by Jason Ross
But not anymore. The hunger had taken even that. Alan lay still, waiting for his dick to get the memo, when a pair of near-simultaneous explosions slapped at his lean-to.
Ba-boom-boom!
The explosions came from the direction of the town. Janice rolled over, startled, then went back to sleep. Alan stayed awake and pondered his boner. Janice probably wouldn’t turn him down, now that she was probably awake. By the time he thought it through, he was soft again, which was probably for the best. It occurred to him that he may have done the deed in this life for the last time. He was too weak and hungry to care about such a minor tragedy.
Ten minutes later, the smell of cooked meat ran over him like a dump truck.
“Oh, my God!” Do you smell that?” Janice sat up ramrod straight, like she’d taken an enormous coke hit.
“Dear Lord, where is that coming from?”
“Fuckers are having a cookout in town,” Alan spat.
The couple scrambled out from under their clumpy sleeping bags, pulled on pants and stumbled out of the lean-to. The cluster of tents around them sprang to life. Some people staggered directly toward the scent of roasting meat without bothering to put on shoes. Others paused to pick up possessions so they wouldn’t be stolen in their absence.
Alan grabbed the heavy stick he used for defense, slipped on his boots without tying the laces and shuffled southwest. Throughout the woods and across the highway, desperate thousands of insidious, human beasts converged on the town of McKenzie, Tennessee.
Dr. Abraham Hauser
Sedalia, Tennessee
* * *
Dr. Hauser had trusted the wrong people. He’d been taken in by Sergeant Best’s lies and the seemingly-kind acts of Sheriff and Beatrice Morgan. He’d been fooled into a pipe dream—an unlikely tale of food to feed his people through the winter. All they had to do was walk thirty miles and take it, the Army Ranger had said. It was a tale they’d yearned to believe.
Three days and thirty miles later, 800 people gathered in campfire groups in and around a rural warehouse outside Sedalia, Tennessee.
Dr. Hauser regarded the now-picked through shelves along the walls of the warehouse, and he knew they’d been betrayed.
At first, when they arrived, they’d celebrated. The shelves looked stocked, just like the Federal Emergency Management Agency might’ve done. But as Hauser’s friends unpacked the shelves, devoured the dried meals, and took a hard look at what was left, they realized the shelves had been shallow, with empty boxes instead of heavy, preserved calories. Much of the dried and canned food was expired. Though it turned out to be edible, they began to suspect FEMA had nothing to do with the warehouse. Too many details failed to line up: the empty boxes, the too-perfect map of FEMA locations, the lightweight padlocks on the doors.
The food would barely get them to the next warehouse on the map, which was supposedly another thirty miles north in a town called Hillerman on the far side of the Ohio River.
One of their group had grown up near Hillerman, and she was absolutely certain there was no FEMA warehouse, nor a warehouse of any kind.
They’d been duped, and the realization steadily dawned that they were marooned in Sedalia. Soon, they’d begin starving again.
Hypothetically, they could drive back to their camp outside McKenzie. There were plenty of vehicles around for the taking, but nothing to put in the gas tank. Every car, everywhere, had been driven until it ran dry.
“It was all our mistake, Doc. We’re in this together,” Jeanine Barlowe reassured him as she put her hand on his forearm. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Vehicle approaching. Defensive positions!” a sentry on the roof shouted through a skylight.
The refugees responded by forming circles, with fighters and melee weapons facing outward. The vulnerable members moved to the centers of the phalanxes.
“One pickup truck. Driving slow. Two pax,” the sentry shouted again.
His people clutched clubs, axes, and spears, poised for another sad turn in their parade of misery. Dr. Hauser hurried out, through the front office of the warehouse and into the parking lot.
A truck turned the corner, and Hauser recognized Sheriff and Beatrice Morgan in the front seat. Hauser almost singled “all clear,” but hesitated. The Morgans had certainly been party to his deception.
What was going on? His shoulders hunched in anticipation of coming conflict. If they didn’t bring the conflict, Hauser certainly would.
Sheriff Morgan pulled in, got down from the cab and looked Hauser in the eyes. Hauser curled his lip and signaled an all clear with his finger in the air.
“You’ve got some nerve, coming here,” he sneered.
Mrs. Morgan walked around the fender and joined the two men. Shame painted her face red.
“That’s true,” Sheriff Morgan agreed. He didn’t extend a hand.
Hauser jammed his fists on his hips. “You lied to us. My people could die here. There’s not enough food. We’re too far now to make it back without people dying along the way.”
“Yeah. That was the plan,” the sheriff confessed.
“And the next warehouse?” Hauser asked.
“Doesn’t exist.”
“What in God’s name are you doing here, Sheriff? Do you think I can stop these people from stomping you to death when they find out?”
“Bea and I made peace with that possibility, if the Lord wills it. But if you’ll hear us out...”
Beatrice Morgan interrupted her husband, “Dr. Hauser, the Lord told us to be your Esther.” She smiled like a penitent and quoted, “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”
Hauser felt nonplussed. “Our Esther?” He knew next-to-nothing about Bible stories.
Sheriff Morgan interjected, “When I agreed to be complicit in lying to you, I thought I was choosing the lesser of two evils. I told myself that the town was giving you the chance to move on before you became too desperate and we had to shoot you. But my better half had other ideas—more faith than me. She was right and I was wrong. The town was wrong. I see it now. We’ve come to ask you back, to find a way to survive together.”
Hauser suspected another deception. “You mean to tell me the same town that sent us on a death march has had a change of heart? I don’t believe you.”
“We weren’t sent by the town,” Beatrice answered. “We’ve come to share your fate, one way or the other.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to offer? Two more mouths to feed?” Hauser looked around at his people, milling about the parking lot. He shook his head.
Sheriff Morgan smiled, and flipped back the tarp covering his truck bed. “We bring two more mouths to feed, plus eighty gallons of unleaded gasoline. That sound any better?”
William and Candice
* * *
Abandoned home on Kemp Street
McKenzie, Tennessee
* * *
William pulled the heavy handgun from his backpack and studied the mechanism. Mat hadn’t let him shoot this gun yet, and yet William planned to kill a man with it.
He and Mat had done four gun range sessions since the collapse, and they hadn’t been long ones. There was precious little ammunition, and Mat was working overtime on the HESCO barrier and night patrol. Organizing a mini-Ranger School for William hadn’t been a top priority.
In those shooting sessions, Mat taught William the Glock handgun, not the shiny, heavy pistol William had taken from the house. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure how the handgun functioned. It didn’t look anything like the Glock.
He found the magazine release and dropped the gleaming, silver mag into his hand. The bullets were thicker than Mat’s nine millimeter rounds.
With the magazine out, he tried to pull back the slide. By jamming it against his hip, he managed to get it back until it clicked open, just like the Glock. The breach was clear of brass, bu
t William still handled the firearm as though it was loaded, pointing it in the opposite direction of sleeping Candice.
“Where’d you get that?”
He startled, but quickly covered it with a grin. “I stole it from my dad’s workbench.”
“Your dad, huh?”
“I stole it from Mat’s workbench.”
“Don’t be too hard on him.” Candice sat up from the sleeping bag and leaned on an elbow. Her naked clavicle showed under the collar of the too-big T-shirt she’d found in the closet of the abandoned house where they’d come to hide. “He’s doing the best he knows how.”
They were both runaways now, and William didn’t care. Whatever happened, they’d be together.
“What’re you planning on doing with that?” she stared at the big handgun.
“Erm. Nothing. It’s just to protect us from rats,” he lied.
She lowered her brows and gave him a look that said baloney.
“Mister Jensen needs to be stopped,” William sputtered, then felt foolish for saying anything so dramatic. He hadn’t even figured out the gun yet.
His heart galloped like a runaway horse at the thought of pointing a gun at Mr. Jensen; a willowy, twelve year-old child facing down a grown man. In the movies, that scene rarely worked out in a boy’s favor.
Candice would see it too—the foolishness of a boy bringing justice down upon a man respected in the community. She’d see him for the unsteady child he really was. Candice was no thirteen year-old girl. Not really. She’d been through stuff. He could see the question in her eyes—like when he would tell his mom that he was going into the backyard to practice sword fighting. Candice knew the embarrassing truth: he was just a kid.
The pistol was almost as long as William’s forearm, and he could barely get his hands around the grips. Candice’s eyes tracked from the gun, up his arms, to his face.
He clamped down hard on the slide release and it clacked shut with authority. William slid the magazine into the mag well and ran it home with a loud click. The metal-on-metal action sent a shot of adrenaline up his spine.
“If no one else will do it, I will,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“William, stop. Don’t do this,” she cried.
He stood and struggled to maintain balance with the handgun in both hands.
“You stay here. I’ll be back later.”
Without waiting for her to answer, William turned and walked out of the house. The screen door slammed shut behind him.
The town tornado siren began to howl as William passed in front of Casey’s Takeout. For a moment, he imagined Candice had called the police, and the town was coming to arrest him. He imagined, for a moment, that the tornado siren was for him.
A knot of people ran past him in the middle of the street, but nobody spared him a second glance. He tried to hide the gun, but it took both of his hands to carry it without pointing it at his own leg. Mat had taught him never to point a gun at himself.
“William!” Candice called to him as she ran down the sidewalk after him. “Wait.”
He stopped and turned. “It’s not murder if he’s a bad man.”
“Yes, but he’s not... I mean, he is. But the town needs him. The town needs him to make chemical weapons.”
“That’s just some B.S. he told you so you wouldn’t tell on him.” William shook his head. “He’s a liar and a peedo-file.”
Confusion blew across the smooth silk of her pretty face. William turned and continued down the sidewalk.
“He protects me,” she said, but this time without conviction.
William kept walking and she hurried to catch up.
“When you use someone in a bad way, you’re not protecting them,” William said. “You’re hurting them. Only a bad man hurts young girls, and you know it.”
“Yes, but things changed. The world’s different now.”
“Not that thing. That didn’t change,” William said, and he was pretty sure he was right on that score. He’d found an absolute truth in a world of uncertainty. He clung to it as his lodestone—that and the heavy handgun.
They turned onto Forrest Avenue. The tornado siren grew louder as they faced downtown. Two more groups of townsfolk ran past them. They carried guns, and the smell of smoke swirled down the avenue.
Something had happened in town, but if he didn’t keep marching toward Mr. Jensen’s house, he’d lose his nerve. What he was about to do was right. He was sure of it.
Candice trotted beside William, struggling to keep up. She offered no further argument. Jim Jensen was in the front yard, running back and forth between the garage and a van—big and white like a FedEx truck. Mr. Jensen held a milk crate in his hands. The radio on his belt chattered with panicked voices.
“Stop!” William shouted and pointed the hulking gun at Jim Jensen. The teacher’s eyes darted between William and Candice and comprehension dawned on his face.
“William. Candice,” Mr. Jensen said. He carefully set the milk crate on the cement. “Hold on...” he stammered.
Gunsights wavered in front of William’s eyes and he willed his arms to be stronger. He realized too late that he’d yelled at Mr. Jensen too early. The distance was much farther than Mat had taught him to shoot—all the way across the grass. Still, Mr. Jensen seemed to take the gun seriously. He held up a hand and stepped toward them.
William pressed the trigger.
Clack!
The handgun’s hammer came down like a lightning bolt, but without the thunder. Nothing happened. The gun wavered in front of William’s face. Mister Jensen smiled, reached around to his back and brought out a gleaming revolver.
William’s arms dropped and he stared at the gun, trying to understand why it had failed to fire. He’d done everything right, but maybe not in the right order.
Mr. Jensen pointed the snub-nosed gun at William and took three steps forward. Then he looked over his shoulder at his open garage and appeared to reconsider.
Jensen waved them away with his gun. “You kids run along now. The rats are attacking en masse and I’m the only one who can stop them. Take refuge at the middle school. Go on.” He stomped menacingly, and William’s legs betrayed him by faltering backward. Candice tugged at his arm.
“Come on, William. We need help. Where’s your dad?”
William had no idea where Mat was. His head swam with fury and humiliation. Mr. Jensen had gone back to loading the van.
William tossed the pistol in a bush, and they both ran back the way they’d come.
Mat Best
* * *
Smith Street HESCO barrier
McKenzie, Tennessee
* * *
The McKenzie community college and Smith Street met in an inverted corner cut out of the northeast perimeter of town by a huge hayfield. It’d been easier to place the HESCO barrier on paved road than setting the foundation across a muddy field.
The smoke-and-pig aroma drifted over the college, into the gaping field and northeast through the bustling woods around Caledonia Creek reservoir.
The Paw Paw Lane neighborhood had been lost to the town when the perimeter left out over a hundred homes as well as the Christ’s Temple Apostolic church. It would’ve required another two miles of HESCO barrier to protect them. The residents and the pastor relocated to the community college campus. Refugees instantly squatted in the cluster of starter homes on the edge of town.
Now the rats emerged, like creatures awakened from rain-soaked hibernation. The smell of cooked meat and charred wood drew them onto the overgrown lawns and trash-strewn streets where children once rode scooters and played frisbee. They carried weapons, most of them. Nobody seemed to go anywhere outside the town perimeter without a weapon of some sort.
Mat watched from atop the Smith Street HESCO barrier, panning his binoculars up and down the four-lane highway that separated the Paw Paw neighborhood from the rest of town.
The rats had no way of knowing the smell came from inside the town perimeter, n
or would they care. Mat learned the overwhelming power of smell when he’d half-starved during field exercises in Ranger School. After a few days of starvation, even the slightest food smell struck like rebar upside the head. It caused physical pain in the nasal cavity and dragged a man forward like a nose ring on a rope.
The rats moved like zombies, driven by their gnawing hunger and weakened by atrophy—stumbling, sniffing, abandoning their mewling children. Mat watched in wonder as the wind dragged his enemy from their hovels and drew them toward murder. He guessed there were a thousand of them, and the woods hadn’t begun to empty yet. This was just the three streets of split-level homes.
Mat marveled at the power of smell—it could’ve been such a simple weapon. If only he’d considered using it before, it could’ve helped the town. He could’ve lured rats away.
With wind sweeping across McKenzie, the scent of cooked meat pulled an army of desperate souls toward the wall, and toward a do-or-die, winner-take-all clash with the townspeople.
His mind swirled with visions of bullets, poison gas, cannons, and walls. Like so many commanders before him, he struggled against fighting the last war in his mind instead of this war.
Today, he didn’t face an enemy army, or insurgents bent on toppling a government, he fought locusts. They would gobble every morsel of food, ruining what they could not eat. Mat remembered seeing rats “butcher” a captured pig with pocket knives, bare hands, and teeth. In their desperation, they wasted most of it.
“Cabrera. This is Actual. Report,” Mat spoke over the radio. He’d already called in all available perimeter guards, and everyone in town who could wield a gun, or even a bat. This fight would be for all the marbles. The town would live or die right here on the Smith Street HESCO, in the next thirty minutes.
The tornado siren continued its doleful wail. It was the pre-set signal for everyone to rush to defense, but it would take time to get the word out as to where. Where would they make their stand? On the other side of McKenzie, the townspeople would have no idea of the crushing masses hurdling themselves across the fields.
