by R. M. Smith
The McDonalds sign had fallen down. It was sparking everywhere. People around were trying to dodge the sparks. Bart sat in the road as cars passed by, speeding, honking at him. There was nowhere to park or even get into the McDonalds. Bart knew that the drive-thru probably wouldn’t be working anyway. He drove over to the Buccaneer Food store.
Inside, people were fighting over the food. One man had a shotgun in the back of the store, pointing it at people, baring his teeth at them. Bart recognized him as Dane Stockton, a guy he had lifted weights with a few times years ago at the gym. Bart went up to Dane, standing guard with him as the people swarmed.
“It’s our food, ya bastards,” Dane yelled. “Get your own dammit!”
Bart started pushing people back, shoving them hard in the chest so they would stumble and fall on their asses. He got a kick out of it, pushing the older people harder, watching them fall backward into other people.
Another man broke through the crowd. Dane almost shot him but it was Jace; Jace Crowley - a friend of his from the bar. They ate together a lot down at the seafood place on Sundays after football was over on TV.
“Get in here,” Dane hollered at him. “This is our food.”
They fought the crowd for a long time. Dane ended up shooting several men who tried to break them down. They lay there dead on the ground around the deli, their faces flat against the concrete.
When the undead came through, the three men stood their ground. Dane emptied his shotgun on the undead. Bart used a tire iron. Jace used a broken pipe. It was madness the way the undead swarmed through the town.
Then the undead were gone. Just like that. It was almost like someone pulled a plug and they all disappeared.
The food in the store lasted them three months. It started to go bad soon thereafter. The three men moved into the store. They set up cots and lit fires in some barrels they drug from across the street that were behind an old warehouse.
They cleaned out the deli first. They had roast beef, ham, chicken, turkey. They needed to eat it all before it went bad. They made huge Dagwood sandwiches, piled high with all kinds of sliced meat, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes.
After that, they raided the freezers throughout the store. They ate the ice cream, frozen popsicles, ice cream sandwiches. They set up several barbecues and cooked all of the meat they could find. Packages of it. The floor was littered with plastic wrap.
They drank all of the beer first. Then they went through all of the sodas, power drinks, powdered drinks and finally all of the bottled water. There were still several larger gallons of distilled water along one shelf.
Each of them easily gained 300 pounds. All they did was eat and drink. They had to find larger clothes. Most nights they sat around the barrels simply wearing their underwear. One day Bart raided a nearby Goodwill store. Inside he found large bib coveralls for all of them. He grabbed a handful of red handkerchiefs from a shelf. Bringing them back to the guys he told them that they needed to tie them around their heads because it would be their clan signature.
Bart also started to use Teller as a threat against the other men. Anytime any of them lipped off to Bart, he would tell Teller to sic them. Of course, Bart knew that Teller was not a mean dog at all, but he used Teller’s playing around with him to his advantage.
As the food dwindled, they all started losing patience with one another faster and faster. They fought over the last scraps of food. The guys said they should get the scraps, not Teller! Teller was a dog, he didn’t need people food, but Bart wouldn’t allow it.
“We got to eat something soon,” Dane told them one night around the barrels. “I’m getting damn hungry.”
Bart looked at all of them, hungry himself. He told them about an old movie he had seen once on cable. It was about a plane that wrecked high in the mountains. He said the survivors of the plane had to eat the dead to stay alive until they were rescued.
“I aint eating no dead people!” Jace said. “I’d rather eat Teller.”
“No one lays a finger on Teller!” Bart yelled at them. “You even touch him and I’ll have him eat your balls off!”
Jace and Dane sat back in their seats. They were intimidated.
Days later, a young kid on a bicycle came into the store looking for food. He said his name was Billy. He didn’t know where his mom and dad were. He was scared. Was it ok if he stayed with the men? They said sure. No problem.
Jace grabbed him by the arm. Dane grabbed his feet.
Bart knocked Billy out. He said “There’s some meat for us, boys. Let’s cook him up.”
The flesh was tough. There were still plenty of bottled seasonings in the store and most of the sauces were good for another year or so. They seasoned him, cooked him and ate him. On a whim, Bart dared Dane to eat the little boy’s penis.
“I ain’t eating no kid’s dick,” Dane yelled.
“Teller wouldn’t have a problem eating yours,” Bart said. “Now EAT it!”
“Fucking fine!” he said as he went over to the corpse of the boy on the table, rolled him over, and sliced the boy’s penis off with a pocket knife. Dane put it in his mouth and started to chew it.
“You could’ve cooked the son of a bitch first!” Bart said. He and Jace started laughing.
“Fuck you two and the horses you rode in on.” Dane said, spitting the chewed flesh out.
This went on for a long time. People would show up looking for food or directions or lost friends. The men would be polite. They would lead them back to the tables and quickly tie them up. They would let the victim hang there until he/she would pass out. Then the men would slice them, season them, cook them, and eat them. They fought over certain body parts to eat.
As time wore on, they began to slice the people as they hung on the hoists. Sometimes they didn’t wait until the victim passed out. They made it a sport, seeing how long a victim would survive as they cut off parts of their bodies. Screams would echo through the adjacent neighborhood.
Months later, Bart told them that Jace and Dane needed to start working a night shift. He and Teller would work the day by going out into the surrounding areas to hunt people down. Of course, Jace and Dane agreed to it – and Bart made them cook his food while he was away hunting.
He went out one morning. The road to the south of town had been dry as of late. The last good catch that Teller had made down that way was an old man with a broken leg.
He went north.
About three miles out of town, he saw a car on the side of the road that he didn’t recognize. He slowly drove up to it. Telling Teller to be quiet while grabbing a crowbar from the back of the truck, he walked over to the car. A lady wearing a dark blue jogging pantsuit was sleeping inside on the back seat. She had a very shapely body and long black hair. She looked to be about 30 or so.
“Excuse me, miss,” Bart said quietly as he tapped with his fingertip on her window which was rolled down a little bit. “Are you ok?”
“Oh…yeah…I’m fine,” the lady said, getting up on elbow as she wiped her eyes.
Bart lifted the handle to the door to open it, but it was locked.
She sat up in the seat. “Do you need something?”
“Some company,” he said, bashfully. “I’ve been out here alone, too. I saw your car and maybe thought you’d like to talk.”
She didn’t want anything to do with him. He was dirty and smelly. His teeth were covered in scum. His hair was long, unwashed, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in months. The hair on his face tried to make a beard, but it wasn’t quite working.
“Where are you from?” Bart asked, being the perfect gentleman.
“Houston,” she said, lying, trying to force a smile. “I was just on my way back. I got tired so I thought I’d lay down for a nap for a while.”
“Oh, why don’t you step outside? It might be good to get out of the car and get some fresh air.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
She didn’t want anything to do with him – or any ma
n for that matter. She was on the run, trying to escape the grasp of her insane husband. She had been on the road for so long – and had been amazed at all of the help she had received from strangers along the way. Even the men who were guarding the helicopter at the base where she had crossed the split had been nice to her. She was so thankful that they didn’t recognize her. If they had, they would have kept her there.
“Please leave me alone,” she said to the fat man outside her window.
Bart was done playing Mr. Nice Guy. Gripping the crowbar tighter, he smashed it through the window they had been chatting through. Glass shattered onto her lap. Bart quickly unlocked the door, flung it open, and made his move to crawl into the car after her.
The lady was able to subdue him for a second. She pushed him back with her feet. She didn’t move him far or keep him from coming in, but she was able to grab the door and slam it shut.
The door slammed on Bart’s hand. He felt bones crunch and skin tear. Blood started pouring out.
“Fucking cunt!” he yelled. He yanked the door back open. She tried to kick him away again but he cracked her shins with the crowbar. She screamed. In a few minutes, he had her out of the car, her arms pinned behind her back. He pushed her limping toward his truck. A dog was barking madly in the back.
He roughly gagged her, tied her hands behind her back and lifted her over his shoulder. He let the tail gate drop. The dog jumped out. It obediently went to the passenger side of the truck.
She was struggling to get off of his shoulder, but he was just too strong. He slammed her down onto the bed of the truck. There was no padding. Her back slammed onto the metal. The truck bounced when she slammed it. Bart tied her feet.
“Stay quiet back here, bitch, and I might go easier on you,” he told her. He got into the truck, grabbed an old rag on the seat, and wrapped his hand. It was bleeding pretty badly. He didn’t think it was broken, but it hurt like hell.
On the way back to the meat market, he stopped at the small town pharmacy. It looked like someone had broken into it. The drive-thru window had been smashed. He clumsily crawled through it, stumbled around a bit, knocked over a cart with boxes on it, and then found a display case with some bandages. He quickly ripped one open, dripping blood on the floor as he did, then wrapped his wound.
Back outside, it looked like the lady had passed out.
“Good,” he said.
He drove back to the meat market.
Inside, he told Dane and Jace what had happened. He told them he was going to take the night off and rest over at the Holiday Inn. His hand hurt like hell.
“Tie her up,” he said, looking down at her. “Get her ready for the morning because when I get back I’m going to filet her alive for what she did to my fucking hand.”
FOR PETE’S SAKE
Mindy’s pregnancy became our focal point.
We needed to find another house like the one we had lived in near the casino in Oklahoma. Mindy wanted to go back because it had been such a home to us, but I reminded her that that side of the earth was falling away.
She also wanted to go back to try and save Rosita but I told her by now it was too late. She was probably already gone.
We kept our eyes peeled for a new home as we headed east away from Temple. Again, the roads were clear other than the ripples. They seemed to be getting wider not taller. We went through small town after small town. Nothing caught our eye as a great place to stay. We did stay in hotels along the way, but they weren’t good enough to make a home in.
There was damage along every ripple, too, so sometimes a town would be damaged but the next one wouldn’t be – or a partial bridge would be damaged or half of a building would be destroyed. The ripples were slowing us down.
We searched through rooms in the hotels we stayed at. If we were lucky, we would find things useful for our travels. In some suitcases we would find better clothes or shoes to wear; maybe some unused toiletries. It was like a treasure hunt in a way, but not a fun one. We were constantly reminded of how dead the world was. Sometimes suitcases had pictures of people in them with smiling faces; families together on vacations or getaways.
Mindy always kept an open eye out for baby stuff. It was rare to find anything new. She really didn’t want to use anything already opened. There were open bags of diapers, but she didn’t want to use them. There were plastic baby bottles in some bags, but then again she didn’t want to use them.
She was being understandably picky.
One afternoon our luck finally kicked in. There was a small out of the way shop in one of the small towns we passed through. In the back of the store there was a rack of clothes with a SALE sign on it. It was all maternity wear.
When we made it to Austin, two things happened. One, Mindy started to show. You really couldn’t tell unless you were really looking, but we were happy to see her bun in the oven actually showing. It gave us a boost of excitement. We didn’t know if Mindy had been eating enough food to give the baby enough nutrition. Evidently we had. She looked at her profile in any mirror we came across. We started thinking about names but couldn’t really decide on anything yet.
The other thing was – we left the main highway. We headed east on a two lane road through the ripple-filled flatlands. Ninety miles later we stopped in Brenham. We stayed at a Super 8 hotel. Before we slept, we rummaged through some rooms, looking for anything useful. Again, our searches came up empty. We settled in for the night. We watched the sun set through the trees. Across the street to the south, on the other side of an overpass, there was a partially demolished Sea Land seafood restaurant.
Mindy asked “I wonder if they have walk-in coolers in there?”
“I bet they do” I said “but they’re probably not working now.”
“I’m so hungry now, Dan. The baby is taking all of my nourishment, and we really haven’t had very much to eat anyway.”
“We need to find something,” I said. “And quick – and we need to get you some vitamins.”
“How close are we to Houston?”
“About 70 miles. We probably won’t get there for another day or so.”
We averaged about 30 miles a day, sometimes less. I never could trust the road and didn’t dare drive the motorcycle any faster than 30 mph because I didn’t know if a split would be on the next ripple.
I had my mind set on La Porte, one of the suburbs in Houston. I had no idea why, honestly. I pretty much just picked it out on the map – but it was right on the gulf and I figured there should be some boats there. Why wouldn’t there be?
The next morning, I grabbed a flashlight we found in a house we had gone through days before and we walked under the overpass hand in hand.
I said to Mindy “This overpass must have been built with stronger steel.”
“How come?”
“Because it isn’t collapsed.”
She got a little laugh out of it.
We entered the seafood restaurant. Right inside the entrance there was a large fish aquarium. The fish had all died because the water inside the aquarium had not been cleaned. Moss had caked the entire inside of the glass.
Next to it, lying with his back against the wall was a man with no head. Mindy let out a little scream. This was the first sign of a person we had seen since leaving Alvarado.
With the front door of the restaurant closed, the place grew dark quickly even though the sun was bright outside. I flipped on the flashlight. We cautiously walked through the place.
Strangely, there were a lot of corpses in here.
Some were slumped over tables with their faces in their plates. Others had fallen backward in their chairs. One corpse was lying in the aisle between tables. It was a young girl. It looked like she might have been a waitress because she was wearing a red t-shirt with Sea Land written across the back in large white letters. There was a small notepad next to her too with dinner orders scribbled on it.
One of the walls of the restaurant had caved in causing the ceiling to cras
h down onto some of the patrons. I shined the flashlight up into the rafters as I looked at the damage. No sunlight was coming through the roof.
There was movement next to us. Under a table. Just a small scuffle.
I quickly shined the flashlight toward the noise.
Under a table we saw a young boy. His red hair was mangled. His clothes were filthy. In his hand he held a small dirty toy Tonka dump truck.
“Hey,” Mindy said, leaning down toward him.
“Be careful,” I said.
“It’s ok,” Mindy told the boy. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
The kid didn’t move. He looked like he was about 7. His eyes kept darting back and forth between Mindy and I. Suddenly, he dropped the toy, sprang up and ran behind us. He ran over to a dead woman sprawled backward in a chair. He jumped up into her lap and put his head on her chest.
Her body was badly decomposed. Her head had been crushed by something. The back of her head was basically missing. I could see that this boy had been sitting in her lap a lot. Her body had a depression in it that fit his body perfectly.
We went over to him. Mindy reached for him but he didn’t budge. She went back, reached under the table where the boy had been, grabbed his toy truck, and brought it back over to him. He took it.
“There’s your truck,” Mindy said kindly. “I got it for you.”
“Thank you lady” he said softly.
“You’re welcome.” She looked at me with a smile. “My name is Mindy. My friend here is Dan. What’s your name?”
He was turning the truck over and over in his hands. His fingernails had grown very long. Underneath them, the dirt was thick. “Pete.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Pete,” Mindy said as she hunkered down next to him and his dead mother. She reached out to touch Pete’s head as a gesture of kindness. He let her touch him.
