by Jeff Beeman
“Now pet, let’s plan this out. I mean you did break into the store to shop lift. Very naughty of you and so young and...tender.”
I get my mouth to work finally but can only say, “I’m sorry.”
Giggling more like a girl than me, Dan brings his filthy, cat litter dusted face to mine and says, “All criminals are sorry when they’re caught...pet! Now you have to pay society for your misdeeds. Since I am all that is left of it of that sad thing called civilization, you will have to pay me. The body will have what it needs...all its needs”. With that said, he gently licks my nose with his weirdly reeking and white tongue. “You see pet, one must feed the body raw meat to get the nutrients it needs, so your muscles and organs will go towards that need. I mean how long can a body live on canned cat and dog food after the other animals, fish, reptiles and bugs are gone. Sure the canned pet food is good for up to two years but the body needs more. Your bones will join the other pets’ bones. It will take quite a while which will help the body therapeutically and also serve to help it remember which part works with the other parts. Your hair and what little fat you have will help make more candles, while your skin and tendons will make nice clothing. I didn’t have what I needed to preserve the adoption pets’ fur so I really lost out on that with them” He holds his sore covered hand to his mouth and tries to take on an embarrassed look. “Finally your separated head will have its...use also for the body!”
Dan suddenly trembles and moans a strange dark sound. This frightens me the most. My lip begins to tremble and tears start to swell. I just can’t get my mind to work right.
After a moment, Dan is able to speak again, “Finally what the body can’t use will go into the litter pile but you will provide the body for some time.” Dan then kisses my right check gently with his chapped and cracked lips and says as he brushes his hand on my head, “Thank you, sweet pet”.
My heart is beating so hard, I can barely breathe and my muscles are quivering, when my brain finally can rally enough to form a question, “How did you catch me?” Why my shattered brain thinks that is important, I don’t have the foggiest clue.
Looking me over as he picks up a large rusty and chipped knife from underneath the table, while focusing on the sharpness of the knife edge, Dan simply replies,” No one ever thinks to look at the ceiling. I have set it up that I can leave my storeroom and drop in on any shoplifter. I am surprised I didn’t crush your skull when I dropped down and clubbed you from behind. Perhaps that means you will be my special friend for a long time”. With that said, he takes something and starts to attempt sharpening the blade but it seems he is more scraping off left-over matter from another of his victims.
Abruptly there is a loud sound of cracking wood. Both Dan and I jump. Again there is a louder cracking sound of wood. Dan and I freeze in place. Suddenly there is the sound of wood exploding followed by the roar of the beast. Before Dan can react, I scream, “Help me!!”
For my effort, Dan throws his left knobby elbow at my head but his aim is off as he is distracted by the rampaging beast of a dog heading our way. Knowing that the dog could be badly hurt if not killed by the knife, I do the only thing I can do, I fight like a dog. My arms all at once obey my aching brain by grabbing Dan’s left arm. Using all my strength, I raise myself to a semi-setting position and sink my teeth into Dan’s bottom part of his left upper crusty arm and right through his moldy shirt. I hold on with my arms and teeth like my and the dog’s life depended on it. Daddy would have been proud how I never let go, no matter how hard Dan hits me with his fist all over my head and shoulders.
I feel the dog’s first attack though Dan’s body. The dog drags Dan and me down to the dirty floor. We both fight Dan like animals with our teeth and nails. When the body wants to live, it will not be denied... not even by Dan, assistant manager!
Slowly rising from what we have done, I try to walk but have to hold onto the shelves of the stock room to keep my balance. From the sounds of it, the dog is making sure Dan won’t be coming after us and it sounds like he is being real through. As I move like I am in goo, something catches the corner of my eye. Looking to the side, I see where Dan keeps what is left of the cat and dog food. I stand there for a moment unable to make sense of things, then like a robot, I start moving. First I go to where I first woke to find my Bouncy Bouncy quietly waiting for me in his seat of my utility belt. He is such a good and patient bunny. Once I have my belt on, I take my torn Hello Kitty backpack and go back to fill it with as much dog food as I can, then I turn and leave. After a while I make it past the broken wooden door and finally to the broken front glass door. I find the wagon half way through the glass door. Looks like the dog chewed himself not only free of the bike rack but also the stuck wagon. I work with the wagon till it is loose and I can get it back outside. The sun is low but I am just too tired to be scared. The dog finally comes out of the store. It isn’t till then that I realize that we have Dan all over us. Not caring about being modest, I take off my Dan soaked clothes, then use part of my water to wash him off my face and out of my hair. I do the same for the dog. Weakly I retie him to the wagon. Not taking the time to dress except to put on fresh panties, I get on the dog’s back and we head back to base.
It seems it takes forever but I finally hide the wagon and take only take a few pieces of clothing out of the clean clothes trash bag and a can of dog food out of my backpack. With the dog’s help, I eventually get up to the fifth floor. With the fading sun light left, I find the can opener and feed the dog. Needless to say, he tries to wolf the food but finds out his mouth is sore from chewing the wire. Still he finishes his food while I dress. It may be a cold night but I don’t care, I just want to sleep. My head feels like it is full of rocks but no longer hurts. I lay down in my nest with Bouncy Bouncy in my arms but before I fall asleep, the dog comes over since I didn’t put him out. He circles the nest a few times, I guess to inspect it, then lies down next to me. We lie there for a bit. I can feel his warmth and him breathing. I forgot what it feels like to have something living near me. It has been so long since Daddy was...no can’t go there. I snuggle closer to the dog. Eventually I gently put my arm around him and whisper, “Your name is now B.B.” and with that all three of us sleep.
Chapter Seven
Another Day, another Supply Run
Drifting... Neither awake nor asleep. Neither in darkness or in light. Neither here or there. Finally I realize that after Dan, I have slept a lot. I’m sure time has passed because the base has started smelling and I seemed to have been feeding B.B. the canned dog food though I don’t remember doing all that much. Sometimes I find him sleeping with me, sometimes it is only Bouncy Bouncy and me. Sometimes my head is either hurting or feeling stuffed with cotton.
I have only come to realize all of this in the last couple of days. What I do know for sure is that I have been staying up longer and longer, while my head feels better and better.
I have come to find it funny how broken time has become. Once I could have told you what time it was by where I was and/or what I was going on, even though I never really learned to tell time from clocks with hands...dang dyslexia. Before The Bad, life on Mondays through Wednesdays went like this; wake up, eat breakfast while watching my one morning show, get dressed for school after brushing my teeth, Daddy took me to school on his way to work. I attended my classes in order with lunch in the middle. I would get on the bus and go to daycare, Tracy would pick her son and me up from there and take us to the apartment. There we would have a snack before doing homework or watch television while Tracy helped do some chores around the apartment while we waited for Daddy to come home. When he came home, Tracy and Houston went to their home while Daddy and I made dinner as we talked about our days and Momma. After dinner, I finished any remaining homework or we would watch television together. Finally I would get ready for bed by brushing my teeth and taking a shower. Daddy would help me blow dry and brush out my hair. Then he would read a story to me and we would do hands, which i
s what we called our night time prayer. Lights out and sleep. Thursday would be different because I went to my gymnasium class instead of daycare. Friday was like Monday through Wednesday but Daddy brought pizza and a movie home. Tracy and Houston would stay over.
Saturday and Sunday were pretty much the same routine but not like the rest of the week. Wake up, breakfast with cartoons, I would do chores while Daddy did office work or his chores. When we both could go, we would go see Momma at the hospital after lunch. Then came dinner, board or card games. Finally I would again brush my teeth and take a shower. The rest of the night was the same as the rest of the week. Everything was normal and only changed once in a while but Daddy always told me beforehand of the upcoming change, so that was no problem.
Then The Bad came and time broke down.
I have my chores for the base which kind of helps fix time but only if there is not another problem that needs to be taken care off like now. After I finally started staying awake which is a good thing, I have discovered that the food supplies for B.B. and me are getting low. To be sure of our condition, I do a full inventory like Daddy and I used to do. Luckily, I find all the other supplies from water to toilet paper in good supply. So all B.B. and I need to do is a food supply run. Once again I begin gathering my scavenging kit. In the torn Hello Kitty backpack, I put my slingshot (someday I will get to use it for defense), emergency flashlight (still need new batteries), four Bic lighters, one set of mismatched clothes (In case my daily attire gets wet or torn), rain coat, two blankets (mostly in name only but still something is better than nothing), spare water container (filled), up to two meals of food (maybe the un-people will think I am a moaner with all the noise my stomach is going to be making), paper, and pen (both are getting scarce). I am going to leave Daddy's big book on edible plants but take one of our Life straws since I could be out for a few days. On my utility belt, I place Papa's big hunting knife (good for cutting), Girl Scout compass, and made sure Bouncy Bouncy's travelling "chair" was really secure. Finally I fill the large Army water canteen. With some of the cast off cloth, I work to make B.B. a more secure but comfortable chest harness. Since the weather is warm and B.B. sleeps with me now, I don’t have to worry about heating rocks like I used to, so I can use that time for this project.
Morning begins to brighten the sky. No clouds and not that cold which are good signs. I give B.B. one of the two remaining cans of dog food while I eat the last of my Brown Sugar Cinnamon pop-tarts. I follow it up with two chewable vitamin C tablets and water. It might not have been too cold last night but the water is, so I shiver a little.
Once on the first floor, I hook B.B. to the wagon and off we go to the north because I feel there should still be good areas to search. B.B and I hurry past the shopping area at the intersection of Harwood and Central where Dan and the victims of the un-persons are. I get sick to my tummy now just being near it.
Walking in the bright sunshine makes me feel good and I feel B.B., Bouncy Bouncy, and I will be lucky on this run. We come to where Spicewood comes to the left of Central while Sage comes to its right. Both streets look the same so I decide to let Moe of Eenie Meanie Miney Moe decide. He chooses Spicewood.
Spicewood looks like it was once a nice neighborhood with its big trees and nice houses but now, like a lot of places, it looks sad and lonely. The yards have been trying to take over parts of the sidewalk. Half way down the block a tree has wrestled with a telephone pole and looks like it has it down on the ropes for the count. We walk up the street and come to a house on the right side of the street. It looks like they turned their garage into a normal part of the house. Some of the glass panes of the door are missing. As we get close, B.B. begins to sniff the air and growls low in his throat. It is the same thing that he did when he first noticed Jingles. I wonder if he can smell the un-persons so I start going near the door again. B.B. starts growling louder and moves to start bumping me away from the door. I know dogs have better senses of smell than people, perhaps they can smell un-people also. I get my slingshot out and load it with a small rock. Aiming at one of the missing glass panes, I let the rock fly. Thanks to the practice that I did when I could find time for it, I am successful to which I proudly say to B.B. “Yes”. After the rock makes it past the door, it vanishes into the dark and then I hear it loudly hit a wall.
Nothing
Maybe B.B. was wrong but just in case I start counting to twenty monkeys.
One Monkeys
Two Monkeys
B.B.’s little ears twitch and perk up.
Three Monkeys
Four Monkeys
B.B. starts loudly growling and using his body to push me away from the door which is not easy for him because he is still hooked up to the wagon. All the time he never takes his eyes from the door.
Five Monkeys
I now can see movement off in the darkness. I can’t help but stare and try to figure out what I am seeing. It is too big to be a person. Then as I suddenly hear the soft moaning I realize I am seeing not just one but a bunch of un-people. It’s a hunting pack!
I yell, “Run” to B.B. and then follow my own advice. The sound of my voice and our running away makes the moaner grow louder. We plow through the tall grass as we run across the neighbor’s front yard and down the sidewalk. B.B. is out-running me even being hooked up to the wagon which is bouncing around so much it looks like it is trying to dance. The few things I had on it are about to fly out of it. We are passing our second house when suddenly I can hear the glass crack then break which adds speed to my feet.
We are passing the fourth house when one of the bundled blankets leaves the wagon and grabs my feet. I of course go flying and twirling until I crash onto my left side on the yard of the fifth house which knocks my breath away. Darkness tries to engulf me as I go deaf due to my heart trying to look out my mouth to see what is going on. I shake my head to get rid of the darkness as I struggle to get my breath. When I can see clearly again, B.B. is about at the end of the block still running. I look back at my upcoming doom but instead I see the un-people either standing still or following a boy in what looks like dirty superhero pajamas. There are what looks like two adults, who are the ones standing. The others are a teen boy and small girl that are following the boy in the P.J.s. Since they are following him that would make him the moaner. Their skin is grayish with black streaks typical of the un-people. I almost think the boy’s small blackish eyes are squinting like he is trying to see something in the bright light. Slowly I realize that their coming from darkness into bright sunlight confused the boy moaner enough that he stopped moaning loudly, which gives us time to get far enough not to be noticed. Once again daylight and luck has saved me. “Daddy was right when he said Daytime was our time!’ I think to myself. For a bit, I just sit there and watch them stumble about, somewhere a voice from the past screams a name and I almost feel that I am somewhere else but it is too faint to remember. I shiver still. The adults are fully dressed but the children look like they were dressed for bed where their lives must have been taken by The Bad.
Slowly I get back up after making sure I am okay. I need to get to B.B. before he comes back and possibly risks attracting the attention of the boy moaner. “Walking it off after rubbing dirt and spit on it” as Daddy would say, I make my way to B.B. who was coming back. On the way to him, I picked up the items that had come off the wagon.
I want to put some distance between the un-person family and us so we head up the road to where it meets Meadow Park and go north. There we met up with Cumming Dr. This area looks to be made up of what Daddy called home associations because there are walls along the street that separate houses of the association neighborhood from everyone else and there are names on the walls like Brook Estates or Glenn Hills. If I remember correctly people paid to live in the association because they wanted others to tell them how to run the way they lived in their home...weird. I can still remember our old home before Momma got sick and we had to move to the apartment. I had a yard fort
in the back and we had an apple tree like Papa had at his home in Abilene. We never had a dog like Papa’s, though. His dog was a hunting dog named Bell that was old and only liked to sleep in warm places and she wouldn’t play with me.
Now there are also other words besides the names of the association that I am not supposed to say and others I am not even sure what they mean on the walls. Looks like at some point, people affected by The Bad have been through this area during the time the air was smoky because a lot of the association houses have been burnt down. I feel blue about our chances for salvage in this area so we will just have to keep moving till we find a better area. I take Bouncy Bouncy from his travelling chair and hold him to help comfort him.
We travel for a long way till we come to Brookside Dr. which is at the entrance of Wood Glen by the Brooks association which is across the street from Brooks Glen by the Woods. I look at one entrance sign to the other and wonder how they came up with the names. Oh well, off we go into Wood Glen. Looks like there was a lot of activity when people began running to escape The Bad early on, because the houses have doors and garages left open and there are very few vehicles. Not a good sign. We keep on Brookside Dr. till it ends in a circle of houses and no more street.
