Customer Reviews
I'm not a huge zombie fan, but this is the kind of apocalypse I could get behind...
Jim Raney, January 17, 2013
…Start with a classic zombie flick—one that doesn't take itself too seriously—something like Shaun of the Dead. Weave into it a taut, deadline-driven race across an inhospitable stretch of Texas. Add literary references to Homer and Joyce, along with the author's sharp eye for authentic Texan characters. Leaven with light social satire and a willingness to flaunt the obvious cliches.
What we have here is a fast, fun read, full of cinematic action and just a hint of country-music camp.
J’n, December 23, 2012
For a first book you hit the top with me! Had me hooked at the very start. Could not put it down. A whole new way to write a sf/horror/tense story...
Really great book. Looking forward to more books, so write them fast! Well worth the money.
Florence Hager, December 30, 2012
I appreciate the balance you managed to find between deep, serious looks into human nature, and humor...
I read this in one sitting today, and enjoyed it very much. Congratulations on a great first novel!
ChandCar, December 27, 2012
300 MILES TO GALVESTON
By Rick Wiedeman
300 MILES TO GALVESTON
Copyright © 2012 by Rick Wiedeman
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
www.rickwiedeman.com
For Prof. Al Wachtel,
who helped me find my voice,
and my daughters Chloë and Rose,
who have to listen to it.
Table of Contents
Epigraph
Chapter 1: Salt the Meat
Chapter 2: When Girls Wore Skirts
Chapter 3: 4-6-6-3-2-9-3
Chapter 4: Ulysses
Chapter 5: Shiabu
Chapter 6: Long Spear
Chapter 7: Half a Bottle of Advil
Chapter 8: Fearfully and Wonderfully
Chapter 9: 100 Chinese with a Sword
Chapter 10: The Polunsky Devils
Chapter 11: Skid Steer
Chapter 12: Forever Hers
Chapter 13: Foil Hats
Chapter 14: Hide until You Hear English
Chapter 15: Stay
Chapter 16: Manifest
Chapter 17: Message Repeats
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719)
Chapter 1: Salt the Meat
Eventually you run out of bullets, even in Texas.
Kurt Fullmer looked at the gun’s profile. There was no point in keeping it; he just wanted to admire it for a moment. It was beautiful, one of the last wheelguns made, a five-round .40 caliber rimless revolver. He ran his other hand through his thinning, brown-and-grey hair. Kurt hadn’t heard a shot fired in two weeks, and hadn’t found ammo in a month. His 39 year old body felt old as he watched blood pump from the Rottweiler’s throat.
I need to keep moving. He was on the edge of his clan’s territory, and the shot was going to attract someone.
No one thought about running out of ammunition, coffee, or garbage bags until two weeks after they were gone. That’s when it set in: the lump at the base of the throat, the wobbly feeling in the hips, as if the body was falling apart along with society. Two weeks was how long it took for the mind to accept that I don’t know how to make ammo, coffee, or garbage bags. I only know how to shop for them. That’s when an awesome perspective took over – that mix of dread and sublime beauty few had felt since the Middle Ages, outside of war.
Even during the boredom and horror of war, people knew there were more bullets, if only in a warehouse in Germany; more guns, if only being cast in a forge in New England. People knew there were experts somewhere who made fine machines. This knowledge was society’s foundation. People who worked with steel, people with thick hands and dirt that never seemed to get out of their nails made everything else possible. When the world they built quit working in 2037, the thought-leaders and cloud-sellers evaporated like ghosts in sunlight.
For Kurt, the world was like an empty church, silent and waiting. Every detail was amplified. The odd moments like this burned brightly, even if the moments of terror made them fade quickly.
He touched the gun, like a beloved pet that had died, and tucked it back into his coat pocket. He wondered if he should keep it. Anyone who saw him with a gun and thought he had ammo would try to kill him for it, and he had little to back up a bluff besides two fists, one with two broken fingers. Sure, he had a knife, but everyone had knives, and with no functioning hospitals with antibiotics, no one wanted to get cut. Plus, a knife wasn’t good against two guys with bats.
Cutting the skin along the joints of the Rottweiler’s black-and-tan hind legs, he sawed them cleanly off the body. That was the most meat for the least effort. He didn’t have time to field dress the animal, and with the hole he’d just blown through its digestive tract, the chest was filling with stomach contents and bacteria that would foul the meat unless he could flush it with fresh water, and that was too far away. It was best to take what was easy and keep moving.
The leg meat fit neatly into two plastic Wal-Mart bags which he tied and put into his backpack. As he took a final look at the bloody sidewalk, he felt empty. He’d always hated that dog. The fact that its owners had wandered off, leaving it desperate enough to dig under the fence and go hunting, formed no sympathy within him. Still, pets shouldn’t have to be shot on sidewalks, even if they were the animal version of jerks.
Kurt recognized this as one of the pleasures of the new era: You didn’t have to wait for a toothless response from a homeowner's association or a piece of paper from animal control. If you had a problem with the neighbor’s dog, you dealt with it directly, after considering risk and reward.
Risk: Attracting people with a gunshot.
Reward: Not getting his throat ripped out by a big dog, or getting infected from bites that would tear into his forearms. Also, four pounds of fresh meat.
Time to go.
* * *
Hold the staff in even thirds. One hand up, one hand down.
It was good that this principle was ground into Sophie Fullmer’s skull, because her 13 year-old instincts would have had her choking down on the five-foot long mop handle like a bat, which is no good when two people are coming at you from different directions. Maybe she’d hit one as the other tackled her. Maybe she’d miss and take too long to correct it. Short, sharp jabs were the answer.
Her grip on the mop handle tightened, her skin creaking against the lacquered wood, as the two teenage boys circled. Her hair clung to her forehead, her eyes tight and unblinking. Cicadas buzzed absently in the nearby trees, but she couldn’t hear them over her heartbeat.
The bigger boy made his move.
Thrust forward, look over shoulder, thrust back. It felt odd to do it with tennis shoes on, in a field with grass and rocks and all the other imperfections found outside the dojo, where the endless barefoot exercises took on an aspect of the religious. She thrust her hips forward with her hands, driving the top, rounded end of the mop ha
ndle into the divot of the bigger boy’s throat with the guidance of her right index finger. He let out an awkward gasp for a boy his size as his body jerked backward.
She glanced over her shoulder. The smaller boy was almost on her. She drove the bottom, screw-threaded end into his stomach, then brought her hands back and swung the far, smooth end of the mop handle, whistling with speed as her hips rotated. It smashed into his temple.
The bigger boy who had been struck in the throat clawed at the grass for a moment, then stopped moving. Blood dripped from the smaller boy’s nose and his left eye was solid red with burst vessels. He collapsed, his eyes still open, but his pupils were wide and unfocused in the afternoon sun.
Sophie backed away, watching them, then turned and ran. At the edge of the park, she stopped next to a Mexican white oak tree, rested the mop handle against its bark, and threw up.
Get home. She spit a few times, then took her mop handle and walked across the street – left past the chain link fence, right where the guy always parked his truck in the yard. She walked with casual purpose, not jogging, not concerned, just as if she had someplace to be. She held the mop handle at the bottom third, tucked behind her back. That way of holding a staff never made sense in class, but now she got it. I just want to walk home with my weapon, not look like I’m out for a fight. As she climbed to the front porch, she deftly spun the handle to her left hand, dug her key out of her front pocket, and went inside.
Dad’s not home yet. Good.
At the screen door across the living room, her little black dog leapt for joy, over and over like popcorn.
* * *
It started on November 17, 2034, during the peak of the Leonids meteor shower, which was spectacular that year. After that cold, windless night when Kurt, Kristine, and Sophie had laid in the crunchy park grass in their winter coats and stared at the open sky together, no one was born, and no one stayed dead.
Worldwide, all pregnancies ended, the unborn dissolving back into their mother’s bodies. When other people died, whether children or adults, they rose ten minutes later, placid, but mindless. These were called Angels. A terrible few came back insane and furious, staggering around as if blind, grabbing and biting like angry infants. These were called Devils. In the early days they were chained in back yards, but eventually they were put in prisons. Room was made by legalizing recreational drugs – first marijuana, then everything. Nobody cared anymore. The illusion had been broken. Life made no sense without death. “Drink paint if you want to,” was the consensus. “We’ve got bigger problems.”
None of these new prisoners needed to eat more than a handful of food a week, though they liked chewing it. None used the restroom as often as normal people. They only needed a little water, and didn’t care if it came from a stainless steel toilet without a seat.
They also didn’t need to be exercised – some were in constant movement, some sat still for days. They didn’t have visitors, except for church volunteers who came to pray for them, which they were more and more comfortable doing from the administration building once they heard the echoing howls and grunts and sounds of bone hitting iron bars.
It was common for Devils to break their forearms between the bars or smash their noses against the cell walls, but that didn’t matter, either. Somehow, they always healed in a few hours, and they never got infections.
Replacing drug users with Devils saved the state and federal governments billions of dollars a year, but as no one was being born, and no one was truly dying, it would not work forever. It just slowed the doomsday clock. The hands would still reach midnight, and all the politicians, correctional officers, and prayer circles knew that. By 2036, the average Texas prison was packing four Devils into each six by eight foot cell.
However, most did not come back as Devils. Most were kept at home, and eventually led to cemeteries, which had become reservations for the dead with high fences and security gates. The nicer ones played Yanni and John Tesh instrumentals from the early 2000s through outdoor speakers that looked like rocks. All of Yanni and Tesh’s music had been rights-released during the Copyright Freedom Act of 2020, co-signed by the US and China to temper their economic war.
As the recently-dead’s clothes became ragged and shrunken from exposure, the Angels were usually covered with plastic rain ponchos, out of respect. White quickly became the preferred color, so they looked like Halloween ghosts in every season – walking into each other, sitting under trees, but always with a slight smile on their lips. They were fed by automated troughs, set up near decorative elements like welcoming statues of the Virgin Mary or Greek-styled cement benches. After a few weeks of experimentation, cemetery managers figured out that their favorite food was Honey Nut Cheerios. Each needed about a cup a week.
The Devils in prison got regular Cheerios. The generic kind. “Great Value Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal.”
Verily, Wal-Mart serveth both the living and the dead.
* * *
Kurt unlocked the front door. Sophie looked at him through the patio door; she was playing with the dog. He held up the bags of meat and pointed his thumb to the left. She nodded and waved, understanding what his gesture meant.
Going down the street to salt the meat. Back in a bit.
If there ever were sociologists again, they would note with interest that even in this greatest of all disasters, when the west side of town was abandoned and their McMansions lay empty, people tended to stay in their own homes. Partly this was practical. New houses, which took up 80% of the lot they were built on, were saunas without constant air conditioning. When the electrical grid went dark, most were abandoned. The old houses on the east side of town were more livable. With shade trees in front and back, and windows that were built to be opened, you could get a nice cross-breeze going on most days, slow and gentle but oh so crisp when you had a wisp of sweat on your forehead.
Kurt and Sophie, like most people on the east side of town, stayed in their house even when nicer ones became available.
Partly for the cross-breeze. Partly for Kristine.
* * *
Kurt gave the shave-and-a-haircut knock, then unlocked the door to the fellowship hall. The others looked up from their work and smiled or said howdy, and that was that.
“What have you got there?” said Brother Travis.
“Dog.”
“That was your shot I heard awhile back?”
Kurt nodded.
“You OK?”
He nodded again.
They walked to the kitchen together.
The Reverend Travis Hurt, 51, had spent much of his professional life overseeing activities that brought people together – charity work, social activities, and worship – but now he had no need to invent reasons to get together. People gathered naturally at his small neighborhood church, bringing pallets of bottled water they found in an abandoned semi-truck trailer, more books from the library, or meat from something recently killed. They volunteered their expertise not for brownie points with God or each other, but just to belong to something worthwhile. Brother Travis would try his best to convince people he had no idea what was going on – he’d never liked The Revelation, and wished the fourth century Council of Nicaea had left it out of the New Testament – but eventually he realized that no one was asking him to explain anything. They just wanted to be together. They wanted to know there was an order to things, that there was right and wrong, good and evil, charity and selfishness, blindness and sight, and that they each had a part to play in it, even if that part was salting fresh dog meat or digging the next latrine.
There was no need to chair capital campaigns, or even pass the plate when services were held. When the roof leaked, a couple of young men got together and patched it with shingles from an abandoned house. On Sundays, people brought what they had and left it on the altar for Brother Travis to distribute as he saw fit: An unopened box of Band-Aids. Half a bottle of vodka, for sterilizing. A hammer.
They called him Brother be
cause that’s how he acted, not because that was his title. His title was Senior Minister, Northern Texas Region. Titles were echoes of a social order that no longer existed. He hadn’t seen any of the church leaders in months, not even his mentor, Tom.
Many in this small neighborhood church didn’t know if they could trust in their faith to get them through this horrible time, but they knew they could trust Travis to give the Band-Aids and vodka and hammers to whomever needed them most.
* * *
Sophie took her walkie-talkie from her belt and gave it a few cranks, even though the charge read 90%.
“Kristine. It’s me. Are you there?”
The green light indicated that her signal was received, but she could not know if it was her father's walkie-talkie, the one she had sneaked out to Kristine, or both.
Sophie decided it was Kristine, partly because her dad usually turned his walkie talkie off when he came home, but mostly because she needed it to be Kristine.
“You remember those two brothers who used to mess with us? The ones who lived by the bus stop in that crap shack? I fought them today. I knew they liked to hang out by the creek, and I didn't want to take one of Dad's weapons because then he'd know I was gone, and he’s been kinda hard ass since the Missus Wallace thing, so I unscrewed the mop handle, and took that with me when I brought you the walkie talkie. Anyway, I think I killed them.”
She was silent for a moment.
“I'm not sad. I'm not happy, either. I don't know what I'm saying. I'm just tired of being alone. I miss Mom. Dad is good, but he's busy, and angry, and maybe a little scared.
“I wish we could talk. But if you can hear me, that's cool, right?”
300 Miles to Galveston Page 1
