by J. M. Snyder
Then again, this was Ronnie—if he’d said he thought they should hole up in the woods and wait for the world to end, Court would be sitting right by his side.
Still, the highways proved fruitful. Despite the official entreaties to stay home in the vain hope of containing the outbreak, many people had hopped into their vehicles and took off…who knew where they thought they were going to go. To the hills, maybe. To larger cities, ‘civilization,’ where there were government buildings and larger hospitals, where they could search for answers. Or to visit friends and family one last time.
Their vehicles clogged the interstates, highways, and byways with wrecks much like the one Court and Adam had come out looking for that morning. People whose bodies gave up the good fight as they drove in search of some semblance of safety had run off the road or plowed into other vehicles, killing others as they themselves died. Many had bundled children into the back seat, or pets, and the whole family perished together on some anonymous road. It was sad, really, and Court felt his heart twist inside his chest every time he saw another wreck.
But he knew each car would have its own private stash of supplies—grocery bags full of cans, cereal boxes, chips, sometimes even batteries and flashlights, as well. Emergency provisions for the road, left trapped behind glass once the drivers were dead.
Left for the living.
He preferred to use the baseball bat to break into the cars because it brought to mind what he should really be doing this time of the year, what he would be doing if the virus hadn’t struck—coaching Little League for the county Parks and Rec Department. Swinging the bat, even if only to shatter a windshield, still sent a familiar surge of anticipation shooting through his body, a feeling of pride mingled with nervousness, a hope of swinging true and hitting it out of the ballpark.
Once they were inside a vehicle, it was easier for him if he treated these exploratory expeditions as nothing more than a long, strange shopping trip. Reaching into the back of the vehicle, he’d pull out one bag after another and hand each off to Adam, who set them to one side of the road. With the bags out, Court propped one foot on the car’s rear tire and stood up on it to look inside, making sure he had everything they could possibly use. Sometimes he took other items—tire irons, rope, bungee cables, tarpaulin, anything they might need later on, for whatever reason.
When he was sure he had it all, he and Adam retreated to their stash of bags and began to root through them like two frantic housewives checking to make sure the kid at the checkout had bagged everything properly. Canned items went into the shopping cart, as did any unopened boxes and bags of pre-made food—cereal, granola bars, crackers, cookies, chips, snacks. They passed on most of the jars of frou-frou items like salsa, spices, and sauces. They passed on boxes of noodles, too, though Court took bags of rice when he found them. Noodles were hard to prepare over a campfire, and wasted what little clean water they had. Who wanted to drink starchy water after they’d cooked a pot of linguine in it? But rice absorbed the water it cooked, and could be boiled in chicken stock if they had it. Besides, it was one of Court’s favorite foods.
By now any fresh vegetables they found were spoiled, and anything that had to be refrigerated was of no use. Unopened drinks went in the shopping cart—Court preferred water bottles still in the packaging, which was why he looked on the floor of each vehicle to make sure he wasn’t missing a twenty-four pack of unopened Aquafina somewhere. Sometimes he found drink mixes, and when he did, he took those. Sometimes he found soda, but after months in a hot car, most of the carbonation dissipated the moment they opened the cans, and to Court, nothing tasted worse than hot, flat Coke.
They took five brown paper bags of groceries from the back of the station wagon. Away from the stench of death rising from within the vehicle, Court and Adam lowered their bandannas for some fresh air, then went through the bags one by one. Instant rice (Court grimaced—he favored the real thing, but he’d deal with boil-in-the-bag if he had to, it was better than nothing). Some cartons of apple juice, for the children in the middle, no doubt. A box of Cheerios, and a few bags of Goldfish crackers—again, for the kids. Adam reached into one bag and looked up at Court with an almost exaggerated expression of sorrow on his face. “Cesar dog food,” he said, extracting a handful of cans designed for a small dog. “Now we know what was in the carrier.”
“Could we eat that?” Court asked, curious.
Adam gave him a crazed look. “It’s dog food.”
“Yeah, but it’s meat.” Court shrugged. “I mean, I’m not saying I want to eat it, but if we had to, could we? You know, heat it up over the campfire maybe, stir it in with some rice…”
But Adam shook his head. “It might say beef on the package, but I guarantee you, it doesn’t taste like steak. Why do you think dogs always beg at the table? They know this stuff is shit, too.”
As Court loaded up the cart with the items they would take back to camp, Adam opened each can of dog food, tearing off the lids completely and discarding them in one of the now-empty grocery bags. Then he set each can on the yellow line marking the edge of the road. “What’re you doing that for?” Court wanted to know.
Adam shrugged. “Just in case anything comes along looking for a snack.”
Like us, Court started to say, but he kept that thought to himself.
The basket was a bear to push when full, but with Adam’s help, Court managed to wrangle it around the twisted remains of the station wagon. The minivan would be a harder nut to crack—the windows along the sides of the vehicle were tinted, the interior dark, and even with his hands cupped around his face, he couldn’t see inside. He didn’t want to swing the bat and hit someone on the other side of the window, even if they were nothing more than rags and bones by this stage. Minivans said kids, to him, the same way station wagons said soccer moms. Today’s scavenging was already gruesome enough.
Leaving the cart on the minivan’s left side, Court circled the vehicle as he looked for a way in. Back doors were locked, of course. The sliding side doors wouldn’t slide, which meant they were locked, too. Front passenger side door was also locked, but at least here he lucked out a little—the window was rolled down, not much but enough to allow him entry. Or so he hoped. The only other option was to crawl onto the hood of the minivan and try to get through the broken windshield without slipping and slicing open something vital on the remaining glass. Which would mean getting up close and personal with the dead driver, and that was something Court didn’t want to do.
So he stood on the step beneath the passenger side door and reached through the open window. There were a row of buttons on the handle inside the door, but after pressing each in turn, he found one that unlocked the doors. “Bingo,” he said with a smile at Adam. “Open sesame.”
Adam gripped the handle on the side of the minivan and slid the door out of the way. The interior was hot, but not unbearable. The dark still retained a hint of the previous night’s coolness, and it was a relief to be out of the glare of the sun. Court wasn’t looking forward to winter—how would they keep warm in their tents, without electricity or heat? But a few cool autumn days weren’t asking too much, were they? It was September already. Dial back the heat, you hear? he thought as he climbed inside the van. He wasn’t sure such a demand constituted a prayer, but he’d take his chances. What was God going to do, strike him dead?
Too late. You missed.
There were no bodies inside the minivan. Hey, thanks for that, Court thought, then realized he was maintaining a one-sided conversation with nobody and stopped. The apocalypse had come and gone, the rapture was over, the end had washed right over them and he—along with Ronnie, and Adam, and a handful of others—they were all still here. Fighting to survive. Fighting to get by. And who did he have to thank for that?
“Talk to me,” he said out loud, if only to chase away his gathering thoughts. He’d followed Adam into the minivan, and though it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior, he could
hear his friend rummaging through what sounded like plastic shopping bags. “Adam? What’d you find?”
“Porn, mostly.”
A magazine came fluttering toward Court, who caught it and glanced at the cover. Playboy. Court laughed as he leafed through it. “Of all the things to take with you when you go.”
Adam’s smile was evident in his voice. “There are some DVDs, too. All raunchy stuff. Really, where’d he think he was going to watch these? On whose TV?”
Before Court could answer, movement from the corner of his vision caught his attention and he turned to see someone’s face pressed against the outside of the back window. Hands cupped around it, blocking out the sun and turning the visage into a ghostly grimace. “Christ!”
Instinctively, he reached for the baseball bat, but he’d left it inside the cart. Then the person pulled back enough to let some light shine on his features, and Court’s racing heart galloped in his chest. He raised his voice in mock anger. “Ronnie! What the hell, man? Are you trying to give me a fucking coronary?”
“Ronnie?” Adam glanced up from the back of the minivan and watched their friend disappear from the window. “Shit. What’s he doing here?”
A few seconds later, Ronnie appeared in the minivan’s open doorway with an answer to that question. “Hey, guys. Guess whose water just broke.”
Adam shook his head. “No.”
Ronnie shrugged in response. Court sank down heavily in the nearest bucket seat, and turned it to face the door. For a moment he allowed himself to savor the sight of Ronnie’s careless hair, the warm brown depths streaked with highlights from the sun. His hands fisted in his lap as he resisted the urge to reach out and run them through Ronnie’s bangs, just to brush them back from Ronnie’s piercing, pale eyes. God, those eyes…
Then Ronnie glanced from Adam to Court, and Court looked at Adam so Ronnie wouldn’t catch him staring. “Well?” he asked, his voice suddenly gruff. “You going to help, or what?”
“I’m a vet, not an OB/GYN,” Adam groused, but it was an old argument and wouldn’t get him out of this. “I don’t even know what you expect me to do. If she was having puppies, that’d be different.”
“Not much,” Ronnie remarked. “Same equipment, different species.”
Court nodded. “Yeah, just hunker down between her legs like a quarterback waiting for a pass. The kid’s probably going to come with or without help from you, anyway.”
“Then why do I even need to show up?” Adam complained.
Ronnie gave him a look that allowed no room for argument. “You’re the closest thing we have to a doctor. Go on. I’ll finish up here with Court.”
Something deliciously hot flashed through Court at those words. With me. He’s staying here with me. He bit the inside of his lower lip to keep from grinning like a fool. Go on already, Adam. What the hell are you waiting for?
Still, Adam hesitated. He looked at Court, lines of worry etched into his brow above his thin glasses. In a quiet voice, he asked, “What if it…?”
Ronnie brushed the question aside with an irritated wave of his hand. “Deliver it first. Then we’ll worry about it getting sick.”
Adam gave one long, last sigh, then took off his glasses to wipe them on the bandanna around his neck. “Fine. I don’t like doing this alone—”
“The other women are with her,” Court pointed out.
Adam shot him an unreadable look. “Just you two hurry back, you hear? If anything happens—”
“It won’t,” Ronnie said.
Court wondered how he could be so sure.
As Adam disappeared through the minivan’s windows, Court gave Ronnie a wide grin. “Excited?” he asked. “We’re having a baby!”
Ronnie rolled his eyes and climbed up into the minivan. He clapped a heavy hand on Court’s shoulder, partly in greeting, partly to help him navigate back to where Adam had been rooting for supplies. “It isn’t mine.”
“Didn’t you ever want kids?” Court had never come out and asked Ronnie about it—for as long as they’d known her, Melissa had had too many ‘female’ complications and children were never a question for the Densches. Then Melissa’s cramps had grown worse, and what her doctor had thought might be endometriosis turned out to be cancer. Court still remembered the hollow look in Ronnie’s eyes when he had found out. If anything good had come of her illness, anything at all, it was that she passed away two years before the virus struck, so she didn’t die with all the others.
In a way, she went first.
When Ronnie didn’t answer, Court thought he should’ve kept his big mouth shut. Leaning against the back of the seat in front of him, he rested his forehead on his sweaty forearm and stared out the open minivan door into the sunlight. Thinking of their wives, of Melissa and Jeanine, and all the others who were no longer alive. Thinking of Adam, a big, brawny man more at home operating on large dogs than delivering babies. Thinking of the woman giving birth in the woods, the woman whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn, just one more mouth to feed in their little growing community.
Thinking of the radio in the tent he shared with Ronnie. A solar-powered, hand-cranked, emergency radio with a crooked antenna and a cracked, plastic shell no longer quite as water-proofed as advertised. Thinking of the burst of almost inarticulate static they’d heard…the previous evening? Two nights ago? Court couldn’t quite remember. He’d thought he heard one word, Sumter, but no amount of fiddling with the dials would get in anything else.
From the back of the minivan, Ronnie’s voice drifted to him. “Don’t dwell on it. We won’t know shit until the baby’s born.”
Court drew in a deep breath, shaking free of the troubling thoughts that circled his mind. “I was thinking of the radio.”
“Don’t,” Ronnie said again. “If there’s anyone out there, we’ll hear it again soon enough. Maybe we’ll pick up the signal better if we keep moving south. This guy was a perv.”
A magazine sailed out of the dark interior to land at Court’s feet. Another porno, this one a little more hardcore than Playboy. The pages sprawled before him like an invitation, and he saw the smooth, round ass of a pretty young woman spread wide as a man with an elephantine cock plowed into her. Court couldn’t take his gaze away from the rigid member, thick with veins, the tip purple and engorged. Despite the heat, he felt his dick stir in the confines of his jeans.
Quickly he looked away, one foot nudging the magazine shut, but his gaze settled on Ronnie’s narrow hips and his libido soared. The no-color, washed-out shirt Ronnie wore tucked into the waistband of his skinny, well-worn jeans pulled taut against his lower back, showing each knobbed bone in his spine. Ronnie was a long, tall drink of water, as Court liked to say. His slim frame enhanced his height, making him seem to tower over most people. Beside Ronnie’s lithe grace, Court always felt clumsy, oafish. Small, somehow, despite standing an inch or two over six foot himself.
He imagined running his hands over Ronnie’s lower back, pressing the shirt down flat against Ronnie’s skin, feeling the heat and the sweat trapped between the fabric and Ronnie’s body. His dick began to throb, a steady, familiar ache he always associated with Ronnie. Melissa’s gone, he told himself as he stared at Ronnie’s backside. Jeanie, too. It’s only you and me now, cowboy.
As if that made it any easier to admit how he felt for his oldest, dearest friend.
Another magazine landed at Court’s feet—another porno. He looked up and found Ronnie standing above him. When had that happened? Had Ronnie seen the way Court was staring at him?
If he had, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he touched Court’s shoulder again, half in friendship but also half to help support him as he moved through the minivan. “There’s nothing here but trash,” he said, leaving his hand on Court’s shoulder as if he’d forgotten where he put it. “What’d you find in the other one? Anything good?”
Court sat up and pressed his cheek to the top of Ronnie’s hand. Hot, rough flesh warmed his face a moment, then o
ne thick finger brushed his jaw. “We got a little food. Nothing for a baby, though.”
Ronnie caressed Court’s chin with his little finger and Court glanced up at him. The rueful look in his eyes mirrored Court’s own. What’s stopping you? Court thought, but he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Ronnie or himself. If we want to, why don’t we? Why can’t we?
Then Ronnie’s mouth took on a sad twist, and the tender moment passed. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the baby for very long.”
Chapter 2
There was never a moment in Court’s life that didn’t include Ronnie. He was born knowing Ronnie, literally—they grew up in the same small apartment complex, and often their mothers spent afternoons watching soap operas while the boys played together. Ronnie was older by five months, and from Court’s earliest memory, his life was an imitation of Ronnie’s. He learned to walk because Ronnie was already moving around without him, and he feared being left behind. He learned to talk only to communicate better with his friend; his mother often liked to tease him about the fact that his first real word hadn’t been “Mommy” or “Da-da,” but “On-Ee.” When she rolled out that juicy tidbit to his prom date, Court just about died.
Because the difference in their ages was so small, they were in the same grade in school. Because of their last names, they always ended up in the same classes and, in high school, their lockers weren’t far apart. When Ronnie began to play baseball, Court cried until his mother signed him up, too. They were inseparable. Even at the tender age of eight, Court knew they always would be.
Ronnie was the first person Court kissed. The first real person—his parents didn’t count. It was the summer before sixth grade, and most of their days were spent down by the small creek that ran under the interstate overpass behind their apartment building. Technically the creek was off-limits, but what no one else knew couldn’t possibly get the boys into trouble, could it?
Court’s mother worked part-time as a cashier at a local grocery store, so Ronnie’s mother kept the boys during the day. But once her stories came on, anything that wasn’t on TV disappeared. The day of the kiss, Ronnie wanted to go swimming, and for Court, that was all he needed to hear. They pulled on swim trunks and T-shirts, grabbed a pair of towels off the rack in the bathroom, and snuck out during a commercial break, when Mrs. Densch went into the kitchen to refill her glass of iced tea.