Apocalypse Atlanta

by Rogers, David

  “Uh . . . nothing personal Dennis, but you’re married.” she said, summoning a grin.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Eighteen – You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here

  Darryl

  Darryl flicked his Zippo, but the wheel only threw sparks that didn’t catch. Frowning, he flicked again, then held the lighter up next to his ear and shook it. “Fuck.”

  “Here bro.”

  He looked up in time to see something small arcing towards him, barely visible in the moonlight. His hand came up just in time to almost catch it, but when he missed he managed to pop it up into the air, which gave him a chance to snag it with a second effort. When his hand closed on it he found it was an oval Bic lighter.

  “Thanks man.” he told Tiny before putting flame on the end of his cigarette and inhaling the smoke. He loved the rush of the smoke into his lungs. It was an easy luxury, and was a very good way to pass the time when you were stuck watching over something. He smoked to pass the time on his Oasis shifts, and now he was finding it was just as diverting when he was sitting on the roof with a rifle at the ready.

  He made to throw the lighter back to Tiny, but the big biker shook his head. “Naw, I got another. That one almost empty anyway.”

  “You know if they remembered to get any lighter fluid?” Darryl asked, sticking the currently useless Zippo and the useful Bic in his pocket.

  “I think there a few cans in the barn, maybe.” EZ offered.

  “Hmm.” Darryl grunted, taking the smoke out of his mouth and tapping ash off to one side. “Guess I gotta go digging through there tomorrow.”

  The thing Darryl had noticed about being out here, something he’d never really been aware of before now, was how quiet it was. To be fair, normally the clubhouse was jumping with tunes and partying. If he wasn’t chilling with his fellow Dogz while he was out here it usually was because he’d partied himself into a drunken stupor and passed out. The next day he’d always be awakened by the resumption, or continuing, of the party.

  And even when things had been a little more sedate, there was also a little bit of something going on in the background. Highway 78 was only about a mile to the northwest, even if it was screened by heavy carpet of trees. Even in the dead of night, or perhaps especially then, cars and trucks could be heard headed west towards Atlanta or east towards Athens.

  Not now though. Darryl had been on watch for about ninety minutes, and he was still trying to get used to how fucking quiet it was. There was no distant hum of engines and tires. No overhead drone of aircraft. No music thumping below him from the clubhouse. And the sky, that was also a real eye opener. In Atlanta the night sky was really more of a dark haze lit from below by the city it was draped over. Out here, it was a velvet blanket with hundreds and hundreds of individual jewels of light that shone down clearly.

  “How long you think it gonna be like this?” Mad asked.

  Darryl continued smoking for a few moments, then felt eyes on him and glanced around. Tiny and EZ were still sitting in their lawn chairs, facing off in the directions they were supposed to be watching, but Mad and Psycho had turned their heads to look at him. “What, you asking me?”

  “I guess.” Mad shrugged. “I mean, it sort of a philosophical question.”

  “Bro, like you know anything about philosophy.” EZ said in a tone calculated to wiggle a verbal knife into Mad’s skin.

  “Hey fuck you EZ.” Mad said, his tone proving the blade had struck home. “I just sitting here thinking and–”

  “Yeah, that’s what I smelled.” Tiny chuckled.

  “Why y’all gotta go an be like that?”

  “Well, what else is there to do?” Psycho said. “I mean, it boring as fuck up here.”

  “We keeping watch.” Tiny replied.

  “Yeah, well, it boring.”

  “It important.” Darryl said mildly, turning back to gaze across the lake.

  “It can be important and boring at the same time.” Mad pointed out.

  “Yeah, well . . . it still important.” Darryl shrugged.

  “So I thinking, cause it a good way to stay awake.” Mad said, clearly trying to haul the thread of the conversation back on what he saw as the track. “How long things gonna stay like this?”

  “Like what?” Darryl asked after a moment, after he made sure no one else was going to volunteer to offer an opinion.

  “You know, with zombies and shit walking around.”

  “How the fuck I supposed to know?” Darryl asked, not entirely unreasonably in his opinion.

  “Well, you a smart Dog, right?”

  “Bro, just ‘cause Bobo gone and made me his bitch don’t make me smart.”

  “Yeah, well at least you know that’s how it is.” Psycho laughed.

  Darryl shrugged again. Bobo had called everyone briefly to order just before people started bunking down to get some sleep and made his delegation announcements. Darryl had been braced for complaints or argument, especially over his part in Bobo’s system, but no objections had been raised. That had surprised him.

  “They gonna figure shit out, sooner or later.” EZ said.

  “Who?” Mad asked.

  “Who what?”

  “Who gonna figure shit out?”

  “Oh.” EZ said. “You know, the government.”

  “What if there ain’t no more government?”

  “Bro, you need to chill.” EZ said.

  “I bored, so I thinking about stuff.” Mad protested. “What you want me to do?”

  “I don’t fucking know. Have a smoke or something.”

  “Dog, it ain’t like I’m asking some far out shit. This applicable to us.”

  “Oh Christ.” Tiny muttered, though his voice was clearly pitched to carry.

  “Now what?”

  “What you been doing, reading a dictionary?” Tiny asked.

  “Just cause you can’t handle no words longer than two syllables don’t mean we all idiots.”

  Darryl heard Tiny’s chair creak, and turned to see the big man turning to glare at Madman. “Alright Dogz, dial it the fuck back a bit.” Darryl said calmly, really hoping that would be enough to prevent further friction.

  Tiny raised a finger at Mad briefly, then turned back to face the trees to the north.

  “Ain’t no one gonna say something?” Mad asked after a few seconds.

  “About what?” Psycho asked.

  “Fuck!” Mad said loudly. “About the shit we done fucking stuck in the middle of.”

  “I don’t know, okay?” Darryl said quickly, trying to head off a repeat of the same argument. “Don’t no one know how it gonna be.”

  “Well, what happen if there ain’t no more government?”

  “There always a government.” Darryl said, thinking to the history classes he’d barely managed to not sleep through at UGA.

  “There ain’t no more President, no Congress, no damn military–”

  “There a Congress an military.” EZ said.

  “No there ain’t.” Mad replied. “Teevee done said they cleared out of Washington. And Atlanta ain’t the only city that done been turned into a fucking zombie buffet.”

  “Teevee said the government was evacuating Washington.” EZ pointed out. “And if there ain’t no military, who you think gonna be dropping them bombs tomorrow?”

  “Today.” Psycho said.

  “Naw, tomorrow.” Tiny said with a grunt of laughter. “It ain’t tomorrow until you done slept.”

  “Whatever, sometime before it get dark again, they supposed to be bombing the shit out of a lot of cities.” EZ said, his tone making it clear he didn’t care about the semantics of when today became tomorrow. “If there ain’t no more military, where they getting the bombs from, and who dropping them?”

  “Okay, but if there no more power, and if all the big cities done been nuked, then where that leave us?”

  “Mad, you need to chill the fuck out.” Tiny said warningly.

  “I
t leave us here.” Darryl said. “Maybe it might not be so bad.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Psycho spoke. “How it not gonna be so bad?”

  “Well, fuck, think about it. Who honestly like the fucking retards we got in government anyway?” Darryl pointed out. “And the cops? And the banks? Shit, maybe it good zombies running around cleaning house.”

  “Harsh.” EZ said. “That harsh DJ.”

  Darryl shrugged. “I ain’t saying I glad people getting eaten and shit, but it ain’t my fault, or your fault, or any of our fault it happening, right? So since we stuck here, maybe it not gonna be so bad?”

  “So this gonna be paradise?” Mad asked.

  Darryl now knew how Tiny was feeling, as he had to suppress a strong urge to turn around and smack Mad upside the head. “I didn’t say nothing about no paradise.”

  “But you say maybe it a good thing?”

  “I didn’t say that neither.” Darryl said carefully, trying not to yell.

  “Then what you saying?”

  “I’m saying, since you fucking asking, that if there ain’t no more Man or governor or president or anybody, that things still could be worse. We got food, we got a place to live, and we got a lot of Dogz here to get through this shit with.” Darryl said, flicking his spent cigarette away towards the barn side of the roof. “I think we got a chance of making out okay.”

  “Man, but what if more people start turning into zombies?” Mad asked.

  There was a long scrape of aluminum against the concrete roof as Tiny stood up. “Alright, that’s at least a slap on your damn fool head you got coming.”

  “What the hell for?” Mad said, standing up and immediately backing away from Tiny.

  “For being a fucking retard.” Tiny growled.

  “That ain’t right bro.”

  “Yeah, keep on.” Tiny said. “I can turn the slap into a full-on ass whipping if you want.”

  Darryl heard them talking, and knew he should say something to keep them from getting into it like they were about to, but he was distracted by movement on the road. He squinted through the moonlit night as Mad told Tiny to calm down. There was a light moving along the road at the southeast corner of the lake. It was almost to where the road curved around to start coming up the northwestern edge.

  “Hey, can it.” Darryl said, remembering he had a hunting rifle in his hands that had a scope on it. The light was moving in a particular way, up and down, as it traced along the road. Just like a flashlight in someone’s hands. And from the motion of the light, it didn’t look like whoever was over there was simply walking through the night; the violent bobbing and swinging of the light looked a lot like someone running. He abruptly wanted, needed, to get a better look at what was going on over there.

  “DJ, it ain’t right he gonna lay hands on me just cause his head too small–”

  “Mad, you digging deeper with every word.” Tiny said warningly.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Darryl said as he settled the rifle against his shoulder and tried to line the scope up on the light. He’d never hunted, and he’d never really gotten into long gun shooting. And he for sure had never been in the military or done any shooting from long range. As a result, the scope was an unfamiliar object to him.

  “DJ, what you doing?” he heard EZ ask.

  “There someone over there.” Darryl said as he tried to get the scope centered properly. “I think they coming this way.”

  There was a rustle of shuffling feet and surprised murmurs from the others on the roof with him as they turned to look where he was pointing the rifle. Darryl looked over the scope and moved the rifle until it was generally lined up with the light, then carefully dropped his eye back to it.

  All he could see was a magnified view of the lakeshore. “Damnit.” Darryl muttered, glancing up and adjusting the rifle again, then peering back through the scope once more. More lakeshore. He scowled and drew his view through the scope ‘down’ until he found the road, then swept right slowly. After a few seconds of not finding what he was looking for he looked up over the scope again.

  “Mother fuc–” Darryl cursed. He was moving his view away from the light, having started from behind it. He looked back through the scope and went through the process again. Lakeside, then find the road, then move to the left this time. He was so surprised when he finally got the target into view of his scope that he almost lost it immediately.

  “What is it?” Psycho asked curiously.

  “Not sure yet.” Darryl said, his voice almost absently flat as he got more used to how little movement was needed to alter where the scope was looking. The moon was bright tonight, full but for a slight sliver, but even with that he couldn’t make out fine details. It was a person, that much he was sure of.

  White, obvious from the way the skin of their face and arms picked up the scattering of faint light coming down from above. Or, maybe, they were just wearing white clothing. He couldn’t be sure. Well, he was sure they were wearing white clothes. He just wasn’t sure about their skin color. They were definitely running though, the flashlight clutched in their left hand only intermittently illuminating the road ahead of them.

  Darryl pondered. Running and holding a flashlight had to rule out zombie. According to the news they didn’t move faster than a staggering walk, and they seemed to lose most of their motor control. He couldn’t remember any reports of zombies using tools or devices of any kind . . . hell they apparently couldn’t even turn a door knob.

  “Shit, that a person.” He heard EZ say. Darryl glanced over after a moment’s thought, weighing his desire to see what the others on the roof were doing against the chore it was going to be for him to find the target in his scope again. The roof won out, and he saw EZ standing beside his chair and doing the same thing Darryl had been. Darryl saw the others were looking curiously in the same direction. Mad and Psycho both had shotguns, not rifles; but Tiny, who also had a rifle, wasn’t trying to use his scope.

  “Y’all supposed to be helping watch everything, not just whatever this is.” Darryl said a little sharply.

  “There ain’t nothing else out here.” Mad said.

  “Don’t matter. We up here watching to make sure. You better keep an eye on your part of the fence or I swear to God I’ll shoot you myself if some damn zombie get in here cause you ain’t paying attention.”

  There was some muttering, especially from Mad, but they turned back to their sections. They did, however, glance over occasionally. Just for a few seconds, then they’d look back where they were supposed to. Darryl decided he could live with that. Hopefully.

  Darryl returned his attention to the issue at hand. The paperwork that had come with this rifle was floating in his mind as he tried to remember the crucial details. He was pretty sure he remembered this scope was variable power, but he wasn’t sure how to adjust it. Turning so his own shadow wasn’t occluding the weapon in his hands, he studied the scope and spotted a ring of markings near the knobs that did something to the elevation and alignment of the scope.

  He lay down on the roof and got the rifle into position, then peered through the scope with his hand on the ring. When he was looking through it, he twisted the little in-line dial with all the markings experimentally. The image in the scope seemed to sort of slide closer, and he nodded unconsciously. Okay then.

  Shifting around to look at the light, he realized as he got realigned on it that whoever was over there had veered off the road and to the house right there at the lake road’s curve. It took Darryl longer to get the scope back onto the ‘target’ this time; it was a lot harder for him to get it centered with the magnification dialed up. By the time he managed it find the person they were retreating from the house.

  No, not retreating. The person was moving to the next house on the shore. There were three houses on this side of the lake, all between the lake road and the lake shore. They were smaller and less ‘vacation home’ than the ones on the eastern side, and had only a few trees and bu
shes that were clearly planted for landscaping purposes, rather than the thick pine stands on the far side.

  As Darryl pondered this, he realized he was looking at a woman. The moonlight was still not enough to really see well, but the increased magnification on the scope was enough to let him make out the figure much better. She had long blonde hair and wore a robe over what looked like a nightgown or maybe a long shirt. Both flapped behind her, streaming back with the speed of her passage along with her hair, as she ran toward the next house.

  She looked like she was maybe pretty, for a white girl. He wasn’t sure. But what really caught his eye were the streaks of color that were visible on the hems of her clothing. Both were white, so the difference was readily apparent. As he studied her through the scope, he was abruptly sure it wasn’t some sort of style thing that was a normal part of her clothing. They were uneven, irregular.

  And they were dark. Maybe red, maybe brown. He wasn’t sure. But they could be blood.

  “So what happening over there?” Psycho asked.

  “It’s a girl.” EZ said. “Maybe a teenager, but she ain’t no older than maybe sixteen or so.”

  Darryl watched as the – woman, girl, whatever – reached the second house. She ran up to the front door and pounded on it with her fists. Darryl swept his view along the front of the house briefly before returning it to her. The house was dark, and there was no vehicle in the driveway. And there wasn’t a garage either. He couldn’t honestly say he’d been paying attention to what the neighbors had been doing over the weekend so far, but he was reasonably sure that house was empty at the moment.

  The girl was glancing to her right, in the direction she’d come from. She hammered on the door again. Darryl frowned and held the scope centered on her as he reached up and found the magnification adjuster by touch. Slowly he dialed it back until he was far enough back to see the whole house without moving his scope, then swept carefully to the right.