“I love it.” I turn it over in my hands while Lana calls dibs on the other spike. Dad fancied himself a carpenter, and I picked up a little along the way, though I don’t see a lathe among the power tools. “I can help with the handles, maybe. Is there a drill?”
“There’s, like, twenty drills.” Daisy’s smile wins out. “Cool.”
I set my spike on the back deck’s table and tie my boot. My blister is gone, thanks to the ultra-sticky, gel-type bandage Lana supplied. I’ve done a lot of walking the surrounding land this past week in an effort to break in my boots, but I plan to keep it bandaged just in case.
Francis sits in a chair across the table. Three days of rest turned to over a week when his shoulder didn’t heal enough for our liking. It came out of the sling yesterday, and we’re giving him another day to regain more range of motion. Though I would’ve liked to get going sooner, I no longer want to do it alone, and I won’t have Francis risk his life for my impatience.
“These are great,” he says, tapping his own spike. “Can’t wait to use it.”
“Daisy’s good at what she does.”
“So are you. Wouldn’t be the same without the handle.”
I smile, uncomfortable with the compliment though I know he means it. I chopped madrone firewood into manageable sizes, then turned and sanded the wood using a makeshift lathe of sander and spinning drill to shape it into smooth, ergonomic handles. Daisy taught me how to grind the steel, and I thinned the tang, leaving a wider lip on the bottom and top. Once the wood is fitted around the spike, the lips keep the spike from pulling or pushing out of the handle when you strike bone—a predicament one of the Lexers on the hill showed is possible. I added holes for string, so the spikes can be attached to our belts, and ferrules cut from copper pipe we found. The finished product is nice enough to sell in a post-apocalyptic gift shop.
Francis motions at the atlas on the table. “I have a route mapped out. Two routes. One takes 505, the other back roads.”
My fingers worry at a string on my jeans, and I flatten my hand on my knee. If I’d left on my own, most likely I’d be dead, and although I can now kill Lexers, there are still so many things that can go wrong. Worse, I could make it to Eugene and find no one.
Francis picks up his map measuring tool and rolls it along the atlas’ cover. “That thing’s cool,” I say in an attempt to take my mind off my thoughts. “What’s it called?”
“We always called it a map measurer or curvimeter,” Francis replies, “but it’s officially called an opisometer. My grandpa brought it back from Germany after World War Two.”
He hands it to me. I run the little wheel along my finger and watch the dial spin around the numbers. The other side is a compass, and I find north—the direction I hope will lead me to everyone I care about. “My grandpa was in the war, too. South Pacific.”
“Mine was Seven-Sixty-First Tank Battalion. The original Black Panthers.”
“I’ve heard of them. They were badass.” My father was a World War II buff. On sleepless nights, he’d watch cable until the wee hours of the morning, and he lauded the feats of the all African-American 761st Battalion.
Francis smiles, looking out over the mountains. “Gramps was no joke. Their motto was Come Out Fighting. Taught me to do the same.” He takes the curvimeter when I hold it out. “He fought for his country and came home to the same Jim Crow bullshit as before, but he never stopped fighting. Marched on Washington, got his degree, and died with nineteen grandchildren at his bedside. Every single one of us showed up. That’s how special he was.”
Francis drops the curvimeter in his shirt pocket. The gold band on his left hand glints in the sunlight. I look away, but not before Francis sees. “My wife died,” he says.
“I’m sorry.” It’s the lamest response, yet I say it anyway. What else can you say? I can’t ask how she died, though I’m curious, if only so I can try not to die the same way.
Francis breathes in slowly. “We didn’t know what was happening at first. By the time we did, it was too late to leave. Then the power went out, and we didn’t have water. They’d drained the condo pool for maintenance. The one fucking time in years that we needed that pool, and it was empty.”
I make a sympathetic noise somewhere between a grunt and a groan. I wanted to know, but I don’t anymore. I don’t know what to say, don’t know where to look when Francis’ face is tight with grief and pain.
“So, we left,” Francis continues. He stares into space as though narrating the story to the movie in his head. “Got about a half-mile in the car and then had to walk it. Stayed in a house the first night with some other people. A few were going for the mountains, but we were headed for the water. For a boat. We thought we could get to Canada, maybe. It was a stupid idea.”
Francis’ short laugh holds no amusement. “Or maybe it was a good idea. A lot of people had it, since there were no boats left. We turned around, headed northeast. She’d dropped her knife when we had to run, and we were looking for another in a store when a group of them attacked. I was trying to protect Lianne from Lexers ahead of us, and she jumped in front of one coming up behind me. She didn’t have any weapon except herself.”
“God,” I whisper.
Francis’ lips tremble, and he presses them into a thin smile. “I think God’s on vacation right now. Drinking margaritas on a lounge chair by the pool.”
He may be right. If there’s a God, He’s washed his hands of humans. Francis’ pain is almost too much to bear, but I force myself to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry about Lianne.”
“Thank you. You’d think I wouldn’t want to hear her name, but I do. It’s almost like she didn’t exist if no one else knows about her.”
Francis slumps as though sorrow and guilt push down on his shoulders. Lianne’s sacrifice has to be torture, especially for someone as big and able as Francis, who likely thought her protection his responsibility.
Before I can think of a response—soothing words Rose would have at the ready—Troy appears. “We’ve got a dozen coming from the south. Francis, you up for helping?”
He doesn’t ask me. A week ago, it would’ve been because he didn’t think me capable. Now it’s a given I’ll do my part, and I get to my feet with my spike in hand.
Francis pushes out of his chair and straightens his shoulders, then nods at me with a bit of life in his tired eyes. “Come out fighting, right?”
“Come out fighting,” I agree, and we follow Troy into the grass.
45
Craig
The road to Winters is barren but for grassy farmland, the occasional Lexer, and orchards of what Francis says are walnut trees. The houses and a winery are dark and quiet. Animal paddocks are empty, their once-electrified fences now broken wires. A cow carcass is torn apart so that its head is the only thing still resembling a cow.
“Lexers eat animals?” I ask. I guessed they did, but I haven’t given it a ton of thought; I’ve been wholly consumed with keeping my own hide safe.
“Yeah,” says Lana, who sits beside me in the pickup.
After another minute, she sniffs, then sniffs again. A tear drops from her lowered face to her jeans. Daisy rubs Lana’s back. “Lana’s dogs…” is all she says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Lana lifts her head. “I know it’s stupid to cry about dogs when so many people lost…” Her eyes move to Francis in the passenger’s seat. “But they were my family.”
“It’s not stupid.” As a kid, my dog Lola was my best friend, the one I hid with when Dad was on a rampage. When she died, even Dad cried, though he told me to suck it up an hour later.
Lana begins to answer, then quiets when a small office building appears, its parking lot home to five Lexers. We have to pass through the city of Winters to go north, and no one is feeling optimistic about the prospect, least of all me. I remind myself I’ve killed many Lexers (I stopped counting at forty) while I rub my spike’s smooth-as-silk wooden grip. I raised the grain and sande
d all the handles with a fine grit sandpaper, then rubbed in tung oil, sanding and oiling each consecutive layer before I finished with a final layer of oil. If you’re going to do something, do it right. I learned that much from Dad, at least.
But it turns out Winters is empty. Eerily empty. Doors are closed, windows unbroken, and aside from those first Lexers, nothing alive or dead greets us. A dinky little gas station has a sign in the window: OUT OF GAS. It’s obvious the convenience store is empty, since the sign in that window reads: EVERYTHING SOLD OUT.
Troy turns onto another road surrounded by farmland with only the occasional house set back from the road. Mountains to the west, flat land to the east. Uniform rows of plants grow in the fields, wilted from lack of irrigation.
Francis snaps open the map, where he’s traced our overall route—the atlas is better for local roads. “This is one hell of a drive. Maybe we should check out I-5, shave eighty miles off.”
“What say you all?” Troy asks the back.
The roads we plan to travel are not only longer, but they’re also twisty and narrow. It’ll take us forever to get north. If I-5 is clear, we’d be in Eugene tonight or tomorrow morning. “Fine with me,” I say.
Daisy and Lana agree. However, a mile down the road that leads to I-5, we hit what might have been most of the population of Winters. Abandoned vehicles fill every lane, surrounded by golden-green fields of drying grasses. Shoes dot the asphalt and bodies pick their way through the cars. Troy releases the disappointed version of his Texas hoot and turns the truck around.
An hour later, past a few one-horse towns, we’re well into the mountains. At the end of another hour, the road slopes to flat, and Troy slows doubtfully when Francis instructs him to turn right. The road we travel is two-lane new blacktop. This next road is much older, with dark spots of patched asphalt where it isn’t a cracked light gray.
“You sure?” Troy asks, and Francis nods.
It leads us past a long stretch of orchards and spring grass already turning brown. A giant red barn comes next, then a small house set in a grove of trees. The latter’s driveway gate is latched tight and hung with a homemade sign that reads Trespassers Will Be Shot. Based on the tire swing hanging from a tree in the front yard, I can’t blame them for their policy.
The road narrows to an incline freckled with patched potholes, then winds up another hill, dropping off sharply on one side. Rose hates these kinds of roads—she’s terrified she won’t be able to stop herself from jerking the steering wheel and plunging to her death. And she says I’m neurotic.
Valley stretches out below, rising into green folded mountains with not a soul in sight. Places like this are safe, at least for now, but you need enough food, water, and shelter to survive any length of time. The desolation that clung to me, alone in my condo, creeps in. If the world is destroyed, the end of ninety days will be the end of most things. There’ll be no grocery stores. No gas or communications. Maybe all my time in the woods with Dad will pay off, if I can remember any of it. I wasn’t the King of Campcraft, either.
Three hours later, we’ve passed a few quiet farmhouses, no Lexers or humans, and are once again on flat ground. No one is sure how far the tank of gas will get us in the pickup, but there’s plenty left—a good thing, since there are no gas stations. Houses appear and grow more numerous, as do cars on the sides of the road. Fallen bodies dot the asphalt, and a few Lexers loiter in a church parking lot.
The cars become a traffic jam. Doors hang open. Bags, suitcases, and purses lay abandoned, much of their contents strewn across the dirt lot set back from the road, which is almost entirely blocked by vehicles.
My best guess is that the people were waiting in their cars when Lexers arrived, and those who couldn’t drive past made a run for it with their belongings. Judging by the dark stains on the dirt, the torn clothing, and the shoes, it didn’t go well. Judging by two bloody kids’ backpacks—one Dora the Explorer and the other Star Wars—it was pretty fucking horrific. Troy pulls into a narrow pathway between vehicles, then stops the truck and opens his door. “Back in a sec.”
On the front path of a small house, where bodies and a white picket fence fell in the grass, he bends to collect a few things. Back in the truck, he sets two guns, a shoulder holster, and two knives beside his seat before he weaves to the intersection. The reason for the pileup becomes apparent at the general store: vehicles sit bumper to bumper at the two gas pumps out front, where what might’ve started as an orderly line turned to a melee.
Three non-zombie bodies lie by the pump. One car rammed another in its side, and the rammed car’s driver slumps out the window. The store’s windows are gone, the planters out front upended. The bar and grill across the street is in a similar state. There must have been a fight for gas, then the Lexers came and made it worse, as usual.
Troy manages to get the truck across a field behind the store, then resumes our route past a post office and more destroyed homes. There are far fewer corpses than the cars would suggest, which means it’s possible their zombie selves are up the road and could be munching on us by nightfall. Gradually, the personal belongings and shoes disappear, but that cheerful thought keeps me company for the fifteen minutes it takes to pass a few houses and a farm full of mutilated cow carcasses.
The road meets with a roadblock on a small bridge into the next town. A former roadblock, since the chain-link fence has fallen onto the car blocking one lane, and the car that blocked the other has broken through the guardrail and is now parked in the creek below. Beyond the bridge, the road continues, empty but for the few stores of a tiny town and the garbage people left behind.
Troy rolls slowly over the open lane. Growls come from the creek bed. I lower my window and watch three zombies trip in the rocky water. The small store ahead has an aboveground gas tank with pump, though the hole in the bottom of the tank and the destroyed store don’t entice us to stop.
“Did they really think that fence would hold back people?” Daisy asks.
“Probably not,” Lana says, “but I bet they were hoping it’d hold back zombies.”
Hours later, Lana is behind the wheel. Aside from the occasional ransacked house, nothing has changed, and the never-ending grass and trees lull me into a stupor until she slams on the brakes. Daisy yelps, and I lift my spike like a madman intent on murdering the passenger’s seat. I let it fall, though I keep my grip at the sight of people on the road.
Three young guys, early twenties at most, all well-muscled and sporty-looking. One waves his arms as if flagging a rescue helicopter. Another watches us hopefully, though he keeps his hands in his pockets, and a dark-haired third guy leans against a red sedan like he’s already written us off. All three wear holstered guns and have a blade of some sort on their belts.
“Don’t lower your window,” Troy says to Lana from the backseat, where he sits on Daisy’s other side. “Let me do the talking.”
Lana pulls forward slowly, lining up Troy’s window with the three. He rolls it down. “How’s it going?”
“Not good,” the arm-waver says. He pushes back his blond hair with a tanned arm. He, like his friends, wears only a T-shirt with ripped-off sleeves, which is a ludicrous choice for a number of reasons. The main three being, in no particular order: fashion, the weather, and zombies. “We’re out of gas and could use a lift. We’d really appreciate it, bro. We’ve been walking for a day now.”
“Why’d you come this way if you didn’t have enough gas?”
“We were hoping we could siphon from a car, but we couldn’t get any out.” He tilts his head at the dark-haired guy. “Lance thought we could make it to the next town, or at least find another car. We didn’t know we were heading into North Bumblefuck.”
“Almost impossible to siphon out of newer cars without a siphon made for that purpose,” Troy says. “They have a valve in there in case the car rolls over. Older cars, any tube will do. Newer ones, punch a hole in the gas tank and drain it out underneath.”
&n
bsp; “That’s good to know.” The blond guy shows us blinding white teeth. “Wish I’d known yesterday, though.”
“Where are you headed?” Troy asks.
“Anywhere, bro. You name it. We can hop in the back and jump out when we reach civilization. That’s all we want.”
Troy scans us to gauge a verdict. When he finds no outright refusal, he nods. “Grab your things and hop in the bed. I’m Troy, by the way.”
“Josh,” Blondie says. “That’s Lance, like I said, and this is Tanner.”
Lance salutes us, and Tanner runs a hand over his crew-cut brown hair. “Thanks, bro.”
The three hoist their giant packs, pushing each other in a joking fashion as they move for the pickup. Once they’ve taken a seat, Josh knocks on the back window and lifts a thumb, showing his white teeth again.
Troy angles himself against his door. “I’m keeping an eye on them, but I don’t think they’re up to anything.”
“Except pledging the nearest fraternity,” Daisy mutters.
“There bros the neighborhood,” I add.
Daisy cackles and shoves me with her shoulder. These guys are the antithesis of everything I was in my twenties. In fact, one of their older brethren probably tried to start a drunken fight with me in a bar at one point or another. These guys don’t seem like assholes. They just seem really enthusiastic, bro.
Lana picks up speed, head shaking while she watches the road. “Want to know a good rule of thumb? If you have a guy named Lance in your group, go ahead and kill him now. Save everybody the trouble.”
Daisy screams with laughter over Francis’ deep guffaw. “Untrue,” Troy says. “I’ve known a good Lance…oh, wait, that was Larry.” That garners more laughter, and his eyes shift to the pickup’s bed. “Look at him now.”
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 42