by Geo Dell
She pinched the biggest joint he had even seen in between two browned fingers. Stained, he supposed, from all the joints she had smoked. She stood with a hand on one hip and shook her head as if to clear it. “Are you stupid or something?”
They all looked at her.
“Zac ain't gonna like it that no ni... black boy touched his bike, I'll tell you,” she said. She took a quick hit off the joint as if to fortify her resolve; squinted and held her breath.
“Really?” Ronnie asked. “What was that other word you were going to use?”
“Never you mind, smart ass. And you had best watch how you talk to your betters too,” she told him. She dismissed him, picked up a bottle of pink sparkle fingernail polish, shook it up, pulled out the wand and began to paint one nail.
The three continued pushing until the bike was over the line. Mike kicked the stand down.
“Dumb fucks,” the woman said. “Wait until Zac hears about this.” She took another deep pull on the joint, held her breath, almost lost it, then let the smoke roll out her nose. She seemed to forget about the three men again. She spread her fingers and looked at the one nail critically. She began to dab at another nail.
“You have a nice day,” Bear told her.
“Yeah. It's been real,” Ronnie added.
“White trash,” Molly said as she climbed back into he truck.
“Who you?” the woman said. She squinted at Molly who paused part way into her truck, but she said nothing else.
They crept around the section with their vehicles. Just as Chloe inched past the bike it fell over onto one of the ratty old couches.
“Huh,” Mike said.
“Must not have set the kick stand right,” Ronnie said.
“Yes!” Mike said. He raised his hand and they both high-fived. “Unbelievable.”
“Yeah. You can say that again,” Ronnie agreed.
~
They dismissed the episode from their minds. It was late afternoon, and despite what was behind the vast, empty countryside; the devastation that was worldwide, the coming fall was painting the foliage in vivid colors and the beauty of it caught their eyes as they drove along.
They had spent most of the early morning cleaning out an alternate energy store that they had happened upon. It had anchored the end of a huge strip mall on the outskirts of a large city they had come upon. There had been no sign for the city. Someone had erected their own from a piece of plywood, spray painting, 'Stay The Fuck Out' and at the bottom, 'Dead Body Count 457'. The sign had been done in blue spray paint. Someone else had x-ed out the 457 with orange paint and wrote 458.
They had stopped; they had heard nothing and they had seen nothing, but they had kept their machine pistols handy, and the safety’s off as they drove down into the strip mall. They had spotted the store and it had also appeared empty at first look, but as they pulled down off the highway the dead had been on them immediately.
Mike had run down three of them that had come down off the cracked sidewalk and ran at their Jeep. And then he and Ronnie had jumped out and gone after the few that were still coming toward them. Within a few seconds there were ten of them scattered across the warped parking lot. Mike walked up to one that lay on the pavement, halfway onto the orange painted curbing that framed the sidewalk.
Half it's mid section was gone. It's spine vaporized, but it continued to scrabble against the blacktop trying to pull itself up. Mike crushed its head with the Jeeps tire iron he had bought from the jeep for just that purpose. A few minutes later the other vehicles were parked by the front doors and Bear and Ronnie kept watch as they searched through the stores for things on Tim's wish list.
They had taken everything they could fit onto the second truck. Tim had decided what to take. Solar panels. Huge spools of wire that they found on a power company truck in the parking lot. The truck's windshield was caved inward, and dried maroon splattered the interior of the truck, but there was no one in it, dead or otherwise. They helped themselves to all the specialized tools the truck carried too.
In the alternative energy store, Tim had found specialized computers set up to run solar powered, wind powered, or virtually any other kind of alternate power supply or individual units. He spent time reading the documentation and then loaded them inside one of the trucks where they would have an easier ride.
There were aisles of specialized appliances, but he had no real use for them. There were two huge refrigeration units in pieces, and those did find their way onto the truck.
Lighting for homes. Street lighting. Generators, converters, heating units that ran on DC current. Mike lost count long before Tim had finished loading the truck. It seemed to him though, that he had taken nearly everything he had come across that he was even slightly sure he might need.
In the end the truck was completely loaded, with no room for even one more item. They decided to press on in search of at least one more big truck, possibly two, once they were moving again they were all happier.
The roads were bad. Much worse than they had been And good fuel was tough to find. It was even tough to tell if it was good fuel. It all burned, but the vehicles were severely under-powered and knocked and pinged with the bad stuff. Even so the roadway itself was the worst of it.
In the hot, humid climate the vegetation was growing like crazy. Kudzu was everywhere. Creeping across the road from side to side. Climbing the trees. Draped from whatever power lines and poles still remained. So thick in places that it was tough to tell what the vines had covered or climbed in the first place. It was like driving through some futuristic jungle, Mike had thought. And that had made him laugh because it actually was a futuristic jungle.
They came upon a huge mall on the outskirts of another city an hour or so after they had left the strip mall. One of the anchors was a huge national home improvement chain store.
They stopped on the highway and checked out the store from there.
There seemed, at first, to be no dead anywhere near it. Maybe inside, but Mike had doubted that too because of the steep sided ravine that circled the store building.
The store sat on a near island. Behind, and on both sides, a steep sided, red earth ravine plunged down a good fifty feet. The rains, a flash flood, something had taken away all the earth surrounding the store on three sides. Leaving a deep sink hole, with just the area of pavement that fronted the store still whole.
As they came closer they could see that there were several dead in the ravine, some lying down, others pacing back and forth in the prison the ravine made. The sides were soft crumbly red dirt with no way out. As he watched the same zombie tried a half dozen times to crawl up the embankment and out. Five or six feet up she would begin to slide back, ending up in a heap at the bottom each time. It seemed to infuriate her, and the last time she fell she turned and attacked one of the others that had been wandering back and forth.
Her fury was out of control. The other zombie tried to run but she chased him down and pulled him limb from limb, finally leaving him scrabbling along the ground, entrails dragging along behind him as he crawled.
“Like a trap,” Bear said as he came up beside Mike.”
“Jesus... I had no idea they were so crazy... So... Strong.” Mike said.
“One your size is at least twice your strength.” Bear nodded when Mike shook his head, and then turned back to the store. “Good thing is, there isn't likely going to be any inside of the store.”
There was a large area of pavement in front of the store that was untouched. More than big enough to drive the trucks across and park on. One part of the concrete slab that the store rested on extended out over the ravine at one end of the building.
They pulled down into the mall and over to the store front.
The glass doors were shut against the humid air. Powdery dust coated the front walk where bags of some sort that had been piled left of the door had toppled and split open. The dust was undisturbed. Nothing had passed this way in some time.
&nbs
p; They entered cautiously, but there were no dead inside the store. The inside was a mess. Humid, green mold growing on nearly all the surfaces that were exposed. Several batteries stacked on pallets near the checkouts had burst in the heat and a strong chemical smell filled the store. They chocked the doors open but it did little to clear the air. After just a few minutes inside eyes began to water and throats began to close up. Bear walked off into the store and came back just a few minutes later with masks used for spraying paint and chemicals. A few minutes later Mike and Molly were guarding the front of the store as they others went off looking through the aisles.
At the back of the store a huge flatbed delivery truck sat just inside the rear garage doors along with two smaller trucks. They searched but could not find the keys. Chloe offered to get the truck running, they drove one of the jeeps in through the open doors past Mike and Molly to jump it with, and a few minutes later the truck was running.
Mike went in to see it a few minutes later, thinking he would find a bunch of hanging wires, but instead a screwdriver protruded from the ignition switch. Chloe seemed embarrassed when he complimented her on how quickly she had made it work.
Mike went back out front sending Tim back in, and he and Molly watched the parking lot as the others pulled the truck up through the middle of the store and began loading it up. Plumbing, pipe, electrical boxes and wire. Supplies of all types and sorts. Hand tools, power tools, fiberglass shower stalls and tubs, connectors, switches, outlets...
Gang Boxes, Nellie read on the side of one box as she loaded it.
“What exactly is a gang box,” She asked Tim.
“It's the box that you mount the electrical outlet, switch or whatever else into. Goes into the wall.” He walked over to a wall switch, pulled a screwdriver from his pocket and removed the plate and showed her the box that rested inside the wall and mounted the switch; the wires coming into it from inside the wall somewhere. “See?”
Nellie nodded. “How do you know all this stuff, though?”
“I read,” Tim said shyly. “I like to know things, so I read. I picked up a book on house wiring last spring, and then another on commercial grade wiring as well. Before we went in, I mean, before we left Watertown. I actually started reading it back there.”
Nellie shook her head. “Good for us,” She said.
“Here,” Ronnie told her. He walked over to a bin of gang boxes and pulled one out. “These nails,” he pointed to two nails that protruded from one side. He proceeded to show her how to make it fit as he held it up against a nearby wall.
A large computer store sat across the ravine, nearly half of the concrete slab broken and leaning down into the ravine. Mike had no doubt that a few more months and the whole mall might be at the bottom of the ravine. At least what was left of it.
The back warehouse area of the computer store looked to be intact. He pointed it out to Tim and he and Bear went over with Nellie. They made short work of gathering together what he wanted, but they decided to leave off loading it until the next day. With the warehouse at their back, they circled the trucks and camped out on what was left of the parking lot.
Instead of tents, they set up three large tarps tied to the tops of the Jeeps, and held up in the center with a tall aluminum step ladder they had liberated from the home improvement store, if it did rain they would stay dry. The sky gave no hint of rain, but twice so far they had been driving along, sun shining, and had been hit by what amounted to a tropical downpour. The sun had continued to shine through the downpour and had still been shining when the rain had abruptly stopped, since then they had payed closer attention.
“You know,” Mike said now. “This may be a faster trip than what we thought it would be.”
“How so?” Molly asked.
“Well, we already have almost everything we were sent to get.”
“I thought of that too,” Nellie said. “Good luck do you suppose?”
“I'd say,” Molly agreed.
“What is left?” Nellie asked.
Bear shook his head. “Tim says he has all the rest of what he needs right over in that warehouse.”
Tim nodded. “But there is a lot of other stuff. Electric cars, well, four by fours really. Books... Specific books. Did anyone see if there was a book chain in this mall,” He asked
“Has to be,” Nellie said.
“Yeah, but it could be all mold too, like the store was,” Molly said.
“True,” Mike said. “But if not, there are our books...” He paused to think, and then pulled a small lined notebook from his shirt pocket. “Seeds. Trees. I mean fruit and nut trees. The four by's... Sheep. A tea bush? I don't know where to find that. I didn't even know there was such a thing. A book that tells how to grow coffee. Furniture... Anything we can find is one less thing we have to make.”
“Sheep?” Nellie asked.
“Wool,” Mike said. “And of course we're still looking for a spinet and a loom as well,” he finished.
“Museum,” Molly said.
“Never thought of that,” He agreed smiling.
“Gonna be hard to find sheep this far down,” Josh threw in.
“Too hot?” Ronnie asked.
“Yeah, but even so, I saw two different herds up the other side of where we were camped... 'Bout sixty, seventy miles back... North. Small... Good herds though, both of them,” Josh said.
“Think they'd still be there?” Mike asked.
“Yeah. They weren’t about to go nowhere. Sheep are pretty simple. They have to be lead to most things. They'll be there,” he finished.
“Okay... So we can get them on the way back then,” Nellie said.
Mike nodded. “Sounds good to me... So, then there isn't much else to get... The electric four by fours sound like the hardest thing... We really might be heading back early,” He said and smiled.
They began to get a dinner meal ready and placed the first posts as the sun began to sink in the northeast.
The Nation
It took four hours of steady walking to reach the lake. Bob was pretty sure they had collected every worm in the valley. They carried them in several plastic containers. They had also bought along a dozen ears of corn for bait. Snagging gear, several large nets, basket nets, fiberglass and bamboo poles and baskets and containers to carry fish back.
They set up two large tents and then set up their equipment to fish. Within three hours they were pulling large bullheads, black bass and lake trout in as fast as they could cast.
“I don't guess they've had a good worm in a few months,” Bob joked.
“Hell, there was no worm on my hook at all that time,” Arlene said laughing.
They threw back most of the bony fish; sun fish, crappies, and kept the bullhead, black bass and occasional lake trout.
Cindy and Tom quickly set up a long line of drying racks and built smokey fires under the strings that ran from rack to rack.
Sharon suddenly gave a shout and Bob lunged for her and grabbed her to keep her from being dragged into the lake as a huge fish leapt into the air. It's wide mouth yawned as it tried to shake the hook. What looked like whiskers trailed the sides of its huge head, whipping back and forth as it tossed its head hoping to shake the hook. “What the Hell is that?” She asked.
“I would guess,” Bob said. “That it has got to be what we would call a channel cat.” He handed his pole off to Tom who had come running and took a firmer grip on Sharron’s pole as she passed it over. “A Channel Cat is just a big catfish. Looks sort of like a bullhead, doesn't it? Only a lot bigger,” Bob laughed. “This one feels about fifty or sixty pounds, maybe five or six feet long... Give or take,” he grunted as the fish fought.
It took most of a half hour for Bob to land the fish. It was taller than Tom, and Tom was well over six feet.
“That is one ugly fish,” David said.
“It is, but cooked right that is one tasty fish,” Arlene said.
“Partaker of the catfish are we?” Bob asked.
Two more hours of fishing and the racks were full. The smell of the catfish cooking was maddening.
Sharon had helped to find what ever grew wild near the lake that they could use. Leeks and Wild Wheat along with a few herbs helped the meal along. Arlene had wrapped the fish in the wild wheat along with the herbs and leeks and placed it over a hot bed of coals.
Wild potatoes and carrots grew near the lake and those were harvested as well. Arlene and Sharon wrapped them in wheat and let them cook near the hot coals. They had used butter to mix with the cut up herbs for the fish and the vegetables.
“I had thought that potatoes, carrots, leeks... Onions or what ever those are called,” Tom said, “were, what would you call it, domesticated?”
“Fair enough word,” Bob agreed. “Many people think that, but the truth is that they grow wild just like anything else. All you need to know is what to look for, and you would never go hungry in the wild. That is exactly what our ancestors did... I wont say domestication didn't help, it did, but it did not invent... The stuff was already there.”
Bob had shown everyone how to make a serviceable cutting edge from stone. Using a larger stone as a hammer to fracture a smaller stone they had made small knives and used them to cut up the fish and the vegetables.
They built up the other smokey fires to keep the insects away as the fish dried and then served up the fish and vegetables. They sat next to the lake and ate dinner as dusk came on.
They intended to stay two days and had already called back to let everyone know how the fishing was going.
“They said the kids are wiped out. Milking this morning, chores this afternoon, and then they picked some corn to take back. Jan made them hamburgers and fries,” Bob said. “Yes, the fries I was supposed to make and forgot about. And an apple pie. They picked some small crab apples from some wild trees down the valley,” he finished.