by Jeff Thomson
“We did do it, Gilbert,” Jim said, his voice calm and even “Deal with it and give me the vault code.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
Jim replied by pulling the .38 from its holster behind his back. He cocked it and placed it against Gilbert’s bucking knee.
“Jim! Wait,” Gus said, staring at the tableau with more than a little unease.
He hadn’t had enough time to process what just happened. First, there was the gun pointed at his eye. Then there was Jim’s gun pointed at Gilbert’s temple. Then there was the knife’s edge tension of the standoff, as Gilbert added two and two and realized with certainty, Jim would pull the trigger if he so much as twitched. Jim had stood back then, and ordered Gus to find the zip ties and truss the gun store owner up like the proverbial dinner. He had done so, mechanically going through the motions as the dawning realization of his own mortality flashed across his mind.
Gilbert had pointed a gun at his eye. The asshole had pointed a gigantic fucking pistol at his fucking eye.
Gus pulled the hammer back with his thumb, stepped forward, and said: “Let me do it.” He jammed the barrel into Gilbert’s knee. “Motherfucker was going to shoot me.”
Gilbert’s eyes had been wide with rage before. They were wider with panic now. He gave them the vault code.
“We can’t leave him tied up like that,” Gus said, heaving a case of 12 gauge into the back of Jim’s SUV. They were once again in the dimly-lit back lot of Gilbert’s store.
“Sure we can,” Jim said, adding another case to the growing pile of ammo.
“He’ll starve,” Gus protested. He had been perfectly willing to blow the asshole’s kneecap off (or at least he thought he’d been willing, and more importantly, Gilbert thought he’d been willing), but letting the man slowly starve to death seemed a little harsh.
Jim stood and stretched his back. The ammo cases were heavy, and neither of them were young any more. “He’s in a store filled with knives and other assorted sharp objects,” he said. “He’ll be okay.” He thought about it for a moment, then added: “But we had probably better be long gone by the time he gets loose.”
The realization hit Gus of just what they were doing. Illegal didn’t begin to describe. If they were caught...
“Jim...”
“Too late to back out now,” his friend said, apparently knowing him well enough to guess what had been going through his mind. What’s more, Gus knew he was right.
In the first place, this was a zombie apocalypse. Life as they knew it was well and truly over. The world was toast. In the second place, they were planning to get underway in just a few hours. They were not planning to come back.
The finality of it hadn’t sunk in. Maybe it would later. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d just repress it all. Maybe he’d need a lot of alcohol to make it happen.
He’d quit drinking six (or was it seven?) years ago. He didn’t have a problem with it, beyond the usual one. Hangovers tended to get worse as he got older. He’d quit because he got bored with it. Do anything often enough, and even the most entertaining things could become tedious. But maybe an apocalypse would make it fun - or necessary - again.
He didn’t want to think about the “necessary” option. But still...This situation was hard to ignore.
He and his wife, Joanne, had packed up their house, finishing just this morning, which could explain why his back hurt. Or maybe he was just old. Either way, it had been surprisingly easy to sort through what was junk and what wasn’t. Most of it had been junk.
The comedian, George Carlin, used to do a bit about the need to buy a bigger house so you had a place to hold all your stuff. And they had a lot of stuff. Carlin also said that your things were “stuff,” but everybody else’s things were shit. That had not turned out to be true. Gus had been astounded at the incredible load of shit filling his house. It was everywhere: every closet, cabinet, nook, and cranny - and almost all of it had been useless in an apocalypse.
He thought about it as they made their way back into the building and toward the vault.
He’d found Chia Pets (never used), and tea cozies, and a wide assortment of woodworking tools he’d bought with the best of intentions, but only used once or twice. He doubted a gadget for making scroll work on wooden planks would in any way be useful in the current world. He had all sorts of gadgets designed to do all sorts of things. All were pointless now.
They’d had a fondue set. Where had they gotten that? Why had they gotten that? He hated fondue. All of these were bits and pieces of seventeen years shared together, and all of them were now useless.
They’d never had children. Never seemed to be the right time. Sad... But at least they didn’t need to worry about them like, Jim, or John, or half a dozen other of their soon-to-be shipmates. But they had taken their motorcycles. Those would be useful. He’d also packed his one remaining box of fine cigars. It was half-full. He doubted he’d find a replacement.
He hefted another box of ammo - 30.06, and heavy as fuck - and headed toward the SUV.
Jim, on the other hand, went into the back room, where Gilbert lay.
They pulled out of the alley, checking to be sure the coast was clear. Gus looked at the pile of cases in the back.
“Did we really need to take half of his ammo?” He asked. They’d removed half of the man’s store of 12 gauge, .357, .45, 9mm, .308, and 30.06, and Gus’s back felt every ounce of it. The SUV bottomed out as they drove over a speed bump.
“Call it carrying charges,” Jim said with a dismissive shrug.
Gus nodded. “And the minigun?” He’d been shocked, then mildly angered when Jim appeared at the back of the store with Gilbert’s “pride and joy.”
Jim hesitated, then replied: “Fucker shouldn’t have pointed a gun at you.”
The logic seemed unassailable. Or maybe Gus was still pissed off about his near-death experience. In any case, he didn’t argue.
“Did you leave the vaccine, at least?” Gus asked.
“Yes, Dear,” Jim said, a note of derision in his voice. “I’m an asshole,” he added, “not a thief.”
“I somehow don’t think the police will care about the distinction.”
“Probably not,” Jim agreed.
“Then we’d better be long gone when they find out.”
“Yes, Dear,” Jim said. He picked up speed.
24
“He said what?” BM2/DECK Duke Peterson asked, incredulous. They were in the Bosun Hold. BM1/DECK Dennis Hurdlika and SN Harold F. Simmons, jr., were in there with them.
The compartment looked - and smelled - the way the interior of a ship should look. At least Jonesy always thought so. Line of various sizes, and made from various substances (cotton, nylon, hemp, etc.) sat arrayed in spools at the back of a long steel bench lining most of the port bulkhead. Vices, and bolted down, conical (phallic) fids, used for working with line in all sorts of ways, also in varying sizes, sat at either end. Cages lined the starboard bulkhead, filled with all the accouterments a good sailor would need, from giant wrenches and fire axes, to chem lights and flashlights and helmet lights, to hard hats and Big Fucking Hammers. There were chains and block and tackle rigs of every size and configuration; tarps and canvas and sail cloth; buoy lights and buoy batteries, neon orange, red and green dayboards, and solar panels, and everything needed to repair or build various Aids to Navigation. And there was a locker, painted dark blue (the others being institutional grey), labeled: LE GEAR (LE standing for Law Enforcement). It - more than just the ability to commiserate with other victims of LT Medavoy’s asshole-ness - was why Jonesy had come down there.
“He said we can’t have firearms,” Jonesy said again, though he hardly needed to. Once was enough to convey the bad news.
Duke stared at him in disbelief. He, like Jonesy, was rigged up in full LE gear, sans helmet, which sat like a disembodied head upon a gunmetal grey desk at the aft end of the Hold. “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”
Jo
nesy nodded and pointed at Duke. “That’s exactly what I said.”
“Fucking idiot,” Harold swore.
“What was that, Seaman Simmons?” Hurdlika barked. If senior Petty Officers weren’t supposed to badmouth superiors, junior enlisted absolutely weren’t.
“Uh! Errr... I meant Duke,” Harold said.
“Fuck you, Harold,” Duke said, then returned his attention to Jonesy. “How are we supposed to...”
But Jonesy waved him off. “I’ve already gone down that road,” he said. “It leads to nothing but being more pissed off.” He shook his head. “What we need to do is deal with what’s in front of us.” He cast a sideways glance at Hurdlika and Harold, sizing up whether or not they could be trusted. He should have saved the effort. He knew they could be. “We need to go around him.”
“You mean arm up, anyway?”
“No, numbnuts,” Jonesy replied, his tone friendly. “Not unless we want to get court martialed.”
“And Medavoy would,” Hurdlika said.
“What then?”
“He didn’t say anything about batons, or knives, or tasers,” Jonesy said.
Duke smiled. “Ah! I begin to see your evil plan.” He looked at Hurdlika. “You’ve got the keys.”
The BM1 looked between the two of them, hesitating. This was a big step in a potentially nasty direction. Then again, it was the right step. He pulled out his keys and headed towards the blue locker.
“Uh...this might seem like a stupid question...” Harold began.
“And it would differ from the rest of your questions how?” Duke asked.
Harold coughed into his hand. It sounded oddly like fuck off. “Why do you need to be armed up in the first place?”
25
The M/V True North was alive with activity. Stores were being put away and secured against the inevitable rocking and rolling in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Engines were being taken through their pre-start checklists. Dinner was being cleared away, young children were being put to bed, and a dozen other things were being done by a dozen other people, as the ship prepared to sail off into the proverbial sunset. The actual one had displayed its light show and disappeared hours ago. This was how Samantha Gordon, age sixteen, and utterly, irrevocably depressed at the thought of any of it, managed to slip over the gangway and disappear into the night.
Her life was over - nothing more, nothing less. She would never see her friends again. She would never go to the mall, or sneak into the cinema to catch a forbidden-by-law R-rated movie. She would never see a concert at the Astoria Center. Green Day had been scheduled to play there. She even had two tickets - a birthday present from her Dad, a little over three weeks ago. She’d wanted a car, of course. Sixteen was the magic year, after all. And he had planned to get her one. She’d taken and passed the driving test the next day, and they had even gone to the dealership to shop a couple days later, but then they announced the Plague. And so now it was concert tickets she couldn’t use and a life she would never have again. Happy Birthday...
She’d had the entire concert scenario worked out, too. Green Day was old, but still considered cool, without being trendy. They were even (in certain circles to which she could only dream of belonging) considered edgy. But that wasn’t why this whole affair was such a suck-fest. It was a gigantic ball of suck because she had been planning to ask Justin Blaisdell to go with her. In the scenario she created with loving, painstaking, fever-dreamed care, there had been kissing.
Justin, of course, was why she slipped away.
She knew she had to go back. Her father would tear the city apart looking for her, and there would be an endless series of Parental Moments inflicted upon her, over and over again, for however long their voyage to wherever they were going would last. But Justin was supposed to be at The Park tonight. And so she went, into the night, in the dark, past curfew.
Edgy...
26
Twenty-two days earlier, and three days before the CDC announced the Pomona outbreak, Brian J. Reeves, sales representative for ChromoSolve, a high tech genetics firm, based in Portland, Oregon, traveled to Los Angeles for a conference with potential buyers for their latest product, AccuChrom, a next gen system for modifying seed corn to grow in arid environments. He’d traveled by air.
At check in, he had touched the automatic check-in screen to save time, then headed to the TSA checkpoint, where he touched the plastic bin that hadn’t been cleaned since God knew when, into which he placed his keys, coins, laptop and shoes, and then removed them after going through the scan. He leaned on the scanner’s conveyor to put his shoes back on, touching it with his left hand.
During the flight, he touched his seat, his seat belt, the tray table, the plastic cup, mini bottle of vodka, and can of tomato juice for his Bloody Mary. It was only ten in the morning, but it must have been cocktail hour somewhere in the world. He paid for it with cash that had, in turn, been change for the cup of convenience store coffee he’d bought on the way to the airport. The coffee had tasted terrible.
In between the purchase of the coffee with a twenty he’d gotten in change at the bank, where he broke a hundred the night before, and the time he paid for his Bloody Mary, the money he’d used changed hands four times. He gave the money to the flight attendant, touching her hand in the process. He had no idea who she touched after that.
He, however, touched the car door on the cab he took from the airport, the seat inside the cab, and the money he gave to the driver, and then the money and receipt he received in exchange. He also touched the door to his hotel, the hotel registration desk, the hotel clerk’s hand, when he handed over his Amex Black credit card, the elevator button outside the elevator, and then the floor button once he’d gotten inside. He touched the room key, which in turn had been touched by an unknowable number of others, and the room door handle, both outside and inside of the room.
And he went right on touching things, all day long: in the cab to the buyer (representing a consortium of investors from Dubai and Macao), at the buyer’s office building and in the buyer’s office, at the restaurant, where he had an excellent steak he couldn’t finish because his appetite was strangely muted, and on and on, and on for another two days, before he finally drove his car back into his driveway at home in Astoria, Oregon.
His wife and three children were there.
He felt more or less fine for e few days, except for the lackluster appetite. He didn’t give it a second thought, though. He always suffered from horrible jet lag.
It had never lasted so long.
Truth be told, he hadn’t felt right since before he’d gone on his business trip - a day before, come to think of it. On that day, he’d attended a Father/Son event at Ronald Reagan Middle School, with his middle child. He’d tried and failed to make eleven year-olds care about genetics. They’d eaten lunch at the cafeteria. It had tasted bland, institutional, and just a touch odd.
Three days after his return from Los Angeles, he awoke feeling like something the cat dragged in, chewed up, then yacked out as a fur ball. He couldn’t ever remember feeling so terrible. Between the coughing and the fever, he didn’t leave his bed for two days. During one of his many naps, the CDC announced the Pomona epidemic. He hadn’t paid attention. He’d been too sick.
His wife, who neglected to mention the plague to him, feeling he had enough to deal with, continued to go to work at the florist shop she owned, and the kids continued to go to school. Then they, too, got sick.
On the seventh day - now fifteen days after his trip to Los Angeles - he began to feel better. Not perfect, by any stretch, but good enough that he’d been able to keep down a small bowl of tomato soup. It reminded him of the in-flight Bloody Mary, though it contained no alcohol. Odd he should think of something so insignificant, but this could be passed off as side-effects of the low grade fever.
Three days later, the fever spiked. Two hours after it reached its peak of 105, Brian J. Reeves was no longer human - at least not in the sense
of what was considered normal human cognition and behavior before The Plague.
His wife and children were now dead, though he didn’t know it. He’d been there when it happened, but nothing had registered. The lights had been on, but nobody had been home. Nobody, except the black dark rage-monster that rose up inside him, blotting out everything and everyone who had ever mattered to him, or ever would.
His middle child, a boy, had died from the fever. Brian hadn’t noticed. He’d been too busy killing and (over the next few days) eating his other two children, and his wife.
He’d been trapped inside the house. The concept of closed door, plus door knob, plus turn door knob, equals open door, was so far beyond his capacity, it might just as well have been quantum mechanics, or origami, or scrap booking; all of which were simply beyond his comprehension.
His neighbor solved the problem for him.
Three days (or it could have been three weeks, for all Brian knew) after he’d finished killing his family, Veronica Marsinski, whom he and his wife had loathed, because she was such a snooping little bitch, had come-a-knocking. Nobody had answered her knock, and so she just invited herself in. It was the last time she would ever do anything so rude.
He hadn’t bothered to eat her, since he was full, following his family feast, but he’d still ripped out her throat with his teeth. Her blood now mingled with his family’s, all over his face and neck and chest and arms and hands. He did, however, stop to drink the last of the water out of the downstairs toilet bowl before heading out the conveniently open front door.
Now, he walked the dark, post-curfew streets. Or rather, he stumbled and staggered, as if intoxicated, since his motor function had been impaired, though not as completely as had his higher brain function. Had anyone seen him, they might have mistaken him for a drunk - except for the fact he was naked (which could have been passed off as inebriation) and covered in blood (which could not) - but nobody did.
He banged into a wooden sign, almost falling ass-over-tea-kettle down the hill upon which the sign sat, but he somehow managed to retain his feet by grabbing and holding the wooden rectangle for support, leaving a bloody hand print upon the upper left corner. He groaned, growled, and headed past the sign and into the trees.