A Thousand Miles to Nowhere

by David Curfiss

  “Rooms are clear. Let’s drop kit and settle in for the night,” Matt said.

  “I reckon we ought to find some food, son. We’re down to crumbs. A dry crick has more water than we do,” Greg said.

  “I second that notion,” Jody announced. His stomach grumbled loud enough that everyone could hear it. “If I don’t get some food soon, I may go cannibal in the night.”

  Jody looked at Chris when he said this. Chris shot him back a concerned look and frowned.

  “Just kidding, little man. You know I wouldn’t eat you. Not first, anyway. I think Steve earned that honor.” He smiled smugly at Steve.

  “Seriously!” Steve exclaimed. “Are we not over the bell yet?”

  “Who said it had anything to do with the bell?”

  “Okay, let’s get going,” Matt said. “Teams of two. Chris, you’re with me, little buddy.”

  Mesquite had little to offer. All the shops had been picked clean, and all the cars were empty. Not even a bag of luggage remained intact with offerings. They couldn’t have chosen a more vacant rest stop. But putting the lack of food and clothing supplies aside, Matt noticed something else wrong. It hadn’t registered with him at first because it was so common to see one lying around that over time, he just ignored the sight. But the deeper Matt and Chris walked into the city and the more they attempted to scavenge, it finally clicked.

  There wasn’t a single dead body anywhere.

  Where are all the dead?

  Matt scanned the cars—no bodies. Inside the stores—no bodies. There were no dead bodies anywhere. Not dead, not withered, nothing lying around or walking around—nothing. It was strange. It was as if they’d all gotten up and left, with the one exception of the single withered employee at the motel.

  Figures. We stumble across the only dead guy in an entire city.

  A small object shot past Matt’s face, bringing him back to the moment. Chris stood a few feet away, a worried look on his face after almost hitting him with the rubber ball, but Matt couldn’t have cared less. He was happy to see the boy in such good spirits. Chris had gone from a mopey, depressed boy scared of his own shadow to an eager youth willing to venture off and be part of something bigger than himself.

  At Matt’s smile, Chris returned it with a smile of his own, then sprinted off to retrieve the ball.

  The boy still had some growing to do. Matt needed to see how strong and able Chris really was. If he was going to survive out here, he was going to need to test his abilities.

  Well, no time like now.

  “Hey, Chris. I’m going to check a few buildings on the next street over. You want to see what you can find over here? I’ll come back to you, okay?”

  “Okay,” Chris called out.

  “I’ll be within earshot, so just call out if you see something.”

  It was like babysitting his little brother all over again. Only now, he had a better idea of what not to do. That was the one good thing that came from lazy parenting; as a kid, he’d learned the hard way how to fend for himself. Baptism by fire.

  He turned his back to Chris and walked off to see if the pickings were any better the next block over.

  Chris chased his ball up to the front doors of a credit union. He watched the ball skip and pop its way in through the hole where the front doors were once secured. Single hundred-dollar bills that would fall apart if touched were stuck to the pavement outside. More cash was strewn out and pasted to the ground inside the credit union.

  He tiptoed toward the dark entrance, concerned something lurked on the other side. His gut told him not to fear, but his mind warned him against the unknown. What were the odds someone or something waited for him—just him? What were the odds someone knew his ball would find its way into the mouth of the store for him to chase? He pushed the thoughts down deep, away from his conscious mind, then walked into the credit union. The darkness inside consumed him like a mouth closing over its prey.

  More shattered glass, more ripped-apart furniture, and scattered dollar bills littered the interior. He could make out the silhouette of the bank counter. Plastic plants and phones still attached to cords filled the blank spaces as he fidgeted through the disarray.

  Something crashed in the back of the building. The hollow corridors echoed the bomb-like explosion, causing Chris to fall to the ground. He pissed himself as he lay low, hoping whatever had caused that noise would not find him. He trembled uncontrollably and wanted to cry, but could only manage a whimper.

  The silence was overwhelming in the seconds that followed. The fear in his mind rendered him useless. His heart thundered between his panicked breaths. And in the distance, Chris heard the distinct sound of footsteps. They crept slowly toward his burrow. He reached around and pulled whatever he could see over his body to cover himself. A cushion, a tree and its pot, the chips of rubber dirt. His fingers tried to grip a small throw rug to pull over his face.

  He watched from under his blanket of trash as a small, ghostly-looking boy about his own age appeared from the shadows and walked around the lobby of the bank a few feet away from where he was hidden. A door slammed shut. The boy turned and ran to the man who entered. Behind the man stood a woman covered in filth. Chris could smell their noxious stink. They reeked of rotten meat and ammonia. The miasma of odors hung in the air like a heavy slime.

  Chris lay quivering as the intruders began their search. They didn’t speak, and when they walked, they did so cautiously, quiet, and seemingly aware of every move they made. The boy wandered over toward Chris, poking and probing at the remains on the floor. He wasn’t sure if the boy could sense his presence because although he looked around, searching, the other child seemed to be well aware of where he was going.

  With each step closer, the stronger and more pungent the odor grew. Chris’s stomach revolted. It caused his body to become turbulent with tremors of fear and spasm in quick successions. He did what he could to resist the urge to vomit and hoped no one could see his cover shudder with each shudder.

  The boy stood above Chris now, looking down at the heap of trash on the floor. At first, Chris thought the boy saw him. He reached down like he was going to pick away the bit of rug that covered Chris’s face, but instead he pulled down his pants and pissed. Urine soaked the carpet and splashed like foul raindrops on Chris’s lips and into his mouth.

  “Psst,” a voice hissed.

  The boy tucked himself away then ran off with the adults out the back of the building. Chris waited for the door to slam shut, then leaped from under his cover and ran out the front door—straight into Matt.

  Matt stopped him with both hands on the boy’s shoulders. Chris’s eyes were wide, and his face was as pale as a ghost.

  “Whoa, buddy, where are you going in such in a hurry?” Matt asked. “And why do you smell like you pissed yourself?” He looked the boy over. The front of his pants was soaked through with urine. “You okay?”

  Chris only stared back, fear plastered across his face.

  Matt studied the credit union, then stared at Chris and wondered what in the hell had happened while he was gone. Chris had gone from being jubilant to filled with terror and peeing himself. And from what he could tell, there was nothing to be scared of. He didn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything, either. What the hell had this boy so spooked? He decided to check it out for himself.

  Tara and Steve were back at the hotel, standing poolside with a suitcase full of water bottles. They placed the case on top of a wobbly opaque table that had a hole in the center of it. The white pole that should have been placed through the hole lay nearby, rusted and useless with the frayed remnants of the umbrella scattered at the top. Inside the suitcase were about four dozen bottles. The seals had been broken and the bottles refilled. None of them looked too poorly to drink from. Steve plucked one from the bag, spun the lid off, then took a sip that turned into a gulp and finished off the bottle in less time than it took to breathe. He sighed with relief as the warm liquid saturated his mou
th.

  “Thirsty much?” Tara said.

  “Oh my God, you don’t even know.”

  “Actually, I do know. I haven’t had any water, either.”

  Steve shrugged. “True.” He reached in to grab another, but Tara grabbed a bottle for herself before zipping the suitcase up.

  “We wait until the others get back before drinking any more. Understood?”

  Steve shrugged again. “Fine with me.”

  Jody and Greg arrived seconds later with a suitcase of their own. When they opened it up, Steve was surprised to find it stacked neatly with cans of SPAM.

  “Whoa,” Steve blurted. “That is a ton of SPAM. Tara, you see this?”

  “Yup!” she said. “Funny you all found a suitcase full of food. We found a similar suitcase full of bottled water.”

  “I was going to ask what was in the suitcase,” Jody said.

  “Interesting. Whereabouts exactly did y’all find that?” Greg asked.

  “Not far. Maybe a block or two north. It was sitting inside one of the stores by the door,” Tara said.

  “Same here. It was like someone left it there to come back for it,” Jody said. “Hey, did anyone find any coffee?”

  “Well, I reckon maybe someone was coming back for it but didn’t get a chance to,” Greg said. “Y’all seen Matt and Chris? They shoulda been back by now.”

  Jody’s coffee inquiry went ignored as everyone looked at one another with blank faces.

  “Take that as a no, y’all have not.”

  As Greg stood with his back to the main road facing Steve, Matt walked into view with Chris at his side.

  “Found them!” Steve announced.

  Greg glanced over his shoulder. “Good to see they’re back.” He let out a light sigh of relief.

  “We’ve got enough bottles for each of us to have one a day for about a week, or two a day for the next few days and hope we find a water source somewhere nearby. Personally, I’d prefer to have two a day. Because I don’t know about you all, but these headaches are getting worse,” Tara said.

  She passed out the bottles to everyone. They each opened a bottle and chugged the contents, discarding the empty plastic to the ground.

  “Let’s eat!” Steve bellowed. “It’s SPAM time.”

  The night sky was upon them once again. The cooler night air provided much-needed relief as they rested and recovered in the bottom of the dried-out pool. They ate SPAM and drank an additional bottle of water each to help counter the sodium content of the meat. The SPAM filled their stomachs with food, but the salt dried them up almost as severely as the sun had. But in the end, something was better than nothing. If they could locate a water source nearby, they would be able to filter and replenish the consumed bottles.

  Chris slept on a plastic poolside chair as Matt and Greg talked about the events of the day.

  Matt’s voice was soft. “I find it strange as hell we didn’t see any dead bodies out there. Not one. We stumbled across the one lone withered here at the hotel, but nothing around town. Then, y’all find cases full of water and food. Something ain’t right.”

  “We’ve only been through a small section of the city. Could be different the farther up we venture. But I understand where you’re coming from. It’s definitely strange, and I don’t like it either,” Greg said.

  “My gut’s telling me we should get out of here first thing. We sleep off the day but get going as soon as we can.”

  Greg leaned back in his chair and stretched. He shifted his body left and right in a feeble attempt to loosen up achy joints and tight muscles.

  “You know what else? Chris. I left him alone for about fifteen minutes. I thought it would be a good chance for him to get comfortable on his own. I come back, the boy is panicked and covered in piss. He wouldn’t say a damn word. I peeked inside the credit union he came running out of, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I probably should have gone all the way through, but I didn’t. Something spooked the living hell into him.”

  Greg nodded.

  Something snapped, small and distant.

  They turned to look around and found the fire inside the pool still burning strong. The flames scorched the twigs and pine cones used to keep the fire going. The sap on the pine cones blistered up like a balloon full of hot air only to burst seconds later. Pop. Sizzle. Snap. Pop.

  “You consider the boy might be dealing with some PTSD?” Greg said. “Think of all he’s been through. Leaving him alone like that for the first time since…hell, I don’t know. He watched his whole family die.”

  “Yeah, I considered that. I don’t know. This whole place just seems…off.”

  “Well, son, maybe some rest will do the boy well. Do us all some good, for that matter. When we wake up, we can head out and see if maybe getting some distance between us and this place will get him to talk.”

  Steve and Tara’s shadows flickered by as they relieved themselves from the pool, disappearing into the veil of night. Then, Jody walked away, stopping by Greg to give him a quick squeeze on the shoulder. Matt had forgotten they were there. Everyone had been so quiet and in their own worlds, disengaged from the group.

  “Listen, son, get some rest. It’ll help you feel a bit less stressed. Not much we can do about it right now, aside from packing up and heading out in the dark. And as much as it would ease the stress and tension of being here, it would only create new circumstances to stress you out.”

  Matt snickered. “You speak the truth old man.”

  Greg smiled, then grabbed the armrests of the chair and pushed himself out of the seat to head to bed for the night.

  “You know,” Matt said, “coming up here and doing all this really doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not even sure why I agreed to make this about her and that letter. I almost wish you’d lied and said we were coming up here to put down new roots or something.”

  “Say what you want, son. I know this wasn’t for your ma. It was for Michael. You need that closure.”

  It was true. Matt wasn’t doing this for her. He needed to know what happened to Michael. He needed that selfish feeling of closure so he could move on and not feel at fault anymore. If he could go back to that day when she’d put him on an airplane and sent him away, he would tell her he wasn’t leaving or make Michael come with him. He would trade everything for an opportunity to fix what he felt he’d caused.

  “Well, son, I’m off to bed. Don’t beat yourself up any more than you already have. You hear me?”

  “I hear ya, old man.”

  “Love ya, son,” Greg said as he walked off to bed.

  “Love you, too, old man,” he mumbled. Then he leaned back, closed his eyes, and let his mind wander, tearing itself apart piece by piece.

  Chris lay a few feet away from Matt with his eyes closed. A million fears coursed through his veins and flooded his mind, leaving him in a catatonic state. Inside he was screaming, warning them of the others. But his mind wouldn’t connect to his mouth. No words would escape him. He hoped eventually he would be able to use his words and warn them the others were coming.

  Chris opened his eyes, rolled over onto his side to face Matt, and croaked. He forced himself up and staggered over, only to find Matt had fallen asleep. He pushed him gently on the shoulder. Matt didn’t wake. Chris tried to say his name, but only a raspy noise escaped. He needed to warn someone, anyone. The others roamed in the darkness; he didn’t know what else to call those people he had seen. They surrounded them, plotted, waited for the moment to strike the way predators did. Chris knew. Now, he needed his family to know.

  He did what he needed to do. He crawled out of the pool, then jumped and pulled himself up the small ladder without any help, finally making it topside.

  A light breeze sailed through the courtyard. It chilled him. It sent waves of goose pimples over his flesh. His mind told him it was a warning. His gut told him to listen to his mind. It was a breeze telling him to run, run as fast as he could to safety. And with that breeze, with
that warning, came a familiar smell. It crippled him at first, but his need to warn Greg, Jody, someone, anyone, overpowered his fear. He listened to the howling breeze and ran through the inky blackness that surrounded him, encased him like an oversized coffin before it locked him inside forever.

  But the casket closed on him.

  Chris smelled the putrid odor of a hand as it wrapped around his mouth. The weight of a man’s body crumpled over his own. He felt the ropes as a woman tied them around the bare flesh of his ankles and wrists. Her breath was a stench of rot and copper as she huffed anxiously in his face. He felt every thread of rope, every poke of a finger, every nail as it scraped him, and screamed as loud as he could.

  But not a single sound escaped him.

  14

  No Heroes Today

  Something seared Matt’s face directly above his right eye. His eye twitched as it slowly burned him awake. The sun shot down on him little laser-beam-like rays of light. He felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. With a single hand, he tried to block the light, only to have the sun burn away at that, too. He rolled off the chair he had fallen asleep in the night before, landing on all fours. His head throbbed from dehydration. His mouth was sticky and swollen. It felt like death.

  Matt stood and looked around. He immediately noticed Chris was gone.

  Weird. He doesn’t usually venture off without someone.

  Matt took a minute to gain his bearings before he attempted to leave the pool on the rickety, three-rung ladder. He spotted the ladder, hesitated, then decided to exit before the sun cooked him alive. The wind blew hot, ragged breaths of air over his body as he made it above ground. It made the dizziness of his dehydration worse. It also spun his intestines into a ball of nausea.