“You think any of them have gas in them?” Brian turns in a slow three-sixty, taking in the whole of the showroom.
“We got our pick of the litter, sport.” Philip nods toward the rear of the room, past the sales counter and desks and shelves brimming with parts. “They got a workspace back there with a garage out back … we can siphon fuel into any one of them things easy enough.”
Penny stares emotionlessly at the banquet of chrome and rubber. She has the Hello Kitty pack strapped securely to her tiny shoulders.
Brian’s head is swimming. Contrary emotions crash up against each other like whitecaps—excitement, anxiety, hope, fear. “Only one problem,” he utters under his breath, the weight of his anguish and uncertainty pressing down on his shoulders.
Philip looks at his brother. “What the hell’s the problem now?”
Brian wipes his mouth. “I have no idea how to work one of those things.”
* * *
They all have a much-needed laugh—nervous, brittle laughter, perhaps, but laughter nonetheless—at the expense of Brian. Philip assures his brother that it doesn’t make one lick of difference that Brian has never ridden a motorcycle—a “retard” could learn it in two minutes. More importantly, both Philip and Nick have owned hogs over the years, and the last time Philip checked, there was only four of them, so the two nonoperators can ride along on the saddles.
“Faster we get outta A-T-L, the better chances we got with no guns,” Philip says minutes later, rifling through a rack of leathers in the rear corner of the store—jackets, trousers, vests, and accessories. He chooses a bomber-brown Harley jacket and a pair of heavy-duty black boots. “I want everybody changed outta their wet clothes and ready to go in five minutes—Brian, you help Penny.”
They get changed as the rain eases up outside the big windows. The street corner crawls with shambling figures now—scores of frayed, tattered souls, some of them scorched from the explosion, others in advanced stages of decomposition. Faces are starting to cave in, some of them dripping with parasites and blackening into moldy masks of putrefied flesh. None of them, however, notices the movement inside the dark showroom.
“You see them Biters gathering out there?” Nick says to Philip under his breath. Nick already has dry clothes on, and is zipping up a black leather jacket. He gives a little nod toward the gray light of the storefront. “Some of them things are pretty ripe.”
“So?”
“Some of them got—what?—three, four weeks on ’em?”
“At least.” Philip thinks about it for a moment, changing out of his wet denims. His underwear is stuck to him and he has to practically peel it off. He turns away so that Penny doesn’t see his package. “Whole thing broke out over a month ago … so what?”
“They’re rotting.”
“Huh?”
Nick lowers his voice so that he doesn’t catch Penny’s ear; the little girl is busying herself across the showroom with a size small winter coat, which Brian is trying to figure out how to snap. “Think about it, Philly. The normal course of affairs, a dead body is dust in a year or so.” He lowers his voice further. “Especially one that’s exposed to the elements.”
“What are you saying, Nick? All we gotta do is wait out the clock? Let the maggots do the work?”
Nick shrugs. “Well, yeah, I guess I just thought—”
“Listen to me.” Philip jabs a finger in Nick’s face. “Keep your theories to yourself.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“They ain’t going away, Nicky. Get that through your thick fucking skull. I don’t want my daughter hearing any of this shit. They eat the living, and they reproduce, and when they rot away, there’s gonna be more of them to take their place, and judging from the fact that old man Chalmers turned without even getting bit, the whole goddamn world’s days are numbered, so drink up, bubba, it’s later than y’all think.”
Nick looks down. “All right, man, I get it … cool down, Philly.”
At this point, Brian has Penny bundled up, and the two of them come over. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
“What time you got?” Philip asks Brian, who looks semiridiculous in a Harley leather jacket that’s a size and half too big for him.
He looks at his watch. “Almost noon.”
“Good … gives us a good six, seven hours of daylight to get the hell outta Dodge.”
“You guys pick out your bikes?” Brian asks.
Philip gives him a cold smile.
* * *
They choose two of the biggest metal masterpieces in the place—a couple of Harley-Davidson Electra Glides, one in pearl blue and the other in midnight black. They choose them for the size of the engines, the roominess of the seats, the cubic inches of storage space, and also because—hey—they’re fucking Harleys. Philip decides that Penny will ride with him, and Brian will ride with Nick. The gas tanks are empty but several bikes in the repair garage in the rear have fuel in them so they siphon as much as they can into the Harleys.
Over the course of the fifteen minutes it takes them to get the bikes ready and find helmets that fit and transfer all their belongings into the luggage carriers, the street outside the front of the place grows hectic with dead. Hundreds of Biters crowd the intersection now, wandering aimlessly in the gray drizzle, brushing against the glass, groaning their rusty groans, drooling their black bile, fixing their pewter-colored eyes on the moving shadows inside the windows of Champion Cycle Center.
“It’s busy out there,” Nick mumbles to no one in particular as he rolls the massive two-wheeler toward the side exit, where a small vertical garage door faces the parking lot along the side of the dealership. He straps on his helmet.
“Element of surprise,” Philip says, pushing his black Harley over to the door. His stomach growls with hunger and nerves as he puts on his helmet. He hasn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. None of them has. He shoves the iron rod from the bus into a seam between the handlebars and windscreen (for quick and easy access). “C’mon, punkin, hop on,” he says to Penny, who stands sheepishly nearby with a kiddie helmet on. “Gonna take a little spin, get outta this place.”
Brian helps the child climb up onto the rear seat, a padded perch above the black lacquer luggage compartment. There’s a safety belt in one of the side compartments, and Brian snaps it around the little girl’s waist. “Don’t worry, kiddo,” he says softly to her.
“Gonna head south and then west, y’all,” Philip says as he mounts the iron beast. “Nicky, you follow me.”
“Copy that.”
“Everybody ready?”
Brian goes over to the door and gives a nervous nod. “Ready.”
Philip kicks the Harley to life, the engine howling and filling the dark showroom with noise and fumes. Nick kicks his bike on. The second engine sings a noisy aria in dissonant unison with the first. Philip revs the throttle and gives Brian the high sign.
Brian jacks the manual lock on the door and then throws it open, letting in the wet wind. Philip kicks the gear and takes off.
Brian leaps onto the back of Nick’s bike and they blast off after Philip.
* * *
“OH SHIT! OH GOD! PHILIP! PHILIP! LOOK DOWN! LOOK DOWN, MAN! PHILIP, LOOK DOWN!”
Brian’s frantic wail is muffled by his helmet and drowned by the noise of the cycles.
It happens mere moments after they slam through a mass of Biters choking the intersection, the ragged bodies bouncing off their fenders. After making a hard left turn and zooming south on Water Street, leaving the throngs in their dust and fumes, Brian sees the mangled corpse dragging along the pavement behind Philip’s bike.
The bottom half of the thing is torn away, its intestines like electrical wiring flagging in the wind, but the torso still has fight left in it, its moldering head still intact. With its two dead arms, it clings to the rear fenders, and it starts pulling itself up the side of the Harley.
The worst part is, neither Philip nor Penny seem t
o be aware of it.
“PULL ALONGSIDE HIM! NICK, PULL UP!” Brian screams, his arms clutched around Nick’s midsection.
“I’M TRYING!”
At this point, roaring down the deserted, wet side street, the bike hydroplaning on slick pavement, Penny notices the creature stuck to the bike, clawing its way toward her, and she starts screaming. From Brian’s vantage point, thirty feet behind her, the child’s scream is inaudible—like an exaggerated gesture of a silent-movie actress.
Nick opens up the throttle. His Harley closes the distance.
“GRAB THE BAT!” he screams over the din, and Brian tries to root the baseball bat out from beneath the luggage carrier behind him.
Up ahead, almost without warning, Philip Blake notices the thing attached to the back of his bike. Philip’s helmet cocks around quickly as he gropes for his weapon.
By this point, Nick is within five or six feet of the black Harley’s taillights, but before Brian can intercede with the bat, he sees Philip drawing the iron rod from its makeshift scabbard on the front of his bike.
With a quick and violent motion, which causes the black Harley to veer slightly off course, Philip twists around in his seat—one-handing the handlebars—and thrusts the hooked end of the metal rod into the zombie’s mouth.
The skewered head of the monster gets stuck inches below Penny, the rod wedged between the gleaming exhaust pipes. Philip draws his right leg up and—with the force of a battering ram—he kicks the corpse (rod and all) off the bike. The thing tumbles and rolls, and Nick has to swerve suddenly to avoid it.
Philip increases his speed, staying on course, heading south, not even bothering to look back.
* * *
They continue on, zigzagging through the south side of town, avoiding the congested areas. A mile down the road, Philip manages to find another main artery that’s relatively clear of wreckage and roaming dead, and he leads them down it. They are now three miles from the Atlanta city limits.
The horizon line is clear, the sky lightening slightly to the west.
They have enough gas to get four hundred miles without refueling.
Whatever awaits them out there in the gray rural countryside has to be better than what they suffered through in Atlanta.
It has to be.
PART 3
Chaos Theory
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
—Mary Wollstonecraft
SEVENTEEN
Around Hartsfield airport, the rain lets up, leaving behind a scoured, metallic sky of low clouds and dismal cold. It feels terrific, however, to get this far in less than an hour. Highway 85 has far less wreckage blocking its lanes than Interstate 20, and the population of dead has thinned considerably. Most roadside buildings are still intact, their windows and doors battened and secured. The stray dead walking about here and there almost seem like part of the landscape now—blending into the skeletal trees like a ghastly fungus infecting the woods. The land itself seems to have turned. The towns themselves are dead. Riding through this area leaves one with more of an impression of desolation than the end of the world.
The only immediate problem is the fact that every abandoned filling station or truck stop is infested with Biters, and Brian is getting very concerned about Penny. At every pit stop—either to take a leak or to forage for food or water—her face seems more drawn, her tiny little tulip lips more cracked. Brian is worried she’s getting dehydrated. Hell, he’s worried they’re all getting dehydrated.
Empty stomachs are one thing (they can go without food for extended lengths of time), but the lack of water is becoming a serious issue.
Ten miles southwest of Hartsfield, as the landscape begins to transition into patchworks of pine forests and soy bean farms, Brian is wondering if they could drink the water from the motorcycles’ radiators, when he sees a green directional sign looming up ahead with a blessed message: REST AREA—1 MI. Philip gives them a signal to pull off, and they take the next exit ramp.
As they roar uphill and into the lot, which is bordered by a small wood-framed tourist center, the relief spreads through Brian like a salve: The place is mercifully deserted, free of any signs of the living or the dead.
* * *
“What really happened back there, Philip?” Brian sits on a picnic table situated on a small promontory of grass behind the rest area shack. Philip paces, sucking down a bottle of Evian that he wrested from a broken vending machine. Nick and Penny are fifty yards away, still within view. Nick is gently spinning Penny on a ramshackle old merry-go-round under a diseased live oak. The girl just sits on the thing, joylessly, like a gargoyle, staring straight out as she turns and turns and turns.
“I told you once already to give that a rest,” Philip grumbles.
“I think you like owe me an answer.”
“I don’t owe you shit.”
“Something happened that night,” Brian persists. He isn’t afraid of his brother anymore. He knows Philip could beat the shit out of him at any moment—the potential for violence between the Blakes seems more imminent now than ever—but Brian doesn’t care anymore. Something deep within Brian Blake has shifted like a seismic plate changing with the landscape. If Philip wants to wring Brian’s throat, so be it. “Something between you and April?”
Philip gets very still and looks down. “What the fuck difference does it make?”
“It makes a big difference—it does to me. Our lives are on the line here. We had a pretty fair chance of surviving back there at that place, and then, just like that … poof?”
Philip looks up. His eyes fix themselves on his brother, and something very dark passes between the two men. “Drop it, Brian.”
“Just tell me one thing. You seemed so hell-bent to get outta there—do you have a plan?”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Do you have, like, a strategy? Any idea where the hell we’re headed?”
“What are you, a fuckin’ tour guide?”
“What if the Biters get thick again? We basically got a piece of wood to fight ’em with.”
“We’ll find something else.”
“Where are we going, Philip?”
Philip turns away and lifts the collar of his leather bomber, staring out at the ribbon of pavement snaking off into the western horizon. “Another month or so, winter’s gonna set in. I’m thinking we stay moving, heading southwest … toward the Mississippi.”
“Where’s that gonna get us?”
“It’s the easiest way to go south.”
“And?”
Philip turns and looks at Brian, a mixture of purpose and anguish crossing Philip’s deeply lined face, as though he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. “We’ll find a place to live—long-term—in the sun. Someplace like Mobile or Biloxi. New Orleans, maybe … I don’t know. Someplace warm. And we’ll live there.”
Brian lets out an exhausted sigh. “Sounds so easy. Just head south.”
“You got a better plan, I’m all ears.”
“Long-term plans are like a luxury I haven’t even thought about.”
“We’ll make it.”
“We gotta find some food, Philip. I’m really worried about Penny getting some nourishment.”
“You let me do the worrying about my daughter.”
“She won’t even eat a Twinkie. You believe that? A kid who doesn’t want a Twinkie.”
“Cockroach food.” Philip grunts. “Can’t say I blame her. We’ll find something. She’s gonna be okay. She’s a tough little thing … like her mother.”
Brian can’t argue with that. Lately, the little girl has shown miraculous spirit. In fact, Brian has started wondering whether Penny might actually be the glue that’s holding them all together, keeping them from self-destructing.
He glances across the rest area and sees Penny Blake dreamily spinning on that rusty merry-go-round in the little scabrous playground area. Nick has lost his enthusiasm for tu
rning it and now just gives it little incremental nudges with his boot.
Beyond the playground, the land rises up to an overgrown wooded knoll, where a small windswept cemetery sits in the pale sun.
Brian notices that Penny is talking to Nick, grilling him about something. Brian wonders what the two of them are talking about that has the girl looking so worried.
* * *
“Uncle Nick?” Penny’s little face is tight with concern as she slowly turns on the merry-go-round. She has called Nick “Uncle” for years, even though she knows very well he is not her real uncle. The affectation has always given Nick a secret twinge of longing—the desire to be somebody’s real uncle.
“Yes, honey?” A leaden feeling of doom presses down on Nick Parsons as he absently pushes Penny on the merry-go-round. He can see the Blake brothers in his peripheral vision, arguing about something.
“Is my dad mad at me?” the little girl asks.
Nick does a double take. Penny looks down as she slowly spins. Nick measures his words. “Of course not. He’s not mad at you. Whaddaya mean? Why would you even think that?”
“He don’t talk to me as much as he used to.”
Nick gently pulls the merry-go-round to a stop. The little girl jerks slightly back against the bar. Nick tenderly pats her on the shoulder. “Listen. I promise you. Your daddy loves you more than anything else in the world.”
“I know.”
“He’s under a lot of pressure. That’s all.”
“You don’t think he’s mad at me?”
“No way. He loves you something fierce, Penny. Believe me. He’s just … under a lot of pressure.”
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