by Henson, Lynn
“Bwashing mah teef,” he foamed.
“It’s not safe here,” she reminded him. “Don’t get too comfortable. We gotta go.”
“Woo fee onna oh? Waygah?” he frothed.
Her eyes rolled, “I’m just going to wait until you’re done.”
He spat out his toothpaste. “Where are we going to go? Vegas?”
“Find my sister,” she confirmed. “No pointing staying here regardless. They rounded everyone up from here and now the majority of them are demented cannibals. We need to find a city where people are working on a cure and protecting people from infection.”
“Yeah, but how do we know Vegas is any better than it is here?” he complained.
“Look, I know you’re probably in denial or whatever, but even if you stayed here eventually you’ll have to go out to get more Spaghetti-O’s and then you’ll be running the risk of getting eaten or shot.” Her hands went to her hips and she shifted. “I want a more permanent solution that involves not having to worry about my next move or becoming a midnight snack while I’m sleeping.”
“One day,” he pleaded. “”I understand everything you said and agree with you, but I want just one day where I can feel normal. Tomorrow we can go back to running from evil soldiers and sick people, but just for today let me enjoy and mourn the death of life as we know it. Haven’t I earned that much?”
She lowered her arms, resolve weakening. “Well... I guess we could take a break. Wouldn’t hurt to stock up on some stuff too.”
“Right!” he beamed triumphantly. He stuck the toothbrush back in his mouth and continued brushing.
thirteen
Today really started off shitty, but I like how it’s progressing. After he cleaned up and donned some comfortable clothes he went to the kitchen, made a couple of sandwiches and wolfed it all down. After that, he had major food coma and napped on his sofa. Bree had told him she was going to look around the neighboring units, so he was left to his own devices. When he’d woken from his nap, he felt refreshed. Bree still hadn’t returned so he went to his bedroom, dug out his treasured copy of Hustler featuring Aurora Snow and rubbed one out. Because who knows when I’ll be able to do that again when I’m on the road. After that he popped the newest Star Trek movie into his portable DVD player along with some fresh batteries and watched on the couch, his worries melted away for a blissful two hours six minutes. After the movie, he had almost fooled himself into a state of mind where he felt like the world wasn’t collapsing around him. The front door opened and Bree walked in holding a laundry basket full of Spam.
“Spam?” he said in disgust.
“Yes. Delicious, nourishing Spam,” she replied, eyes filled with emotion. “One of your neighbors had a whole cupboard full of it.”
“You’ve been gone for hours. All you have to show for it is Spam?”
“No, no... I was doing car maintenance, making sure there’s enough oil, checking tire pressure, that sort of thing,” she replied. “Also got some extra tanks of gas to put in my trunk, a new set of tires, and some super cute Hello Kitty stickers for my back window.”
“You went shopping?”
“Sort of. If you call walking into abandoned stores and taking stuff ‘shopping’,” she said thoughtfully. “This area we’re in is pretty much deserted except for the occasional infected. Driving was kind of a pain though. Despite evacuating people to conveniently turn them into monsters in one spacious location, there were still some pretty messed up places where cars were just left in the streets randomly. I had to drive pretty creatively at times.”
“You see? It’s not so bad, right? There’s no one around to really bother us. Just gotta keep clear of the sick and we can live a perfectly comfortable life here,” he pointed out.
She shook her head, “While I admit that it’s pretty quiet here and we could probably get by for months, I really feel strongly about finding civilization. Aren’t you going to get tired of not having electricity? Or eating stale canned foods? What about finding some nice girl?”
“You’re a nice girl.”
“I’m not. And if you’re just going to stay here feeling sorry for yourself and not accepting the reality of the situation, then you’re going to do it by yourself,” she in all seriousness.
He felt hurt. “Well, for enough money you would like any guy at all,” he retorted.
She pointed her index finger in his face and angrily said, “I’m going to let that slide because I don’t want to feel guilty later for kicking your weak ass. And I’m not what you think. I was just stalling you until the actual masseuse could get to you. We were kind of shorthanded that day.”
“What? You were just... sucking up the time I paid for?” he said astonished.
“Oh come on...” she reasoned, “Mama-san took one look at you and figured the masseuse would just look at you sexy and you’d blow your wad. You would’ve felt more like a man if you used most of your time instead of sitting there for thirty minutes apologizing. Am I wrong?”
He raised his finger to object then thought better of it. “So I’m not that experienced. That’s not a crime. But wait, where do you fit in that operation?”
“I clean up the rooms after the time’s up,” she answered.
His face lit up at that. “Wait... let me get this straight. You’re that creepy dude in the overalls that mops up jizz?”
“NO! Well, maybe, but it generally wasn’t too bad. I just took the trash out, sanitized stuff, and sprayed air freshener,” she admitted.
“I shouldn’t make fun actually. You’ve saved my life a few times now I think. Otherwise, I’d be running around all chewed up and trying to eat people,” he apologized.
“Forget it. I owe you too.” She gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Enjoy your night, because we’ll be setting out in the morning.” She gathered her Spam basket and made for the door.
“Wait. Where you going?” he asked.
“Next door. Your neighbor’s apartment is cleaner than yours.”
“You’re leaving me alone here?” he surprised himself by saying.
“You think I don’t appreciate alone time? Just remember to lock up,” she advised. “See you in the morning.”
fourteen
The night didn’t go as he had thought. He wanted a hot meal, but he had bread, peanut butter, and jelly. He lit candles in preparation for the coming night and curled up with the book he had been reading before the world went crazy. He lost all sense of time when he was reading, the entire world seemed to exist only as the book in front of him. He was jolted out of his state by an odd moaning noise coming from outside. He put his finger in between the pages of his novel as he closed the book to mark his place, walked up to his balcony and pulled the curtain aside to look. Outside, the street was filled with hundreds of figures all shuffling listlessly around. He pulled the curtain closed, heart beating wildly. He moved quickly to his front door, looked through the peephole, opened the door and went out. Down at the bottom of the steps, the small courtyard for the complex had maybe twenty or so figures shuffling around. They perked up though when Blake appeared at the top of the stairs and those closest walked towards him.
He ran back inside, shut the door, and locked every lock. Shit! Why are there so many? He spent the next hour alternating between peeking out from behind the curtain to look at the street and running to his front door peephole to see if they could make it upstairs. In the street, more infected came and others left. The peephole presented him with a dark view of the top of the stairs and his neighbor’s doors every time he checked. Fuck this, I’m going to bed. He snuffed out the candles, went to his bedroom, closed the door, and pushed the dresser in front of it.
He had trouble getting to sleep. Finally, when he did, he dreamed he was back in the security room at the convention center and the infected were piled up at the door, scratching, scratching, scratching...
He woke up tired but unable to sleep any more so he went out to look at the street.
>
For the most part, the infected were gone. There were a couple of them walking aimlessly about, but nowhere near what he’d seen last night. He went to his door and looked out the peephole again to be greeted by the same view of nothing but stairs and doors. He opened the door and went outside. He looked down and there was a fresh corpse, his brains splattered around where his head hit cement.
Bree came out of the neighboring unit just then and went over to look at what he was looking at. “That was me,” she told him. “That one somehow managed to climb the stairs, and I found him doing laps up here. So I waited until his back was turned and then came out and pushed him over the railing.”
“I saw a lot of them,” he confessed. “I didn’t really sleep well knowing that so many were just outside.”
“Well, the good thing about this place is that you live up on the second floor,” she conceded. “And only one figured out how to get upstairs. Maybe it’s not impossible to stay here and wait to be rescued after all.”
“Have you changed your mind then?” he asked.
“Hell no,” she shook her head. “I think there’s safety in numbers. I’m going to find those numbers. And then I’m going to enjoy getting drunk and passing out in my air-conditioned bedroom knowing that when I wake up I’m not going to be missing limbs or my sanity.”
He nodded and turned to walk back to his apartment when he stopped suddenly and turned white. She followed his gaze and saw that there were claw marks on Blake’s door. It must’ve been at it for hours. They’re not very deep, but if more manage to find their way up here...
She put a hand on his shoulder, “Well, I’m not sure you want to stay here in your shitty apartment anyway. If you’re going to stay put you might as well go find a mansion or something. Why slum it?” she reasoned.
He sighed. “You’re right Bree. Let me pack some stuff and we’ll get going.” He turned to look at her, “Las Vegas here we come?”
“Vegas, baby.”
fifteen
Blake shouldered his pack and a small carry on sized piece of luggage full of his clothes, in his other hand was a full trash bag. He locked his door and went down to the garage where Bree was warming up her GT-S. He tossed the trash bag in the dumpster and went over to the car and placed his stuff in the trunk. She looked over at him as she opened the driver’s side door. “You took the trash out?”
He nodded, “If the world returns to normal and I come back, I don’t want to come back to a fridge full of rotting food.” He got into the passenger side and shut the door, buckling his seatbelt. She got in as well, strapped herself in and eased the car out of the garage.
The GT-S was a small nimble car and even when they’d come across areas where people had inexplicably abandoned their cars randomly all over the street, Bree could usually find a way through it. Blake would look into these cars as they passed them and wondered about their owners. Later they passed cars that still contained their owners and the things that feasted on them. Other cars became prisons to those who had come back from the dead and no longer knew how to open their doors. After they had driven by a beige minivan displaying two adult stick figure stickers and three little ones on the back window Blake decided to stop looking too closely.
There were infected people scattered about everywhere. Groups of them would chase anyone stupid enough to get close enough to be noticed by them. I’d bet good money that the city was reverting to a system where groups of survivors would band together and try to secure a food source or some defendable structure. “I wonder what the malls were like right now,” he thought out loud.
“Holing up in a mall might seem smart at first, but you won’t be able to stay there indefinitely. You’ve got to worry about food, weapons, and other people. I bet some people don’t think rationally when faced with an ongoing crisis,” she replied as she carefully picked her way east.
And while it probably seemed like a good idea to run around during the day when the infected seemed to wander about randomly, he wondered how long these people would last when night fell and suddenly hordes of them would try to crack the shells of the buildings that they hoped would shelter them.
When they were driving on the freeway going past downtown, Blake happened to see someone throw himself from the top of a skyscraper and plunge to his death just behind falling glass that twinkled in the daylight. Mercifully, from their vantage point, they couldn’t see him when he hit the ground.
They passed other survivors in vehicles as well. As they were exiting a freeway to bypass a particularly bad pile-up which had infected swarming all over it, they passed an SUV using it as an on-ramp. The driver was a middle-aged man with a cropped beard wearing what might have been a fishing vest and sunglasses. He waved an apology at them. Blake guessed that he was accompanied by his wife and children. He wondered where their idea of safety lay.
It took twice as long as it should have, but gradually they made it out of the densest part of the city and as the scenery changed from buildings and houses to dirt and rolling hills covered with dry dead grass, Blake almost felt the world was gradually returning to normal as they drove further away.
Bree used an off ramp and pulled into a gas station at dusk. He glanced over at her. “Potty break,” she shrugged. The gas station had a large food mart with a large sign that read “CLOSED”. The glass on the doors had been shattered though, so someone had since decided otherwise. Bree backed them into a spot just in front of the doors and shut the engine off. Blake took off his seatbelt and got out and stretched his back and legs. Road trip. Bree got out of the car and locked the doors. She pulled out the pistol she had borrowed from the infected cop and toggled the safety off. She cautiously approached the mart’s entrance, slightly hunched down with both hands gripping the pistol. She put her back next to the door and tried to look inside. She looks like she’s auditioning for Law and Order. He decided to make himself useful even though she seemed to have things under control and moved up behind her, looking around to make sure they weren’t snuck up on. She pushed the door open and she went inside checking the building. Blake watched the outside until moments later she popped back out. “All clear!” she reported.
He walked inside as she held the door open for him, pistol pointed up above her shoulder. Inside, the store was partially ransacked. There were still plenty of snack items, postcards, and over the counter medications, but some of the stuff had been dropped on the floor as if things were hurriedly grabbed and stuffed in a sack. The cash register had been dumped out on the floor and was devoid of any money. Well, at least whoever took it is optimistic about society overcoming this pandemic. It looked like all the cigarettes were gone as well. Well, not all. There were still some untouched cartons of Newports. What the fuck does that say about whoever had been here before us? “I’m gonna use the bathroom,” Bree reminded him.
“I’ve got your back,” he reassured her.
“Just make sure no one steals my car. It’s going to suck if we get stranded out here with nothing to eat but Cheetos and room temperature half and half,” she said seriously, pushing into the women’s restroom.
He wandered about with one eye on the car and the other looking for useful stuff. He grabbed a pair of flashlights that were sealed in those impossible to open plastic containers that were contoured to the shape of whatever was inside it. He looked around for scissors and found a pair, but they were also sealed in that same plastic packaging. Great. He took a closer look at the hot dogs that looked brown and wrinkled from sitting on the roller thing for an indeterminate period of time and was wondering if he dared to try one when he heard a car out front roll up and park. Blake rapped on the bathroom door to alert Bree and ran behind the ruins of the counter and crouched down. Car doors slammed shut outside then the door to the mart opened and in walked an elderly couple. The man was like fifty-something, with a bushy brown mustache peppered with gray. Wire framed glasses with circular lens were perched precariously on his nose, and he was dressed in bro
wn slacks, a buttoned down shirt with a green vest with a crosshatched pattern. “Hello?” he called out in an English accent, “We would like to purchase petrol. Is anyone here?” The woman who was with him peered around cautiously. She looked to be about the same age as her counterpart, dressed in an ankle length navy blue skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was done up in a gray bun which gave her a matronly look. Well, they look harmless enough. He stood up and waved, “Hello.”
Expressions of relief crossed their faces and they approached the counter, “Excellent! The sign said you were closed, but our petrol tank was so low and we saw the car in front so we decided to stop and see if someone was here.”
“I don’t work here. We actually stopped here to use the restroom,” he replied helpfully. “The door was already broken when we got here.”
“I... I see,” he replied looking a bit crestfallen. “Would you happen to know how to turn on the pumps so that we could refuel our car? We really are quite desperately in need of more.”
“With the power out, the pumps won’t work. But maybe we can figure out some way to get you going again.”
Bree chose that moment to come out of the bathroom. She saw the couple and Blake and raised her eyebrow up in question.
Blake got free of the counter and jogged over to her. “Bree! This is, er... what are your names?”