by Jason Offutt
He almost found out four summers ago, or was it five? It was at the Block Party. Every July 4, Mulberry Street, between Forest Street and Cunningham Drive, became a festering wall of people from all over the multi-block area who dragged their canvas lawn chairs and mini-gas grills, their beer coolers and, what’s worse, their children; their loud, screaming children, over to Craig’s street and mingled, waiting for the yearly fireworks show. Posey was their king, strutting up and down the street with a German beer stein like he was the Goddamned Kaiser. Craig sat on his porch every Block Party, smiling, and waving at the neighbors who strolled past his house, not knowing that in the right side pocket of Craig’s cargo shorts rested a .38-caliber pistol. With the streets crawling with vermin, Craig couldn’t take any chances. He didn’t move from his porch; he didn’t eat his neighbor’s offered food; he didn’t join them in conversation. But he did watch. If that fucking Purdy had told him on one night a year, evil walked this street, he would have bought another house, but he bought one on Mulberry Street.
Shortly before dark the year Craig knew Posey wanted him dead, about the time the fire-fighters on the high school football field across town were ready to light the first fireworks of the Independence Day show, Posey and that nosey Don Bing from down the street met on the sidewalk in front of Craig’s house, and said a few words Craig couldn’t hear, but they both turned and looked at him. Looked directly at him. As they stood there, plotting, Craig’s hand instinctively crept into his pocket and slid around the smooth wooden handle of the .38. Would they come get him? Right there in front of all the drunks wandering the street? He gripped the handle tight. Why not? They were all in it together. Posey turned away from Craig, laughed, and slapped Bing on the shoulder, then walked back toward the spot on the street Lilith shared with their grandchildren, their noisy, noisy grandchildren and that shitty little dog. Craig’s grip relaxed and he pulled his hand from his pocket, but at that moment, Craig knew he was marked. That’s why he watched Posey closely while he mowed his lawn.
Craig turned off the Craftsman and wheeled it to the shed in the backyard, the sudden silence loud in his ears. The shed was close to the house, but the short walk exposed him to the Posey house. Posey never rested. Never. He might look asleep in his chair on the front porch, but he wasn’t. Posey didn’t sleep – he waited.
“What you going to do now, McAllister? Play with yourself?” Craig tried to hum Posey out of his head, but that rarely worked. He banged open the shed door and slid in the mower next to the snow blower he’d have to use soon enough in northwest Missouri. His eyes dragged across the chainsaw hanging off the back wall. Craig grinned. That would be fun to run across Doofus’ backside, or maybe Posey’s. “You’re not man enough, McAllister,” Posey’s voice shouted. “Not man enough by a long shot.” Craig slammed the door shut and locked it.
“Shut up, Posey,” he mumbled. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
The Poseys’ home, a white bungalow with red shutters, fenced-in porch, and flower pots by the front door, seemed to Craig a looming monster as he stood at the shed. Posey moved. Oh, shit. He moved. The man was old, at least to Craig. He might have been sixty, seventy, one hundred. Hell, Craig didn’t know. All Craig knew was old man Posey spent almost every afternoon sitting in that damned lawn chair, pretending to nap, but watching Craig every second. I’m on to you, old man. Posey stretched, gently shook Lilith’s shoulder and said something to her. Something, Craig knew, about him. Posey noticed Craig standing by his shed, staring at them. How does it feel, Posey? How does it feel to know someone’s watching you? Always watching you?
“Well hey, Craig,” Dave Posey shouted from his front porch, Lilith rose slowly from the canvas chair, yawning all the way. “The lawn looks nice. Real nice. You need to come over for dinner some time.” The old man smiled and waved as the couple walked inside the house, Doofus skipping quietly under their feet.
Asshole.
June 21: Paola, Kansas
Chapter 3
Silence hovered through the shop at Doug’s Muffler and Brakes, broken only by AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” playing much too softly on the radio in the empty front waiting area. Angus Young’s guitar riffs drifted over the cold, dusty coffee maker, fuzzy black and white Magnavox TV, and two year’s worth of Car and Driver. Doctor’s offices aren’t the real havens for old magazines no one reads; mechanic shops are. Doug Titus sat in his office, the smell of oil and grease as unnoticed to him as the scars on his knuckles, there from years of dinking his hands while twisting a wrench under automobiles.
“We gonna stay here all day, boss?” Terry asked, leaning on the doorframe of Doug’s office. Terry Jenkins always leaned on something. Doug smiled at the thought of Terry’s mom yelling at him to stand up straight. Doug figured his mechanic’s mom used to yell at him a lot.
The Built Ford Tough clock on the wall read 4:20 p.m. through the sticker of Calvin pissing on a Chevy logo. Terry put the now-cliché sticker there about three years ago, and he still thought it was funny. Good old Terry. Terry had worked for Doug the past five years and was the same person he’d hired; hadn’t matured a bit. Doug usually shut the shop down at 5 p.m., but there was no sense in staying open any longer. Not today. Heck, not yesterday either. The one appointment scheduled for today, the back brakes on Donny Rodenberg’s F-150, canceled on him, the ring from the black AT&T office phone giving Doug a start in the silent shop. That call, that uncomfortable call.
“Doug,” Donny had wheezed. “I can’t bring the truck in today. Sorry, man. But I, I,” he paused to cough. “I’m not going to make it.” Then the line went dead. Terry thought the call was strange, really strange. But thinking about it, Donny didn’t sound so good. And there was the cough, the wet, almost gurgly cough. Doug shook his head.
“I think we should shut down early. Thanks, Terry. I’ve just sat here staring at the walls.” Doug smiled. “Besides, I think I’ve paid you enough for sitting on the toilet all day. That’s pretty good work if you can get it.”
Terry grinned. “Wanna go get a beer?”
Doug nodded. “Sure.” He stood and reached for the office light switch. Even the Makita Power Tool model for June, Catalina, looked sad on the wall calendar as she leaned forward on the slick two-dimensional page, her cleavage and pouty dark red lips took command of the photograph instead of the air wrench she held like it was a different type of power tool. “Sorry nobody’s been in to look at you today, Catalina,” Doug said, kissing his right index finger and pressing it on her lips. “I’m here for you, though, baby.” Then he shut off the lights, and sent the quiet building into darkness. Terry had already shut off the back shop lights and leaned in the doorway, silhouetted by the light of the bright summer sun. Yeah, Terry was ready for a beer, but Terry was always ready for a beer.
“You comin’ slowpoke?” Terry shouted. His booming voice echoed through the empty shop, bringing home the fact something wasn’t right; no, something was definitely wrong. Shouts never echoed in his shop; there were usually too many vehicles sitting on racks, and too many bodies and whirring tools to absorb the sound. But there were no cars, no whirring tools, and no one there. Terry was the only mechanic who didn’t call in sick today. Yeah, something was wrong.
The Corner Bar squatted in a two-story brick building at the intersection of Centennial Avenue and First Street, a 1960s tavern that didn’t get the notice it was the 21st century; a Schlitz sign featuring a man in a crew cut betrayed its age. The place was a dive, with sticky floors, bar shuffleboard, and really bad Karaoke on Friday nights, but Doug liked dives. You didn’t have to change clothes for a dive, and the owner, Mike, didn’t care when you dropped peanut shells on the floor. Hell, he expected it. The Corner Bar usually wasn’t full on a Friday around 5 p.m., but with the Honda plant just down the street that’s mid shift let out at 3:30 p.m., it was never quiet, not like this. Doug and Terry stepped through the heavy front door and into the dark, silent bar, the lack of cigarette smoke and cracking pool ba
lls all too obvious. The only person in the bar was Mike, who smiled a forced smile when Doug and Terry walked in and sat at the bar.
“I almost shut down, boys,” Mike said from behind his usually neatly trimmed white beard. Today the beard was shaggy; Mike looked tired. “If the guys from the plant didn’t show up after their shift on a Friday, I figured nobody would.”
Mike shouldn’t be standing behind the bar. All Doug ever saw Mike do was bullshit with customers and call the cops if Lester Ropey got piss drunk and started another fight with the missus, although she could usually take pretty good care of herself. It should be Carrie behind the bar pulling taps, hot Carrie, Mike’s secret weapon on a Friday after work, bringing in guys from all over Paola just to get a look at her tight shirt and Daisy Duke shorts.
“Well, we’re here,” Terry said with a grin. “How about a couple of Buds?”
Mike nodded. “You bet.”
Doug wasn’t a regular at the Corner Bar, but he was regular enough to see what was missing. Frank, the greeter from Wal-Mart, should be sitting at the bar feeding quarters into the Keno machine, Ben Gilroy and Delbert Benson from A-1 Movers should be arguing Chiefs football way too loudly in the corner, and Gary “Sissy” Conrad who worked at the flower shop down the street should be at the bar drinking a Captain Morgan and Coke, trying to chat up Carrie who wanted nothing to do with him. Gary hated it when the guys called him “Sissy,” but hell, he worked in a flower shop. He was asking for it.
“Where’s Carrie today, Mike?” Doug asked as Mike tilted a frosted mug under the Budweiser tap and pulled the handle, golden liquid rising from the bottom of the mug.
Mike shook his head. “Sick,” he said. “She called in yesterday and didn’t sound good at all. She didn’t call in today, but the way she was yesterday; I figure she’s still down.”
“Did she cough?” Doug asked.
Mike nodded, setting one mug down and picking up the other. “Yep,” he said. “And it sounded pretty productive.”
“Productive?” Terry asked. “What the hell does that mean?”
“She was coughing something up,” Doug said, turning back toward Mike. “Everybody but Terry called in sick down at the shop, too. So did the brake job for today. All the same, kinda gurgly. What do you think’s going around, Mike?”
Mike sat two cardboard Kansas Speedway coasters in front of Doug and Terry, sprinkled them with salt, and put the mugs down atop them.
“Some kinda virus, I guess,” he said. “I’ve been watching a lot of TV in here, and that’s the word. Well, one of the words.” He stopped and pointed toward the old Sony above the bar. “Not much else to do the past couple of days but watch TV.”
“Could I get another beer, Mike?” Terry asked, holding out his empty mug, remnants of foam coated the bottom. He looked at Doug and shrugged. “It was a long afternoon. Sittin’ on your ass all day takes a lot out of a guy.” Mike took the glass and went back to the tap.
Doug took a long, slow drink. Carrie sick, the crew from Honda gone, not even Lester Ropey was here. What the hell? “What are the news guys saying?”
Mike sat the beer in front of Terry, who immediately picked it up and took a drink. “Something from Asia. Hell, they all come from Asia,” Mike said. “That seems to be what a lot of the news guys are saying, but according to the reports, the scientists haven’t found anything. None of them really seem to know what’s making everybody sick. Fox News had some guy in a white lab coat claiming it’s caused by radiation from that Japanese nuclear plant that went hot back in 2011. They said it could just be now infecting us. Somebody on MSNBC said it was that new antidepressant.”
“Ophiocordon.” Terry put his beer on the coaster, nodding. “The Piper.”
“Piper?” Mike asked. He reached behind the bar and pulled up a white medicine bottle. “This stuff?”
Terry nodded. “Where’d you get that?”
“It’s Carrie’s.”
Terry took a swig of beer. “Well, that’s what they’re calling it. Not the news guys, just people. Everybody’s using it. The Piper. It’s from that old Led Zeppelin song.”
‘Stairway to Heaven,’ Doug knew. ‘The Piper’s calling you to join him.’ Well, if it makes you feel half as good as it’s supposed to, no wonder it’s popular.
“You must have seen something about it,” Mike said to Doug.
No, Doug hadn’t. He rarely watched the news. It was too depressing.
“Got any peanuts, Mike?” Terry asked. “Oh, and another beer?” Terry was almost thirty, but never quite made it past twenty-one. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment with movie posters on the wall, and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a beer model dressed for Oktoberfest he’d gotten from the liquor store down the street. Terry was a regular there, too. Mike slid a shiny tin bucket of peanuts in the shell toward Terry and went to pour another beer. The bucket of peanuts stopped in front of Terry like Mike had done it thousands of times. He had.
“That sounds BS to me,” Doug said to Mike who lifted a fresh cold mug up to the tapper.
“What? This Piper?” Mike asked.
Doug shook his head. “No. Do you know how much shit a new drug has to go through before a doctor can prescribe it? This Ophi-cotton stuff is fine. I’m talking about that earthquake and tsunami. That happened so long ago.”
Mike’s face grew stern, his brow pinched; he put his knuckles on the bar and leaned closer to his only customers like someone else might hear.
“I thought so, too. I’ve been wondering the past few days. I haven’t said to no one, mainly because there’s been no one here to say it too, but you think it could be terrorists? I know Saddam had biological weapons, what’s to say Al-Qaeda, and Hamas, and ISIS, and all those groups couldn’t have them, too. I mean, they might be assholes, but they’re smart assholes. They might be killing us with science. Probably something the CIA gave them to use against each other. You know that’s where these groups got started, don’t you? The CI fucking A.”
“It’s aliens,” Terry said in almost a whisper. He paused and took a long pull off his beer glass, draining it.
“Aliens?” Mike asked, the surprise not hidden in his voice.
“Yeah,” Terry said quietly, pushing his empty mug toward Mike. “Think about it. Something’s making everybody sick, nobody seems to know what it is, and no terrorist group’s taking claim for it – and you know damn well and good them camel-fuckers would be hackin’ each other’s heads off to take the credit for this. What else is left? Aliens.”
“Well,” Mike said, seriously. “What do you think they want?”
Terry looked from side to side, squinted and leaned closer to Mike. “Water.”
“Water?” Mike asked, almost entranced.
“Come on, look around,” Terry said. “What do we have no other planet in the solar system has?”
“I don’t know? Cows? Air?”
“Water,” Terry said. “Lots and lots of water. We need water to survive, why shouldn’t they? They just come down, and make us all sick, then we can’t stop them from sucking every fucking drop of it up into their space tankers and, whoosh, bye-bye water, bye-bye Earth.”
Doug finished his beer and looked at Terry. Was his mechanic serious? “I think you’ve been watching the Syfy Channel too damned much,” he said. “Next thing you’ll be quoting ‘Sharknado.’”
“Pfft,” vibrated on Doug’s lips, enough of an answer as he wanted to give his boss. “Well, what do you think it is?”
Doug slowly shook his head. He didn’t know, all he knew was something bad was going down around him – maybe something biblically bad – and he wondered if it had hit the few people he even remotely cared about. Doug stood and dropped thirty dollars on the bar. “Mike, this should cover what we’ve had so far and maybe a couple more for Terry. I think I need to go home.” He patted Terry’s shoulder. “I’ll see you Monday, right?”
Terry raised his mug and grinned. “You betcha, boss. You betcha.”
/> June 25: St. Joseph, Missouri
Chapter 4
The gentle glow from Nikki’s MacBook Pro bathed her face in blue. Soft clicks from her fingers on the keyboard filled the quiet bedroom, posters of Johnny Depp and SpongeBob SquarePants stared over her shoulder. Nikki hated summer college classes. Summers were for swimming, trips to Colorado, and maybe parties on some far-off farm road; not work at a chain restaurant when waitresses with the best rack got the best tips, afternoons sitting in lectures, and evenings in front of her computer writing a term paper on the Baroque Era. Summers were for fun. Fun. This wasn’t the summer of fun. Fun didn’t mean watching a man nearly choke to death on his own blood. She’d had fun before, and that, Mister, weren’t it. At least with whatever was going around, the community college canceled all classes effective today. The beauty of the internet kept everything running smoothly, even her Western Civ assignment.
Nobody knew what to call the odd behavior blanketing the world. Well, at least anyone in charge. People on social networking sites, from Facebook and Twitter to conspiracy theory podcast message boards, were calling it the Zombie Virus. Whatever. There were no zombies, and the scientific community hadn’t even pinpointed the cause as a virus. There were no reports of people attacking and eating anyone. Nobody was attacking anyone at all, only the illness. Sick or healthy, young or old, poor or wealthy would suddenly start bleeding from everywhere, eyes, nose, ears, pores, rectum, everywhere. Like the fat businessman at Hooligans who lumbered after Nikki, blood spewing from every point on his face, before he collapsed on a table. But then he got up, and didn’t know where he was. Zombie? No, of course he wasn’t a zombie. He was still alive when the EMTs took him away, but he wasn’t all right either. Those were the calling cards, blood, collapse, then their mind was gone. What was it? A terrorist attack? A plague? A curse? The news faces on cable simply referred to the wandering, mindless people in the streets (and Nikki’s restaurant section) as victims of “the Outbreak,” although nobody seemed to know what kind of outbreak it was.