right and then the passenger side door in front opened.
“Listen up, everyone,” Coop said. “Cuss hadn’t decided yet. We should have covered their heads coming in and we didn’t. I expected to dump them on the side of the road until this cooking thing came up, so I didn’t think about it until we were pulling in. I covered us by saying maybe we should torture them for information. If Cuss finds out we drove them in looking around, he’s going to take our eyes for it. I don’t think anyone was paying attention to them, so we may get by, if we keep quiet about it.”
Coop tossed a roll of duct tape between Doc and me. I didn’t hear it hit, so I assume one of them caught it. Bam didn’t move his gun, so I figured it must have been Vike. I heard two pieces rip up and then tear loose. Bam finally pulled the gun away from my head, but I didn’t dare move.
Vike said, “We don’t have bags to hood them, Coop.”
“Use the tape over their eyes too,” Coop said. “Just do it fast.”
Vike reached around Doc’s head and smoothed the tape down over his lips. Bam pulled the tape over my eyes and the world vanished. There were two more rips and then my mouth was covered too.
Vike said, “We should just go ahead and put one over their nostrils and make them airtight. We can watch them squirm for breath.”
“Do it, if you want,” Hoss said. “Just shut up about it, so we don’t get in trouble.”
I heard the tape rip again and I ducked my head. I wanted to protect my nose and airway with my hands, but I was afraid to provoke them by lifting my hands. I clasped them tight in my lap to control myself.
I imagined I was one of the bodies in Collin Trasker’s mystery house. He was paying for old sins and I had gotten dragged along with his punishment because I chose to stay silent.
***
The door next to me was opened and I was pulled out. I was shuffled through the grass with someone pulling my arm. We stopped after a while. I heard metal and creaking in front of me and distant conversations behind me.
A voice I didn’t recognize said, “Step up.”
I lifted my foot up and felt out with my toe. I got slapped on the back of the head.
Hoss said, “Not you, stupid.”
After a moment, I was pulled forward a few steps.
A voice said, “Step up.”
I got shoved on my side.
Hoss said, “They said, step up, stupid.”
I lifted my foot up in the air again.
Another voice said, “Higher, kid.”
I reached my foot up higher and found the bumper of a truck. I was pushed forward and tripped over another step. I was shoved down to sitting on a hard floor and my hands were pulled over my head.
The voice said, “Keep your wrists together over your head.”
The sound was echoing inside wherever we were. A chain rattled against the wall behind me and cuffs were locked tightly over my hands. The floor rocked and squeaked as the owner of the voice walked heavily outside. The doors closed and latched and the room became instantly stifling.
I wasn’t sure if Doc was in here with me. I heard other chains down the line. There was whispering and crying. It sounded like girls.
A woman’s voice spoke out where I could hear it. Her words were muffled. The chains and people’s shoes shuffling along the floor echoed in the stuffy chamber. Her words were more distant and didn’t catch the walls like the metal and my own breathing. I wondered if she was real.
“Are you two new?” she asked.
We didn’t answer, of course. I heard someone across from me moan faintly and then sniff out a wet snort of air. It sounded low, but it could have been another woman. I thought maybe it was Doc struggling with his tape. The muffled voice spoke again.
“They have you gagged, I gather,” she said. “Don’t struggle. It will only make it worse.”
There was crying down the line and a choked sob. There were more women’s voices shushing and whispering. It sounded like the words were for comforting, but the tone sounded drawn and afraid. It sounded like they were telling the criers to be quiet. I hoped that approach worked better here than it did under my bed years ago.
“Everything will be …” the voice stopped.
Something was banging around outside, but then moved away.
“Well,” the voice said, “It won’t be okay, but you can survive and that might have to do for now.”
Somebody shushed and the voice stopped for a while. I just sat with my hands going numb and raw above my head. I kept sliding down and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I felt a moment of panic each time I tried to push myself back up and my feet wouldn’t catch. I sat up leaning forward and sat up leaning back. Eventually, I’d get tired and start sliding down again until there wasn’t enough air pulling through my nostrils between the strips of tape.
The voice hissed out from through its filter or out of my imagination again.
She said, “You have to do what they say. Ignore the names they call you. Ignore what is happening to your bodies. This isn’t your fault and you are not a slut or a whore because of what they do to you. You have to hide your mind and heart from it, if you want to survive. That is all we have right now. They are just men and they can’t reach your soul, if you don’t let them.”
Someone shushed again and see stopped talking. She couldn’t see us either. She thought we were girls. She thought we were here for the same reason she was.
Maybe we are, I thought.
I felt a slick taste in my throat after the thought. I panicked and had trouble snorting in enough air. If I threw up behind the tape, I would die. I tried to breath my slowly and failed.
I couldn’t picture her face from her voice. All I had was the voice telling me how to be safe in a world full of monsters. Maybe this was a memory and was not really happening outside my mind.
She hissed. “Don’t let them in. When they take you, just go. Go where they can’t reach your mind with your body. Go!”
I shook suddenly from the push of her voice. My chains rapped against my cuffs and the walls with the motion.
My mother had held the ankle of the monster as she was eaten. The window was too far up and I was afraid to jump. She had hissed for me to go. My mom was sending me away bodily. Zombies could reach our minds and I suspected the Riding Dead could too. My mom had told me to go. I hurled myself out the window as the monster was grabbing at me. It wasn’t like falling in a cartoon. She had hissed for me to go … save my sister.
I shuddered as I jolted out of the memory in the growing, blind heat of the dungeon I was really inside. Sending my mind somewhere else wasn’t so great either. I had my own mystery house full of dead family and monsters. I didn’t want to go back there either.
I didn’t go back, I thought.
The doors opened and the men walked in again. I tried to go like the voice told me, but I was focused on the sounds of their shoes. The chains deeper in the vehicle were jangled. There were a lot of stifled whimpers. The men walked back out and to the doors again. The voice spoke very faintly above my head.
She said, “I’m not here.”
The monsters left me and took her like they had done before and like before I felt guilty and grateful. The doors closed ag
ain and several people exhaled haggard breath that they had been holding.
This happened twice more as the day grew hotter and my energy to pull myself back upright from the floor weakened.
Don’t throw up, I commanded myself.
The next time the door opened a man’s voice asked, “Which one?”
Another man answered, “The one with the white mop on his head.”
They rattled the chains across from me and took someone else out. I heard the tape rip and Doc grunted.
“Holy smokes,” he groaned, “Can I get something to-”
The door slammed shut on his voice. The women were muttering among themselves. I hung my head and tried not to cry behind the tape because the tears had nowhere to go either. I felt sweat running under my hair, over my forehead, it vanished over the tape, then reconnected with my skin below the tape, it ran down my nose, and then dripped off into my lap as I hung my head.
The doors opened again. They were hauling more people into the hot box. They didn’t have to tell them to step up. The women were wheezing and heaving for breath as they were sat down and rechained. The men were walking back out again and closing the doors.
The woman’s voice whispered again, “You’re safe. They’re done for the night. Something big is going on tonight. You have to be prepared for what’s coming next.”
The men swung the doors open again and she stopped talking.
One of them said, “The kid … okay.”
My arms exploded pain through my shoulders as they pulled at my chains while they uncuffed them. I groaned as they lifted me up to my feet. I couldn’t drop my arms below my shoulders as they pulled me forward.
The voice called, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
***
A man’s voice growled, “Shut up, Linda, or I’ll tape your mouth shut under there.”
I stumbled as they pulled me down off the platform and bumper. The cool air hit me like a splash of water. I sucked air in through my nose and nearly choked on my dry throat.