by McBain, Tim
Teddy
Moundsville, West Virginia
69 days after
He drank long and deep. The Mountain Dew was warm, but he’d always liked it that way. He set the bottle down on the floor next to his bed, still feeling the acidic tingle on his lips and tongue. He grabbed a handful of cheese puffs out of the bag resting on his chest and crunched them one by one. When his hand was empty, he sucked the orange cheese off of his fingertips, getting a whiff of death for a split second as his ring finger entered his mouth. He lay there and breathed for a moment, his hands folded on his belly like paws, the plastic bag rising and falling with his chest. Then he went back for another handful.
Here he was, in an otherwise empty room, in an otherwise empty house, in an otherwise empty town, indulging in a private all-you-can-eat-buffet of his favorite food and drink. It felt like a dream, a strange dream.
In some ways he missed the people, the sound of them, knowing they were out there. He missed TV. He missed meat, too. That one he really missed.
Sometimes the old lady that owned the house would give him their leftovers – salisbury steak, meatloaf, roasted chicken, Swedish meatballs, barbecue ribs, and even clam chowder once. The cheese puffs were good, but he missed all of that, missed the sensation of biting down on a well cooked piece of protein and feeling the texture of it as he chewed it up.
And that made him think about the garbage truck again, about the cats and dogs. It never made much sense to him that people would get so worked up about some animals and not others. Why was it OK for cows to get massacred by the thousands in slaughterhouses, but bad for him to throw a few cats into the truck? Why could people like his uncle hunt and kill deer but hurting a dog was bad? Why did the other kids think he was sick for picking up road kill, but when the lunch lady slopped beef stroganoff onto their tray, they ate it all up? None of them thought twice when they went to the grocery store and saw all of the little plastic packages of meat in the meat department. It made no sense.
He liked putting the cats in the truck the same way he liked eating meat. Both made him happy, stimulated, excited. Both made him feel some primal satisfaction, made him feel powerful in some vague sense like he could wrestle the world under his command if he needed to. He knew other people liked meat a lot. He didn’t know why they didn’t like the other.
It was bad, though, what he did to people’s pets. He knew it must be a bad thing, but he couldn’t understand it. Not all of the way.
He crumpled the top of the cheese puff bag closed, rolling it up and setting it down on the floor in such a manner that it would stay closed. It was time to check his traps.
He licked his lips, and they tasted like fake cheese and salt and Mountain Dew.
Ray
Galveston, Texas
3 days before
“Giving people something to believe in is the best gift you can give them,” he said, his fingers tapping at the steering wheel. “That’s what I tell people I do for a living. Sounds a hell of a lot better than ‘televangelist,’ you know?”
She smiled and nodded and looked out the window. She wasn’t much of a talker, but he didn’t mind that. Her black hair sheared off above her eyebrows, a severe line of bangs. It was an uncommon haircut for a woman of her age but one that highlighted the shape of her face.
They sat at a red light, the city around them bustling as usual, people driving and walking and eating their fries and drinking their Coke, no idea that they’d be incinerated before long. He hadn’t even explained that to his new companion yet. Wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He looked at her again.
Her breasts were enormous. Probably fake. He didn’t mind that, either. As far as Ray was concerned, breast implants ranked among mankind’s greatest achievements, one of the clearest symbols of capitalism’s strengths. For a price you could reinvent yourself to any degree, even physically. Any dream could come true if you scratched and clawed and earned your way to it. If you paid the price, it was yours.
In this world, everything had a price. He saw great opportunity in that. Endless possibilities.
He ran into her outside of a Texaco station that the raiders had already sucked dry, a phenomenon he’d only heard about on the news until now. All across the South, these sons of bitches were stealing gas, and the police were too occupied with the riots to do anything about it.
She was standing by the pumps, just outside of her Sebring, the tank apparently empty, and he pulled in to ask if she needed any help. She recognized him from TV. If any magic truly existed, Ray thought, it was the magic power of fame, of television. When your face gets broadcast into someone’s home, they tend to feel like they know you, like they can trust you. Apparently a certain portion will even send you their life savings if you ask for it, and he did ask for it. Often.
“So where are we headed?” she said.
“We’ve got to get out of town,” he said. “Some crazy shit is about to go down. You’re lucky you ran into me, you know that?”
She smiled and nodded and looked out the window again. It struck him that she may be on drugs of some kind, probably pills. He’d taken her slow, medicated feel as an aloofness until now. But heading out of town with a stranger without a second thought was a little weird, even if she did know him from TV.
What was her name again? Debra? Diana? Started with a D, he thought. Maybe a B.
His cell phone itched in his pocket. He wanted to try another call but not in front of his new guest.
Still, already he wasn’t alone. Already he’d found a follower not 15 minutes out from his home. He knew he was going to be just fine.
Baghead
Rural Oklahoma
9 years, 126 days after
The car rolled through the place where the stop sign fence had been moments before, and then they accelerated. The engine hummed. The sand and weeds alongside them returned to their former state of blurriness. It felt good to get moving again.
Bags watched in the rearview as the gate rolled back into place, and the soldiers went back to standing around, just their heads visible above the fence. They shrank and their features darkened until the horizon swallowed them up.
Delfino smiled in the driver’s seat, his eyes opened wide.
“You wanted them to find the money, didn’t you?” Bags said.
“You’re finally starting to figure me out, smart guy.”
“Making them work to find it makes them assume they’ve found your big stash.”
“Righto. And I like to throw in something shiny that they probably don’t see too often. Today it was the necklace, but anything with an air of fanciness will do the trick.”
“So all of your best stuff is actually in the cooler?”
“Now don’t you go worrying your baggy little head about that.”
“Rough bunch of kids there. Not what I was expecting when you said they were ruthless, but…”
Delfino squinted.
“I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me or not. They really are ruthless, though. One of them bit me once! Look at this.”
He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a jagged oval of a scar just at the spot where the triceps and deltoid met.
“You ever seen what it looks like when a human bite gets infected?”
“Never.”
“It’s hellish, man. It’s truly hellish.”
The conversation trailed off as Delfino rolled down his sleeve.
Bags checked the rearview again, as though the hateful kid might have reappeared on the horizon, but no. The road trailed away to a point like it always did. Nothing to see.
“Was that true?” Delfino said. “What that kid said about your face, about the radiation?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that was true. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.”
“There wasn’t supposed to be no fallout, but the government fucked it up, right?”
“Yeah, something like that. The radiation should have dissipated in the air. If all of the bombs
had airburst, like they were supposed to, the fallout would have been negligible. It didn’t happen that way. Not in Miami, anyway. It’s all dead cities out that way, from Atlanta or so on south.”
“Miami? You been all the way down there?”
“Yeah, I’ve been all over. Haven’t traveled as much this past year, but I’ve been around.”
“That’s juicy butt crack country.”
“What?”
“The humidity down that way, man. Makes my ass all sweaty, and it won’t evaporate, so I’m running around with a soggy ass crack all day. Wearing a pair of boxer shorts you could ring out like a dishrag.”
They were silent for a beat. Baghead pressed his hand into the bag, trying to smash down his beard so it didn’t touch the canvas anymore.
“Well, that’s good to know,” Bags said.
Delfino pulled the tin out of his pocket and lit a cigarette. He spoke again as he exhaled his second puff.
“Not to pry, but you ever get a doc to take a look at it? Your face, I mean?”
“No. I never figured there’d be much of a point. If it’s cancerous or whatever, there’s nothing to be done about it. No chemo or radiation or surgery exists that’s going to fix it. Not anymore. And it’s not like there are any plastic surgeons out there to pretty me up.”
Another beat of silence overtook the Delta 88. Smoke rolled out of Delfino’s nose and ascended, coiling around above his head.
“I’m still here, right? Still walking around. That’s all that matters for now.”
Delfino nodded, smoke still spinning out of his face.
“Mind if I ask you one more question?”
“Go ahead.”
“The Hand of Death. Did you get the card?”
“I did.”
“Do you, you know, have it on you?”
“I do.”
Delfino licks his lips.
“Might I take a look at it?”
Baghead turned his shoulders and looked out the window.
“No.”
Erin
Presto, Pennsylvania
40 days after
It wasn’t until they brought the generator home and unloaded it that Erin realized they’d need fuel for it.
She looked down at the box, and scratched the side of her nose in agitation. It took every ounce of her willpower not to let loose a string of obscenities. But Izzy would give her hell for it. So she kept her mouth shut and let every swear word she knew echo inside her skull.
She’d been so preoccupied with the idea of having power that she just glossed right over the specifics. She’d imagined them hauling it back to the house, pressing a button, and boom -- let there be light.
OK, so they’d have to find gas first. It shouldn’t be that hard. There had to be tons of gas just sitting out there.
They hadn’t ventured into the nearest town since they found the house, but Erin knew from road signs that the village of Presto was only four miles down the road. She filled a water bottle for each of them at the well and tossed a gas can from the barn into the carrier.
Erin watched Izzy mount the bike.
“A little refresher course for you: the brakes are located on the handlebars. You wanna slow down, you give those hand brakes a squeeze.”
Izzy pedaled by, sticking her tongue out.
“Or you could just stop the old-fashioned way by riding into a swamp. Up to you.”
The water bottle sloshed around as the tires of Erin’s bike bumped over a pothole where the driveway met the road.
It was mostly coasting downhill to town, and the wind at their backs made the ride seem even easier. Almost more braking than pedaling.
The first several houses they passed were familiar: the Slim Jim house, the rhubarb house, and a few others they’d been through, scavenging for food and supplies. But after about half a mile, it was new territory.
In one yard, someone had placed a white and blue sign that said “Stop the Gravel Pit - Vote No on Prop 4.” Well they’d gotten their wish. There would be no gravel pit.
A long stretch of uninhabited road sprawled before them. It was all green on either side. The whisper of leaves in the breeze and the sounds of the birds and crickets and cicadas made it feel like they were in the Amazon. Jungle explorers entering uncharted lands.
Amongst the greenery, the back of a truck came into view, tire tracks leading off the road and through the brush. The front end wrapped around the trunk of a maple. Like the truck was giving the tree a crumpled metal hug. She could just make out the silhouette of the driver slumped over the wheel.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed movement in the cab. A little pulse of panic shot through her. Was he still alive? Was this a trap? And then she saw the tiny shapes flitting about and realized it was flies. Hundreds and hundreds of flies.
Erin turned away, redirecting her focus back to the road.
They slowed at the first traffic light at the edge of town. In the center of the intersection, half a dozen vehicles lay motionless in a pile-up, a knotted mass of plastic, metal, and glass. It looked like someone had taken a bucketful of toy cars and dumped them onto the road, except they weren’t toys. And those weren’t Lego people fused to the road in gory globs. And that wasn’t ketchup smearing the shattered windshields.
It was a slap-in-the-face reminder of how things were now. They were sheltered from most of it at the house. Sure, they saw bodies in houses. There was no power. They were alone. But this display of destruction was a wake-up call. This wasn’t a camping trip. This was the end of the world.
Erin released her grip on the handlebars one at a time to wipe the sweat from her palms. This was the closest they’d come to a densely populated area in weeks. She couldn’t stop imagining a sniper shooting at them from the top of one of the buildings. Or a mob of zombies staggering out of an alley at the smell of fresh meat.
She glanced over at Izzy, hair dancing in the wind like coiled snakes. Maybe she should have come alone. Entering the town would be dangerous. And she couldn’t do a sweep the way she did for the houses. At the same time, she knew she would have been too chicken to come by herself.
Main street rolled into view, and they veered right.
“A playground!” Izzy said.
It jutted out from an oval of sand in the middle of a park at the end of the street. The jungle gym was blue and yellow, a cone-shaped turret on each end giving it a castle-like appearance. A red slide curved around the front, looking like a giant tongue. Beyond the sand, Erin could see the shimmering surface of the river.
“Can I go check it out?”
The breeze loosened a strand of Erin’s hair and sent it fluttering over her face. She tucked it back behind her ear.
“Maybe after we get the gas.”
“Why can’t I go while you get the gas?”
“Because I don’t want you going off by yourself.”
A bank and the post office appeared ahead. Both had their windows mostly smashed. The bank Erin understood. Someone figured the apocalypse was the perfect chance to become a “self-made” millionaire. But the post office?
“I guess someone really wanted their damn mail.”
The next building was the public library, which appeared to be without a scratch.
“Figures,” Erin muttered to herself.
The squeal of Izzy’s brakes sounded ahead of her.
“Hey, look.”
Izzy pointed across the street from the library, and Erin turned her head to check it out.
The gas station windows were busted out, trash littering the ground. Glass shards and convenience store flotsam and jetsam were scattered about the parking lot like confetti. Erin imagined people looting it, arms loaded up so heavily with Snickers bars and cases of Budweiser that bits and pieces inevitably fell from the pile, stomped by the herd. A body sprawled in the middle of the lot, face down with one of the arms at an impossible angle.
Maybe he died of natural causes, she thought. Or as nat
ural as was possible when the apocalypse was happening. Like maybe he was sick, but he decided to pop out to grab a bag of pretzels. But as her bike rolled nearer, she saw the blood on his shirt and the crater in the back of his head and the black stain spreading out on the concrete beneath him.
They’d seen so many bodies now, she hadn’t anticipated anything would be able to shock and disturb her anymore. But this was the first victim of violence she’d seen since they left the camp. Or the first obvious one, anyway.
Thankfully, Izzy seemed to have glided right by it without noticing, fixating on the gas pumps. Erin swooped in next to her, hopped down from the bike, and lowered the kickstand. While she retrieved the gas can, Izzy lifted the nozzle from the cradle of the pump labeled #2.
“Can I pump the gas?”
Erin unscrewed the lid from the can.
“I guess so. Have you done it before?”
Izzy nodded.
The can made a hollow sound like a drum as she set it on the ground. It was one of the red plastic deals, pretty standard.
Izzy bent over it, inserting the nozzle. She squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
Her fist clenched as she squeezed it again, but still the gas didn’t flow.
Erin’s eyes followed the fuel hose from the nozzle back up to the pump. The little windows that usually flashed a price per gallon were dark. She pushed at the button labeled PREMIUM anyway. Izzy wiggled the nozzle and shook the hose to no effect.
Erin’s molars pressed together, harder and harder until her jaw ached and the muscles actually started to shake. Why couldn’t anything go as planned? Why did everything have to be such a goddamned ordeal?
The frustration made her want to flop onto the cement and throw a tantrum, like she was a toddler in a store, one that had been told, no, she couldn’t have the toy she wanted, the shiny box ripped from her pudgy fist.