by Ann Christy
“Stop screwing around and just end it,” I say, my patience wearing thin. “He’s going to draw more of them with all that noise.”
That’s probably not entirely true because in-betweeners don’t last long in this urban desert, almost devoid of animal life except the ones that can fly, but you never know. Deaders, on the other hand, are everywhere, and while they are slow and weak, we could still get overwhelmed. My words work, because Charlie stops his circling, his eyes darting around us in quick, hyper-vigilant jerks. He purses his lips, his only sign so far of the distaste he feels for the creature at his feet. Then he brings the hammer down with devastating force right on the forehead of what was once a man—albeit a very bad one.
The difference between Charlie’s strength and mine is obvious when he does a removal. That’s what we call it when we take out an in-betweener or a deader. It’s clinical and I doubt very much that anyone actually thinks of it that way, but we have our own forms of politeness. Calling the act of smashing someone’s head into a slime trail a removal is one of them. And now, his extra six inches of height and thirty pounds of weight really show in the force with which he brings down the hammer.
His blows start to ring against the concrete as he gets through the bones and brain. It’s a loud, sharp sound and I wince, watching the corners with greater caution. This much noise is not good.
Sure enough, two deaders—remarkably mobile despite their horrific conditions—feel their way around the corner of a bookstore at the end of the block. Neither appears to have sight because their noses lift as if to sniff us out and their heads cock toward the sound of the blows. One is almost completely naked, the ragged remains of a bra and panties doing little to cover the disgusting sight of her withered—and yet somehow gooey-looking—flesh.
The other is in better condition and streaks of brown that must be dried blood cover it nearly from head to toe. A sleeveless business suit faded to an indiscriminate shade of gray covers his body, and it makes a perfect backdrop for the blood to show up against. Another hammer blow sounds out and both heads jerk in our direction with greater purpose.
“We’ve got to go! Finish!” I whisper harshly and bring my own bow to bear. They’re walking so jerkily that I have zero confidence in my ability to sever the spine on either of them. As weak as they are on their own, it’s easy to get overrun and where there are two, there are more.
One last, definitive blow makes the concrete sidewalk sing out a note, and then Charlie wipes his gore-covered hammer on the clothing of the now permanently dead man. I can’t keep holding his bike and my crossbow and expect to get a decent aim, or fire effectively. I’m at the point of letting it go and taking my shot when the bike steadies under my hand and Charlie hops back on.
“Two more coming at the other end,” he says and jerks his head toward the tiny, fancy restaurant at the other end of the block. “Forget them! Let’s go.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I flip my crossbow around to my back and hit the pedals on my bike like there’s no tomorrow. A few more deaders make their way out of a small drugstore and I swerve on my bike to avoid them. I pass so close that I can smell them, the scent of metal, blood, and rot thick on their bodies.
Charlie is to the left of me, so he slips past them without trouble, but he mutters, “Take a frigging bath, why don’t you,” to the group as we pass.
That makes me grin. If he’s got his sense of humor, then all is well. Gloria and he were close. She was maternal, naturally so, and she seemed to know how much all of us needed some mothering. This was especially true as we watched Emily fade further and further, her pain increasing along with our helplessness. He took Gloria’s loss even harder than the rest of us. Now that the last of those guys is gone, maybe he can get over it and move on.
We’ve disturbed some equilibrium in the city with our actions. Ripples of disturbance spread out from that center of noise and activity. As we ride, our bikes quiet but our gear rattling, deaders shuffle in confused circles, or touch and taste their way along the walls. Those who can no longer walk or crawl, crane their necks away from whatever metal they’ve attached themselves to, seeming to sniff at the air even with only the insufficient stubs of noses that remain to them.
Perhaps it’s luck, but no more in-betweeners come our way. There aren’t that many humans around as far as I know, so that means there are fewer humans to fall into in-betweener status after that first death. And, with so little to replenish their systems, they transition into deader fairly rapidly once turned in-betweener. And they seem almost territorial, roaming an area wide enough for them but no more. I don’t believe in luck, though, so I watch every nook and cranny, every cross street and intersection, as sharply as is humanly possible.
Charlie moves up to take point again, so we go back to our individual roles; me on watch and him watching the road. The miles fall behind us, birds and immobile deaders our only company. I’m okay with that. We’ve had more than enough company for one day.
“Highway ahead,” Charlie calls over his shoulder.
“Decision time?” I send back.
He nods and both of us start looking for a safe spot to stop and consult. A place up high would be best, so we can actually see the roads in question, but I’m not interested in going into buildings when there are only two of us to do any clearing.
“There,” Charlie calls, pointing toward a gas station parking area. There are a couple of big trucks parked there. We’ve searched them before—not me, but someone from our group at some point has—because the sign we use for a completed search is prominent on the side of each trailer in black spray paint. They are a good choice. We can put the bikes up into the back of a truck and take a rest on the top. Nice and quiet and out of the way.
“Yeah. Good,” I huff back at him, grateful that conversation isn’t required while on the bikes. I’m tired already and we’ve only been riding for a few hours. We’ve barely covered a dozen miles. Getting around a post-apocalyptic city sure takes it out of a girl.
We park and clear the area around—and under—the trucks like we do every time. There’s a deader underneath a car in the small garage. He’s in no condition to come after us since he’s got no legs at all and is trapped under the car to boot. Another one is latched onto a spigot behind the station, licking at the metal for all it’s worth and in fair shape. Charlie takes his hammer to it before it can do more than note our appearance.
A final deader sits in the cab of one of the trucks, baffled by the seat belt and as withered as any I’ve ever seen. I stand on the step up to the cab and watch it for a while. It’s amazing to me that something that has been dead for almost four years and had nothing at all to eat in that time can still be moving, but it is, though barely. I inspect it to see if I can figure out what killed it, but there’s not a mark to be seen.
When the finger of one skeletal hand moves, I spy a prescription bottle on the seat. I can’t read it from where I am, so I hop down and go to the other side. The door is unlocked. It takes a good tug and when it opens, it does so with a loud metallic groan that makes Charlie shoot me a look. I shrug an apology and snatch up the bottle. It’s empty, but there are little spots of color where tablets have melted into the carpet and onto the seat. I don’t recognize the drug name—and all of us are almost encyclopedic in our knowledge of modern medications by now—but the instructions say to take them when his heartbeat becomes erratic.
I read the name on the bottle and say, “Howdy, Howard. How’s it hanging?”
I check the second hand on my watch and it takes a full forty-four seconds for the deader to react, the barest twitch of its jaw my answer.
“That good, eh?” I quip and reach for the glove-box. The console gives up a big book of maps—a huge prize—but that’s about it. The trailers may have been searched, but there’s no way any of us would have missed these maps. I make a mental note to re-check other truck cabs.
“Quit screwing around,” Charlie says, hefting
my bike up into the open back of the trailer. It’s a bigger lift that it looks from a distance, so it’s an awkward process I should be helping with.
I close the door quietly and hop down, waving the book of maps as I join Charlie. His eyebrows lift and he grins when he sees the cover of the book, so I know we’re cool.
The ladder up to the top of the trailer is awkward, but we manage. The top is thick with dirt and sooty flakes that have consolidated into a dense, gray mat. It’s so packed that my boots leave impressions in it as I cross it like they would in crusty snow. This truck is under the awning over the pumps, so it’s been spared the rain and rare dusting of snow. Seeing the inch-plus worth of evidence of all that has burned and blown around is sobering. How can we ever recover the world from what’s happened to it?
The sooty mat slides off the roof in heavy chunks and flakes as we kick at it, but a cloud still lifts that we hop back from, covering our mouths and noses with our sleeves as we do. I’m not overly concerned with cleanliness, but I’ve got just one spare set of clothes, so these have to last at least a few days. I’m not in favor of making them uncomfortable to wear on the first day. We get a bit of the edge clear enough to sit and it feels good to sit down on something other than a bike saddle. Dangling my legs over the edge and kicking my feet feels even better.
Charlie passes me a bottle of water and I can’t believe how good it feels to drink it. It’s amazing how much the character of something changes depending on your needs. I’m not a fan of water as a general rule. I hoard those drink flavor packets like they’re made out of gold. I can make a single packet stretch for three or four big bottles of water. So long as I can make water taste like something else, no matter how weakly, I like it much better. But now that I’m thirsty, my throat parched from the wind and stress, plain water tastes divine.
“Don’t be a hog,” Charlie says and tips the end of the bottle down so no more water will flow out and into my mouth. “You’ll just pee out the extra.”
He’s right, of course. Using water correctly is almost as important as having enough of it. I remember someone saying that the best place to carry water is inside your body, but that appears to be complete baloney, because you can only carry so much inside before the imperative to pee means you lose it. Hence, no hogging.
He takes a carefully measured drink and then caps the bottle with care. Then we look out at the world. The old highway—the one people used before the freeways went in—stretches off to our right, hugged by trees for as far as the road is visible. Further on, beyond our current sightlines, is an exit ramp that leads to the freeway.
We’ve explored this far, but I have no recollection of anything beyond it. I wasn’t exactly super-interested in the layout of the roads in my former life.
For the most part, my life on the roads consisted of sitting in the back seat behind my bickering parents with my earbuds in and music drowning out their quiet hatred of each other. Either that, or sitting next to one or the other of the parental units as they drove, chattering incessantly about business over the speakers in the car. Again, with music blasting in my ears. The paths we took to get places were unimportant and unnoted by me.
I wish I could go back and get a do-over on that. I would love to be able to navigate this city like Matt and Gregory can. Even Charlie is better at it than I am and he’s not even from here.
“Well, what do you think?” he asks, eyes on the tree-lined highway that looks suspiciously peaceful.
“Both have equal crap potential, wouldn’t you say?” I ask him back.
He considers my question, or else he’s already doing the balance sheets in his head, because his head cocks a little and his eyes lose some of that sharp focus. After a moment of silence, while I wait and listen to the birds scritching around on the overhang above us, he says, “The highway doesn’t have great sightlines. The trees are so close to the road that we’ll have less time to react. But on the upside, it’s not a great place for people to watch from for the same reasons. And we have bikes. But there are houses and farms all along it and those would be great places for people to set up camp. They’d keep watch from there.”
I nod and grunt, waiting for him to share the other half of his mental checklist.
“The freeway, on the other hand, is wide open except for the cars all over it. We can see a long way, but so can anyone else. The advantage of our bikes is diminished a little, but there’s also less chance that there’s a group camped out near it, since it’s not exactly a great place to get comfy. And there’s bound to be deaders with so many cars. Still, if I was setting up a watch, I’d set it up near one of the overpasses. You know, the ones where one of the smaller highways goes under the freeway?”
I nod again, not quite sure if he’s done. It appears he is because he looks to me, waiting for me to add some sort of input or even just express an opinion. That puts me on the spot because both routes sort of scare the crap out of me. No matter which way we choose, there’s danger. There’s always danger.
“Well?” he prompts when I don’t say anything.
“Give me more water and I’ll give you my opinion,” I say and hold out my hand for the bottle. We share another drink and then I’ve got no more excuse for delay. I really don’t want to be the one to make this decision, because I can tell that’s what he’s doing, leaving the decision to me. If I choose a path and something bad happens, it will be my fault and any potential solution we might have found will be gone forever.
He doesn’t mean to put that on me. I know that. He just knows that this is my journey to make. No one else will make this trip. No one else cares enough about Emily, about what she and I discussed over the long months of her illness. They don’t really believe me when I talk about what might be possible if she’s even a little bit right. If we don’t come back quickly enough, they’ll take a shovel or a sledgehammer to her head and that will be that. So, this decision is an important one to get right.
He’s waiting, sitting there patiently and without fidgeting, giving me the time I need to think this through. But really, what’s there to think through? The freeway might be marginally safer, but the highway, with its more direct route, will be faster so long as nothing happens to slow us down. And the advantage our bikes bestow can’t be ignored.
On the other hand, the deaders and in-betweeners who were lucky enough to find their way to the woods may have also found more to eat. Squirrels are fast, but the instincts of those who were once human are still there to varying extents. Those instincts could allow for catching squirrels. Vulnerability is there. The same goes for deer, rats, mice and anything else that must sleep at some point or travel on the ground.
I may not know it for certain from my own experience, but the stories of the others are convincing enough to inform my opinion. The vitality of in-betweeners and deaders within the forests may be significantly greater than that of those trapped in the city. It’s a risk no matter what.
“Highway,” I say before I can waffle further. If I let myself, I can go back and forth between decisions all day. “I’m sure. But we’ll take it easy and carefully when we get to overpasses or where there are houses. Deal?”
“Agreed.”
The map we have is one we found in the bookstore, of all places, and it’s super detailed. Scattered amongst the ruined romances and endless, waterlogged copies of the latest, bland bestseller laid a few precious copies of these maps. They’re irreplaceable and we treat them as such. I may have found a big book of maps in that truck, but for our local area, there’s nothing better than the ones we have. Charlie opens the folded paper to the section we need and we both inspect it as if it might hold further clues, as if we haven’t already spent hours poring over it while planning this trip.
He points to a strip alongside of the highway and says, “Then this is where they’ll be the most potential for trouble. Lots of houses along this area. After that, we get to farms and some of the bigger warehouse type places. Those are set furthe
r back from the road. But here, well, that’s where I’d be if I wasn’t with you guys. If I got there first.”
I nod along. We’ve gone over this before and us talking about it is just a repeat, but one that seems to make him feel better. Charlie is very thorough about things.
He folds the paper again and slips it into the side pocket of his jacket, careful to zip it closed. Then he sits some more and watches the world. I do, too. It’s not particularly lovely to look at from here.
Across the street is one of those two story hotels, the kind that have bargain prices and small windows. It’s the kind of hotel where the linens are of questionable cleanliness. The bottom floor windows have been boarded up, probably right after the veggie-heads rose to become deaders and in-betweeners. A fire on the bottom floor, somewhere near the center, has gutted a couple of the rooms and blackened a big swath of the building. Outside the room that appears to have been the origin of the fire—if the concentration of soot is any indicator—lies a bundle of faded cloth with pale gray bones scattered nearby.
That person was lucky, though not as lucky as those of us who are still alive. While the nanites spread through bites or blood, they don’t always do so. Whoever that pile of bones was, the nanites didn’t infect them. That person’s death, however gruesome, was at least final. The living death of in-betweener-ness would be far worse. I know this now first hand. I know this because of Emily and Sam.
“Are you rested?” I ask him, nudging his arm. We’ve been up here for twenty minutes at least and we’ve got a long way to go before we stop for the night.
He smiles his peculiar, serene smile, one I haven’t seen much since Gloria got taken. I’ve sorely missed it. His dark hair is a bit dusty, which makes it look gray, but his eyes are bright, filled with life and as blue as a summer sky when you look at it through sunglasses.
“I’m ready when you are,” he says, the smile lifting the corners of his mouth.