I went over to the man I’d shot in the stomach and grabbed his feet. Pain went through my injured arm from the strain.
“We need to get them off the road in case their friends come looking for them,” Sara said, attempting to pull one of the others. She wasn’t strong enough to move him.
“If the rest of their group stopped to check the liquor stores on the county line, they might have heard the gunshots,” I said, leaving the man in the ditch. I didn’t know how far the sound would travel, but we were around four or five miles from the county line by that time. I could see the convenient store ahead in the distance to our left.
Sara looked to the north and nodded. “We need to hurry.”
I grabbed the second guy, the one that took the key to the eye.
“That’s some nasty work you did on his face,” I said.
“My church offered a self-defense class for women,” she said, still trying to move the last man. “They taught us how to do that.”
I got the second man to the edge of the shoulder then rolled him into the ditch with the other. When I returned, Sara had given up trying to pull the last man and was just standing there staring at him.
“Here, I’ll get him,” I said. “Push the bike off the road, if you can. We’ll take their Jeep with us.”
By the time I got the third man into the ditch, Sara was walking along beside the bike, leaning into the handlebars. She gave it a shove when she got to the edge. It wobbled for a short distance, tilted then fell over. Our handiwork wasn’t completely hidden, but it was concealed enough that it might be overlooked if driven past at a high speed.
“You drive the van, and I’ll take the Jeep,” I said. “If the infected have left the store up there, I’m going to pull in and get the maps and things from the Crown Vic. After that, we stop for no one.”
CHAPTER 16
The infected that we’d attracted to the convenient store were all milling around on the edge of the parking lot. Sara waited for me on the highway. I pulled in fast next to the car and retrieved the necessary items we’d left inside—maps, machete, and a bottle of water. The creatures fell all over themselves trying to get to me, but I was already leaving before they made it to the car.
I led the way in the Jeep, going as fast as the cluttered road would allow. I kept an eye on my mirror, too, but no one had followed us. I was pleased to see some supplies in the vehicle, including a shotgun and at least one box of shells in the backseat. My plan was to leave the Jeep somewhere in Clayfield as the first of our supply caches/escape vehicles.
Of course, we would not want to place all of our supply caches in vehicles, but all of the placed vehicles should have supplies. Betsy’s minivan, still parked next to the museum where Jen and I had left in weeks before, would be a good emergency escape vehicle. We would need to stock it with a few supplies, but it could stay where it was. I wanted to place the working, gassed-up vehicles so that we’d never have to run more than a couple of blocks to find one. There were cars and trucks everywhere, but when you’re running for your life, you want a place to go, and you want a sure thing waiting for you when you get there.
Strategically, I felt that my house on 17th Street and the Somerville’s house on Depot Street, would be good places to leave vehicles. The Somerville’s house had already been looted, and my house had likely been hit, too by that time. I doubted the looters would bother hitting them again, especially since the houses had been marked with the big white Xs on the doors. Plus, they both had a garage where the cars could be hidden and protected.
When we entered Clayfield, I headed over to 17 Street. I pulled up in front of the of my home and got out.
Sara let down her window, “Do you think the Somervilles are here?”
“No,” I said. I told her my plans.
She went into the back of the van then returned to the driver’s seat and passed a bottle of vodka and a flashlight through the window.
“Do it fast while no one is around,” she said.
I ran to the house and lifted the garage door then pulled the Jeep inside. I left a map, the vodka, and the flashlight in the front floorboard. I traded my .22 revolver for the shotgun and shells in the backseat. Then I grabbed the rest of the maps and the machete, shut the door, and climbed into the van with Sara.
“Okay,” I said, “Let’s drive out of town and try to find some seeds.”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I almost forgot about that.”
“Well,” I snorted. “We’ve had a busy day so far.”
The van was older, snub-nosed, with the engine in the cab. The doghouse--the plastic and carpeted shell that covered the engine--had a lot of trash piled up on it. There was an old Styrofoam coffee cup in the left cup holder and several yellow invoice slips. On top of the slips, like a big paperweight, was the semi-automatic pistol Sara had used to kill the three men.
“Well, at least we were able to arm ourselves better,” I said, trying to find a silver lining in the horribly black cloud of what had happened several minutes before.
Sara looked over at the shotgun I had brought back with me. She pulled another handgun from her lap and handed it to me—a .45 revolver.
“I took this one off that other guy,” she said. “You can have it.”
I took it and looked out the window. I didn’t really know what to say. So much had happened in the last hour alone, it was difficult to decide what to talk about.
“I thought we’d focus on some of the roads near the stables,” Sara said. “Maybe we should do like the other people and mark the houses as we go. We’ve been going into houses for more than a month now, and eventually we’re going to search houses we’ve already searched, especially if we keep doing it randomly.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s do Gala Road. I used to go that way when I visited Blaine. I remember houses where people planted big gardens.”
“Would it be alright if we go through downtown,” she asked. “I’m curious.”
We hadn’t been through downtown since the incident with the tornado siren and the fire. I had skirted around the edge of those streets just to take a look a few days after that, but it was still too infested to risk it at that time.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s take a look.”
We got onto Broadway and headed east into town. At first glance (a very quick first glance), you would think it looked like Clayfield on any other normal day before Canton B. There were people on the sidewalks, crossing the street, and going about their business. Then the reality would set in and you would notice a car crashed through a storefront, or the man that seemed to be waiting to cross the street was naked, or that more than one of the people going about their business were missing body parts.
When we got to the intersection with 8th Street, I looked a block over to my left at the museum. The little red truck that had been my herald for Canton B’s arrival was still there on the museum’s broken sign. Betsy’s minivan was blocked from view, but I figured it was still there.
Only one partial lane was open as we crossed over to 7th Street. Sara slowed the van to a crawl and threaded her way between the abandoned cars. The citizens of Clayfield started coming out of the shadows, from around cars, and from between buildings. By the time we got to the court square, Broadway was starting to look the way it used to look when people would gather to watch the annual Christmas parade.
There was a thump against the side of the van. I looked in my side mirror to see the naked man from the street corner walking alongside us. Others began to join him.
Sara ignored them. Her eyes were on the corner of the next block where the burned-out shell of the drug store was.
“There aren’t as many bodies as I thought there would be,” she said. “I wonder if the fire didn’t kill them or if someone has removed them.”
The van jostled, and I looked in my mirror again. There were four of them running beside us on my side, pushing at the van.
“Don’t drive over that burned area,�
�� I said, indicating the intersection of 6th and Broadway. “There are a lot of bones in there. They might hurt the tires.”
Off to my right, on the court house lawn, was one of the fire trucks the group from the high school had used. The door was standing open and a long, limp, yellow fire hose stretched out away from it. Sara took a right and headed south, still creeping along because of the cars and debris. The infected had crowded around us on all sides but the front, and I was starting to get nervous.
“We should be okay out at the stables,” she said, still unfazed by the fan fair outside. “When we get back, we’ll barricade the doors and windows, then just wait it out on the second floor.”
“Wait it out?”
“My menstrual cycle,” she said, taking a quick look in the side mirrors. “We can tell Mr. Parks what our plans are then he can come out in a few days and lure them away from the house.”
“He said his place was secure,” I said.
She shook her head, “Even if it is, I see no reason to put them in danger because of me. In fact, you could stay with them until—“
“No,” I said, flatly.
She smiled a little, and took her hand off the wheel long enough to pat my leg.
“Thank you,” she said, softly.
The knocking and thumping against the side of the van was getting louder and more violent. A couple of times, the vehicle rocked.
“There are a lot of them,” she said. “It’s going to take a while to kill them all.”
I nodded, still dreading that.
A woman pressed her face against Sara’s window. She looked so familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen her before. I didn’t like to look at their faces, for this very reason. I didn’t want to see people I knew; I wanted to remember them the way they were before. Clayfield was a small town, and it hadn’t been uncommon in the time before Canton B to run into people I knew almost every day. I allowed myself to look. Her blond hair was dry and stood away from her head on the right side but was a matted scab on the left. Her eyes were milky. Her left ear was gone. Yet, despite these grotesque changes in her appearance, I recognized her.
“Tammy,” I whispered.
“What?” Sara said.
“That woman outside your window,” I said. “Her name was Tammy. She was Betsy’s friend. She worked in an insurance office, I think. Betsy set us up on a blind date last year or the year before; I don’t remember. She got a phone call during dinner and had to leave early.”
“Oh,” Sara said.
“I’m not an idiot,” I said. “I knew it was one of her friends calling to give her an out.”
Sara stopped the van.
“We really need to keep moving,” I said.
She rolled down her window, picked up the pistol on the doghouse between us, and shot Tammy in the face.
The crowd grew and followed and beat against the van until Sara had a clear stretch of road where she could speed up. We traveled south until our pursuers were left behind, then Sara turned the van east and connected with the bypass.
I didn’t ask her, but I wondered what her motivation had been for shooting Tammy. I doubted it was jealousy. Unlike Jen, Sara had never acted jealous. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the “dirty work” of extermination, either; there were scores of others outside that she didn’t shoot. I liked to think it was retaliation for me having been slighted. It would have been a pointless retaliation—that wasn’t Tammy anymore--but it seemed like an oddly sweet gesture.
I thought about Tammy and our brief date. I remembered being hurt that she would end the date early without getting to know me, but I also remembered playing along and acting like I believed her when she lied to me about why she had to leave. We’d both lied, and we were okay with that. Then I thought about all the silly games and fake pleasantries that went along with being civil. We not only allowed such behavior but encouraged it. What alternative was there? Honesty? Hostility? It’s gonna be like caveman days--that was what Jen had said.
I hate to admit it, but I could see the place for two-facedness in the world before. Real or genuine, civility is nice to have, but it only becomes a necessity when the population reaches a certain level. I have no idea what that level is, but I can say that in this post-Canton B world, it tends to get in the way. When you strip everything away—and since Canton B, everything has been stripped bare—it is easier to see that there was so much that went along with “civilized” society that was just a construct of lies. To get to that place we called civilization, there was a lot we had to swallow, to believe.
We had to invent unnecessary tasks so everyone could feel like they could “contribute” and the rest of the civilization went along with it. Take my profession as museum director as an example. What the hell purpose did that serve? Did we really need museums and people to direct them? No, but we convinced ourselves we did. I would spend a week or so each year, writing up a grant request to convince the government that my job was important and that I was a necessary part of society. How about Tammy’s position in the insurance office? Was that really necessary? We were told insurance was necessary, and we were forced by law to have it.
Think about all the stuff we obsessed over and argued about before--fashion, celebrities, art, politics, sports, religion….they’re all gone now. I remember all of those smug people on TV and in internet forums who would act like they were better than someone else because they knew more about a particular popular or obscure, yet unnecessary, subject. Did their familiarity with fashion trends, new music, or the latest software save them from the infected hordes? Did their expensive designer slingbacks help them outrun death?
I’m not knocking the frivolous things, it’s just that we had elevated the frivolous for so long we started to believe it was important, so much so that we forgot how to take care of ourselves.
Now, I can wear the best clothes, drive an expensive car, drink the best wine…hell, I could even go into a real museum and walk out of there with a priceless piece of art to hang on my wall. Yet, none of it seems as alluring as it used to. Maybe it is because there isn’t anyone around to impress anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I can still enjoy it, but there was always something about one-upping the next guy. There was always someone out there I wanted to impress.
I never knew why Tammy walked out of the restaurant that evening. Maybe she saw my crappy little car. Maybe she realized that while the title of museum director sounded nice, it really wasn’t any more glamorous than selling insurance. Maybe she didn’t like the looks of me. Maybe she found me boring. Bottom line—I didn’t impress her.
I’m plenty impressive now; I survived the apocalypse.
CHAPTER 17
We accessed Gala Road at its beginning point east of town near the junkyard and soccer fields. We had not been on this part of the road since everything happened. When I would visit Blaine, this was the way I always went.
The road actually seemed to pass through the junkyard. On the immediate left was a big gate with a sign that said Ray’s Salvage. The bulk of it was on that side, but Ray owned the land on the other side of the road, too, so there was some spillover from his business. Both sides of the road were lined with junked and wrecked cars. This wasn’t from the virus; it had always been that way. It gave that section of road a heavy, claustrophobic feel.
Once we were through that, we entered a cluster of modest, older homes and mobile homes placed close together. Even though most of the homes were well-kept, their closeness to each other extended the heaviness.
The little community looked very different from the way it had looked the last time I’d been through. A small, single engine plane had crashed on the right side of the road taking out two of the houses. Now more than a month since the crash, the charred wreckage was still being looked after by a group of infected. They watched us pass, their facial expression a cross between curiosity and confusion. We were probably the first people they’d seen since the world ended.
&
nbsp; After that, we passed the community soccer fields and then after that, the houses were spaced farther apart usually separated by woods and farmland.
“There’s a house up here on the right,” I said. “The woman that lived there always had a big garden.”
There was a square, roughly half-acre lot to the side of the house where the garden had been. Had Canton B not happened, the lot would have been turned under by this time in preparation for planting. As it was, it didn’t look like a garden at all. The plot was full of old weeds and dried stems from the previous growing season and after-season. There were some spots where new green grass was beginning to poke through, so it looked like any other fallow lot. The driveway was empty. I didn’t expect to find anyone at home.
“Most people that save seeds keep them in their refrigerator or freezer,” I said. “Just in case you are attracting the infected, let’s not dawdle. We’re getting seeds and food, and that’s it. Only grab guns and medicine if they’re out in the open and easy.”
“Yes, sir,” Sara said, giving me a smartass salute.
“Maybe you should sit in the van with it running,” I said, thinking about it.
“The closest people are the ones around that plane crash,” she said. “We’ll have time.”
I took the .45 and Sara took her nearly empty AR-15, and we went up to the front porch. I knocked while Sara looked through the front window. When no one answered, I tried the knob. It was locked. The cursory search for a key on the front porch yielded nothing, so we went around to the back door. It was also locked, so we broke a window. I lifted Sara inside, and she unlocked the backdoor for me.
“See if you can find some boxes or bags to put food in, and I’ll check the fridge for the seeds.”
Sara nodded. I knew she wouldn’t argue with that. By this time, all refrigerators and freezers had become stink vaults, being full of spoiled food. Sara turned on her flashlight and went into a dark curtained room off of the kitchen. I braced myself and opened the small top door on the refrigerator freezer.
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