Long Empty Roads

by Sean Little

  There was an office behind the lobby desk, so I figured I’d start exploring there. The door was slightly ajar. The smell of decay increased slightly as I moved toward the door. I’d like to say that I was prepared for the corpse in the office, but in reality, even after encountering numerous corpses, even after living amongst the houses-turned-mausoleums, I was never prepared to see another body. I doubted I ever would be. I didn’t get sick to my stomach when I saw them anymore, but I certainly didn’t enjoy finding them. They were just an unpleasant part of life, like mold.

  The corpse in the office was still dressed in an employee’s uniform, white shirt with frilly lace at the neck and a maroon skirt. A gold-bar name tag on the shirt read “Kayla.” She was curled up in a corner of the office on the floor, a jacket balled up under her head as a pillow. Why had she stayed at work to die? I would have gone home. Sorry, boss—everyone in the world is dying. I quit.

  Kayla had mummified well. Insects had their way with her eyes, unfortunately. Her skin had shrunk and pulled back around her mouth, giving her a ghastly, leering grin. The skin on her fingers had dried, too. Her fingernails protruded like talons. It was pretty easy to see how vampire myths started. Her hair was around her face in stringy, matted locks. It was probably nice hair at one point in her life, but the last hours of her life had been spent on a hard floor in feverish misery. My heart went out to her. I hoped she’d at least called her family and said good-bye. She looked like she had been young, maybe early twenties. It was hard to judge age on dried corpses.

  I found a set of master keys in the office, and then closed the door, letting it click shut behind me. Kayla deserved to rest undisturbed. It was a lousy place to die, but the whole situation was pretty lousy.

  The rest of the hotel was largely dark. The long hallways had small windows at the far ends of them, but the light they gave was barely enough to see the shape of the hall. Long stretches of the corridors were left in complete darkness. I needed a flashlight, and if I was carrying a flashlight, I couldn’t carry a shotgun, too. I had to ditch the comforting weight of the shotgun and rely on the pistol on my hip. I actually had to take a moment to tell myself that Bigfoot hadn’t taken up residence in the lodge, and shotguns would not be effective against ghosts, either. I went back to the RV, ditched the shotgun, and got my police-style MagLite. The MagLite wasn’t quite as comforting as a shotgun, but its long handle filled with six D batteries was heavy enough to knock a man unconscious with a single, well-placed swing. It definitely helped give me a fortitude boost. It also had 178 lumens. A normal flashlight runs around 20-80 lumens, depending on quality. This thing was basically a portable spotlight. The MagLite helped put my mind at ease. With its blinding beam splayed out ahead of me, there was no way Bigfoot could jump out and surprise me inside a several-hundred million dollar hotel.

  I walked the first-floor hallway. It was a long corridor with rooms on either side. All the room locks were key-card locks, those new-fangled locks that required a plastic key like a credit card. You’d think that they wouldn’t work, but I tried the master card in the first lock. The little red and green lights on the top of the lock glowed, and I was able to open it. Apparently, the locks were powered with a few AA batteries and if no one was using them, they had the ability to last a long time. They would eventually fizzle out, I was sure, but it was a testament to their quality that the doors still worked after a year and a half.

  The first room I tried had a body in it, a single corpse, and it looked like a man’s corpse. It was lying in the king-sized bed in the center of the room. The covers were pulled up to his chest, and his arms were lying on either side of his body. He looked peaceful, like he’d died in his sleep instead of gasping for air. I saw an empty bottle of painkillers and an empty vodka bottle next to the bed. I couldn’t be sure, but I felt it was safe to assume he’d committed suicide. The writing was on the wall pretty quickly during the Flu, and a lot of people, upon coming down with symptoms, chose a fast, painless death instead of drowning in their own fluids. I backed out of his room and let his door close behind me. After that, I didn’t bother with any more rooms. I was certain that I did not want to spend the night in that hotel.

  I did explore a bit more of the hotel, going through some of the convention center and the restaurants therein. I found the pool, but the pool was unbelievably gross. There was still water in it, but that water had grown green and slimy. Despite the stagnant chemical smell in the air, black mold was sprouting on all the walls in the pool area. I didn’t even waste time unlocking the door. I immediately felt dirty just being there, and I tucked my mouth and nose into my shirt to prevent inhaling any more of that mess than I already had. I backed out of the pool area, found my way to the nearest exit, and went back to the RV.

  That hotel had probably cost at least $100 million to build. It was massive, five stories, with a convention center that could have hosted a regulation college basketball game. It was a monument to American excess, a beautiful structure in a beautiful area, and it had probably provided tens of thousands of people with a fun vacation over its lifetime. Now it was just a dark, multi-room tomb. The rot in the pool area would probably speed its decay. In another five years, storms and weather would take their toll and the siding would be coming off, some of the windows would be broken due to the building shifting and settling as it deteriorated, and animals might try to build homes in the areas they could access. The building would continue to fall to rack and ruin. Eventually, it would collapse in on itself, and the earth would send up weeds and trees to try to reclaim it. In fifty years, maybe a hundred, it would be a pile of rubble in the midst of a burgeoning wood—the same sort of wood someone had probably had to chop down just to build the damn thing. In the end, everything dies; nothing lasts forever.

  While I pulled away from the hotel, I told Fester about the bodies inside, and the black mold. He was curled up on the passenger seat with his paws tucked underneath him, a pose I liked to think of as “furry bread loaf with a head.” He squeezed his eyes and looked unimpressed.

  I pulled off the main highway onto a private road and saw large, expensive houses mostly hidden by trees and brick walls. Big money homes. Million-dollar places with million-dollar views of the mountains around them. Most of the driveways had large iron gates in front of them, the kind that were powered by keypads or remotes. My dad always hated solicitors, be they religious or commercial. He would have loved to have had a gate like these. I had to park the RV on the road in order to go into the homes. I needed to see inside these places. I needed to know what sort of secrets they held.

  I picked the biggest one I could see, a sprawling, three-story job with a log-cabin look to the exterior. It had a few windows across the front of the main section that allowed me to see through the interior to the rooms at the rear where massive panes of glass provided a view of the expansive valley beyond.

  I climbed the eight-foot stone wall in front of the house and landed on the other side. There, in the yard, was garbage. A staggering amount of garbage, actually. In one corner of the yard was a mountain of black 55-gallon garbage bags, each crammed with cans and bottles and other odds and ends. When whoever did this ran out of bags, he or she (or they, judging from the amount of debris) just started dumping trash in piles near the garbage bag mountain. The stench was powerful. Flies and hornets buzzed thickly around the waste piles. I had no doubt that vermin were about, as well. I could not see any, but I knew they were there. I hadn’t expected to find this sort of thing behind the wall of a multi-million dollar home. However, this amount of garbage meant that someone, or several someones, had survived the Flu. There was enough garbage there to account for months of living, maybe even a year’s worth.

  When I realized I wasn’t going to catch the Flu and die, I’d chosen to go live in a library. Plenty of reading material, and I was able to make a small annex of the library into my home. A small fire could heat the annex completely, and I was able to survive a Wisconsin winter there
. The opposite sort of mentality for a survivor was to claim the biggest, best house they could find and make a go of it there, which is what these people had chosen to do. It was not efficient, but it was stylish.

  Apprehension seized my gut and wound its way around my groin. Would these people be friendly? Scary? I didn’t know. I did know that I had to take my chances on finding them, though. I rushed to the front door of the house and knocked hard. I listened. Nothing. I knocked again, this time using the stock of the shotgun to make heavy, ringing knocks. Still nothing. I tried the handle of the front door. Unlocked. The door swung open easily. I sniffed the air out of habit. There was a stale, warm smell, but no decay. No rot. Someone had at least given basic maintenance to that place over the past year.

  The interior of the home had once been very nice. I could tell, just looking around, that it had been, at one time, like one of those Better Homes & Gardens houses, a showpiece worthy of being an interior design magazine centerfold. Ritzy. Extravagant. However, whoever had been living there had treated the place with less than kid gloves and where once had been a wonderful home, it now looked like a hoarder had been keeping residence. I’m not pointing fingers, though. I tried my best to keep my small annex living area somewhat neat and clean, but the rest of the library had taken a bit of a beating. I’d used the community center room to store wood for burning, and I’d used a lot of the main area for storing supplies. I had tried to keep my living area from succumbing to filth, though. I bagged my garbage and threw it into dumpsters around town in the winter. In the spring and summer, when the weather was nice, I drove sacks of trash to the Dane County landfill south of my hometown and dumped them there. Judging from the variety of clothes and assorted boxes of supplies, several people had lived in this house. It looked like at least two women and at least one man, maybe more. They had just stored whatever they found along the walls and piled it into spare rooms. There was a living area near the fireplace that was somewhat free of debris, but there were soot stains and wood bark all over the place.

  I called out a greeting and listened, but no one responded. The ashes in the fireplace were ice cold. No fire had been built in that hearth for weeks, maybe months. Whoever had lived in this house had moved somewhere else. Maybe another house nearby. Maybe they had moved south like I was going to do. Maybe they went west to California. People had been in this house, though. They had survived the Flu. This discovery bolstered my hopes of finding more people. It was a needed breath of optimism. I would never know where the people who lived here had gone, but I at least knew they were out there somewhere.

  I wasn’t about to stay in the disaster the unknown people had left, though. I walked around until I found a very nice house that was relatively untouched. Supplies had been ransacked from the kitchen, but I didn’t need supplies. I brought Fester, his food dish, and his necessary box from the RV and prepared to spend a night holed up on the third floor of a million-dollar home.

  I started by hauling in all the supplies I’d need for the night from the Greyhawk: a change of clothes, towel, soap, two whole cases of water, some food for me and the cat, lanterns, and weapons. I made a survey of the house and locked all the doors I could find. I secured everything on the first floor, doors and windows, and made sure there was no easy access in the basement. There was an extensive deck with a sliding door on the second floor. I made sure that was locked. Sure, someone could smash the glass on either of the two sliding doors on the floors below, but I would hear that. I’d have time to wake up, get my bearings, and arm myself.

  I stationed myself in the third story of the home. The master bedroom was clean and neat, albeit dusty from disuse. Dusty was just the way the world was now, though. I was used to dusty. There was a king-sized bed along the left wall, and a master bathroom to the right. Two matching oak bureaus were along the same wall as the bathroom door. To the left of the bedroom was a large walk-in closet. Men’s and women’s clothes hung on hangers in it, although most of the women’s clothes had been picked over, probably by the two women in the hoarder house. To the right of the bed was another sliding glass door that led outside to a small observation deck, hardly big enough for two people. The view from the deck was stunning. A wide valley of green trees lay spread out before me like a carpet. I could see the glint of windows in other homes through the leaves of some of the trees, homes hidden from view otherwise. I watched the valley for some time, looking for telltale wisps of smoke. I inhaled the clean air, trying to taste the scent of a wood fire on my tongue. I only smelled the clean, tasteless scent of woods and winds.

  I went through the house and collected several glass knick-knacks and some metal trinkets. Later that night, I would scatter them on the floor behind the closed bedroom door like caltrops, a final line of defense. It made me feel like the kid from Home Alone. Then, and only then, did I feel myself start to relax.

  I went through the house thoroughly. The family photos on the walls made it look like it had been owned by a successful, middle-aged couple. No kids. From the pictures, I could see they’d been all over the world. Egypt, Tokyo, some island shots, maybe Hawaii, maybe the Bahamas; I couldn’t tell. There were pictures of them at Penn State football games in one of the luxury suites. These people had been high rollers and big spenders, no paltry stadium seating for them. The basement was every bit as expansive as the rest of the house. It was a total man-cave, too. One room held a very nice study that looked more like it was for decoration than something that got used. There were bookshelves lined with those showpiece leather-bound tomes that you see in old movies, but not one of them had a single crack in the spine. I doubted that any of them had ever been opened. The rest of the basement was like a man-child’s playroom. There was a gorgeous pool table, a full bar, a tiny theater room with an eighty-inch flat-screen and a fully loaded sound system. There was another room with some vintage video games, the kind in the upright cabinets like an old-style arcade. It made me want to go scavenge up a generator and play a few rounds of Galaga. Instead, I racked up the balls on the pool table and spent a couple of hours playing pool. It wasn’t as much fun as it would have been with someone else, but it was still a good way to spend the night. It took my mind off Bigfoot, at least.

  I went to bed in the third floor bedroom. I hauled up my cases of water and stood in the shower. I poured a couple bottles on myself. I soaped up, washed myself well, making sure to hit every crevice, even my toenails, and then I used about two dozen bottles to rinse. It wasn’t the best use of good drinking water, but it felt good to be really clean instead of just using a washcloth and Wet Wipes to maintain a passable level of hygiene. I picked up a towel to dry myself, but stopped. Instead, I switched off the lantern in the bathroom and walked across the bedroom to the balcony. I stood naked in the night and let the warm, summer wind dry me.

  The moon was full that night. It was perched high in the sky and illuminated the whole valley with dull yellow light. Far below me, insects chirped their symphony. I heard an owl in the distance. I leaned on the edge of the balcony three stories above the ground and felt safe. The door was barricaded. My cat was chilling on my bed. I was fed and clean. I had every right to feel good. I was planning to start reading a new book. I was looking forward to getting on to New York City. I was less than a day’s journey away from the Big Apple; I could probably make it there before noon if the roads weren’t too bad. I was confident that none of the boogiemen of my fear-wrought nightmares would scale the exterior of the house and get me while I slept. I had found more proof that others had survived the Flu, and I knew that they were still out there, probably on the road like I was. I had every reason to feel good, but I didn’t. I looked at the moon, and my heart fell into my stomach. When I was a sophomore, I asked Jillian Wright to Homecoming. She looked me up and down and laughed. Then she walked away. At that moment on the balcony, I felt exactly the same way I did back then. I don’t know why.

  I went back into the room, dressed in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt
, and climbed into bed. I looked at the book and the lantern by the bed and couldn’t muster the energy to read them. I pulled the blankets of that fine, dusty king-sized bed over my head and cried myself to sleep.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Big Rotten Apple

  I left the Poconos just after dawn, the sun barely cresting the edge of the horizon. Any enchantment I had with life on the road was dwindling. It was three weeks since I had left my hometown. I was getting tired of being on the move. I was getting tired of sleeping in a cramped RV and eating canned tuna and endless bowls of salty ramen. I was just tired, period. I was processing too much information every day. Before the Flu, I had spent the majority of my life in a small town; I rarely traveled, and I had rarely slept anywhere but my own bed. I started the trip with the best of intentions, but now the travel was starting to grate on me. I have to think that it was because I was scared.

  Fear is draining. It does things to the mind and body. During the day, I was not scared. I was a man in control of my own life and destiny. I was overcoming obstacles. I was blazing new ground in a brave new frontier. The second the sun went down, every noise demanded investigation. When I closed my eyes, thoughts of waking up to someone—or something—charging me down would play havoc with my mind. I wanted to find other people, people I could trust, just so I could stop feeling so alone against the world. I had to keep reminding myself that this whole situation was not something I could control. I had to keep reminding myself that when I settled in the south, that was it. I wouldn’t be moving; I’d be working hard to eke out some sort of existence until I died, and if I was lucky, it would be a happy, fulfilling existence.

  Searching for others started feeling as if I was looking for needles in a haystack. It began to feel pointless and tedious. I’d been stupidly lucky to stumble across Doug. If he’d been bedridden, I would not have found him. If I had decided not to go into the pharmacy that day, I never would have known someone in that town was still alive. If I arrived a week later, who knows if he would even still be alive? I knew people were out there—they had to be out there—but I had no reliable method of finding them. It was a near-impossible task. I felt like Sisyphus.