I’m heading out to the barn to check on the goats and punch a wall after a particularly obnoxious comment from Peter, when Nelly falls into step with me.
“Want to take a walk?” he asks.
“No, I’d really rather pitchfork out goat shit.” I turn away mid-step and head for the path.
When we get to the Message Tree, Nelly boosts me onto the wooden platform, the only remaining part of the tree house. We swing our legs and watch chipmunks race around with their tails sticking up like masts.
It’s nice to blow off work. During the day we’re always busy. John’s newest project is digging a trench around the fences we made. It reminds me of how my parents used to catch the slugs in the garden. We would mound up dirt and place a small cup of beer in the center. In a day or two the cup would be full of slimy drowned slugs. But slugs are small. This pest control solution entails digging five feet deep and a few feet wide by hand, which should be finished in about twelve years.
Between the digging and chopping firewood, my arms are much stronger than they were. The next time I need to take out a Lexer, I won’t be sore afterward. And I think there will be a next time because we’re going to town tomorrow. John’s working on a long-handled blade in his shop that might be more useful than a machete.
We move the plants in and out of the sun, water them, and sing to them. Well, Penny and I sing to them. Nelly says we’re bananas. We fill the generator and cook food. We clean the chicken coop and milk Flora. But, mainly, we dig. Then, at night, we sit around in the lamplight and talk or read or play Scrabble or Monopoly before heading to bed, where we’re so tired we fall asleep mid-speech.
Thinking about games reminds me of Nelly and John’s project.
“How’s the beer coming?” I ask. “We need a night of debauchery and drinking games.”
My dad’s brewing ingredients are still around. There are a few dozen bottles in the basement right now, filled, capped, and doing whatever beer does while you’re waiting for it. I’m dying for one. Maybe those people who grab the beer first thing in a crisis are on to something.
“We’ll know in a few days,” Nelly says. “I could really use a night of debauchery. And I’m not looking forward to heading to town.”
We need some radio parts, and I want to get some stuff for a project I have in mind. Everyone is going. John has a cockamamie idea that seeing what town is like will get a fire going under Ana and Peter.
“You’ve been quiet lately,” I say. “Why the long face? What’d the world end or something?”
Nelly smiles and lies back on the platform, his face sun-dappled. I sit cross-legged above him and watch him watch the leaves rustle.
“I guess I’m just acclimating,” he says. “You know, I think I’m getting used to all of this, and then I’ll be doing something mundane like chopping wood, and I think, ‘Holy fuck, this is all real.’ Like half the time I’m in a dream state or something.”
I nod. I do the same thing. Or, sometimes, I’ll be digging the ditch or pulling weeds and wonder if Adrian’s doing the same thing. Those are the good moments, the ones where I feel a tiny kernel of hope that I’ll get to see him again.
Then there are the moments I think of Eric and Rachel, or Maria, and I feel sick and desperately impotent. I can always tell by someone’s face when they’re thinking of their families. There’s hope, then desperation and then finally some mixture of horror and resignation. Peter’s the only one whose face remains clear; he has no one to fear for. I can’t decide which is worse.
“What about you?” he asks. “How’s life as Public Enemy Number One?”
I shrug. “It’s great, thanks for asking. I always hoped I would be the one everyone hated.”
Nelly turns on his side and props his head on his hand with a wry smile. “Everyone doesn’t hate you. Peter and Ana have decided to hold you responsible for everything that’s befallen the world, that’s all.” He raises his eyebrows. “I know it bothers you more than you’ll say. So, since you’re incapable of asking for help, I’ll ask you. Do you want me to say something to Peter?”
What I want is for Peter to come around and act sensible because he’s a decent human being, not because he’s threatened with bodily harm. Making people do something they don’t want to do almost always backfires.
“They’ve been doing their chores,” I reply. “So what are you going to do, tell them to be nice, or else? Ana was never very nice to begin with. And Peter, I guess he had his moments, although he was nice to me. How can you force someone not to be selfish?”
I twist one of my braids around my finger. I feel like a terrible person when I do it, but sometimes I daydream that Peter hadn’t been in my apartment that night. That he was just another person who was out of reach right now. I don’t wish him dead, but wishing he isn’t here is so close it makes me feel guilty.
“Well, I guess you can’t, Half-pint.” Nelly tugs on my other braid and flashes me his big smile. “But I could still beat him up for you. Knock some sense into him.”
“You’re really dying to punch him, aren’t you?” His eyes light up. “Stop being such a guy.”
I would love to take him up on his offer, but that would only give Peter more fuel for the fire. He already thinks everyone is against him.
“If only it worked that way, you could’ve knocked some sense into me two years ago, after I broke up with Adrian. Then I never would’ve met Peter.” I wonder where I would be right now. Probably on a farm in Vermont, just like we’d planned.
“Yeah, but then you’d be off in the country somewhere, painting and living some idyllic farm life, and I’d be a corpse shuffling around New York City.”
I ruffle his hair. “You? Never!”
But there’s a good chance he’s right. He might have gone out in Manhattan that night, without me and James to stop him. He would’ve ignored the signs until it was too late, like most people did.
He sits up. “Bet you a million bucks you’re wrong.” He sounds so like a little kid that I wait for his tongue to make an appearance.
He’s got on his smile where one corner of his mouth goes up and his eyes go all crinkly. I’m overcome with love for my friend, my would-be protector, the guy who knows when I need a boot in the ass. I’m so glad he’s here. I can’t regret being the reason he is, even if it means being so far from where I hoped I’d be.
“Well, then, next time you’re shaking your head because I’m doing something really stupid, remember my stupidity saved your life once,” I say, with a superior look.
His eyes crinkle even more. “Yeah, once. Out of how many, a thousand stupid things? Those aren’t great odds, darlin’.”
Then, always the mature one, I stick my tongue out at him.
65
“I thought you said you’d never shop at Wal-mart,” I tease John, as we near the gigantic cinderblock box.
“I did say ‘When Pigs Fly,’ ” he says. “I figure that’s pretty much on par with When Dead People Walk. Plus, I’m not shopping, I’m looting.” He smiles at me and resumes scanning the road.
Ana and Peter are in the backseat. Nelly, James and Penny follow in the police truck. The trucks and John’s fuel drums are full of gas we siphoned on the way down. Pumping all that took a couple of hours, even with a motorized pump to help. You don’t know if a car’s gas tank is empty until you try it, so there was a lot of wasted time.
“I do believe it’s not looting anymore, since there’s no one around to care,” I say.
“I suppose you’re right.”
Cars litter the parking lot, like the occupants got here and made a run for it. The electric eye of the front doors has closed for a long nap, but it’ll be easy to enter through the gaping hole in the glass.
“Someone’s been here,” John says, and we pull up to the doors.
“Obviously,” Ana mutters.
She’s really itching for some conditioner. Apparently, ours leaves her hair flat. I was so upset to hear the accommodat
ions were lacking.
John hops out of the truck and motions for us. I walk over to the clods of mud he examines. “Shoe treads, still damp but not wet. Sometime in the last twenty-four hours, but not in the last ten or so. We’re probably in the clear, but just to be sure we’ll be extra cautious. We pair up. One shopper, one watcher. Two of us out here.”
He checks our weapons over. We look like a ragtag paramilitary group. James, Penny, and John fit radio earpieces into their ears and test them. A holster, a machete, or both hang off every hip or shoulder. John insists we wear our guns at home so we get used to doing everything while armed. Plus, there’s no telling when something may stumble out of the woods.
I’ve got my trusty revolver on one side of my holster, a nine millimeter on the other and a sharpened machete on my back. Penny slings a rifle over her shoulder and looks nervously through the hole in the glass.
We pound inside the door and call out, our voices echoing through the store. It seems like the best way to find the infected; if you call, they’ll come running, or at least lurching. Nothing comes.
John teams up with Peter outside and sends James and me into Health and Beauty. Nelly and Penny will head to Clothing, since digging really does a number on one’s wardrobe. Ana stands just inside, so she can help where needed.
We switch on headlamps and flashlights as we duck through the door. The cash register lanes stretch out, dark and vacant. They already look foreign, like some relic of an ancient world. It’s quiet and feels empty, in the way that no hairs stand up on the back of my neck. But it smells awful. Something in here is very, very dead. In any other situation that would be reassuring.
We creep farther in. The wide front aisle of the store is in shambles. Boxes of crackers and cereal litter the floor, intermixed with clothes and liquids that have hardened to a brown gel. Penny and Nelly head to the back, crunching on Triscuits and Cheerios. Ana’s dark eyes are perfect circles, and her face is pale. She’s within eye- and earshot of John, but she’s the only one who’s alone. She holds her gun in her hand, and her finger tends toward the trigger.
“Ana, watch your finger,” I warn. “One yell and we’ll be back in ten seconds for you, I promise. It’s clear right here. You’ll be okay.”
She moves her finger, the whites of her eyes shining in the gloom, and nods. “Just hurry up.” I’m about to say something reassuring when she continues. “I want my turn to get what I need.”
I motion to James and turn away before sighing. “Let’s go.”
We turn down the main aisle and try to keep our crunching to a minimum. It sounds so loud in the silence. I never realized how much noise there was in the world until it was gone. The metal gates at the pharmacy are bent and twisted. The bottles lay in jumbles and heaps. Entire shelves are bare.
“Bet all the good stuff’s gone,” James whispers as we walk past.
My jeans stick to my legs with sweat, even though it’s not so stuffy in here. My heart beats so loud that I’m almost surprised James hasn’t remarked upon it.
I fill the bag slung over my shoulder with latex gloves and assorted supplies while James keeps watch. The decayed smell is worse here, and there are huge dark patches of gunk on the floor. I’m pretty sure they’re the color of dried blood, but they look black-brown in the headlamps, whose LED glare makes everything look like a black and white movie.
It looks like Hershey’s Syrup; that’s what they used to use for blood in old horror films. That must have been one hell of a food fight. I raise my hand to my mouth to stifle the insane laugh that bubbles up.
James looks at me curiously. “What’s funny?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I say, truthfully. “It’s just getting to me.”
“It reeks. It’s even worse over here.” He holds his earpiece. “Let’s go see about the automotive section. John says all’s still clear but to hurry up.”
There’s a room that leads to the Garden Center on our left, where they put the seasonal merchandise. The stench here is solid; it fills my mouth and coats my skin with a layer of slime. We gag and breathe through our mouths. But now I can taste it, which is far worse than smelling it. I lean on a shelf and retch, but nothing comes out. When I raise my head, my headlamp illuminates the area.
“Jesus,” breathes James.
There must be forty corpses piled there, arms and legs splayed and tangled together, so we can’t tell where one ends and another begins. We inch closer, ready to run at any movement. When James clicks on his big flashlight, we see gray skin and open unhealed wounds. Every last body has a head wound; someone has killed all of the Lexers in the store.
“Jesus,” James repeats, and then speaks into the radio. “Someone’s killed all the infected. We’ve got a pileup by the Garden Center. We’re heading for Automotive. Five minutes, tops.”
I’m grateful that someone has done this. I feel tremendous relief that other people are out here fighting, surviving. I wish they were here right now. I notice two bodies set apart and motion for the flashlight.
Two girls, both no more than eighteen, are half-propped against the shelves. One wears only a ripped and stained tank top, the other still has on a jacket. They don’t have that gray, coagulated look the other bodies have.
Their thighs and faces are bruised and swollen, but I can tell they haven’t been dead very long. I wonder if they were infected, recently bitten, but I dismiss that thought immediately. One sits on a carpet of blood, shot through the chest, not the head. The other girl appears to have been strangled with the rope that’s still knotted around her neck. And they’re the only ones with flies circling and landing on them like some sort of insect airport. Suddenly, I’m very thankful that whoever killed these infected isn’t here, because they must have done this, too.
I want to drag them somewhere, away from the pile of infected. Cover their naked bodies and preserve some of their dignity. But there’s no time to do things like that now. A little flame of anger flares in my belly and spreads. They survived this far, only to be raped and murdered by some inhuman son of a bitch. Like we haven’t got enough inhumanity running around.
“C’mon.” James tugs my sleeve. “Nel and Penny are done. They’re waiting for us.”
We find driving gloves in the automotive section and head out. Ana, Penny and Nelly wait for us at the hole in the glass, their bags full. I gulp in the fresh air outside and fish around in my pocket for something, anything, to get the taste out of my mouth. I find lint-covered peppermint Life Savers and Adrian’s ring. I give the ring a rub and pop a candy in my mouth, offering one to James, who looks like he needs it as badly as I do. He accepts it gratefully and spits out the swig of water he was swishing around.
John’s gotten the gist of what we saw, and he wastes no time. “Everyone in the trucks, let’s go.”
His eyes haven’t stopped moving and his mouth is tight. We head back onto the road. At the crest of the hill, I turn back and see a beat-up red van and a sports car pulling into the Wal-Mart parking lot.
“That might be them,” I say, shaking at how close we came to being confronted with people who rape and kill young girls.
“I had a feeling,” John says.
66
“Ana actually had the nerve to complain that everybody but her ‘got something’ at the store. Like we all got perfume and boxes of candy and she got nothing,” Penny says. She looks up from where she’s cutting pieces out of my mom’s leather coat on the back deck and makes a face.
“Your sister…” I leave the rest unsaid.
“I know, I know. I’ve tried to talk to her. She’s being so obstinate. My mom always said Ana’s picture would be next to obstinate in the dictionary.”
I can think of a few other words Ana’s picture might be next to.
Penny sees my face and cracks up. “Yes, obstinate doesn’t begin to cover it. I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I can’t blame her. This whole thing is terrifying and surreal. But as an excuse, I think that’s stretc
hed pretty thin. We all have to do our part, you know?”
“Yeah.” I thread the needle of the sewing machine on the table. “I don’t know, Pen. You know, Ana’s like my little sister, or was, when she would actually say more than two words to me. But she and Peter have formed their own little clique of denial or something.”
I put strips of elastic and leather under the machine needle and spin the knob on the side with my hand. It’s not as fast as a real foot treadle, but it does the job of sewing neater, stronger and faster than I can without electricity.
“So what exactly are we making, anyway?” Penny asks.
“Kind of like armor. I’m attaching it to the gloves. It’ll strap over our arms to protect us from scratches or bites. It should protect us from infected blood. Lexers have regular teeth like us. They can’t rip through leather.”
I think of the horror I felt after I killed that one with the machete, how afraid I was that the virus had made its way into my bloodstream. I’m not usually obsessed with germs, but I’ve got a raging case of OCD about this.
“Okay. This is one of those surreal moments I was just talking about. I’m sitting in the sunshine in the woods making zombie armor.”
James steps through the sliding glass doors to the deck. “Don’t you know you aren’t supposed to call them zombies?” He wags a finger at her. “Every book or movie or whatever, they always call them something else.”
“You know,” I say, “preppers used to call the people who weren’t prepared zombies, too. The people who would want your supplies after everything went south. But you’re right, they never say zombies. Weird.”
Seeing those girls at Wal-Mart made it clear that there really are two types of zombies to fear.
“We call them something else, too,” Penny says. “What have we got? Lexers, Biters, Walkers, Infected, Undead, Creepers, Stumblers, Zeds. I’m sure there’s others we haven’t heard or thought of yet. Plus, unfortunately, this is not a movie.”
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 21
