by Dixon, Chuck
“Maybe Mommy will make you some Jell-O,” Smash cooed.
Jim Kim started to protest. She shushed him and left to head up to the roof.
It would have been better if he’d stood watch. He sat in the techno lair, staring at the unmoving screen, watching for a new entry from her. A mug of tea cold and untouched. He posted a few of his own messages, but they went unanswered.
At some point, he dozed with his eyes open. A soft peep brought him back to focus.
The entry line by her avatar was wavering. She was typing.
U there???
He typed back:
I’m here.
The entry line wavered, a stationary inchworm rising and falling, rising and falling.
Nt much at the store. :>(
He typed:
You were gone all day.
The line shimmied.
Men on the street. Huntng. didnt see me. Ran. Hid insde a car all dy. Tired. cold. Gng to sleep. OK?
He typed:
Ok.
She typed:
:>)
She was home and safe. He could sleep now himself. Sleep gave him no rest. In dreams, he was running, crawling, hiding. All around were teeth and hands reaching from the shadows. And the grasping hands of laughing men and the shrill scream of racing engines.
56
The snow fell heavy and wet. More than a foot and drifting higher out on the lot.
It was causing problems for the dead. The accumulation slowed them down.
Many took to crawling in the snow on all fours. Others tried to step on top of the snow only to have the crust collapse under them. They left filthy snow angels in their clumsy attempts to regain their feet.
Smash joined Jim Kim in the lookout shack, bringing cups of hot chocolate. It was change of watch.
“It’s more sad than funny,” Jim Kim said.
“It’s pretty, though, right? Covers up all the shit,” Smash said, looking over the brilliant white landscape glaring harsh under a clear noon sky.
“It is,” Jim Kim said.
The two-way squawked to life. “Who’s on roof watch?” Caz’s voice.
“I’m just coming off. Smash is up here with me,” Jim Kim responded.
“Could you guys both stay up there a while? I’m going out. I could use eyes all around.”
“Out?”
“Never going to be a better opportunity to get us a deer.”
“Fresh meat?” Smash asked after snagging the radio from Jim Kim’s hand.
“That’s the idea.” It was Mercy’s voice. Smash and Jim Kim shared a glance. “I’ll be up for the Savage,” Caz said.
Wendy was exhilarated. He made concentric circles in the snow between the trees, running all around Caz and Mercy moving through the bare trees behind Tool Town. He drove his nose into the drifts, rolling on his back and coming up shivering off powder with a look of sheer joy in his shining eyes.
“Wendy hasn’t been outside except for runs on the roof,” Caz said. He stepped through the snow beside Mercy, cradling the bolt action on his arm. She had her shotgun as backup.
“Your dog’s going to chase off the game,” she said.
Caz whistled low and patted his leg. The big shepherd galumphed to him, leaping hummocks of snow, tail high. Caz stroked the dog’s side and made cooing sounds to get Wendy to settle down.
They moved further into the woods, where the sumacs gave way to birches and mature maples. The broad span of the interstate rose high above them as they stepped wary under its shadow to the deeper forest beyond.
After a ten-minute hike through virgin snow, they came to the top of a bank that sloped down to a creek bed. The creek was iced over under a blanket of snow but for a narrow stream of rolling water open at the center. Caz dropped to a knee by the thick bole of a poplar. He touched a hand to Mercy’s arm. Wendy dropped on his belly, nose sniffing the air.
They remained that way for a beat or two, listening. Caz snapped off the two-way on the Molle vest he wore over his heavy canvas coat. He pointed a finger to the thicket of young trees and brambles up on the opposite bank. Something was stepping around over there, breaking brush under a careful tread.
“Deer or…” Mercy whispered.
“Not gomers. Wendy’d be making a fuss.”
He raised the rifle and sighted on the hedge. A tawny shape moved behind the skein of branches on berry bushes. A whitetail. He couldn’t tell size or sex.
“You okay to wait?” he murmured.
“Yeah?”
“The snow’s clean down there except for some rabbit tracks. They’ll be coming out to drink.”
Mercy nodded and settled down to wait with him.
The sun was moving toward the tops of the trees to the west when Wendy sat up, ears raised and eyes locked on the brush over the creek. A fawn skipped into the clear to pick its dainty way down the bank to the narrow course of water. Two does followed, standing a bit with heads up, before crunching down to the center of the creek bed.
Caz knelt, rifle raised, watching the animals over the top of the scope. A dark shape moved in the shadows. A buck stepped out. A big one. Mature. Eight point antlers.
Caz drew in a breath as he snugged the rifle to his shoulder. He released it as though through a straw while he made minor adjustments to the angle of fire. Mercy took a deep breath and held it. The slug took the buck at an angle through the chest just below where its neck joined the torso. It stumbled while trying to turn, righted itself once and then fell to the bank unmoving. The does were already gone, running down the course of the creek in high bounds. The fawn leaped after them.
The cough of the suppressed shot was absorbed by the thick snow. But still Caz and Mercy waited, watching and listening, before following Wendy down to the kill.
57
“Think they’re doing it?” Smash said, lips orange with the dust of taco chips.
“What?” Jim Kim said even though he knew what Smash was asking.
“Caz and her? Mercy? Doing it? She spends more time with him than with us.”
“Not counting Monopoly.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Are we their parents? They don’t have to sneak off into the woods if that’s what they want to do.” Jim Kim shrugged, eyes on shopping mama who had reappeared and was now creeping over the snow on her knees.
“They don’t want to cause a whole thing,” Smash said.
“What kind of thing?”
“A whole jealousy thing so we don’t go cavemen on each other?”
“You’re going to go caveman on Caz? Make sure I’m around to see that.”
“Hey, pussy can move a man to do crazy things,” Smash said, pouting.
“Pussy never even made you get a decent job,” Jim Kim said, shaking his head with a smile.
Smash banged out of the lookout shed to take a whiz off the roof.
Mercy stood watch while Caz hauled the buck off the ground to bleed out. He hung the carcass from a stout branch using nylon cording (Aisle 12) secured around the trunk once the antlers cleared the snow, turning now to cherry-colored slush. Vapor rose from where the blood splashed to the crust. Wendy sat up on the bank, nose drawing in the rich scent of the buck’s lifeblood.
“Think they smell blood?” Mercy said, eyes sweeping the banks. She kept her voice low.
“The gomers? Not sure. Lights and sound turn them on. Not sure their noses work,” he said as he worked his knife down the belly of the buck.
“Their ears work. Their eyes work. Why not their noses?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Keeps my mind off stuff.”
He nodded at that.
“Why does your dog have a girl’s name?” she said, eyes on him as he scooped out handfuls of ropy entrails from the slit he made in the deer’s gut.
He said nothing.
“You can’t walk away. You can’t act like you didn’t hear me. Why’s a boy dog named Wendy?”
Caz
kicked snow over the gray-brown mess of organs, making a pink mound.
“You had another dog. Her name was Wendy,” Mercy said, voice low.
Caz sat down in the snow and pulled off the long yellow gloves now sticky with blood and lymph.
Mercy crouched by him, shotgun across her knees, eyes on the far bank.
“I was EOD. Explosive Ordnance Disposal,” Caz said after a while. “Wendy was my dog, my partner. She was trained to sniff out C-4, Semtex, anything that goes boom. We just found them. Up to the guys in the blast suits to disarm them. Course there were risks, same as everyone else in the Helmand. Mines. Snipers. Always the chance some hadji’d remote-detonate when we got too close.”
Caz swallowed and looked at his hands before continuing. “They give you a dog and that’s your dog, you know? You keep each other alive. But the dog doesn’t know what it’s all about, does she? All she knows is her job, and doing her job makes you happy, and you let her know it. ‘Good girl. You done good, girl.’ That’s all she wants, all she’s looking for. Like any dog. Just like any dog.” He made fists of his hands. His voice became a croaking whisper. “I fucked up. Lost her. My dog. And I didn’t keep her safe. They send you home after that. You’re no good after that. Won’t give you another dog. You don’t want another dog. You want your dog. But she’s gone, and it’s all on you.”
“I’m sorry,” Mercy breathed.
“I know he’s a fucking boy dog. Shit, I know that. But he don’t care what I call him. Only sometimes I can forget, you know. And it’s Wendy sleeping by me. My Wendy. And that’s the only peace I get. When I can fool myself, she’s still with me and I didn’t fuck up.”
She reached a hand to touch him, but he leaped to his feet.
“Take my hatchet and cut us a pole like ten-foot so we can carry this bastard back,” he said.
Caz held the buck’s head up, cradled against his hip, and began cutting the antlers from the skull with a hacksaw.
Mercy walked away toward a stand of young birches with the hatchet in her hand. Wendy loped after her. Mercy wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her glove.
58
Caz keyed the two-way. “Are we clear?”
“We didn’t hear the shot here.” Smash’s voice. “Any gomer movement?”
“They have problems of their own.”
“Like what?” Caz said, growing impatient with wheedling info out of Smash.
“Most of them have fallen down, and they can’t get up.” There was mutual giggling over the speaker.
“Keep us advised,” Caz said and hung the walkie back on his vest.
“They stoners?” Mercy said.
“Nerds,” Caz said.
He and Mercy hefted the pole that the deer carcass now hung from. Caz took the rump end and lifted as high as he could, but they were still mostly dragging it over the snow. Mercy wasn’t tall enough to lift the carcass clear. They struggled with it, pushing and pulling until they were in sight of the interstate overpass again.
Mercy was winded, so they took a break. Caz fussed with his rifle. Neither spoke. Wendy trotted toward the overpass and stopped, head tilted to one side. Caz followed to call him back.
A distant rumbling broke the cotton-wool silence. A trundling sound growing louder. Wendy began to bark, nose upward and leaping on his hind legs. A motor’s cough was rising from the span above, rolling closer at speed. Heavy booms and sharp squeals joined the noise as something big raced south on the interstate.
Caz turned to see Mercy running full-out through the snow. She ran for the trees back the way they’d come. He ignored her to follow Wendy. The dog was running into the shadows beneath the span. Black diesel smoke fell over her like a fog. The sound from above was deafening.
Something threw a shadow across the sky. Caz rolled over a drift onto the bare ground in the shelter of the highway span. A car flipped end over end through the air behind him. It arced down off the span to crash to the snow. A second car was flung off atop a filthy cascade of plowed snow. It smashed through the treetops, snapping off branches as it dropped. Other figures cartwheeled off the overpass to land tumbling in the snow, limbs loose and flailing. The source of the thunderous noise rumbled past.
A dozen gomers had plummeted off the broad span on either side. A few were recovering, rising with an effort to get to their feet in the deep snow. Some flapped around, the limbs necessary to regain their feet torn off. A sneaker, with a length of yellow bone sticking from a threadbare sock, skidded down the face of a drift.
Mercy had run back to the overpass. Dead were rising from the white between her and where Caz and Wendy stood under the overpass. A clutch of gomers was up and wading through the snow toward her. She backed away, raising the shotgun to her hip. Her eyes sought Caz as she stepped back from the dead converging on her. Some of the dead dragged limbs snapped in the fall. Some drew themselves along with the strength of their hands, spines bent and broken.
The dog, growling deep in his chest, dashed past Caz for the gomers, teeth bared. Caz charged after him, calling him back. Wendy was blind to everything but the gomers converging on the retreating girl.
Mercy hesitated to fire even as the gomers moved on her in a closing half circle. Caz and Wendy were in her line of fire.
Caz leapt, a hand out, and snagged Wendy’s collar, dragging them both down to the snow.
“Shoot!” he called, hugging the wriggling dog to him.
Mercy blasted the closest of the dead. A full charge of double ought turned the skull of a gomer into spray. Her next shots dropped a gomer full in the chest, a woman in nurse scrubs. The nurse tumbled to the snow only to try and rise again. Mercy pumped a fresh round into the woman’s head. A rifled slug turned Nurse Gomer’s head into a stinking shower of goop.
A beefy-looking gomer stumbled up on Mercy’s right. Caz, Wendy heaving under his weight, fired his rifle. The fat .308 round split the gomer’s head in two with a spew of tissue, bringing it to its ass. The rifle thundered, the suppressor removed and stored in Caz’s pack.
Wendy freed himself and leapt for an attacker that was reaching for Mercy with clawed hands. The dog bowled the gomer over, arms flailing, under all his rushing weight. Wendy’s teeth sank into the back of the gomer’s neck, driving both of them to the snow. Caz rushed up and kicked Wendy off the prostrate gomer before firing a round through the dead man’s head from inches away. A backsplash of foul putrescence flung over Caz in an oily shower.
Caz was by Mercy’s side in one stride. The remaining gomers converged on them with even more staggering out from the shadow of the overpass, arriving from where they’d been shoved off the far side of the span. They closed fast, moving easier over the bare ground under the cover of the highway. Their eyes were feral, the faces of mindless predators. The gomers worked their jaws as though already feeding on the warm flesh they lusted for.
Between working the bolt and firing the rifle, Caz shouted for the dog. Wendy kept up a furious baying but obeyed his master. The dog loped to his side, muzzle caked with flakes of rotten meat. “Jesus!” Mercy said, her hand locking on Caz’s arm in a painful grip. Her eyes were wide with terror.
What Mercy heard was silence. The vehicle up on the roadway had gone quiet. It hadn’t faded into the distance. It had come to a deliberate stop.
“They heard us,” Mercy said.
Caz’s eyes searched the span above.
The gomers, twenty or more, were working their way closer. The two-way on Caz’s vest came to life.
“Caz!” It was Jim Kim. “What can you see?”
“A monster snow plow just came down the highway. We could see the top of it.”
“Where is it now, Jimmy?” Caz said, backing off, the walkie volume down and held close to his ear, the rifle cradled. Mercy had the dog by the collar, pulling him away.
“Idling on the roadway. Door’s open. Some dude’s standing up, looking over the roof of the cab.”
“Which way, Jimmy? Ahead?”
“No. Looking back your way.”
“Keep watching,” Caz said, looking to Mercy, her eyes wide, pupils dancing.
“It’s moving now. Backing up.” Jim Kim’s voice rose in panic.
Caz snapped off the walkie and turned to run for cover in the trees. Mercy ran ahead, releasing the shepherd to leap through the snow before her.
59
Jim Kim watched the big truck through the front sight of the M4. He stood well back from the view slit in the shadows of the lookout shack. The truck reversed along the span in a haze of blowing diesel exhaust. It came to a stop at a spot on the highway directly behind Tool Town. He could only see the top half of the big rig over the guard wall. The scoop of the plow rose higher than the cab on one side. He’d once seen plows like this on an airport runway when he’d visited his Grandma in Seoul one winter.
“What’s he doing?” Smash said low, craning to see from behind Jim Kim.
“Just idling there.”
“Think he saw them?”
“I think he heard them. We could hear that big rifle from here, and he’s a lot closer.”
Over the front tang at the end of the barrel, Jim Kim saw the door of the cabin open again. A man emerged to make his way along a running board to a steel ladder set on the wall of the sleeper cab. He climbed to the roof, a weapon swinging from a strap over his arm.
The man was dressed in a dark parka with a raised hood trimmed with some kind of long fur. Jim Kim squinted to see details. The man stepped to the opposite side of the roof away from Jim Kim. He unslung the rifle from his shoulder. The man stood with legs apart and leaned out to scan the snow below.
Jim Kim laid the sights between the man’s shoulders and drew in a lungful of air. As he let it out slow, he saw the man in the parka raise the rifle to shoulder height. Jim Kim took his finger from the guard to lay it on the ridged surface of the trigger.
The walkie squelched once. Twice. Caz’s hushed voice came from the speaker.
“Do not engage.”
