“Yeah, but why? I’ve been that wasted maybe three times in my life, and I damn sure didn’t cap it with a nice, four-mile trek down the road.” I stared at the guy, who had lost a step or two behind us, but not many, maybe a couple hundred yards back.
Garrett shrugged. “We are headed to a bar. Makes sense he’s going the same way. That or he’s in the same boat we are, and I kinda doubt it.”
“Whatever. When we get to the bar, just stay alert, all right? We may be a half-hour from Roanoke, but we’re a million miles from civilization, if you get my drift … I’m really sorry about the car,” I said.
“I know. You’re gonna be even sorrier when you realize what was in the back seat.” He made a teeth-clenched frown in mock horror.
After a few seconds of my brain’s gears grinding, I shouted a hearty string of swear words into the cool air. “My tampons? Who does that?”
He shook his head. “The box was all torn up. Whoever took ’em must have been desperate. Probably needed them worse than you.”
“Great, now I get to buy some at the shadiest gas station on the planet. I’ll bet their bathroom is super clean, too.”
Garrett pointed at the road ahead. “Well, we’re gonna find out. There’s the bar. The gas station’s another quarter mile at most. You wanna run ahead while I make the call?”
Such was Garrett’s trademark squeamishness over all things simultaneously feminine and sibling. Despite us sharing the same space since Mom’s womb, he had a strict “nope!” policy regarding my feminine hygiene.
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Can you have them pick us up at the station? I have zero desire to sit in a bar for an hour waiting for them.”
“Gas station parking lot sounds better?”
I’d spent a respectable number of hours lingering at bars, but this one held no appeal. It was a tinderbox: all unrefined, dark wood slapped together, though I’m sure it could weather worse than the tract home Garrett and I shared in Roanoke. The double doors were propped open, but no music came from inside. No light, either. A couple of cars littered the parking lot, but either the patrons were the most inconsiderate people ever, or they weren’t parked so much as abandoned.
As we drew closer, I saw the vehicles were in no better shape than Garrett’s Honda: all stripped and left with little more than the frames and the glass, and most of that shone white with deep spider-webbing as if victim to an epic hail storm.
“Umm… so that’s ominous,” I said.
“Stay out here,” Garrett said and headed for the double doors.
“Screw that, dude. I’m coming with you.”
We walked up a double-sided, cement staircase, Garrett on one side and me the other. We’d no sooner come level with the entrance when the smell hit me like I’d walked right into a glass door, but one made of the acrid, almost charred-plastic stench that could only mean one thing.
“Something died,” I said through my fingers.
Garrett gagged. He turned and leaned over the railing with his mouth open like a fish, though he managed to keep down our oatmeal breakfast.
“There’s a guy in there,” I said. “Behind the bar. And someone else at the back.” I waved my free hand at the entrance, unwilling to venture any closer for fear of gagging as well. “Hey in there. You guys okay?”
The guy behind the bar could only have been the bartender. He turned at the sound of my voice, revealing an aproned lower half complete with a hand towel, but the trademark white shirt was soiled like he’d thrown up down the front of it. Considering the fetid air, who could blame him if he had?
“You work here? You okay?”
The guy put out his hands and stumbled toward us, opening his mouth to reveal blackened teeth. He growled high and long, the sound alerting the other guy in the back, near the bathroom.
The other was skinny to the bartender’s paunchy heft, but tall, too. Even with his shoulders all hunched, he easily had six inches on my brother. The tall guy never put up his hands, but he shuffled toward us all the same, his growl much lower, more like a moan.
“Garrett, something’s wrong,” I said. I grabbed him and yanked him upright.
“I gotta sit down,” he said.
He slumped under my grip, but I shook him hard. “Snap out of it, dude. We’ve got to move,”
Garrett coughed. “What are you talking about?”
When I turned back to the open double doors, the bartender and his lanky friend had moved into the light of day. I couldn’t help it: trite girl move or not, I screamed. I’d never worked an emergency room, but both of them looked like prime candidates. The viscera down the bartender’s front wasn’t puke, but blood and the tall guy was missing half his face. For all I knew, it was lining the bartender’s shirt. And yet, neither seemed to want help but kept stumbling toward us. At least I redeemed myself when, a second later, I broke the damsel in distress paralysis and yanked Garrett toward the steps.
“What’s your deal?” he said to them. “Back the fuck up, assholes.” He put up his fists, but all I imagined were the diseases he’d get popping one of these psychos in the face.
“Forget them. Come on.” This was right about where my heroine, straight-thinking streak ended, and I ran directly into the stumbling drunk who’d followed us for miles. Only, he wasn’t drunk, and that stumble had proven more than adequate to pen us in. He was clad in low-hanging jeans faded to oblivion and a flannel torn at one elbow. Not much hung below the shredded, wet fabric but a few cords of flesh and what could only loosely be described as a hand beneath that. If, that was, people carried around their hands like a kid who’s too lazy to rewind his yo-yo. The appendage had long ago stopped receiving any orders from the guy’s nervous system and now looked waxy, fake even. But the iron stench of whatever carnage used to be his arm hung thick in the air, so I knew it was real.
The guy reached for me with his good arm, and I instantly forgot every self-defense class I’d taken in college. All I could do was watch that hand come in, grab me, and then shove me to the concrete. Garrett fared little better. He all but tripped over me and the one-armed stumbler trying to get away from the other two. Even when he began whaling on the one-armed guy on top of me, he might as well have been Rocky working a side of beef, as little effect as it was having. In the meantime, the bartender and the tall man had tumbled down the stairs and were just feet away from joining their buddy.
“For Charles,” came a yell, somewhere beyond the mass of flesh bearing down on me. First Garrett was grabbed by what I thought was a giant robot arm and flung backward. Before I could piece together what was happening, the stumbling guy—his bared teeth not a foot from my face—had a head one moment and then nothing the next, just a neck from which a geyser of smelly blood flew mercifully past my face and over my shoulder.
All I could do was scream… again. Even minus a head, the body crushed down on me. I shoved it to the side and scuttled out into the parking lot and away from the two crazies from the bar.
On my feet at last, I saw that no robot had grabbed Garrett, but a knight in full armor. The gauntlet that had pulled him from the psycho attacking me still clung to my brother’s shirt and pulled him along, away from the entrance. Two more knights, one in lighter chainmail and another in armor that looked like he’d pulled it off the side of a tank, spread out to deal with the bartender and the tall one.
Here most people would have run or even cried, but my muscle memory sent a different signal, one hardwired into me since I got a Hi-8 camcorder for my eighth birthday. I reached for the camera. No preamble, no babbling, not even fear, strictly speaking. I only knew that whatever was happening deserved recording. My fingers shook, my legs wobbled like I’d run five miles, but I took a knee and started rolling.
“Longshanks is mine,” called the tank. Through the thick armor, his voice sounded filtered, like it came over a radio, but I heard it all right. He carried a weapon I’d only ever seen in the movies: a stick as big around as a Red Bull can with a fat cha
in that ended in a spiked ball. The chain jangled, and I thought—psycho or not—I pitied whatever was on the other end of that thing when it got to swinging.
And swing it did, the first arc bringing down the tall one like he was stuffed with straw. The guy never called out, didn’t even grunt. He just crumpled, folded in on himself. The tank made a wide circle and brought the ball down on the tall man’s head.
The bartender charged the other knight, not a smidge of fear inspired by his friend being brained. He splayed his bloody fingers and let out that high growl. The chainmail knight moved faster than the tank. He had a small ax in his left hand but dropped it in favor of the spear in his right. Not a spear exactly, but long, deadly, with a spike on the end that shined in the pale sun a moment before he drove it through the bartender’s eye. I mean right through his eye like he’d meant no other target.
“For Sinistra,” the knight yelled and pulled the spear free.
I filmed it all, and I turned to see Garrett had acted just as well on instinct, his digital recorder capturing the sounds even as the sword-bearing knight still clung to him.
And then my battery died.
***
As if Garrett had been holding it together for me to film and for him to record that single, insane moment, he threw up immediately after the display on my camera went black. The knight who’d pulled him from the fray jumped back, lithe for a man in who-knows-how-many pounds of armor.
“Are you all right?” the knight asked him.
The tank pulled up his visor, revealing the scowling face of a man sporting a goatee, his forehead beaded with sweat. “Well, that’s a waste,” he said and then turned back to his victim.
The knight with the sword likewise presented himself, and the face on the other side of the visor looked a good bit kinder, apologetic almost, and easy on the eyes. “Are you sick or is it just the stress?” he asked Garrett. The man looked at me. “Has he been bitten, or is it nerves?”
I stammered. “Bit— bitten? I don’t understand. No one bit him. They came out of the bar and started after us. It wasn’t our fault, and—”
The man’s incredulous look—hooked, single eyebrow and squinted eyes—stopped me mid-sentence. “You don’t know? What’s happening, I mean.”
“I just watched three knights kill guys who looked about a minute this side of death. I don’t think I even know the year, let alone what’s happening.” I hugged the camera to my chest and had to sit. Everything was shaking. A part of me wanted to get back behind the camera, but what was the point without juice?
The knight leaned down to my level, clanking. He doffed his helmet and sat on it. “Where have you been?”
“We were camping. All last week.”
Garrett recovered and came to join us.
“Well,” the knight said, “I won’t mince words. There’s been a zombie apocalypse.”
I looked at Garret, and we both broke out laughing at the same time. It started with a normal I’m-in-on-the-joke laugh but blossomed into a full-on belly laugh. It felt good, actually. The stress left me, even as my core cramped and I fought for air.
The knight and his partners formed a semi-circle. They looked on, neither offended nor joining in the laughter. Eventually, we stopped, and I stared again at the good-looking knight. His face held the same concerned, serious expression as before. My laughter turned into confusion, then concern, then my own brand of incredulity.
“You’re not serious,” I said.
“They can’t be,” Garrett said, wrapping up his own laughing fit.
“I am Sir Gregory Boucher,” the tank said. “I like to think I live up to my namesake. The butcher, that’s where it came from. You saw a sliver of it just now. Only that wasn’t enough to save my father. One of those freaks got a bite of his ankle.” He pointed at the sword knight. “Philip here was good enough to lend me his sword. I cut off his leg below the knee. The man who raised me. Who worked nights at a stockyard that smelled worse these stale fucks for years so he could see me off to school, pick me up after. Taught me our history, taught me to fight. That was the man I swung a sword at, cut him up while he was screaming for me to stop. And it still didn’t catch it in time.”
He walked forward, close enough for me to smell the sweat on him, not body odor, but the smell of exertion, like passing by someone at a gym who’d worked out in the clothes they’d worn all day. “So tell me, mon Cherie. Do you think I’m serious?”
He leaned in even closer, staring me down. I could feel Garrett bristling beside me.
“Take it easy, Greg,” the spear guy said. He tapped the Butcher on the back of his plate mail with his spear. “We’ve all lost someone. They don’t know. You heard ’em. They weren’t even here.”
“You guys are for real,” I said. But then the absurdity of the situation fell upon me. Their armor, the fight I’d witnessed. I’d never seen a damned fist-fight, let alone see three people die. For all I knew, the entire thing was staged—some elaborate prank.
As if reading my mind, Garrett said, “This is some role-playing thing, right? What do they call it? Lark.”
“The term you’re looking for is LARP,” Philip said. “But no, this is no role-playing game. We’re medieval re-enactors. Our gear isn’t made of foam or plastic. It’s all real, made just the way they made it a thousand years ago.”
“But the fight, the zombie thing,” I said. “That’s part of your… re-enactment, right?”
The Butcher huffed and turned away. Philip kept that warm expression in place, only now it looked pitying. “I’m afraid not, ma’am.”
“Shiloh,” I said. “Shiloh Easter. And this is my brother, Garrett.”
“Shiloh,” Philip said. “I’m afraid this is as real as it gets.”
The wind shifted, and the stench of the zombies and whatever carnage waited in the bar came over me. I teetered inches from losing my breakfast like Garrett had done. “I need to get out of here.”
“We all do,” said the spearman.
“And who are you?” I asked.
“Percy Meyer. We’re headed to a safe place. A… castle, if you will. You should come along. Both of you.”
“To a castle in southwest Virginia,” I said, tone betraying my incredulity.
“If you will.”
I palmed my camera, hand snug in the nylon strap. I loved the feeling. Love the weight of the thing, the power of it to capture whatever you aimed it at, no matter if whatever it stared at agreed or opposed. What I’d just filmed already would raise every eyebrow from every filmmaker I knew. Forget the news, this was bigger than some thirty-second story on a 24/7 news station. This was my chance to capture something else, something meaningful.
I tucked the camera back into my pack and adjusted my straps. “I need to make a stop first.”
***
“For the record, this is a shit idea,” Boucher said. He’d affixed the ball and chain thing to his back somehow. Some DIY magnet setup it looked like, which kept the handle in place. Not exactly period, but it seemed pretty sweet to me.
“There’s a cluster of hotels on the way, almost as the crow flies. Maybe an hour off track at most.” This from Percy. Though the spear must have weighed a good bit, he kept it propped over his shoulder and flipped through the folding map with his free hand, the small ax at his waist.
“Shouldn’t be any zombies at a hotel,” Boucher drawled. “Why not hit up the stadium while we’re at it? Or a nice apartment complex.”
“It’s not a horrible idea,” Philip said. “They’ll have processed food, I imagine—stuff that’ll keep. If it’s power we’re after, they’re bound to have a genny and extra fuel. And think about it: who on earth would stay at a hotel just off the interstate? The infection spread fast, sure, but there’s likely to be only a handful of stragglers. Nothing like in the shelters.”
He turned to Garrett and me as we walked, his long sword over his shoulder like Percy. “You wouldn’t believe how fast the shit hit the fan. Al
l we’ve done to create a safe, abundant society….” He scoffed. “That’s was all gone in days. Every store, bare. Every house, either abandoned or nailed up. You’d think the whole world was on the brink of collapse and the zombies were just the icing. You’d never guess that people were shopping at Wal-Mart and washing their cars and watching movies in the theater a week ago. Never.”
“That’s rural Virginia for ya,” Percy said. “Salemites were probably happy it all went down. Validates their own parochial paranoia.”
“Mister Downtown Roanoke,” the Butcher said, mocking him. “Please tell us how civilized and orderly the infection spread on Campbell Avenue. I’m sure they’re sipping tea at Mill Mountain as we speak, all well in hand.”
“Clam it,” Philip told them. “You heard the news; it’s everywhere. I’d guess that whether you’re in upper Manhattan or BFE Nebraska, the result is about the same.”
“Which is what?” I asked. The breath had left me, not just from the walking or the backpack, which felt three times heavier than before. I just couldn’t take much more of… whatever this was. It was too much. Half a day ago, I’d been indulging in the rare smoke while Garrett made us bacon over the fire on our last morning. I needed my goddamn camera.
“You’ll see,” Boucher said. He smiled, but his face radiated a coldness despite the perpetual sweat on his brow. “You think the bar was something? Wait till we get to your hotel. Philip was being nice when he said ‘handful’.’”
“How nice?” Garrett asked.
Boucher only laughed, leaning his head back.
***
Like everything along Virginia’s rolling hills, the hotels obeyed the topography, set down inside a small bowl and at odd angles. The interstate, packed with cars, sat behind a dense tree line above the bowl. An occasional moan cascaded down to where we set up just outside the Locus Inn. The air had grown warmer, but still cool enough to carry such noise fairly far, so I didn’t worry about it.
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