by Ryan Schow
“I don’t think I can take her,” I admit.
“I’ll do it,” Stanton says.
“I wish you didn’t have to.”
“Someone has to or she’s going to sit there and rot. Or get eaten by coyotes when they figure out they can have their choice of corpses now that people are being exterminated and civility is a formality of the past.”
“Don’t call her that. A corpse.”
“Yeah, but…she’s starting to stink,” Stanton says. He’s not wrong. Then: “Sorry, Sin. You’re right. I shouldn’t be so blunt. It’s just…all this, what’s happening to us, San Francisco, it’s starting to feel like—”
“Where’d the guy go?” I ask.
Stanton turns and looks at the dried-blood smears leading up to a vacancy in front of a garage door that’s also smeared with the same rust-colored stains.
“He didn’t just get up and walk away,” Stanton says. I level him with a frown. “Sorry. I’m just trying to not be so bothered right now.”
“Well good luck with that.”
We scout out a place to stow the bodies. We settle on a row of bushes on the grassy hillside under the shade of twin trees at the foot of The Exorcist stairs that are formally called Arbol Lane for some reason or another. It’s not a lane, it’s an escape route. A serial killer’s shortcut. The perfect movie prop for demons and priests.
Using the better part of an hour, we dispose of the old lady and the two guys Stanton shot yesterday. Stanton drags the little girl and the old lady down, too. He stops three times to gag and once to puke. They really do smell awful.
“If we kill anyone else,” Stanton says, “we’re going to have to find another place to stash the bodies because these bushes are full.”
“This whole hillside is going to reek inside of a day or two.”
“Blowflies and maggots will find them, and eventually we’ll have to burn them,” he replies. “Or not. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next few days? So far, though, it’s not looking promising considering the blue skies are now brown with ash.”
“Will you try not to sound so morose?”
“If we’re lucky,” Stanton says, not even listening, “the coyotes will drag one or more of them off and save us the trouble of a bonfire.”
“If I never think about what you just said for the rest of my life,” I tell him, “it’ll still be too soon.”
As we’re climbing back up the stairs, we hear the rumble of an engine. Motorcycle, not car, truck or drone. By the time we get up top, I see the sport bike and its driver parked in the driveway of the house we confiscated last night.
The rider pulls off his helmet, stretches.
“Is that Rex?” Stanton asks, looking at me. I smile and he looks excited. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
“You needed a good surprise after all the bad ones.”
Rex and Stanton are tight, even though Rex is twenty-three and ex-military and Stanton is thirty-five and a soft money man. Well he was soft. Not now.
Not anymore.
“Hey!” I shout as Rex is getting off his bike.
He sees me, smiles, and we run to each other, into a ferocious hug that lasts forever. I can’t keep him to myself though. Macy is outside now and Stanton is waiting.
The thing about Rex is he’s competent, full of exciting stories and usually the life of the party when there’s a party to be had. It doesn’t hurt that he’s super good looking either.
“Whatcha guys doing?” he finally says, looking at me and Stanton.
“Gardening,” Stanton replies, still not his usual self.
As I’m looking at my hubby, I’m realizing I like him with a bit of scruff on his face and his hair a mess. It’s totally the opposite of what he usually looks like. And Rex? His dark hair is short on the side with a little length on top, he has the same scruff as Stanton (although he’s a few days ahead in growth), and he looks like he’s been working out. Plus, he’s clearly packing. There’s a sawed-off shotgun on the bike, a pistol holstered on his side and a military issue knife strapped to his boot.
“You have any trouble getting here?” I ask.
“Yeah. Plus I’m out of ammo.”
Looking at the pistol on his hip, Macy says, “That thing take nine millimeter rounds?”
He looks at her and grins, like he can’t believe it. “When did you get so grown up?” he asks, looking at her then at me. We haven’t seen him for nearly a year now.
“About fifteen minutes ago. We’ve got a box of fifty rounds if you need some.”
That’s when we hear the shotgun blast and duck. It came from inside the formless three story home we’re staying in.
“What the—?” Rex says.
Stanton and Rex head inside, pushing open the ugly, white, shot-to-crap door. Rex knocks on the first floor door, UNIT A. There’s no answer.
“Hello!” Stanton says. “You okay in there?” Looking at Rex he says, “She’s been crying all night.”
Rex shrugs his shoulders.
“We’re going to come in if you don’t let us know you’re okay!” Stanton says.
Nothing.
Rearing back, he gives the door a hearty kick and it caves around the lock. One more kick and he’s in. Stanton turns around right away, a look on his face. My brother strolls inside.
“Depressed much?” Rex says as he’s looking at the body.
There’s what used to be a girl sitting on the couch, her body flopped backwards against the back cushions. Half her head is missing, the other half is on the walls at a meaty, forty-five degree rake. Macy tried to come in, but Stanton told me to keep her out.
“Go upstairs,” I say.
“I’m not a kid anymore, Mom.”
I turn and level her with my eyes. “You don’t need to see this. Now go upstairs and get your uncle some water.”
Reluctantly she heads upstairs, one heavy, stomping foot at a time.
Inside, the girl is on the couch. Blood-soaked grey matter is drizzling down the wall, which I find disgusting, even as a nurse. On the floor, laid out before her, is the guy who was outside. The dead guy against the garage door.
“Looks like we found the reason for her departure,” Stanton says.
“Mystery solved,” I hear myself say.
“We’ve got ourselves a modern day tale of Romeo and Juliet,” Rex says.
Stanton fires him a look.
Rex once told me he’d counted up all his kills in Afghanistan. He started to cry when he told me they numbered in the fifties, and every single one of them haunted him. The fact that he’s funny and upbeat all the time while holding on to this type of guilt makes me worry about his state of mind. I think it’s an act. The upbeat, life-of-the-party part. I suspect it’s a way for him to conceal the true pain eating him from the inside out.
Lots of ex-military can’t take it anymore so they eat a bullet and call it a life. I pray every night my little brother won’t end up the same way.
Rex starts nosing around the home.
“Guys, I’m not sure if you know this,” he says, “but these people were prepared.”
He’s rifling through cupboards, checking the fridge and the pantry. He steps out into the garage and comes back grinning.
“We’ve got storable food, weapons, ammo and supplies, along with water filters and a bunch of camping equipment.”
“Why would they need all that?” Stanton asks. “This is the city. We don’t have preppers here.”
“Really?” he asks.
On the fridge is an SurvivorsGear.com sticker. In the pill pantry are bottles of Survivor’s Gear products. Some brain clarity product, a male vitality bottle and a black bottle of deep earth iodine.
“That explains it,” Rex says, pointing to the black bumper sticker on the fridge.
“Survivor’s Gear?”
“Yeah. It’s a prepper’s program on the internet. The people who run it are either on point or total nut jobs, but either way, they’re alway
s talking about being healthy and prepared for things like the police state and martial law. Looks like they listened, and thank God because what they have, it’s not going to go a long way between the four of us, but it’ll certainly soften the blow. Not the pills, I mean. The other stuff.”
“They were prepared for everything but the loss of each other,” I say with a heavy heart. I don’t know what I’d do without Macy or Stanton. Probably the same thing the dead girl did. My eyes clearing, I ask, “What should we do with it all?”
“Where are you staying?” Rex asks. I point upstairs and he says, “Let’s get it all upstairs then. Sort through it, start making plans for riding this thing out.”
“Are you staying with us?” I ask.
“Depends on the neighborhood,” he says. “What’s it like? I mean, aside from all this.”
“Quiet. Well today anyway. The drones went through here yesterday.”
“Cool. I’ll find a place nearby,” he says. “Somewhere a little more upbeat than this oversized coffin.”
“Why don’t you stay with us?” I ask.
“The nightmares,” he says, as if that explains everything.
I hear Macy tromping downstairs with a piece of paper in hand. She stands in the doorway, not looking inside because she’s still pouting about not being invited in. A few of us look at her, and that’s when she decides to hold up a handwritten note and say, “I think we have a problem.”
Chapter Twelve
Back upstairs, in the old lady’s place, Macy hands the note to Rex, who reads it again: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO THE OLD LADY.
“What did you do to the old lady?” Rex asks.
“She…she didn’t make it,” Stanton says.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she pulled a rifle on Stanton,” I say, “and when he took it from her, she stepped backwards, tripped on the carpet and struck her head on the coffee table.”
“This carpet looks a whole lot like a hardwood floor,” he quips. Yeah, we get it, there’s no carpet on the floor. No area rug to blame for the owner’s absence from this place and life in general.
“No kidding,” Macy says, arms folded, being playful. She adores her uncle, so I’m pretty sure it’s just posturing so we don’t have to talk about it. We don’t really like to talk about it.
“So this carpet, the one that’s not here—”
“We rolled her up in it,” I say. “Then we sort of…found a place to stash her.”
Suddenly it dawns on him—my smart, resourceful little brother. He gives a knowing grin and looks at Stanton.
“Ah,” he says, “the gardening.”
“Yes, the gardening,” Stanton echoes.
Looking at Macy, pointing to the note, Rex says, “You want me to solve this problem?”
“That would be nice,” I say.
“No,” Macy replies. “I can handle it. I just need to borrow Daddy’s gun.”
“No,” all three of us say at the same time.
“Whatever,” she says before heading out the front door. Seconds later she’s up there banging on the upstairs door. UNIT C, if the pattern follows. Me and Stanton trade worried looks, then both hustle up the stairs to where she’s on the third floor kicking the note-writer’s front door.
“Open up you sissy!” she’s saying. “It’s your pen pal from downstairs!”
Stanton gets to her first, grabbing her by the arm.
“This isn’t the way we do things!” he snaps. “Downstairs, now!” Then to me, he says, “Take her downstairs. I’ll deal with this.”
He moves to the side of the door so whomever is inside doesn’t get the bright idea to shoot through it and catch him in the chest. Macy breaks free of me, tromps downstairs and heads back inside our confiscated home. I hang out a few steps down.
“I’m sorry about that,” I hear Stanton say into the door. He waits to see if anyone is listening. “I don’t know if you’ve been out there, but it’s really bad. All this…nonsense, it’s turning people into, well…versions of themselves they’re not.”
There is nothing but silence. Then a creak on the floor. We both hear it. Stanton lets out his breath, takes another, then lets it out slower.
“We didn’t kill her,” he says. “But by virtue of us coming in here to avoid the attacks going on outside, she is dead and that…I don’t know how to make that right.”
The creaking again, then the sounds of feet walking away.
Stanton looks at me. With troubled eyes, he raises his brow and slowly releases his breath in either shame or dismay.
“It’s okay, hon.”
For the later part of the afternoon, we take the food, water and supplies from the downstairs neighbor’s home. Meanwhile, the bombing continues unimpeded. Although the drones aren’t targeting our neighborhood, we remain on high alert. When we make it through the day without incident, I won’t lie, I whisper a short prayer of gratitude, thanking Him, or whomever is watching over us. God knows we needed the reprieve.
Rex shoves off that night with a bunch of food and water stuffed into his pant’s pockets and the jacket he took from the dead guy’s closet downstairs. As he’s leaving, Stanton pulls him aside and says, “Can I see you outside? For a second?”
“Sure,” Rex says.
“What are you two going to talk about?” I ask, making a very light, very rationed meal.
“Boy stuff,” Rex teases. “No-girls-allowed kind of stuff.”
He winks at Macy and I pray nothing bad happens to him. Growing up, you don’t always like or appreciate your siblings, but as long as your home isn’t some kind of a dysfunctional nightmare (ours wasn’t), then you realize later on in life that maybe you love them and want nothing bad to happen to them. I love Rex like that. I’m glad here’s here. But dammit, I really wish he wasn’t going.
“When you find your home,” I tell him, “make sure it’s really, really close. And stay safe.”
“Copy that,” he says as he and Stanton head outside.
“Love you!”
“Love you too, sis!”
The front door shuts and some crazy part of me almost suffers a panic attack. What if I never see him again? What if something happens? What if—
“Are you alright, Mom?”
Wiping my eyes, going back to my dinner duties, I wave a dismissive hand and say, “Mind your own business. Go to your couch.”
That’s code for go to your room, except she has no room, only three cushions and a stolen blanket.
“I have to use the excretorium first, if you don’t mind.”
Looking up, not sure what language she’s speaking, I say, “What? You need to use the what?”
“The excretorium. The emporium of excrement? Hello…the bathroom. Oh, hell,” she says with a monumental eye roll before going back to the bathroom.
“Just flush twice!” I call out as the door is closing.
The next morning we wake to the sounds of bombing. I wake up freezing, even though we’re in a bed with extra blankets and everything.
I get up, pull back the drapes and two of the windows are broken from the intermittent shaking of the foundation. A few small triangles of glass rattled out, leaving us exposed to the elements. The smell of smoke hangs heavy in the air, but I’m slowly getting used to it and the headaches it’s creating.
There’s a soft knock on the door. I look at Stanton. He looks at me from where he’s at in bed. His three day shadow is a little thicker today, his hair a mess and a half. Before we can answer the door, a note slides underneath it and footsteps hurry upstairs.
I grab it, pick it up and read it. It says: IT’S NOT OKAY.
I’m not sure what kind of juvenile game this person is playing, but I’m not going to be guilt shamed because one old woman failed to survive the apocalypse. Crumpling it up, I throw it in the kitchen where it lands next to the garbage can. By now Stanton is up, pulling a shirt on over his head.
“Are you cold?” I ask.
“No,�
�� Stanton grumbles. He’s rubbing his hair, yawning, looking around the place probably wondering how he’s going to fill his day now that he’s got a roof over his head and no job.
“Well I’m am,” Macy says from under her gigantic blanket.
“Window’s broken,” I tell Stanton.
Stanton throws Macy our blanket which she snuggles into with a welcomed smile. Then there’s another knock at the door, this time not so subtle.
“What now?” I ask.
“Rex.”
I open the door to my brother. He smiles really big, but I know him well enough to know he’s looking for Stanton. They see each other and trade conspiratorial nods. Stanton’s putting on his shoes. So now he’s just a guy in fancy shoes with ash-colored slacks and a semi-clean white button-up, except for where it was exposed under his suit and has since turned gray. He runs a little water through his hair, halfway styles it, then takes a breath and looks at me.
“You look like a GQ model, Walking Dead style.”
“I feel the ‘walking dead’ part.”
“Where are you going?”
“He’s borrowing my motorcycle,” Rex offers. “Going into town to see if your guys’ house is still standing.”
I look at my husband, fold my arms and set my jaw.
“Were you even going to ask me?”
“I have to know,” he explains. Clearly he’s uncomfortable having this conversation in front of both Macy and Rex, but it has to be had.
“You need to be careful,” I say.
“I will.”
“It’s not safe out there,” I tell him, a bit of pleading creeping into my voice. “Will you at least take his helmet?”
“It’ll keep me from having the best possible hearing,” he explains. “If I’m going down there, I’ll need every advantage I can get.”
“I’ll take care of you guys today,” Rex says, smiling like he’s being extra helpful.
“You know Rex, your charm and the apocalypse go together like a fine wine and diarrhea. And we’re not kids. Macy and I don’t need babysitting.”
“I know you’re worried,” he says, taking a step forward. I raise my hand. Yeah…stop means stop. Thankfully he’s got the good sense to halt his advance.
