"Then we'll have to go," April said. "We'll have to go right now."
"We have a little time," Billy said. He thought for a few minutes. "We need a truck... An SUV. Yeah, an SUV is closed in and we can put everything in there with us. We need to buy one... With cash... Maybe get the paper and find a used one for sale by owner... Take the plates off my truck and put them on it... Leave my truck somewhere where they won't find it right away," Billy said.
"Can we do it from the road," April asked. “You're scaring me a little. Maybe we should already be gone.”
"Yeah... We can... Should... C'mon, let's get the truck loaded and get the hell out of here." He jumped from the bed and April's hand caught him as he did.
"Are we going to be okay?" she asked. Her eyes were bright. Her voice shaky. She pulled herself to him from across the bed as he stood there and hugged him. "I'm scared," she said.
Billy was so surprised that he couldn't react for a second. "I won't let anything happen to you," he told her. He sank down onto the bed as her hands pulled him, body pressed against hers. He could feel her breasts pressing against him. The little hard and soft parts of her body. She looked up at him. "You promise?" she asked.
"I promise," he told her.
She looked at him a few seconds longer and then kissed him softly. It just seemed to go on forever to Billy and even though he hated himself for it he felt himself grow hard. He couldn't help it. She looked back up and smiled. She shifted and her body pressed a little more firmly against his erection.
"We'll take care of that later," she said, "Okay?"
Billy nodded and reluctantly let her go when she pulled away. He fell back against the bed for a second as she began getting everything ready to go. A half hour later the truck was loaded, a tarp tied down across the back and they were driving down Lott road toward the main highway. The money in the suitcase between them.
Gabe Kohlson
Watertown New York
Jefferson County Transfer Station 2
Gabe Kohlson came around slowly, his hands clutched tightly across his face.
They had gone for the eyes. Gulls. They were everywhere here. Thousands of them.
Fuck that! They had gone for all sorts of things, but he couldn't protect it all. Without eyes you couldn't see, even an idiot knew that, and so he had protected those and let them have the rest. The hands were in bad shape, he could feel that.
He could also tell that it was morning, or close to it, the red screen beyond his eyes, beyond the hands that covered his eyes, told him that, but the hands had done their job. He had probably passed out. Stayed gone until this morning. If he could see that red screen, then he could see, and so if the hands were a bit ripped up it was worth it.
The rest of his body hurt too, it wasn't just the hands, but he supposed he should still be grateful, after all he hadn't expected to live through it. He had been sure she would kill him when she had come for him and Johns, and so if he hurt a little, even if he was banged up pretty good, at least she hadn't killed him. He removed his hands, but left the eyes closed.
Ah, yes, the redness was brighter, not much brighter, but it had been fairly damn bright to begin with, he opened them slowly, one at a time, and...
...He looked up into a clear, blue sky. Not a cloud in sight anywhere. Stunningly beautiful, absolutely beautiful, especially since he hadn't expected to ever see it again. One lone bird up there, circling in all that blue, looked like a buzzard for sure, but even that didn't break the spell. He'd probably been laying here, unmoving, all morning long, and so the buzzard had obviously assumed he was a goner. Fuck that though, once he was up and moving, Mr. Buzzard could take a walk. No free meal for him today, Gabe Kohlson assured himself.
He tried to sit.
Well, maybe not totally unhurt, he told himself. He could feel his legs, but they didn't seem to want to move for him.
Don't panic, he told himself, keep a cool tool Gabe, probably broke 'em, or something like that, is all.
He tried to lift his head. It didn't budge. It didn't even try to budge.
Fuck!
Hey, hold on, your hands work, right?
"Yeah,"Gabe said aloud, in a buzzing-whisper. He hadn't meant to whisper, in fact he had meant to shout. The buzzard was dropping lower, and he thought a shout might send him along. Let him know for sure that Gabe Kohlson was not road-kill, but his voice didn't seem to be working all that well. The hands...?
He brought them up from his side and looked closely. Blinked, and looked again.
They were fuckticated big time. Really fuckticated. They weren't really hands anymore either. They were really nothing more than bones, tendons, and a few stringy runners of flesh.
Apparently they had suffered a little more than he had thought they had, apparently they had suffered greatly, and apparently they had not suffered alone.
Gabe Kohlson had always thought there was just one great big long bone that ran up a persons arm from the wrist. He saw now that he had been wrong. There were two, and not great big bones like he had thought either, pretty skinny thin ones, and... And how was it that they could be this bad and still move, Gabe? How could that be?
A shadow slipped across his face, before he could think of an answer, and he dragged his attention back to the sky above.
Mr. Buzzard was coming down quick. No more than ten feet off the ground now, and circling like a mad bastard as he spiraled downward. Gabe jammed his fingers under the back of his head and tried to lift it. It came, but barely. He could move the fingers, but apparently there was no real strength in them. It came up enough though, enough to get a good peek at the rest of him. He quickly let go of his head, and it cracked back down to the ground. He was lying on a mound of garbage. A huge mound of garbage... County Dump? Transfer Station? Maybe. And that was bad, but his body was worse. He quickly pushed what he had seen away.
His swiveled his eyes to the left. Mr. Buzzard had apparently been cleared to land over there. He glared back at Carl with his beady little buzzard eyes and strutted importantly, purposely, towards him.
Gabe had gotten a good peek while he had been holding his head up, and, wasn't Mr. buzzard really wasting his time?
He was, the small little voice inside him agreed, and Gabe had to agree right back. He had seen in that little peek that there was nothing there for him to eat, somebody, or maybe several somebody's had beaten him to it, and so how could he disagree.
There was nothing but bone below him, at least what he could see. White bone, gnawed bone, several types of bone, but it was all bone, and there was ...
The buzzard was standing over him now, and Carl really didn't like the way the son-of-a-bitch was looking at him, not at all.
"Get," he whisper-croaked.
No good. The buzzard, Gabe was afraid, had noticed that there was some left. Maybe not the good stuff, maybe not even the best stuff, but still...
A quick blur of movement, and suddenly, painlessly, the left eye stopped working. He could see why too, the son-of-a-...
Another quick blur...
It was dark now, totally and utterly, no redness, no anthing, but he could still feel that little son-of-a-bitch staring at him up there, and the last thing... The last thing he had seen was his own...
Ouch! Oh you bitch, you no good...
Richard Pierce
Project Bluechip
Far below the small city of Watertown New York, Richard Pierce sat working before an elaborate computer terminal. He had just initiated the program that managed the small nuclear power plant hidden deep below him in the rock. A small handset beside the computer station chimed, and he picked it up and listened. He did not speak at first, but as he listened a smile spread across his face. "Very good," he said happily when the caller was finished, "keep me advised." He set the small handset back into its cradle and turned his attention back to the screen in front of him. The plant had powered up just as it was supposed to, no problems whatsoever, and that made Richard Pierce ext
remely happy. Two more weeks tops, he thought, and then maybe I'll get out of this dump.
He supposed he should feel honored that he was even here. It was after all one of the biggest projects in the country, albeit top secret, but he could not help the way he felt. He was close to a mile underground, totally cut off from everything and everyone, and he hated it. If he had a choice, which he had not, he would never have come at all, but he had written the software that handled the power plant, as well as several other sections of the underground city, and that made it his baby. There were a couple of small bugs, mainly due to the fact that no one had been allowed to know what the entire program was supposed to do. The way the rewrites were going however, it looked as though he would not be stuck here anywhere near as long as he had originally thought, and that was something to think about. He had begun to feel that he would never leave this rock bound prison, and wouldn't that be a real bitch.
FOUR
Rochester New York
Friday afternoon
"It's the right straight ahead," April said. "She looked back down at the directions she had written down.
They were on Lyell Avenue in Rochester New York looking for a street that would take them away from downtown. The used car lot they were looking for would be right on the corner.
"Take the next right... That was the right, right behind us. The car lot must be close to here," April told him. She twisted and looked back shaking her head.
Billy made the next corner and then the next right again to take them back to the avenue.
They both looked from the corner, but saw nothing.
"I don't know, but there's one down that way," Billy said. He pointed further down the street to where there were two used car lots right across the street from each other.
April sighed in exasperation. "Might as well, I guess this guy doesn't care enough about our money to give us good directions." April had spent ten minutes talking to the guy on the phone already. She picked up the prepaid cell phone they were using, one of half a dozen: The clerk had looked at them like they were crazy. She turned it on and called up the recent-calls readout.
Billy continued down the street and pulled into one of the car lots. Bob's Easy Auto, the sign over a small trailer office said.
"We're on Lexington Avenue," April was saying. "Bobs Easy Auto... All there are..." She twisted around and looked back toward Lyell Avenue. "All I see is signs, no cars, nothing. No place to park even... Across from the corner... You said on the corner... I thought you said on the corner," she said.
An old guy walked over from the trailer and knocked on Billy's window.
"Help you kids?" he asked. He smiled, the kind of perfect, white square-toothed smile his grandmother had always smiled with her plastic dentures.
"We're looking for 'Denny's Auto Body,'" Billy told him. "A Jeep Cherokee they have for sale."
The guy nodded. "Well it's good for you that you stopped here instead. That old bastard buys wrecks, fixes them up, doesn't even tell you. You could be buying anything." He stared at Billy.
Billy heard April in the background.
"Has that car ever been wrecked," she asked into the cell phone.
"Sure, honey, ask him," the old guy said. "Junk. Pure and simple.”
"It hasn't?" April asked into the phone.
The old guy scoffed. "Tell him you want a body-man to take a look at it," he said wisely and winked at April.
"Would you care if we came and picked it up and let a body guy look it over?" April asked. She listened for a few minutes and then simply closed the phone.
"He had a few choice words for you," April said. "You must be Bob?" she asked.
"Robert Robello," the old guy said. "At your service."
"Might as well pull in, honey," April said smiling.
"Might as well," the old guy said and nodded at Billy.
Billy pulled in, parked his truck, got out and stretched his legs. It was early afternoon, they had just driven three hours straight. This was the first time out of the truck.
"Miss...?" Robert Robello asked her.
"April Evans," April said.
"Well, April, and...?' He looked at Billy.
"Billy," Billy told him. They were supposed to be playing it like they were husband and wife. She should have said Jingo.
"So it was a Jeep Cherokee... Late model? Anything else that might come close?" the old guy asked.
"We had called on the price," April said. "And then we went and got the money from the bank... We're kind of on a tight budget," she said and smiled.
"I'm used to working with budgets..." He paused waiting for April to tell him the amount, but she stayed silent.
"You'll be trading in the pickup?" he asked.
"No... I need the truck for work," Billy told him.
"So a Sport-Ute... Does it have to be a Jeep? I ask because I got this really nice blazer and a low mileage Nissan... Wanna take a look at them? I do have a one owner Commander with low mileage... Big V8 though, kind of hard on gas the way things are," he apologized. He was walking as he talked and they followed along behind him a few spaces. Billy did not want to get too far from the truck. Finally, he turned back and walked back to the truck. Started it and pulled up close to the building and then locked it up before he came back to them.
"He really likes that truck," April said to Robert's raised eyebrows.
"I can see. Well, loyalty is good... I could give him a good price for it though... Help you folks out. Pickup trucks are in demand. Even though it's rough," he told her. He had pegged her as the head of the relationship. The one who made the decisions.
"He'd never let it go," she said. "It was his dad's," she decided spur of the moment.
Billy walked back over. "Sorry," he said, “it's just that..." April cut him off.
"I told him it used to be your dad's, honey," she said.
"Huh," Billy said. He focused on Robello. “Yeah.” He spread his palms out in front of his body pointed at the ground. “He's passed on.”
"I understand the deal," Robello said and nodded solemnly.
They ended up choosing the commander. It was really the same thing as the Cherokee they had been interested in when it came to space, only this one had the benefit of the big V8 motor.
"So it was Billy and April Evans?" Robello asked.
They both nodded as Robello pulled out the paperwork. I can send my guy for the plates if you can get proof of insurance," he looked at his watch. "There's time." He looked at them.
"I didn't think about the insurance. I thought we'd drive it home and worry about it tomorrow," Billy said.
"We just moved down here from up north. I don't even know an insurance agent here," April added.
"I got a guy a lot of my customers use," Robello said. "Cash up front for three months fee and you're on your way... I can call him, get his guy to bring around the insurance cards," Robello told them. "Say the word and I'll call him."
A few minutes later and it was done, another $1100 which someone was there to pick up in just a few minutes. Shortly after that his own man was off to the DMV office.
Billy and April stood and watched the traffic go by while they waited. They drank cokes from the machine outside of the dealership.
"We're not far from Lake Avenue," April said.
"Ben Neo... Sounds like a fake name, doesn't it?" Billy asked.
She nodded. "But it's what I put down for the address for the registration and insurance."
"I don't know if it's smart to go by there," Billy said. "Who knows? Maybe he's got a girl... A wife... Kids... Dogs. Maybe the cops are there already too," he said.
"Maybe, maybe not," April said. "Wouldn't hurt to look, would it?" she asked.
Billy looked at her. "We have all the money we could ever use. Too much... And the drugs and pot to get rid of too. Why do you wanna go?"
"Just to see how a dude that makes deals like that lives, I guess," April said.
"I guess we could dr
ive by... See how it looks," Billy agreed at last. "But no stopping unless it looks really good. Even then I don't know."
"I just wanna see how it looks," April said.
Robello walked out of the office as his guy, a skinny pimple-faced kid got back and pulled onto the lot. He handed the kid a screwdriver so he could put the plates on the Commander.
A few minutes later Billy was following April as she made her way through the late afternoon traffic and onto Lake Avenue.
~
The house was nondescript and set back from the street on its own. The driveways on both sides of it were empty. They drove by twice before April pulled into the driveway. Billy had no choice but to follow her in. He locked the truck and got out. She met him coming from the Jeep. "Nobody's here," she said.
"This is crazy, April. What do you mean nobody's here? You can't see inside! Could be a dog, wife, girlfriend. Could be that some dude across the street looks after his place while he's gone," Billy said.
"There's a dude across the street watching the place?" April asked. She looked comically across the street, hiding behind his arm, looking frightful. She smiled. "It's a city. Nobody cares who does what or who they do it too. There's nobody here. Let's just go in for a few minutes... Just to see," she said.
"I must be nuts," Billy said.
"It would probably help to be with me," April said. "Well?" she asked.
"Maybe the key won't fit," Billy said.
"Maybe," April agreed. She walked right over to the front door and rang the doorbell. The chimes sounded loudly somewhere inside. She waited and tried again before she pulled the brass key from her pocket and slipped it into the lock. It slid in easily and April turned it unlocking the door.
"I don't like this," Billy said.
"Oh don't be a baby," April said. "Come on. Anybody asks, we're friends who stopped by to water his plants." She boldly stepped inside and Billy closed and locked the door behind them.
Across the street
Marion
Marion Winters leaned back away from her window across the street as her husband Fred walked in from the kitchen his first drink of the afternoon in his hand.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 148
