by M. D. Massey
“Thanks.” I smile in appreciation as I slip on his shirt slowly because he’s watching and not bothering to hide it, either.
He shrugs, looking a little disappointed. “I’d rather you be without it.”
I grin at him. “Dick for brains.” My jacket goes over the t-shirt. I’m not letting it go. I’ll scrub it when we get back to the community. Stained or not.
“Those people were living out in the open. Without any protection, they drew in putrids. I wonder why they didn’t get eaten alive?” I reason out loud.
“One of them could’ve been bit, didn’t say anything to the others, and things escalated,” Reece points out.
Mac glances out the window as we pull onto the road, heading for another destination. “Maybe. My guess would be, they were living in a Wal-Mart. Using and cooking methamphetamine. Got taken by surprise trying to escape with any supplies they could grab, hence the zombie with the bag. It could also explain why the doors were open and no vehicles in the parking lot. Maybe someone managed to escape."
I shake my head. “Lovely,” I say. They nod their agreement. Breathing normal again, my adrenaline high is dissipating. I shouldn’t voice this, but I do anyway. “That was fun.”
Mac shoots me a grin because for once, I’m not being sarcastic.
The Target department store is much easier. This time we do a little banging around. There are no putrids to deal with, but Target has been looted of most of the food and electronics. The things people take priority of when the shit hits the fan never ceases to amaze me. I’m able to get a few more sleeping bags, baseball bats, and white t-shirts. I get enough for the whole team in case they need them. Mac also grabs jeans and socks for everyone.
Upon looting a home improvement store, Reece demands our attention because he finds several wooden pallets in the back of PVC pipes. It’s the most we’ve ever come across. We pile the van full, having to keep the hatch open, and tie them down securely.
Reece looks at all the leftover pipe we have to leave behind, not to mention another few skids of chlorine and hydrochloric acid. He rubs his stubbly tattooed head in mounting frustration. “I don’t want to leave these.”
“We don’t have anywhere to store it at the community. Not to mention, the gas it would take going back and forth per load,” I reason. This is true. Reece does not have any more space in his room or at his booth. Last time I walked through his room, it was packed to the ceiling. We had a hard enough time finding a secret place to make them. I have to admit, barely having a hand in it. Reece is determined to master this skill, always having his head in a book or trying a new recipe. His interest is astounding, and he’s come a long way from our first little cherry bomb that wouldn’t blow up my own hand if we tried. He’s only grown more attached, as if he’s addicted.
I can understand his frustration since we’ve had a hard time finding the right things in the right amounts. Looking at this find, it’s a complete gold mine to him. I sigh, tapping my foot and picking at my cuticle. “Reece stay here. Mac and I will drive up the road a ways.”
Reece and Mac both peer at me in question. I try not to smile at the hope in Reece’s eyes. “Why?”
“I’m not making any promises, but we need to find a semi with an empty trailer. And gas.”
Mac speaks up, “You know how to get one started?”
“I’ve never tried, but I’m up to the challenge.”
Three and half hours, a handbook, three battery exchanges, four different trucks, and an endless string of curses later, I pull the van back into the home improvement store delivery docks. Catching sight of Reece leaning against a brick wall, I grin from ear to ear, but it slips when I realize he’s a mess, watching a burning pile of bodies.
The semi rumbles behind me as the amateur driver comes to a stop. Jumping out of the van, I ask, “What happened to you?”
Reece points to the trees behind me. “Famished.” He tries cleaning himself up a bit, but he looks spooked. He grins, letting me know he’s okay, and gestures to the semi. “Took you long enough.”
Looking back, Mac stands behind me studying the burning corpses. He’s not in a good mood. From the look on his face, Reece’s comment burns like a lit fuse in his brain. Mac turns a glare on Reece, the fuse must have ended. “She got you the semi so you can continue your pyro tendencies. Who gives a fuck how long it took? If it was up to me, we’d be back at the community by now.” Reece straightens as tall as he can, hackles rising. Mac points and I flinch. “She was almost electrocuted.”
“I was not almost electrocuted. I knew it was a live wire!” I jump to my defense, mostly because he’s right. I continue, “Besides, we were all almost killed today.” I gesture to the burning bodies as Mac moves to stand in front of me. “We need to load the semi and get out of here before any more famished show up.”
He stares at me for a long moment before looking back to Reece. “You’re driving the damn thing.”
After everything is loaded in the truck, I ride with Reece in the semi while Mac drives the van. On our way back to the interstate, the reference texts I have at my former house pop into my mind.
“We’re close to my old house. We should see about those books while we’re here.”
He immediately wants directions. “Your boyfriend won’t be happy, but I don’t care.”
“Don’t get your hopes up Reece. I set fire to the house. The books were in the bunker. I don’t know if they survived. If they didn’t get the fire put out, then the house could’ve collapsed.” I don’t relish seeing it for myself. Even though Mac knew what happened, I tell Reece about Harley, Nadine, Bridget, and Kale.
Reece nods. “They shouldn’t be a problem. I have a pipester for a distraction.” I grin at his name for the bombs. Even though I wouldn’t call them pipe bombs. I have him park where I parked Rhonda the Honda the night I set the fire. Mac pulls beside us and does a good job of keeping his mouth shut, his way of making up for his uncalled-for outburst.
Reece goes about three hundred yards the other way to detonate the bomb. I’ll be able to see if the Lollipop Gang heads toward the sound. It’ll take them more time to try to figure out what happened.
Ten minutes after Reece throws the bomb, he comes back. Maybe they moved on? Which was what I’d wanted them to do by way of fire. Finally, Harley, Nadine, and Bridget scurry toward it. I guess they had to figure out what to do about the sound. I almost laugh they go together.
I sprint forward with Mac and Reece following. We make it into the neighborhood and dart between fences. When I see my house, I stop. It’s burnt, but still standing. Scorch marks crawl up the bricks like ghosts of the flames. The windows are boarded up.
“I’m guessing this is it?” Mac asks with excitement.
I shoot him a look. “You’re excited?”
He nods. “Yeah, another piece of the Kansas puzzle.” I laugh despite myself. He would see it that way.
I lead them up the walk, through the gate, and peer around. They are living here. Clothes dangle from my old clothing lines. A pain pierces my chest, I want to leave.
“Reece, keep watch,” I say. “I need to get something out of the house.”
Going up the patio steps, Mac follows. Burnt wood and old things drift to my nose as I go inside. My heart lurches at the sight of my family home from the old life. Everything’s destroyed. I can see straight to the front of the house from where walls have collapsed. A hole takes up the kitchen floor. I remember the tequila spilling onto the floor and catching fire.
I swallow, hoping what I came for made it. Mac squeezes my hand. I look at him, glad for his reassuring presence. Checking the floor, I walk toward the master bedroom. The model jewelry box lies on its side on the floor, scorched, but being on the floor kept the fire from ruining it. When I open it, I find the precious metals have melted somewhat, but they’re still valuable.
“Smart,” Mac comments.
I sigh. “If I was smart I would have gotten them before setting the h
ouse on fire.” He smiles at me and helps me shove gold, silver, and diamonds into our pockets. I grab a string of pearls that had been in my mother’s family for generations.
My dad, being a traditional man, gave my mother gemstones on the proper wedding anniversaries. For their fifth year, he gave her a charm bracelet with a dangling sapphire. A new charm was added every year after that. For their fifteenth, he gave her ruby earrings. A platinum ring with an emerald was for their twentieth. An imperial topaz charm for the bracelet was for their twenty-third year of marriage, their last.
“Looks like your mom was a lucky woman,” he whispers as I realize I was explaining all of them out loud. A flash of her passed out with a bottle between her legs goes through my mind.
“Yeah. Lucky.” I don’t know if I’d trade these, but I take everything, the majority looted from neighboring houses.
Reece waits outside and gives us curious looks as I open the bunker door. It’s been cleaned of the debris I made to escape. The calico brick and blocks are no longer the soothing presence they once were. The ceiling, the floor of the house, is darkened brown. Obviously it came close to catching fire and collapsing. How did they put it out? When I left, I thought the fire was big enough to destroy the place. I sigh.
“You built this?” Mac asks, looking around in amazement.
“Yes, but my dad did the stairs.” I smirk at his look, but go to the bookshelf and pull volumes. I point to a box. “Will you hand me that?” He dumps the crap out of it and hands it to me. I throw books in it. Mac flips through my album of barn photographs and drawings before sticking it in the box. I squat to reach the lower shelf.
Mac bends over and picks up a picture that fell from a book. I wince, knowing what it is. It was one of those booth photos, where pictures are taken consecutively, and the machine prints them out. Malachi and I were waiting to see the newest horror movie, happy and carefree. Two of the pictures are of us kissing.
“Is this the guy at the base?” Mac asks, looking down at me.
“What?” My voice cracks.
“This is Malachi?” he asks. What? How did he know about Malachi? I’ve never uttered his name to anyone. I’m bewildered.
I don’t ask him how he knows. My jaw clenches. “Malachi has been dead for four years,” I say, looking him in the eyes. “I know this because I shot him. With a gun. In the head.” His eyes widen as my tone turns to cold steel with each word.
I’m interrupted from asking him questions when Reece says, “They’re coming.”
Grabbing the picture, I throw it and several more books in the box with shaking hands.
Cocking guns and grappling from outside makes me hurry. “Well, well, I’ll bet the princess is in there.” Harley laughs. “I knew she’d come back for those books. Come on out, Kan, or I’ll shoot your friend.”
“He doesn’t know I have guns, or you,” I whisper to Mac.
“Don’t worry, I’m a good shot. You focus on the ladies.” He winks, trying to lighten my mood.
I stare at him. “Try not to kill him.”
When I clear the top of the stairs, Mac’s right behind me. His hand holding a gun comes into my peripheral vision, and he shoots Harley right between the eyes. Brain matter splatters Nadine. Reece rolls out of the way, grabbing his gun. I’m going to be sick.
Nadine screams, “You asshole!” It sounds like more of a sob, but she keeps it under control. Not wiping Harley’s brains and blood off her face, she gives Mac a deadly stare, looking like Carrie at the prom about to throw things with her mind. She’s so focused on Mac that she doesn’t see my gun train on Bridget. I don’t like how she’s looking at him. I keep calm, even though Mac just killed a man. Again. I’ll get to him later.
“Nadine, back away. Mac, will you get the box?” Mac goes under to retrieve it. Reece disarms them, throwing the shotgun a few feet away.
“He didn’t have to kill him. He wasn’t going to hurt your friend.” Nadine’s voice shakes with suppressed rage, looking at Harley and his lack of a forehead. Now she knows how I felt.
“Well, now you have dinner.” She glares at me.
“That’s two I owe you, bitch!” Bridget speaks with her limited vocabulary. “Kale is still gone, and I know he went with you.”
“Sorry, I don’t know a Kale,” Mac states as he leaves the bunker with the box. She scoffs at him.
“Looks like you found another one.” She snarls as she looks Mac up and down.
“You know I can shoot you, right?” I ask sarcastically. This conversation’s weird. “Now, both of you in the bunker.” I steer them under and close the bunker door. Reece and Mac help me load leftover cinderblocks onto it. They’ll get out, but we’ll be long gone.
“That was interesting.” Mac states as we bound down the highway, subdued. He talked me into driving the van to give me something to focus on, I guess. How’d I feel if I found a picture of him kissing another girl? Not to mention, I snapped at him about Malachi. I didn’t mean to, it was a shock.
“You killed him after I told you to try not to,” I emphasize.
He rolls his eyes at me from the passenger seat. “He was killing and eating people. He almost did that to you. He might as well be a zombie.”
Harley didn’t eat me though, and he was going to let me go. I don’t say anything because Mac could’ve killed Nadine and Bridget, too, but he didn’t. Mac moves a dreadlock out of my face, but I don’t turn to him. He gets out the album of barns to look at it.
“You have a knack for capturing Tennessee,” he says.
“How do you know I drew them?” I ask. How does he know anything? I’d ask him, but I don’t want to get into it. A little part of me is scared of the answer.
“Hmm…maybe because your name is in the bottom right hand corners?” He grins, trying to cheer me up.
“I love barns. I painted them,” I confess.
“You’re something.” I don’t think so. The picture of Malachi floats through my head.
We drive in silence the rest of the way.
27
When we get back, it’s around noon. I’m exhausted and want to take a nap before Glinda gets a hold of me. I don’t get to because Glinda’s waiting on us, pouncing when she spots her prey. Me.
I find she wants to comb out my dreads and color the bottom half of my hair blue. The coloring doesn’t scare me, it’s the combing out my locks that terrifies me.
“You can’t comb them out! I’ll be bald!” I argue, sitting on her bed piled with an assortment of clothing.
“Don be stupid, suga’! You didn’t tease ‘em! And anyway, you been washin’ ‘em with shampoo. You ain’t suppose to wash dreads with shampoo that leaves residue that grow mold and otha funky shit. Yours hadn’t. Dey not real dreads.”
Slightly offended, I don’t tell her I don’t wash them all the time. I reluctantly agree when she says I can sleep while she does it.
After a shower to get rid of zombie crud, I lather my locks with a thick, oily conditioner. She told me not to rinse it, so I don’t.
I lay on her bed before she sets about her tedious task. After a few minutes, I realize they are long enough to where I don’t feel the pull, just a lulling sound of combing.
“Least you didn’t tease these. You’d have to shave your head to git ‘em out,” she says.
I shrug. “I stopped brushing it and it matted and wove together into locks. I never had to tease them. They were au naturel.” Her lips purse like it is the dumbest thing a girl can do.
It takes hours of combing and when she wakes me, it’s early evening. She finishes toward my scalp. We wash it, condition it, and comb it again with products I didn’t know existed before the outbreak, let alone after it. All the loose hair that comes from them can make several wigs. My hair seems six inches longer, too.
She trims my hair even at the middle of my back before she parts my hair horizontal and then bleaches and colors the hair on the bottom half of my scalp. She keeps it down, but puts soft waves
in it. Running my hair between my fingers feels foreign. I grieve and wonder if she’ll tease them back in, but she scoffs at my request, shoving me toward a mirror.
My eyes widen, not recognizing myself, but I do. A wave of melancholy overtakes me as my face frowns back at me. I don’t look like me, but who I was in the old life. Turning my head, peeks of blue poke through, bringing out natural highlights. My light hazel eyes pop, looking bigger.
Glinda enhances my eyes even more when she uses eyeliner and mascara. Painting my face with soft brushes, the makeup feels caked on. When I peer into the mirror, everything dusted on highlights my natural beauty.
Several clothing changes later, Glinda is finally satisfied with a frayed denim mini skirt, and a brown and turquoise print top with splashes of purple. The top hugs my curves and is almost as long as the skirt, giving the appearance of a tight dress with denim fringes. Although it’s different from my normal t-shirt and jeans, and feeling my bare legs in open air is foreign, I like it. Glinda says my boots will look great with it, and I’m excited she lets me wear them.
“I don’t look like a hooker,” I say, still gazing at myself in the mirror, having strange memories of vanity and fashion. I don’t tell Glinda this – she’d only scorn me for giving it up.
“I have taste, you know?” She rolls her eyes. “I’ve been wantin’ to do this since I saw you. I was a hairdresser before, you know? I know fashion.”
“That’s how you know so much about dreadlocks. You’re good at it.” I smile at her through the mirror, and her eyes glint.
“Thank you. Can I ask you sumthin’?” I nod to her. “Whut you think about Reece? You two seem close.” She shrugs.
Reece? “Um…he’s a good guy. We’ve become good friends and partners in crime.” She smiles. Good for her.
“I think I might dance wit that man!” We laugh.
Now that she’s said something, she doesn’t look like she normally does either. Well, she hasn’t in the last few days. I noticed, but I didn’t think she had a romantic interest in anyone, let alone Reece. It makes sense – they have both been hanging out with me, talking and getting to know each other.
