American Apocalypse Wastelands

by Nova

  That’s when it struck me. Where were all the refugees? With the Feds tightening the D.C. Zone and expanding their lockdown, we couldn’t be the only ones who had decided to move out. I had a good idea of what was going on. I was hoping we could bypass it.

  We kept moving along, and I tried to get into the rhythm of walking. When I’m by myself, I prefer to keep the stops to a minimum. Maybe a breather every once in a while, which for me means stopping and bending over at the waist so my pack shifts enough that it feels like I’m not wearing it for a few minutes. Then it’s back to moving. I liked to push until I felt like I was on autopilot. With it came a detachment from my physical self that was pleasant.

  We couldn’t move that way now for a lot of reasons. My gear was bothering me. The weight didn’t feel distributed right. I couldn’t retrieve my water bottle without stopping and dropping my pack. Plus, my new sheath knife was interfering with how my gun belt rode on my hip. I noticed both Ninja and Night fidgeting with their gear. It was just part of the process of settling down, until your gear became as unnoticeable as the clothes you had on.

  We all wore knives. Everyone in our part of town did. Max wore a KA-BAR, of course. Night wore a fisherman’s fillet knife.

  I could never make up my mind. I changed knives and bought knives the way kids used to buy sneakers. Then I moved from knives to daggers after a while. I thought they looked cool and they certainly were effective for one thing.

  The problem was they were useless for everything else. The fifth time I found myself using a dagger to cut string or leather for tie downs, I realized how useless they really were. You couldn’t use the tip for a screwdriver. Well, you could, but you ended up with a dagger with a broken tip. Cutting bread or an apple? Let’s just say it was overkill. I finally took to wearing a Swiss Army knife on a leather thong around my neck. Not very cool—I felt like a latchkey kid—but very handy.

  I couldn’t give up wearing a belt knife, though. I had the image thing to worry about. So I was wearing a KA-BAR like Max. I was beginning to wish I had brought a machete. The sides of the trail were overgrown with Queen Anne’s lace, daisies, burdock, and other plants whose sole purpose in life was to trip me up when I needed to take a piss and to decorate my pants with ticks and burrs.

  Ninja carried the same knife he had worn for the last year. He was really proud of it when he bought it at the market. It wasn’t just a knife. It was the Dragon Knife. Made in China, of course. Stainless steel, with a handle shaped like a dragon’s head.

  He thought it was awesome. I thought it was ridiculous when he first showed it to me.

  “Ninj, what the hell is that?”

  “It’s my Dragon Knife!”

  I shook my head and handed it back to him. “It’s stainless steel. You need carbon steel.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a fantasy knife, Ninj.”

  He pointed at the medieval dagger I was wearing back then. “What do you call that?”

  He had a point. I held up my hands. “Fine. It’s yours.”

  After he had walked away, unhappily, I thought to myself, Wow, nice job, asshole. He’s a freaking kid. I made a point of looking him up later, reexamining the knife, and grudgingly praising it.

  When I told Night about it later, she laughed and told me, “He wanted to buy a Ninja sword, but no one had any for sale.”

  The sun was beating down on us. Max had told us we were not going to push it past early afternoon for the first week. He also told us that after we stopped for the day and settled in, he wanted to look at everyone’s feet. I had a feeling that it would probably turn into a teaching moment, which was fine. Max didn’t beat his points into the ground.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught the occasional bird. I saw a red-tailed hawk soaring above us one day. That was pretty cool. On the trail I saw a lot of Virginia butterflies, also known as gypsy moths.

  Maybe that was why they almost always caught me by surprise. Well, not surprise, but off-balance for a second. Probably because it was so unexpected.

  I berated myself later. There was no excuse for it. Nowadays, a second meant everything.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I was walking point and had come to a bend in the trail. I could not see around it because of the plants and a fallen tree. I should have held up my fist in the FREEZE sign and gone on by myself first. I didn’t. Yet another mistake. Instead, lulled by the sun and walking on autopilot, I just kept going.

  What awaited us was a little different from what we usually dealt with when we walked our beat back in Fairfax. Yet in many ways it was the same. It was always the same type of people up to the same kind of shit that they always get up to when no one is around to kick their asses.

  The first thing I noticed was a fat, jiggly, very white ass pumping up and down, with a big boil or zit on it. I normally would have shot the guy just for violating the gross and ugly law, but he wasn’t alone. They never are.

  Also standing with his back to me was a skinny white man with a bunnytail ass and his pants around his ankles. He had long, scraggly gray-and-white hair, and even from this distance it was easy to tell that he needed a wash. Not just his hair, either. He had a fair amount of blood on him. On the ground off to his right lay a bloody machete. He was watching Fatboy and jerking off.

  About four feet away, two more white guys watched the show. One had shaggy blond hair and wore a Polo shirt and khaki pants. He held a hunting bow. My guess was that he was the leader. He was smoking and pointing at Fat Boy pumping away.

  He said something to his sidekick, a middle-aged white guy who looked like every high school gym teacher I had ever seen. In his hand he should have had the AR-15 that was at his feet. Instead he had a bottle. They both began laughing.

  It was easy to see what must have happened. The guy in the tie-dyed shirt had come around the bend. I’m sure he had seen the downed tree out of the corner of his eye. So when he saw the pine limb across the path it did not set off any alarms, especially since the trail dipped down to cross a stream about twenty feet further on. It had a bridge once, but it was no longer usable for bike traffic.

  He had stopped, probably quickly, which wouldn’t have helped him any as far as getting to his weapon. Not that he’d had a chance. He’d taken an arrow to the neck and looked as if he’d choked to death.

  The woman probably narrowly avoided plowing into him. They must have been on her right away—probably two on her, with the Leader standing back and Bunnytail working his machete magic on the older guy bringing up the rear. It had been a fast and efficient slaughter.

  They quit laughing abruptly when they saw me. I shouldered the shotgun. Bunnytail turned around to see what the big boys were looking at, mouth open, his hand still moving. Fat Boy either didn’t hear me or was too close to the edge to care.

  I took out the sidekick with the AR-15 at his feet. I didn’t like shotguns but I respected them. In World War I, they called them trench brooms because of how well they swept a trench clean of anything living.

  As I was racking back the slide I heard the boom of a .45 from my right. Max had taken out the Leader, his bow still at his side. That left the two in front of me. Bunnytail took my buckshot at crotch level. It wasn’t pretty.

  I felt someone coming up behind me. I really hoped it was Ninja because I wasn’t turning around to take a look. He stood next to me. I noticed he was breathing a little hard. Night came up beside us, and together we stared for a minute at the carnage and the two survivors.

  Max was moving toward us. He had moved to my right and into the brush without my hearing him. I could tell he was getting ready to say something. It was probably going to be along the lines of “What the hell you gawking at? Is this what I taught you to do?” He didn’t get a chance.

  I moved toward the woman. Keep in mind that everything happened in under a minute. Fat Boy was still on top of the woman, but was no longer pumping. He was also as much red as white. The red spl
otches, plus a few pieces of gristle, were from his buddy who had been waiting his turn.

  I heard the woman moan. No, it was a keening sound. It was the sound a puppy would make if it got its nose jammed into a fan. It made me angry.

  Fat Boy twisted around enough that he saw me coming. He looked ahead. The woman’s clothes and holster, including the gun, had been tossed into a pile about six feet away. Fat Boy was going to go for it. That made me happy. It was considerate of him to give me a clear shot. I didn’t want to hurt the woman underneath him any more than she had already been hurt.

  He didn’t leap as much as slither over her body. I let him get about halfway across her—unfortunate for her, I suppose. Watching his hand reaching out like a drowning swimmer for the gun, I pretty much blew it off. It looked like some of it remained—not enough for him to get his palm read, that was for sure. He rolled off her, got to his knees and then, to my surprise, to his feet.

  “You son of a bitch!”

  I shrugged.

  “Oh, Jesus! Do something! I’m hurt!”

  I heard Ninja say, “No shit.”

  The woman continued to shriek from where she lay.

  I cycled a new round and was getting ready to finish Fat Boy when Night zipped past me.

  “Goddamn it, Night!” I yelled.

  I started moving toward her and Fat Boy. My first thought was that she was going to help the woman before we were done with Fat Boy. He must have thought she was coming to help him. We were both wrong.

  Her hand went to her belt and the fillet knife. Fat Boy had his arm up in the air. It sprayed bright red blood like a flabby white fountain. For some strange reason I found myself thinking of the Fourth of July. He had to be going into shock.

  Night got to him, reached out, grabbed his now flaccid cock, and whipped her fillet blade across it. It looked like a clean cut.

  She held it up in front of his face and screamed, “Rape this, you cocksucker!” She shook it in his face, walked past him, wound up, and threw it into the creek. If he hadn’t gone into shock a minute ago, he certainly had now. His eyes rolled back until all I saw was white, and he went down like a clear-cut tree.

  I turned to Ninja. “You see what she just did?”

  He nodded.

  “That just wasn’t right,” I said

  He looked at me surprised.

  “Yep. She should have put a hook in that worm before throwing it into the creek.” I grinned at him and winked. He didn’t get it at first. I shook my head and started toward Max, who was looking at the bow.

  Night knelt down to comfort the woman. I held back. I didn’t think she needed another man in her face right then.

  Ninja had disappeared in the few seconds I had my back to him. Damn. I looked at Max and turned back. I figured Ninja was puking his guts out in the bushes.

  The woman got up and looked at the dead man with the arrow through his neck. She screamed again, a much higher-pitched scream. She took three steps to her clothes and the holster, bent over, and came up with the gun.

  Time froze.

  I saw Night open her mouth, the word “No” forming, as the woman took the pistol and inserted the barrel into her mouth. She pulled the trigger and dropped.

  I moved quickly to Night, who had frozen in place. I think I heard Max say, “Shit.” I knelt down next to Night, holding her close.

  “C’mon, honey. We need to go.” She resisted at first and then stiffly got to her feet. I kept my arm around her and turned her away from the woman’s body. I started walking her to the creek.

  I heard Ninja scream, “You motherfucker!” I looked back. He was standing over the body; in his hand was one of his shirts. He had gone to get the woman something to wear.

  I didn’t have time for him. That was going to have to be Max. I could feel Night shaking. I started talking to her. Nothing much. Just a string of “It’s going to be okay. It’s alright,” as I led her away.

  Max moved toward Ninja. But of course it wasn’t over. I don’t know if it was death throes or not, but Fat Boy started twitching like he still had some life in him. Whatever it was, it didn’t last. Ninja walked up to him, pulled out his handgun, and removed the top of his head.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We didn’t have time to deal with emotional issues. Max got us moving. I realized later that it was the only sane way for regular people to cope with dispensing and seeing others suffer violent deaths. You had to get busy; keep your mind focused on the present—and the next moment.

  I wanted Night away from this. She didn’t need to see it. At the same time, I held her next to me, making physical contact, trying to quiet the shaking that convulsed her.

  We heard Max yelling, “Night! Night!”

  She pulled away from me. “Yeah, Max?”

  “Get your ass over here. We got work to do!”

  She paused and glanced up at me, looking for something. To this day I don’t know what she expected—or wanted—to see. Whatever it was, I don’t think it was there.

  “Coming!” she yelled, heading toward Max and the bodies. I stood there watching her walk, shrugged, and followed her.

  We walked back to where the stink of death was already drawing flies.

  They always came: the big, fat, black flies. The kind of flies that crunched and squashed when you swatted them, leaving a nasty little stain.

  You never saw them until blood was spilled or the latrine got its first load. Then, like magic, they appeared out of nowhere. I imagined their maggots hanging in clusters, like grapes in secret places, where they slumbered until the right smell called them forth. Then, they would burst free and, like ugly butterflies, they would take wing and follow the scent.

  I hated flies. When I was bored, I would take a flyswatter and kill every one I came across.

  Max had us toss the bodies into the bushes and the bikes into the trees. He had Night fetch water from the creek to wash down the bloodiest spots.

  “What about the bone fragments?” I asked him.

  “Leave them. I’m more worried about what it looks like from the air. Police the brass, though.”

  Ninja and I tossed bodies, and Night watered the whole area. Max took over the watch. It would have been awkward to be surprised by a county park crew, if they still existed, or a random passerby, while tossing bodies. Let alone any remnants of the gang.

  Ninja was bothered by the idea of tossing the woman in the bushes with Fat Boy and everyone else. “Shouldn’t we bury her? And her friends?”

  I could tell that “friends” was an afterthought. I bit my tongue and, instead of biting his head off, decided to try my kinder and gentler approach. “No. No time.”

  “Oh.”

  I sighed. “You want to say a prayer?” He nodded his head. “Before or after we toss her?”

  “After.”

  “Okay.”

  We tossed her. He stepped forward and bowed his head. “Dear God, please look out for her. She seemed nice. Let the rest of these assholes, except for her friends, burn in hell. Amen.”

  I added my “Amen” to the chorus.

  We silently went back to work. Afterward, I took the machete and used it cut some branches to cover up what the bushes didn’t. We washed up in the creek.

  We took nothing in the way of personal spoils from either group. We all decided, without talking much about it, that it was all tainted. Plus, we were maxed out as far carrying any more weight.

  Ninja asked hesitantly, “Why don’t we take the bikes, Max? I mean, I understand why we don’t go through their stuff but …”

  “Night, you want to answer that?”

  She replied flatly, “Because we don’t want to cover a lot of ground quickly if it means at the end of the day that we die just as quickly.”

  Max nodded. “Ninja, there is a time for speed, but this isn’t it.” He grinned at him. “C’mon, what better way to see Virginia than by humping sixty pounds of gear while you sweat your ass off? You got point. Gardener, take
drag. Let’s move.”

  We started down the trail again.

  The next few days proved uneventful. We faded into the woods if we heard helicopters overhead. There wasn’t a lot we could do about them. There was even less we could do about the drones that were up there somewhere.

  We rolled out of our bags before dawn. We would just sit, weapons up, and wait for about twenty minutes until Max gave us the sign to fix breakfast.

  When I had a chance to catch him alone, I asked him, “What’s up with the morning meditation routine? I mean, I doubt if any Tree People are going to come storming into camp. Hell, they usually don’t wake up until the sun pierces their hangovers.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “You really think we’re the only people moving around out here with some kind of military training? I’m not worried about the ones we spot. It’s the ones we don’t that will be the problem.”

  Not a lot I could say to that. So I didn’t. I was somewhat cranky for a while in the morning anyway.

  We usually ate a cold breakfast. In the morning the only hot thing we had was tea or coffee. We ate just one full hot meal a day now, a hot lunch cooked over a backpacker’s stove. At dinner, we made tea but ate our food cold. We didn’t want to spend any length of time where we sent the smell of food out into the breeze.

  I don’t know about the others but I could now clearly identify everyone just by smell. Even their farts had become familiar. It wasn’t that we stunk as much as each of us had a signature odor.

  I could easily recognize Night; she had the most complex smell. It would change before and during her period. When her period was over, it would revert to what I thought of as her smell. I never told her, but during her period she smelled like Chinese food.

  Max had a heavy smell. It was dark, with undertones of black licorice, metal, and gun oil. Ninja smelled like a sweaty kid, the beach, and a public Laundromat. Me? I don’t know but I am sure there was a smell.