Perry glanced over and smiled. “I know,” he said.
“What’s wrong with them?” Soma asked.
“They died,” he said simply.
He signaled, pulled into the parking lot of the local grocery store. The name of the business was Pollie’s Market, but several of the letters had fallen from the building’s façade so that it read POE’S MARK instead, which Soma found suspiciously fortuitous. There were several vehicles in the lot, most of them trucks. A homemade gantry had been erected along the side of the building on which several large carcasses – pigs, she hoped – hung from metal hooks. A handful of people were gathered there. A tall, heavyset man in a bloodstained butcher’s apron was carving one of the animals with a large knife as an assistant dickered with their customers. Another assistant wrapped packages in wax paper and string.
“What do they use for money?” Soma asked. Several of the customers had turned to gawk at them.
“It varies,” Perry said. “Paper money is worthless now, as you can imagine. We’ve returned to a barter economy. Meat, weapons, ammunition, gasoline… those are the things that have the most value now. Consumable necessities, I guess you’d call them. Clothes, books, everything else… you can break into just about any abandoned house and find those things. They have a little value, but not much. There’s a surplus of dead people’s things nowadays.”
“What has the most value?” Soma asked as he parked near the front doors. She suspected she knew the answer.
“Human flesh,” Perry said. “Especially the brains.”
She pressed her lips together.
“I don’t partake,” he said earnestly, “but many still do. It’s the only thing that makes the pain go away completely.”
“How long?”
“What long what?”
“How long does the pain go away? After you eat the flesh.”
“A day or two. Depends on how much you eat, and how fresh it is.”
“And you’ve never…?”
“Not after I woke up,” Perry said. He stared out the windshield, the lines of his face deepening for a moment, then threw open the door and slid from the truck. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get some supplies.”
Perry came around and helped her down, leaving his rifle in the cab.
“Don’t you want your gun?”
“It’s pretty safe here.”
She stepped down onto the pavement and immediately noted a strong odor of gasoline. She looked back toward the butcher’s gantry and spotted, at the end of the kiosk, a couple of metal drums. Some of the men and women trading for meat were carrying metal pails or red plastic jugs. The butcher’s assistant would inspect the containers and then direct the customers to pour their contents into the drums. After conferring with his co-workers, the other assistant would pass them a package of meat. Others customers offered up weapons, bullets, batteries, lighters. Valuable consumables, she thought.
“Where do they get the gas?” she asked.
“Oh, here and there,” Perry said, walking to the tailgate. “You can siphon it from cars. Find it in people’s garages. Pump it out of the underground tanks of old filling stations, if you can find one that hasn’t been plundered already. Instead of working at jobs, people range out looking for gas and batteries. It’s dangerous, but it puts food on the table.” He lowered the tailgate and hauled the cooler out. “Come on.”
Before they could go inside, a female Resurrect ambled over from the butcher’s stall. She was a rail-thin woman with long auburn hair, dressed in a spaghetti strap t-shirt and faded denim jeans. She had a gaunt, pocked face and her lips had been partially chewed off, giving her a permanent, ghastly grin. She had tried to conceal her injuries with makeup, but had applied it so thickly she looked as if she were wearing a Halloween mask. Her fingernails, which were very long and sharp, were painted cherry red.
“Well, hey, honeybuns!” she croaked, eyeing Perry intensely. “Haven’t seen you in town in a while. What you up to today, Rabbit?”
“Hey, Shirl,” Perry said. “Come to do some trading.”
Soma could tell from his sigh that he was not overly pleased to see the woman, though the woman seemed oblivious of his distaste.
“What you looking to trade for?” Shirl asked, gimlet eyes caressing the cooler hungrily.
“Ammunition and gas,” Perry said.
“Too bad you boys can’t get it up anymore, or we could trade for something else,” the woman said, and laughed wheezily.
Perry’s lips became a thin line. “Yeah, too bad,” he said. He shifted the cooler in his hands.
“Who’s this?” Shirl asked, jerking her head toward Soma.
“This is my friend, Soma.”
“Girlfriend, you mean?”
“She’s been stayin’ with me,” Perry said neutrally.
The ghoulish woman looked Soma up and down, then leaned in and said, “Lucky you.” She laughed again and Soma, trying to be polite, laughed with her, though the woman’s breath smelled like feces and pepperoni.
“Well, Shirl, I hate to be rude, but we’ve got a lot to do today,” Perry said loudly, and he headed for the doors.
Soma hurried after him.
“That’s Shirley,” he said under his breath.
“Old flame?” Soma teased.
“Old bar hag.”
“She’s from Stone Ridge?”
“Yeah. About half the folks here are. The rest are deaders that wandered in while they were in the dead zone. Get the door for me?”
She had expected the door, which was operated by electric eye, to spring open for them automatically, but of course, it wouldn’t. No electricity. She held the door while he carried the cooler in.
The first thing she noticed was the smell. The atmosphere of the supermarket was a stew of rancid meat, propane gas, motor oil and mildew, making her wrinkle her nose in revulsion. The second thing she noticed was the mess. The interior of the supermarket was as run down as the town itself. Only the forward portion of the market was being used. The rest was a dangerous looking conglomeration of grocery gondolas and unrelated bric-a-brac: road signs and bikes, garden implements and scrap metal, clothes and shoes, camping gear and hunting trophies. There were several glass display cases up front filled with ammunition and weapons. The display cases were lit by a couple of hissing Coleman lanterns and attended by a trio of Resurrects, all men. The trio, and the handful of customers perusing their wares, turned to look at Soma and Perry when they strode inside. Their scrutiny gave her a little flash of anxiety.
“Rabbit!” one of the men behind the glass cases cried out. He was a tall obese fellow in bib overalls. Some sort of black fungus mottled the roll of fat beneath his chin. Tendrils of the stuff climbed his doughy cheeks in strange Arabesque patterns. He seemed friendly enough, though. He grinned a black-gummed grin and waved them forward.
After exchanging pleasantries – everyone called Perry “Rabbit” here, apparently -- Perry opened the cooler to show them what he had brought to trade.
A look of unadulterated greed pinched the fat man’s face, but he negotiated fiercely. Soma watched, trying to ignore the curious stares of the other patrons, as Perry and the proprietor dickered. Within moments, both men were complaining vociferously that the other was trying to rip him off.
“Why don’t you quit with the sweet talk and just bend me over this counter right here?” Perry cried. “That’s what you’re trying to do!”
“Me?” the big man squalled, acting offended. “You’re the one trying to bend someone over here!”
A friendly looking woman approached as the men haggled. She was tall and nicely shaped, and relatively intact except for a missing nose. Someone or something had bitten her nose clean off, the edges of the wound scalpel-smooth.
“Hi,” the woman said.
“Hi.”
“First time I’ve seen you around.” Her sinus cavities whistled when she spoke.
“I’m new here. Just woke up a coup
le days ago.”
“That right? Well, happy birthday. That’s what we ought to call it, I think. So where you from?”
“Indiana,” Soma said. “Just outside Cincinnati.”
“Wow, that’s pretty good!” the woman said. “I wandered all the way from Saint Louis while I was brain dead. Name’s Billie Jean, like in the song.”
“Soma.”
“That’s an interesting name. Never heard it before. So how’d you meet Rabbit?”
“Perry?” Soma said, glancing back at the man, who was yelling, “You’re killin’ me, Buck! You’re killing me!” Smiling in amusement, Soma said, “Perry saved my life.”
“Is that right?” Billie Jean said, glancing wistfully toward the man. Soma was starting to get the feeling a lot of the women in Stone Ridge were appreciative of Perry’s charms. “He’s a good man,” Billie Jean said. She smiled at Soma with thinly concealed jealousy.
“Yes, he is.”
“So… you planning to stay?”
“I’m not really sure…” She didn’t know if she should tell anyone what she and Perry were planning to do.
“I hear you. I thought about going back to Saint Louis, but it’s rough out there. Every zombie for himself, you know? I finally decided the smart thing to do was just stay put. And then I met Robbie.”
She nodded to a fellow standing nearby. Robbie, noticing their attention, raised a hand in greeting. His only hand. His left arm was missing, the empty sleeve rolled up and pinned.
“Robbie’s a sweet guy,” Billie Jean said. “A really sweet guy.”
Perry wrapped up his bartering, exchanging the rabbit meat for a box of .30-06 rifle bullets, a box of 9 mm handgun bullets and fuel for his truck-- a fill-up and an extra five gallons. Happy with the transaction, Perry joined Soma and talked to Billie Jean and Robbie, who had sauntered over to join the conversation. They called him Rabbit, too. Perry seemed mildly embarrassed by the nickname, but Soma thought it was kind of sexy. She wasn’t sure why. Finally, he said, “Well, kids, it’s been nice jawing with y’all, but we need to head out. You know how it is. Places to go, people to see.”
“All right,” Billie Jean said. “You take care.”
“Take care, Rabbit,” Robbie said, and they shook hands. “Stay out of trouble.”
“I’ll try.”
Outside, Soma grinned up at Perry and said, “Rabbit?”
He rolled his eyes. “Real clever, huh?”
“I think it’s cute.”
“Let’s get our gas and head home.”
“All right… Rabbit,” Soma teased.
He swatted her on the bum and she laughed.
20
“Found it!” Perry said, walking into the kitchen with a large road atlas, a triumphant grin on his face. Throwing it down on the table, he said, “I was afraid Jake borrowed it, but it was in the bedroom closet.”
He straddled a chair, pencil in hand, as Soma came around the table. She had been cleaning the kitchen -- just busy work, really, the place was spotless -- while Perry packed for their journey.
“You have a road atlas?” she said.
“Yeah. I found one in a service station last year and thought it might come in handy someday. Guess I tossed it in the closet and forgot where I put it. We should map out our route, plan it all out before we leave.”
Soma leaned over him, hand on his shoulder, as he flipped to the page for Illinois. He glanced up at her touch – the thoughtful, measuring look men give to women when the blue movies start playing in their heads. She had seen that look in Nandi’s eyes often enough over the years to recognize it when she saw it. She took her hand away quickly.
“Sorry.”
“No problem.”
He blinked his eyes as if he were trying to clear his thoughts, then said distractedly, “Yeah, so… yeah. I was thinking… rather than take the most direct route, it would probably be best to stick to the back roads and secondary highways as much as possible, stay away from the cities. There will be less wreckage, fewer herds, less chance of stumbling across other tribes of Resurrects.”
“That makes sense.”
“Unfortunately, it will probably increase our chances of coming across survivors,” he said. “They tend to keep to rural areas.”
She did not like that. Her memory of the militant group she had run across shortly after awakening was still fresh in her mind. If she closed her eyes, she could summon the image of the men gunning down her herd like a movie playing on the inside of her eyelids. And the man in the ladies room… the way he had so casually desecrated the dead woman’s corpse. In some ways, his behavior was even more frightening than the way his people had gunned down her herd! It was demented. She didn’t want to imagine what a man like that might do to her if she fell into his hands. After half a decade as an emergency room nurse, she had no illusions about the limits of man’s perversity… or lack thereof.
Perry asked her something while she was woolgathering. “What?” she said, turning her attention back to him.
“I asked if you know how to use a gun,” he said.
She shook her head. “Not very well. I went hunting with my dad a few times when I was growing up, but I just went to spend time with him. I let him do all the shooting. After the Phage, he tried to teach me how to shoot, but we had very limited ammunition. We couldn’t practice very much.”
“We need to see to that before we go,” he said.
“Make me a marksman?” she asked jokingly.
“You need to be able to defend yourself if something should happen to me.”
She frowned, straightening the hem of the tablecloth. “I’ve always been real nervous around guns.”
“That’s just lack of experience,” he said. “You won’t be afraid of guns after you’ve been trained to use them. It’s like learning how to swim. You’re not scared to get in the pool if you know how to swim – um, you do know how to swim, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Well, tomorrow you’ll know how to shoot, too.”
She started to demure, then saw the survivor in her mind’s eye again, the big man with the beard. Saw him pulling his cock from his trousers, pissing on the dead woman beside her. Saw the twitchy, perverse smile on his lips as he defiled the woman’s corpse.
“You like that, honey?” the bearded man had purred as he relieved himself between her splayed thighs, his side-splash spattering Soma’s arm and midriff. “Gotcha all warm and wet now, don’t I?”
They wouldn’t all be like him, she knew. Of course not. But as her father always said, hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
“Okay,” she said with a decisive nod. “You’re right.”
Satisfied, Perry returned to his map.
“So here we are. The closest bridge across the Ohio River is here. We’ll skirt around Harrisburg and take Highway 13 across the Shawneetown Bridge and then head north on 667. This is all just farmland and forest out through here.”
“What if the bridge is washed out or impassable for some reason?”
He scowled. “Ugh! Yeah, if the Shawneetown Bridge is out, we’ll have to get across at… um, Henderson. Cave-in-Rock doesn’t have a bridge. Just a ferry service. Doubt that’s running anymore. Shoot! Not too many ways across the river around here! Bad thing about crossing at Henderson, it’s a pretty big town, and there’s a tribe of Resurrects there. We’ve traded with them a couple times in the past. They’re not hostile, but they’re not exactly friendly either. They might let us pass if they catch us, but they’re just as liable to take everything we have and send us packing on foot. We can go south and try to get across at Paducah, but that would take us several hours in the opposite direction. Let’s just hope the Shawneetown Bridge is passable.”
“And out here, further east?” Soma said, pointing toward home.
Perry looked up at her and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
21
The next day, he took her out into the road. As she stoo
d waiting in the speckled shade of the hickory and oaks overarching the highway, he set a metal coffee can down in the middle of the pavement several yards away and then walked toward her. He pulled a black pistol from the holster belted around his waist. “This is a Smith & Wesson 9 millimeter semiautomatic,” he said, holding the handgun toward her.
Soma took it in her hands gingerly.
“Don’t worry. It’s not loaded,” he said.
She turned it back and forth, examining it. “It’s really light. Feels like a toy.”
“That’s because it’s not loaded,” Perry said. “The clip and bullets will add a little weight, but yeah, it’s a light weapon. I’ll be bringing my rifle and .357, but I want you to carry this, for your own protection.”
She looked at the bottom of the grip. It was hollow, with a rectangular opening in the butt. “This is where the clip goes?”
“Yep.”
“How do you get it out?”
“First things first.”
“Okay.”
He moved behind her, took her hand in his -- the one holding the gun. He showed her how to hold it correctly, warning her to keep her thumb away from the hammer. He showed her how to cock it, explaining that once the bullet had slid up into the chamber she could fire it continuously until the clip was depleted.
She was quite aware of his nearness, and the size of him. He towered over her, was probably a good three or four inches taller than Nandi, and then she felt ashamed that the proximity of his body made her so nervous and distracted. She focused her attention on his instructions, trying to absorb everything as quickly and completely as possible. She had always been a fast learner.
“This is the safety,” Perry said, pointing toward a lever on the left side of the weapon. “Use your thumb to push it forward. That red dot shows that the gun can be fired. If you have to draw on someone, or something, make sure you thumb the safety off. You won’t get a second chance if you forget. Not unless you’re very, very lucky.”
Soma (The Fearlanders) Page 13
