by Jason Offutt
“Terry,” Doug said aloud, the sound of his voice hollow in the empty room. “I gotta get to Terry.” Doug sent Terry home the day after they’d talked to Mike at the Corner Bar. No need for employees if there’s no work. ‘How the hell am I going to pay my bills, or buy booze?’ Terry had said, more scared than angry. ‘What am I going to do without a job?’ Terry is (or maybe was) a good man. Not the best dog in the hunt, but a good man all the same. Doug smiled at Terry, although he felt no humor in his heart, and said, ‘the post office isn’t delivering, so there’s no mail. No mail, no bills. Your landlord is in the morgue, and the front door of the liquor store down the street is held open with a brick. I think you’ll be okay.’ Terry thought for a few seconds, smiled and nodded. ‘Yeah, I will.’ That’s the last time Doug had seen Terry, and if the Outbreak still hadn’t visited him; he may still be alive. Doug hoped so. He couldn’t stay here, in Paola, any longer, and he didn’t want to go alone. This town was dead. Doug knew it. He felt it. He had to get somewhere safe, somewhere untouched by the Outbreak. The last person he’d talked to had called the Outbreak victims zombies, but they didn’t look like any zombie Doug had seen in the movies. They were dumb, all right, but they just stood there, pacing. Then they eventually fell over and stopped moving.
If Terry was still alive, he had to come, too. Doug stood from his office chair, stepped toward the door and stopped to the sound of Catalina making pouty noises in his head. He smiled and plucked the calendar off the wall. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere without you, baby,” he said, folded the calendar and shoved it in his mechanic uniform’s deep front pocket. The shop clock read straight-up noon as Doug pulled the rear door of the shop closed and locked it for no other reason than he had the key. He’d walked the ten blocks to work every day for the past few weeks, realizing he should have done that the past five years. He felt better, his breathing not so labored after a walk. And, the streets of Paola were pretty pleasant when people weren’t around. But Doug had to fight his imagination from sending visions of bodies lying on blood-soaked carpets just behind the friendly front windows of the homes he walked past, some of them with big, colorful, plastic toys in the front yard. He fought the feeling because he knew he was probably right about the bodies, about the blood.
Terry lived in an apartment on the opposite side of downtown from the muffler shop. The streets, usually rumbling with midday traffic; people driving to Clem’s Diner or running errands on their lunch hour, but Doug didn’t bother looking for traffic as he stepped onto the dead street and walked toward Terry’s apartment above the drug store. No need to look. The streets of Paola were quiet, he hadn’t seen a vehicle more complicated than a bicycle for days since Squirrelly Bob pedaled past Doug like a mess of Bushwhackers were on his ass, the arms of a blow-up fuck doll tied around his neck, and a half-empty gallon of whiskey bouncing in the bike’s front basket in a mound of medicine bottles, the basket bouncing the bottles out like popcorn. For years, Squirrelly Bob rode his bike all over town, stopping to pick up loose change some people dropped for him on purpose. He was harmless. Bat shit crazy, but harmless. Squirrelly Bob had trailed blood as he wheezed by Doug, and Doug knew Squirrelly Bob was probably now picking up coins in heaven. Doug bent and looked at one of the medicine bottles that had come to rest on the street. He turned it with a stick. If Squirrelly Bob had the Outbreak, he wasn’t going to touch anything. Ophiocordon. A grin pulled at Doug’s mouth. The Piper called Squirrelly Bob to join him. No wonder he looked so happy.
Crossing the street, Doug heard a telephone ring somewhere. For weeks Doug had heard an occasional telephone ring and had grown numb to it. The first few calls sent him running around like the character in an old “Twilight Zone” episode, the one where a guy is alone in a town with no people and goes a little nutty. Doug was that character for nearly a week before he gave up. But, unlike that character, he wasn’t going crazy. At least not yet. If someone was going to call, they could sure as hell leave a message. Doug reached the other side of the street, and rounded the corner of Centennial in front of the Corner Bar; Mike slumped in a red mess over the bar’s shuffleboard table. Doug had stopped by to check on Mike a couple of days after Terry’s talk of aliens, and didn’t like what he found. No one at 9-1-1 answered Doug’s telephone call about Mike lying dead, and he left the cord of the bar’s wall phone hanging, knowing that if he found Terry dead, too, he might be the only person left in town, or in the world, who would ever use that phone, or walk down any street, or breathe – then he saw the woman.
She stood in the street, her permed brown hair flat on one side like she’d slept on it wrong. The woman, about 30-something, and built like God felt particularly inspired the day she was conceived, stood looking away from him, but Doug knew that figure, that curvy, tight figure. Doug had fantasized about wrapping his arms around this woman’s waist during all four years of high school and never got close enough to get to first base. Hell, he never got off the bench.
“Connie?” Doug said, then called louder. “Connie?” The woman slowly turned toward him. Yeah, it was Connie. Connie Dornberg Mickelson worked at the First National Bank of Miami County and only wore the name Mickelson out of habit. Her high school sweetheart Enis Mickelson left her years ago. Dipshit. As she stood in the street, her eyes staring blankly at Doug, terror suddenly swept across her face.
“Connie,” Doug said again, holding his hands in front of him, walking toward her slowly. “It’s me, Doug Titus from high school. I’m okay. No Outbreak here. I’m healthy as a moose.” At least from ten or so yards away she looked like the Outbreak had passed her by, too. No blood on her face. No blood on her lavender blouse. But something was wrong. Her nametag was still pinned over her left breast. Doors to the bank had been locked for weeks. The drive-through, tellers blasting every transaction with disinfectant (no, you can keep the pen, please. We have lots), stayed open for a short time after. But the drive-through had been closed for a while now, too. Connie still wore her banker uniform; she hadn’t changed her clothes for at least a week, most probably two. My God, Connie. What happened?
The stench of sweat and her period, either current or long gone, struck him as he stepped within five feet, the desire of getting anywhere near first base with the former prom queen and valedictorian ran screaming from Doug’s pants. She didn’t move, the look of terror frozen on her face.
“Connie,” Doug said softly. “Where have you been?”
Her mouth, lips chapped and cracked, moved slowly like a fish’s, no sound escaped. “Connie,” Doug said again. “Things are pretty fucked up right now. I don’t know why; I don’t know how. I only know almost everybody’s dead. But I’m not, you’re not. I think a friend of mine is still alive. I know you’re scared. So am I.” Hearing that admission come from his own mouth stopped Doug’s words. He hadn’t verbalized that feeling; he hadn’t even allowed himself to think it. Yes, he was scared. Hell, yes, he was scared. He’d be as crazy as Squirrelly Bob riding a bike with a blow-up sex doll trailing behind him if he wasn’t scared. “What has happened to you?”
Connie slowly moved her hands to her face, covering it.
“I. I. I. I hiding,” she said, like she hadn’t spoken to another human being for weeks. Maybe she hadn’t. “I hid. I locked myself in my house and hid in my basement, eating food out of cans and drinking out of the downstairs bathroom sink.” Once she started speaking, the words poured from her mouth. She pulled her hands from her face and looked squarely at Doug, the terror still there. “Frank, the bank manager, the fucking bank manager, died in front of me. Then he got back up and started walking. Walking around his desk over and over and over. He didn’t know his name anymore; he didn’t know anything.” Tears, long choked back, rolled down her face. “Then Carla puked blood all over a customer, and I couldn’t take it. The TV reports about the Outbreak scared me. They scared the shit out of me. I ran to my car and went home.”
“How long ago was that?” Doug asked.
Conn
ie’s eyes glazed for a moment, her focus wandering. “Last week, or maybe the week before,” she said, sobs starting to stagger her words. “And I hid. I tried to hide from whatever is killing everybody. I sat in the basement with the lights off. Then somebody broke into my house.”
Doug had survived the Outbreak, at least to this point. He wasn’t afraid of the Outbreak anymore, at least not as much as the other people who survived it. He read “Lord of the Flies” in high school. He knew what happened when the rules of society broke down. People didn’t have to follow them anymore. “What did you do?” he asked.
Her tears came even more heavily. She took a step toward Doug. “I had a gun,” she said. “Daddy always said a girl has to know how to protect herself. He said that. He said it when I was thirteen, he said it when I graduated high school, and he said it when I married Enis. He bought me a gun.” Connie paused, wiping tears with the sleeves of her blouse. “He bought me a gun and took me out target practicing every weekend until I was good.”
“What did you do?” Doug asked again, flatly. “What did you do to the man who broke into your house?"
“I shot him,” she said, looking into his eyes. “It was Donnie Ferguson. Math club Donnie Ferguson. He snuck down my steps, holding a beer from my refrigerator in his hand – my refrigerator – and said, ‘Well, well, well. It’s Connie I’m too good for you Dornberg.’ Then he came close to me, too close, and unzipped his pants. Then I shot him with my pistol. I shot him in the face.”
Good Christ Almighty. What has happened to us?
More tears sprang from Connie’s eyes and she stepped toward Doug. “Can you help me?” she sobbed. Doug reached out to her and stopped. Connie’s tears were red.
“You’re bleeding, Connie,” he said.
She put her hands to her face and wiped them over her eyes. When she pulled them off, her palms were slick with blood. Connie looked at Doug through a red mask. “Run,” she whispered, flecks of blood splattering her lips. “Run.”
Doug turned and ran. Away from his former fantasy, away from a woman who committed the murder of a high school classmate, away from death. About twenty yards down the street, Doug turned and looked at Connie, beautiful Connie, dying Connie. She stood in the street, the front of her lavender blouse streaked with blood, her feet shuffled, but she didn’t go anywhere. Connie was one of them, the Outbreak people. Doug stifled a scream and ran again, ran like he hadn’t since high school. Years away from the track team, and too many nights of Swanson microwave dinners and beer, brought Doug to a stop in the street, hands on knees, breath heaving. He looked up and stared at the shattered front window of Phillips Drug Store. An off-white newspaper end roll sign handwritten in Sharpie flapped against the broken glass: “The Outbreak is a lie. Ophiocordon is death. The Apocalypse is upon us.” Doug staggered toward the window, air just starting to suck back into his lungs. Through the window, the interior of the drug store looked like a toy box, its contents strewn across the floor, posters and displays dangling from the walls. A homemade, blood-splattered sign still hung from the counter: “Phillips Drug is out of Ophiocordon. Will shoot on sight.”
“Holy shit,” Doug whispered. He turned and ran up the metal stairs on the west side of the building to Terry’s apartment, a stitch pulling at his right side. Moments later, pounding brought Terry to his door in his underwear holding a Natty Light loosely in his right hand. “Oh, hey, man,” he said slowly to Doug, grinning. “How’s it goin’?”
Doug pushed past Terry and slammed the door shut behind him. “I just saw Connie Dornberg bleed to death from her face,” he said before he grabbed the beer from Terry’s hand and drained it. “We gotta get outta here, man. We gotta get outta this town. We gotta find someplace safe. Today. Now.”
Terry nodded. “Cool,” he said, the zombie first-person shooter game Left4Dead played in the background. “Can I finish my videogame first?”
July 1: Harrisonville, Missouri
Chapter 6
A branch snapped. Karl jumped from sleep and snatched the hunting rifle from the edge of his sleeping bag, lifted it to his shoulder and scanned the forest. The naked trees, trimmed in morning fog, betrayed nothing. Karl slipped out of his sleeping bag fully dressed and turned slowly to examine the woods. Still nothing. He tightened his grip on the gunstock. A rustle in the underbrush. Karl crouched to make himself smaller and aimed at the sound. Another rustle and a movement low to the ground pulled his attention to his left. Karl’s lip twitched; something hunted him. He raised the gun sight to his eye and gently squeezed the cold trigger. Another rustle, then it rushed him. Golden fur tore through the forest and leapt at Karl. He fired and a big dog dropped in a heap next to his sleeping bag.
“Goddamnit,” Karl spat, watching the now-wild dog’s taut body bleed into the forest floor. This was a big fella. People were dying off and animals were already going wild. “Sorry, Fido.” He stroked the dog’s fur. “It was you or me.” Karl stood and looked around. Somebody heard the shot. He knew that. And it was probably somebody he didn’t want to meet. There were bad people out there; nasty people and Karl Derking didn’t take shit from anybody. He pulled out the rifle’s clip to count his remaining bullets – four. Only four. He rolled his sleeping bag into a tight bundle and strapped it onto the green backpack that held everything he had. The sleeping bag, the backpack, the rifle – all taken from looting. Them or me, Hoss. Them or me. Karl slung the backpack over his shoulders and walked north, Harrisonville lay a few miles away.
An hour later, Karl sat on a small hill, leaning against a gnarled oak tree, binoculars pressed against his face. The black and gray pavement of U.S. 71 cut the countryside into two parts, its four-lane surface webbed with cracks and dotted with an occasional dash of yellow paint. A small herd of white-tailed deer, about six, walked calmly across the highway, a doe stopped in the median to graze. A month and they’d forgotten about us, Karl realized. A buck walked past the one car on the highway, a Chevy Lumina, its hood up, its driver nowhere to be seen. Karl’s pickup sat just like it fifteen miles south of that hill near Archie, Missouri, dead like it had the Outbreak, or whatever the hell was killing people. Karl thought the Outbreak scare was bullshit. Something was killing people, all right, but he didn’t think it was some kind of virus.
U.S. 71 brushed against Harrisonville, population 10,190, although now it may well be zero. Two church steeples and a water tower peeked over the treetops of the town, a Wal-Mart and Price Chopper grocery store sat like big concrete blobs on the town’s outskirts. That was his goal. He needed food, clothing, water, and ammunition, all at everyday low prices. Nothing moved in town, at least that Karl could see. Heck, he might even find a car to take; it’s not stealing if you take something from a dead guy. He stood and began walking.
Deserted. Highway 7 that branched off from U.S. 71 was empty. Nothing. The coast isn’t going to get any clearer, Derking. Panic gripped Karl as he stepped onto the highway and began ascending the off ramp, but nothing happened. Boot steps on the pavement he normally didn’t notice, tapped an uncomfortable cadence through the morning air, but that was it. A hawk cried in the distance, but there were no motors, no shouts, and no car radios to break the silence. Karl was alone. He liked it like that. Karl had jumped in his pickup in Vinita, Oklahoma, and pointed himself toward Miami (pronounced Miam-uh for all you Yankees) two days ago, only to find the city gone. Gone gone. Whether by accident or by some madman with a match, he didn’t know, but the city lay flat, the occasional chimney and hollowed husk of a brick storefront still stood. So, he kept driving, this time north, just because it seemed to make the most sense. If someone were alive, still fighting this biblical pox, terrorist attack, or whatever it was, he might find them in Kansas City. He was close, but he still hadn’t made it.
Karl stopped and pulled the binoculars to his face. Four bodies lie in the Wal-Mart parking lot, a great, black turkey vulture stood on a woman’s chest, ripping at the soft flesh of her face, but that was it, the only mo
vement he could see. If anyone in this town were alive, they were somewhere inside a building, watching him. He suddenly felt exposed. The Wal-Mart building butted up to a line of trees that rose from a dip to the right of the off ramp; Karl could see the back door not a dozen yards from the trees. A body lay next to it. The Dumpster and a stack of boxes would help conceal his approach. Karl stepped off the pavement and back into the cover of brush.
He squatted behind Wal-Mart for 20 minutes before moving. The body by the door had been there for a while; he could smell that from the trees, but something else mingled with the odor of death, something thick, earthy. The back door had been propped open by a box. The poor guy was probably having a smoke when he died from the whatever, not like the smoking wouldn’t have done it eventually. The only things moving within eyesight were flies fluttering around the corpse. He ran for the door, but the corpse had fallen too close for Karl to open it. Flies scattered as he reached toward the bloated body to drag it out of the way, but the gray skin held him back. Karl was used to death by now, watching blood shoot from the face of everyone he knew, only to watch them wander around mindlessly until they eventually fell, never to move again.
But what the hell was up with the man’s skin? Karl sat his rifle on the pavement next to the corpse and leaned close. He gagged and almost vomited; fuzzy gray fungus grew all over this man’s flesh. Fascinated, he leaned in closer. Holy shit, it was moving, growing as he watched. Karl stood and staggered back. That was the smell, the fungus. “Oh, my God,” Karl whispered, the quiet city forgotten, the turkey vultures pecked at the parking lot corpses now in some other world. The corpse, the man in the blue Wal-Mart vest, the name “Kelly” on a red, white, and blue plastic nametag pinned to the front, moved. Not on his own, something moved him. Karl grabbed his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and took two more steps back. Is this normal? he wondered. An unnatural lump began to rise between the open flaps of Kelly’s vest.