Lee is out of the truck doing the same.
Dorian is…laughing. He does not raise his weapon.
Quite the opposite.
He turns his back and begins walking towards the tanker truck blocking our path. “Your face, kid, you should have seen your face.” He twirls a finger in the air above his head. “Donny, open the road, let these nice people through.”
“Whoa, what is wrong with that guy?” Lee gasps as he scrambles inside and punches it into drive.
“Let’s just go,” I mutter, surprised at how rattled I sound.
As we pass through, I look back and Dorian is there, in the road, that same cold steel in his eyes, waving at us with that black smile on full display, as the flatbed moves slowly back into place, obscuring him from view like a curtain closing on some twisted play.
26
“Did we pass it, we must have passed it.” Lee sighs loudly and smacks his lips. “Is everyone keeping their eyes open? It’s been over thirty miles, according to the map, we should be sitting on top of the place at this point.”
“Honey, everyone’s eyes are open,” Momma says.
“Wide open,” Bethany rolls hers at me and shakes her head, pointing at Lee with silent light-hearted mockery.
“Maybe the map was wrong.” I suggest.
“Maps aren’t usually wrong, Two-Step.”
“They aren’t infallible either.” Bethany retorts.
“Bethany, now is not the time to antagonize.” Mom is rubbing Lee’s back as he sucks in another gulp of air in an attempt to calm his visibly frazzled nerves.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You know infallible, but you don’t know what antagonize means?” To me, it’s an obvious paradox.
“I’m not a dictionary, and it looks like I won’t be finishing my education any time in the near future, so give me a break.”
“I’m just saying…”
“There, there, there, sign, sign!” Bethany is practically standing on her seat.
Lee jumps on the brakes, fish tailing the truck forward another twenty yards and threatening to pitch us all through the windshield.
“Was that really necessary?” Momma asks through clenched teeth while pushing her hair back behind her ears.
“Sorry, I got excited, it was a twitch reflex.” He backs up to confirm the sign. It’s bent over on one leg as if bowing to some unseen master. The previously green surface is singed black and caked with mud. Half of the letters are still visible.
-mbull
“Good eyes, Bethany.” I nod my head, thoroughly impressed.
“Like a hawk.” Lee turns and high-fives her.
She shrugs. “What can I say, my vision is infallible.”
The exit for the town is less than a mile up the highway. The traffic signal is blinking red as we come to the end of the off ramp.
“Whoo-hoo, they’ve got juice.” Lee drums at the steering wheel in celebration.
As we turn right, I notice that the streets appear to have been swept clean. The clutter we’d dealt with up until now, the twisted carcasses of autos decimated by the Rabid, is non-existent. They’ve been moved off to either side of the road, there are cars and trucks practically stacked on top of each other, laying across the sidewalks, and in the adjacent parking lots beyond. It feels as if we’re driving through the middle of a junkyard.
“Well that doesn’t look very encouraging.” Momma signals to the Slash & Save store off to our right. The back half of the building is caved in and the front of it is nothing more than a black gaping hole, like someone pulled the gas line and lit a match.
But, that’s not what has her attention.
Or ours.
It’s the large tee-pee shaped pile of bodies in the middle of the parking lot. They are burnt something crispy. I imagine that the right gust of wind would cause them simply to flake away like a petrified pile of dog shit.
“I guess it’s safe to assume they don’t believe in burying their dead around here.” Lee is doing his best to sound unperturbed. He's been doing a good job of stepping up ever since the rest stop. He'd put us on the road for this town and had handled the roadblock well. He doesn't want to revert now.
“That is a lot of dead, and to be fair, that’s a lot of digging,” I say.
“Yeah, it is. But in the open like that? I mean come on.” Momma is covering her mouth and nose as if she can smell them.
The road dips down through pine groves and across small bridges cutting gaps across man made creeks and biking trails. This had been a thriving little town, a country club kind of town. It was the kind of town where the wives got boob jobs and took their rat dogs to the groomers, while their husbands sucked the blood from the middle class under the cover of flat screen computer monitors and multi colored neckties (one for each holiday).
The neighborhoods appear untouched in spite of everything. They are big homes. All house. No yard. No driveway. Everyone parks in the street and comes out to get their mail at 3:30.
“These houses probably have every last supply we could ever need.” Lee slows to a crawl.
“I don’t think we should make a habit of looting houses.” I look to Bethany and Momma for agreement. They say nothing. They are too busy tracing the lines in the bricks and mortar that make up the fortress like walls surrounding each neighborhood.
“What, so we can rob stores and vandalize vending machines, but we cut the rope at houses? Please explain that moral quandary, because I’m not quite catching on.”
“It has nothing to do with a moral quandary. Stores and vending machines, you know what you’re getting; you’ve got a general idea of the stock and the layout. Besides, when it comes to houses, you’re more likely to run across some hinky survivor ready to empty a double barrel into your chest. You want that, then you go right ahead. I’ll wait here while you kick down the front door. We got lucky last time, Lee, lucky.”
Lee relents and pushes us onward.
Suburbia soon gives way to two story office complexes and oversized multi-denominational churches with steeples stretching towards the open sky. Traffic lights continue to blink red and yellow, assuring us that the electricity is still fresh and flowing. We pass a smaller, but no less crispy pile of corpses stacked up in front of an insurance office.
“I know they’ve got electricity here and everything, but this place is giving me the creeps. We have yet to see another living soul, and they’ve got these bodies placed everywhere like some weird totem. I don’t like it; maybe we should just turn around.” Momma’s voice is shaking a little. The optimist is draining slowly.
“I don’t like this place either,” Bethany concurs.
“Just a few more minutes, let’s just look around for a few more. We need a convenience store or something, that’s what we really need.” Lee is stretched across the steering wheel like an old lady trying to make it to game night at the senior center.
“Look, check it out.” I spot the sign for a drug store through a clearing in a line of hand planted trees standing side by side like palace guards.
“Yep, that'll work nicely.” Lee pulls into the parking lot, drumming at the steering wheel as if his favorite song just came across the radio.
Caddy cornered across the street is a double decker motel with exterior walkways. The curtains are all pulled tight around the windows. There is no signs of life, just the bonfire bodies and the blinking traffic signals that lay behind us.
“I really hope we’re the pioneers here, and not the clean-up crew.” Lee sighs as he chambers a round in his M4 and aims it towards the entrance.
“Right there with you on that.” I check my magazine based off something Bo had mentioned about never neglecting your brass. I blow into it like you would a faulty video game cartridge before hammering it home.
The glass plating from the swing-out doors has been sprinkled across the asphalt like tiny chips of ice. It crunches beneath our feet as we duck under the pull bars. Momma and Betha
ny are at our backs, Momma carries her GSG5 and Bethany her P-32 pistol.
“A light switch would be nice right about now.” The sunlight makes visibility manageable, but the shadows still remain, obscuring corners and draw distance. I flank left with Bethany, while Lee and Momma go right, moving briskly down the aisles towards the back of the store.
We meet at the pharmacy counter.
Lee clears it with a graceful bound and gives the space a quick once over. “Everything looks good. There still seems to be a pretty generous stockpile of meds. Two-Step, grab the duffels.”
Lee goes shelf to shelf in the pharmacy, perusing and scooping pill bottles into one of the duffels, while Momma and I sweep the aisles for snacks, and bandages, and whatever hygiene products we can find.
Bethany is propped against a cooler on the other side of the store rummaging her way through the magazine rack. “They’ve got the newest issue of Cosmo Girl.” Her voice comes zooming excitedly across the tops of the shelves.
“That’s great, sis, but can you try to keep your voice down, we still don’t know who’s out there.”
“My bad, my bad.” The sound of turning pages quickly fills the void.
Something else fills the void as well. The husky bass drum engine sound of a large truck approaching outside.
“Everyone be quiet, get down on the floor. Lee, I need you out here.”
We crouch together on the left side of the entrance, the shadows cloaking us from view of the outside world as bits of glass gnaw at our kneecaps. It’s got large silver exhaust pipes springing from the middle of the body like bullhorns. It comes to a stop in the center of the street and two men hop down from the cab, both wearing blue jean overalls with nothing underneath. They carry jet-black shotguns in their arms as they move towards the motel.
“Them nigger girls gotta be in there. Clifford said he saw a light burnin’ in the room last night while he was trottin’ the dogs.” The man speaking has a curly plot of hair that wraps around the bottom of his scalp like a life vest. He’s pulling red shells from his pocket and loading them into the undercarriage of his shotgun, as they approach the steps leading up to the second landing.
“Man, Clifford is as dumb as a shaken baby.” His partner replies. He’s got back hair for days, springing from below the straps of his overalls like some caged beast.
“He said he saw the goddamn thing, let’s see bout’ it. Maybe keep ourselves from havin’ to go out into them fuckin' woods again with them fuckin' biters.” They walk up the steps single file, panting like a couple of hound dogs. They go two doors down, exchange a silent glance, and reach some unspoken agreement.
The one with the descending hairline pounds the door like an overeager police rookie trying to collar his first bust. “Niggers, we know yer’ in there. No more games, you get yer black asses out here or we will put a lickin’ on ya.”
“This might be a problem.”
Lee is already nodding, having apparently arrived at the exact same conclusion. “We’re going to have to kill these guys.”
27
Lee shifts his weight beside me, his M4 resting across his thighs. “What do you think this is?” He asks as we watch the two men pound at the door on the second floor, shotguns at the ready.
“I’m not sure.”
“It looks like it’s going to be bad.”
“Yeah, it does.”
The two men share a malevolent glare and shake their heads. They step away from the door as Back Hair raises his shotgun and lets loose with a shower of lead that splinters the handle and sends the door flying backwards on its hinges. This is immediately followed by a pair of lung scratching screams, as the men charge into the room, like guerrillas through an open cage door. They emerge a few moments later with two black women, one for each of them. They pull them by their hair, lugging their shotguns in the opposite hand. They drag them across the pavement, scraping their knees and shins, laughing as their prey twists, struggles, and claws at their grasp.
“We’re not letting innocent people get hurt this time, Two-Step, not when we can stop it.”
“I’m with you, Lee, not when we can stop it.”
Back Hair shoves the youngest one forward with the heel of a dirty brown work boot, sending her spiralling like a weighted barrel down the flight of steps, the exposed parts of herself reverberating against the jagged edges. She squirms at the bottom, moaning and bleeding into the cement. He descends on her, his shotgun propped over one shoulder, laughing as she wriggles in pain. He’s a kid with gasoline, matches, and a field full of ant hills.
The older woman is in pieces, bucking and screaming. “My baby, ya’ll done hurt my baby!”
“You best hush up you old coon. I’m nicer than my friend there, ya hear. But don’t think for a goddamn second that I won’t kick yer wrinkled ass down them goddamn steps less you stop yer hollerin.”
She stares warily at the top of the steps, and then at the young girl being scooped from the ground by Back Hair. Blood is dripping like ten tiny faucets from the tips of her fingers as she’s pulled towards the truck. The old woman nods and strikes a hesitant pact with her captor, as tears free fall from her eyes. She winces at the tension as she’s pulled forward by the set of stubby white fingers snarled in her hair.
“Thought you’d see reason, lead the way nigger.” She steps lightly, pulled back by the fleshy leash whenever she gets too far ahead. “We searched all day yesterday for you bitches, all goddamn day long. You remember Skeeter? That boy you put the slip on? He got eaten up in the woods by them fuckin' biters while searchin’ for yer asses. You two niggers, ya’ll got a lot to answer for.”
My stomach is in knots. The Rabid have an excuse at least, they’re dead, and by all accounts, they’re operating with minimal faculties. But to be a live functioning human being—to do this—it’s beyond me, as my daddy would say.
We wait.
The two men let down the tailgate with a rusty pop.
The older woman buries her face in the young girl’s chest, expressing mournful regret. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Momma, it’s gon’ be okay.”
Another twist in the curtains; they're mother and daughter.
Lee is right there with me. His eyes moisten. Even in the low light, they glisten like iridescent algae.
We wait.
They herd the two women up into the bed of the truck like cattle. The mother cradles her daughter, wiping away the blood with the hem of her dress.
The two men bump fists, cackling as they slam the tailgate shut.
“Now or never,” I whisper.
“The hell with it, let’s go.”
We come through the double doors,
knees slightly cocked,
moving quickly,
shoulder to shoulder,
M4’s up.
I take a knee behind a set of blue and white newspaper dispensers, while Lee goes right and takes up a standing position behind a utility pole.
“Put the shotguns on the ground,” I call out.
Back Hair steps behind the truck, placing the women between himself and a bullet like the fat hairy coward that he is. The barrel of his shotgun is now staring me in the face. The bald one stays put behind the tailgate, resting easy, aiming from the waist towards Lee.
“Lee, you get tailgate, I’ll take his friend.”
“Already on it.”
“Now, what do we got us here? A couple of dead on arrival sumbitches? You two got any idea who yer fuckin' with?” Back Hair emphasizes each word with the barrel of his 12 gauge.
“I asked you to drop your shotguns, please.” I repeat.
“Oh, well you said please. Blow me! What are you, 12? 13?”
“16.”
“You no pube little motherfucker. We have shotguns, boy! You know what that shit means?”
“At this range, it means we hold the advantage. Are you going to drop your weapons?”
“You gonna suck my dic
k? You want me to pull it out for ya' to help things along?”
“Then we have nothing left to discuss.”
I fire first. Back Hair, he’s my target. The round enters right above the bridge of his nose. His head springs backwards as if he’s just taken a hard punch.
Lee wastes no time following up, he squeezes off two rounds.
The first destroys the passenger side brake light.
The second enters the shoulder and turns the follicly challenged man’s fan of fire on me.
I don’t react. There is no time.
Just the flash from the barrel.
And the blackness.
28
The older black woman from the motel is looming above me. Her face is no longer twisted in sorrow and fear. It is more nurturing and maternal now. Yellow light flickers on the ceiling above her head. She fades in and out like a waking dream. There is something cool and wet sliding across my forehead. There is water calling unto water, droplets sprinkle my cheek, and that warm soggy comfort moves back and forth between my temples and back across my scalp. Caught up in some otherworldly stupor, I attempt to push it away, to remove myself from its reach. Her hand is on my chest, pushing me back down into the bed. I relent, my senses still swimming, trying to find the surface.
“Calm down now, son, you just calm down now, ya hear.” She smiles faintly, humming something I do not recognize. “Ma’am, ya boy, he’s awake now.”
Momma appears to my right with Bethany. They are sniffling, clutching one another, and are gnawing at the bit to turn their affection on me.
“You can go on and hug him. Just don’t go shakin’ him around or nothin’.”
They fall on top of me, burying me in hugs and kisses.
“My God, my head is killing me.” It feels like knives have been buried in the back of my skull.
“You hit it pretty hard when you fell.” Momma says planting a kiss above my left eye.
“Where are we?” The white four walled room is bare, aside from a black rimmed picture bearing the silhouette of a saxophonist bent backwards, and belting out what I can only assume is one doozy of a solo. There is a small supply closet directly across the way from me, the door is cracked open, and there is a stack of boxes running to the ceiling. There is a fan overhead. The blades are still and the bulbs are silent. The yellow illumination trotting circles around the room is all courtesy of a single candle beside my head, bleeding wax into a gold plated holder.
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 15
