I start up the stairs to the kitchen.
***
It’s a bare essentials operation; I imagine the kitchen didn’t look all that different than it does now, even before the hysterical crowds barged through grabbing what they could. It’s a room only slightly larger than the cells downstairs. There is a knee-high refrigerator, a sink, a splinter prone countertop, two pots, a pan, a rusty four-burner stove, and a pair of crusty spatulas. The sink hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed, and by the looks of it that was right around the time indoor plumbing was invented. It’s missing the hot water knob and there’s a fine layer of white soap scum clinging to the bottom and sides. The sponge is a withered clump of gruff fabric with bits of burnt and fallen food stuck between the fibers. The dish soap bottle has been left open. The stay-clean cap is clogged with dried gel. I swivel left and right, up and down, trying to spot something edible without having to touch anything. No dice. The cabinets are closed and I need to see inside. I hold my rifle at the ready under one arm, while I open the cabinet above the sink with the other. I’m not sure what I am expecting to jump out at me, the space is barely big enough to hold an infant, never mind an adult sized flesh eater.
Flesh eating rats or mice, maybe.
The shelves are bare save for the peeling cabinet liner, a bargain brand box of enriched spaghetti noodles, Styrofoam plates, and a rolled down bag of bargain brand granulated sugar. I doubt the cops were much for baking. It was probably a staple in their morning coffee. Someone took the coffee pot though. They are probably out there right now trying to find a place to plug it in. The end of the world and all people can think about is their morning caffeine fix.
I grab the noodles and a pot. There’s no point in checking the expiration date. These things would still be good eating three generations from now. The one knobbed sink sputters, spits, and finally surrenders a steady stream of water into the pot. It’s tinged a few shades darker than clear and it stinks, but I’m not too concerned over the contents, I’ll boil off whatever may be lurking.
The pot sits at a slight angle on the front left burner as the noodles rattle their way towards edibility. I open the mini fridge and duck down, sticking my head into the chasm of pale light. It’s as sparse as the cabinet. There’s spoiled milk, a half-eaten candy bar, two onions, and a bottle of bargain brand ketchup. Some marinara would have been nice, but the ketchup will have to serve in its stead.
As the noodles finish out, I approach the only window in the room, pushing aside a plastic table and a handful of metal chairs. I crack the blinds with two fingers, there are a few broken panes of glass and a gathering of shell casings are at my feet; someone tried to play sniper. I gaze out over the battle ravaged streets. The moon is high as the creatures of the night call out to one another in varying pitches and intervals. I smile. What else can you do when you realize that the insect is now a more viable life form than the human being?
***
After serving Momma and Bethany, I return to Der in his cell and push the flimsy plate of noodles and ketchup through a small square opening in the bars.
“No fork?”
“Tough times,” I saddle up against the wall across from him and slide down to my butt, scooping knots of soggy red noodles into my mouth with my fingers. Der looks as if he’s going to object further, and sighs before dropping to the floor Indian style and following in my footsteps.
“They didn’t even have napkins?” He slurps.
“If they did, they don’t anymore.”
“Man, they really got it all.”
“Everything except for the noodles and the ketchup.”
“And the plates,” he holds up his own and winks at me.
Once I get down to the last of my meal, I fold the Styrofoam and drop what’s left of the juice and noodle fragments into my mouth. I wipe my lips across the back of my sleeve and set the plate aside. I suddenly feel tired. It’s a good sign. Every night sleep is a gamble. Tonight, I may actually win. “So it got pretty bad here?”
“You could say that, man.” He licks his fingers, thumb to pinky, repeating the pattern twice. “Never been so thankful to be locked up.”
“Did you see it actually begin?”
“Nah, I heard it first. Outside in the streets. Folks hollerin’, then the gunshots, and then those noises.” He’s drawing shapes in the ketchup with his fingers. “Station house emptied out right off, so it was just me in here. When they finally came back through, it was cops and civilians and everyone else, place was chaos. The people were fighting amongst each other at that point. I heard a few gunshots upstairs and saw someone knock Sheriff Perkins over the head right where you’re sitting, just flattened him out and took his equipment bag right off his shoulder, they were out the back door before he could figure out which way was up.”
“So they just left you sitting in there?”
“Pretty much, yeah. My cousin came wandering down from upstairs with those eyes on him. When he saw me in the cell, he just turned straight beast. And then you and your people came along. So now, here we are.”
“Here we are.” I pull my hat down over my eyes, stifling a yawn.
“So what about you?”
“What about me?”
He tucks his knees up to his chest. “What do you know?”
“Pretty much the same as you, not a whole lot.”
“Nonsense, you’ve been out there. What happened? Who’s left? How far does it go?”
I lift my hat back up. Der looks small sitting in the center of his cell curled up like a child. “It’s bad, that’s what I know; it’s everywhere. Most of the power grids seem to be down. And worst of all, there are a whole lot of them and very few of us.”
“There’s no military? No martial law? No cure being worked on?”
“Haven’t seen nothing, haven’t heard nothing, so we’re just staying on the move.”
“Wow…I can’t believe it. That’s…crazy, it’s crazy even to think about.” He leaves his plate and scoots across the floor until his back connects with the bunk. He pulls himself up and rolls over against the wall, his knees nestled against his chest. He reminds me of Georgia. After Bethany and me made it out of school. After Momma got us home and I threw up outside on the driveway. That’s how I felt. Scared and alone. Like I just wanted to curl up and let the world fade away.
I leave him and join Momma and Bethany in the office area. They are already spread out on the floor, asleep.
I grab a rifle and take first watch.
***
“So you understand, you do not open this door until we’re gone. You pop your head outside before we’ve pulled off, and I’m going to put a bullet in it, clear? I’ve become quite the shot, so don’t test me.”
“You were a cranky baby weren’t you? Probably cried all night to spite your folks.”
“Der, don’t test me on this. I left you a handgun, water, and some rations upstairs. If I were you, I’d stay here till the generator goes through the kerosene. Shoot them in the head, and don’t stroll around outside after dark. That’s the only advice I’ve really got.” I reach for the handle on the one-way exit door. Momma and Bethany are already packed up in the van and waiting.
“Hey, little mister.”
“What do you want?’
He sticks a hand through the bars. “Thanks, seriously. You and your people hadn’t come along, I’d be eaten up or starved to death, I owe you my life.”
I keep one hand behind my back near the butt of my pistol while I use the other to accept the gesture. “You stay safe, Der.”
As we’re pulling away, I watch the door in my rear-view. It’s still stained with blood and bullet holes, but it doesn’t budge. Der holds up his end of the bargain.
36
We’re a half hour outside the city of Dallas, biding our time in a shit bag pay by the week motel. From the third floor balcony, I can see the glass office buildings dotting the skyline to the west; they rise from the surrounding no
rth side suburbs and south side slums that rest at their feet, shaking off the ashes of the dead. They rise like some industrialized Phoenix, all the while winking at me like a thousand camera flashes.
We’ve been here for twenty days.
On our arrival, we raided the vending machines in the lobby along with a poorly hidden drawer of sweets stashed behind the front counter. There is no power and no running water. The back office, where the bills got paid and the customer complaints got stacked, filed, and ignored, possessed a water cooler and a couple unopened spare jugs stacked around and between the sparse two-desk operation.
It’s been thirty-seven days, to the day, since we lost Lee.
It’s been thirty-seven days since we lost Momma.
She is here with us, physically. I recognize her face (sort of), her voice, and those hazel eyes I used to swim in as she’d rock me to sleep, but everything else has become unrecognizable. The parts we’ve all got, ticking away between our heart and soul, hers have come to a dead stop. Every day feels like a perpetual rescue mission. When we need her, a precarious wager we’ve reduced as much as possible, we practically have to pull her from the bed, slapping her cheeks with cold water.
Momma, momma, momma, get up, come on, get up, getup, geeeeeeetup!
The pills were the worst thing I could have done for her, or for us. She’s up to 4mg of Klonopin, 2mg of Xanax, and 20mg of Zolpidem a day. She spends every moment in a drooling stupor. She’s become more of a liability than an asset, and seems indifferent to our plight.
We’ve tried for the city twice now. Both times, we’ve been pushed back by the Rabid.
Our first trek in, seemed to be going well enough. I’d been at the wheel while Momma, dark circles under her eyes and a pistol in her palms, along with Bethany, took up spotting positions on the bench seats in back of me. There’d been the usual wreckages, and a much heavier Rabid presence. There were dozens of them, moping towards the city on both sides of interstate 75. Despite their company, I felt like I was in control. Even when they ran at us like neighborhood dogs chasing a mail truck, I was able to keep a decent pace. I knocked them aside like bowling pins, laying them out, and rolling across their torsos as if they were nothing more than putrefied speed bumps.
The problem reared its ugly head when we got beneath the 635 overpass. A six-foot wall of smoldering rubber tires and barbwire stretched across the roadway in front of us.
I hesitated.
When I saw that wall of debris, I should have dropped the stick to R and gotten us out of the choke point. Instead, I sat there contemplating digging a path through with my own hands. And then the Rabid were on top of us, quite literally. They flung themselves from the overpass, pelting the top of our van like human sized balls of hail. The shocks bounced and the metal body warped. The windows cracked like pond ice, threatening to toss us into the drink. Their cacophonous dinner call presented itself for the first time in full surround sound, as two of them slid down across the windshield baring coffee colored teeth, licking the glass, like a couple of mares getting after a salt block, while boring holes through me with their pallid eyes.
“Cover your ears,” Bethany knelt between the seats shouldering her M16.
“Don’t we need the barrier.” I pushed the heavy automatic to the floorboard. “Hang on.” I tore backwards, over and through the mass of Rabid pounding at the back door. I held the wheel firm as we bounced wildly across the ocean of wretched flesh. As quick as they went down, they were back up, in front of me now, charging our retreat.
“Get them off the window or I’m going to start shooting.” Bethany had raised her weapon again, setting the muzzle inches from the glass.
“I’ve got it, just give me a second!” I yelled as I pinned three of them between the back bumper and the passenger side husk of a four-door sedan.
“Chill, sweetie, Tim has got it. You’ve got it, Tim.” Momma had popped two Xanax before we’d left the motel, and they were in full effect.
I pushed it into drive and swept the stampeding army aside with the ass end of the church van as if I were clearing a chessboard with the back of my hand, flinging the unwanted hitchhikers from our hood.
We’d gotten lucky that time.
The next time out, our luck was a bit thinner.
I’d plotted a different route, Greenville Avenue. It ran us parallel to interstate 75 and put us right where we needed to be.
“They had a little flat over near the Arts District last time I talked to them.” Momma had assured us as we packed into the battered church van for our second pre-dawn excursion in less than a week.
“Momma the chances of them being there are slim, the city looks overrun. We should just go around everything and keep driving west.”
“To what end?” Momma had become snippier as the days wore on, and she’d begun having to ration her pill supply.
“To what end? I don’t know, right now, the only end we should be worried about is staying alive.”
“Staying alive? Really, that’s it? Never mind my sister, your Aunt. Let’s just forget about them, let them die, right? Let’s just let everyone around us die, as long as we’re the last ones left.”
“You mean the sister you haven’t spoken to in years? The Aunt I’ve never met? I’m just making sure so I know what we’re risking our asses for.”
“Yeah, Tim, that one, go ahead. Leave her out there, just like you did Lee. At least we still have breath in our lungs. Survive or die, right?”
“Okay Momma.”
Fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves overrun once more at Greenville and Polk Street.
“Get us out of here, Tim!” Bethany was laid back with both feet braced against the sliding door firing through the metal while Momma ducked in next to her with her rifle hooked in the other direction.
Discharged shell casings pinged against the center console to my right as the cab filled with smoke and the scent of burned off black powder. I jumped a curb, cursing as I slew a gas station billboard and nearly ran through a pump.
Back at the motel, our mode of transport looking like a suspect vehicle that’d come under the scrutiny of the LAPD, I slammed the driver door shut and put my fist through the side mirror, knocking it from its perch and bruising my knuckles. I was embarrassed. I was frustrated. I’d plotted the course two times, and both had almost gotten us killed.
That was four days ago.
Nothing has changed. Momma still sleeps the day away, splitting the remaining Xanax pills in fourths and halving the last of the Zolpidem and Klonopin. She doesn’t bathe or brush her teeth. She stirs for small meals and to mumble vacant inquiries regarding our well-being.
As dusk falls, I spread the map across the peeling metal handrail. I’ve never been much good at figuring these damned things. Bo and Lee, they were the map guys. The last two routes I’d plotted almost got us killed; my confidence isn’t running especially high at the moment.
“What’ve you got?” I don’t hear Bethany approach. She folds her elbows across the railing beside me, cocking her head at the lines and numbers careening across the face of the oversized sheet of paper bending in the breeze.
“Don’t know to be honest. Drive northwest, drive southwest, I can’t figure this thing.”
She pulls it towards her, only to push it back a few seconds later. “Yeah, sorry, that’s a language I don’t speak, hurts my head.”
“Momma still asleep?”
“Of course.”
I fold the map away in my back pocket. “It’s strange how quick people change.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, look at you?”
“Look at me what?” She secures her hair with a black band she’s been keeping strapped across her wrist.
“You’re running around with a gun, shooting down the Rabid, throwing orders at me; big turnaround from when you were buried in Mommas hip.”
“Yeah, well, I had to kick fear in the balls at some point, right? Lucky for you, or
you’d be dragging me and Momma both.”
“Not sure I could do it, if I’m being honest.”
“You remember her being this bad after daddy?”
Few memories had survived that period of my life. They are heady ventures, potent, having not lost their affect after so many years. “Not this bad. She let it show less, that’s for sure. It was different though, she had the groups and the meds back then, and they were regulated. It was easier to hope, you know.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We all break in different ways.”
“I suppose, so how’re you gonna break?”
“Not sure yet. Been so busy trying to keep everyone together, I really haven’t had the time to plan my own meltdown.” I pick at a piece of loose paint until it stands upright and then flick it from its perch. It floats and whirls out of sight, three floors, landing unseen in the parking lot below. “Like I said, I don’t know if I could do it. I need someone to keep me grounded. I can’t imagine the man that could face this world solo and keep his head attached to his shoulders, I’m not sure that I’d want to meet him. I need you, Bethany, now more than ever. You lose it, and I lose it. Deal?”
She wraps an arm through mine and squeezes in close to me. “I think I can live with that.”
I’d pulled a pair of binoculars from the supply bag we’d obtained from the church compound the night we escaped; they haven’t left my neck since.
“How’s it look?” Bethany pries them from my eyes, gagging me with the cord.
“It’s died down to more of a trickle.” I wheeze.
“Stop being so dramatic, you can breathe.” She lets them fall back against my chest, turning sideways to face me, an elbow propped on the rail, her spare hand resting against the butt of the pistol tucked in the front of her blue jeans. “Maybe we can make another go at it, less resistance and all.”
“No way, no way in hell, not after the last two times; not risking it again, not with so many unknowns.”
The Rabid (Book 1) Page 22
