by Weston Ochse
CHAPTER 6
Buckley awoke to find his hangover murmuring the great Tibetan secrets of pain to his subconscious. Surrounded by darkness, he could tell he was still in the kitchen. He lifted his head from the table and wiped a line of drool from his cheek. Other than a few snores from the other room, everything was quiet. Then he paused, recognizing the significance of the darkness. They slept in shifts. There was always a guard with a battery operated lantern to check the integrity of the windows and the door. It was one of their only rules.
So where the hell was the guard?
His old knees ached as he stood. His right, a victim of a car accident, seemed to grate as loud as the chair legs upon the floor. Buckley’s elbow sent an empty bottle spinning across the table. Using his hands as eyes, he felt his way to the kitchen counter where he fumbled around until he found one of the flashlights. Snapping it on, he panned the beam across the kitchen and to the front door where all he saw was an empty chair and a shotgun leaning against it.
He rushed into the living room and took inventory. Sissy and Little Rashad were curled up on the couch in a dream-trembling clutch. Grandma Riggs was slumped in her armchair, the glass pipe pressed to her chest by liver-spotted hands. Bennie and Samuel were sprawled along the carpet like a couple of boys at a sleep over. MacHenry and Gert, however, were nowhere to be seen.
Buckley plodded down the hall and noticed light seeping from beneath the master bedroom door. As he approached he heard the sounds of heavy breathing and a long muffled squeal. He banged on the door with the flashlight.
"What's going on in there?"
"What do you think is going on in here," MacHenry said, after about ten seconds of hesitation.
"At a time like this?"
"Is there a better time?" Gert piped in.
Buckley scratched his head and shuffled his feet. "Well, no. Come on out when you're done, then."
"Okay. Just a sec. Almost finished."
The sounds of heavy breathing resumed, joined by the squeal of bedsprings. Buckley stared at the door for a second, then shook his head and headed back down the hall. He plopped down in the chair and laid the shotgun across his lap. He was pretty pissed at MacHenry for deserting his post, but really couldn't find the energy to get actively angry over it. Maybe the old man's morale would be improved with Gert's immoral contributions. Love was a hard thing to find. Even in small increments, it was worth more than anything else sometimes.
Buckley smiled. The old whore had finally found a way to help out. Good for her. He checked the salt beneath the door then felt himself nodding off. Maybe a few more hours of sleep would help him get rid of his hangover.
He couldn’t be sure of how long he’d been asleep, but it was Sissy's shriek that sent him to his feet and the shotgun clattering to the floor. She was sitting up, her finger pointing towards the door behind him. Her mouth gaped open in a frozen scream.
Buckley spun and jumped back as he noticed that several maggies had breached the line of salt below the lower edge of the door. There must have been a dozen of the little bastards sliding across the floor towards him. They only got a few inches, however, before Bennie emptied a canister of salt atop them causing them to writhe, smoke and dissolve.
"Holy Fuck, if that wasn't close," Buckley gasped.
"What the hell, old man. You falling asleep almost killed us."
Buckley could understand the anger. He stared ahead and took it like a man.
Never mind he wasn't supposed to be on shift.
Never mind it’d been MacHenry's job.
Buckley had messed up and deserved what was coming, and it seemed as if everyone was ready to let him know it. Maybe they were really mad at him, or maybe they just needed an outlet for their emotions. Whatever the case, he’d be their whipping boy if it meant that they’d keep their sanity. Buckley nodded and accepted everything that came his way for almost ten minutes. Everyone except Sissy and Little Rashad seemed to have something to say. It was better they were angry at him than to remain in constant fear. Their litany of complaints went on and on for an hour until the first crunching noise echoed through the deserted streets. Then it came again. The sound of a building being eaten boomed through the empty streets and slammed against the stout wood covering the windows.
The two things Buckley thought of was the caddies they'd talked about on the news and what they could do to this building if hungry enough. Another crunch could be heard from somewhere else in the city. That screwed it. The caddies had come to Wilmington. It hadn’t been enough that the people were dead. The creatures wanted the city too. Goddamned maggies wouldn’t stop until all evidence of humanity was erased from the planet. If there was one thing that was for sure, it was time to postpone the democratic process.
"Enough! I messed up. I'm human. But if you want to keep this up, you’ll have to wait. Right now, we got ourselves a problem. Soon. Very fucking soon, this city is gonna come down around our ears. Whoever is controlling these things has sent in the big guns and ten to one they ain't tourists.” Realizing he’d been shouting, he lowered his voice to normal. “I don’t know how much longer we can stay here. For all I know, this place is next. So, if it’s okay with the rest of you perfect individuals, we need to make ourselves a plan."
He looked from one to the other. They’d had their say and felt better for it. Now, it was back to the business of survival. Two faces were still missing, however.
"Where's MacHenry and Gert?" Sissy asked.
Blank stares all around.
"Fine," he sighed. "Samuel, you and Sissy go and inventory the salt. Bennie, you do the same with the ammunition. Little Rashad, can you grab all the empty bottles, buckets and jars and place them on the table in the kitchen? I have an idea about making us some special North Carolina Cocktails."
He turned to go.
"What about me?”
"Grandma, your eyes must be hurting. Why don't you take a few hits on the pipe and watch the door.”
"Don't you condescend to Grandma Riggs, boy. I marched with Martin Luther King. I fought the KKK. I’ve seen and done things that would scare even your badass self, King Kong garbage man. You can treat me like I’m old, but don’t make me out as crazy.” She sighed and stared at the bulge in her robe that hid forty ten-dollar bags, each holding a single rock that had been destined for resale on the street before the world came to an end. “Just the same, you're right. My eyes are hurting something fierce. I'll just do me a rock and watch for them maggies. It don't matter if I can't see, I can smell them. I can smell them real good."
Buckley stared at her a moment with a furrowed brow, then went down the hall to wake up the love birds.
CHAPTER 7
He knocked once, then opened the door to the master bedroom where MacHenry lay naked on the spread, his white flaccid body a perfect color match to the cheap sheets. The used car salesman was propped up against the headboard, smoking a cigar. Gert sat cross-legged beside him with the covers drawn around her in a diaphanous swirl, dismay creasing her worn face.
"What's up with him?" Buckley asked.
"He says he's gonna kill himself."
"What's she talking about, MacHenry?"
MacHenry smiled as he took another great puff from his cigar and launched three perfect smoke rings into the air. He sipped from a brandy snifter, paused and puffed again.
"Listen, I don't know what's going on here and, at this point, I don't really care,” Buckley said. “Get your clothes on. We're gonna have a meeting in the living room, most ricky-tick." He turned to go.
MacHenry’s response stopped him. "Nope."
Buckley spun around. "What'd you say?"
"I said nope. I thought I said it pretty clear."
Buckley's first instinct was to launch himself across the room at the smart-ass car salesmen, beat him within an inch of his life, then drag his naked ass down the hall and into the living room, but he forced himself to remain calm and invoked the old yarn about the carrot and the s
tick. Still, he gritted his teeth when he said, "Come on, MacHenry. We need you out there. The caddies are coming and no telling how much time we got left."
MacHenry shook his head and blew another smoke ring. "I told you, I ain't coming. At least not until I finish my cigar. Hell. This here is a Robusto. You ever smoked a Robusto, Adamski? This baby's leaves were rolled on the honey-brown legs of a Cuban Senorita.” He sniffed the length of the cigar. “I can almost smell her sweat. I can almost taste her. A man can't hurry a cigar like this. A cigar like this is meant to be savored. Anything else would be disrespectful."
"Listen, Lord MacHenry. I don't know where you think you are, but this ain't Cuba. Hell, as far as we know, Cuba is gone."
"One more reason to take my time. This may just be the last Robusto in existence."
Buckley eyed Gert, pleading for some assistance, but she merely shook her head. Her expression held little hope that Buckley would succeed.
"He's been like this for hours. Rambling on about this and that. He says he wants to die. But not like Lashawna or Sally or any of the others. He wants to do it in style."
"Listen MacHenry." Buckley caught himself and removed the edge to his voice. One of the complaints from the others was that he wasn't taking time to listen to their wants and needs. He was always ordering people around without a care or concern for their emotional well-being. They’d called him a micro-manager. They’d used the term type-A personality. Bennie, the drug dealer, had actually called him a fascist. Fine. If they wanted him to listen, then by the God of All Impatience, he'd fucking listen.
He began again, but softer this time. "Listen, MacHenry. As far as we know, this is the end of the world. We really need to pull together. We need you to help us."
"So what if it's the end of the world? Who the fuck cares? It was bound to happen sooner or later and seeming how it's sooner, now actually, I'm gonna go out with a bang. Not crying, not screaming, not begging. Hell no. With a fucking bang."
"Remember Elliot? He said This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper."
"What crack have you been smoking, Buckley?" MacHenry rolled his eyes towards Gert. "Of all the joints in all the world, I had to hole up with the only garbage man with a PHD in uselessness. Poetry."
"Those are some wise words."
"Fuck that!" MacHenry sneered.
"What?"
"I said Bang!"
"You don't know what—"
“B – A – N – G.”
“But—"
"Shut up. I ain't done. You wanted me to talk, so now I'm talking, so listen and listen good and none of your poetry shit. I, Travis James MacHenry, am gonna go out with a bang. In fact, as soon as I finish the better part of this cigar and this rather lazy cognac, I'm gonna get dressed, comb my hair, walk in the kitchen, pour fucking turpentine over my head, open the door and use the last of my Robusto to Flame On.”
He puffed on his cigar and eyed Buckley. “You ever read that Fantastic Four comic book when you was a kid, Adamski? You know with Johnny Storm, The Invisible Woman, The Thing, Ben Grimm, and that rubber band man, Reed Richards?"
Buckley glanced over at the nightstand and saw that the bottle of Hennessy was half empty. Yes, he’d read the comic when he was young. He liked Ben Grimm the best. The rest of the super heroes were just too white and too suburban. He nodded. “Yeah, I read them when I was a kid.”
"See Gert? See? I told you our Minister of Sanitation Defense, his right royal honorable highness General Buckley Adamski hisself was well read. So you know Johnny Storm then. You understand how them writers seemed to make him out as some selfish, bastard teenager like he was some kind of social retard, just an angry young man who was so lost in life that he couldn't find his way out of a paper bag with a knife. Sure he was the youngest of the four, but they made it seem as if it was his youth that made him hardly in control, always going off." MacHenry puffed at his cigar and waved his hand expansively. "I got my own ideas, though. He was a metaphor, see. He wasn't only Johnny Storm. Hell, he was James Dean. He was Marylyn Monroe. He was a freaking pro wrestler always diving from the top rope in a suicidal suplex. Live fast, die young, enjoy life, and fuck the world. He was the mach in machismo and lived life at Mach 10. He was Johnny fucking Storm, every second of every day going out in a blaze of glory. He was a metaphor, you see. He was you and me."
A scraping, like the sounds of a hundred teeth against wood came from the front door. Screams exploded from the living room as the men and women there dealt with the threat. Buckley wanted desperately to leave and see what was wrong, but he’d been told he was too much in charge. He fought down the urge to run and fix things. Fuck it. Let them see if they could handle it on their own. He squeezed his hand until his nails dug in his palm as MacHenry continued.
"You want to know who I am? I’ll tell you who I am, Adamski. I’m Johnny Storm. No longer am I a washed up old has-been whose best days were when Toyota's motto was Oh What a Feeling. No longer will I wait to die like the rest of you chumps. I'm Johnny Fucking Storm who’s gonna go out in a blaze of glory. And you? Hell, man. You’re Ben Grimm. Always so grim, Ben Grimm. I'd always thought Ben Grimm was a brother, you know. The way he acted, the way other people treated him. He was both cool and downtrodden at the same time. The rest of them wore costumes. Hell, he was a costume. If that wasn't a metaphor for an outcast, then I don't know what was. I couldn't have been more surprised when that issue came out where he became human again and he was white like the rest of them. How about that, Adamski? You believe they made The Thing white? You remember that one, Adamski?"
Yes he did. In fact, he'd stopped reading the Fantastic Four then.
MacHenry finished his glass and fell back upon his pillow. "Now, Mr. Grimm. Get the hell out of here and let me finish my bottle. I have a short life ahead of me and a long life to relive."
Buckley sighed. Yesterday, he would have jerked the man out of the bed and shit-kicked sense into him until he capitulated and realized that his best chance at survival rested in his participation in his own defense. But today, within their newly formed pocket of democracy, Buckley intended on letting the old guy do whatever he wanted. After all, it was his decision. If he wanted to die, then it was one less body to be concerned with.
Buckley glanced down at Gert who stared fondly at her Johnny Storm. Poor woman. Years searching for love on the gritty streets and she’d finally found it in a crazed old used car salesman with a Marvel Comic’s death wish. If that wasn't the saddest thing he'd ever seen, he didn't know what was.
CHAPTER 8
The ex-garbage man closed the door softly, pausing in the hall. The scraping continued from the front door, but the screams had subsided. Bennie and Samuel spoke in confident tones, coming together to solve the problem, one gangbanger to another. Grandma was singing again and over the din, he could hear the well remembered strains--
Patty cake, Patty cake, baker's man.
Bake us a cake as fast as you can.
Mix it, and roll it, and mark it with a B,
Slap it on the door for Buckley and me!
For the hundredth time Buckley shook his head. Everything was so damn insane. He somehow thought the end of the world would be a little more orderly, a little less rife with the absurd. How he’d ended up in this redoubt with such a gaggle of--
Suddenly, an indescribable itch began at his side. Beginning as a pinprick, it evolved to a small tingling, then quickly progressed through the usual levels of pain until there was a second of intense searing agony and then a small pop. Scratching at the spot, he came away with a blood-soaked finger. Buckley Adamski stared in shock and felt around the hole again. His heart sank when he felt the small wriggling form. He pulled out his hand and glared at the innocent looking maggie that had exited his body, and with the surety of a lifetime knew that he was going to die.
He hurled the harbinger to the ground and squashed it beneath his heel, driving it into the cheap carpet with all of his two-hundred and
twenty pounds. The fact that he was going to die a horrible death crept through him on sticky fingers, each touch a promise of the devastation to come, an assurance that he’d be the next one dancing the Sally Struthers’ death disco. It must have happened when he’d fallen asleep. They must’ve missed one in the rush to kill them all. Worst of all, he was paying for the sins of the others and it was so unfair. MacHenry should have been the one sitting in the chair. The irony wasn’t lost on Buckley. The man who wanted to die had escaped death.
Buckley wiped the blood on his pants and fought back the sob that’d bubbled up and lodged within his throat. He would have to tell the others. If he was any kind of man at all, he'd have to tell them, open the door and walk out into the hall.
They deserved to know.
He turned the corner and shuffled into the lantern-lit living room, head down. Bennie and Samuel stood with their hands on their hips, breathing heavily and staring happily at the door. Everything was coated with a light dusting of flour. The door was a mass of sticky white paste. Flour, salt, and water had been combined to make a cook's mortar to cover the wood and fill all the edges.
"Grandma gave us the idea. If one of those damned things manages to bite its way through the wood, then it'll get itself a killer surprise," Bennie said.
Grandma was sitting in her armchair, an empty crack-pipe wedged between her smile as she silently pantomimed the patty cake motion over and over. Little Rashad and Sissy were on the couch holding hands. It seemed as if everyone had come together and they were proud of themselves.
"You all did good," Buckley murmured.
"It was because of you, Mr. Adamski,” Samuel said. “We talked about it and we're real sorry the way we treated you. All you wanted to do was help us, we know that. You made one small mistake and we attacked you. The truth is that the way you pulled us together and taught us how to work as a team was what made the difference."
