by J. B. Beatty
“No, I’m good,” she says, her face revealing more horror than it showed when she killed a soccer team’s worth of little boys.
We find grampa’s house a few blocks later. White. With a fence around it. Not a picket fence. He’s got a chain link fence with barbed wire on the top. Completely surrounding his place. From the street, Maggie shouts, “Anyone home?”
Nothing.
I ask June if she knows her grampa’s phone number. She looks at me seriously and then says, “3 and 4 are in it.”
“Okay,” I say. I look at Maggie. “Got a plan?”
“Yeah, you should get out and try to open the gate.” I hesitate fearfully. “Oh, go on,” she prods. “Don’t take a gun. That would invite trouble.”
I open the door and step out. Slowly I walk around the front of the truck and a gunshot rings out. I throw myself back behind the truck.
Maggie yells, “We’re not after anything. We’ve just come to bring your granddaughter here. June. And her friends.”
“We’re not all friends,” June corrects.
Maggie looks at her, flustered. “Yeah. Right.”
A voice comes from the house. “Leave us alone. We don’t want any trouble.”
“I don’t know if she’s any trouble, but do you want June?”
“How do we know you have her?” It’s the grampa’s voice. He sounds afraid, rattled and paranoid. So about normal for this stage moment in world history.
I take June’s hand and lead her out of the truck. “Let’s all get out, Maggie. Unarmed.”
He can see her and he yells, “June!” as we pile out of the truck. Maggie reluctantly leaves her guns behind.
Hands up, she yells, “We’re unarmed now. We just want to get these kids safe.” And we stand before the gates, all eight of us.
Finally the front door opens. The old man stands there brandishing his gun. He tries to hold his wife back but she gives him a sharp elbow and runs toward the fence sobbing June’s name. She opens the gate and we step in.
So that was happy. We explain that June and her associates were held captive by evil boys who are now burning in hell. Then we explain that we’re going to leave the girls with the grandparents because there’s no place else safe for them. The old man balks at this. “I don’t even know the rest of the kids.” But we remind him that he has a safe, stable compound. We have a pickup truck that has had the windows shot out and we don’t know where we’re heading after we leave this town. He says something about six kids eating a lot.
Maggie says, “Not so much, they’re girls.”
I tell him that as far as we can see, this is not like the usual end times situation à la television, in that food seems to be pretty easy to find. “Most of the adults are dead. All we’re finding is senior citizens and kids. So that leaves a lot of pantries and grocery stores unmolested. You’ll be fine. And you’re the best protection these kids have.”
“You seem like good Christian folk,” Maggie adds. I swear, sometimes she’s an absolute genius.
The grandma nudges him sharply and the man says, “Okay.” He hugs his only surviving grandchild. “We’ll try to do what we can.”
On our way back to Justin and the camp, Maggie says, “Why us?”
“Why us what?”
“Why are we still alive?
Senior citizens and children. And us. Don’t you see? One of these things is not like the others. We’re what’s wrong with this picture.”
She’s making sense. It’s been eating at me too. (You know, I really did not intend to make that line a zombie joke. But it almost works.)
So far, of adults between the ages of, say, 14 and 65ish, we’ve only seen four people who aren’t zombified. And that’s us. I have a feeling about this, kind of a pre-theory in its embryonic state. But before I can sort it out even into a sentence, Maggie yells, “Jesus fucking Christ! There is a god!”
At first, I think she might be referring to the Methodist church we are passing, an awkward brick monstrosity, all sharp non-functional angles, from an era in which no architects will ever be remembered as legendary. This confuses me, because I assumed Maggie was a lot closer to meth than Methodism. But then I see she’s looking farther down the road and what’s got her jumping for joy is a Chevy dealership.
“You’re not thinking…”
“Trade-in. Oh my god, those things are beautiful. And they have windows!”
So we pull into Dale’s Chevy dealership. She says, “Cover me, I’m shopping.” I grab one of the AKs and follow her into the lot, as she makes a beeline for the most obscenely-sized pick-ups ever made. All the while she is gushing forth words that I take to be redneck expressions of joy: “Sweetass” and “Holy mother fucker” and “Shitkicking 8th wonder of the world.”
A salesman lurches toward us. “All yours,” she says. So I shoot him in the chest a couple of times once he gets close enough so I can’t miss. He’s the first flu victim I’ve killed all day.
She zeroes in on this blue beast, all shiny with extra-wide wheels and it can probably drive over a tank on a slow day. Extended cab and a ton of cargo space. She takes a tag off it and we walk to the showroom to grab the keys. Turns out they were in a locked cabinet. Luckily we find the keys to the cabinet near the body of a half-eaten receptionist.
Twenty minutes later, having transferred our supplies to the new truck with oodles of room to spare, we tear out onto the highway in our new wheels. Almost immediately, she says we need gas, so we pull into a Speedway by the freeway interchange. There are several zombies in range, so we shoot the close ones. Maggie goes to one of them, kicks him over, and pulls his wallet out.
“Score,” she says, looking through it. She pays at the pump with his credit card after punching in his zip code. The blue beast takes 32 gallons. “Need anything from the store?” she asks. “It’s on me.”
“I’m good,” I say as a small swarm of 20 or so undead start coalescing around the gas station. I nervously start shooting at them as they approach, my back to the open door of the new pickup. All I’m thinking is, “Hurry up please, Maggie.” I’m thinking out loud here. Repeatedly.
The swarm flows closer. None of them are running, which is a good thing. I’d probably be dead if there were any track stars in the bunch. Maggie emerges from the store, guzzling a Red Bull. She also has a shopping basket that seems to be overflowing with junk food.
“Hey Mags… can you please… speed things up a little?” I say between gunshots.
“You baby,” she says. She tosses the Red Bull can and grips her rifle with one hand. She unleashes a volley that takes down most of the nearby threats. My gun simply clicks—out of ammo. I hop in the truck. She follows.
“Beef jerky?” she says.
Sometimes when I just don’t know what to say, I simply go with, “No, thank you.”
21→THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
We have been at Camp Attignawantan for several days. Warm, fed, safe. The only thing we don’t have is a plan. We don’t even have a reason for being. Why are we even alive in a world full of old folks and children, both of them prey species for flu-crazed zombies? And even if we knew that, what would be the most logical move?
Among the options we discuss:
1)Move South. Winter is coming. Michigan can be brutal once we get over the giddiness of raking up all the colorful leaves and celebrating Oktoberfest. Down south we would be warm. That’s a plus. The downside? I saw “Deliverance.”
2)Stay Put. Food seems plentiful. Even if major swarms of zombies come our way, we are well-armed and well-positioned. Plus, winter may kill most of the zombies, who seem to be vulnerable to all sorts of real world consequences. For one thing, they’re slowing down, which may be a function of hunger. That may also be why we see them attack each other occasionally. Downside: ennui and a continuing lack of purpose.
3)Chase after the Evil Scientists Behind the Flu Outbreak. It can make for a great plot in a movie, but we have no leads. And Maggie is maybe clos
e to right when she says, “It might just be the flu.” H1Z1? Act of God? In any case, while we acknowledge that it would be terrifically motivating to have a quest to pursue, we find we cannot get excited about one that has no clues to follow.
4)Follow the Airplanes. This is Justin’s suggestion. We are still seeing airplanes above us. Most seem to be flying North-South, rather than the pre-apocalypse East-West. Justin says that something must be going on in the North. Upside is it’s a Quest. And we’ve just got to keep going North. Downside is winter is coming. We could die cold, violent deaths. Definitely cold; possibly violent. Justin tries to reassure us by saying, “It’s long been acknowledged that one of the most pleasant ways to die is by freezing to death.” Maggie looks at him with her head tilted, mouth open, eyes squinted, and gives him the finger. He shrugs.
5)The Bunker. The summer camp we’re in is fine for our needs for now—plenty of firewood—but really wouldn’t withstand against an attack by healthy non-zombies who are heavily armed. There are only three of us. So the Bunker Plan is all about finding a structure that’s virtually impregnable by zombies or humans so that we can live in peace. No real downside here, other than the dangers we would face in traveling and searching for such a place. But do we really want to commit to putting down roots?
6)The Orphanage. I actually suggested this one. There seem to be kids that have survived—maybe in significant numbers. They survived cannibalism by their parents, and now they’re holed up in their basements, or worse, dodging zombies and other predators while roaming this unforgiving world in ill-equipped girl scout troops. So why not set up our camp, or the above-mentioned Bunker, as an orphanage and take care of the little ones, teaching them how to survive in the world we have inherited? Justin seems to be accepting of the idea, but Maggie says, “Kids give me the creeps. I hate the little fuckers.” When I think that maybe I can argue her back, Justin kills my chances by compromising with, “We can keep dumping them off at grandmas’ houses in the woods.” So there’s that.
7)Rob Banks. All Maggie: “It would be so cool to go on a spree and rob some banks! The cops are all gone. We could be millionaires in an afternoon!” Justin just says, “What are you going to spend it on?” and she loses all her momentum on that one. She opens another beer. Stares at the ceiling.
8)Find Love. No one actually puts it like that, but there surely must be more than three people left on earth between the ages of 13 and 65. And unless we find some of them, we are stuck with just ourselves. And while we get along fine, how likely is it that any of us are going to find love or fulfillment in our current company? [More on that later.] Justin seemed to like this idea for a few minutes. Then he shrugged it off.
22→HERE YE STRIKE BUT SPLINTERED HEARTS
Idid kind of promise an update on the whole personal relationships thing, and now’s actually a good time. Right now, our world only has three remaining viable characters, so any literate soul would think that lends itself to a classic romantic triangle. Think of it: the busty, beautiful, redneck warrior girl; the burly, sensitive, intelligent nurse with street smarts; and me, the skinny, depressed cynic.
(Yeah, I know I lose, but bear with…)
Yet, things don’t play out that way. I mean, I’m definitely attracted to Maggie. She’s quite beautiful. But we’re cut from different cloth entirely. We share no values beyond staying alive (and even that one I’m just now warming up to). While I like looking at her, when she catches me looking at her, I feel like she might just kill me. After eating my eyeballs first. She’s scary in every sense.
Instead, after we joined up with Justin, Maggie only had eyes for him. At first, that really burned me up. I mean, I’m practically the last guy on earth, and we have to pick up this super-handsome piece of girl bait? For a few days she seemed to be aggressively courting him every time I turned my back. One night I heard her creep into his room. Not so long later, I heard her storm back. A door or two might have slammed. Or it could have been the wind. When she looks at him now, she just seems angry and confused.
And then Justin, I don’t know. He’s a genuinely great guy and now I’m very glad he’s part of the team. He seems to have a deep inner sadness about the people he’s left behind. Actually, that type of sadness is default for all of us now, so what I mean to say is that his sadness seems to be more acute. More than once he has mentioned someone special he misses. No names or hints. But when he says it, he catches himself and withdraws into his shell. Conversation withers and dies and turns up under the couch days later looking like a dehydrated french fry.
The only time Maggie said anything to me about Justin was when just the two of us went on a supply run to a nearby town. I said, “What do you need?” referring to supplies. She answered, “A cigarette, a beer, and a good fuck.” Maybe pre-Apocalypse, some guys would see that as a door opening. Me, I saw it as the fire alarm going off inside a theater. I started looking around in panic for an exit from the conversation.
Finally, I manned up—by my standards, anyway—and replied with, “Well, if you’re going to exclude present company, there’s always Justin.”
She laughed. Looked at me and shook her head. “Oh, we have a lot in common. As in, we both like guys.”
Honestly, and in keeping with my perpetual state of social cluelessness, I did not see that one coming. Sometimes my life is all about new surprises around every corner, but they’re only new to me.
So, relationship-wise at the Camp Attignawantan, what we are left with is not a love triangle. It’s three solitary points and no lines are going to be drawn between any of us. That’s maybe why the “Looking for Love” option is out there. Though right now, no one’s pushing very hard for it.
23→THE SWIFT, SUDDEN TURN OF DEATH
We make the decision to get a couple more vehicles. It really doesn’t make sense to only have one. Making our usual store runs, for instance, with no backup, means if something happens to the pickup truck, we have a lot of mean territory to cover until we get back to the camp.
Maggie has strong opinions on vehicular selection, so we end up with another monster pickup along with a big SUV. No hybrids here, though I did make the argument that a Prius might be the ideal vehicle in Zombie World, since the afflicted do seem to pick up on noise. My thoughts were presented cogently and without emotion—logic would win the day, I surmised.
“Fuck that shit,” came her response. So now I’m behind the wheel of the SUV, following her in formation as we make another drug store run. If we run into little kids, I get to chauffeur them to the nearest grandparents we can find.
Justin follows me. He always wants to be a part of the drug store runs, since he knows his drugs. We have walkie talkies now as a backup. We’ve run into some problems with our cell phones: dead zones, as well as accounts (Justin’s) cut off due to lack of payment. We eventually fixed that one by paying online with one of the credit cards we took off a zombie. Truly amazing that Internet commerce still thrives in an America that is now a mostly depopulated wasteland. Also amazing that Netflix is still what entertains us most nights.
In addition to the walkie-talkies, we’ve picked up a bunch of other abandoned cell phones, trying to get a few from each carrier. We keep them charged and they can sometimes help with the problems we hit in dead zones.
Dead zones. So much irony in that term.
We hit a dangerous type of dead zone en route to the drug store. Maggie is well ahead of me—she drives fast. I see her brake lights come on as she passes a woodlot. I slow my speed and pick up the phone. Then I start to see why she stopped. A swarm.
She picks up. “Fuck me. There are a lot of these fuckers. Blocking the road.”
“Back up! Get out of there!” I slow to a stop. Justin stops as well, and runs to my window.
“A swarm up ahead.” He can see them now too. It’s not just 20 or 50 or 100. This is the biggest swarm we’ve seen.
We hear gunshots. Again, I say, “Get out of there!” But she’s no longer liste
ning. She’s several hundred yards ahead of us, just past an intersection of county roads. Where we are, it’s cornfields on both sides. We creep our vehicles closer to the intersection, taking care to leave a couple of clear escape routes.
Maggie speaks again: “Okay, there are too goddamn many. I’m going to try to back out.” By now, her truck is nearly surrounded. Then we hear gunfire, far more shots than she could generate. It sounds like a lesser world war. Then I see two black vehicles coming toward Maggie from the other direction. Humvees. On one is mounted a 50-caliber machine gun and that’s what’s ripping all the zombies to shreds. When the road is nearly clear of the undead—though their carcasses have created plenty of speed bumps, the Humvees appear to stop.
My mind is racing through fields of jubilation: Other people! Possibly in our age range! It’s the military! We’re being rescued by the cavalry!
Only the next image doesn’t fit. Next to the machine gun, a soldier appears to bring something to his shoulder. There’s a noise, a whooshing rockety noise, and Maggie’s truck leaps into the air and lands upside down next to the road. Flames. Then the Humvees start moving again, picking up speed as they lurch over the piles of the dead. They go past Maggie’s burning truck without hesitation. And just when I realize I’m next and duck my head down, they swerve around the corner and head west.
A minute or so later. Justin pulls alongside of me, yells “We’ve got to get her,” and pulls his pickup to within a dozen yards of Maggie’s. I bring my SUV to a stop behind him. He gets out with just a pistol. I can only stare at the coming zombies. The soldiers only cleared the road temporarily, cutting a path through the swam like a footprint on the beach. Before long the waves start washing it away. “Cover me!” he yells. I grab my AK and all the clips I can manage and start shooting from a position next to the front of his truck. He uses his pistol to smash the back window of her overturned truck. He climbs in.
