Dominion

by Doug Goodman

  “Go to hell,” Jax said.

  “Fuck off,” Aidan growled as he shouldered the rifle and headed towards the cars. “Anybody doesn’t agree with me, give her your breakfast.”

  “What’s up?” Alyssa asked Aidan as he finished pushing a Prius off the overpass. They were alone except for the dead. The Prius careened down the hill, barrel rolling until it collided into another train of cars.

  “I don’t have anything against her. She’s been good for Jaxon, I mean Jax, and I think you’ve enjoyed having another girl in the boy’s club.”

  “But she’s not one of us.”

  “Exactly. Look at it this way. If you had to choose between her and me, who would you choose?”

  “That’s not a fair question.”

  “A couple of months ago it wasn’t a fair question. It was like the whole if I lost all my arms and legs and was horribly disfigured, would you still love me, question. But babe, any one of use cold lose an arm to a warg or a dryder or whatever other kind of F’ed-up monster is out there now. So these questions that sound so callous and horrible are fair, and the truth is, every day she’s with us, she’s eating food that was rationed for six people, not seven.”

  “Have you looked at her? Riley’s nothing but skin and bones. She just picks at her food.”

  “But if it came down to you or her, I would put a bullet through her head to save you.”

  “Would you put a bullet through Kirk or Jax’s head? What about one of your brothers?”

  “I’m trying to keep it from ever getting like that.”

  “But the way you’re doing it is all wrong. It’s not very Christian of you.”

  “Christian? You want to talk family values, and I’m trying to keep us alive.”

  She caressed his arm. “But we are alive, and we do have values. And you may not believe in God anymore, but…”

  “I believe in God. I just have no value in Him.”

  Aidan smashed in the window of a Mercedes with a hammer and unlocked the door. He turned the wheel and began pushing it off the overpass. Alyssa walked away.

  She gasped sharply as she saw a dead body standing on the other side of the road. Alyssa was used to seeing dead bodies lying in cars and on the floors of stores and houses, often pulled apart and mangled, but never had she seen one standing. This corpse was pretty dried out from being on the overpass throughout the summer. It was not very disfigured. Something about it looked kind of odd. Was it doing the jerk?

  Colt and Peter came out from behind the nearest car, carrying another dead body.

  “What are you up to?”

  “Oh, this? Well, we had this idea,” Peter said.

  “You had this idea,” Kirk said, dragging another body over.

  “Okay, I had this idea. I remember reading about I think it was Pompeii, and how some of the people who were uncovered there were found in weird positions, and now archaeologists are spending their entire lives trying to figure out how they died that way and what were they doing that was so important they were going to risk dying for it. So I got this idea. One day, people will look back on all this and try to piece together what we were doing and why. I wanted to throw them a curveball. I decided we could pose some bodies in dance positions along the road, and that way, the archaeologists could spend their entire careers trying to figure out why people were dancing while others were being attacked by monsters.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Tomorrow, we are going to make a flash mob,” Kirk said.

  “How is it going to be a flash mob if—never mind. Why do I bother asking?”

  Behind them, in the distance, Alyssa saw something that made her pause. The boys were too busy positioning dead bodies to notice Alyssa staring out in the distance. So they didn’t see the joy spread across her face like lights flickering back on after a long blackout.

  “Look! Look!” she shouted. Everyone within earshot turned and stared where she was pointing.

  “What is it?” Peter asked.

  Colt cupped his hand over his eyebrows. Then he jerked back. “The bridge! Look at it!”

  “What bridge?” Kirk asked as he came over.

  “The bridge over the ship channel,” Alyssa said. She pointed at it. “It’s full of buildings!”

  Aidan came over, too. “Buildings on a bridge?”

  “Don’t believe me, hater, but it’s true!”

  “We really need a pair of binoculars,” Peter reminded them.

  From where they stood, they could barely make out giant blocked shapes on the bridge. “I’m not sure what it is,” Aidan said, “but it’s definitely not cars or trucks.”

  Then a bright light flashed at them.

  “Somebody’s over there!” Alyssa cheered.

  “Let’s not get too jumpy. Remember the last time we met people, they were stealing our solar panels.”

  “They weren’t our solar panels,” Alyssa said.

  “Same difference. You know what I mean.”

  Back at the van, Riley lifted her head from Jax’s waist. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  “No. Don’t care.”

  “I think they saw something.”

  “Sure. Fine. Whatever. Just finish.”

  She smiled mischievously. He frowned at her, and she finished him as the others returned.

  “Oh,” Alyssa said, seeing Riley and Jax. She turned her head. Jax buckled his pants.

  “Sorry!” Alyssa said.

  “It was nothing,” Riley said. She got a water bottle and drank deeply as the remaining four walked up behind Alyssa.

  Kirk could feel the tension in the air. “Did I miss something?”

  “Nope,” Jax said. “What’d y’all find? A working television?”

  “Better,” Peter said. “Civilization.”

  “Civilization. I thought it died last summer.”

  “But what kind of civilization?” It was Aidan. “We need to take it slow. Approach them, but on our terms, and with a get-away option.”

  After much discussion that went long into the night, the get-away option became a BMW. BMWs were common, and they had high top speeds and excellent acceleration. Their tires also didn’t run flat, so that made them good running-from-the-law cars. One time, they had all sat around a television set watching a man in a BMW who was able to run from the police for hours on end until he finally slammed into a car coming up an on-ramp he was trying to go down.

  The problem was gasoline. The irony was not lost on anyone that they were running out of gas while moving through all the refineries. They hadn’t seen a gas station since the one with the gas masks, so they had to siphon the gas from car fuel tanks. Only problem was, they needed a hose and a gas tank. Finally, they decided to rip hoses from stranded cars. The gas tanks were easier to come up with. A couple of cars had some old gas cans, even if they were empty because the owners spilled them in their efforts to run from whatever hideous monster was attacking them.

  Peter and Kirk took one lane, Aidan and Colt the other.

  Aidan sucked on the hose until gasoline poured out. He quickly jammed the hose into the red gas tank and sat back. He watched Colt holding the tank with his one crooked arm, the arm that Cthulhu mangled.

  “How does it feel?”

  Colt looked up and saw Aidan staring at his crooked arm. He started to pull the sleeves down.

  “I’m sorry,” Aidan said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “It’s okay. I mean, no worse off than your finger, or your belly, right?”

  “I guess so. I’d never set a bone before. I wish I could have done better for you, Colt.”

  Colt shrugged. “Is this going to be one of those brotherly moments where we say things about each other and cry?”

  Aidan laughed. “Hell, no. This is going to be one of those moments where I grab your cap and run.”

  It was a Texas Longhorns cap, and Aidan waved it in the air as he ran past the cars. He was not much of a runner, especial
ly not compared to his little brother, who would probably have ended up on a junior high track team because he was so fast. But he was laughing. He tried to stiff-arm Colt, but his kid brother pushed his arm out of the way and tackled him. The kid hit hard for a 13-year old. Maybe he could have been a cornerback instead of a track star. They fell in a ball of laughter.

  Kirk wanted to drive the Bimmer they found, but he couldn’t handle a stick-shift, so he led with the van on the final push to the ship channel bridge. They found they were closer to the bridge than they thought, and as they got closer, the cars thinned out. Riley, who could drive a stick shift (which was much to everyone’s surprise until they remembered her telling them once that her dad gave her an old Pontiac Firebird for her Sweet 16), drove the BMW.

  “I thought you couldn’t drive a stick,” Kirk said. “I remember Alyssa asking explicitly back at Lakewood when we were in the Viper if anyone could drive a stick, and nobody said anything.”

  “I was a little out of it that day, I guess, having just seen my friends blown up and eaten by wargs.”

  “You still bitching about that Viper?” Jax said.

  “It was a Viper, man!”

  Colt stayed with Riley in case anything went seriously wrong. Aidan decided that he, Peter, and Jax, who were armed, would walk in front of the Bimmer and mini-van. Alyssa, to nobody’s surprise, refused to be anywhere but at Aidan’s side.

  Since the ship channel bridge was actually part of the interstate, they had to climb up the on-ramp to get to the bridge. They found that the wide bridge was blockaded, but unlike the great wall of automobiles they found weeks ago in the pine-wooded forests, here large cargo shipping crates were carefully placed along the edge of the bridge’s low point. Two prominent crates were painted up like the Texas flag. Between the two, a large metal gate had been placed. Two towers were erected behind the crates, one on each side of the north and southbound lanes. About ten people holding various rifles, pistols, and crossbows were aiming their weapons at them.

  Each side waited for the other to do something.

  “We’re gonna have to run,” Aidan said under his breath.

  “Just chill, Aidan,” Jax said. “They will be okay about it.”

  Still, the people in the towers didn’t say anything. They didn’t drop their weapons, either.

  “Somebody should say something,” Peter said. “Aidan, say something.”

  “You say something and get shot.”

  Alyssa took a step forward and pulled off her gas mask. Everybody reacted. The people in the towers started shouting, and the boys raised their weapons.

  Something caught her eye, though.

  “Val, is that you?” she yelled over the shouting.

  One of the people put their weapons down. “Alyssa? Hey! I didn’t recognize you!”

  While Val had the gate opened, the boys stood paralyzed. Alyssa ran up to the gate. As soon as Val appeared, she gave him a giant, full-bodied hug.

  “Who is Val?” Peter asked.

  “Her ex,” Aidan said.

  “Oh.”

  “They went out on a date or two, but nothing happened.”

  “Clearly,” Peter said.

  “Nothing happened. They just haven’t seen each other since the beginning of the apocalypse.”

  “I’d crush on her too, if it meant I got to hug her like that.”

  Aidan didn’t reply. Of all the people to survive Black Friday, why Val? Couldn’t he have been carried off by some roc and fed to its little roc babies? Val was a charming, pretty man with fair features. Val was like a really tall Zac Efron or Ryan Reynolds to Aidan’s Shrek. He was so tall that in hugging Alyssa, he had to lift her off her feet to hug her properly. She giggled while he twirled her.

  Val looked over to the others. “You can take your masks off. We’ve tested the air and it’s okay to breathe.”

  “Thank God!” Peter said to Val as he ripped his mask off and tossed it. “That thing was murder. You have no idea what it’s like to sleep in a gas mask.”

  Aidan was the last to pull his mask off. He collected the others and put them in the Bimmer.

  “C’mon in!” Val said. “You can bring the cars if you want, but drive slow. We don’t have much street room.”

  Aidan guessed there were 200 people living on the giant arched bridge. It was almost completely walled in by the large cargo crates, which were often layered one on top of the other with nothing more than a ladder to get people up and down.

  “We used cranes to move the crates from the shipping docks. You can’t imagine what we find in them. It’s like one day we find an entire crate full of Hello Kitty or Power Rangers, and the next day, we find one full of noodles or cokes. Speaking of which – I’m guessing you guys haven’t eaten good meat in a couple of months. Who wants barbecue?”

  Peter said, “I must have died cause it sounded like you said you had barbecue.”

  “C’mon. I’ll take you to the kitchen.”

  As they made their way to the kitchen, Aidan noticed that Alyssa and Val were still arm-in-arm. As they walked through the makeshift town, people stopped and watched them. Aidan noticed that none of the people looked too happy to have his friends and family there.

  The kitchen was a big red crate with golden arches on it. “Don’t get your hopes up. It was full of kid’s toys,” Val told them, “But I thought it would look good on our kitchen. It breaks the monotony of all these same-colored cargo crates.”

  The sweet smell of barbecue wafted to them from a hundred feet away, and they were all salivating by the time they reached the kitchen crate. The doors were open, and inside they saw metal picnic tables like the kind normally found in parks. At the far end of the crate was a small counter, and on the other side, stacks and stacks of MREs, all still in their cardboard shipping boxes.

  “Edna, could I get some barbecue for my friends? They are new here.”

  “We only have the best for the newbies,” Edna replied. Edna had the look of a woman who was older than she appeared, with deep laugh lines and tallow skin on her narrow frame. Her smile covered half her face. Aidan thought all she was missing was a hairnet and a burning cigarette to look like the cafeteria lunch lady. She cut open a box and gave Val eight MREs, but Val handed his back. As they sat down at the picnic tables, she brought out a gallon of water.

  “Been filtered, darlins,” she said. “Happy eating.”

  Val showed them how to add water to the barbecue, which cooked the meat. In five minutes, they were eating it without abandon. Barbecue sauce and crackers drizzled down their chins. They ate not completely unlike wild, half-starved dogs. They squirted tubes of jelly down their throats and gulped the Powerade-reject drink mix almost without stirring. For a full minute, there was complete silence except for the sounds of chewing, glurping, and smacking. Even Aidan had to admit to himself, though he would never say it out loud, the barbecue was the best food he could remember.

  After the minute of silence, Val noticed Alyssa crying.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s just – I haven’t had beef since Black Friday. It just tastes so good!”

  Val noticed how quickly they were all finishing their meals, so he brought them each two more of the barbecue MREs and began cooking them.

  “It’s been tough for everyone,” Val said, “But somehow, we all find a way to survive. How did you guys do it?”

  “Holed up in a two-story house in a subdivision,” Alyssa said between mouthfuls. “What about you? I mean, clearly, you guys went a different route.”

  “Yeah,” Val said. “I don’t think we could have survived if we went in the direction you took. My dad was out on the oilrig on Black Friday. I was back home. You know my cousin has a monster truck, right?”

  “So it’s agreed – we chose the worst escape car in the history of the apocalypse, right?” Kirk asked.

  “Did you get to drive out on a monster truck?” Colt asked.

  “Pic
k your jaw up off the floor,” Aidan told Colt. In reality, Colt was admiring the monster truck idea through mouthfuls of barbecue.

  Val laughed at Colt. “Ha. More than that. We took a few of those things down on the way out. We knew the suburbs would be a deathtrap, and from everything I’ve heard, they’re nothing more than prisons, which is partly why I am surprised you got out of there, Alyssa. No, like everyone else, we first thought of evacuation. We tried, but you can’t get far in a monster truck unless you are willing to run over some cars, and I didn’t want to injure anyone, even if it meant harming myself.”

  “That’s very brave of you. I wish everyone had that sentimentality,” Alyssa said.

  “Thanks, but mainly we were just trying to escape. Before the power went out, I was able to get in touch with my dad. We met here at the bridge, and that’s where we got the idea to stack crates and build the fortress.”

  “Who is this?” A big man with broad girth said as he entered the kitchen. He came upon them so suddenly that Jax and Aidan reached for their weapons out of surprise. The large man wore a black leather jacket and pants. A salt-and-pepper beard teased his face. When he spoke, his voice was like mortar and concrete. “More lost boys?”

  “Dad, this is Alyssa. You remember Alyssa, right?”

  “The one that got away. I’m glad to see you survived. Welcome. And these are your friends?”

  “They went to high school with me. Kirk, Jax, Riley, and the brothers Peter, Colt, and Aidan, my boyfriend.”

  He looked sternly at Aidan while shaking his hand. “You I have to thank for my son’s loss.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that,” Alyssa said.

  “No te preocupas,” he said, waving his hand and smiling. “Water under the bridge, right? Nothing could please me more than the news that more people survived. Your self-preservation shows you to be a credit to our species. We need more people like that, since the food chain has been turned upside-down on us. I am Señor Victor Olivarez, but you can call me Mr. Olivarez. You know my son, Val. Together we founded Bridgetown. At first, there were just a few of us, but now several hundred call Bridgetown home.”