by Joe McKinney
Poor Jamie O’Dell, she’s gone away,
Got sick and rose that very same day.
She had a fever and a hacking cough,
But her legs still managed to carry her off.
This is the body of Margaret Pound
Whose mind went missing and was never found.
And then there is a subset of these epitaphs that almost read like permission slips to the reader to kill the wearer.
Burn me up or cut me down,
Either way is fine;
Just make it quick
And make it stick.
Fuck you, World,
Signing off, Alex Mentick.
This is the body of William Bunn
Who would like to be killed by a gun.
Really, his name was not Bunn, but Hood,
But Hood wouldn’t rhyme with gun, and Bunn would.
I’m the dentist John Hannity
And it seems I’ve met with calamity.
Please dispatch me with some gravity
As I’m eager to die and fill my last cavity.
Take your best shot at Mrs. Annabelle Bostich.
She was my landlady and a mean old witch.
Go ahead—
I asked around; they won’t miss the bitch.
I tried to die in bed.
I got up and walked around instead.
Kill me or I’ll kill you
Before this mess is through.
Love always, Debbie Shue.
Well, that’s it for tonight. God, I’m gonna have a head-splitter in the morning.
Nearly five hundred miles away, just outside Dalhart, Texas, a man on a motorcycle pulled to the side of the road and stared at a pickup parked under the awning of a Valero gas station. The truck’s back windshield had been shot out. There were bullet holes in the tailgate. The Harley burbled noisily in the hot, dusty night air. Randall Gaines killed the motor and stepped from the bike.
There was no other sound save for the echo of his worn boot heels clicking on the asphalt.
He looked into the bed of the truck and saw blood everywhere.
“Hello,” Gaines said.
He walked around the truck to the hood and put his hand on it. It was warmer than the night air, but no longer hot. No more than an hour gone, he guessed.
“But where did you go, Harvard? That’s the question I want answered.”
He opened the driver’s door and looked inside. He saw candy bar wrappers and cigarettes and crumpled pieces of paper.
And something else.
A map.
He opened it and saw the United States. His gaze drifted over the states until he came to a thin penciled circle around the Cedar River National Grasslands in North Dakota.
A straight shot up Highway 83, he realized.
He folded the map and slid it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then, whistling, he slowly made his way back to his bike.
CHAPTER 37
“There’s nothing on the radio.”
Billy Kline hit the radio’s Seek button and watched the numbers speed all the way through the FM band without stopping.
“I can’t believe this. You’d think we’d at least be able to find one of those automated BOB or JACK stations. There’s fucking nothing on.”
Billy caught himself.
“Sorry, Ed.”
Ed shook his head. “You’re not gonna find anything. Except maybe one of those radio preachers on the AM stations, and I don’t want to listen to that. Might do you some good, though.”
“You think so, huh?”
Ed shrugged, smiled.
“You’re a funny guy, you know that?”
“Yeah, I’ve been told that.”
Outside the car, the Kansas prairie went on forever, flat and gray. They’d been driving the entire day, stopping only for bathroom breaks (Randy and Billy both had to go nearly every thirty minutes, it seemed) and to raid the occasional gas station for candy bars and bottled waters. They went through town after town, all of them dead, bodies in the streets, the infected wandering around houses that were empty and ominous in their desolation. But now, after thirty hours of driving across the prairie, the emptiness was starting to give way to farmhouses and outbuildings again. They saw chickens pecking the dirt in machinery-choked yards. They saw swings on rusted jungle gyms dangling listlessly in the breeze. Here and there, they passed faded billboards advertising colas and gas stations.
“We’re gonna need to find a place to rest for the night here pretty soon,” Ed said. He pushed the brim of his cowboy hat up with his thumb and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You okay to drive?” Billy asked. “I can take over.”
“No, I got it. It’s the road. Straight and flat and monotonous, you know? Gets you exhausted.”
“Yeah. Emporia’s up here another ten miles or so. Maybe we can find a place there.”
They entered Emporia a few minutes later. A 30-mile-per-hour speed limit sign marked the change from highway to Main Street. They crossed Elm Street, then Oaklawn Street, and pulled up on the town square. Houses lined Main Street on either side. They were plain, wooden structures with covered front porches and small lawns that looked untrimmed and shaggy. There were bodies here and there, faceup in the street. They passed an infected man near the corner of Main and Birch wearing nothing but a bloody T-shirt and soiled boxer shorts. He turned on his heel and stumbled toward them, but he was too far away to be a threat and Ed didn’t even bother to accelerate.
“Man, you could smell that guy from here,” Billy said.
“Yeah, they don’t have the ability to take care of themselves, you know? They still have to do all the things anybody else has got to do, like going to the bathroom and stuff, but they’re not aware enough to take care of it. They just sort of go whenever. It’s a wonder to me that more of them don’t get sick and die from some kind of disease.”
“A lot of ‘em do,” Billy said. “I read about it in Discover Magazine. They did some studies in San Antonio and found that most of them have got worms and all kinds of nasty stuff. The article said the average life span for an infected person is about two weeks.”
“Really? They die that fast?”
“Most do. Some’ll live for years, of course. But most die pretty fast.”
Ed turned the van onto Chestnut Street and headed west. He said, “You’ve done a lot of reading on the infected, haven’t you?”
“There isn’t a whole lot else to do when your ass is rotting in jail.”
Ed raised an eyebrow at him.
“What? I can’t say ass? Come on.”
Ed slowed the van to a stop.
“What’s up?” Billy asked. “You’re not gonna beat me up again, are you?”
“No.” Ed turned to the others and said, “Who here wants to go shopping?”
“Shopping?” Billy said. “Where?”
Ed pointed out the windshield at Costco down the block. “Right there.”
“Badass,” Billy said, and flinched. “Sorry. But man, I love Costco.”
Randall Gaines had been riding all day, too. His clothes were matted with sweat and filthy from the dust blowing off the Kansas prairies. He was sitting in a barber’s chair at the corner of Chestnut and 3rd Street, a cooler full of Budweiser on the ground at his feet, watching a white Ford Econoline pull into the Costco parking lot across the street. It was the first vehicle he’d seen driving around in a day and a half, and he felt a momentary thrill of anticipation as it stopped and the doors opened.
He leaned forward in his chair, eager as a kid at Christmas, waiting to see if Harvard would step out of the van.
But when an old man in a cowboy hat, a couple of old women, some kids, and a young, Jewish-looking guy stepped out of the van, he fell back into the chair and muttered, “Well, shit.”
He watched them as they stretched and milled about the van. The young Jewish-looking guy carried himself like a swinging dick, might even have done some time. And the dude in t
he cowboy hat looked like he thought he was Paul Newman or something, but the others were nothing.
Randall Gaines lost interest in them fast. He took another big gulp of his Budweiser and got comfortable. Maybe he could even take a nap before he got going again.
He was about to drift off when another vehicle pulled into the lot.
“Hello,” he said, perking up immediately.
It was a glistening, maroon F-350 pickup. A crewcab, four-door model. Dark tinted windows. Oversized, off-road tires. The King Ranch Edition.
“Traveling in style,” Gaines said. “Nice.”
The pickup coasted up to the front of the store and parked about fifty feet from the white van. The old folks from the van watched it, the young guy and the clown in the cowboy hat trading apprehensive looks.
The doors opened, and Gaines leaned forward again without even realizing he was doing it.
“Come on. Who are you?”
Four people got out, two men and two women. One of the women was a brunette with a body that could have made a dead man stand at attention, but Gaines wasn’t looking at her.
He was looking at Harvard.
“Holy shit,” he said, and drained the rest of his beer. “Looks like we gonna have us a party after all.”
He reached down into the cooler and pulled out a .45 semi-automatic pistol.
“Colin?”
A woman’s voice. To Billy’s ears, she sounded young, pretty. He rounded the corner, hoping to see the hot brunette that looked so familiar—though he still couldn’t place her, an actress maybe—and instead saw the slender, dark-haired girl. The blind one.
She was standing in the middle of the aisle, looking lost.
She stiffened when she heard his feet clicking on the linoleum. “Colin?”
“Uh, no,” he said. “My name’s Billy Kline. I’m with that group you met out front.”
She half turned from him, like she might take off running if he so much as breathed wrong.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he said.
“You didn’t frighten me.”
He heard the West Texas drawl in her voice and liked it right away. It fit her, a country girl. But he didn’t believe her when she said he hadn’t frightened her. The way she hugged her arms around her chest made him feel like a monster.
“Glad to hear it,” he said.
“I was looking for Colin. Have you seen him? He’s the one with the real short hair.”
“No, sorry, I haven’t seen him. Is he your boyfriend?”
“He’s a friend.”
“Oh, well, that’s good.”
She frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Uh, nothing,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just, you know, when you meet a pretty girl and, well, you find out she doesn’t have a boyfriend, it’s…”
She unfolded her arms from around her chest and put a hand on her hip and cocked the hip to one side.
“It’s what?”
One of the guys from the fancy pickup truck trotted around the corner and stopped when he saw the two of them together.
Billy nodded at him.
He said, “I think this is Colin behind you.”
The girl turned and said, “Colin?”
“Yeah, Kyra, I’m here.” He came up next to her and took her hand in his. He said, “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Billy said.
Kyra didn’t say anything.
“Kyra, you okay?”
She nodded. “Colin, where’d you go?”
“I was looking at the canned chili, and when I turned around, you weren’t there.” He put a hand on the small of her back like he meant to lead her away. “Come on, we found some good stuff over here.”
“Okay.”
She let Colin turn her around, but then she stopped and turned back to Billy. “It was nice to meet you, Billy.” And then she smiled. It was a nice smile.
He gave one back to her, making it a point to avoid the glare from Colin standing beside her.
“Here, zombie zombie. Come here, girl.”
Randall Gaines was standing on the edge of a loading dock behind the local high school. In his hands he held a pool skimmer that he’d fitted with a length of rope that looped out at the far end into a makeshift dog handler’s pole.
The zombie shambled closer. She was barefoot, leaving a path of mud and blood on the white concrete. Her clothes were little more than rags now. She had the look of starvation about her, her skin saggy on her bones from recent, dramatic weight loss. There were open sores on her face and arms and a huge gash across her right cheek that might have been caused by fingernails. She smelled of rotting meat and defecation.
“Thatta girl,” Gaines said. “Come to daddy. You know you want it.”
The zombie raised her arms and let out a stuttering moan. She staggered closer, closer, and Gaines extended the pole, waiting to drop the loop of rope around her neck.
“Closer now. Come on, come on.”
Gaines swatted her hand out of the way with the pole, then gave the pole a quick flick to open up the loop of rope. It slid over the woman’s head and fell down around her shoulders.
He yanked on the pole and the rope tightened.
“Gotcha,” he said.
The woman started to choke, but she never stopped reaching for him. Slowly, careful to keep her on her feet, Gaines walked to the bottom of the ramp upon which he stood and began the slow, tedious process of turning the zombie around and guiding her onto the ramp. At the far end was the three-axle produce truck he’d found on a farm just outside town. It had taken some doing, but eventually he’d managed to lure eight zombies into his trap. Stinky girl here was his final catch of the day.
She was trying to turn around and grab him, but Gaines wouldn’t let her. She snarled and snapped at him, but for all her fighting, he managed to get her to the end of the ramp without too much effort. Then he positioned her at the edge of the ramp, just above the open bed of the produce truck where the other seven zombies waited, moaning and reaching skyward for him, and pushed her over.
She fell face-first into the bed of the truck, not even aware enough to try to break her fall. She crashed into three other zombies and sent them all tumbling into the railing. The woman caught her chin on the slat and Gaines heard something crunch.
“Ouch,” he said.
While she was down, he released the loop from around her neck. A moment later, with her jaw askew in a nasty break, she was on her feet, reaching for him.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s it. Time to go, folks.”
He jumped down from the edge of the ramp and climbed behind the wheel of the truck.
Fifteen minutes later he was pulling into a spot near a farmhouse at the edge of town. He could see the white van and the pickup parked in the driveway near the front door. The windows were lit from the inside with the soft orange glow of candlelight.
It looked so sweet and peaceful he wanted to vomit.
“Okay, Harvard,” he said. “Time to party.”
CHAPTER 38
There wasn’t a table big enough for all of them to sit down, so some of them had to eat standing up, their plates on the kitchen counter. Nobody seemed to mind, though. It was a party, and they were all feeling good.
The wine helped, Billy thought.
They’d found the good stuff at Costco and brought home three cases of it. He’d never cared for wine, but then, he reminded himself, he’d never had wine like this. The stuff in a box was no match for this fancy French shit he couldn’t even pronounce.
They’d also brought back a ton of food—and Margaret O’Brien and Jeff Stavers immediately found in each other kindred spirits of the kitchen. They made a huge meal of buttermilk fried chicken and biscuits with sweet cream butter and honey, oven-roasted rosemary fingerling potatoes, and steamed broccoli with a butter, white wine, and shallot reduction. They had loads of potato chips and pretzels and bread. And for dessert there was
a raspberry-chocolate-and whipped-cream swirl.
Their plates were piled high, their faces shining with the promise of the first real meal any of them had had in over a week. Billy and Ed both had pieces of chicken halfway to their mouths when Kyra suddenly stood up and bowed her head.
“Dear Lord,” she said, and though she spoke quietly, her opening words managed to make everyone go silent. “There is so much we do not understand. So much has happened, and so many good people have died. Everyone here has wondered why these things had to happen. We mourn for the lives we had and the comforts that are gone. We wonder if we are lost forever. But in your mercy you have given us each other. We give thanks, Lord, for bringing us together with these fellow travelers who share our destination. We give thanks, Lord, for their company and the strength they bring us and for the bounty you have set before us tonight. Please, bless this food, and bless each of us in the time to come. In your name we pray. Amen.”
A very sober round of Amen answered her.
It was at that point, while looking around the kitchen at the others, that Billy realized he was in the middle of his first real Thanksgiving dinner.
They even had a kids’ table. Robin Tharp, the incredibly beautiful brunette who Billy was certain he recognized from somewhere, had taken an instant shine to the two kids, and they to her. She was sitting at their table now, making them giggle over something.
The sound of their laughter was contagious, and it spread smiles around the room.
The wine started flowing.
But it wasn’t the food or the good spirits or even the sense of security he had here with these people that convinced him he was having his first real Thanksgiving dinner. He looked across the kitchen at Kyra and saw her cover her mouth with her hand as she laughed at something Colin had said, and he realized that this dinner was different because it was the first time in his life that he was truly thankful for the skin he lived in.