by Sweet, Dell
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.
Watertown NY: Johnny
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 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.
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 flicked the headlights on and 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. Johnny 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, the tire tracks on the sides of the road.
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 had become 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 Chevy 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, paint-peeled 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. Johnny jammed the gas pedal into the floor board and the old Chevy 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. Johnny instinctively released the gas pedal and jammed his foot into the brake pedal while working the wiper switch. The old Chevy shuddered in protest and began to slide down the road.
The windshield cleared as it 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.
Johnny drew a deep breath into his lungs as his own 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. Johnny could see his yellow and crooked teeth, from where he sat in the truck as he grinned. Two other faces moved beside him, white blurs in the dim light. 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, Johnny thought. The kid raised his rifle and pointed it out the window at Johnny.
“Hey! Get outta that fuckin' truck, man. Come on, man, get outta there right now!”
Johnny 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, Johnny saw, which was completely ridiculous. It was a shot of twenty, twenty five feet. You could do that with your eyes closed. Unless...
Johnny swung the rifle up fast and popped off a shot aimed at the kid at the outermost edge of the hood. The kid flipped backwards with a surprised look on his face. 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. It was a game to them. They had no idea what they were doing. They were playing roles in a movie they had seen once, something like that, Johnny told himself. He had become convinced that they could see nothing of him staring into his headlights. He squeezed off his shot, aiming carefully and the kid dropped the rifle he had been holding and stepped quickly backward, clawing at his chest and then disappeared from sight.
Had it been him he would not have made that mistake. He would have realized how much of a target he was, but these were just kids, babies, no more experience in life than a few years and a couple dozen action films. Even so a kid could kill you every bit as dead as a full grown man could, he told himself.
The dark-haired kid in the truck finally raised his rifle and aimed at him. It was almost funny, Johnny 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 Johnny'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.
Johnny 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 a few seconds later as the tires began to bite into the pavement, producing a high pitched scream. Johnny 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 Chevy 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. Johnny 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, Johnny 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. The wind and rain was a heavy roar through the open door. Johnny 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.
Johnny mashed the brakes on the Chevy 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. Johnny stepped cautiously from the pickup, and continued to watch as the truck burned.
He was still watching in horror a split second later 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. Johnny 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. Johnny shifted into first and drove quickly away.
He pushed the truck hard until he arrived in the city; 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 darkened, 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 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 limped to the awning covered sidewalk that fronted the strip mall and 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 when he pulled in, to the left of the store, and he set off toward it now to replace the bloodied and torn jeans, keeping to the sidewalk, dodging the rainfall where the awning was ripped and tattered.
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, hearing a generator kick on in the far distance as he let the door swing shut.
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.
ELEVEN
Johnny
Watertown NY: October 22nd
The moon is blood red, stained by sunrise which can't be too far away now. I have heard some noise outside from the dead. It's almost a relief to hear it, makes me know they haven't somehow gotten in and are right now sneaking up on me from the basement or something.
I am sick... I don't want to think about that though, I don't....
In Watertown, a few days of rest made a huge difference in how I felt and my leg had responded as I had hoped it would. It was still stiff, something was wrong in the knee, maybe, still is, but I could walk and the more I walked the better I felt. I sat in a chair on the front porch of a house I had moved myself into, drank hot coffee and watched the snow melt and drip from the trees: It had snowed overnight, but once again it was warming.
I had found a truck in the parking lot of the store I was in, managed to get it started and driven it out toward the suburbs. This house had seen better days, but it was still standing, no worse than any others I had seen. It sat a little apart on its lot, and the doors front and rear were steel units. That is what had attracted me to it. It looked defensible to me.
I had seen no one. Not even signs of anyone. Nothing. Bodies, smoke, nothing. Winter was coming and the entire town was covered with snow. I had driven to the top of State Street hill and looked out over the city. Dead. No footprints in the snow. Nothing, and that seemed all wrong. There should be people. What had happened to all the people that had lived here? Had they left? Something else?
There were no clear answers. I had driven back to this place, stopping at a few stores on the way, searching out food and medicines and dug in. There was an old wood stove that had been used to heat the basement. A little work and I got it going. There was a cord of wood that had been stacked outside the back steps that led down into the basement.
The wood stove had heated the house up fine. I spent a few hours looking over the house after that. It was rough. The foundation was cracked and had dropped about eight inches on one side. The house was leaning, but still solid. Maybe a few years of leaning would take its toll. Maybe the next earthquake, if there was one, but for now it was stable, and that was all I cared about.
I had taken another dose of antibiotics, along with three aspirin, and had fallen asleep on the couch in the basement and slept for... I don't know how long, but time didn't really matter a great deal. I slept a long ti
me. I woke to take more water, antibiotics and aspirin. I had finally awakened with the headache and the buzzing gone, the swelling in my leg lessened, and the redness mostly gone when I redressed the two wounds. I took yet another dose of the antibiotics, skipped the aspirin, and restocked the wood stove before I ate a breakfast of canned meat and powdered eggs made on the top of the glowing wood stove.
I had been sitting there trying to figure out what to do. Something, maybe while I had slept, had worked its way into my brain and it would not leave. What if, my thoughts had asked, What if Lana was not dead? What if she had survived? Wouldn't they have wanted to keep the women alive?
It troubled me, because how could I know the truth of it? I had been badly injured, I had looked around, but right then, in the clear light of a day removed by several days of rest I couldn't be sure what I had done, what I had looked at, how well I had searched. Whether she was there, gone, dead, alive. There was no way to know, except... Well, except to go back and find out, my mind had supplied.
I had sat there sipping at the hot coffee looking for reasons to ignore the thought that had just seemed to drop in on me, but I couldn't. I had to go back. I had to be sure. And it wasn't just about Lana, maybe she was gone, maybe she wasn't, but what about the others? Could I really have been the only survivor? Had it been their plan to kill us all or were they looking to take the men out so they could get to the women? That seemed more logical. And yes, there were bones, I remembered, blackened and burned by the fire, and body parts. I could see them vaguely in my mind, but I saw no faces. I saw nothing that convinced me they were all dead, in fact the longer I thought it out, the clearer it became that they had to be alive, at least some of them. I had most likely survived because I had appeared dead. I must have appeared dead. Hell, I had been halfway to dead.
I had sighed, leaned forward, and the legs of the chair had dropped back down to the floorboards of the porch with a loud band. There was nothing for it and no reason to put it off. There was nothing here. This town was dead. Dead as dog shit, as they used to say. I had to leave anyway and I had no intention of heading east so west it would be. And Rochester was west.
