Dead (A Lot)

by Howard Odentz

  “It would have been nice if you had told me.”

  “I didn’t think I had to.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” asked Bullseye.

  “Nothing,” we both said in unison.

  With Bullseye still in the dark, I palmed the wheel to the left, and we headed past the restaurant and down a steep hill toward the center of Purgatory Chasm, Massachusetts.

  57

  THE FIRST WORDS out of Trina’s mouth were, “Where are all the poxers?”

  She was right. We were in a small town, slowly driving down a gentle hill with sidewalks on both sides of the road and big, old homes painted all sorts of funky colors. They looked half way between amusement park rides and haunted houses.

  Half way down the hill, the road curved to the left and opened up into a town center. Purgatory Chasm was nothing to write home about. There was really nothing there accept two blocks of stores on both sides of the street. There was also a bank and a restaurant advertising a blue plate special of meatloaf and fries along with something called an Awful-Awful, featuring a picture of a milk shake.

  “What’s a blue plate special?” asked Bullseye.

  “You really want to know?” I asked. “They tell you right there it’s awful, awful.”

  Trina lowered her window and let the fall air rush in. “Really, where are all the poxers?”

  There were definitely pile-ups in town. One, which looked like two pickups had a monster mash-up, was particularly nasty. As far as people, though—dead, poxified, or otherwise, there was nobody.

  I pulled in front of the bank and parked Stella’s minivan.

  “What are you doing,” Trina blurted out.

  “Getting bullets and supplies,” I said. “That’s the plan, right?”

  “But aren’t you creeped out?”

  “I’m creeped out,” offered Bullseye from the backseat. “Not that I want to be attacked by poxers or anything, but no poxers is creepier than some poxers, right?”

  Trina nodded her head. “That’s what I’m talking about. Unless everyone in town is at some spooky intervention for the dead, this isn’t right.”

  Stupid me, I was counting ourselves lucky. Quick in and quick out—isn’t that what we wanted to accomplish here? Okay, I guess it was a little odd that there were no poxers around, but we were in the middle of the hill towns, population like three. How many people did she expect there to be?

  “Maybe when everything happened, everyone was down in Greenfield for Fall Fest,” I offered. “This place doesn’t look like a thriving metropolis to begin with.”

  Trina and Bullseye weren’t convinced.

  Those little waves of tension began to lap at my feet like I was standing on the edge of an incredibly large and scary lake—safe, as long as I didn’t so much as stick my pinky toe in the water.

  “Okay, um, what are we doing here?” I asked them both.

  Trina stared straight ahead like she was mentally trying to figure out why things were so deadsville in Deadsville. Bullseye waited for her to say something. When he finally realized she wasn’t going to, he pointed across the street and down a little bit. “There’s the gun shop,” he said. “Shouldn’t we go there?”

  “I’m telling you, there’s something’s wrong,” she said but shrugged and opened the minivan door, so I took that as my cue to follow. I had a lighter and an old magazine with me. Trina had matches and some computer paper. Bullseye deliberated for a moment before leaving his rifle in the car in favor of the small handgun he had taken after his encounter with Mr. Choy. He shoved the barrel down the front of his pants, untucked his shirt, and draped the cloth over the butt of the gun.

  “Very gangsta,” I said. He beamed. “Who you hiding it from? There’s nobody here.”

  “But there was,” gulped Trina as she took a few steps and pointed down the sidewalk in front of us.

  There were black, tarlike puddles everywhere. I don’t know why we didn’t notice them when we first drove into town, but now, outside of the van, they seemed to dot the sidewalks and the street.

  “Someone was here before us.” I said, stating the obvious. I scanned the center of town. There wasn’t movement anywhere, but you could tell that there had been dozens and dozens of people who had been getting their last bit of Friday night shopping in when the tatti hit the fan.

  Greasy, oily slicks reflected the early afternoon sunlight. There were splatters on a few of the cars and even on some of the storefront windows and doors.

  “Good,” snorted Trina. “One less thing to worry about.” She started across the street toward the Purgatory Chasm Gun Shoppe. Shoppe was spelled in that funny way that’s supposed to make the store sound quaint.

  Sure, guns could be quaint—if you lived in bizzaro-world.

  Bullseye and I followed her.

  “She’s kind of scary, isn’t she?” he whispered to me when she was about ten feet in front of us.

  “I can hear you,” she yelled over her shoulder, and I was fairly certain Bullseye would have peed in his pants again if I wasn’t there.

  “She has her moments,” I said.

  THE GUN SHOPPE was sandwiched in between a handmade country furniture store and a realtor’s office. You could buy a place, decorate it, and shoot yourself a turkey dinner, all in one fell swoop.

  Trina stomped up a couple cement stairs and reached for the gun shoppe’s doorknob.

  “Careful,” I cautioned her. “Remember what Jimmy said? Just because there aren’t any poxers out here doesn’t mean there aren’t any inside that are too stupid to figure out how to use the door.”

  Trina hesitated for a moment, took out her lighter, sucked in a deep breath, and turned the knob.

  “Anybody home?” she screamed into the dimly lit store. If we learned nothing else in the past few days, it was to always announce ourselves when going into a building. The poxers weren’t big on hiding and pouncing. If you rang the dinner bell, they came running.

  Nothing was inside—and I mean nothing.

  Not only was Purgatory Chasm Gun Shoppe poxer free, the store had been completely and totally ransacked.

  That’s when we heard gun shots off in the distance.

  58

  “PEOPLE,” EXCLAIMED Bullseye. “There’re people.” He started to dash down the steps toward the sound of the gunfire. Both Trina and I grabbed the back of his shirt, hauled him inside the gun shoppe, and closed the door.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Real live people who shoot real live bullets and torch up real dead towns to the last poxer.”

  “But . . .” he wailed and really started crying. “I just want to see people,” he sniffed. “I . . . I just want everything to be back the way it was. Why can’t things just be like that?” He started hitting himself in the head with his fist. “Why can’t I wake up? Why can’t I be sitting with Mom and Dad and my sisters and the baby, eating Chinese food?”

  Everyone’s entitled to a meltdown. It’s too bad they always came at exactly the wrong time.

  Trina pulled him close, and we receded into the gun shop. Bullseye calmed down to a slow sniffle. We crouched behind a glass counter with a wooden lower half so we could peer through the glass to the window and beyond, but no one could see us.

  The place had been radically picked over. There were still some guns left and some ammo, but it looked like a tornado had torn through the store, taken the choicest and most deadly weapons available, and whisked them all away.

  We heard gun shots again, this time a little closer. The rapid rat-a-tat- tat-tat-tat-tat-tat made me think I was hearing a machine gun. The only time I had ever heard one for real was in one of my video games or in a movie.

  Who am I kidding? Those weren’t even real.

  “Is that a machine gun?” whispered Trina. Her arms were
folded around Bullseye, and his head was buried into her shoulder.

  My face said yes. Who would be firing a machine gun out here, and at what?

  For some reason, all I could think of was Prianka back at my aunt’s house. Here I was, cowering behind a gun counter in east cupcake, middle-of-nowhere. She was probably figuring out the exact best way to bake bread on a gas grill.

  I missed her.

  The gun shots became louder and louder, and along with them, we heard a car.

  The last time we ran into another living being with a gun was in Amherst. That weirdo told us he was going to pick out the perfect spot in Maine to kill himself. Who knew what kind of lunatic was behind the trigger this time? Was it some crazed, scary, backwoods freak shooting at anything that moved—dead or alive? Maybe the shooter was just another kid like us. Either way, I wasn’t taking any chances. As we heard the car come closer, I put a finger to my lips and made sure that both Trina and Bullseye understood.

  The car motor stopped, and we heard voices. They were loud and clear like they were right out in front of the store.

  “ . . . said we can’t take any chances,” said a guy.

  “What does she know, anyway?” said another. “Just because she’s the big cheese, it don’t mean diddly.”

  “Yeah, you say that to her face. I dare ya.”

  “I ain’t stupid.”

  “No, just ig-nint.”

  The voices had a southern accent. Whoever they were, they were seriously from not around here. Bullseye clutched Trina even tighter and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “I didn’t sign up for this, ya know. Y’all think she’s all that, but I ain’t seen nothing special.”

  “Well she do look mighty fine in a suit—for a Grammy.”

  “You know what else looks mighty fine? A lady praying mantis—until she has her way with her beau before eating its head.”

  Both voices laughed. The laughter got closer and closer as though whomever they belonged to was right in front of the gun shoppe.

  Then they abruptly stopped.

  “Where did that come from?” said one voice.

  I had a sinking suspicion I knew what they were talking about.

  “Dang,” said the other voice. “Ain’t no way that was there before. We parked right there when we did our first round of burning. Ain’t no van here then. Ain’t, fo sure.”

  Bullseye twisted around in Trina’s arms. He looked scared out of his mind.

  The voices trailed off into the distance. No doubt they were going to check out Stella’s minivan. I made a mental picture and tried to recall if there was anything we left inside that could lead them either back to my aunt’s house or to Stella. The last thing I wanted was to turn the trigger happy twosome loose on the farm or the quiet tranquility of the Wordsmith Used Book Emporium and Stella Rathbone.

  “Stay here,” I whispered. “I just want to see who they are.”

  Trina nodded. Bullseye just looked freaked.

  I crawled on my hand and knees to the front of the store and lifted my head cautiously over the window sill. There was a jeep parked in front of the shoppe—green—like the one that came with my toy soldiers when I was little.

  Off in the distance, inspecting Stella’s minivan, were two older guys, well older than us, anyway. They were both jarheads and both wearing fatigues.

  Army. They were Army.

  59

  “I DON’T CARE WHO they are,” hissed Trina as we crouched by the window. Bullseye stayed huddled behind the counter while we watched the two soldiers methodically rip through Stella’s minivan. “I don’t trust them.”

  “Why? They’re just surviving like we are?”

  “No. They were talking about someone else. Someone they reported to.”

  “Maybe a group of them survived. I don’t know.”

  “They said she was scary.”

  “All adults are scary.”

  Trina glared at me and rudely pinched my arm like she used to do when we were in fifth grade. “Jimmy’s an adult. He’s not scary,” she said

  “Don’t get me started, and, OW, that hurt.”

  The soldiers stood by Stella’s minivan, scratching their heads. One of them was holding a big gun, bigger than anything that the Purgatory Chasm Gun Shoppe would have ever carried. The barrel looked like it could pack a serious punch. Maybe that’s what was responsible for the rapid fire that we heard.

  The soldiers seemed to be in a serious conversation. Then they pointed right at us and headed back across the street.

  Trina and I scrambled behind the counter. Bullseye’s face was as white as a sheet. Whatever prepubescent freckles he had looked more like chicken pox or measles.

  “Chill,” I said. “Just be absolutely quiet.”

  The soldiers’ voices became more distinct, and soon we could make out what they were saying.

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” said one of them. “Good ole country fried steak and biscuits—none of this meatloaf and french fries crap. Tell me again why the North won the war?”

  The other one laughed.

  “Seriously, though. Diana said to bring back survivors. I ain’t leaving until we find who be driving that van.”

  “What if they make a fuss like last time?”

  I didn’t hear the answer. I could only imagine that one of them was drawing a line across his neck with his finger. The tension waves lapped at my feet again, but before I could even shudder, the unexpected happened. The door opened and the two men stepped inside the gun shoppe.

  “Cal, aren’t we done in here?”

  “I just wanna take another looksee. Don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Diana’s going to be happy with all the guns and the ammo,” said Cal.

  “She’d be happier with survivors. Don’t know what she’s planning.”

  “Luke, my friend. It ain’t our job to ask. For all I know she’s dissecting each and every one of them to see why they don’t get sick like everyone else. Just be thankful she hasn’t turned on us.”

  Bullseye’s lips buttoned together so tightly that I could see tiny lines all around his mouth. He covered both his eyes with his hands and stuck his fingers in his ears, like if he couldn’t see them and couldn’t hear them they would go away.

  I could hardly breathe. The two soldiers rummaged through the mess they had left behind when they ransacked the place the first time. At any moment they would come close enough to the counter to see us, and what would happen then? They’d take us—that’s what would happen—probably someplace tucked far away and safe from poxers—someplace that seemed all nice and normal but really wasn’t.

  Trina and I stared hard at each other. She put one hand on the ground next to mind, and I put mine over hers. I could feel her shaking. Who knew if she was afraid or angry? Sometimes with Trina I couldn’t tell the difference.

  The soldiers moved to the other side of the store, and Trina quietly pushed Bullseye toward me and shifted into a crouching position. I furrowed my brow. What was she doing? My eyes searched her face. She just looked determined.

  No. I knew that look. I pressed down harder on her hand, but she pulled away.

  “You see them suckers pop when we fired ‘em up?”

  “Yeah. Just like a roll of fire crackers. It’s weird they do that.”

  “Nah. Diana says they burn because of the gasses the bugs are farting out.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me. So we done in here or what? We gotta find whatever yahoo owns that van and hope they don’t give us the same sort of trouble that the doc and his wife did.”

  The doc and his wife? Mom and Dad? Were they talking about Mom and Dad? No wonder they never showed up at Aunt Ella’s. Did they have a run in with Cal and Luke? No. No.
No. No. No.

  Trina and I looked frantically into each other’s eyes. She was thinking the same thing as me. I knew she was.

  Her cheeks flushed. She looked at the ground and shook her head back and forth, and her whole body tensed. I didn’t know what she was doing. When she finally moved, I didn’t even have a chance to stop her. She shot to her feet like a freaking jack-in-the-box.

  “Hiya,” she said cheerfully, and that’s all she had time to say.

  The gun blast was deafening.

  60

  “WHAT THE HELL are you doing?” shouted one of the soldiers as the wall exploded behind Trina’s head.

  “I . . . I . . .”stammered the other.

  “Yeah,” shouted Trina as she used her foot to slide open the wooden paneled door on the back lower half of the glass counter.” What the hell, you ignorant idiot?”

  Before I even knew what I was doing, I pushed Bullseye inside the lower half of the cabinet as quickly and quietly as I could. Trina kept her tirade going to cover any noise we might be making.

  “You’re supposed to serve and protect, you dumb hick,” she screamed. “I’m a civilian. Can you spell it? C–I–V–I–L–I–A–N. You almost took my head off.”

  “I’m, I’m sorry,” I heard one of the soldiers say.

  “You better believe you’re sorry. What are you using a stupid gun for anyway? You can’t kill them with bullets, you know, or haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  “Just hold on one damn minute,” barked the other soldier. “And put your damn gun down, already,” he snapped to his partner.

  “Yeah,” shouted Trina. “Get that thing out of my face.”

  “Shut up, blondie. You’re pretty loudmouthed for a kid.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Trina said. “You haven’t heard me loud. This is my library voice.”

  “Where did you come from? Me and Luke scoured every inch of this place. That your van out there?”

  Trina leaned over with her elbows on the countertop, her chin perched in her hands.

  “Who wants to know?”