by Jason Offutt
“Stay away from me,” he screamed. “Stay the hell away from me. These are my pork chops, mine. You can’t have my goddamned pork chops.”
Craig stared at the man. “I don’t want your pork chops, asshole,” he said softly, resting the ax head on his shoulder. “I’m here for beer, and maybe a steak or two. If you don’t fuck with me, I won’t fuck with you. Understand? Comprehendo?” Pork Chop Man stared at him. Sweat ran down the man’s face in the cool, air-conditioned interior of the store. After a few seconds, he nodded. “I do have a question, though,” Craig continued. “What the fuck happened?”
He looked confused. “What do you mean?” he wheezed.
“This,” Craig said, spreading his arms. Pork Chop Man flinched as the ax rose in Craig’s hand. “All this. This mess, the people lying dead in the street with mushrooms growing out of their fucking chests. That pile of burned bodies in the parking lot. That’s what I mean.”
Pork Chop shrugged. “The Piper,” he said. “The Piper came. The Piper’s calling you to join him.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t you ever leave your house?” Pork Chop asked. “Don’t you turn on the TV? The radio? Talk to people on the phone?”
Craig shook his head, resting the ax again on his shoulder. “Not if I can help it.”
Pork Chop laughed, which quickly ended in a fit of coughing, packages of pork chops fell from the man’s arms from the spasms.
“Not if you can help it,” the man spat. “The world is dead. Dead. The Piper, Ophiocordon, a goddamned antidepressant, started killing the fuck out of people. Those assholes made a wonder drug out of a fungus that turns ants into fucking zombies, and it’s eating us – alive.” Pork Chop Man howled with laughter, a line of snot danced from his nose. “And no one can fix it. No one.” He bent and picked up his dropped other white meat. “Enjoy your beer,” Pork Chop said as he straightened and walked past Craig in an arc, keeping out of range of the ax, and scampered out the automatic door.
Dead? Everybody’s dead? ran through Craig’s head, and surprisingly didn’t bother him. That meant maybe Posey and Lilith weren’t playacting. Maybe they were dead, too, sprouting mushrooms like an old stump. The devil is dead. Craig smiled at that as he watched Pork Chop Man dump all that meat into the back seat of his car and drive away. But not everyone was dead. Craig wasn’t dead, neither was Pork Chop Man. Hmm, Craig thought, I wonder if old Pork Chop knew he had a nosebleed?
July 6: Belton, Missouri
Chapter 8
Jenna stood on her toes to hold the deep, green curtains up to the living room picture window. She went flat on her feet, pulled the green curtains down, and stood back, looking at the burgundy curtains that already hung there. The house where they stayed – where the red curtains hung – was just a stroke of dumb luck. Karl had pulled Jenna’s 2011 black Nissan Altima down the long country lane off U.S. 71 just south of Belton, Missouri, and stumbled upon this grand, two story house with a three-car garage and backyard in-ground pool. Better yet, the property was almost invisible from the highway.
“We gotta stop,” Jenna had said a few miles south of Belton, then whined, “please.”
“Why do we ‘gotta stop’?” Karl mocked.
“Because I gotta pee,” she said, pinching her knees together for effect. They’d been on the road from Harrisonville less than a half hour and she already had to stop.
Karl shrugged. “Sure,” he said, taking his foot off the accelerator. “I can see a gravel road up ahead; you can pee there.”
Jenna slapped Karl on the shoulder. “Ow,” he barked.
“I need a bathroom. Eww,” she said. “Find me a bathroom.”
Our relationship will not end pretty if I have to put up with shit like this, Karl thought as he pulled off the highway onto the gravel road and brought the car to a stop, because Karl Derking didn’t take shit from anybody
“I’m not going here,” she said, sinking into the passenger seat and crossing her arms. “It’s dirty. I’m not getting dirty.”
Fuckenheimer. Karl put the car in gear and crawled, as slowly as he could manage, farther down the gravel road, looking for a good place to turn around. Let her piss in her seat. The car topped a rise and the house greeted them like a rich uncle.
“This clean enough for you, princess?” Karl said softly, his eyes taking in the big building. There was even a working fountain out front, with cherubs and everything. A fucking fountain.
That was five days ago. “Which do you like better, the green or the red?” Jenna asked. Karl looked up from a laptop that belonged to the couple that once lived in this house, and grunted. “I’ll take that as the green,” she said and dropped the green curtains on the floor. “Don’t bother to get up. I can change the curtains all by myself,” she said, and trudged into the dining room for a chair.
Five days ago, finding the house with Jenna was a dream with boners. Sure, Jenna wasn’t a centerfold, but she wasn’t ugly, and she’s all he had. Karl scoured the house with Jenna in tow. Holding his rifle like a soldier, he looked in every room, every closet, under every bed. No one was there. Jenna eventually found a note on the refrigerator that read, “We’re done. By the time someone reads this, we’ll be in a better place. Please, take the house and anything you find in it. Use it to stay alive – The Peckinpas.” Karl and Jenna were alone in something that was, to them, a mansion. After showering in separate bathrooms, Karl found steaks in the freezer, potatoes in a plastic bag in the pantry, and a bottle of merlot in the cabinet. An hour later, cleaned, scented, and shaved, they had their first warm dinner together.
“Not a bad meal, huh?” Karl asked. He’d watched her every bite, every chew. Karl had been away from people for so long, he took in her movement, her sound. Until now, he hadn’t realized he’d been lonely. Jenna looked up from her plate and grunted; blood from the medium rare beef ran down her chin. Karl laughed for the first time in a very long time. She wiped her mouth on a linen napkin, stood, walked around the table and slid into a chair at the table next to him. She wrapped her arms around Karl; he shuddered at the closeness of her warm body.
“I’m scared,” she said.
Karl put his arms around her, trying to hide the weakness that suddenly tugged his limbs.
“I’ve taken care of myself for the past month or so. I can take care of you, too. Don’t worry. Don’t be scared.”
“Karl,” she said, brushing her lips against his cleanly shaven cheek. “I want something.”
“What?” came out in a whisper.
Jenna stood, the presumably dead Mrs. Peckinpa’s robe slid to the floor.
“You,” she said, pressing her naked body against him. “I want you.”
“Jenna,” he started before she pressed her warm lips, still bloody from the steak, onto his.
“Shhhh,” she hissed as she pulled off his clothes and climbed on top of him.
Yep. Five days was a long time. Jenna bumped into Karl’s shoulder as she dragged a heavy, wooden dining room chair into the living room. “You could be a gentleman and lay off that stupid computer and help me,” she said, stopping at the couch where he sat and looked over his shoulder. “What’s so freaking important, anyway? Spider solitaire?”
Karl looked up, frowning. “Have you ever taken Ophiocordon?” he asked, looking at Jenna through pinched eyes.
She rested her hands on her skinny hips and frowned. “No. What’s that got to do with anything?”
Karl shook his head. “Probably nothing,” he said, closing a window before Jenna saw it, the headline ‘The Zombie Drug’ vanishing from the screen. “Look, the Internet’s still up. I don’t know how long that’s going to last. If I can just find somebody, anybody, there’s a chance we’ll all live through this.”
Jenna crossed her arms over her chest. “The chances of that are jack and shit,” she said. “We’ve both seen what this Outbreak thing has done to everybody, probably everybody except us. Trying to find som
ebody else is just as silly as you playing with that Porsche out in the garage. You’re never going to do anything with that either.” She paused. Karl glared at her. She never paused. She never fucking quit talking. “I think we’re going to be here together for a very, very, very long time, so let’s start being happy. Now are you going to help me hang these green curtains or what?”
The next morning, the Porsche was gone, and Karl along with it.
Jenna sat at the breakfast table in the kitchen, wondering if he’d just driven into town for something and didn’t want to wake her. Over a bowl of cold Frosted Flakes, Tony the Bear on the cover of the box telling her they were G-R-R-R-E-A-T!, she pulled open the laptop Karl had worked on the night before and got online. Nothing had been updated. Fox News, Hulu, Cracked.com, Facebook. They were all showing dates from two weeks before. She checked her email account; not even spam. Then she noticed a Word file tucked beneath the Google Chrome browser labelled “Jenna.” She clicked the file.
“Dear Jenna,” the letter read. “I’d like to say I’m sorry for leaving, but I can’t. I’m not sorry. You’re fucking crazy. I hope there’s someone alive out there, someone you can travel with, but it’s not me. I advise you to travel. If we found the house, somebody else will find the house. Don’t stay there. I haven’t left you unprotected. I found a .38-caliber pistol and ammunition in the upstairs master bedroom closet. I put it in the middle of the bed. Please take it with you, and be safe. Karl Derking.”
Hmm, Jenna thought. I didn’t know his name was Derking. She closed the laptop, drank the milk and last few flakes of soggy cereal out of the bowl, and threw the bowl against the wall, shards of it scattered across the floor and table. Jenna giggled like Betty Rubble and got up. There was something important in the upstairs master bedroom and she was going to try it out. She’d found a bikini in the chest of drawers a few days ago and she wanted to go swimming.
“Stupid Karl,” Jenna screamed into the cloudless sky as she lay on an inflatable raft floating in the concrete pool, the hot July sun shining down on her, a margarita in her hand. She laughed for a long time.
A few hours later, Jenna determined the Nissan handled better after she’d had a few margaritas. It was late afternoon by the time she got out of the pool, and dark before she ate dinner, packed food for the next few days, and took along a few nice things she found in the Peckinpa house (they had such good taste). The dark didn’t really bother her tonight. Besides, it’s not like she had to drive with her lights on. The bright, full moon shone on Jenna’s part of North America, the long, straight stretch of U.S. 71 she pulled onto from the Peckinpa’s gravel lane glowed blue in the moonlight. She gunned the Nissan and zipped toward Kansas City, the glow of the still working city lights filled the horizon. She hoped to see the Porsche wrapped around a tree, and Karl bruised and bleeding standing on the side of the highway, begging for a ride she wouldn’t give; but she didn’t see it. No Porsche, no Karl. Soon, an exit for a mall went by, then the zoo. She hoped some dying idiot, blood gushing from his face, didn’t let the animals loose as his last act of compassion. As she pulled onto the onramp to Interstate 435, she smiled as she thought of a rhinoceros lumbering across the road, or a … a flash of movement. Jenna slammed on her brakes and pulled the wheel tightly to the left. The movement skittered and danced in front of the Nissan that hit it hard, the thud ran through Jenna’s body. The car’s driver-side air bag popped open, and pinned Jenna to her seat as the Nissan spun to a stop in the middle of the interstate.
She pushed against the air bag, trying to catch her breath that came in quick, heavy gasps. What the hell was that thing? It wasn’t a rhinoceros; too small. It wasn’t a person; wrong shape. As the air bag deflated, and Jenna sat panting, she saw lights. Headlights. And they pulled up behind her. Jenna pushed the slowly shrinking air bag to the side and fumbled for her purse. It had fallen to the floor. Her heart pounded in her chest, so loudly she thought she could hear it. Wallet, sunglasses, phone, gun. She grabbed the loaded .38 and swung toward the door, thrusting the nose of the pistol out the open window.
“Whoa there, little missy,” a calm, genial voice said in the darkness. “We’re all friends here. No need for that kinda hardware.” The voice stopped for a second. Jenna heard a deep breath. “I’m going to turn on a flashlight, now, and show you who we are. Please don’t think I’m just trying to give you a better target.”
“You think that’s a good idea, Doug?” a shaky voice said from the darkness. “I kinda like not getting shot.”
The soft click of the flashlight switch was loud in the empty city night, a yellow light shined into the face of a man in a mechanic’s shirt, the name Doug written across the right breast in red stitching. Jenna thought it was a kind face. “Okay,” Doug said, holding up his other hand palm out. “I’m now going to show you Terry. Terry, are you ready?”
“I think I might throw up,” Terry said in the night as the light washed over him. Jenna thought this face was kind, too, and kind of drunk. Probably so. He held a can of Natural Light. The world either had come to an end, or was seriously swirling down the shitter, and this Terry guy was still drinking Natural Light. Jenna grinned. Terry looked too frightened to be dangerous.
“My name’s Jenna,” she said, and pulled the .38 back inside the car.
“Pleased to meet you, Jenna,” the man with the Doug shirt said, bringing the light back on himself. “We’re up from Paola, Kansas. Nobody’s left there. We’re trying to find somewhere safe.”
“Me, too,” Jenna said through the open window.
“What happened?” Doug asked.
A beer can snapped open to Jenna’s left. She could only assume Terry felt better.
“Well,” she said. “I met this guy named Karl and we hung out for a couple of days, then he dumped me. I …”
“No,” Doug interrupted. “I mean what happened here. To your car?”
“Oh, uh, I hit something. Something big. Not like rhinoceros big, but big.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Jenna said. “Just kinda pissed off.”
Doug smiled. She liked his smile. It seemed natural, genuine, nice. Jenna put the pistol back in her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder. “I’m going to get out now,” she said, and pushed open the door, a few aches in her body from the impact telling her she would be sore as hell in the morning. In the combination of flashlight and moonlight, Jenna could see Doug standing in the highway, as Terry leaned against their pickup drinking a beer. She didn’t think these guys were dangerous, but then again she didn’t think Karl was going to be a complete dick. At least they weren’t like the others she’d seen wandering aimlessly with bloody faces, or the dead ones sprouting mushrooms. “I don’t trust you yet.”
“I don’t blame you,” Doug said, then turned to Terry. “Hey, go see what she hit. It might be a deer. Deer sounds good tonight.”
Terry drained his Natty Light and tossed the can onto the highway before he reached into the bed of Doug’s truck and pulled out an aluminum softball bat. “You got it boss,” he said, and disappeared behind Jenna’s car.
“What’s he going to do?” Jenna asked.
“Finish what you started, for one thing,” Doug said. “Get us supper for another.”
Jenna slid her hand into her purse and fingered the butt of the gun. “What if it’s not a deer?”
Doug smiled again. “What else do you think it’s gonna be? A mountain lion?”
A scrambling in the brush next to Jenna’s car brought Jenna and Doug around. “Boss,” Terry shouted as he ran up the onramp embankment and slid across the crinkled hood of Jenna’s Nissan. “It’s not a deer, it’s a mountain lion. A goddamned mountain lion. We need to go.”
July 6: St. Joseph, Missouri
Chapter 9
Five days. Dad has been gone five days. Nikki walked around the house, picking up Gene Holleran’s things and just holding them; his coffee mug, his old GameBoy (57 years old and he still lo
ved his Tetris), his St. Joe Mustangs baseball cap. She brought the cap to her face and breathed in. It still smelled like Dad. A tear ran down her face; Dad was gone. Nikki had helped Dr. Davault zip him into a black body bag and carry him through the emergency room door of St. Joseph Regional Hospital. They stacked him with the rest. Was his body moving like the others? she wondered. Dr. Davault told her it would, but Gene Holleran wasn’t alive anymore, his limbs just didn’t know it. Something, whatever was killing the infected, kept them going for a while before they dropped. Their brains didn’t know anything; they were dead, but something foreign inside the body kept it moving, trying to go somewhere. Dr. Davault had mentioned something about Ophiocordon and a Southeast Asian fungus, or had he? Nikki drove home crying that night, like she was now, tears streamed from both eyes as she breathed in her father’s scent; sobs came in short, quick bursts. Dr. Davault didn’t know what was going on, but he did know only the people who’d taken the new antidepressant had come down with the Outbreak. One thing he did reassure her of, he told her these walking dead were not zombies.
