Perry had sighed when Siloam fell into the distance behind them. “I didn’t think they’d actually let us leave,” he confessed. He grinned giddily, glancing over at her. She couldn’t help but grin back, though her hands were knotted in her lap. “People like that, they don’t like to let you go,” he said. “My uncle’s church was like that. Once they had you, they thought they owned you body and soul.”
“Well, we’re shut of them now,” Soma said. “And we can go back if we ever change our minds. I didn’t think they were all that bad. They saved us from the herd, and they kept their promise that we could leave.”
“Never,” Perry said resolutely, his eyes and lips squeezed into slits.
She didn’t reply. She found his paranoia a little annoying.
“Let’s go find your family!” he exclaimed with sudden good cheer, and he goosed the Ford up to sixty.
Once they left the stragglers behind, they made very good time. The journey to Brookville took less than six hours. There were very few zombies wandering the countryside in the wake of the herd, just piles of bones swarming with flies, and they only had to double back once, when they came upon a bridge that had been washed out by a flash flood. Quite before she was prepared for it, Soma found herself in familiar territory.
Northeast Indiana was her old stomping grounds. It was where she had been born, where she’d grown up, the world she’d relinquished to build a life with Nandi, and all the more precious for it. Each town they passed bore with it now some poignant memory so that their journey became as much a trip down memory lane as it was a search for her lost family. This little town, nearly engulfed now by the woodlands that surrounded it, had hosted the small hospital she’d worked at when she first got her nursing degree. She was still engaged to Nandi then and he would come and share dinner with her in the nurses’ break room on the days when he was not working himself. She remembered how all the other nurses had flirted with him – shameless older women, most of them married – but that was always a hazard when handsome young men intruded into the territory of middle-aged professional women, especially nurses, who must quickly surrender to their vocation what bit of modesty they might once have held. And then they were tracing the outskirts of the town where she had earned her nursing degree. It was deserted, had all but succumbed to entropy, the gas stations and crummy little shops, the houses and playgrounds fallen to rust and ruin. Next, the towns she had frequented as a teenager. Here and here, she had enjoyed her first sweet tastes of freedom: driving in cars with boys, partying at her friends’ houses while their parents were away for the weekend, hanging out at the mall, drag racing in the streets late at night. This old skate park, now wilderness, its ramps and half pipes engulfed in vegetation, was where she had first made out with a boy, a kid named Benjie Layton. He was tall and skinny, with a constellation of angry red zits on his forehead, but he’d had the most dreamy blue eyes, and lanky blond hair that he’d feathered stylishly over the right side of his forehead, and she’d had such a crush on him that she felt like she was melting inside whenever he was near. They made out behind the bleachers, back where the trees grew thick and cleaved the streetlights into horizontal bands, like a scene from a noir film. He had thrust his tongue into her mouth and cupped one of her breasts, and she had reached down and felt the rigid bulge of his penis through his shorts before losing her nerve and fleeing from him in a panic of embarrassment. She shared these memories with Perry as they passed through the towns, narrating the last leg of their journey like an episode of This Is Your Life in reverse.
Perry listened without interrupting, though he did chuckle from time to time when she confessed to something embarrassing or humorous.
There was the Cineplex where they went to see movies. There was the Dairy Queen she worked at when she was sixteen -- her first job. Here was the Ben Franklin her mother used to shop at. The Kroger’s where they had bought their groceries. Her Dad’s best friend’s house, roof caved in, windows busted out. Her old grade school. Her old high school. All of it dead and rotting now, like the people who had once enlivened it. She wept, though no tears came, and Perry asked if she wanted to turn back.
“No,” she had answered. “We’re almost there. It’s just a little further.” She smiled at him, pushing through the pain. “I have to see. I have to know if they’re still alive.”
“And if they’re not there?” Perry asked. “If they’ve moved on?”
“Then I’ll have tried,” she said. “I can live with that… if you call what this is living.”
As they neared her father’s home, Soma began to give him directions. Her father’s farm lay about seven miles north of the town of Brookville, out on a rocky wooded ridge that overlooked the lake. It was called Parker’s Ridge, though the family it was named after departed Indiana shortly after the stock market crash of 1929. In 1990, when he retired from teaching English literature at Goshem University, her father had purchased a great deal of the land the Parker’s once owned. He had refurbished the old Parker home, a two story Colonial, put up a barn and some greenhouses, and set about his life’s dream of being a vegetable farmer, selling his produce to neighbors and at the local farmer’s market on the square in Brookville. He had also installed a fallout shelter. Her dad, she told Perry with an affectionate grin, was a little bit crazy.
“Ain’t we all,” Perry said, smiling back at her.
As they navigated the maze of back roads and rural blacktops that led to her father’s farm, Perry suggested they pull over before they arrived and approach by foot. “I think that’s probably the smartest thing to do,” he said. “We can hide the truck somewhere. Check the place out before we show ourselves. You’ve been gone several years. Your family might be there. They might not. They might have packed up and run for Home. All I’m saying is, there’s no telling who’s living there now, and it might not be wise to just roll up the driveway and say howdy. Anybody that ain’t your kin is likely to shoot first and ask questions later. I know I would.”
Soma nodded. She had her hands on the dash, was staring out the windshield impatiently. “You’re right, of course. I’m just so anxious to get there! I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin!”
About a quarter mile from the turnoff to her father’s farm, Perry pulled behind an old service station that was long abandoned even when she was a teenager. The woods that bordered the road had nearly engulfed the small building. All that was left of it were three cinderblock walls and a pile of decomposing shingles. They climbed out, armed themselves and concealed the Ford beneath some leafy saplings that Perry chopped down with his Bowie knife.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Soma answered.
They had trotted across the road and dived into the underbrush.
Twenty minutes later (and about ten minutes after telling Soma to keep her eyes peeled for booby traps), Perry was hanging by one ankle from a cleverly concealed tree spring trap.
After scolding him to be quiet so she could concentrate on freeing him from the snare, Soma raised the Smith & Wesson over her head, sighted down the barrel at the nylon rope he was swinging from and shifted her index finger to the trigger.
The report of the shot echoed through the forest.
“You missed,” Perry said, still hanging upside down.
“Thanks,” Soma said. “I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t told me. Now hush!”
She aimed again, shot.
“Give me the gun,” Perry said, holding out his hand. “Maybe I can shoot it--”
They heard a dog baying then and both of them froze in surprise.
“Gun! Gun!” Perry hissed, eyes bulging. He waved his open hand at her, fingers splayed.
“I can do it,” Soma hissed back.
Voices! Two men -- no, three! -- shouting to one another in the same direction the dog was barking. Soma could hear them crashing through the forest, headed directly for them. One of the men said, “This way, dummy!” Another
shouted, “Sic ‘em, boy!” The dog – it sounded like a bloodhound -- continued to bay. It was like a scene from a prison break movie.
Soma pulled the trigger. A piece of the limb the rope was attached to exploded into toothpicks, but the limb held, and Perry continued to dangle.
Sobbing in fright, Soma shoved the pistol into Perry’s hands.
“Here! You do it! I’m too nervous!” she cried.
“Hold me still,” he said, trying to aim upwards as his body spun away from her.
Before she could steady his body, Perry took a shot. She jumped a little as the report rattled through the treetops. She expected him to drop to the ground instantly. When he didn’t, she looked up in confusion, surprised he’d also missed.
(He was such a good shot--!)
And then she realized, even as she felt the cold fluid trickling down her cheeks.
Perry was not the one who had pulled the trigger.
Perry’s arms dropped limply to the ground. The pistol tumbled from his twitching fingers. Soma looked down at his face, feeling very slow and stupid, and there was a hole about the diameter of her index finger in the center of his forehead. Black fluid dribbled from that hole into his hat. His eyes had rolled back to their whites.
She drew a breath to scream and that was when the dog pounced.
45
Shock and horror made everything seem unreal after that, as though she were watching a scene on a television show rather than experiencing the events herself. She even thought, as the hound bore her to the ground, that time itself seemed suspended, as if the very universe were holding its breath in suspense.
The hound was black and tan, close to a hundred pounds and all muscle. It had a black saddle and black tipped snout and the morose features typical of its breed. Her grandfather had owned a bloodhound when she was a little girl, a lazy but affectionate dog named Droopy, after the Tex Avery cartoon character. She had always thought the breed was lovable and silly looking, with their big floppy ears and nappy eyes, but the beast that had her arm in its mouth, shaking her back and forth like a rag doll, did not seem so lovable now. In fact, she was certain the big brute was about to rip her arm out of its socket.
Three men came jogging down the ridge as the hound wrenched her to and fro. There was a short, stocky white man in tan Dockers and a dirty white t-shirt. There was a tall and muscular black man in blue jeans and a camouflage jacket, and there was a young, slim white man with lanky blond hair. They were all armed. The young guy slipped on a loose stone as he descended the ridge and scooted down the slope on his butt, dropping his rifle as he fell. The stocky white man in the Dockers stopped and pointed in her direction. “We got another one!” he yelled. “Sic ‘er, Bluto! Sic ‘er!”
They were alive! The scent of their flesh, the hot living smell of them, quickened the hunger in her even as the hound continued to maul her. She wanted to kill them, eat them, feel their hot, salty blood coursing down her chin and neck.
The dog yanked her around ninety degrees, snarling and drooling, and for a second she was looking directly at Perry’s face, and she thought: Perry’s dead.
He was already dead, just like her, but now he was dead-dead.
She howled inside her head: PERRY’S DEAD!
The sense of loss that accompanied the thought drained all the fight from her. Perry was dead and she wanted to be dead, too. Maybe it had been wrong to love him before she knew the fate of her family, but she had loved him -- it had always been easy for her to love -- and now he was gone and this terrible un-life she had awakened to just days ago seemed much too painful to endure any longer.
The black man grabbed the dog by the collar and pulled it away from her, grunting as the bulky animal strained against him. For a moment, the two titans were locked in stalemate, man and beast, the muscles in both their bodies straining mightily, and then the dog relented and allowed the black man to pull him off her. The stocky guy shoved his booted foot to her chest and pinned her to the ground. He looked to the skinny blond boy, who was just now joining the others, dusting his rump with his hand, and told the lad, “Right now, kid. Here’s your chance. Put a bullet in the bitch’s head. It’s time to pop that cherry.”
If the boy had been any more confidant, or Soma any less distraught, the day might have ended a little differently. The lad might have blown her brains out before she found her tongue, and that would have been the end of it. But the boy was unsure of himself, and in his uncertainty, he was slow. He fumbled with his rifle, almost dropped it again, swung the barrel back up and sighted down the length of it. He hesitated, licked his lips, and Soma, staring into the dark tunnel of the rifle’s muzzle, impatient for that darkness to enfold her, said, “Please, do it. It hurts too much.”
The young man’s eyes flew wide and he looked to the older men beside him.
The stocky man pinning Soma down looked surprised as well, but not as surprised as the kid. His eyes widened, then narrowed, and he shook her with his booted foot. “Did you just talk?” he said.
Soma grabbed his ankle with a gasp of pain and said, “Do it! Please! It’s okay!” She wanted the darkness inside the barrel of that rifle to keep its promise, to take all the pain away, to end her suffering. She was not afraid of dying. She had already died once. It would be a relief. A release. An escape from this corrupt world.
The boy stepped back. He looked ready to flee.
The stocky man in the white t-shirt grinned at the tall black man. “We got a talker!” he cried. “Hot damn, we finally got a talker!”
Still wrestling with the hound, the black man stepped closer. He was a handsome fellow, but cruel-looking, with a broad toothy mouth and a sharp flat flared nose. His eyes, jaundiced and bloodshot, slitted as he peered down at her. “Is that right?” he said. “If you’re a talker, say something. What’s your name?”
“Soma,” Soma choked. It was hard to speak with the man’s booted foot grinding into her chest.
“Big Boss is gonna cream his jeans when we bring her in,” the stocky man crowed. “He’s been waitin’ to get his hands on a talker for months!”
“It can talk?” the boy said, edging a little closer.
“We heard there was some that was getting their brains back,” the stocky man said. His eyes gleamed like he’d found hidden treasure. “Those fellas we shot it out with a couple months back said a few of them were regaining their memories. Big Boss has been wanting one to examine for a while now.” He licked his lips, grinning down at her nastily. “Do some experiments on her, maybe.”
“Your friend here,” the black man said, nodding toward Perry’s dangling corpse. “Was he a talker, too?”
Soma nodded – as best she could with a boot pressed to her throat.
“Damn!” the black man exclaimed. “Damn the bad luck! Too bad you’re such a crack shot, Jim Bob. We could have brought Big Boss two of them.”
“One will do just fine,” Jim Bob said, grinning down at Soma avidly. “We didn’t know they was talkers.” He twisted around to address the boy, boot still pressed to her throat. “Chigger, run back and grab the pole leash. Tell the others what we caught. And leave your rifle here so you don’t fall down and blow your dick off.”
The boy nodded and began to lower his rifle to the ground.
“Lean it against the tree,” Jim Bob said impatiently. “And hurry!”
The boy did as he was told and scurried away.
Soma turned her head to watch as the boy pelted up the rocky ridge. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, was obviously still eager to please the older males of his clan. He had yet to hit that phase of young adulthood when teenagers got surly and decided all adults were idiots.
He started up the rocky slope they had just descended, slipped and fell in the exact some spot, but was up and over the top before his friends had time to finish laughing at him. A moment later, Soma heard him swishing through the forest duff, headed in the direction of her parents’ farmhouse, the sound gr
owing fainter as he raced away.
Jim Bob and his companion chatted idly as they waited for the boy to return. She thought they might interrogate her further, but they seemed more interested in gossiping about the other members of their company, particularly the women, than questioning her.
It started with the black man, who squinted an eye at her and remarked, “You know, she ain’t half bad looking for a dead bitch. I’d fuck her. How about you, Jim Bob?”
“I don’t know,” Jim Bob said. “I’ve fucked some cold fish in my day, but never any dead fish!”
Soma listened with disgust as they went on to debate the lovemaking skills of the various Pusses in their harem. That’s what they called the female members of their group: Pusses. They eventually began to argue over who had the tightest pussy, like two men debating the merits of their favorite baseball teams, and Soma could not help but snort in contempt. This earned her a rather painful stomp from the one named Jim Bob, who leered down at her and said, “If I want your opinion, cunt, I’ll beat it out of you. I don’t take no guff from live women, and I sure as shit ain’t taking no attitude from a dead one.”
The other man -- whose name was Ray – enthused about a Puss named Dixie, who, in his learned opinion, had the tightest twat of all the Pusses, but was almost too ugly to get his dick hard.
“I’m thinking about cutting a couple eyeholes in a pillowcase, that way she can wear it when I throw down on her,” Ray said. “I’d enjoy it a lot better if I ain’t gotta look at her ugly mug while I’m doing my business.”
“Why eyeholes?” Jim Bob said. “Just need one hole for the mouth. Bitch ain’t got to see to suck dick!”
They roared at that -- Jim Bob the loudest, despite the fact that he was the one who’d cracked the funny – and Soma retreated from them in her mind, unwilling to participate, even passively, in such ugliness.
Soma (The Fearlanders) Page 27
