Bad Day For A Road Trip

by Jason Offutt

  Senior had broken through the flimsy bedroom door a day ago, maybe two. Matty saw him through the big front windows, blindly bumping into furniture, his clothes soaked in Mary’s blood. Oh, no. He wasn’t going into the house, but he wasn’t going to leave Senior like that, either. Senior might break out of the house like he did the bedroom and eat someone else. Matty wouldn’t have that, he wouldn’t have that at all.

  The bottle of Laphroaig was easy to decide on, Senior’s choice of scotch gave Matty gut rot. He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket and walked to the side of the house where he soaked it with the liquor.

  The windows were triple pane energy savers Senior ordered last spring. Too thick to chance throwing the bottle through it. Matty fetched Mom’s concrete yard gnome from beneath a bush below the front window, ducking low to keep Senior from sensing him and walked to where he’d left the whisky. The window shattered all the way through on the first throw; the gnome, with its pointed red hat and sunflower yellow tunic disappeared into the house. Senior growled from somewhere inside, but had no idea where the sound had come from.

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said as he stuffed one end of the liquor-soaked handkerchief into the whisky bottle and lit it with a lighter Mom had left in the glove box along with an emergency box of Pall Malls. “Nothing personal.” He pulled his arm back and tossed the bottle through the broken window.

  A whoosh told Matty the fire had spread as the bottle hit the floor.

  That had been about a half-hour or so ago; Matty didn’t know and he didn’t care. Time didn’t mean much anymore. The only thing that mattered to him right then, as he sat on the roof of the RV, were the Ding Dongs. The interior of the house was completely engulfed when Matty decided he needed to leave. He didn’t want to watch his childhood home go up in flame. He didn’t want to set his parents on fire, either. Well, at least not his mother, but his mother was dead and the monster in the house wasn’t his father anymore.

  ***

  Matty had to stop again, his breath gone. He knew he shouldn’t have sprinted; his body wasn’t used to that anymore. It was used to Southern Comfort. He knew a jog may have easily kept the distance between him and the two-legged creatures moving through the cornfields, but Farmer Joe was too much, just too much. Keep it calm, Matty. You’re going to get through this. Sure, the crows could keep up with him, hell they could pass him, but Matty wasn’t afraid of birds. The crow behind him cawed, then once more; too quickly for it to be from the same bird. Was that one? Or two? Shit. He looked up, his breath still coming hard. The dusty country road took a slight left in between the fields. How many miles had he gone? One? Two? None?

  He sucked in as much air as he could, his lungs burning. A sudden rustling to his right brought his head around, but that was it, just his head; the stitch in his side still stabbed at him. The crow landed at his feet and the fat bird looked up at him with its dead eyes.

  “Shoo,” he wheezed.

  The bird cocked its head at the words like it was trying to make sense of this two-legged thing before it.

  “Shoo,” he said again, stronger this time. “Get out of here, bird.”

  “Caw,” the slick, greasy thing squawked.

  What the hell?

  “People are scary, bird,” Matty said, staring the creature in the eyes. “Why don’t you shoo?”

  The bird clicked its beak open and shut, the clacking sound threatening. Wha—? started to cross Matty’s mind when the crow slammed its beak into his shin; pain lanced through his leg.

  “Hey, goddammit,” he shouted, pushing himself straight. Something trickled down his shin. Blood. Blood? “You made me bleed, you little bastard.”

  A rustling from behind froze Matty, his stomach clenched, the pain in his leg and in his chest forgotten. He turned slowly. At least a half-dozen black birds sat in the corn, staring at him.

  ***

  The drive north was a no-brainer. South? What hell was south? Dallas? What was in Dallas? Cowboys fans. Senior was a Cowboys fan, so Matty became a Packer’s fan early. From Sequoyah County, the closest big city was Muskogee, population about 40,000, a lot bigger than Gore’s 977. Gore was dead; the streets empty, the air silent. Even Mom’s land-line telephone she insisted on keeping had fallen quiet, her gossip partners as dead as she was. So Matty climbed down from the roof and hefted himself into the driver’s seat of the RV. He stared at the house for a moment, but only a moment. Senior walked by the window covered in dancing orange flame and Matty started the vehicle, backing from the driveway, not even bothering to look behind him. He didn’t need to; no one was there.

  ***

  Matty couldn’t feel his legs anymore, they simply moved underneath him. His head swam, his chest was on fire. The sky had grown dark behind him, the air filled with flapping wings, but Matty knew better than to turn to look. The cloud of crows was closer, but so were the monsters in the corn. He had to keep moving.

  The road turned to the left and emerged from between cornfields. Matty limped across the gravel as the city of Muskogee, Oklahoma, appeared in front of him, the long, white form of a Motel 6 the closest building. Between Matty and the motel were a cemetery and a highway. Gonna make it. Gonna make it. He pulled open a gate in the cast-iron fence that surrounded the cemetery and nearly fell inside, slamming the gate behind him in a clang. Oh, shit. The sky behind him was thick with birds and the cornfields shook with movement of the once-human monsters inside. He released the gate and hurried through the graveyard, the tops of tombstones uncomfortably black with gathering crows.

  “Fuck you,” he rasped, stumbling through the tall unkempt grass between the stones, the bird’s attention following him as he moved by.

  Caws barked around Matty. Something was wrong here, something different than these damned birds and the creatures pursuing him in the field. He grew closer to the motel, the streetlights popping on in the growing darkness under the approaching blanket of birds. Matty’s feet slowed, his head understanding what he saw. A fence. A twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence rose from the ground, splitting the cemetery in two. It continued as far as Matty could see to the east. He swung his head to the west and the nearby highway; the fence continued, aluminum poles embedded in the asphalt, the fence keeping him from the motel, from safety.

  “What the hell?” he whispered, the words soft, weak.

  The gate rattled behind him. Creatures that used to be people pressed against it; the decorative fence tilted forward.

  Fuck.

  Matty lurched to the chain-link fence and wrapped his fingers into it. Climb, Matty. Climb. Up high, where you’re safe. “Come on, man.” He tried to pull himself up, but his breath and strength were gone. The flimsy barrier that surrounded this resting home of the dead groaned and collapsed, the growls of the monsters grew louder. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He tried to shove the toes of his Chuck Taylors between the links, but they were too big. Fuck. Matty stepped on the heel of his right shoe and pulled up with a shaking leg. The shoe came free. He pulled off his left shoe, stuck his toes into the links and pushed up. It hurt, the quarter-inch galvanized wire dug into the soft balls of his feet, but he thought being eaten would hurt worse.

  Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes, but the stinging didn’t matter, he couldn’t wipe it out anyway. Matty pulled himself upward with shaky arms and moved his right foot to gain a higher purchase. Come on, Matty. Come on. He struggled to suck air into his burning lungs and reached upward, hoisting his body higher inches at a time. The guttural roar of the monsters was clear now, an underscore in the symphony of crows.

  His fingers and toes kept pulling, the pain in his feet deadened now, but the wires cut into his feet and his socks were wet with blood. Four feet, six feet, eight feet. You got this, baby. You got this.

  A voice came from nowhere, propelled across Matty’s eardrums from a megaphone, or a loudspeaker. He didn’t know where it originated, he just knew he could deal with that later, when he was on the other side of the fence, away fr
om the monsters, hopefully sitting in a hot tub sipping something cold and foamy.

  “Citizen,” was all the voice said.

  Citizen? Matty kept his arms and legs moving slowly, painfully upward, the guttural sounds of the creatures closing on him now louder than the cawing of crows.

  The voice said something else, but a nearby crow drowned it out.

  “What?” Matty said, his voice too soft to reach anywhere.

  The voice came back. “Citizen. Back away from the fence,” the woman said.

  No. No, no, no.

  “It’s cool,” he tried to yell, but it came out as a rush of air. “I’m cool.” Eight feet, nine. The top was near his grasp.

  “Please remove yourself from the fence,” the woman said, the voice tinny through the speaker. “Remove yourself immediately.”

  Immediately? Crows had already begun to perch on the fence just feet above him, the birds’ caws drummed in his ears.

  “Help,” he yelled, his face pressed into the metal links, sweat, tears and snot glistened on his face. “Help me.”

  The first of the Piper monsters grew close enough for Matty to hear its individual groan; his fingers wrapped tighter around the thick wire, strength quickly leaving his limbs. I’m not going to make it. Shit, man. I’m not going to make it.

  He forced in a breath deeper than he thought he could take and screamed through the fence. “Hey, asshole. I need help, here.” A crow screeched above Matty’s head, the sound drowning out his words. Fucking help me.

  Something as hard as a baseball slammed into the top of Matty’s head, pushing his face hard into the wire. Claws dug into his scalp. “Help,” he screamed. A crow had landed atop his head, it punched its beak into Matty’s temple, blood gushed down his face.

  The voice came back, emotionless, cold. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I truly am, but I have my orders. You are in violation of United States Army Code No. 45986B. For the survival of the human race, no one is to cross the Southern Border of the United States. Trespassers will be shot on sight. Now, please, remove yourself from the fence.”

  Matty’s head swam. The bird’s beak cracked his forehead, searching for his eyes. He shook his head, but the crow wouldn’t budge. The fence began to shake beneath him; the monsters were here.

  “Please, help me.” The words came in a whisper.

  July 28: I-80, Western Nebraska

  Chapter 2

  Smoke. Screams. Fire. Blackness. Smoke. Screams. Gravelyman. Fire. Blackness. Smoke. Hot dogs. Fire. Blackness. Always blackness. Doug stirred in the eternal night. He’d been in the blackness too long; something in his mind knew he needed to come out, to come out of the blackness now, or he might stay there.

  The eerie silence of the B-2 overhead dropping unguided Mk 82 bombs down onto the Community, a fenced-in hell the government locked anyone it thought had been exposed to – what? A disease? No, the Piper. Yeah, the Piper. The antidepressant some lab genius created out of a Southeast Asian fungus that turned ants into zombies and used the ants to spread their spores through the jungle. Why didn’t the science guy think it would do the same to people? Explosions. Blackness. The Gravelyman, the coughing man from the bus lying in a puddle of his own blood. The bus. The bus had taken Doug and friends with faces but no names to the Community after they were picked up in, where? Des Moines? No. Omaha. Omaha, Nebraska. Shit, is my ankle broken? Dear God, it hurts. Explosions. Fire. Screams. Hot dogs.

  Hot dogs?

  The warm smell of roasting hot dogs flooded his thoughts. Were they real hot dogs? Or memory hot dogs? One of his memory friends loved hot dogs. He cooked them in a barn near Platte City, Missouri, even though Doug told him not to, they might be caught. By whom? He couldn’t remember. But, wait. That was wrong. His friend cooked bratwurst in the barn; he’d had a hot dog with Johnnyball at the stadium.

  Smoke. Screams. Fire. Blackness. No, not quite blackness anymore. Grayness. Doug stirred in the grayness.

  “Well,” a voice, a familiar voice, said from far away. Or was it close by? “Good morning, sleeping beauty. You kept us worrying long enough.”

  The voice was from his friend who liked hot dogs. Terry. His name was Terry and Terry was okay. Doug’s eyes fluttered and the grayness got brighter, driving the last of the velvet black from his eyes. Shapes formed slowly, the light, what light there was, stung his eyes.

  “Doug,” a different voice, a softer voice said. He knew this voice, too. He was intimate with this voice. “Doug, honey. Wake up. I was so worried about you.”

  Something wet and warm pressed against his forehead. Lips. Her lips. Jenna’s lips. Oh, lord, Jenna. Jenna was alive, too. Doug opened and closed his eyes a few times, the lids heavy. The shapes slowly came into focus. Jenna. Yes, Jenna, her face smudged and her once bouncy auburn hair flat, but she still looked beautiful to him. And Terry, grinning like he’d just won $10 on a scratcher’s ticket. Doug had seen the scratcher’s ticket grin before. And there was someone else, dark hair, Nikki. Nikki from the electric house. Doug smiled, although he didn’t know if that smile grew on his face, or just inside. He wanted to tell everyone he loved them. He wanted to tell them he needed a drink of water and some food, but blackness returned and the world disappeared once again.

  ***

  When Doug fully came to, he felt hungover. A dull ache filled his head, his mouth was a desert that tasted like dirty socks. The world was still gray. From the yellow light that streamed in from his left and the growing shadows to his right, the day might be nearing dusk. The gray was concrete with square corners. It looked like – A box culvert? What the hell am I doing in a box culvert?

  “Hey, Doug’s awake again,” Jenna called toward the dusk entrance to the short concrete tunnel that probably ran under a highway. What highway? She sat next to him on a cardboard box marked, what was that? Spotted Dick? She’s sitting on a box of Spotted Dick? What the hell is Spotted Dick? Something squeezed him. Where? His hand. Jenna was holding his hand. How long had she been doing that? Jenna turned her face back toward him; the dirt on her face washed away, her hair clean. “I was so scared, Doug. I was worried you weren’t coming back.”

  Almost didn’t, flashed across his mind, but didn’t make it to his lips. He didn’t know if he could talk through all that cotton. “Water,” came out of him in a soft hiss.

  Jenna leaned closer to his mouth. “What?”

  Doug closed his eyes and focused on his thought reaching his mouth. “Water,” he said, louder. “I need water.” He opened his eyes to see Jenna smiling. She pulled a bottle of Aquafina from below Doug’s line of sight and twisted off the cap, then gently slid a warm hand under his head and tilted it toward the bottle.

  “Here you go,” she said and splashed some into his mouth. Dear God, it tasted like champagne on New Year’s Eve. “More?”

  Doug nodded slightly and she fed him more.

  “Hey, boss. Good to see your eyes open.”

  Terry stepped into Doug’s view; that scratcher’s grin back. He held a can of Budweiser. Where the hell did he get a Budweiser? Well, if anyone could find beer during the end of the world, it would be Terry. Doug nodded and motioned to Jenna to give him more water. For the first time since Doug felt Terry lift him off the dirt of the Community as the government dropped bombs on the mesh of tents and Quonset huts, Doug felt like he was going to live. A smile reached his face this time as he relaxed and fell into unconsciousness.

  ***

  It was dark when Doug came around again, the orange glow of a small fire cast long shadows in the culvert. “How long was I out?”

  A laugh shot from Terry like he’d just heard the best joke of his life. “Too long, boss. We almost left you for the buzzards.”

  Nikki sat next to Terry on the Spotted Dick box. She punched Terry’s shoulder.

  “Three days.” It was Jenna. He felt warm. Had she never left my side? Doug started to sit from, what the hell? A mattress? But his chest met Jenna’s hand and it pushed him back down.
When did she get so strong?

  “You aren’t going anywhere, mister,” she said. “You’ve been unconscious three days, most of two of those across Terry’s back and you’re going to lie there until I say it’s okay to move.”

  Three days. It had been three days since the government destroyed the Community, maybe all the Communities, wiping out everyone it thought was infected with the Piper. Anyone that might turn like the Milky Cataract Man. A panicked thought touched his mind. Maybe someone had seen them leave. Maybe someone was still looking for them.

  “Where are we?”

  Terry crushed an empty Budweiser can and tossed it down the dark culvert, to Doug the rattle of the can was uncomfortably loud. “We’re still in western Nebraska,” Terry said and cracked open another beer. “I used to like Nebraska. Had an aunt in Beatrice. She made great pies. I fucking hate this place now.”

  Too many thoughts pushed against each other in Doug’s head. God, it hurt. “Can I have more water?”

  “Sure, baby,” Jenna said and lifted a bottle to his mouth, the warm liquid refreshing him with each small swallow.

  Doug reached up and gently nudged the bottle away. He smiled. “Thank you.” Then turned toward Terry and Nikki. “Thank you all. You could have left me. You’d be miles away from here. Heck, even states away from here.” His face grew serious. “No, you should have left me.”

  Terry shook his head. “No dice, dude. We’re doin’ the apocalypse together or we’re not doin’ it at all.”