Rabbits have ideas when they run from foxes. How high to jump, where to turn, when to hide. When they run out of ideas, they die. Butch girls like me have thoughts that won’t fit into rabbit brains. I cut a ten-foot section of coaxial cable. I open the back gate and tie it across, wondering if a war movie is trapped inside, or maybe a slasher film, or a pornographic movie about girls kissing girls.
I go to the front gate. I open it and wait for the motorcycle sound to come my way.
If the biker hasn’t given up.
If he hasn’t found someone else to torment.
If he hasn’t lost my trail.
It doesn’t take a minute until his engine roars to life. The bare chested biker of the apocalypse rides down the road too fast for the almost total darkness of electricity-free Oklahoma City. So fast I don’t have time to shut the front gate before I run. So fast I have barely enough time to duck out the back gate under the cable that he won’t see from a speeding motorcycle in the dark—not even with his glowing eyes.
It catches him on the throat and throws him backward like a slingshot. His motorcycle crashes through the fence across the alley and keeps on going.
The biker isn’t going anywhere. He lies on the pressed concrete deck thrashing his arms and legs like he’s trying to make a snow angel.
His eyes still glow. They fill with hate when they find me. That’s the last thing on the biker’s mind when life slips out of his grip with a nasty gurgling sound, like water going down a drain that’s plugged with hair.
I could try to save him, but I don’t.
I look at the place on my wrist where I used to wear a watch when punctuality mattered. “My, look at the time.”
I don’t know if he heard my smart aleck remark, but I hope so.
• • •
The sun peaks over the horizon, filling the eastern sky with the color red. Darkness is scary but light is scarier. People can see you in the daytime, watch you walk down the street, wait for you at a blind corner, and make you wish you had a gun. I take a twisted pathway home in case I’m followed.
Mona and Joseph will be up already, wondering where I am, because people go out and don’t come back all the time.
They can’t call the police, because the phones don’t work, and the cops are all gone anyway. They can’t post signs or ask around, because then everybody would know I’m not watching out for them anymore. So they’ll wash down their worries with powdered orange juice and fill their bellies with pancakes made from scratch.
We still have gas and water, so we are warm and clean and eat cooked food. That’s how much is left of the civilized world.
By the time I reach the front door of our house, I have my story edited and ready for the morning edition. Beginning with, “This is why I’m late, you guys.” Ending with, “I’m just glad to be alive.”
I’ll delete the part about watching the biker die, because I want Mona and Joseph to be glad to see me.
The front door is unlocked—a bad sign.
No sounds inside—another bad sign.
No breathing noises or air moving around bodies as they change position. No bare feet slapping the linoleum. No clinking sound of dishes being washed and put away.
No breakfast smells. No people smells. No people.
“Mona!” I call out. “Joseph!” I know the place is empty without looking, but I look anyway. I call Joseph’s name again and add, “Alli alli oxen free,” just in case it’s a hide-and-seek game I don’t know about.
“Please!” That’s a one-word prayer, because the house is so quiet and the only thing I know that could make it that way is death. “Don’t let them be dead,” I whisper, barely loud enough for God to hear. I think about rephrasing that statement, make it more humble and less demanding, but if there is a God, he’ll understand, and if there isn’t, it doesn’t matter anyway.
I take a quick tour of the house, not looking at anything too closely in case there’s blood.
No bodies in the living room—so far so good.
I keep on walking and praying through the bedrooms, and the kitchen. No bodies, no blood, no signs of violence. Panic pulls back so I can look for something besides dead people, and I see the note stuck to the refrigerator door under a magnet advertising Jean’s Plumbing. The fridge is a bulletin board now that the electricity is gone. Not cold inside, but there’s a cold hard fact stuck to the door.
“We’re gone!” the note says, as if I hadn’t figured that out. “We can’t stay in OKC any longer. Follow us to Choctaw country when you’re ready to man up.” It’s signed, “Love Mona and Joseph,” with a series of little x’s and a smiley face.
It’s written on the back of a flier from St. Anthony’s hospital. That’s where Joseph’s girlfriend is getting over being shot. Joseph won’t leave town without saying goodbye to her. So that’s where I’ll go first, to a hospital with a Saint’s name.
I take a few minutes to eat breakfast, because now that I’m not so worried I’m ravenous. Kashi Go Lean and powdered milk is quick and easy—fiber rich crunchy particles that look like statues of alien bacteria. I read a promise on the box—regular bowel movements and a slim waist. Those things still come in handy.
I take a few more minutes to pack everything I know Mona and Joseph will forget. By the time I’m ready to go the sun is high, but I have my pistol in its cowboy holster, and my cooking gear, and my EMT equipment, and my Swiss Army knife with the fancy blades and the ivorine toothpick and the tweezers. Everything a girl needs to man up.
• • •
Choctaw boys like Joseph have uncles, who can teach them all kinds of Indian things. Joseph has boy cousins too, and a grandfather who is old but still manly, but I’m the closest thing to a father he’s ever had. Women don’t make good dads, even if they have broad shoulders and tough attitudes. We can’t teach boys anything at all about football, or dirty jokes, or how to pee standing up.
I’m thinking about all that while I’m walking to St. Anthony’s Hospital, hoping I’ll see Mona and Joseph along the way. I’m cutting across parking lots and climbing fences and taking side streets, so there’s not much chance of that, but when the world comes to an end people start thinking about things like destiny.
The street I’m on stops in a cul-de-sac that runs up against a drainage ditch. There’s too much water in it to cross, and the water’s full of all kinds of things, like shopping carts and broken down exercise equipment. Something makes a big splash that sends ripples across the duckweed. A flock of birds flies all at once, filling the air with a waterfall sound, and by the time I figure out what just scared the hell out of me, my six-shooter is in my hand.
“Quick draw McGraw,” says a voice behind me.
It doesn’t sound like a threatening voice, so I put my pistol back in its holster and turn slowly toward the words. The voice is androgynous, sort of like mine, and I don’t know exactly what to expect.
“Got any spare change, buddy?” The speaker is an old man with a scraggly beard and an even scragglier dog.
Spare change isn’t good for much these days, but that’s the way the old man says hello. He has a friendly smile with all of his front teeth, and a suit of clothes that tells me he’s been living out of rag bins for a long time. Nothing matches, not even his shoes. Everything about him is ragged except for the walking stick he’s holding in his right hand. The stick is perfectly straight and lacquered so its wood grain stands out like the lines on a child’s finger painting. Probably not much good for walking, but I guess we all love something that has no practical value—a ring, a watch, a polished stick, a pretty Choctaw girl.
“Sorry, Miss.” He realizes I’m a woman now, and blushes underneath the sun damage and the grime. “I don’t see too good from far away.”
He gives me time to take offense, and when I don’t, he smiles again. He tells me something lives in the drainage ditch.
“Kills whatever it gets a hold of. Killed a deer th’ other day.” He sidles up beside
me and points at a partially submerged carcass. “Jake squalled like a puppy when it happened.
Jake might be part pit bull and part Chihuahua, or he might be some kind of mutation that comes out at the end of the world, but he has a sensitive face.
According to the old man, Jake has a sense of smell that rivals any bloodhound. “He’s a real good dog. Best friend I ever had. Now he’s th’ only one.”
Jake lays back his ears, tucks his tail between his legs, and wags it at the same time. He lifts his left paw, like he wants to shake hands, but pulls it back when I stoop over.
“People call me Andy.” The old man extends his hand, and doesn’t pull it back. He has a gentle, firm grip, exactly the way I always imagined Will Rogers would shake hands. He knows how hard to squeeze and when to let go, and he doesn’t wipe his hand on his pants leg when everything is done.
“My name’s Chris.” I give Andy the most pleasant smile I have, but it probably comes off like the one on my driver’s license.
I try to pet Jake, but the dog backs several feet away. He licks at his front paw, tests it to see if it will hold his weight, picks it up again.
“I met Jake under the Tenth Street overpass right after the electricity went off,” Andy said. “Maybe a car hit him, back when there was cars. Maybe one of them wild dogs bit him, or maybe a tick bite got infected.”
Jake shakes his head back and forth after each of Andy’s possibilities.
“Maybe I can help,” I say mostly to the dog. “I’m a trained paramedic.”
Jake hobbles over to me as cautious as a five-year-old on his first trip to the dentist. He flops on the pavement right in front of me with his injured paw extended. He turns his eyes toward Andy and whines softly.
“Jake’s a real good judge of character.” The old man sits cross-legged beside Jake and strokes his head. “It’s the scent of reliability. He smells it on you strong.”
Dogs and people aren’t so different. Lidocaine works on both of them, and the anatomy is practically identical—at least in the forearm. That’s where Jake’s problem is.
“Abscess in the muscle,” I say in case anybody’s interested. “There’s a piece of birdshot lodged against the radius, distal to the point where a tendon attaches.” I can’t remember the name of the muscle, or the tendon, and the bone might actually be the ulna, but I like to say the Latin names, even if they’re wrong.
The incision is so small it doesn’t even need a suture. It doesn’t bleed much, and that’s a relief, because I’m not really sure how to control bleeding in a dog. I wrap the wound with a strip of gauze, because I need practice doing field dressings, and Jake is such a good patient.
I pet him and tell him what a good dog he is and he gives me a look of one-hundred percent pure love. I’ve never gotten that look from anybody ever—not from Mona, not even from Joseph when he was a baby.
I bend over so Jake can lick my face. He doesn’t want to stop, and I don’t want him to, even though I know all the other places he’s been licking regularly since he was born.
“Chris.” Andy’s standing beside us, half-whispering my name, but I’m the busy recipient of unconditional love, so I don’t pay attention.
Then I hear the sound of claws scratching on concrete—not running, but coming our way pretty fast. Jake stops licking me and I look up in time to see a ninety pound Rottweiler mix trotting toward us with his head down and his tail up and most of his teeth showing.
Jake struggles to roll onto his feet and I reach for my gun, but it’s clear neither of us will have time.
Maybe he’ll go for Jake, I think without meaning to, and hope the dog can’t smell my thoughts.
“Oh shit.” I say the words softly and solemnly, as if they are a prayer. As if they are my epitaph. I try to think of something more profound, while my hand slips off the grip of my pistol like it was a bar of soap in a shower room filled with naked men who are all looking my way.
The dog is twenty feet away when Andy makes a sound, like a sneeze inside a vacuum cleaner hose.
I’ve pulled my gun almost all the way out of my holster. I fumble the hammer back and raise the pistol into firing position just as the Rottweiler rolls head-over-heels and lands on his feet like a Rumanian gymnast dog doing a floor exercise.
He starts at us again, slower this time, listing to the side.
I hear the sneezing sound again, and he stops dead, like the statue of a monster dog. He topples over with a thump and moves his lips and legs as if he’s chasing rabbits in a dream.
The Rottweiler takes a breath that’s much deeper than necessary for a dog that’s lying on its side. He exhales with a rattle that reminds me of a dying biker on a pressed concrete deck.
Jake trots over to monster and sniffs the air for signs of his escaping soul. He looks at me as if to say, “It’s gone.”
“Blowgun.” Andy holds his polished walking stick so I can see it’s hollow. “Deadly weapon, concealed in plain sight.”
He tells me something about darts made of honey locust thorns soaked in natural poisons. “Sometimes they don’t kill so quick. This time we were lucky.”
I barely hear what Andy says because I’m inspecting the monster. Flies gather on his eyes. I brush them away and pull the lids closed, even though I know it’s a meaningless gesture.
“Maybe we should say some words,” Andy says. “You know, a prayer or something.”
“I’m glad it was him instead of one of us.” I fold my hands together the way Shaolin monks do in kung fu movies. I’m especially glad it wasn’t me, but I keep that to myself.
• • •
Now that Jake’s limp is fixed, I can’t walk fast enough to leave him behind. Andy says he has to stay with me until his debt’s repaid.
“No slackers in the animal kingdom.” He tells me the short version of Androcles and the lion complete with voices.
I’m not sure if Jake is my dog now, or just on loan until his medical bill is paid. Andy says Jake will make the final decision. Meanwhile we’ll stick together. The old man doesn’t seem to walk with any plan, but after a couple of hours we are standing in front of St. Anthony’s Hospital, where Joseph’s girlfriend is still getting over her gunshot wound.
“If she ain’t dead,” Andy says. “This part of town’s full of New Flu crazies, praising God and killing people.”
“Maybe they’re all gone,” I say. “We haven’t seen anybody all day.”
“They don’t come out except when you don’t expect them,” Andy tells me. “That’s another one of them laws of nature.”
According to Andy, the New Flu crazies pattern their behavior after horror movies they saw before the fall. “Once movies and television was gone, people played them stories in their minds. Twenty-four hour slasher films seven days a week.”
“What about people who watched Lifetime Television?”
“The slashers kill you with knives,” Andy tells me. “The lovers kill you with romance. Either way, you’re killed.”
• • •
Women dressed in multicolored scrubs watch me from behind the glass front of the St. Anthony’s reception area. It’s locked and nobody makes a move to let me in.
“Stand back,” I tell Andy. “Take Jake with you.” I’ve decided that a homeless man and a stray dog are scaring the nurses more than a bull dyke with a gun strapped around her middle. It seems to be working.
A nurse opens the door, but she won’t let me in. She’s wearing a pistol around her middle too and a pair of bandoleers across her chest and a big crucifix around her neck. She holds a translucent white polyethylene squeeze bottle so I can see it, then squirts a tiny stream onto my shoulder.
“Holy Water,” she tells me. “We can’t be too careful anymore.”
She tells me I can’t come inside unless I’m a friend or family member of a patient.
“I’m looking for some people who might have visited a patient earlier today.”
The nurse looks at me for a long
time before she speaks, trying to be just careful enough.
“Indians.” She spits the word out like it’s infested with maggots. “They’re here now, visiting the little gunshot girl.”
“Karma.” She winces when I say the little gunshot girl’s name. She crosses herself, takes a sip of holy water from her squeeze bottle. She offers it to me, but I tell her, “Couldn’t hold another drop.”
She closes the glass door, locks it, shows me the key.
“You can wait outside,” the nurse shouts loud enough so I can hear her through the glass. “With all the others.”
I turn around slowly, and there they are—three New Flu crazies. When I least expect it, just like Andy said.
All three of them are men. It’s easy to tell, because they are naked, except for cowboy gun belts like mine. All three have erections. I’ve heard men always get those when they are about to kill somebody—also when they die.
The leader has the largest penis—no surprise. He also has his pistol drawn. Both are pointed right at me.
“You a woman or a man?” His pistol and his penis bob synchronously. Marking the last few seconds of my life in the nastiest way possible.
My answer is interrupted by a vacuum cleaner sneeze. Then another. The leader looks at the darts sprouting from his belly. He turns and fires a wild shot at Andy, who draws another breath deep enough to launch a third dart.
The other two men have drawn their pistols now. One aims at Andy, and the other aims at me, while their leader falls onto his back and twitches like a dying Rottweiler.
Jake charges into the scene, giving the surviving crazies another target to consider. Long enough for me to draw my pistol and put two bullets into one man’s chest, just as he squeezes off a shot at Jake.
Jake!” I’m at the dog’s side, trying to hold back the blood that’s coming out of his side in a torrent of foam.
I hear another blowgun discharge and another pistol shot, and the nurses in the lobby run out shouting, “Patients! Patients!”
They wrap the wounded and the dying in paper sheets, flop them onto gurneys, and wheel them inside—even Jake.
Sacred Alarm Clock Page 10
