The King of Clayfield - 01

by Shane Gregory

  "Zach...oh God...He just lost it," she said through the sobs.

  I propped the shotgun against the wall, and set the tequila beside it. There was a duffle bag by the closet. I put it on the bed and started filling it with the clothes from the floor. There were three or four hundred dollars in tens and twenties scattered on the floor, too. I grabbed as many as I could.

  "I was trying to pack some stuff after I read your message," she said. "Zach got sick, that asshole. God, he was such an asshole..."

  I looked out the window again. They were headed in our direction.

  "They're really coming now, Jen, we have to go."

  She just kept sitting there.

  "...as soon as he said he had a headache, and I mean the very second he said he had one, I opened the bottle and started drinking, just like that doctor said. I knew he'd get sick. That was just like him."

  "Tell me in the car, Jen," I said.

  I put the tobacco stick in her hand. She took it. I pulled my towel up around my nose and mouth, hung the strap of the bag around my neck, and took her by the elbow. I stood her up, and then grabbed the shotgun.

  We made it to the living room but had to stop. There was the silhouette of a man in the doorway. Out the front window, I could see the other two by the Blazer.

  "There he is," she said. "What an asshole. You hear me, you son of a bitch?!"

  She broke away, jumped on, then over the foldout couch and at the man in the doorway. When he stepped inside, she nailed him in the crotch with the stick. He folded up into a neat ball at her feet. The other two men were on their way up the porch.

  I got to her before she got outside, and pulled her through the dining room. I could see the back door in the kitchen on the other side of the refrigerator.

  "We'll circle around," I said, but I knew I was just talking to myself.

  Out back, there were shallow footprints in the snow that had been partially filled in with newer snow. There was a snow-covered gas grill to the right of the steps and a snow-covered garbage can to the left. The backyard was fenced, so we headed for the gate. I realized then that she wasn't dressed for the cold. She was wearing sweatpants, a lightweight sweater, and some house slippers.

  I stopped her underneath the kitchen window, next to the garbage can and leaned her against the house.

  "I'm cold," she said.

  "I know. I'm going back for your coat and shoes. Stay right here."

  She looked like she was going to say something, but I left before she could.

  I stepped into the kitchen, and shielding myself with the refrigerator, I peered into the dining room. There was no one there. As quietly as I could, I made my way toward the living room. All three men were out on the front porch again. I was about to try sneaking past the open door to her bedroom, when I noticed a row of coats hanging on pegs behind the front door. Beneath them was a row of shoes.

  The men were going down the steps toward the Blazer. Quickly and silently, I ran to the coats. I took a bulky brown one from its peg and draped it over my arm, and then I picked up a pair of pink and white running shoes.

  I would need to get the men away from the truck so Jen and I could leave.

  I went to the doorway, "Hey! I'm up here!"

  Their heads jerked up, and they came at me. I ran back through the house. When I got to the fridge, I stopped to see if they were still following. As soon as they entered the dining room, I ran out the back door.

  Jen was bent at the waist, leaning on the stick. The snow at her feet was brown and melting.

  "They're coming," I said as I ran past her.

  "I puked," she said.

  I got to the gate and nudged it open with my foot.

  "Now, Jen!"

  The back door flew open, and one of the men fell out into the snow. A second man stumbled out on top of him. Jen seemed to come to her senses, and bolted away from them. She was having trouble getting traction in the snow in her slippers, and her feet would run in place for a few steps, make progress, and then she'd fall to one knee. The third man leapt out of the house. When his feet hit the ground, they slipped in the snow, and he landed on his butt. The whole scene looked like something from a cartoon.

  I backed against the gate, to hold it open. Jen made it to me before the men could recover. I closed the gate, and looked for something to prop it closed. I started to use the shotgun, but Jen stopped me.

  "Are you outta your mind?" she said, looking at me like I was an idiot. She jammed the tobacco stick into the ground, and then leaned it over so that it was wedged under the gate's latch. Then she took the shotgun from me.

  More people were coming down the street. They didn't seem to be a group--just nine loners, spaced out and staggering toward us, attracted by the noise.

  We got in the Blazer and pulled away before they could reach us.

  I drove around and past the people in the streets. Some stopped and, with slack jaws, watched us pass; others chased us. I couldn't get over how little some of them were wearing. How could they stand this cold? The thermometer on the dashboard was showing the outside temperature at 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

  I headed east on College to 6th Street, then took that to Bragusberg Road.

  "Are we going to your house?" Jen asked softly. She'd put the shotgun in the backseat and was resting her head against the window. The big, brown coat covered her like a blanket, pulled up to her chin.

  "No," I said. "A friend owns a place out between Gala and Farmtown, I'm going out there."

  Her distant stare was back.

  "Are you okay?" I said.

  "No."

  I didn't know what to say. She and I were "friends" on Facebook, but that was the extent of our relationship. We had only been acquaintances in high school; we didn't run in the same circles. I might have seen her three times around town since graduation. I didn't know anything about her.

  "You grabbed the wrong coat," she said. "This is Zach's coat...my boyfriend."

  "Sorry," I said. "It was the first one on the rack.”

  She was silent for a moment. She pushed her hands down in the pockets of the coat. An ever so slight grin crossed her lips.

  "Score," she whispered and fished out a pack of cigarettes. She stuck one in her mouth.

  "Do you mind?" she asked.

  I did mind, but I said, "No, go ahead."

  "Want one?”

  "No," I said. "I quit back in 2004."

  "2004? Hell...good for you. But I think we've earned it."

  "If I smoke one, I'll smoke the whole pack," I said. "The last thing I need to is get re-addicted to something they might not be making anymore."

  She pulled out a lighter, and flicked it a couple of times until the flame danced.

  "Ain't nothing worse than a smoker that's quit," she said, lighting up.

  "Why's that?"

  "They bitch and moan about smoking more than people that's never done it."

  She took a deep drag and exhaled, filling the cab with smoke.

  I opened my window, and the cold wind bit at my face.

  "I should know, because I quit, too. I gave Zach hell about these things every damn day. I wouldn't let him smoke inside...."

  She rolled her window down and she threw the cigarette and the rest of the pack out.

  "Tastes like dirt," she said.

  We put our windows up and were quiet for a while. I pulled off of Bragusberg Road onto little Britton Lane. The road had been snow-covered the whole way. There were no tire tracks or footprints.

  "Have you been exposed?" she asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "I've been around people that had it, so probably. I've been wearing this mask."

  "If I'm going to turn..." she paused as if she didn't want to finish. “If I turn into one of them, it'll be sometime today. Zach and I were probably exposed to the disease within a few hours of each other. He probably caught it at work, and I probably caught it from him. We should know by this afternoon whether this alcohol thing work
s."

  "Do you think there is something to it?" I asked, turning onto Gala Road. "It sounds crazy."

  "Crazy is all we've got right now."

  "There's no way to know how much to drink," I said.

  "I got wasted," she said. "I made sure I got my brain good and soaked."

  She looked out the window.

  "I've got a headache," she said. "I don't know if it is from the virus or the liquor. I thought you ought to know."

  "Is a headache the first symptom?"

  "Yeah," she said. "Zach got a headache. His sister and her kids were staying with us, because their power went out yesterday, and their neighborhood was getting bad. They were all in bed with bad headaches before long. I was drinking, but I don't know if it helped."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "Me too," she said. "He was an asshole, but he didn't deserve that. His sister and...and the kids..." Jen sighed heavily and started crying.

  I pulled into Blaine's driveway. His truck was gone, but Betsy's minivan was there. Their long, tan, manufactured home was off to the right of the driveway. They had a workshop behind the house with an attached chicken coop. I could see four chickens in the pen. There were other, smaller outbuildings here and there. The snow in the yard was pristine, and I didn't take that to be a good sign. I started to get out, and Jen put her hand on my arm.

  "Don't let me become one of them," she said.

  "Jen, I..."

  "If I start acting funny, if I start getting violent, you kill me."

  "Jen, I couldn't do that."

  "Before this is over, you'll probably have to kill some of them," she said.

  I stared at her. I was afraid I already had killed, but I didn't want to tell her. Her eyes were red from the booze and the tears; they were desperate and pleading.

  "I don't want to wind up like Zach," she said.

  "Blaine didn't know I was coming," I said, changing the subject. "I'm going to see if it's okay if we stay here."

  She pulled her hand away and ran her fingers through her hair.

  "I'll wait," she said.

  Family and friends used the back door at Blaine's. Strangers always came to the front. I knew I should go around back. Blaine had a shotgun, too, and if I tried the front door, he might give me the same welcome that Jen had.

  I went up the back porch and knocked.

  "Blaine!" I said. "Betsy!"

  I couldn't hear any movement inside. I cupped my eyes and looked through the narrow window on the back door. I could see their small laundry room. I knocked again, louder. I left the porch and walked around the house looking in windows. No one was in there.

  For as far as I could see snow was perfect and untouched. During the ice storm of 2009, the family had slept in the workshop, because Blaine had a small wood-burning stove in there. I walked over to the shop. I waved at Jen. The windows were starting to fog up on the Blazer, but she saw me and raised her hand in acknowledgement.

  I knocked on the workshop door, and then tried the knob. It was unlocked. I stepped inside. It was as cold in there as it was outside. I touched the wood stove to be sure--cold, unused. I tried the light switch, but there was nothing.

  I returned to the Blazer.

  "They're gone," I said, climbing in.

  "So what now?" she said.

  "I don't think Blaine would mind us staying here," I said. "The power is out, so we'll sleep over in the workshop. Maybe I can get a fire going."

  "Do you think your friend has anything to drink?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Haven't you had enough?"

  "Not for me," she said. "If I don't get sick, then we know alcohol works. If it works, you need to get good and drunk."

  CHAPTER 8

  We unloaded the truck and took everything into the workshop. The building was a metal pole barn on a concrete slab, tan to match the house; the dimensions were about 15 feet by 20 feet. Along the two shorter walls to the left and right of the door were counters lined with tools–grinder, miter saw, vise, drill, etc. The building had three windows--two on the south side facing the road, and one on the east side looking out into the chicken pen. Up high on the walls, hung garden tools, some lawn chairs, and a bicycle. On the back wall opposite the front door was a little square door three or four feet off the ground.

  “What’s this for?” Jen asked. “Hobbits?”

  That Hobbit thing was nice. I almost didn’t notice it, because I was distracted with my thoughts. It was out-of-the-blue on a very bad day and coming from someone who'd just experienced a terrible loss. It made me smile.

  “It's an egg door.”

  “Egg door?”

  “Open it,” I grinned.

  She unlatched the door and opened it. She was wearing the coat now, and it swallowed her up making her look like a little kid. Then she stood on tiptoes to get a better view into the opening, which further accentuated her childlike appearance.

  It took her a minute....

  “It’s dark…oooh...an egg door. It's the chicken coop.”

  She turned to me, “There’s one in there."

  She reached in and pulled out a brown chicken egg.

  “I think it’s frozen,” she said.

  ”Chickens don’t lay much in the winter,” I said. “I’m surprised there was one there at all.”

  “They don’t like the cold?”

  “No, it’s not that,” I said. “They need a certain amount of daylight, and the days are shorter in the winter. Some people put lights in the coop to trick them into laying.”

  The building was insulated, so that would help once I got the fire started. Jen was still kind of spacey, and she'd sat on an upside-down five-gallon bucket and was staring down at the egg.

  Blaine didn’t have any dry firewood inside, which surprised me. I stepped outside. There was a small pile of wood to the right of the door, but it was covered in snow.

  C’mon, Blaine. I thought you were Mr. Prepared…Johnny On The Spot. Where’s all the dry wood, dammit?

  I came back inside with four small, wet logs.

  Jen didn't look up.

  "There's some food in those boxes, if you're hungry."

  "I can't eat right now," she said.

  I put the logs in the floor and looked around the shop for something I could use as tinder and kindling. There was a short length of a two-by-four next to the miter saw; I grabbed that. Then, I ripped out some of the advertisement pages from my magazines. After digging around in one of the drawers under one of the counters, I found a box cutter, and I used it to shave off curly slivers of the two-by-four.

  When I had a handful of shavings ready, I opened the door to the stove. We had a stove like this when I was a kid, but I’d never actually operated it. I'd watched my dad enough that I thought I could do it. If I was lucky, I wouldn’t burn the building down, and Jen would think I knew what I was doing.... not that she cared.

  The bottom of the stove had a lot of ash in it. I found Blaine’s ash bucket and shovel, and cleaned out the stove. I put down some of my shredded magazine ads in first. There was a small hatchet next to the door. I turned the two-by-four on its end and used the hatchet to bust up into smaller sticks for kindling.

  Then, I opened the damper on the stove, so it could draw air.

  “Still got the lighter?” I said.

  Jen looked up absently, then dug around in the coat pocket and tossed me the little green BIC. I got the paper started, and then I placed my pile of shavings loosely on top of the flame. It started to smoke, and then ignited. I put the smaller kindling on first and when it caught, I put on the bigger pieces. Then I put one of the wet logs next to, but not on, the fire. Smoke was coming into the room. I'd forgotten to open the flue. I looked over my shoulder to see if Jen noticed, but she wasn’t paying attention. I opened the flue and the smoke went out the chimney.

  “I’ve got to find more dry wood,” I said. “I’m going to see if there is any in one of the sheds.”

  She nodded but didn
't look up.

  I stepped out and shut the door behind me. In the field across the road were several cows. They all stared at me as though I was the only human they’d ever seen. There were cows like this on farms all over the countryside. There were all sorts of fenced livestock out there. I wondered what would happen to them. Would they eventually overpopulate their boundaries? Turn feral? Starve?

  I walked over to the closest shed. Inside, I found stacks of plastic flowerpots, four bags of potting soil, and a bucket of sand. I was about to leave and check another shed, when I noticed the wooden pallet on which the bags of soil sat. I moved the dirt quickly and pulled out the pallet. The top boards were dry, and that would do for now.

  On my way back, I looked out across the open fields behind the house. In the far distance, I could see a figure moving around, dark against the snow. It was far enough away and my depth perception was confused enough, that I couldn't tell whether or not it was human or animal. My imagination told me it was human. I watched it, trying to figure it out, but the whiteness of the snow was playing tricks on my eyes. But I couldn't watch long, because I had a fire to feed.

  When I came back into the building with the pallet, Jen was removing the power tools from the counter.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not sleeping on that concrete,” she said. “It is cold and hard, and there might be stuff crawling around down there.”

  I didn’t argue. It made sense to me.

  "How many shells do you have for that shotgun?" I asked as casually as I could.

  "Two."

  "Just two?”

  "It only holds three, and I used one.”

  I didn't want to shoot anyone, but the reality was that I might have to defend myself and Jen.

  I grabbed a claw hammer and pried the pallet apart.

  I could feel her staring at me.

  "We should save them," she said. "You know, for us...just in case."

  I looked over at her; she looked so incredibly sad and scared.

  "It'll be okay," I said. "The alcohol worked. I'm sure it did."

  "But my head is splitting," she said.

  "You're just hung over," I said. "Eat something.”

  She picked up the egg and sat down on the bucket again.