by Sweet, W. G.
He had no fever, and he counted that as a good thing. He finished some energy bars and three bottles of water before he limped off to find what he still needed. Two aisles over he found a small knitting needle. The point was sharp. It was wide enough to allow him to push it in to get to the abscess he was sure was there. He carried it back to the aisle then decided maybe something to help with the pain might help. He searched, but there was nothing stronger than beer in the now warm coolers, and that was covered with a gray moss he didn't want to chance touching. The drug store nearby probably had some pain pills he could take, but he wouldn't know how much would be safe. It probably wasn't a good idea to be out of it in this world any longer. Maybe later, he decided. He would have to visit to get antibiotics anyway. Reluctantly he limped back to the aisle and sat with his back against the shelving as he arranged the items he needed around him.
The peroxide came first. He broke the seal and poured half the bottle over the wound. There was some pain, but the bubbling and foam that appeared told him what he had already guessed, the infection was bad.
He spun the top off the iodine, spilled a little into the dimple of the puncture wound and then inserted the knitting needle into the bottle and left it to soak in the iodine. He wasn't positive if it could disinfect it, but he was reasonably sure it could. The pain was intense when the iodine hit the raw wound, but it abated after a few moments. He picked up the needle, but just touching the wound with it sent shock waves of pain up his leg.
He stopped, stretched backwards against the shelving, bracing himself firmly. His breathing was hard and fast, tears had squirted from his eyes and stained his dirty cheeks as they rolled away to his jaw line. Sweat had instantly broke out on his brow. He couldn't stop at a mere touch. He had to shove the needle down far enough to be sure he punctured the abscess so it could drain. He steeled himself, took a deep breath, centered the needle over the dimple and drove it down into his leg before he could think anymore about it. The pain came fast, but his mind shut down just as quickly.
He had awakened hours later, the sunlight lower in the front windows. The leg was draining freely, fresh blood now, but he could see that the poison had also drained. His head felt better, his stomach more settled. He took his time and grimaced only slightly as he poured first the remaining peroxide into the wound, and then the balance of the iodine. Both hurt, but the pain was nothing like it had been. Antibiotic creme and some bandage and he was finished. He sat, staring down at his hands. Dirt, blood, who knew what else. He made his feet and limped off into the store looking for supplies for the road. A few moments later he was loading them into the passenger side of the truck. A quick search through the drug store turned up antibiotics, an ace bandage that might help, and some vitamins. He didn't know if the vitamins could help, but he was sure they couldn't hurt. A few minutes later he had bent the pawnshop's steel mesh, protective door open and smashed out the front door glass with a jack handle from the truck. The exercise was making his leg hurt, but the skies were turning dark and he wanted to hurry before nightfall came.
The pawn shop was a nightmare inside. Every single cabinet was locked. Even so he found a gun cabinet, managed to pry it open, and left with two semi automatic nine mm pistols and a dozen boxes of ammunition. He got to the truck, debated on the ammunition, and went back to see if he could find more. The problem was he didn't know where to look. He found nothing, but he did liberate a shotgun and a whole case of slugs for it. He made his way back to the truck tired out, sweating, his leg aching deep inside. The bandage was soaked through with blood so he changed it as he sat in the truck and gathered his strength.
The leg of the jeans he had been wearing were a tattered wreck. Blood and gore streaked the leg to his boot top. The once white sock stained deep red and black in places. He needed clothes. His shirt stank, and was stuck to him with sweat. His boots, he hadn't really noticed until he had just taken a hard look at them, were melted in places. The leather looked sandblasted and ratty. He took two of the pills, washed it down with water. Next big town, he told himself, he would get clothes.
A light rain had begun as he pulled the truck back out on to the roadway, heading for Mexico as the rain bounced up from the pavement and covered the surface with a gray mist.
Mexico NY: Joel
The truck was far better suited to the task of driving over the wrecked roads than the little car had been. A few short hours later he stopped for a rest in a small town at a local gas station.
He siphoned gas from the underground tanks, and scrounged a light lunch from the combination gas and food mart, dragged a beat looking aluminum lawn chair out from behind the station, and sat down to eat. He sipped at a warm beer as he ate. He hadn't tasted beer in forever, it seemed to him, and he enjoyed it even though it was warm. He finished his lunch and climbed back into the cab of the truck. It started without hesitation this time. He nosed it out of the small station and headed north once more.
Ten miles down the road, as he passed through another small town, the truck suddenly quit. He coasted to the side of the road, shifted out of gear and tried to start it. Nothing, it turned over and over. He stopped before he could chance running the battery down. Night was moving in. Whatever the problem was it would have to wait for daylight.
Watertown NY: Joel
As he drew closer to Watertown the stalled traffic thickened, and when he reached the Watertown Center exit a heavy rain began to fall, which slowed him down even more. He followed the same muddy tracks that cut into the steep grassy embankment down to the road below the overpass. He slid the last twenty feet to the pavement, and proceeded slowly along the rain slicked street.
He had just passed the Watertown town limit sign, when he noticed the fresh muddy tracks had cut across the road and into a field on the right. He slowed the truck, and let his eyes follow the tracks into the field of standing hay.
A gray pickup truck rested in the middle of the field, at the end of the deep muddy grooves it had cut as it plowed through it. It had slued around at the end, and now sat facing the road. Joel shivered as a cold chill crept down his neck and into his spine. He couldn't explain the feeling that had crept into him when he had spotted the truck, but it set him on edge immediately. This had to be the same truck he had been following since before Oswego.
He stopped, but did not leave the truck. Instead he stared through the rain slicked windshield at the Ford. It appeared to have been abandoned after it became stuck in the field. The rain streamed across the darkened glass of its windows, and down the sides of the gray steel body. He fought the urge to get out and check the pickup. Someone could still be in it, hurt maybe, he reasoned, but he was sure his leg would never allow him to make the trip out to the truck and back. He felt unreasonably positive that the truck wasn't empty, that someone was watching him as he sat idling in the road. He put the truck back in drive and drove past, shaking off the chill that had passed through him, and sped up a little as he left the truck behind in the muddy field. It was nearly night, the gray of the afternoon moving toward blackness.
When a set of headlights appeared behind him a couple of miles down the road, he stared at them through the rear view mirror so long, that he almost slammed into the rear of a stalled tractor-trailer in front of him. He looked up just in time and managed to miss the truck, but slid off the road and into the front yard of an old, peeling green house.
He narrowly missed hitting the rickety front porch, and fought to bring the truck back under control as he shot past it. He goosed the gas pedal and the truck swung around, clipping several bushes that fronted the porch, but the truck was now angled toward the road. He gave it more gas and steered it back onto the roadway at last.
He looked into the rear-view as he gained the road, and he could now clearly make out the shape of the gray pickup behind him. It was gaining, and when it reached the tractor trailer, it seemed to skim by on the outer edge of the road without slowing at all. Joel jammed the gas pedal into the floor bo
ard and the old truck began to shudder as it picked up speed.
He glanced back, and as he did, the truck blew by on his left in a spray of water that momentarily covered the windshield. Joel instinctively released the gas pedal and jammed the brake pedal, while working the wiper switch. The old truck shuddered in protest and began to slide down the road.
The windshield cleared as the truck slowed down, and he watched as the Ford spun sideways in the road. It came to rest in the center of the road, blocking it from side to side.
Steam rose from the hot tires. Its black windows gleamed in the light rain as tiny rivulets streamed across them towards the ground; washing away some mud that still clung to the lower body.
Joel drew a deep breath into his lungs as the truck slid the last few feet and stopped. He ended up still pointing straight in the right hand lane, about twenty five feet from the pickup.
He reached for the rifle that had slid off the seat onto the floorboard, as his heart beat quickly in his chest. The passenger side window of the Ford slowly lowered as he watched.
The black glass gave way to a dark gray interior, and the young dark-haired kid that sat behind the wheel of the truck slowly turned towards him. Joel could see his yellow and crooked teeth, from where he sat in the truck, as he grinned. Two other faces moved beside him. His heartbeat sped along crazily, and he fought to control the panic he felt rising inside him. He clicked off the safety on the rifle as he slowly eased it up onto the seat beside him. The dark-haired kid continued to grin, a cigarette plastered into one corner of his mouth, jittering up and down. Talking to the others, probably, Joel though. The kid raised his rifle and pointed it out the window at Joel.
“Hey!. Get outta that fuckin' truck, man. Come on, man, get outta there right now!”
Joel heard the words over the rain, over his own closed windows, but there was no way he intended to get out of the truck. The kid motioned with his head and the two others with him climbed out the passenger side of the truck: Laying their rifles across the hood; aiming carefully at him, Joel saw, which was completely ridiculous. It was a shot of maybe twenty, twenty five feet. You could do that with your eyes closed. Unless...
Joel swung the rifle up fast and popped off a shot aimed at the kid at the outermost edge of the hood. A split second later he was sighting on the second kid. No one had shot back, the driver was still grinning foolishly, but he didn't think that would last long. They had no idea what they were doing. Playing roles in a movie they had seen once. Something like that, Joel told himself.
The dark-haired kid in the truck finally raised his rifle and aimed at him. It was almost funny, Joel thought, looking at the rifle jerk and jump on its way up, but the next instant, when the windshield on the passenger side cracked loudly, he was stunned to see a small hole punched through it when he looked. A nest of cracks ran away from it, and small crystals of glass glittered on the dashboard.
He quickly ducked, levered the door open, and dropped to the pavement. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. As he did he heard another shot, and felt a stinging sensation in his left leg. The right side of the kid’s face dissolved as Joel's shot found its mark. He saw the spray of skin and blood hit the black passenger side window behind him, as the bullet shattered it almost simultaneously. The young man continued to grin with what was left of his face, he shot once more.
Joel saw the flame lick from the end of his rifle, as he dropped towards the ground. The shot missed, and he heard the ford's engine whine as the tires began to bite into the pavement, producing a high pitched scream. Joel dove back up from the ground, and shot once more at the truck, that was now sliding around and heading for him.
He dove back into the truck just as the pickup hit the still open door, and tore it from its hinges. It flipped up over the already braking pickup, and clattered to the pavement. Joel keyed the ignition, and jammed the truck into drive. The tires spun and began to smoke as he mashed the gas pedal to the floor and tore off down the road. The truck slewed around behind him, and began once again to give chase.
Although the truck shuddered in protest, Joel did not let up on the gas pedal: Instead he kept it jammed to the floor. The truck edged up and past eighty before he eased off.
At just under ninety, the truck rattled loudly, and the large tires hummed as it sped down the road with the gray pickup seemingly welded to its rear bumper. Joel used the stock of the rifle to smash out the rear glass of the truck, and fired twice into the windshield of the Ford. The windshield blew inward, and the Ford locked its brakes and spun sideways on the road.
The tires caught, and the pickup truck flipped into the air. When it landed it rolled several times before bursting into flames, where it came to rest in the middle of the road.
Joel mashed the brakes on the truck, and slid to a shuddering stop in the road, craning over his shoulder, staring out at the burning wreck behind him. As he watched the gas tank caught, and the truck lifted from the road with a loud, Whump! It clattered back down seconds later, scattering parts of itself across the rain slicked roadway as it did. Joel stepped cautiously from the pickup, and continued to watch as the truck burned.
He was still watching a split second later, in horror, as the kid spilled from the wrecked car.
The right side of his face was a raw mass of meat, and curls of flame and smoke leapt from his clothing as he tumbled out of the inferno and hit the pavement. The flames on his clothing seemed to flare up as if in anger, and then, within a space of seconds, die out altogether and disappear. Smoke curled from the kid. Joel stared momentarily transfixed. And then bent over and vomited on the road. He stayed, hunched over for a second, before he turned, crawled back into the truck, and quickly started it.
Before he pulled away, he glanced into the rear view, back at the truck. As he watched the flames leapt and flared into the rain filled skies. Joel shifted into first and drove quickly away.
He pushed the truck hard until he arrived in Watertown; constantly checking the mirrors, expecting the truck to reappear at any moment. It didn't, and when he almost lost control of the truck sliding around a stalled car in the road, he finally slowed down, afraid that he would wreck the truck, and end up dead, or dying on the side of the road, finishing the job the kid had started.
He turned right at a four corners, passing a small gas station that sat there, and headed into the city, still glancing nervously behind him. Just as he topped a small hill he glanced back once more. There was no one in sight, so he pulled off into the parking lot of a small store and turned off the motor.
He sat for a moment, with the rain streaming in the opening where the door had once been, listening. He half expected to hear the truck's engine roaring towards him. He didn't, the air was silent, save the thrumming of the rain on the steel roof of the truck, as it fell and splashed its way to the ground.
He slowly became aware of the pain in his left leg, as his heart slowed down and resumed a somewhat normal beat again. He stepped out of the truck to the ground, testing the leg. Dark blood covered a large area of the outside pant leg, just below his hip, and the blue denim fabric was shredded and burned. It now matched the lower leg.
The skin was spit open for a few inches, he saw, but the bullet had only grazed the upper thigh. He breathed a sigh of relief, turned and walked towards the store. He took his rifle with him, and, glancing back at the road, listened carefully before he entered the store. Nothing.
Inside he slipped off the jeans and clenched his teeth tightly together as he sprayed the wound first with a disinfectant, then poured a full bottle of peroxide over it. He wrapped the leg with clean white gauze, and taped the flap tightly. It stung a great deal, but he was afraid of infection, and it wasn't likely he would be seeing a doctor soon, he thought. The other wound had opened and was bleeding freely once more so he changed that too.
He looked out the front glass doors when he had finished, still listening, then stepped outside. He had seen a small shopping center whe
n he pulled in, to the left of the store, and set off towards it now, to replace the bloodied and torn jeans.
He picked up two complete sets of clothes, leaving the others where he had removed them in the aisle of the store. The blood had nearly sealed the boot on his left leg to his foot, he discovered, so he pried them both off, washed his feet as well as he could with bottled water to make sure there were no wounds under all the blood, and then pulled on fresh socks and a new pair of boots.
He walked back over to the store, and then back to the rear coolers. He was surprised to find them still cold, and was even more surprised to hear a small fan kick on as he pulled a cold beer from within. He hesitated, then pulled out one more.
He walked back towards the front counter, went behind it, and sat down on the stool that was there, staring out the wide glass windows at the parking lot as he sipped from the can. The rain dripped and drizzled, letting up somewhat.
"Well, I made it this far," he said aloud. He shook his head, lowered his face into his hands and began to weep.
SIX
Watertown NY: Joel
A few days of rest had made a huge difference in how he felt and his leg had responded as he had hoped it would. It was still stiff, something was wrong in the knee, maybe, but he could walk and the more he walked the better he felt. He sat in a chair on his front porch now, drinking hot coffee, and watching the snow melt and drip from the trees: Once again it was warming.
He had found a truck in the parking lot, managed to get it started and driven to his own house on Linden Street. His house had seen better days, but it was still standing. The house itself still leaning, but it was no worse than it had been that first morning when he had awakened to... whatever this was, he thought. He had had a hard time getting around the public square. Sometime in the days that had passed the entire downtown section had sunk and then flooded. Probably as Glenn had said, the cave system under the city had collapsed. Either all or partial, it hadn't made much difference to the downtown area, it had crumbled and the water now owned it.
