Dead End

by Howard Odentz

  Definitely a girl.

  Finally, Bullseye retrieved a bag of Newfie’s dried dog food from the bus, tore it open, and mounded some in his hands. Immediately, the starving thing dove into the pile of kibble and didn’t stop eating until Bullseye’s palms were licked clean.

  “She has a tag on her collar,” said Trina as she bent down and read her name off the little octagonal piece of metal. “Whitby,” she said. “Are you Whitby?”

  The little white greyhound immediately jumped to her feet, whining and wagging her tail, and covered my sister’s face in delicate cat kisses. What a bizarre animal. Whitby looked like one of Cinderella’s mice halfway through its transformation into a horse so that it could lead her pumpkin carriage.

  “So we’re keeping her, right?” I said, but no one even answered me. It was a foregone conclusion. Whoever Whitby’s parents were, I think they were long gone. There was no way she would survive for long out here by herself. Besides, one look at her and you could tell she didn’t eat all that much. I doubt her burden on Newfie’s food supply would even make a dent.

  “Whitby, Whitby, Whitby,” Trina kept saying over and over again as the thin dog licked her face. So much for mourning Sprinkles. Then again, Sprinkles had always been my mom’s dog. Now she was gone. I guess the little whippet was a good replacement.

  Suddenly, Newfie started growling and Andrew left Sanjay’s shoulder and flew to the top of the bus. Whitby pulled away from Trina, too, and stood erect with her little ears held high. After a moment, her lip curled back to reveal rows of tiny shark teeth that could probably do a lot of damage given half the chance.

  Jimmy was the one who pointed out the obvious. “So you know how we’re living in the zombie apocalypse? Well, there’re a couple of them heading this way.” He had already turned his chair around and was facing Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks. From around the side of the building came the signature old geezer that I had imagined would be running the place along with his equally ancient wife.

  Both of them made Dorcas Duke look like a teenager.

  “I’m bored already,” Trina muttered as she watched the two poxers stagger in our direction. Poor little Whitby alternated between whining and growling as they both got closer and closer.

  “That’s sad,” said Prianka as she bent down to calm the little whippet. “They must have been her owners.”

  “Not anymore,” sighed Bullseye. “Once you watch your family turn, they aren’t anything anymore. They’re just poxers and poxers aren’t anybody.”

  Ouch. I could practically feel Bullseye’s sadness creep back. He knew full well what it was like to see everyone you love turn into something else right before your eyes, and not know what to do about it.

  Just like Whitby.

  15

  HERE’S A FUN FACT.

  When you roll over a couple of poxers with a bus, they don’t really grumble about it. They just sort of make a squashing sound and leak their black insides all over the road.

  I’m not sure why we didn’t burn the two old poxers, but we didn’t. Trina hit them with the school bus instead and they both flattened into the pavement a little too easily.

  I grimaced when Trina rammed into them. How was it that she had lost the ability to care that poxers were once human beings? Maybe the numbness of torching dozens of them had finally morphed into something else.

  Anger.

  Who was I kidding? Of course she was angry. We all were. We were angry about every little thing that had happened to us since this whole mess started. We had every right to be mad.

  Now it was up to us to fix the tiny slice of dead pie we had been given, then ride away into the sunset without helicopters and crazy doctors nipping at our heels. If rolling over a few dead people was the price we had to pay for that kind of peace, then we were more than prepared to pay it.

  Anger can do that to you.

  With the blackened, dead streaks pressed into the road behind us, Trina drove the bus up alongside Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks and pulled the crank handle for the door.

  “Anyone for a bathroom break?” I called out from the front of the bus, but no one took the bait. Everyone was still gathered around Whitby, petting her and giving her extra pieces of kibble, while Newfie stood over her like a giant protector, which I guess he now was.

  “Alrighty then,” I said, but no one seemed to listen. “I’m just going to go fight off whatever poxers are left inside. Don’t mind me.”

  Yeah. No one cared.

  I hopped off the bus. I had a fistful of loose paper in one hand and a lighter in the other, just in case there really were more poxers inside or out back. Then I made my way to the front of the gas station. There were paper signs taped to the windows announcing things like upcoming fall festivals, Halloween pumpkin carving contests, and even a haunted hayride that went through one of the local apple orchards. There were also some photographs taped to the inside of the glass.

  I stared at the images. They made me sad.

  In most of the pictures there was this plump and smiling older couple with a middle-aged guy with Down syndrome. His grin was huge, and he looked unbelievably happy. The old folks must have been his parents. There was another picture of the three of them holding a puppy with the Down syndrome guy getting kissed all over. Written in pen on the white rim of that one was a single line. ‘Christmas, 2014. Billy, Mom, Dad, and our new addition.’

  Then I saw a couple photographs of Whitby, who I assumed was Billy’s Christmas gift, all grown up.

  The pictures showed a slightly filled-out version of the scrawny whippet. In a couple of them she was wearing a bright colored vest. On the rim of one of the photos it read, ‘Billy’s Service Pup,’ and on another one, all the way around in childlike handwriting it said, ‘Whitby Whitby Bo-Bitby Banana-fana Fo-Fitby Me-My-Mo Mitby . . . Whitby!!!’

  I don’t know why, but reading that made me even sadder. As a matter of fact, all I could think about was Sprinkles. She was a good dog. She should have been with us right now. Instead, Chuck Peterson happened.

  I absentmindedly brushed at my eyes. So what if they were dribbling a little. I didn’t care. This whole Necropoxy thing was beyond sad. It was beyond criminal. Necropoxy and those who made it were pure evil. That was the honest truth.

  I stood with my fingers splayed against the window pane, staring at the pictures taped to the glass. How many other dogs were out there like Whitby? How many cats?

  How many kids were all alone like Bullseye, whose families turned into monsters and left them to fend for themselves?

  “You suck, Diana,” I said aloud. “You really do.”

  I took a deep breath and banged on the glass door at the front of the gas station just in case anyone dead was inside hankering for a hunk of Littleham prime teen, but nothing took the bait. I fully expected a middle-aged poxer with Down syndrome to come staggering out of the gloom, but Billy was a no show.

  I waited a full minute and banged a few more times, but still nothing, so I went inside.

  Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks had nothing on Swifty’s. The whole place didn’t amount to much but a small cooler with sodas inside, a cash register, and a mini rack of candy bars. Oh, and there were boxes and boxes of cigarettes. Dorcas would have had a field day in here. She would have had her pick of menthol or regular, long or short, and even cigars if she wanted. I walked around the counter to the back, fingered the boxes of cigars that were neatly stacked under rows of cigarettes, and pulled out a box that was priced the highest.

  “For you, Dorcas,” I said to no one but myself.

  I then made a silent promise that I would get back to Apple and give her the box of cigars. Once I promised myself something like that, there was no going back. I’d always been too stubborn to let go of promises.

  Trina, too. That’s just how we w
ere built, I guess.

  With the box of cigars in my hand, I made a quick sweep of the store until I found what I was looking for. There was a rack of street maps in the corner. Of course an out-of-the-way place like Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks would still have street maps.

  I walked over to the rack, not even noticing the glass door leading to the garage where Whitby’s owners fixed cars, and plucked all the maps free of the metal holders. It’s not like anyone was going to ever show up again looking for street maps, and we needed directions. With them, we’d be able to pinpoint where we were and where the Peace Pagoda was from here.

  As I turned to leave, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye in the direction of the garage. My heart jumped and the box of cigars and the maps fell to my feet. I took a deep breath and silently pleaded that I wasn’t going to find what I knew I was going to find.

  I could have wished the same thing a thousand times over, and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference.

  Not one bit.

  16

  WHEN I LEFT BLOODY Brook Gas and Snacks, the door swinging closed behind me, I was staring at my feet. Looking at the ground seemed to be the best place to look at the moment. I had seen my share of crappy things since Necropoxy started, but what I found in the mechanics garage was right up alongside the best of them, just like finding my Uncle Don already turned into a zombie or discovering Witch Hazel in the back of the ambulance with her newborn baby poxette.

  “Hey, what’s shaking?” said the last voice in the world that I wanted to hear.

  I slowly picked up my head with my arms filled with maps and the box of cigars for Dorcas, and watched as Jimmy cheerfully wheeled up to me.

  “There’s nothing in there,” I blurted out a little too quickly.

  “It’s all cool,” he said but barely slowed pumping his wheels with his massive arms. “I just gotta see a man about a horse.”

  “Huh?” I said. I had a million good zingers up my sleeve, but that was a new one to me.

  “I gotta whiz,” he said. “Tinkle? Pee? Go number one?”

  I practically jumped in front of his chair. “Um . . . uh . . . there isn’t a bathroom in there,” I stuttered.

  “Cool beans,” he said. “I’ll just find a glass jar. I’m good.”

  “Wait,” I shouted, but Jimmy wasn’t waiting. He had pulled his chair up to the front of the gas station and was looking at the pictures of Whitby, Billy and the two old people that used to be alive and now were splattered across the road behind us.

  I went up and stood beside him.

  The veins on his neck were taut. I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he looked at the pictures, slowly adding two and two together and coming up with a story in his head that wasn’t a story at all.

  It was truth.

  He swore under his breath. Jimmy James never swore. Cursing wasn’t his style. He was too mellow for that—too cool. He put his hands on the top of his wheels and maneuvered his chair away from the window and pointed it toward the door.

  “Wait,” I cried again, but he wasn’t in a waiting mood.

  He reached for the handle of the door and yanked it back, much harder than he needed to, and wheeled his chair over the threshold and into the gas station. I followed right behind him, afraid to be with him and afraid not to be. He stared at the empty rack of maps and made a ‘humph’ sound then spun around and looked at the empty counter with the cash register, candy, and rows of cigarette cartons and cigars stacked behind it.

  “Where is he?” he said flatly.

  I didn’t want to answer him. I wanted to run out the front door and never look back. “I . . .” I stammered, but he didn’t let me get much more than that out of my mouth.

  “TRIPP,” he snapped, which was totally out of character for a guy like him. Immediately I knew that coming across Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks was a bad twist of fate, even though we found Whitby—even though we were able to save another life that deserved to be saved.

  “In the garage,” I said. I didn’t look directly at Jimmy. I wanted to preserve my image of him as the positive, happy-go-lucky dude who was dating my sister. I let out a deep breath that I didn’t even know I was holding, took a wad of paper and a lighter, and gently placed it in his lap. Then I backed up against the wall and didn’t say anything else.

  Jimmy didn’t hesitate. He leaned forward, his teeth clenched, with just a hint of anger spreading across his face, and pushed his way through the doorway to the mechanic’s garage. The sad thing is, Jimmy never wore anger. It didn’t go well on him.

  As his wheels disappeared, the front door swung open and my sister sauntered in. “Hey,” said Trina. She was absentmindedly studying her nails, probably wondering what color in a world of free polish she would paint them next. She started following after Jimmy, but I immediately grabbed her arm and shook my head.

  “What?” she said, then looked at my face. That’s all it took. She immediately knew there was something wrong. She didn’t need to know what it was exactly. She just knew that Jimmy had to be alone right now, or at the very least, for a minute or two.

  “There’s a poxer in the mechanics garage,” I told her. “Um . . .” I began, but a frog stuck in my throat, and I couldn’t get the words out.

  “Um what?” she said and tried to pull away from me. I held onto her arm, not tightly, but just tight enough that she knew that me stopping her was important.

  “Trina,” I said softly, maybe even tenderly. “Just give him a second, okay?”

  My sister got a scared look on her face. “Like, does he have a lighter or matches with him? Does he have paper? He’s not immune like we are, Tripp. He can’t get bitten. I can’t handle losing someone else.”

  “He’s fine,” I told her, but my sister didn’t want to listen to me. Instead, she pulled her arm away and went after Jimmy. The only thing I could do was follow her.

  We found him inside the mechanics garage with the thing that I was so desperately trying to keep him from seeing. No matter how many times you try and do the right thing, sometimes the right thing turns all wrong anyway.

  I think this was one of those times.

  Jimmy sat in his wheelchair facing a middle-aged poxer weakly growling at him and struggling to get free from where it was, but it couldn’t.

  Billy, with the Down syndrome and the wonderful parents who probably scraped together their life savings to buy him Whitby the service dog, was in a wheelchair, too. His legs were twisted and one of his arms was much thinner than the other. It was fastened to the arm of the chair with leather straps, not to restrain him, but to probably keep it from flopping uselessly to his side. A strap was also across his chest holding Billy in place. I got the sense that if that strap wasn’t there, Billy wouldn’t be able to hold himself up on his own.

  The back of Billy’s chair had a tall pole with a flag on the top. The flag said, ‘Proud owner of a service dog,’ on it.

  “Crap,” whispered Trina. We both watched as Jimmy stared at Billy, and Billy gurgled and growled back at him, probably desperate to take a bite out of Jimmy’s bicep or anything else that looked like meat. Finally, Trina let out a deep breath and took a step closer to Jimmy.

  “Go back to the bus,” he said. His voice didn’t sound like the voice of the Jimmy James that I knew. His voice sounded like it was coming out of a person who was much older and much darker, who saw the world for what it really was, and not a happy, positive place where a kid in a wheelchair could have an amazing foster mom who taught him that his wheels weren’t a disability and that he could do or be anything he wanted.

  “Jimmy,” she whispered.

  “Just go back,” he said with such bitterness in his voice that the two of us didn’t have a choice but to do exactly what he asked.

  I didn’t want to see what he
was going to do, anyway.

  I really didn’t.

  17

  THE NEXT THIRTY minutes seemed like an eternity. Trina and I sat in the bus with Prianka, Sanjay, Bullseye, Andrew, and the dogs. Bullseye offered Whitby some more kibble, and she greedily licked it out of his hands. Newfie ate a pile off the floor and Andrew picked at it, too, all the while eyeing Whitby because she probably looked a little too much like a predator for his liking.

  Sanjay patiently introduced Andrew to the whippet. After a lot of sniffing and wagging of tails, with just a few pecks from Andrew when Whitby’s snout got too close, the crow and our new cast member came to some sort of understanding that they were on the same side.

  Soon, just like Newfie cleaved to Sanjay, Whitby positioned herself next to Bullseye and wouldn’t leave.

  I knew that she had been trained to be a service dog and all, and probably instinctively gravitated to those who were in need. I think Bullseye was that person for her. He needed something to care about. She needed someone to serve.

  They were a perfect match.

  “Make sure she doesn’t crap in the bus,” I said to him, with the stack of maps and the box of cigars sitting on my lap. “Or pee on my leg.”

  “No promises,” Bullseye said as he gently rubbed her white head. “Peeing on your leg might even be a little bit funny.”

  I snorted and gazed out the window at Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks, but there was no movement from over there. For a moment I thought about Jimmy James having a stare-off with Billy in the garage. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what seeing a poxer in a wheelchair would mean to Jimmy. Was Billy a dead reminder to him that he was luckier than lucky to escape Necropoxy, or did he represent something else? I didn’t know. I couldn’t wrap my head around the situation at all. I didn’t even know what I would do or think if it were me in a wheelchair finding a zombie on wheels.