A few minutes later, Chet strutted in. “I’m starving!” he announced. He picked up the cooling saucepan of rice, plunked a spoon in it, and sauntered away from the food prep area.
Matthew and I watched him go. We managed to keep our faces straight, barely, until he was out of sight.
“He’s getting some extra protein, anyway,” Matthew said, wiping a tear from his eye, finally having pulled himself together.
Thom approached. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Sorry you missed it,” Matthew said.
We cracked up again.
“Chet…” tried Matthew. “Chet…” More snickering.
I rolled onto my back, holding my aching stomach. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d laughed so hard. We eventually relayed the story to Thom. Matthew’s stomach continued to growl. I retrieved one of my MREs for Matthew to supplement his meal with.
he time had come to sleep up off the ground. Crawling in and out of my tent made me ache terribly. My whole body complained every time.
I fastened a small note to my sleeping bag and snuck away, alone. If Eric or his brothers got worried regarding my whereabouts, it would be clear where I’d gone this time.
I attached a trailer to my truck hitch at Lowe’s, and filled both the trailer and the truck with supplies. I gathered brooms, tools, wood, nails, metal roofing, and other things I’d need. I also nabbed some gifts for the camp, like buckets, wheelbarrows, and rolls of fencing. I’d propped open the store’s front doors and made several trips in, reading their sign in the doorway every time:
FREE CLASS SATURDAY 10 A.M.!
LOCATION: GARDEN CENTER
LEARN HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN LADDER!
CELEBRITY GUEST
TY PENNINGTON
FROM TV’S ‘EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER’S!’ [sic]
FREE SUPPLIES (PARACORD & WOOD) PROVIDED!
BRING YOUR FRIENDS!
On my fourth or fifth trip, I noticed a lanyard on the floor. Out of curiosity, I picked it up. The lanyard’s laminated badge featured a picture of Ty Pennington which had clearly been cut from a magazine. Below the picture was his name, written in Sharpie, along with the words “SECURITY PASS.” I shoved it into a cargo pocket and moved along.
A bale of galvanized steel barbed wire didn’t make the journey back to camp. I looked at it a long time, remembering its sting. Cursed stuff. I tried to view it like it was any regular object, but we had a past, barbed wire and me. When I tried to heave the heavy, prickly first roll down from its shelf, barbs bit into my arms. The bale barely moved. I wrapped a rope around it and hauled it toward my contractor cart.
Up until this point in my shopping trip, I hadn’t had a problem with rotters. They were around, but sparse. Easy to deal with.
I screwed myself over royally trying to get the bale of wire down. After three good tugs, it tipped uncontrollably off the shelf’s edge. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted. The barbed wire had fallen across my leg and hit my still-discolored foot when it glanced off the cart and onto the floor. The crash made by the wire hitting and denting the cart echoed. I’d never heard anything echo in a store like this before.
A few seconds later, rotters lumbered through the doorway from the garden center. It wasn’t a concern at first; I bashed at them with my hammer. They kept emerging from the door, though, and others began stepping from another doorway, cutting off my path down the aisle to the outside. And then more, from another door. Now I had something to worry about.
I slipped my hammer into its loop on my pants and ascended the metal shelving in an aisle. As Renee and I had observed, rotters don’t climb. I’d be safe above their heads. I pulled myself to a shelf several feet above them and looked at the swelling rotter crowd. They might not be able to turn me (or maybe they somehow still could, I wasn’t entirely certain), but being eaten alive wasn’t my idea of a good time.
Great job, idiot. Now what? I could get to the end of the row, but there was still a large stretch of space between its conclusion and the exit door. Dozens upon dozens of rotters converged on all sides of the aisle space. I took stock of my surroundings. There was plenty to work with, but nothing I could think of to eradicate the problem en masse.
Keep your head together, dummy, I scolded. I sat and looked around. There were ceiling supports I could reach from the top pallet of the row I’d climbed onto. Okay, not completely stuck now. Got a whole damn box store to work with.
I scampered up a pallet of potting soil bags and hoisted myself onto one of the long support bars of the store’s ceiling. I scanned for any sort of roof access, but the only things I could see were a few unreachable skylights that the supports didn’t cross beneath. I shimmied along the cold metal until I got to the tools row and climbed down to the shelves. The rotters were following along in the aisles beneath me. If I tried to get out the front door, the rotters would have my exit blocked before I could get near it. I’d have to take a bunch of them out first. I reached down for a package of tin snips. When I pulled the snips off their hook, a rotter tried to bite at the back of my arm. I clubbed the rotter with the package in my hand, but it didn’t cause any damage.
I reached for a box of circular saw blades, grabbed its handles, and pulled it up. The blades were individually wrapped in semi-rigid plastic. As I opened one with the tin snips, a sharp piece of plastic jabbed into my skin, leaving a deep gouge. I angrily removed the rest of the blade’s packaging. I flipped the metal over in my hands; it felt cheap. The packaging was sharper than the blade. I didn’t have high hopes for it to be effective. I chucked the blade into a rotter. The blade caught the rotter by the throat and lodged there. The rotter wasn’t ended. These were small blades; they didn’t have a lot of heft to them. The trouble of unwrapping them wasn’t worth the effort.
Next, I snagged a conduit bender and pulled it up with my belt, then felt and considered its substantial weight. I gave it a couple of swings in the air, then bashed some skulls with it. This wouldn’t last long. The implement was powerful, but tiring. I couldn’t get a good hold on the thing. I wrapped some duct tape around the end of my weapon’s handle for additional traction, and tried swinging it again. I took out more rotters, but my swings were getting weaker. And then my shoulder dislocated again. I felt like throwing a tantrum. Wouldn’t do any good to perform random throwing of shit, though.
I tried what Thom had described about Eric, wedging my wrist into a large zip tie that I’d attached to the shelving and pulling with all my might, but I didn’t have the strength and weight to put my shoulder back together. Not happening.
Instead of bothering over my arm more, I transferred the conduit bender to my usable hand, then began cracking more skulls.
A skylight broke open on the far end of the row.
“Kit?” It was Eric.
“Hi, Eric,” I said while smashing a rotter’s skull.
“Glad you left that note,” he called down. “Entrance is blocked—I couldn’t even get close to it. Where’d they all come from?”
“Celebrity ladder class in the garden center.”
“Huh. Gonna get you out of here.”
I moved to put down another rotter, heading in Eric’s direction. He watched me swing the conduit bender, whacking a rotter in the skull. I stood nearly below him now, though still well out of reach.
“My shoulder’s screwed again,” I bellyached.
“Yeah, I saw. I’ll be down to fix it in a few minutes. Hang tight. I think we should spend the night here. Gotta keep the store usable, so we’ll need to clear it out in daylight. I’m going to see what I can get from the grocery next door. I’ll be right back. Get some rope ready.”
“My plans haven’t gone so well so far,” I complained, mostly to myself.
“Rope,” Eric instructed through the skylight before he took off.
I used a hooked piece of metal, snagged from the pegboard display underneath me, and fished around until I caught the end of a spool of rope. I pulled and cut a length of it, and tossed Eric o
ne end when he returned with a couple of full plastic grocery bags.
Eric attached the rope to something on the roof and lowered the supplies, then climbed down to join me on the top shelf of a row, about twenty feet beneath the ceiling. He reset my shoulder again, and I felt deeply ashamed—for being in this mess, for needing help, for accepting his help.
It had gotten pretty dark. We had some flashlights and candles, but we didn’t use them for long. Eric handed me a chunk of canned brown bread and we ate in darkness.
“We’ll draw them to a back exit door in the morning,” Eric said. “We can control the flow out easier that way.”
We each used a sheet of plywood as a bed, and we slept on top of the lumber row until the sun illuminated the world again. Then we climbed the rope to the roof and descended rusted fire escape stairs to the ground.
We chose an emergency exit and used air horns properly—to lure rotters out the back of the building. Eric and I took turns killing them off. Once the store was clear, we stocked up on a few more supplies. Then we slipped out the front doors. We stood before the truck and Matthew’s motorcycle, which Eric had ridden out. He loaded the bike onto the trailer, tying it down and cushioning it with tarps. I handed Ty’s security badge to Eric, and he shoved it in his pocket. He had his Cheshire Cat grin on as we went back to camp.
I’d stolen away from camp in the truck, but Jeff wouldn’t be angry. We were bringing back useful supplies, and I had refueled and stocked up on extra gas. Besides, I didn’t feel like the truck belonged to the camp. It’s the one Eric and I had procured. Ours.
I’d chosen a spot away from the tent area, outside the generally accepted bounds of the actual camp, and asked to be dropped off there. Eric helped me unload my building supplies. Then he returned the truck to its designated parking area and searched out Jeff to inform him of the other provisions we’d brought.
I surveyed the site of my new abode and began to assemble it on the mostly flat surface of a granite ledge. I’d formulated a plan and felt possessed by motivation to work. Out came the hammer. I soon had the base of a large lean-to constructed.
Thom and Matthew found me. I hadn’t known they were even looking for me, and felt surprised and confused that all my hammering hadn’t been disturbance enough to guide them my way sooner. I’d put enough space between the camp and the lean-to to keep it private, apparently. Good.
They helped get the sides of the lean-to attached, easily handling the lumber I’d been struggling with. They talked as they worked, joking and telling me stories. Then Eric showed up, carrying my sleeping bag and bagged-up tent. He joined in, holding each piece of sheet metal for the roof steady until it was secured.
“Why’d you spend the night at Lowe’s?” Matthew asked Eric while pounding a nail in with two hammer swings.
Eric glanced at me sideways. I gave my head half a shake. No. Eric surprised me by respecting my request: he didn’t tell about the mess I’d gotten myself into. And I realized why it was safe to talk with him. He understood how to help me talk about and work through most of my issues. He would respect my privacy when I asked him not to share something.
“It’s going to be an essential building for us as far as supplies go, but it was full of rotters. We needed daylight to clear it out,” Eric said, adjusting the roofing he held.
Thom bit the side of his lip and frowned at my shoe, where the barbed wire had punctured my foot and blood had stained the mesh of my sneaker. I gave my head another shake, and he didn’t say anything about it.
The guys strung bells on wires to signal when rotters tried to make their way into the campsite, as well as to slow the rotters down. I hung a couple of old quilts at the front of the lean-to. I stapled them at the top and threaded them onto a large dowel like they were curtains, so they could be opened to let in light or closed to keep the light—and prying eyes—out.
Eric had Thom, the tallest of our bunch, put in an extra nail, high up in a corner. Thom then hung Ty’s badge from it like a trophy.
We surveyed the structure. Sturdy. Comfortable.
“Good deal!” Matthew commented, fist-bumping Thom and Eric and me each in turn. “It even has the Ty Pennington Seal of Approval.”
The guys dragged their belongings into the lean-to and packed their tent away. This hadn’t been my intention, to move us all in together, but it felt correct. If I’d really wanted to stay alone, I realized, I would’ve planned a much smaller structure. Maybe I wasn’t so antisocial after all.
I got bitten yet another time late that afternoon. A kid rotter in the woods. It was my own fault, too. My mind was occupied. The day was windy and leaves were swirling up around me, and I was hypnotized by its beauty. It felt like I was living in a snow globe. I’d leaned back against a tree, hearing only the wind and the leaves, thinking only of what my life was trying to become. Then I felt the kid, biting down hard on my forearm, by the wrist.
I grumbled with exasperation, then pulled out my knife and put the kid down. I cleaned and bandaged my wound, and headed back to the lean-to to find Eric. I asked him to take a walk with me. I didn’t want to freak out the camp. I didn’t want Thom and Matthew to know, either. It was mortifying.
“We might have a problem,” I said. Then I told Eric what had happened, ending with, “I don’t think I’m going to turn, but keep me on a short leash for a couple days, okay?” Now that I was sleeping in close quarters with other people, I didn’t dare risk anyone else’s safety by not telling someone.
I tried not to look at Eric, tried not to feel the terror settling like a cloud around him. He swallowed hard, trying to process the news and barely keeping himself under control. We turned back for the lean-to.
“Please don’t tell. Don’t even tell your brothers,” I pled.
He assured me he wouldn’t. And he didn’t.
I griped, “I deserve to be one, letting it happen so many times.”
Eric shook his head and put his arm around me. Then he stopped walking, still looking stricken. “Wait… what?”
I looked at his feet and studied his bootlaces, stalling. I was angry at myself for saying too much. I muttered, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“How many times?”
I continued to stare at his boots. “As I said, I don’t think I’m going to turn since I haven’t yet. That’s my Song About It.” I refused to discuss it further even though he kept asking questions.
We finally walked on. The cloud of supreme panic surrounding him dissipated slightly, into… intense worry, instead.
The next days were surprisingly good ones for me. I enjoyed the excuse to hang out with Eric and he went easy on me, not asking a lot of hard questions. And he had drugs for recreation.
I charged my little MP3 player with a solar charger, another treasure I’d found among Renee’s things. It took forever, but was worth every second of waiting. I offered Eric one of my earbuds, and he gave me something in exchange: another of the chalky pills with the star. I happily took it, and he downed two. He settled beside me, our heads close together because of the headphones’ short cords. We basked in the breeze, in the distorted sounds of the music, in the buzzing, beautiful feeling the pills caused. He scooted closer, so his leg was against my leg. He slid an arm around me, and I leaned against him. We stayed like that until the MP3 player’s battery died. I enjoyed feeling him beside me as he slowly relaxed while the hours slipped past. Rule #6: Live in the moment, when you can.
After a couple days of hanging around the lean-to with Eric as my babysitter, I was still fine. We decided it was safe to set me loose upon the world again.
“Present!” I dropped a package onto the floor of the lean-to, next to Eric. I’d gone out flying by myself when he had gone hunting.
He prepared to open it, feigning apprehension. “Is it a crocodile?” he said, shaking the package. He tore the present from its wrapping. “Whoa, seriously?” His face lit up with excitement.
“Didn’t know you were so easy,”
I told him. “To please,” I quickly added, before he could turn the remark into a dirty one—and then realizing I hadn’t fixed it at all.
He smirked, following my line of thought. “I’m rubbing off on you.” Then he planted a kiss on the side of my head.
Now it was my turn to smirk at his words. Eric didn’t notice, because he was gawking at what I’d brought him.
“This is awesome!” Eric enthused.
“What’s awesome?” Thom asked as he and Matthew walked in.
Eric held his present in the air. Two packs of precooked bacon, the kind that technically didn’t need refrigeration. It was out-of-date, of course, but perfectly preserved. I’d found the packages in the refrigerated section of a desolate, dark Walmart. Everything around them had been ruined, and most of the nonperishable foods were already gone. The bacon’s boxes had been wrecked, covered in mold and who-knows-what, but I’d washed the inner plastic pouches clean and inspected the food carefully before determining it was a good find.
Thom and Matthew looked excited. “You’d better share!” they told Eric.
“Uh-uh, mine!” he teased them.
“Actually…” I reached to a side wall of our lean-to and lifted a blanket. About thirty more packages were piled there. “You may regret my finding these,” I told them, thinking they’d get sick of it pretty fast.
“Not a chance!” Eric declared, ripping a package open. We ate the whole thing without bothering to heat it and licked our fingers clean.
“That,” said Matthew, “was elegant.”
The next day, a little girl ran up to me, putting out her hand. I shook it. It was sticky. Yuck.
“Hi! I’m Sadie!” she announced. “Want to be my friend?”
Not particularly, I thought. “Okay,” I said, hoping her mother would call for her soon.
“Want to play?” She held up a grimy Strawberry Shortcake doll and a naked Barbie whose platinum blonde hair had been chopped short in an uneven, matted mess.
Someone save me, my brain begged. Someone did. Matthew called for me, and I excused myself, leaving little Sadie to play on her own.
Survial Kit Series (Book 1): Survival Kit's Apocalypse Page 9
