Clouds Before Rain

by Marco Etheridge

  “Sons of Bitches!”

  Shut up! What the fuck are you doing? Are you trying to get yourself killed? Shout crap in your head if you need to, but not out loud, for chrissakes. The sound of his own voice shocked him, rasping and creaky, the first words he had spoken aloud in weeks. He waited for some attack, some challenge to his curses, but there was only the rustling of the disturbed pigeons settling back onto their roosts.

  But dammit, it was true. They were sons of bitches, whoever it was that caused all this crazy shit. Ruining the world before I even had a chance. A chance to do what, paint cars? That’s all you’ve ever done, paint other people’s cars. Hey, it’s a job. At least I had a job, making my own money, living my own life. I wasn’t bothering nobody. It wasn’t bad, you know? I was warm, I had food to eat, buddies to drink beer with, cute girls to look at. Hell, from here it looks like a pretty damn fine life. Now I’m hiding in a doorway, freezing my ass off, and every Creeper and Mad-Max in the city is trying to kill me. Yeah, and if you don’t find a better hiding place, they will kill you. Time to get a move on.

  He leaned the heavy shotgun against the wall, pushed himself from the floor. A tattered messenger bag was slung across his narrow chest, the weight of canned food and a water bottle pulling against a sore shoulder. Holy crap I’m tired. Three days to get here from Georgetown. What is that, about a mile and a half a day? Getting out of Georgetown was tough, and Sodo wasn’t much better. Where there were survivors, there were guns. Where there were guns, there were Mad-Maxs. And where those killers went, there were fresh bodies. That attracted the Creepers. It was a damn miracle that a single one of them was left alive. There weren’t many survivors to start with, not after the die-off. Now the crazy bastards seemed bent on killing every last human survivor; sons of bitches, all of them. This ain’t no video game, this is the real deal. You get dead in this game, you stay dead. He picked up the goose gun, cursing its weight.

  If I have to find another hole to hide in, at least it can be a soft one. Let’s try the T-shirt shop. He checked the street again, then moved across the open pavement, quiet as a spectre in the gloom. Nothing moved behind the plate-glass windows. Using the barrel of the shotgun, he pushed the glass door open, waiting. There was no sound. Better yet, there was no smell. There seemed to be a lot less corpses downtown. Everyone must have gotten out of the downtown before the die-off really hit. Well, let’s go if we’re going. This place smells a lot better than that stinking cellar last night. Pushing the door wider, he stepped in off the street.

  Colorful T-shirts, still folded carefully, were stacked on display tables. The store seemed untouched. Sure, who would want to loot a T-shirt shop? Right, like who would want to loot a flat-screen television, but you saw tons of that, remember. Stereos, TVs, people running into stores and running out again, like no one figured the power was going to die; the power and everything else. The smart ones, they were hitting the gun stores, the pharmacies, the hardware stores. And the liquor stores, criminy, the damn liquor stores turned into war zones. Smart or crazy, most of them died with their goods. Then came the stench, the gagging reek of dead bodies. Be glad that this place is empty and clean. It’s a nice change.

  He checked the interior of the store, looking under every table, behind every counter. In a drawer under the cash register, he found a bulky key ring. Satisfied that the shop was empty, he closed and locked the front door. Behind the cashier counter, there are two doors marked Employees Only. One door led to a dark storeroom, the other to a small bathroom. This ain’t too bad; we’ve damn sure slept in worse. He propped open the door of the store room. Tearing open cardboard boxes, he dumped T-shirts into a pile. The flattened cardboard became a sleeping mat, the piles of shirts a warm nest. He tore open more boxes, laying sheets of cardboard over the top of the pile. Satisfied with the results, he made his way to the bathroom.

  Maybe, just maybe, there’s some warm water still in the tank. Yeah, but if there is, it won’t last long. You’ll have to be ready. He stripped off his heavy jacket, pulled the hat from his head. Wait, towels, you need towels. Stepping out into the shop, he grabbed a pile of T-shirts from the nearest table.

  “C’mon Baby, just a little bit, give me some of that nice, warm water.”

  He cracked the hot water tap and held a hand under the faucet. It was cold, icy cold, sending a shiver up his arm. Then he felt the sting of the cold change to a tepid wash of lukewarm. He dove into it like a drowning man, soaping and scrubbing; splashing as fast as he could. It did not last long, and it was not nearly enough, nor hot enough, but it was the best thing he could remember. The dark reflection staring back at him looked almost human.

  The last light of day was fading away. The little glimmers seeping through the clouds were cold and grey. He made his supper by the dying light, a can of sardines forked onto dry crackers. Hidden behind the cashier counter, he could see out the tops of the windows, but no one could see in. He ate slowly, trying to savor every bit. Damn, what I wouldn’t do for a hot, greasy burger. Or a burrito, shit; what’s a world without burritos? He swallowed down the last of the food, dreading the coming of the night.

  When the sky went truly dark, he crawled into his nest. Burrowed into the pile of T-shirts, he pulled more cardboard over the top of it, trying to insulate himself from the damp, seeping cold. I might not sleep, but at least I won’t die of hypothermia. Yeah, like that would be such a bad thing; just go to sleep and not wake up. Easier than trying to shoot myself with that cannon. Who wants to sleep anyway? Another night alone, another nightmare; better to stay awake. He settled down into the growing pocket of warmth.

  I wonder if anyone got out? Maybe, maybe the first ones, the smart ones, the ones who bolted at the first news. They could be out there somewhere, out in the woods, sitting around a nice, hot campfire. Yeah, sure, them lucky ones, they’ll be toasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories. But most of them didn’t make it anywhere. I saw that. They died on I-5, miles of dead cars and dead bodies. That damn freeway, running above the gritty streets of Georgetown, it was one giant graveyard; not much luck there.

  In the end, it didn’t really matter much anyway. By the time he figured it out, it was too late to run, just like it was too late for all those poor bastards falling dead in the streets. He didn’t have no family to run to, no one to save him, and no one to save. Like it would have done any good anyway. His few friends were dead, gone, or both. Probably all dead, knowing his buddies. None of them had any luck. So he stayed, and he wasn’t dead; not yet anyway. After the die-off was over, the people he’d met tried to kill him. Each sunrise brought one more day of cold and fear. Each night brought only the nightmares. That was life in Georgetown after the damn plague.

  Then came the Creepers. It was too much for him. He gave up on Georgetown, gave up on all of it. He set out walking north, foraging along the way. His only hope was to live until the next morning; survive one more day. Maybe he couldn’t drive out of this godforsaken city, but he could walk out. Just keep walking, not die, and one day he would be clear of it. It couldn’t be any worse than this. It was the best plan he could come up with. If he walked long enough, maybe he could sit around a nice, hot campfire; be one of the lucky ones.

  SHE WAS HUNGRY. HER head ached with it; the hunger, the desire. There was nothing else, nothing except a tangle of impulses: Hunt, kill, eat. She learned the first lesson. She learned to be still, so still that the prey did not notice her, not until it was too late. Devoid of memory, of pity, of any past, she crouched, frozen, a shade in the shadows.

  Cold brick pressed into her back, but she took no notice of it. Her senses were turned outward, straining to detect any movement. Her ears searched for the slightest click of claw against stone, padded paw against pavement; the sound of the meat coming close. The prey came for the smells in the big steel bin. She knew that the smells drew them, just like the hunger for meat drew her. Suspended in time, waiting meant nothing to her. Nothing mattered except filling the hunge
r. Her breathing slowed to nothing, eyes fixed open, unblinking.

  There was no memory of awakening. There was only pain, pain throbbing in her head, driving her; a horrible droning noise piercing her ears. Alone, unprotected in the glowing light, she had to escape. She fled into the dark, into the cold, into the silence. Then came the hunger, sharp and clear, telling her what to do. First she caught the small things, the things that scurried and squeaked. Easy prey, but too small to satisfy the hunger.

  She watched the other hunters at work. They padded silently after the squeaking small meat; or waited silently, pouncing when the prey got too close. Watching, she learned. Then she began to hunt the hunters.

  Her nose caught a scent in the air; wet fur, pungent and rancid. There was the sound of clawed feet, moving, hesitating, moving again. A snuffling sound, a low growling, then clicking claws moving again. Legs coiled spring-tight beneath her, her body was as still as a corpse. She waited. She could wait, motionless, for hours.

  The hunter crept into view, one of the noisy creatures. Its head jutted out low between its shoulders, eyes up, mouth open. Its tongue hung to one side, quivering in the cold. It stopped, front paw extended in the air, frozen. The paw moved, touched the wet pavement, stopped again. Another low growl came from the hunter’s throat, then silence, waiting, testing.

  As still and silent as the death waiting for this hunter, she did not move, did not blink. Muscles tensed, she also waited. The thing began to move. She could feel its hot breath against the cold air.

  In one motion, she struck. Legs springing up, clenched fingers shooting out, her hand closed on the prey’s throat. The struggling hunter was lifted clear of the ground as she rose to her full height. A high-pitched yipping strangled to nothing under her deadly grip. The animal’s legs flailed against empty air. Raising the kicking thing above her, she smashed the prey’s head against the edge of the steel bin, once, twice, until the legs went limp.

  Squatting against the brick wall, she held her dead prey in front of her. Her teeth tore at the soft skin of the belly. She wrinkled her nose at the rank taste of the fur, spitting it from her mouth. Warm blood oozed from the beginning of a tear in the skin. Wedging the warm meat between her knees, she slid her fingers into the tear, ripping away the skin. Her fingernails dug into the skin, peeling it back. The exposed meat glistened red and white in the shadows. Raising the dead prey to her ravenous mouth, she began to feed.

  Chapter 7

  Encounters

  A pale morning light seeped into the Fort, a weak glow over the tops of the plywood shutters. Liz and Pat sat at the galley table, warming their hands around hot mugs of precious coffee. The aroma of the coffee, triggering memories of safe mornings long gone, hovered about the room. Liz looked at Pat over the rim of her mug. She watched him sip his coffee, his eyes closed.

  “How’s that coffee?”

  Pat placed his mug down on the scarred, wooden table top.

  “It’s a damn fine cuppa Joe, Liz. You know, it’s funny, but I think my taste buds have been dialed up a couple of notches. Everything is more intense, good flavors, bad flavors, smells, stuff like that.”

  “Hmm... that’s interesting, I’ve been noticing the same thing. You could say it’s just human nature, you know, what we can’t have tastes better. Call it the forbidden fruit effect. Except that’s not it. This coffee really does taste good, better than I can remember coffee tasting. But it’s just coffee, made exactly the way I always made it. Okay, not exactly; I didn’t use a camp stove at home.”

  Pat scratched at his jaw through three days of beard.

  “I was pondering that last night, up on the roof. Everything seemed incredibly vivid. The evening was, you know, a typical damp Seattle cold. But it felt like I was inside the cold, feeling it, instead of just noticing it. The cigar I was smoking was nothing special. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought back, you know, before. Yet the damn thing tasted, and smoked, like the best cigar there ever was. I think there is a really simple explanation; we aren’t taking things for granted anymore.”

  Liz finished the last of her coffee, cradling the still-warm mug in her hand. She nodded her head. Pat was right, there was now damn little that could be taken for granted.

  “A warm bed, with a real mattress, I will never take that for granted, never again.”

  “I’m pretty sick of sleeping bags myself. With any luck, tonight you will sleep like a princess in your nice, new bed.”

  “Our nice new bed. I know how much you like shopping trips, My Love. Are you sure you are up for this?”

  “Liz, that is one hell of a euphemism. Risking our lives for a mattress and some bedding, and we call it a shopping trip.”

  “Shopping trip has a nicer ring to it than, say, scavenging from the dead, doesn’t it? Besides, it is the perfect day for a shopping excursion. It’s Black Friday.”

  “Damn, Friday after Thanksgiving, yeah, one of those days I always avoided. Oh well, I don’t think the lines will be quite as bad as I remember.”

  “Yes, I’m guessing not. Besides, I need to walk off a bit of that Thanksgiving dinner.”

  The confusion in Pat’s eyes pushed her over the edge. Liz burst into laughter, horrified that she was laughing, the horror of it pushing out more laughter. Through tearing eyes, she saw the same laughter pouring out of Pat. She gasped for breath, snorted, the sound wrenching out even more laughter. When the spasms subsided, finally, they sat wiping their eyes and stretching their aching sides.

  “Criminy, Liz, I think I cracked a rib. I haven’t laughed like that since, well, you know.”

  “There hasn’t been much to laugh about, My Love. But if we can’t laugh about Thanksgiving from a can, and Black Friday without the lines, then we might as well give up on the whole thing.”

  “Hey, c’mon now, I love that canned cranberry stuff, especially the noise it makes when it finally comes out of the can.”

  Liz caught the impish sparkle in his eye, held her hand up in warning.

  “No, no more, stop it. Besides, we have a mission, right?”

  Pat blew out a breath, the mood washing far away.

  “Right, a mission; errands for the theater of the damned. I think that fancy hotel is the best option, and the closest. Two long blocks up First Avenue, then two short blocks on Republican.”

  “Are you still okay with going on foot?”

  “Yeah, I think your plan is best. The truck might attract too much attention, even though it would be easier. No, we go on foot, just like we planned it. The utility wagon will work fine. I’ve got some two-by-fours lashed to it for bracing. And it’s all downhill coming back.”

  “Pat, do you think they will ever stop shooting each other? Today is, what, the eleventh day?”

  Pat’s hand closed over her, warm, calming.

  “Yes, Elizabeth, it’s been ten nights in our little Fort. They were at it again last night, but it was a lot further off. You’d think they’d give it up; there can’t be that many more folks to shoot at. But no one is shooting at us. Our neighborhood seems to be abandoned, which is a good thing. So let’s go get our mattress and make the Fort a little cozier, right?”

  A wave of dread pushed through Liz’s heart, driving away the last shreds of laughter.

  She saw Pat’s eyes, sad and beautiful.

  “We make the Fort cozy, and we stay here? Is that our plan?”

  “I was thinking about that last night, up on the roof; the question of whether we stay or go. I think that we stay, at least for now. It’s way too dangerous out there. All these crazy bastards shooting at each other, the roads clogged with dead cars. Just getting clear of the city would be very, very hard. And where would we go if we left?”

  “North, I would want to go north. My Mother, my Sister...”

  Her voice trailed off, leaving a silence brooding between them. Pat started to speak, but she raised her hand.

  “I know, Pat, I know you want to say something to make it better, but there
is nothing to say. It’s okay, I know there is not much hope. I’m just saying that if we decide to leave here, I want to go north. I need to be sure, that’s all. There is nothing for you to fix, it’s okay.”

  Pat nodded his head, holding his tongue. Liz saw the pain in his face. Dammit, I need a woman to talk to, a girlfriend to cry with. Yeah, but all your girlfriends are dead. Look at him, he’s dying to make it okay. Give the man something tangible, Liz, something he can work with.

  “Pat, if we were going to leave, hypothetically, could we do it?”

  She saw the look of relief pass over his face, even as he tried to hide it.

  “Yes, we could leave, at least I think we could. Getting out of the city would be the worst of it. Three, maybe four days, going slow around all the dead vehicles, then we might be outside the city. We really have no idea what it’s like past that. We could scavenge fuel from the gas station on Denny, but I would have to find lots of cans to carry it in. I guess the short answer is, yes, we could do it. The longer answer is all wound up in whether or not we would survive the trip.”

  “Thank you, My Love, for that and for everything else.”

  Liz blew out a hard breath, pushing her empty coffee mug away.

  “Stay or leave, I’m not spending another night sleeping on that cold floor. Let’s go get a mattress, then we can celebrate by breaking it in properly.”

  Pat’s face broke into a wide grin.

  “Right, I’m ready when you are.”

  Liz rose from the table, leading the way into the small entry room, the space that Pat had taken to calling the Ready Room. Liz marveled at the changes Pat had wrought. A heavy steel bar was fitted across the front door, resting on a pair of homemade brackets. Next to the door was a weapons rack made from PVC pipe. Cabin fever, combined with Pat’s always restless hands, meant new inventions everyday.