by Jason Offutt
Terry patted the H3’s right quarter panel. “Looks like these people were ready for what happened,” he said.
“Except the part about not dying,” Nikki said softly.
Arnold stepped into the garage and stood before the wall of guns. “The 12-gauge auto-loader. The .45 long slide, with laser sighting. Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.”
“Hey,” Terry said, matching Arnold’s ‘Terminator’ reference quote for quote. “Just what you see, pal.”
Jenna touched Doug’s forearm, a smile pulled at his mouth from the welcomed tingle. “What do you think they were doing?” she asked.
Doug shook his head. “I don’t know. Probably just survival types, stocking up for the end of the world. People did it for the Hale-Bopp comet that was supposed to be pulling a planet behind it, they did it at Y2K, and they did it in 2012 for the end of the Mayan calendar. Doesn’t mean anything; the world never came to an end, until now. They just weren’t going to let anybody touch their stuff, that’s all. But this map means something.” He turned to Nikki. “These guys have a computer?”
She nodded. “It’s in the spare bedroom on the left.”
“I’m going to find out a little more about our hosts,” Doug said, as he walked up the two steps to the kitchen, and disappeared.
Terry grabbed a case of beer and followed. “Well, come on, guys,” he said. “Let’s put this to good use.”
Three beers into the night, Nikki realized she was smiling. When Terry hooked up the Xbox, he found a Wii installed to the flat screen, the game “Dance Dance Revolution” already loaded.
“Probably for their grandkids,” Nikki said, remembering the computer screensaver of smiling young faces that were most probably lying in a rusty, crusted stain, skin picked from their skulls by a hungry growing fungus. “I can’t imagine the Marstens boogying to ‘Just Dance’.” Nikki paused. She didn’t know the Marstens apart from their wardrobe, their décor, and their corpses. But, then again, she did. She felt she knew them more intimately than anyone else on the planet. “Hey, turn it on.”
Terry grinned like an idiot. “No way,” he said. “We’re dancin’?”
Jenna stood up, laughing. “Uh-uh. I don’t dance, Terry. It’s not happening.”
“Come on.”
“Nope. I’m going to check on Doug.” Jenna stood and walked down the hall.
“That leaves you,” Terry said to Nikki. “You up for ’99 Red Balloons’?”
Nikki looked up at Terry, standing in the middle of the living room. He held out a calloused hand; this man had obviously worked for a living. He seemed nice enough, and was cute in a Larry the Cable Guy kind of way. “It’s been a while,” she said. “But I’m up for it.”
Terry took her hand with surprising gentleness and pulled her onto her feet. “Hell yes.”
Doug sat in a darkened room, the HP monitor bathed his face in soft white. Jenna walked in, and rested a hand on his shoulder. She felt the muscles under her hand quiver. “Found anything?” she asked. Doug turned to find her silhouetted in the doorway. He smiled.
“Yeah,” he said, and stood. “Come here and see this.” Jenna slid into the desk chair. Doug loomed over her shoulder, and moved the mouse. His scent drifted across her nose. Just months ago, this smell of sweat, beer, and cedar smoke may have caused her to wretch, but now it warmed her, excited her. “Check this out.” He clicked on a file marked “Itinerary.” A Word document popped onto the screen.
DateTimeTo-Dos
June 20NoonDrive to KC. Say good-bye to Jimmy, Karla and the kids.
June 218 a.m.Shut off utilities. Change mailing address to PO box in Alliance.
10 a.m.Load Hummer with food, guns, camping gear. Don’t forget photo albums.
Noon. Lunch at the café. Tell Ben to come by and get tomatoes tomorrow.
3 p.m. Close out bank accounts in Allenville. Get three months of prescriptions.
6 p.m. Go to cookout at Johnstons. BYOB. Take German potato salad.
June 225 a.m.Head to Tanelorn.
The last entry was June 22. Nineteen days ago. The Marstens were still here; they never made it to Tanelorn.
“What’s Tanelorn?” Jenna asked. She turned and looked at Doug. He stood behind her, staring intently at the screen. “That’s a strange word. Do you know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Tanelorn is a city in Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series where the heroes go when they die, retire, get fed up with saving everyone. Erekosë, Elric, Hawkmoon …” His voice trailed off, and he looked at Jenna who looked back at him, smirking. “What?” he asked.
“That’s fantasy, right? You read fantasy?”
Doug stood straight. “I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction in high school, yeah,” he said. “I still do, sometimes. I also watch a lot of ‘Star Trek.’ But it’s coming in handy, isn’t it?”
“Don’t get so defensive, nerd boy,” Jenna said, turning back toward the computer. “What else did you find?”
He leaned back over her shoulder, his stubbly cheek grazed hers. “This is the good stuff.” He minimized the Itinerary file and double-clicked a folder on the desktop marked “Tanelorn.” The folder held document files named, “Essentials,” “Food,” “Medical,” “Armory,” “Movie Collection,” and a JPEG called “Home Defense.”
“These guys have a summer home,” Doug said. “In the middle of nowhere, it’s a half-day’s drive away, it’s stocked with everything we need, and it’s armed to the teeth.”
Jenna sat silent, scanning the “Medical” file. “You know they were even prepared to deliver a baby? What were they, like, 80, or something?” She turned the desk chair and faced Doug, the soft light of the computer rendered him gray in the dark room. “What are you thinking?”
Doug stepped back, leaned on the doorframe, and ran a hand through his brown hair, longer than it had been in a long time. “I think we should go to Omaha and try to find people,” he said. “There has to be something there, or at least someone. I can’t believe civilization is just gone.”
“Isn’t it?” she said. “From what we saw in Kansas City, civilization is gone.” Jenna grasped Doug’s hands, her soft warmth calming. “Why are you so sure about Omaha?”
“I’m not sure, but the shelter at Worlds of Fun pointed us there. If that doesn’t work out, we should go to Tanelorn. This place is great, but Tanelorn is a fucking fort, pardon my French. It has its own water, its own electricity, and they stocked it with enough survivalist food for the next twenty-five years. We can wait out whatever else is coming.”
Jenna nodded. “But we could do that here.”
“Yeah, but we found ‘here’. ‘Here’ is open, exposed. If anyone’s driving by now, that big front window in the living room is a beacon in the night. There are no paved roads to Tanelorn, and when you get there, chances are you’ll be electrocuted.”
“What?”
Doug smirked. “You didn’t open the file marked ‘Home Defense,’ did you?” Jenna shook her head. “There’s a perimeter fence, twelve-feet tall and topped with razor wire. A flick of the switch and it goes hot.”
Jenna nodded, she didn’t know what else to do. “You’re probably right, but I’m not going to tell everyone that. I’m going to print all this, and we’re going to talk about it tomorrow. You, me, Terry, Nikki, and Arnold. We’re going to spread everything out and make a decision as a group. We can’t do it tonight.”
“Why?” Doug asked.
Jenna smiled. “Because I think I’m ready to rule Terry at ‘Dance, Dance Revolution.’”
Doug and Jenna walked into the living room to Nikki and Arnold doing the robot to ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’. Jenna giggled. “Go Arnold. Terminate that song.”
He paused and looked at her. “I cannot comply.”
“Me neither. No more dancing,” Nikki said, and dropped onto the couch. “Not tonight. Terry, would you get me another beer?”
Terry grinned and bowed like a stage actor. “Ye
s, m’lady.” As he stood and turned toward the kitchen, something big hit the front window in a wet thud. Everyone turned. A man, his face and hand streaked in red, pressed against the glass, the skin that showed through the blood was painfully white in the tungsten lights. Nikki screamed. The man’s eyes drooped shut and his face slid in a bloody streak down the glass and out of sight.
July 12: Rural Missouri
Chapter 29
The big white RV sat diagonally across the two northbound lanes of U.S. 71 south of Allenville. The Kingsville Police cruiser was partially on the gravel shoulder at the top of a hill about a mile away from the roadblock. Maryanne leaned against the back door of the car and took a swig of Evan Williams from the bottle. It was getting low. Trent stood in front of the car taking a leak; Karl stood on his own in the middle of the road, a pair of Bushnell binoculars, Dooker’s binoculars, pressed to his face.
“Anybody there, Cowboy?” Maryanne asked.
Karl didn’t answer; he didn’t move. A moment later, he pulled the binoculars down to his chest and turned toward Maryanne, the beauty of this mad woman always surprised him. He cocked his head at her expression, a smile like she knew what he was thinking.
“Not that I can see,” he said. “Nothing’s moving down there, but that Winnebago didn’t get in that spot by itself. There’s a deep culvert on the right side of the highway, another drop off to the left, and southbound lanes are stuffed with cars.” He paused for a few seconds and pressed the Bushnell’s back to his eyes. “Somebody put it there as a roadblock.”
“Why?” Trent asked. He zipped his pants, and walked back toward the driver’s side door.
“Don’t know, Beavis,” Maryanne said. “But if someone’s down there, they know we’re up here. I’m sure they heard our car for miles. We have to get past that roadblock, so we might as well go down there and say ‘hi.’”
Trent turned to face her. “And why do we have to do that? If somebody blocked the road, they don’t plan to make good out of it. We can just go back to Kingsville, you can drop me off, and let me be. I can live a long time on the farm. I don’t think I can if we go down there.”
Maryanne stuck a finger in Trent’s sternum, the spot she’d pointed the shotgun back in the Kingsville City Jail, and dug it in. Trent didn’t squirm; he didn’t even feel it because he’d never seen a look like Maryanne’s on a human face. It was alien, soulless, reptile.
“Darryl’s in a town about six miles on the other side of that RV,” she said slowly, calmly, joylessly. “Or he’s going to be soon. And I’m going to be there, too, whether you like it or not.”
Sweat started to bead on Trent’s upper lip. “What’s so God awful important about this Darryl?”
Maryanne smiled and Trent felt the skin on his scrotum tighten. “Because he got away.” She motioned to Karl. “You’d better drive from here on out, Cowboy. Beavis’ gotta earn back my trust. Let’s move.” Karl nodded to Trent and he moved away from the door. Maryanne directed Trent to sit bitch, and she slid into shotgun. Karl eased the cruiser into drive, and slowly crawled down the hill.
A turn of the key and the world became silent. Maryanne, Karl, and Trent stepped from the cruiser and onto the cracked, gray asphalt of the rural highway ten yards away from the RV, the word HAVEN written across the side in red spray-paint. The shotgun and rifle sat on the front seat of the police car because Maryanne said so. She wanted them to look all friendly-like.
When they clicked the car doors shut, people came seemingly from nowhere. Four from the west side of the RV, a half-dozen from the east. They weren’t starving stragglers. These men were well fed, their clothing clean for the most part. All were armed with shotguns and hunting rifles. One jerk off had a samurai sword on his belt. Asshole. Maryanne felt a shiver next to her, although she wasn’t touching anyone. Beavis and the Cowboy were terrified. A grim smile crossed her lips. Pussies.
“We-hell,” a greasy man in a deeply stained death metal T-shirt said, as he stepped from the side of the RV, cradling a deer rifle. “Looky, looky what we have here. A little present.” He beat on the side of the RV once, twice, three times. “Hey, boss. Come look. We got company.”
Maryanne, Karl, and Trent raised their hands, and the door to the RV slammed open. A big man, at least 6’2”, maybe 225, stepped out, smiling through a skinny blond moustache. “Thanks, Danny. You know how much I love visitors,” the man said. Weapons around them cocked as he stepped closer. “Hi, folks. Welcome to Haven.”
Haven? Maryanne’s smile never left her face. She put her weight on her right leg, and a hand on her hip. “Well, that sure is friendly,” she said, her voice velvet. “Now, if you’d move this hunk of shit out of the road, my boys and I have business to attend to north of here.”
“Ha,” the big man bellowed, his laugh deep and more friendly than his face. “Oh, I’m sorry, little lady. Afraid I’m not going to do that. We have a good thing here, and wouldn’t you know it, y’all are now part of our good thing.”
Maryanne shifted to her other leg. “And what kind of ‘thing’ are we talking about? Because it’s not good if you’re keeping me from my business.”
The big man spread his arms wide. “We’re a traveling community,” he said. “A great big happy family, and you’re our new brothers and sister.” He turned to Karl, and Trent. “You fellas are going to work hard for us here at the Haven. Movin’ dead cars, changin’ tires, liftin’ boxes. Then there’s …”
“We ain’t doin’ shit for you,” Trent spat. The big man turned on him, and sent a box-like fist into Trent’s midsection. He collapsed into a sobbing ball on the highway. The men hovering around the periphery stepped closer, but the big man raised a palm and they stopped.
“Anything else?” he asked, and kicked Trent in the ribs before he turned back toward Maryanne, smiling. “You, young lady,” he said, leaning in close to Maryanne, hot rancid breath washed across her face. “I think I have a special job for you.”
Maryanne smiled back. Karl hated that smile; she looked like a hunter, like a shark. He was just glad she didn’t direct it at him. “What’s your name, big man?” she asked softly, seductively. The man’s smile grew bigger.
“Leonardo,” he said.
“Like the painter?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, the Ninja Turtle.” He never took his eyes off hers while he barked. “Donatello, make sure these new gentlemen know their place in their new home.” Only one man stepped forward as Leonardo slipped a tightly muscled arm around Maryanne’s waist and lifted her up toward his face. They may have seen Maryanne reach behind her and pull a .38 from her belt at the small of her back, or maybe not. But everyone saw her swing the pistol around, press it against Leonardo’s temple and pull the trigger, a shower of blood and skull fragments spewed out the side of his ruined head. The report commanded the night. Leonardo’s arm loosened and Maryanne landed on her feet. The big man’s body fell in a wet thud on the highway.
Maryanne looked around at the group of men, Leonardo’s blood splattered across her face. “Looks like I’m your new boss,” she said. “Anybody want to fuck?” Nobody moved. She pointed the pistol at a nearby abandoned car and fired, the rear window shattered. “Are you sure?” A man stepped forward on shaking legs. “What’s your name, bubba?”
“Donatello,” he said.
Maryanne frowned. “No, what’s your name?”
“Darrian.”
“Uh, Donatello’s good.” She waved her pistol toward the remaining men. “Where’s Michelangelo and Raphael?” No one moved. Maryanne fired into the sky. “Where are they?”
“Here,” a voice said. A young, thin man ran around the side of the RV to find a .38 pointed toward his face. He stopped and raised his arms. “Mike’s right behind me. Leo…” He stopped; Leo lay in a heap on the highway, his exploded head in the middle of a pool of blood. “Uh, Leo had us watch out about a mile up the road.” Mike ran up behind Raphael and stopped.
“What happened to
Leonardo?”
“I’m Leonardo now,” she said. Maryanne turned, and addressed the twelve men that surrounded them. “Anybody else here we should know about?” She pulled back the .38’s hammer. “Anybody?”
“Yeah,” the Greasyman said, his voice close to tears. “Got a truckload of slaves ’round back. ’Bout thirty of them.”
“Slaves?”
“It, uh…” Raphael began.
She turned to face him.
“It was Leo’s idea,” Mike finished. “He said it was necessary. We’d need them sooner or later. To move stuff out of the way, to find food, to build shit …”
“For blowjobs?”
“That was Leo’s deal,” Donatello said. “Not ours.”
Maryanne nodded. “Good. Now get your asses in the van and strip down. I got plans for you.” She turned to the Greasyman. “As for you, let the slaves loose. All of them. This guy…” She pointed to Karl. “This guy is in charge when I’m getting recreation in the vehicle with the Ninja Turtles. Tell those poor people they got five minutes to disappear or you’re using them for target practice.”
“But,” the Greasyman started. Maryanne held up her hand, stopping him.
“They’ll just slow us down.” She turned away from the Greasyman and smiled at Karl. “I’ll save you for later, Cowboy,” she said, gently cupping his balls through his jeans. “If you’re good.”
He watched her bounce up the two steps into the RV, hoping like hell those three turtles would kill her before she came back out. He never wanted to be good again.
July 11: Barton, Missouri
Chapter 30
The bloody streak on the front glass gleamed in the light of the living room like fresh paint. The group stood in silence, the drone of Dance Dance Revolution now something far away.
“What the fuck was that?” Nikki whispered.
“A person,” Terry said, setting his beer on a nearby end table before it fell from his shaky hand.
