Peaches smiled. “Look at you, suddenly taking charge. You have an energy drink for breakfast or something?”
“I wish. Just stay here with grandma, and keep an eye on me from the window. K?”
Peaches sighed. “Sure.”
“Don’t look so miserable,” I said, “we’re still alive.”
“Yeah, but what does that even mean anymore?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Chapter 11
From the first step outside, I sensed something in the air, and it wasn’t just the stench from the dumpster behind the building. It was more visceral than a smell, something electric and unnerving. There were cold whispers in the wind, deafening sounds of chaos in the silence. And warnings of terrible things to come.
I walked steadily, building more strength with each step. Peaches had asked, what if I get infected? I had blown it off, but the thought sat on my mind like an anchor, weighing me down. What if I did become infected? What if I already was? Or what if I never did and I had to live the rest of my life in a world where there was a corpse around every corner. I wasn’t sure which I’d rather prefer.
Live or die.
Like I had told her, I guess I’d find out.
I had always been an introvert, staying mostly indoors, escaping the harsh reality of the world outside by living inside fictional worlds. I told myself I didn’t need many people in my life. That I was independent. That I was just misunderstood. That I was okay with being alone. But now, with the world undergoing immediate and perhaps irreparable change, I was forced to reexamine everything I thought I knew about myself, with the conclusion unclear.
I began to cross the road. I slowed down as I came upon the rear of the humvee. It was the color of sand. The gunner in the back was hunched over with his face out of sight and his right arm clutching the top of a high-caliber machine gun. A stream of large bullets hung from the left side of the gun. The sleeping gunner wore desert camo, a matching hard hat, and what looked to be a pair of safety goggles around his head. The back of his neck was the only part of his body exposed. I couldn’t imagine how badly he’d be sunburned after a full day in the Florida sun; even in March it could be unforgiving.
I walked along the front of the vehicle. The engine droned on at a constant pace. The windows had a decent tint, but still I could see human shapes from within. Did I have the courage to look inside the cabin?
Yes, I did.
If this was going to be the new world, I’d either have to get used to it or find somewhere to hide. There were no other options. There were no good options. Take it or leave it. I’d have to learn to be brave one baby step at a time.
The door was heavy but swung open rather easy.
“What are you doing?” a voice yelled from far behind me.
It was Peaches at the window in my room on the second floor of the bookstore. I frowned and held a silencing finger to my lips, and then turned my attention back to the humvee. Two soldiers were inside, dressed identical to the gunner except without the eye protection. Unfortunately for me, their heads weren’t down. They stared straight ahead like wax figures—eyes closed, mouths open, drool dripping down their chins. The driver still had his hands planted on the wheel. As I climbed up and reached over to feel around for keys on the other side, he suddenly slouched forward, trapping my arm between his upper chest and the steering column.
I felt a sudden urge to scream like a little girl but held my breath. I had to remind myself these men weren’t dead, even if they looked like they could be. I slowly pulled my arm back out as though I was afraid of waking the driver, and as I did, a line of thick, ice-cold saliva oozed down onto my forearm.
Now I screamed, fell backward to the pavement. I looked at my arm and felt a burning sensation rise in my throat. I forced it back down and tried to take another deep breath. I wiped my forearm against the concrete until most of the drool was off and then wiped the remainder on my pants. Then I got back to my feet and slammed the door to the humvee.
Fuck figuring out how to shut it off.
“Are you okay?” Peaches yelled.
I turned and gave a thumbs-up, checked my arm one last time for drops of spit, and then hustled across the street to the convenience store. A quarter mile down the street, I saw a car slowly cross the road and fall out of sight behind some buildings. It wasn’t a particularly busy time of day, and this wasn’t a busy road, but it was good to know there were still some signs of life.
As I approached the store, I noticed Aamod’s Toyota wasn’t parked along the side where it usually sat. It was possible they could have left in the time it took me to get downstairs, but I couldn’t remember seeing the car earlier from the window either.
I tried the door, but it was locked. No surprise there. I put my face to the glass, knocked a few times. The lights were off inside, and I didn’t see anyone moving about in the shadows.
I sighed. “Crap.”
I looked back at Peaches sitting at the window across the street. She never took her eyes off me. She was doing the job I gave her well. She really cared. She hardly knew me, but she cared what happened to me, even if it was just that without me, she’d be all alone. Regardless of her motive, it felt good to be needed. For this moment in time, I was all she had. I was like . . . her hero.
I smiled at her and then turned back around.
“Shit!” I yelled, recoiling backward, thinking I’d seen a ghost.
Naima stood on the other side of the glass looking out at me, scaring the hero piss out of me. I wondered what Peaches would think of me jumping like a spooked cat.
“What do you want?” Naima asked.
“Can you open up?” She shook her head. “Please. I just need some food and water.”
She shook her head again. “Sorry. The store is closed.”
“Please,” I said again.
But she didn’t respond. She just stood there staring at me through the glass like I was some beggar. I felt like one. I felt like Kevin. I thought about the gun tucked into my pants. Yeah, I’m sure Sally would get her to open the door. More like run and hide in the back.
I sighed and walked away.
Maybe it was because I gave her some space that she felt comfortable opening the door. But she did, only enough to poke her head out.
I’ll never understand how a man as repulsive looking as Aamod could have produced a daughter as attractive as Naima. I figured she was either adopted, or her mom had ultra-strong genes. Her cheekbones were well defined, her lips soft, her nose small but sharp, her hair long and dark and shiny. But unlike Peaches, Naima dressed conservatively, probably due in part to her father, and while her breasts weren’t nearly as big, neither was the rest of her. From my little experience doing small business with her, she was also very kind and well spoken. A major contrast to Aamod’s stern and overbearing personality.
“Do you know what is going on?” she asked. “I see the soldiers around and it makes me nervous.”
“Me too. I only know what I saw on the news, and it wasn’t good. I’m not sure what to do.”
She slowly came the rest of the way outside. “I could sense something in my father this morning that wasn’t right. Like he wasn’t telling me something.”
“Where is he?”
“He went to my house to get my mother.” She took a deep breath. A look of concern ran all through her face. “He left over an hour ago. He should have been back by now.”
So that’s why the car wasn’t there.
“He wanted me to keep an eye on the store,” she continued. “He thought people might try to break in.”
I thought about how I had considered the idea of breaking in, and suddenly felt guilty.
“You’re guarding the store?” I asked, surprised.
“There’s a shotgun on the counter.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, even more surprised.
“Not that I would ever use it. But it’s there. And it’s loaded. He told me not to open the doo
r for anybody until he got back with my mother.”
“You think something could have happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice quivering. “I sure hope not.”
“Tell you what,” I said, “maybe we can make a deal.”
Chapter 12
The deal was simple. In exchange for a few boxes of food and water, I would take my grandma’s car and drop Naima off at her house. That way she could find out what happened to her father, which I suspected wasn’t good news. She said her house was no more than fifteen minutes away. Fair trade for thirty minutes of driving, I thought, even if some of the food was expired.
We found some empty wine boxes in the back, and she said I could fill four of them. Not just with food, with anything I wanted, so as long as I didn’t ever ever ever tell her father.
“What are you crazy?” I said. “I don’t think he likes me very much as it is.”
Naima smiled. The first smile I’d seen out of her that morning. “He’s not so bad. A little protective, but at least he’s not trying to arrange a marriage.”
“There’s always that.”
I stuffed the four boxes with as much junk as I could, three with food and water, and one with other stuff like ibuprofen, batteries, and assorted first aid supplies. I even grabbed a pack of cigarettes for Peaches. That’ll make her love me.
We carried the boxes outside and then she locked up the store. Naima agreed to help carry the stuff over to my place and then I’d take her to her house. Peaches watched us from the window the entire way across the street and then met us downstairs at the door.
“We got some stuff,” I said.
“Great,” Peaches said. She looked over at Naima. “Hi there.”
I introduced them, and then told Peaches the deal. She didn’t look too happy about staying there with my grandma while I ran off escorting Naima around. But what was she going to say? I got us food and water.
Peaches took one of the boxes, and we all went upstairs. We set the boxes down in the kitchen and then Peaches began to sort through them to see what I had picked out.
“Hold on,” I said to Naima. “I’ve got to tell my grandma that I’m gonna take the car. She won’t mind.”
I hadn’t even thought about what time it was, but it had to be pushing eight a.m.
I knocked on her door.
Then again.
Peaches looked over, concerned. I met her gaze and could tell immediately what she was thinking.
Terrible thoughts.
I pushed them away and entered grandma’s room. She was curled up in bed, on her side facing me, eyes closed, looking solemn. She wore a nightcap to bed that gave her an innocent, childlike quality.
I lightly nudged her shoulder, but she didn’t move.
I nudged her again. “Grandma, wake up.”
I could feel Peaches and Naima standing behind me in the doorway, looking on quietly.
I knelt down beside her. “No,” I whispered, continuing to lightly shake her. “No, no, no. Grandma, please, please wake up.”
I started to cry.
“Don’t leave me.”
I took her hand in mine, and as the tears ran down my face, I could feel the pulse of her heartbeat still going strong even after eighty years. But nothing I could say or do would wake her up.
Chapter 13
How long was I in the bathroom?
Five minutes?
Ten?
I was hiding out. Hiding and crying. Crying because my grandmother, the woman who practically raised me all my life, had become infected with the unexplainable plague—the virus that had crossed the planet in record time, oceans and all, and left the majority of people on earth in a coma.
The television was first to tell me the story, but it wasn’t real. The news reports showed video of abandoned cities, looted cities, destroyed cities, usually from the vantage point of a helicopter. Cities with hundreds of thousands, millions of people even, normally bursting with economic activity, brought to a standstill—brought down in an instant, now lying quiet. Like giant ghost towns.
But it wasn’t real.
I saw only a small part of the plague firsthand outside my home, soldiers in a humvee, asleep at the wheel. Not dead. Not really alive.
But it still wasn’t real.
Not until the ugly plague reached home was any of it real. It took my grandma going into a coma to wake me up. Then it got my attention. I responded by hiding in the bathroom like a small child.
Hey, crying wasn’t something I did often, and certainly not in front of other people. I think the last time I had cried was when I heard Simon Cowell wouldn’t be returning as a judge on American Idol. Not that I thought Peaches and Naima wouldn’t understand my pain. It was likely Naima’s mother, and perhaps even her father, Aamod, had fallen victim to the same fate as my grandma. Peaches had family back in Kentucky, and while she didn’t seem very close to them, it was possible she may never know their fate, not with such few lines of communication open. And not knowing was probably worse than knowing.
They would understand perfectly. They were in the same sinking ship as me, after all. So I had no reason to be ashamed of crying, but still I stayed hidden. Regrouping in the bathroom. Letting my emotions go wild until I was sure I could control them.
How long would it take?
Another five minutes?
Ten?
I don’t know. Peaches didn’t let me get that far.
She knocked on the door. “Jimmy, are you okay?”
She was trying to be nice, caring, considerate, even if it was a question she already knew the answer to. If I were okay, I wouldn’t be sitting on the edge of the tub staring at the toilet crying my face off.
I didn’t respond, so she knocked again. A little louder.
“Jimmy . . .”
“I’m fine,” I finally said.
“Okay, good. I was just getting worried. I thought maybe . . . well, you know.”
“No, I’m still awake, if that’s what you were wondering. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Take your time.”
I took another minute and then finally left the bathroom. I stood in the hallway for a moment glancing at my grandma lying solemnly in her bed, and then shut the door to her room. Peaches was sitting on the edge of my bed when I walked back into my room. Naima was looking out the still open window.
Peaches gave me a soft smile. Her eyes were red like she’d been crying too. “Hi.”
I nodded.
Naima turned from the window. “I’m sorry.”
I continued nodding.
“Has your dad got back yet?” I asked.
“No, not yet.”
“Then I’m sorry too.”
Naima looked back out the window. “What has happened to this world?”
“It’s gone to hell. The best we can hope for is that it’s only temporary.”
“What do you mean?” Peaches asked.
“I mean that maybe whatever is causing so many people to go into a coma will wear off eventually. At least before it’s too late.”
“How long can someone survive like that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. With the right care, I’ve heard of people living for a long time in a coma, if you want to call that living. Of course, that’s under the care of doctors and nurses in a hospital or some other medically equipped environment. Here we have no way of feeding her or giving her life support. And at her age . . .” I took a deep breath, trying to drown my pain in oxygen. “I’d give her no more than a few days.”
“I’m so sorry, Jimmy,” Peaches said.
I sat down next to her on the bed. “It’s going to happen to all of us eventually. May as well get used to it, huh.”
“Well, I don’t want to just wait around for my turn. There’s got to be something we can do.”
“I’m gonna go drop Naima off at her house like I promised. After that, I’ll scout around. See how bad it is.”
&n
bsp; “I want to go with you,” Peaches said.
“I know you do, but I need you to stay here with my grandma. What if she wakes up?”
“And what if she doesn’t . . . and then you don’t return? Then what?”
“Then you’re on your own.”
Naima left the window and sat down at my desk. “You really think she’s gonna come out of it so soon?”
I shook my head. “No, but I’d like to stay positive about it.”
“Okay, I’ll stay and keep an eye on her,” Peaches said. “But you better return.”
“I’ll be back.”
I went downstairs and pulled my grandma’s Buick around to the front of the store. I put Sally, my one and only, between the seat and the center console. Naima was waiting by the curb when I pulled up. I popped open the passenger door, and she got in.
“Nice car. It’s big.” She pressed down on the seats with her hands. “Comfy.”
“It sucks actually, but thanks.”
Peaches stood inside the bookstore and waved us off. The disappointment of being left alone again was evident on her face.
I made it halfway down the block before I turned around and went back.
Peaches was still standing where we’d left her. I rolled down the car windows.
She came outside and asked, “What is it?”
It was a bad feeling that came on suddenly as I had pulled away. That’s what it was. And the message was clear. Whatever you do, don’t let her out of your sight. Don’t leave her behind. I’m the awful disfigured creature in your brain that produces terrible thoughts. And I’m telling you, if you leave her behind, you’ll never see her again. Muhahaha.
But of course, I wouldn’t tell her that.
All I told her was, “I changed my mind.”
I gave her the keys to lock up the bookstore and then she hopped in the backseat. I restarted the car and then pulled back onto the road.
Dead Highways: Origins Page 5