“Hey.”
Scott looked up at Lila, chuckling. “They were right.”
“Huh?”
“About Hostess Twinkies surviving a nuclear holocaust.” He plucked loose the snack cake and tore open its brittle plastic wrapping. “That’s what it looks like around here, you know. Like a bomb went off somewhere in the distance and nuclear winter settled in. Unless I’m dead.”
Warren snickered. “You back on that shit?”
Scott took a bite of his Twinkie, surprised at how fresh the thing seemed, the tantalizing taste as he chewed and swallowed, took another bite and chewed and swallowed some more. “God, I’m so hungry,” he said, and then popped the rest into his mouth.
“Yeah,” said Lila. “Me too. What kind of food you got stashed, little man?”
“Just a bunch of canned shit. You know: Spam, soup, sardines. Mostly Spam.”
“Well, let’s get to it.”
“Follow me, sister.”
“What about the car?” Scott asked, already weary from walking, even though they hadn’t journeyed very far.
“It won’t work,” Lila told him. “Even if we had the keys, it wouldn’t start. If it would, it wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“Yeah,” said Warren. “Let’s just get outa here before somebody wanders up and starts some shit.”
Back up the street they went, toward the human barbecue pit Scott most definitely did not want to revisit—fortunately for him, they veered off to the east several blocks before reaching the place. Lila kept an eye on Warren and, Scott, who felt much more secure with a fully loaded shotgun in his hands, kept a watchful eye up and down the street. Once, he thought he saw something moving in the shadows between a couple of buildings they were passing by, but nothing materialized as they continued on their way, and he finally came to believe that after everything he’d been through today, his eyes were simply playing tricks on him. But his hands stayed firmly gripped on the shotgun and his finger wrapped the trigger, ready to cut loose at a moment’s notice. And that was what he figured he would have: a moment's notice before some psychotic freak of nature came swarming up out of the woodwork, or maybe a band of brutes with their spiked bats ready to do God only knew what to Scott and his traveling companions.
They walked up the street a ways, through the dust and swirling ash that seemed to be materializing out of nowhere… past a bus and a van, and a burnt-out shell of a Honda Accord someone had left upended on its side in the middle of the roadway. Scott wondered briefly if it was the same vehicle that had set this whole sorry ball of wax into motion with a tap of its breaks on a congested highway on a blistering hot August day, so long ago now that Scott barely remembered it. What he might do to the guy if he ever got his hands on him, he didn’t know, but walking down this desolate street at the ass-end of the dreary universe he found himself in, he thought he might like to find out.
They followed Warren for another fifteen minutes or so, down the streets and over the curbs as they passed through what appeared to Scott to be a block of long-abandoned businesses: a doughnut shop here, there a dress shop; a jewelry store with a wide-open door, the front window beside it smashed out and nothing at all in the display case it framed. In the distance, the charred and burned-out remnants of a gas station reminded Scott of how bleak his situation was, and for a brief moment his mind went back to how. How could his town have been turned into this?
They had distanced themselves from the shops and were moving along at a steady clip when Warren came to a sudden stop at the entrance to an alleyway. A row of warehouses stood on either side of the narrow, one lane strip of asphalt stretching out before them.
“This way,” he said, and Lila said, “I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“What? What do you think? It’s too narrow, too confined and too many dark doorways. Something happens in there, we might not make it out alive.”
“Seriously,” Warren said. “I go this way all the time. Believe me: this is much better than circling around the main roads. That route, I have run into trouble. Biker boys and trolls, all kinds of fucked-up shit. I dodged it all, but I’m little and I can blend in with the scenery. The three of us, though? Let’s just say I don’t like the odds.”
“Yeah, and I don’t like the alley. Like I said: it’s too confined. And it’s not like we’re defenseless.”
“What? You think you’re the only people packin’ firepower around here? Damn near everybody I’ve run into is. We just got lucky with those behemoth motherfuckers back there. Don’t mean our luck’s gonna hold up, though. Not by a long shot. I know I sure as hell don’t wanta chance it. C’mon, let’s do the smart thing. Down the alley and through a couple of yards and we’re home free.”
Scott didn’t want to go into the ally. There was no telling what might be lurking in the darkened entryways scattered between here and where the thing ended, and, shotgun or no shotgun, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out what was down there. But into the alley they went, Scott chambering a round while Lila freed her weapon from its moorings, and Warren strolled casually along as if he indeed had passed this way before and it was no problem at all. A smattering of dumpster bins lay like miniature barges along the way. Several aluminum trash cans scattered up and down the block stood sentry in front of their darkened doorways.
A distant rumbling brought the trio to an abrupt stop.
“Over here,” Warren said as he ran to the backside of a dumpster, and Lila and Scott followed, the three of them peeking around the flat metal surface as the roaring—which Scott now recognized as the sound of motorcycles—grew closer. The shotgun, and the fact that Lila was beside him, weapon in hand, made him feel safe, as safe as he could feel, anyway, standing in a deserted alley with a hole in his head and a razor-toothed midget, who most definitely would have left him for dead on the side of the road had Lila not happened along. He figured they’d be okay, though. Even if somebody looked up the alley, they wouldn’t see anything—Scott hadn’t seen much when he’d peered into the narrow entrance.
Unless they pulled into the alley.
Might see plenty, then, if they roared down the alley and one of them spotted Scott and his companions, or sensed they were there. There’d be hell to pay then, Scott knew, and as his finger once again snaked through the trigger-guard, he resolved that if there was trouble then let it come. If there was hell to pay, he’d be the Paymaster.
Five riders roared by on their bikes, so fast that Scott barely caught a glimpse of the tricked-out chrome frames supporting their massive girths. But he did get a look at the jackets they wore, the same sleeveless garments he’d seen back at the pit with The Devil’s Own emblem on its back. The Devil’s Own, an apt name for a group of sick and twisted Neanderthals whose depravities included burning women at the stake and happily crunching their charred nipples. A chill went through Scott as the roar of the bikes once again grew distant—if they’d do that to a woman, what in the hell would they do to him?
“Glad y’all followed me in here now, aren’t ya?”
“No shit,” Scott said, and Lila nodded her agreement, the gun resting against her thigh as she turned to look up the alley. “Better get going,” she said, and Warren said, “Yep.” He stepped away from the dumpster and started up the middle of the narrow passageway, Lila and Scott at his heels, both their weapons held at the ready.
“So, Lila,” Scott said. “What’s your story?”
“You don’t want to know my story.”
“Sure I do. I want to know everything I can. I need to know everything I can so I can work out what’s happening here.”
“Look, all you need to know is: right here, right now, we’ve been thrown together in a fucked-up situation, and as bad as it is, if we don’t keep our eyes peeled and our minds sharp, we could end up a lot worse off. A lot worse off. As far as my story goes: I’m not telling you shit about me. It’s a horrible mess and it’s none of your fucking business.”
Lila
quickened her pace, leaving Scott and Warren behind as she hurried up the alley, swiping a hand across her cheek. Scott wondered if she was brushing tears off the jagged scar he’d seen running along her face, and how in the hell the thing had come to be there in the first place.
“Bad,” said Warren, and Scott said, “What?”
“Whatever she did, it must’ve been pretty bad, otherwise she wouldn’t be here. Like I told you back at the pit: all the decent folks are gone and the damned are walking the earth. She’s done something she isn’t proud of. So have I, so have those woman-roasting Devil’s Own pricks—or maybe they are proud. Hell, I don’t know. I do know I’ve done some fucked-up shit I wouldn’t tell anybody about, much less you. What I want to know is: what the fuck did you do to end up in this shit?”
What had he done? If Warren was right and some kind of Rapture had called the chosen flock to Heaven and left the sinners behind, what had he done that was so bad he’d be denied passage? Had his job as a claims specialist sent him into this hell-hole, all the lying and conniving and getting over on ill-informed and inexperienced customers, people who had relied on being treated fair-and-square by one of the nation’s largest trucking companies, only to find themselves snagged on the shit-end of some asinine corporate policy, holding hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in liability for freight American had damaged, or flat-out lost? Thou shalt not steal. Well, Scott may not have stolen, but he and his mealy-mouthed bullshit excuses had put a dent in many a person’s income. Or was it what happened back on the Interstate? Surely beating that guy on the side of the road hadn’t sent him here. Hell, the guy shot him, for chrissakes. Maybe it was the women. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Like nobody ever did that shit. Just him and about a billion other guys roaming the planet. And there were just two… Those were the thoughts running through Scott’s head when a trashcan rattled and the shotgun rose up, Scott firing before he even knew what he was doing while Warren took off running with Scott dead on his heels, the shotgun blast ripping away a patch of aluminum leaving an old black guy who’d been hiding behind the receptacle shouting, “WHAT THE FUCK!”
Chapter Five
Up the alley they ran, Warren and Scott in front and Lila following, Warren’s short legs furiously pumping, as Lila said, “What happened?” and Warren panted out, “Fuck if I know. Something moved and he started blastin’. No way I was waiting around to... what? Get my ass shot off?”
They were away from the buildings and heading west, following Warren as he jumped a ditch and hauled ass across a field of scorched grass. Scott, his breath coming in short staccato blasts, began to fall further and further behind. Finally, he stopped, watching Lila chase the midget through the field and over to a chain-link fence. Warren leapt upon the fence and started to climb, but Lila grabbed his shoulder and ripped his clutching fingers away from the wire-work of the latticed fence. His feet hit the ground as he staggered backward and fell sprawling to the ground.
“What!” he shouted. “What, goddamnit!”
“Just wait a minute.”
“What’dya mean, wait a minute? For what?”
“We go over the fence together,” she said as Scott began walking toward them. “All three of us.”
Lila stood over at Warren, both of them watching Scott make his way through the scorched grass. She brushed her long black hair over her shoulder, slipped the pistol into its holster, looked down at Warren, and said, “How much farther?”
“Couple of streets over and we’re there.”
“Just so you know: you lead us into a trap, anything happens that shouldn’t—anything at all—I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head.”
Warren, still sitting on the ground, glanced up at Lila. “Look,” he said. “All I wanta do is get some grub and lay low for a while. In case you haven’t noticed, we came about a cunt hair away from twirling on a goddamn spit this afternoon. If it hadn’t been for Hero over there…”
“The fuck were you doing to him, anyway?”
“What do you think?” Warren said as he got to his knees. Brushing dirt off his rump, he stood up just as Scott reached them.
“Thanks for waiting,” Scott said, and Lila said, “No problem. Two’s better than one and a half.”
Scott chuckled, and Warren gave his head a disgusted shake. He looked up at Lila, baring his teeth, an obvious smirk of a parodied smile. The sight of those razor-sharp choppers sent a chill down Scott’s spine, as once again he pictured them clamping down and sucking on his wound, which is what Scott figured was about to happen when Lila showed up. What else could’ve happened, the way the rat-faced bastard ripped his bandage away and sank those fingers into his scalp?
“You okay?” Lila said, and Scott said, “Yeah.”
“What happened back there?”
“I don’t know. I heard a noise and freaked out. Next thing I know the gun’s going off and some poor bastard’s screaming bloody murder. He was probably as scared as I was, hiding out and hoping we wouldn’t see him, and I damn near killed him anyway.”
“Well,” Lila said, peering out across the field toward the warehouses they’d left behind, “doesn’t look like anybody followed us. Let’s get going before something else happens.”
“About time,” Warren said. He grabbed the chain-link fence and Lila grabbed him by the wrist. “Me first, then you. Then Scott.”
Warren shrugged and took a backward step. “Whatever,” he said as Lila flung her knapsack to the other side. She hooked her fingers through the fence. Moments later she was up and over and scooping up her sack, hanging it around her shoulder while Warren scaled the barrier.
Then it was Scott’s turn. He stood before them, clutching his shotgun and looking at them through the fence.
“Toss it over,” Lila said.
Scott heaved the shotgun over the fence, into Lila’s waiting arms. A moment later, he carefully swung first one, and then the other leg over the sharp, upward pointing tines of the fence.
Once on the ground, Lila returned his weapon, and the three of them resumed their journey to Warren the Rat Boy’s stash house, and true to his word, a couple of back yards and a couple of streets over, Scott found himself following Warren and Lila into the yard of a yellow and beige trimmed building. A picnic table sat dead center behind the place, four or five yards from two windows set into the back wall of the house. Further into the yard was a swing set with a ladder and a slippery-slide attached to it. Curtains fluttered in the breeze blowing through the open windows, into the dark interior of the house. Scott wondered about the children. Where were the happy children who had once frolicked on those swings? What had become of the parents? But most importantly: what had become of the children? According to Warren, the Rapture had come and gone and all the good things had left with it. All the decent and law abiding people… gone. The cats and dogs and birds and bees… all gone. And the children. Where had they gone? Heaven, if you believed Warren, but why would anybody believe that freaky-looking son of a bitch?
“This way,” said Warren, and Scott followed him and Lila around the side of the house, up a walkway of flat, round stones placed several inches apart. An arched doorway stood midway along the side of the house. A light layer of whatever had been swirling in the air covered the decorative aluminum awning hanging above the raised concrete platform that stood directly in front of the doorway.
Whatever had been swirling.
Scott suddenly realized that nothing was swirling through the air, that somewhere along the way it had simply stopped, like a dissipating snowstorm that had finally ground to a halt, so casual of a circumstance that no one had noted its stoppage.
Warren gave the door a push and it creaked open. “This is it,” he said, and then led Lila into the dark, Scott hesitating as Lila called out, “Scott, c’mon! What’re you doing out there?”
Scott didn’t want to go inside, but Lila was right: what was he doing out here? What? Was he going to run off and end up back where he’d star
ted, all alone in a fucked-up nightmare of a world with God only knew what waiting just around the corner? And then what, satisfy the gnawing feeling in his gut with a mouthful of dirt and ash? Fight off a bunch of crazies and bizarre freaks of nature until he ran out of ammo and they tore him apart? Or maybe they’d keep him alive long enough to lash him to a spit and spin him round and around over a raging fire like a human sausage, until his skin split open and his life’s blood ran sizzling into the flames.
Scott stepped inside to find himself in front of a bookcase loaded top to bottom with paperbacks and hard covers alike, the light filtering through windows at the opposite end of the room much too dim to allow him to make out the titles, or the author names decorating the spines. Beyond the bookcase was a kitchen, which led into another, larger room, which Scott presumed to be the dining room. Billowing curtains danced beyond the end of a rectangular table that stood in front of an open window in that room. One high-backed wooden chair sat askew at the end of the table, two more faced each other at the table’s middle. The mouth of a hallway stood dark and foreboding at the far edge of the kitchen. Next to Scott was the back side of a bar. Below that, a couch, and a coffee table on which sat a telephone, and a lamp with an off-kilter shade. On the opposite side of the room was a La-Z-Boy recliner with a lamp and table of its own. In front of the two open windows at the opposite end was a big screen television with free standing speakers on either side of it. A dead neon Coors beer sign decorated one wall while the opposite wall hosted pennants and flags of various sports franchises. Centered in the middle of a Miami Dolphins and an Atlanta Braves pennant was a basketball poster: LeBron James throwing down a two-handed jam over a cowering seven-footer Scott recognized, but whose name he could not recall.
THE DAMNED Page 4
