by J. M. Snyder
“Going out, Mom!” Ronnie called behind them.
Court let the door slam shut on Ronnie’s mother’s reply.
They chased each other into the tall grass behind the apartments, then down the steep embankment to where the creek trickled by. Just outside their building, the creek wasn’t much to look at, but farther down, where the overpass arched above it, the water ran deep and cool. The boys’ sneakers slid and skidded on the damp rocks as the two jumped over the water, crisscrossing in front of each other. Their leaps grew longer, and more often than not, their feet landed in the water, splashing up spray, rather than on the dry banks. When they could no longer quite manage to jump the creek, they walked single-file, Ronnie leading the way with his arms out to keep Court from passing. Court tugged on Ronnie’s left arm under the pretext of attempting to throw him off-balance and into the creek. But even at that young age, he enjoyed the feel of his friend’s flesh against his own.
When they reached the overpass, Ronnie ducked into the shadowy recesses beneath the interstate and Court followed without hesitation. Halfway under the overpass, Ronnie stripped off his T-shirt and tossed it onto the ledge-shaped base of a concrete piling. He kicked off his shoes, tied the laces together, and tossed them after the shirt. As Court hurried to imitate him, Ronnie cannon-balled into the creek.
Shirt and shoes stashed where they wouldn’t get wet, Court dived into the creek after his friend. He knew from experience the water ran deep and fast here, so he wasn’t surprised to find it pulling him farther downstream. What did catch him off-guard was the hand that slipped into the waistband of his swimming trunks and pulled at them as he passed.
The trunks slipped down over his butt and started to slide off his thighs. Still underwater, he twisted away from Ronnie’s grasping hands, legs kicking and arms thrashing as he fought for the surface. They broke through together, gasping for breath, Ronnie still tugging at Court’s trunks. Ronnie grinned mischievously. “If I threw them into the woods, everyone on 95 would see your junk.”
“I think you want to see my junk,” Court said, placing a foot against Ronnie’s stomach and kicking his friend away. “Let go.”
Ronnie’s grin widened, showing the chipped eyetooth on the right side of his mouth where Court had hit him with a rattle when they were babies. “Make me.”
With a twist of his body, Court dived underwater, trying to put some distance between them, but he felt the swimming trunks pull down a little further so he twisted the other way. Ronnie held on tight. As Court tried to kick out of reach, Ronnie dogged his tail, hands clenched tight in fabric now down below Court’s buttocks. For some reason, his whole body felt flushed, impossibly hot despite the cold water, as if he had a sunburn all over. Worse, he had to pee—no, not really, but he felt like he might have to pee. At least, he felt something in the front of his shorts, something that made him shiver to think about, something he didn’t want Ronnie to find out about, so he kicked harder and tried desperately to ignore the pounding of blood in his ears, his chest, his groin.
Then Ronnie pinched his ass, hard.
Court broke the surface and, when Ronnie appeared, spurted a mouthful of water into his friend’s face. When Ronnie advanced, Court ducked down a little as if to rearm himself, but he didn’t rise up again. No. He waited until Ronnie was right above him, hands now clasped tight in the damp material around Court’s crotch, so close, so painfully close…
Pushing himself off the bottom of the creek, Court shot up out of the water and pressed his mouth to Ronnie’s in a sudden, surprise kiss.
Ronnie’s eyes widened—Court stared his friend down. Go on, he thought, hoping his friend could read the dare shining in his face. Pull them down. See what you find. Maybe you’ll like it. Maybe you’re just as hard as me.
But Ronnie released Court’s swimming trunks and backpedaled in the water, pulling away. For one, shocked moment, the emotion in his eyes mirrored Court’s own. I knew it! Court thought in triumph. I knew—
Then Ronnie jumped up, bringing both hands out of the water, and clasped them over the top of Court’s head. With all his might, he pushed Court into the creek, out of sight. Ronnie held him underwater until Court thought his lungs would burst. He struck Ronnie’s chest, tried to tug down Ronnie’s shorts in retaliation, kicked and struggled and probably would’ve drowned if Ronnie didn’t finally let go. By the time Court sputtered to the surface, Ronnie was on the bank, drying himself off with one of his mother’s bath towels.
Without looking at Court, he said, “We should get back. My mom might notice we’re gone.”
We told her we were going, Court thought, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t mention the kiss, either. As in everything else, he followed Ronnie’s lead. Climbing out of the creek, he reached for his own towel and began to dry off.
Court didn’t know if Ronnie remembered the kiss or not—if he did, he never said anything about it. Ever. Here they were, a good thirty years later, and still he wasn’t sure if Ronnie recalled that day in the creek. For Court, no other kiss had ever compared, not even the one he gave Jeanine on their wedding day.
Once they were sure the minivan contained nothing of value or, rather, nothing they could use, Court followed Ronnie around the back to the other side, where he had left the shopping cart. With Ronnie guiding the end this time, Court pushed the cart back the way he’d come earlier with Adam. Ronnie didn’t bother to stop and look inside the station wagon; maybe he had peered through the broken windows first, looking for his friends, before startling them in the van. Maybe he didn’t care to know what was in there, exactly. Either way, he passed it by, pulling the cart along in his wake. Court followed the same way he always followed Ronnie. Without question.
The trip down the center lane of the interstate was easier with someone else’s hand steadying the front wheels. In the future, Court would have to remember to ask Adam to help out a bit more instead of plodding along beside the cart with his hand up over his glasses. In companionable silence, Court and Ronnie headed for the gap in the trees off the right side of the interstate, which led to a dirt path and the small clearing where their group was camped.
There were maybe twenty of them in all—Court didn’t know how many exactly, because no matter how often he tried to count them, he messed up somehow. Counted someone twice, or skipped over someone completely. One day he might come up with eighteen people sitting around their morning fire, eating quietly, and later that evening, he’d count twenty-two instead, and couldn’t say for sure which four he’d missed earlier. He didn’t know all their names, didn’t even know when some of them had shown up. At the outset, it had just been Ronnie and himself, no others. Right after Jeanine passed on, after Ronnie had helped Court bury her in the backyard beneath the rhododendrons like she had asked, it was just them two.
Leave, Ronnie had said when Court asked him what they should do next.
South, he said, when asked where.
With a weary nod, Court had agreed. Really, had there been any doubt he wouldn’t?
They picked up Adam on their way out of Lakeside, a northern suburb of Richmond where both men lived. Court knew Adam, of course—he’d been their family vet, or rather, Jeanine’s vet. The pit bulls she had fostered were hers, not Court’s. For some reason, it didn’t surprise him to recognize the first other person they saw alive. Adam had had an overstuffed backpack he’d stocked at Wal-Mart before the store was completely looted out, and he stood on the exit ramp to the interstate like a hitchhiker hoping to thumb a ride. When he heard they had a destination in mind—or rather, Ronnie did, at any rate—he threw his lot in with them.
The highways threading around the city had been the worst. Crossing the James River Bridge was like navigating an obstacle course—wrecked vehicles littered the road, bodies strewn about in various stages of decay, tires and engines still smoldering. Court spotted an ambulance smashed between the median wall and a tractor trailer. That right there, more than anything else, told him civi
lization as he’d known it was over.
At times they had to climb over crumpled hoods, holding hands to keep from sliding off and disappearing over the bridge’s railing to the river below. Other highways clover-leafed under the bridge were just as clogged with destroyed and abandoned vehicles. Buzzards circled like seagulls, enjoying the spoils. Ronnie kept them moving ahead, and if Court or Adam paused too long to stare death in the face, Ronnie was right there, tugging at their shirts or belts, pulling them away.
Two weeks later, they had made very little progress. Survivors seeking company seemed drawn to the interstates, as if sure someone would pick them up on the way to a better place. These people fell in with Ronnie and Court and Adam, forming a loose sort of society as they traveled 95 or, more and more often, walked the gravel shoulder and camped in the woods lining the road. Court introduced himself to everyone, and tried his best to remember their names. But soon there were too many of them, some simply appearing at their morning fire like bums seeking food, and he started giving them nicknames, instead.
Just south of Petersburg, where the interstate cleared a bit for long stretches of asphalt, they picked up the pregnant girl. Court doubted she was even old enough to drink. Her belly distended in front of her like a beach ball and she waddled when she walked, one hand pressed against the small of her back as if to balance herself. When Ronnie saw her, he shook his head. “She’s due any day now, I bet you.”
Court was glad he hadn’t taken the bet. Here it was, four days later, and sure enough, her water had broke. As Ronnie helped him bully the shopping cart off the road and onto the dirt path through the trees, he wondered how Adam was coping with the delivery. Babies came whether or not someone helped them along, didn’t they? Court thought so. People might have grown used to having all those monitors and machines hooked up to help facilitate the birth, but how did people in Biblical times do it? Without pain killers or spinal taps, he was pretty damn sure. Nothing in the Good Book about that.
As if in reply to his thoughts, a woman’s scream pierced the air. Court felt goose bumps rise on his arms despite the heat. Then he pushed the cart into the woods, and green shadows cooled the sweat on his brow and nape. It wasn’t much—wasn’t air conditioning, that was for sure—but it was enough. It had to be.
Ronnie helped him guide the cart to their camp. Tents rose in a staggered circle around a pile of smoldering embers, which were all that remained of the morning fire they’d used to boil water for those who wanted coffee. They rolled the cart between two tents, then Court pulled up hard on the handle to avoid running Ronnie over when his friend stepped into the cart’s path. Ronnie knocked on the flap of the nearest tent. “Bree? Food.”
Bree was one of the few people in camp whose name Court bothered to remember. She’d joined them just off the entrance ramp for Chippenham Parkway, and the shopping cart belonged to her. Well, no, it belonged to Martin’s, but as all the Martin’s grocery stores they’d come across were now closed or ransacked or burned to the ground, the cart was as good as hers.
The tent flap came down as she unzipped it and stuck her head out to see them. She glanced at Ronnie, then leaned forward on her hands to look around the tent at Court. When she saw him, a smile burst onto her face.
She’d sleep with you in a heartbeat, Johnny, he heard a voice inside him say. It sounded suspiciously like his dead wife. Go on, tell her what you told me. Go on and break her heart, too.
Before he could say anything, though, another scream rent the air. “Jesus Christ,” Bree muttered, clambering out of her tent. She was twenty-five or twenty-six, lithe and fair, with a smattering of freckles on her cheeks and more appearing every day on her bare arms and legs. Her blond hair was tied back in a sloppy bun, and in her cut-off shorts and tank top, she looked more likely to be spending the day at the river instead of here in the middle of the woods.
To Court, she said, “Don’t tell me that’s what childbirth is like now, because I sure as hell ain’t having kids. Next time you’re out snooping, if you find any condoms, make sure you bring some back for me.”
Funny thing was, they had found condoms in the minivan, under all those stacks of porn mags and DVDs. Ronnie had looked the box over, then tossed it aside. Court picked it up, though, and when he saw it wasn’t even opened, he tucked it into the front pocket of his jeans. Never know when I might get lucky, he thought, watching Ronnie bend over to dig deeper into the minivan’s interior.
Unfortunately for Bree, she hadn’t been on his mind at the time.
When Court didn’t reply, she laughed awkwardly and moved toward the shopping cart like a bagboy about to put groceries into a customer’s car. “What’d you find? Anything good?”
Ronnie stepped back, the fingers of one hand still laced through the cart’s basket, and watched her rummage through the items. “Snack food, mostly. One of the cars had nothing but Playboys in it.”
She looked up at him, startled, then dropped a sly wink in Court’s direction. “So that’s what took you two so long. Come on, help me get these put away. Unless you want to go watch the baby show?”
That was the last thing Court wanted to do. Bree took a handful of cans into her tent, and Ronnie set up a position in front of the tent flap while Court moved to the end of the cart. They made a supply chain in that fashion—Court handed items to Ronnie, who passed them inside the tent to Bree. She maintained their food supply, and it might’ve been a shitty reason to pick her for the job, but Ronnie had done so only because she was so thin. “If she ate any of it on her own, we’d know,” he’d told Court. “Besides, she wants to keep herself looking good, so she’s going to watch her weight.”
“Looking good for who?” Court had asked. “Why bother?”
It’d been Ronnie’s arched look at the time that finally made Court realize Bree might have the hots for him. Even if she didn’t, her flirtatious nature always seemed to wake Jeanine’s ghost up inside Court’s mind.
Judging from the pregnant woman’s screams and curses, Court suspected the baby show was still warming up. He had no desire to snag a ringside seat, and grinned again at the image of Adam squatting between the woman’s raised knees. Hup, two, three, hike! With nothing else pressing to do, he followed Ronnie back to their tent and stretched out above his sleeping bag, which lay beside his friend’s. He picked up the radio he kept beside his pillow and turned it on. A burst of static filled the air, momentarily blotting out the birthing screams until he turned it down to a murmur of white noise.
Beside him, Ronnie sat Indian-style on his own sleeping bag and unrolled the length of chamois cloth in which he kept his cleaning kit. Though several of the men in their group had guns, most picked up without the hassle of a background check after the virus ran its course, Court thought maybe Ronnie was the only one who really knew how to use his. It was a handgun of some sort, Court didn’t know what kind, a .45 caliber maybe. He didn’t know, but that sounded about right. At least, that seemed to have been the most common gun on all the TV shows, back when there was something other than blind static on TV.
Speaking of static…
He smacked the side of his radio, then pulled the antenna out as far as it’d go, wiggled it a little, and turned it this way and that. Still nothing. Not even a hint of open air at the end of the AM dial, like he’d heard earlier. Like he thought he heard.
Sumter. That was in South Carolina, wasn’t it? He’d never been a fan of history in school, but growing up in Virginia, the only real history they’d learned stopped at the American Civil War. As if nothing else had happened after the surrender at Appomattox. Sumter had been where the first shot of the Civil War was fired, if he remembered correctly. It was a fort of some type, and he thought it might be on an island off the coast. Maybe near that lighthouse they moved a while back…or was he thinking of the Outer Banks?
Didn’t matter. Ronnie had heard the word, too, Court knew, because he’d asked Ronnie about it later that night, in the darkness and relative pr
ivacy of their tent. Ronnie wanted to head down that direction, see if maybe there were other survivors, and Court thought that was a good idea. Of course he did. If Ronnie said he wanted to visit Cape Canaveral instead, see if he couldn’t hotwire a rocket ship and fly them to Mars, Court would be the first in line.
From the corner of his vision, Court watched Ronnie unload and disassemble the gun he wore in a holster on his belt. A .45 definitely, shiny and deadly. Setting the parts out carefully on the chamois cloth, Ronnie began polishing them, a ritual that not only maintained the life of the weapon but seemed to soothe his mind, too.
Court fiddled with the radio’s dial a bit longer. “What I wouldn’t give to hear some of that crappy pop shit they used to play on Q94 right about now, you know?”
Ronnie grunted, his eyes unfocused as he stared at his hands, lost in their work.
“What do you think we should name it?” Court asked.
The question dragged Ronnie from his thoughts. “Name what?”
“The baby.” As if they’d been talking about it all along. Well, in a way, hadn’t they?
Ronnie shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. It isn’t mine.”
“Maybe Adam,” Court suggested, “like in the Bible. First man and all that. Oh, wait, we already have an Adam. Maybe Eve.”
A faint line of consternation creased Ronnie’s brow. Ronnie hated idle chatter, and sometimes Court talked just to hear the sound of his own voice. “What if it’s a boy?”
Court thought a moment. “Adam version 2. No, Evel. How’s that? Like Evel Knievel.”