Gross. I wish I hadn’t just thought that.
I made my decision. I went back into the bathroom and got the magazines, but I put them in the pillowcase like I was hiding them, so no one would see them when I walked out of the RV. Like there was anybody left alive to see.
I didn’t come out of the bunker for three days.
5
I found the magazines because I was scavenging through other RVs and mobile homes in the park. At first, anyway. I stopped looking around because in general I didn’t think it was safe. That’s because one time the bugs got me pretty bad.
It was Lisa and Bob Crossin’s trailer. I remember I went in and listened, and I didn’t hear anything. I was extra careful because their skeletons were all over the floor, and it freaked me out, so I was extra careful to listen for any little sound.
When the bugs get ahold of you, they fuck you up bad. Hopefully you die quick, because once they start eating, they do not stop until every piece of flesh and every bit of gristle is scraped clean off your bones. Every time I come across somebody’s leg bone, it has deep grooves in it where the bugs’ teeth have cut into the bone. You usually don’t ever see smaller bones, like finger bones or toe bones, because they snap those up and eat them entirely. The bugs aren’t quite strong enough to crack open the big bones, so I guess they don’t know there’s marrow in there. If they knew that, I don’t think they would ever give up.
The bugs can’t crack open skulls with their teeth either, so they rip the heads off the spines and flick their tails in and out the little hole at the base, scraping the brains out. It’s disgusting. Their tails come out like wires with whitish-grey globs of crap stuck to them, and they run it through their teeth.
The first time I saw it, I was walking by a trailer and I saw them doing it out front on somebody’s bones they had picked clean. There were two of them squabbling over the head, fighting each other to stick their tails in the hole like they were fucking it.
(Excuse my French, but that is how I imagined fucking would look like. I haven’t ever seen it for real, so I’m not exactly sure what it looks like.)
As soon as I saw it I puked all over the ground and backed away, holding my gun out in case they rushed me. There were only two of them, though, squabbling over the skull. Once I puked, one of them went over to that and started eating the chunks from my breakfast. I guess they had enough to eat in those days because they didn’t come after me as fast back then. Now whenever they see me, or smell me, or however it is they know I’m there, they make a beeline straight for me.
Anyway, I shot the first one that was eating my puke. I would’ve shot the other one with the skull but it ran away under the trailer. When I came back the next day, the head was gone. The vomit was, too, and all the dirt underneath it for half an inch, like a bug had scraped the entire area so it could eat up every last bit of the beans I’d had for breakfast.
I was furious that I wasted my food that morning. I’ve never puked since then, even though a couple of times I wanted to.
Like the time they got me. I was in Lisa and Bob’s trailer. I was real careful going in, cause like I said, their skeletons were lying there on the floor and that was freaking me out pretty good. I stood there two minutes just listening for any sounds of little bug legs scraping, or that tail of theirs, shikka-skikka-shikka-shikka. I didn’t hear nothing, so I went to the fridge.
I had already cleared out most of the RVs in the first 2 weeks after It happened. Once it hit me that there wasn’t gonna be any more trips to Vons or Ralphs to get groceries, I figured I better grab as much food as I could. I got the stuff that could rot first and ate that, then went back later for canned goods and such.
Lisa and Bob’s trailer was one of the furthest away in the park, right out on the edge, with nothing between them and a hundred miles of desert scrub brush. I had only been in their RV one other time, right after I started scavenging.
I should have just skipped the fridge and gone right to the cupboard or the bathroom and seen if they had some antibiotics or whatnot. Anything they had in the fridge would have been rotten and moldy weeks ago. Remember, there hadn’t been no power for weeks now, so the refrigerators in all of the RVs basically turned into little slow-cook ovens.
But maybe I thought I could find some beer or warm cola or something. I don’t know. It probably wasn’t as stupid a decision as I’m making it out in my mind, cause if nothing bad had happened, then I just woulda just opened the fridge, seen a bunch of mold growing everywhere, and closed the stinking thing back up.
But that’s not what happened.
6
I didn’t see it at first because it was dark in the fridge and basically everywhere you looked was a carpet of black mold. Mold covering the milk carton, mold covering tupperware, mold covering a bunch of vegetables down in the crisper. I remembered them, cause they were already going bad when I saw them a couple of weeks ago.
What I didn’t see was the bug sitting in the middle of all that mold. And I didn’t hear it cause it wasn’t moving – not until it got a look at me.
It launched out right at my jeans and clamped on good and tight to my leg.
Not only did it bite me, but it spiked its tail right through my thigh.
That’s what they like to do, either wrap their tail around you, or spike it through you so they can clamp down better. I saw it go clear through the front of my jeans and out the back before it whipped around my leg.
Jesus God, I ain’t ever felt that much pain since I broke my arm when I was 9. (To tell the truth, when Mom’s boyfriend Gordon broke my arm when I was 9.) I screamed when it spiked me, then I screamed some more when it took a big hunk out of my leg, ripping off the jeans along with my skin. Blood was everywhere in two seconds flat. My whole leg was red.
I had my rifle in my right hand, and I smashed the stock down on its mouth. It was still hanging on pretty good since its tail was in me (which is the part that still gives me the shivers even now, feeling that tail moving through my skin and muscles like a goddamn piano wire), but it slid down my leg all the way to my knee. I smashed it again and got it down to my shin before it took another bite.
I guess I should be thankful it got the shin and not the knee, cause it would have fucked up my knee something awful. When it chomped down on my shin it mainly hit bone. Still hurt like shit, though.
By this time, I swung the rifle around and put the barrel straight down its goddamn mouth. I wasn’t thinking too good, because if the bug had been directly over my shoe I probably would’ve shot it all the way through and blown a hole in my own damn foot. Lucky for me it had kind of skidded to the side on my shin, so when I shot, the bullet tore through it and missed my ankle by about an inch.
That little fucker’s guts exploded out his asshole. He let go of me and flipped over onto his back, spinning around, all those little spider legs kicking in the air. The tail was still inside me and it comes sliding out (Christ that still gives me the shivers) and starts whipping around, shikka-skikka-shikka-shikka, flicking my blood everywhere.
I popped another two rounds into it. Finally it stopped spinning around and just lay there twitching, its black motor-oil insides splashed out everywhere on the floor.
I ripped open my jeans a little more so I could get a good look. My leg looked like somebody took off about 4 square inches of skin plus a good chunk of meat with a potato peeler. Blood was oozing up out of it so quick I could barely see how deep the fucker got me.
I wasn’t afraid I was gonna bleed to death, but I was afraid I might get woozy and pass out before I got back to the bunker. I grabbed a sheet off of Bob and Lisa’s bed and wrapped it tight around my leg. It started turning red in seconds.
I opened up the door again, took a good look and listen, and limped my ass out of there. I was super lucky there weren’t any of the little fuckers around that day, because I wouldn’t have been able to outrun them.
I got back to the bunker, shut the door and locked it, got
out the handcrank light, and took a look. By then I was getting a little lightheaded, but the bleeding had slowed down.
I was afraid their teeth might have some kind of poison on them, or some kind of germ like a flesh-eating virus, so I washed it off with a bunch of rubbing alcohol, which made me scream and about pass out from the pain. Then I scrounged out some of the antibiotics I’d found in people’s medicine cabinets over the weeks and took some of those. And a couple of percocets, too, out of a bottle I found in Old Man Knox’s bathroom. If I’d have been smart, I would have taken the percocet first, then used the rubbing alcohol.
I gotta say, percocet is the shit. Old Man Knox claimed he had horrible leg pain from an injury he got on the job that put him on disability twenty years ago, but most people in the park just thought he was probably a junkie. Didn’t matter, I don’t care what Old Man Knox was, I was just glad he had the percocet because I laid there stoned out of my mind and listened to the shikka-skikka-shikka-shikka sound as the bugs all followed my blood straight to my door, thirsty to get the rest of it out of me.
And for the first time in weeks, I didn’t care. I just lay there listening, fucked out of my mind, whispering, Go on, drink it all up, you fuckers, cause that’s all you’re gonna get. Assholes.
I didn’t leave the bunker for five days. I had enough percocet for the first three. Those were three of the best days of my life.
After I ran out, it was back to a hell of a lot of pain.
But I lived. My leg scabbed up and then healed, though it’s ugly as sin. There’s a kind of a pit in the skin and a humongous scar. But it coulda been a lot worse. Five inches up and a few more over and it woulda got my pecker, so maybe God was looking out for me. I guess He don’t hate me completely for playing with myself, or He would’ve had the bug bite it off.
And I figured out the bugs ain’t poison and they don’t have flesh-eating viruses since I’m still here and my leg’s still here. They’re just mean little fuckers with lots of teeth, that’s all.
So there might be a ton of other Playboys somewhere out there in the park, but I won’t ever know, because I’m not going looking for them. I’ll check the bathrooms for pills and the cupboards for food, but I won’t go digging around any longer than what’s absolutely necessary when I go in the RVs anymore.
I might be getting a little bored with the girls in my magazines, but I figure you can’t jerk off if you’re dead, and I’d rather keep looking at them and jerking off, so why not play it safe.
Plus, giant bites on the leg really suck.
7
I think I got a little off track. So here’s what my daily routine is like again.
Get up in the morning, early. The sun comes right through the crack in the bunker door, so I don’t have much of a choice about that one.
Usually I have to pee, so I do that.
If I have to take a crap, I do it in the bunker. I know, it makes the place smell bad, but YOU try crapping out in the desert with a rifle in your hands while you look for something that wants to take a chunk out of your ass.
I brought in a toilet seat from one of the RVs and rigged it up over a metal bucket. It’s real nice. Now I can go in peace, not have to squat on the bucket, and not have to worry about going out in the desert and having one of them bugs rip my nuts off while I’m trying to drop a deuce.
I open up a can of vegetables and eat half of it. If there’s water in it (like corn) I drink that down, too. Usually I do this before I take a crap, by the way.
If I’m gonna be honest, usually I take a look at my magazines and yank on it for awhile. Then I spurt in the bucket.
Then I go outside (with my gun) and dump the bucket far away from the bunker.
(I don’t mean to be gross, but whatever I dump in the bucket is always gone when I go back the next day. Those fuckers’ll eat anything.)
The rest of the day is basically a whole lot of nothin.
I don’t like to spend time in the bunker during the day cause it gets hot as an oven in there. So I do a lot of sitting on the top of Grams and Pop’s RV.
I don’t hardly ever go inside our RV anymore, for the same reason I don’t go in the other ones: cause I’m afraid there might be bugs inside. They might have gone in and nested. But there’s a ladder on the side of the RV, and I go up there and sit.
One thing the bugs don’t do so good is climb stuff that’s straight up. They can jump a couple of feet in the air, and they can go up rocks just fine, and somehow they keep getting in the RVs. Probably eat a hole out of the bottom and get in that way. But I’ve never seen them get up on top of an RV yet.
That don’t mean I’m not real careful when I climb up on top, though. I don’t want one of them biting my face off just cause one of them got lucky and I didn’t take a good enough look.
I built me a little shelter up there with scraps of wood and corrugated metal. I made sure to build it so I can see out of all four sides, in case the little fuckers figure out how to get up on top of the RV somehow and sneak up behind me.
I can see the whole RV park when I’m up there. Hell, I can see for miles around. There’s the highway off to the left, and the power lines that stretch across the desert. Everything else is basically just scrub brush. I can see a billboard way off down the highway, but it’s facing the other way. All I can see is the back and the metal struts holding it up.
I always wondered what was on the other side of that billboard. I sit there for hours and imagine what kind of picture is up there – if it’s a half-naked girl, or maybe a poster for Hawaii, with the most beautiful hula girls you ever seen on the prettiest beaches in the world. Or maybe the best restaurant in Los Angeles, with a big old steak and a giant potato with butter and sour cream and all the fixings.
I spend a lot of time up on that RV roof wondering what’s on the other side of that billboard.
When I’m really bored, I look for bugs and take aim at them like I’m an Army sniper. I don’t fire, though. I don’t want to use up the bullets. I’ve only got 127 left. But I use the scope and follow them around, talking to them. Like, “You son of a bitch, you better be glad I’m saving my bullets or you’d be one dead motherfucker…you’re only walking around cause I got better things than to waste a good bullet on your sorry ass.” Things like that.
I have a lot of free time, what can I say.
When I’m having a bad day, sometimes I pull the trigger and kill one. Especially if they’re in a group, and I’m thinking about Grams and Pop and all the other people in the trailer park, sometimes I just can’t help myself.
It makes me feel better.
First the guts splatter everywhere. Then the bug starts thrashing around. All the bugs around it’ll jump back, then they go in and strip him down faster than you can say cheese.
But mostly I try to keep that under control, because I have a lot of bad days. If I shot one of the little fuckers every time I got to feeling down, I’d have used up all my bullets the first week.
Sometimes I’ll go for a walk, but I don’t go far, and I don’t go where I can’t see for a good hundred feet around me. If I spot a group of bugs heading my way, I hightail it back to the bunker or the RV.
You can outrun the bugs, by the way. They’re fast, but they ain’t that fast. You can outrun them for short distances. Thing is, you better not fall or stumble, or you’re fucked. And I don’t ever want to try to run a marathon against them, cause they don’t ever seem to get tired. They just keep on going. I haven’t seen it yet, but I figure if you’re running out in front of them and you start to slow down, you’re dead.
I eat lunch around mid-day. The leftovers of whatever I had for breakfast, and another half a can of something else.
Usually I eat up on top of the RV with the sun beating down on my little shelter. It’s hot as hell, but it’s better than down in the bunker. And it’s way better than inside an RV with a bunch of the little fuckers nesting inside, just waiting for you to come in and do something stupid.
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I figure in another couple of months it’ll start to cool down.
If I make it that long.
Right now I got 15 cans of spaghetti with meatballs, 47 cans of soup, 68 cans of vegetables, 45 cans of fruit, and 23 cans of tuna fish. I figure if I eat 2 cans of food a day, with an extra can thrown in here and there, it’ll last maybe 90 days.
3 months.
They say you can go without water for 3 days, but you can go without food for a month.
So maybe I last 4 months.
If somebody’s gonna come up with a plan and save the world, I hope they do it by then.
You see all those movies where the hero is a scientist who’s working to find a cure for whatever’s turning everybody into zombies…or the hero is just a guy, but he goes out and saves the scientist who’s finding a cure for what turned everybody into zombies. Either way, there’s always a hero, and there’s always somebody that’s working on a cure.
I sure do hope there’s a hero or a scientist out there in a lab somewhere figuring out how to kill these things, cause unless a bullet is involved, I got no clue.
And I only got 3 months more to wait. 4 tops.
I don’t eat dinner again until I go inside the bunker for the night, which I do when the sun starts getting low. Seriously, you do not want to be outside when it’s dark and you can’t see nothing. I basically just finish off the half a can of whatever I opened up for lunch. Sometimes, if I’m really hungry and can’t stand it, I’ll open up another can. But I try to keep that to a minimum.
After that I usually crank up the flashlight and look at the girls again, and play with it until I spurt. Then I lie there on the crappy mattress I dragged down from the RV two months ago, and I listen to them outside, shikka-skikka-shikka-shikka. And that’s how I fall asleep, listening to the things that killed Grams and Pop and every person in the trailer park and every other person in the world, for all I know.
Bottle Full Of Scorpions Page 2