by Jason Offutt
The quickly receding patch of uncut grass drew Craig and his mower closer to the Posey’s yard. Stupid Poseys and their stupid dog. The last time Doofus crapped in Craig’s yard he told Old Man Posey he was going to shoot it in the head. That had been months ago. Craig smiled when he thought of that ridiculous yapping ankle-biter hit by a car and lying in a lump in the street outside Posey’s house a few days later.
Two more passes and Craig could reach and touch the Posey’s lawn. This side of his yard was slightly sloped, giving the Poseys his runoff when it rained. One more pass and the yard would be finished. As he pushed the Craftsman up the small incline, the Posey’s grass waved in the slight breeze, and brushed against his arm. The Posey’s own lawnmower was in that grass somewhere, buried with a concrete bird bath and what was once a tomato garden under what was now more prairie than yard.
Craig pulled the mower even with the Posey’s porch and killed the engine, the loud afternoon suddenly quiet as a cemetery. “Look at that lawn, Posey,” Craig yelled to figures still sitting in chairs on the Posey porch, fungus stalks reaching toward the sky like boners. “Best lookin’ lawn in town. You should probably do something about your piece of shit lawn. It’s knockin’ down my property values.” No reply. Fucking Posey didn’t say too much anymore, but he did sometimes, even though he and his fat wife still sat on the porch. They hadn’t moved for weeks. The white of Mr. and Mrs. Poseys’ skulls showed through parts of their face birds had pecked through. The rest of them sagged in their rotting clothes that were quickly melting in the moist Northwest Missouri weather; the smell of death long since gone, the gray, creeping fungus that consumed them all but spent. Craig was happy the Poseys had the courtesy to die outside the house, watching the body of their dog that had crawled across the street and collapsed; he didn’t have any surprises when he broke through the back door to see what food they had left. Old people kept a lot of canned food and marshmallows. Craig also rifled through their medicine cabinet. Tylenol, Alka Seltzer, blood pressure pills, cholesterol pills, arthritis pills, Ophiocordon. Sucks getting old, Craig thought, and dropped the Tylenol, Alka Seltzer, and antidepressants into the black plastic garbage bag he used to carry the food. Ophiocordon? Craig had read somewhere this shit gave you one hell of a rush. He grinned to think of old man Posey and fat Lilith getting their hornies off with some antidepressant pills. What the hell? Might be worth trying.
The sun began to sink in the mid-afternoon sky. It beat Craig’s back as he dragged the quiet mower into the shed behind his house and walked to the porch to have a warm beer. That’s one of the few things that bothered him about all the deaths – the lack of electricity. He didn’t need a clock anymore, but he missed reruns on TV, air conditioning, his computer, and mostly, cold beer. He didn’t mind the room temperature bottled water he’d horded by the case in his garage and basement, but room temperature beer kind of took the fun out of drinking it.
“Hey, Posey,” Craig yelled across the yard. “Wanna beer? I just got it from the gas station yesterday; I already drank all yours.” A faint ‘fuck you, McAllister,’ drifted across the lawn. ‘Tonight I’m going to eat your soul.’ Craig’s head snapped toward Posey’s house; the Poseys sat motionless as they’d been for weeks, slowly rotting into their lawn chairs. Goddamned Posey, he thought. I’m glad he’s dead. Craig chugged the Budweiser, threw the empty can toward Posey’s yard and went into the house to grab another. He kept his beer in the basement, but in the summer heat, the basement didn’t keep it much cooler.
Boxes of canned and dried food, crates of bottled water, cases of beer and soda filled the rooms of Craig’s house. He’d packed away everything he could take from the grocery stores before the smell of rotting meat and produce prevented him from going in. The few convenience stores in town didn’t smell so bad, but he could only eat so many Doritos. Guns and ammunition he’d taken from houses and the sporting goods store were scattered across the living room. In the early days, Craig never walked outside his house unarmed, but now he didn’t care. No one was left in this small town except Old Man Posey, and he was just talk.
The stairs creaked slightly as Craig left the basement and stepped into the kitchen; the stove, refrigerator and microwave sat quietly, buried by boxes of food. They were useless for anything now anyway. The last meal Craig had cooked before the electricity went out was ramen noodles. He still regretted that.
But as the basement door slid shut with a click, Craig heard another noise, a quiet hum that slowly grew louder. “Christ,” he hissed. “A car.” The last car engine he’d heard pull through was a man shouting verses from the Book of Revelation from the open driver’s side window. Craig had watched the crazy man with a Charles Manson face pass as he hid in the shadow of the courthouse on the town square. That car didn’t stop; it kept going north into Iowa. This time he might not be that lucky. Craig grabbed a hunting rifle and threw himself out the door.
Grass and weeds grew from cracks in the asphalt. Soon enough, Craig thought, the streets would be mostly vegetation. He sprinted across his newly cut lawn. It would be a signal, Craig realized, a beacon telling whoever was behind the wheel of the car someone in town was alive, someone they could steal from. The noise faded into a steady drone as the vehicle drove slowly on Main Street, a long, faint “hello” occasionally broke through the day. The driver was a man, or at least the voice was a man’s; the car or truck could be filled with any number of people. Are there any good people left after the end of the world? Craig wondered as he ran up the street. “Run, McAllister, run,” Posey’s voice called after him. Craig rarely wished someone else in town was alive, the bastards, but as the weeks crawled by, he wanted to know if Old Man Posey’s rotting corpse was talking to him, or if he was just crazy.
Mulberry Street gave way to First Street. Craig ran down sidewalks, avoiding the gray pavement. If the car rounded a corner, he could drop to the concrete, the overgrown yards and the small swath of grass next to the street would give him some kind of hiding place that the open street wouldn’t. Craig turned onto First Street and went toward Main. The car would be headed through the center of town before branching onto the side streets, looking for people who were still alive – looking for him. As he ran, a vision screamed through his head. Craig lay on his front porch, head split open, an unearthly living mold bursting from his chest, dead eyes staring at the Poseys on their porch, the corpses laughing, laughing at him while faceless men, women and androgynous things walked in and out of his house, taking his food, his water, his beer, his guns. White knuckles gripped the wooden stock of the rifle as Craig approached Main Street. The car traveled slowly and was a few blocks away by the sound of the shouts.
Crouching and looking toward the hum of the oncoming engine, Craig saw nothing and broke onto the street, slipped into the safety of the overgrown grass, weeds and bushes on the courthouse lawn; the spot he’d hidden from the Revelation Man as he drove through town. “Hide, little girl. Hide,” Old Man Posey called to him. Craig looked for the voice, expecting to see Posey sitting in his lawn chair on the courthouse yard, the stiff, dry corpse of Doofus lying at his feet. No one was there.
Across the street, the sporting goods store where Craig got the rifle he held, the restaurant where he’d cooked a steak before the electricity left town, the pharmacy, Purdy’s Hometown Real Estate, the T-shirt shop, were all dark, lonely, dead. Craig put the rifle to his shoulder and waited.
Minutes later a decades-old Geo Metro crept into view. Nothing to eat a lot of gas, something for traveling on next to nothing. The man is smart, Craig realized. Gas is hard to get without electricity. The Geo pulled to a stop in front of the courthouse and the driver stepped out; a slight man, bearded, his I Heart Philly T-shirt filthy and splattered with grease. “Hello?” the man yelled. “Is anyone there?” The breeze blew through the tall grass hiding Craig, the courthouse lawn looking like a great, green lake. “Is anybody there?” the man called again.
“Well, answer him, McAllister,�
� Posey whispered into his ear. Craig flinched; he could feel someone behind him.
“Shut the fuck up, old man,” Craig hissed and threw an elbow that hit nothing.
“Hello?” the slight man called as he walked a circle around the little car. “If anyone’s there, I’m traveling to Kansas City. I heard a station come in on my radio. Someone’s alive in Kansas City. Please, come with me. I have water, and enough food for a few days.”
Liar, ran through Craig’s head. You don’t have food. You want my food. Craig steadied himself and pointed the rifle at the man’s chest. “Yeah, your food,” Posey said. “He wants your food, your water, your beer, and he hasn’t seen a woman in months. He wants your ass.”
Craig shook his head. “This is my town, Posey, you motherfucker,” he hissed. “You’re dead. This is my town. My town. Go to Hell where you belong.”
“So you two can be alone?” the voice taunted.
“No,” Craig screamed and squeezed the trigger. A thunder crack split the quiet square and the slight, bearded man dropped dead in the street. As dead as the Posey’s dog.
“Well, you screwed the pooch now, McAllister,” Posey said, laughing. “That was your ticket out of Deadsville. What are you going to do now?”
Craig pulled the bolt on his rifle, loading another shell into the chamber, swung toward Posey’s voice and fired into a patch of high, waving, prairie grass. Posey wasn’t there. He was never there. Fuckin’ Posey.
Craig pulled his legs through the high grass and weeds and stepped onto the street. The young bearded man lay in a heap, a pool of red that gathered on the gray asphalt beneath his black hair. Craig stumbled to him and dropped to his knees; the man didn’t move.
“Touch his pecker,” Posey whispered.
Craig screamed and shot into the air. He reloaded the rifle and shot around him, shattering windows in J.J.’s Bar and Grill, Stoner Pharmacy, and the blackened bronze statue face of Col. Alexander Duncan of the Confederate Army that had stood in front of the county courthouse for 120 years.
“Goddamn you, Posey,” he screamed.
Craig stood in the Square, his voice echoed in his head seconds after it had vanished on the slight breeze. Then the world was silent. What did I do?
Craig sat his rifle gently against the side of the Geo and walked across the street to Mac’s Hardware. He emerged with a shovel and buried the man on the courthouse lawn on the spot where Posey had whispered in his ear, the spot where he’d pulled the trigger. Craig left the shovel sticking out of the fresh earth as a marker for the man’s grave; the man he knew Posey killed. Craig walked to the Geo, slid into the driver’s seat and drove it home. The man had said he had water and food; Craig could always use more.
That night, Craig McAllister threw Doofus onto the Posey’s porch and set their house on fire.
July 11: Exeter, Missouri
Chapter 17
The glow from the Kum and Go shone like a lighthouse in the waning dusk. It caught Nikki Holleran by surprise as she topped a rise on this stretch of hilly, rural highway. That light shouldn’t be there. Nikki pulled her Harley-Davidson to a stop on the highway and killed the engine. She pushed the kickstand down, stepped off the bike and stared at the convenience store that sat atop the next hill. Despite her trailer with boxes of macaroni and cheese, and cans of beans, her stomach rumbled at the thought of food that wasn’t good for the next two years. The sight of a convenience store in this region of hills and farm fields north of St. Joseph was a somewhat welcome, but unexpected sight. Especially the lights. The electric grid still had juice, so the Kum and Go meant food and a microwave, cold soda, and working gas pumps, but it also meant one of the other Leftovers may still be using it. I’m either lucky or fucked, she thought. But no sound of machinery or human activity drifted along the slight breeze that whistled in the growing darkness. A coyote yipped somewhere to her right; another joined it, then another. Close, but she wasn’t too worried about coyotes, they had things to hunt other than her. Nikki pulled a pair of Bushnell binoculars from one of the bike’s saddlebags and started walking.
Grass grew high on the highway shoulder. In just a few years, plants and weathering would break the world’s highway systems into so much rubble; grass and saplings would take it completely over short years after that. Nikki knew she would eventually have to find something with four-wheel drive to get anywhere, if she lived that long.
About a hundred yards from the Kum and Go – Ejaculate and Evacuate, her friends had called it at Missouri Western State Community College – Nikki stepped off the road and hid in the tree line, a remnant of days gone by when farmers planted rows of trees to keep the wind from pounding their crops, farmers who died a hundred years before people started turning into mushrooms. Leaning her right shoulder on a big oak to steady herself, Nikki pulled the Bushnells to her eyes and scanned the store. Two pickups, a Ford F-150 and a Dodge Ram, average vehicles for this part of the country, rested on the store’s big gravel lot. A flat tire caused the bed of the Ford to dip to the right. Near the back of the lot, sitting outside the aura of yellow light, a White Freightliner with a sleeper cab sat quietly, a rotor blade for one of the big windmills that apparently still helped supply electricity for this part of the grid loaded on its flat-bed trailer. Nikki eyed the sleeper cab almost with hunger. It had been three days since she’d slept in a bed, and she already missed it. Past the Missouri Lottery and Budweiser neons in the front window, the store seemed still, quiet, but that didn’t mean anything. A Leftover might still be … something moved. Nikki tensed at the suddenness of it, then it was gone. Where’d you go? Her breath came in short pants as panic began to creep over her. If another Leftover had claimed the store, she’d have to run, praying he didn’t have a faster ride than hers. She couldn’t risk meeting an unfriendly. Please, oh please, don’t let it be. A head peeked over a rack of Doritos – a deer. Nikki almost laughed. A young doe wandered the small aisles of the Kum and Go. On a second pass of the windows, she noticed one had shattered; the deer must have leapt through it. Nikki smiled.
“I’ll get you out, Bambi,” she whispered. “Just gotta open the front door.”
Popcorn and potato chips dotted with deer droppings scattered the floor of the Kum and Go. Nikki propped open the glass front door and tossed rocks into the store from the broken window until the doe found its way out. Someone else would have shot the deer and eaten well, Nikki realized, but she wasn’t a hunter, she was a waitress, and Hooligans hadn’t prepared her for the end of the world. Nikki filled the pockets of her cargo pants with packages of peanuts, beef jerky, and candy bars as she made her way to the back of the store. The snacks were for later, when she had nothing else. Today was for something hot.
A rush of cold air danced across her arm as she slowly pulled open one of the cooler doors.
“Thank God,” she moaned. The refrigeration still worked, but the burritos had expired more than a week ago. Nikki’s stomach growled again and she unwrapped a burrito and put it in the microwave oven. Fuck it. Microwaves fix a lot of problems. It tasted fine, so she ate a second one.
Tossing the wrappers into the trashcan out of habit, she knew it was time to move. Any Leftovers who saw the lights of the Kum and Go, the only lights on for miles, it would draw them in to do what she was doing. In less desperate times, people would call it looting. She called it surviving. Nikki packed three Styrofoam coolers from the store into the small trailer attached to her motorcycle. In went bacon, lunchmeat, eggs, milk, and cheese from the convenience store coolers, and enough ice to keep them cold for a few days. Three cases of bottled water and a 12-pack of Diet Coke sat beside them, along with six red five-gallon cans of gasoline and all the batteries, flashlights, coffee, bread, and all the hunting gear Nikki could find. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to bring herself to hunt, she didn’t even have a gun, but it would keep her warm when the seasons changed.
Munching from a bag of Fritos, she walked back into the store. There was one mor
e task. The acrid stench of rotting urine struck her face as she opened the door to the women’s restroom. Someone had forgotten to flush – Nikki was glad she’d eaten first. She used the toilet, the first time she’d used an indoor toilet in a week, then washed her short-cropped hair in the sink; the hot water felt better than she’d ever remembered. But she knew she had to hurry, to get back into hiding. She was exposed in the Kum and Go. A few minutes ago, her pants were down and Dad always said never get caught with your pants down. It took her a few minutes to find the switches for the lights, but she needed to find them. Had to find them. The lights were a welcome sign, and nobody was welcome. With a click of the breaker box’s master switch, the electricity of the Kum and Go went dead.
Outside, the slight breeze fighting her still-wet hair, was quiet. She could see for miles atop this hill. No lights, no cars, no human life. Above her a satellite moved in a steady line across the sky, sending information to people who were no longer alive to receive it. She yawned and stretched her tired muscles – muscles tired of riding, tired of sleeping on the ground, tired of moving. The roar of the motorcycle’s engine exploded in the night as Nikki started it on the short trip around the parking lot. She winced at the sound; anyone within miles would have heard her fire up her ride. She pulled her father’s motorcycle and its little trailer to the back of the lot and parked in front of a grove of trees and behind the Freightliner. The bed that sat in the truck’s cab waited for her. Killing the engine amplified the dead silence of the country night. No other engines had come to life. Nikki hoped that meant no other people were around to hear it, but she knew that was just hope.