“You know how to get to the record store from here?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
The highway isn’t passable, but the access roads and shoulders are a little better. Gideon chooses the access road, littered with luggage, strewn clothing, and piles of bones still in the shape of the bodies they once occupied. A baby stroller comes into view and I avert my eyes. I don’t want to see if there’s anyone—or anything—inside of it.
“Jesus.” Gideon exhales, shakes his head.
“I don’t wanna know. If it’s ever a baby, I . . .”
Gideon takes my hand. “I get it, honey. But it wasn’t.”
“That’s good.” I twist my one-hitter into the cubbyhole half-full of weed. When I remove it and see the tip filled with bright green leaves with purple hairs, I’m all warm and fuzzy inside. I haven’t smoked weed in too long.
Gideon clicks a Bic lighter in my peripheral. I lean in to steal a kiss and take the lighter before settling into my seat to light the bowl. When I inhale my first hit of weed in two months, I hold it in my lungs until my head throbs from lack of oxygen, then I attempt to blow the smoke out the window, but it comes out in a burst as I hack my brains out. When it subsides, I’m high as shit. Damn, that’s nice.
“You gonna make it, hot stuff?” Gideon teases.
“Yep, I’m good.” I reload the one-hitter and hand it to him, and I’m met with a mediocre head shake.
“It’s okay, you’ve earned it.” I place the filled bat and the lighter in his hand. “Relax.”
After a period of contemplation, he steers with his knee while he takes a hit. When he exhales a huge cloud of smoke, he proceeds to cough for a minute straight, just like I did.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Heck, yeah.” He coughs again. “That hit the spot. I wonder what kind of bud that is. Don’t they all have fancy, hipster names like Stars at night in Selam and Roses and Lilies with Unicorns or whatever shit?”
We laugh, and I remember how much I love these giggly weed highs. It’s been a while.
“We should give it a name so it doesn’t feel left out,” I offer, high as hell.
“We totally should.”
“How about ‘A Giggly Trip Down Memory Lane’?”
“Oh, I love that,” he says. “It’s perfect.”
From the floorboard, I collect the bottle of Cuervo from Gideon’s backpack, and shudder. I hate Tequila, but I’m high, and it’s calling my name, nonetheless. And I’ll be goddamned if I don’t drink this whole bottle in two days anyway.
I crack the lid and take a swig, cringe. “I hate nasty-ass fucking tequila.” Despite a wave of nausea, I take another pull from the bottle.
“Aaaand she takes another gulp,” Gideon says with a laugh.
I offer him some.
“I’m cool. That’s one thing I don’t mix with driving. Not since I drank half a bottle and got a DWI. I got locked up in the worst scum-hole in Phoenix for two weeks, and after that, tequila and I were not on speaking terms. In fact, grabbing that bottle for you is the most love tequila has gotten from me in years. See how much I love you?”
“I really do.” I take another gulp that becomes a guzzle. I’m already getting numb to it.
“Over there.” He points ahead to where a CVS sign is off the highway a few blocks. “Wanna try it?”
“Yeah, for sure. Fingers crossed.”
By the time we arrive in the empty CVS parking lot, the rain has subsided. The front door is boarded up from the inside, but there doesn’t appear to be any signs of life. Gideon points to the side of the building where a propane tank locker sits beneath a row of high, narrow windows, one of them busted out.
“Someone’s in there hiding out, I bet,” Gideon says.
“Kids, you think?”
“Hard to say.”
“What do we do?”
“We should try to talk to them. If they’re young, maybe they’ll trust us and let us in.”
“We could bribe them with weed and booze.”
He shoots me a look.
“What? It’s the end of the world. What kid wouldn’t want to get high or drunk? At least once?”
He sighs, then chuckles as he ties his hair back into a short, messy ponytail. “We should offer these guys a fair trade.”
“You mean more than weed?”
“Yeah, I mean like guns. We’ll give them one of our weapons for ten bags of supplies.”
“Think they’ll go for it?”
“Depends on who we’re dealing with. Watch out, be still.”
A large group of them moves through the parking lot behind us, and we duck down.
“How many?” I whisper.
“Medium-sized horde. We should be fine in a few.” After a short silence, staring at the floorboards, he glances up at me. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you—why Ophelia?”
“Huh?”
“Why’d you choose it?”
“Oh . . . Ais named me. Right before she died. She was a hopeless romantic and a poet, really into Shakespeare. She named me after Ophelia in Hamlet. She was heartbroken and climbed into a willow tree over a stream, the branch broke, and she drowned. I always loved willow trees, and . . . I was always sad. So, she said it was a fitting name for me.”
“I know that story, yeah. Takes me back to high school English class.”
“Right?”
“So, you were Ophelia for ten years?”
“No, I didn’t use Ophelia again until I was sixteen. I walked away from Zalaa for a while after she died. It hurt too much. I did everything I could to not think of Aislynn for many years, until I flipped and went opposite. I was obsessed even. I wanted to become her, or something. Started reading up on Zalaa again, relearning the things she taught me. Then, when I met Eve a couple years later—she was Lucy at the time—I taught her everything I knew.”
“Ah, I see. So, why’d you give it up?”
“It was a lie?” I shrug.
“Hm. It worked for you for a while though, right?”
“I’m not sure . . . A part of me thinks it only further alienated me from them, and everyone else, besides Evie. Who knows? I guess it had its benefits, though.”
We sit in thick silence, staring up at the broken window. He peeks out to scan the vicinity.
“All clear?” I ask.
“Yeah. Wanna be spokesperson? If they’re kids, they might respond better to a female voice.”
“And what if they’re not kids?”
He stares at me for a few seconds, and grins. “Then they might respond better to a female voice.”
“Okay, let me get my sexy on real quick.”
“Oh, you’ve always got that on, baby.” He checks the perimeter one more time, and so do I. “You ready?” he asks.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
Eight
I’ve never negotiated through a broken store window from atop a propane locker before, so when Gideon hoists me up there, I freeze. My stomach threatens to expel Cuervo onto their homemade intruder alarm—tin cans and other random, metal objects on a rope.
Below me, Gideon stands, weapon raised to the surrounding darkness, as another Boeing flies by overhead, returning from wherever it is they go. I peer inside at the neat rows of un-looted products, minus an almost empty rack near the cash register that may have once stored candy. Definitely kids.
I bite the bullet. “We’ve got a rifle to trade for some supplies,” I call inside. After no response, I add, “And we’ll get you high and drunk, too.”
“Are you armed?” a voice calls from the shadows.
“I am unarmed. My . . . husband is keeping watch out here with a rifle. Could you let us in, please? I promise we won’t hurt you.”
After a few seconds of silence, a figure appears, wearing a black bandana, holding an M16. “Put your hands where I can see them.”
I do as he says, palms facing him. “I’m Grace, and Gideon’s outside. We need a few supplies and we’ll be gone.
We have an AR-15 to trade for ten bags.”
“Five.”
Gideon holds up seven fingers.
“Seven,” I say. “Or no deal. There’s a Walgreens right down the road.”
“You said you got weed and booze?” he adds after a short period of contemplation.
I take the bottle of Cuervo from beside me on the propane locker and show it to him. “I have a little weed, too, yes, but I don’t want to alarm you by reaching into my pocket.”
He drops his weapon, climbs the shelves below to remove the clanking, jingly can contraption from the window. “Come on.” He pauses for a split-second to scan my leather-wrapped curves, and with a glance to Gideon, he descends the shelving.
Gideon hops up beside me, and I climb through onto the rickety shelf. He sits on the sill, waves to our host. “How’s it going?”
“Just dandy.”
Once my feet are on the ground behind the counter, I ogle the full wall of tobacco products while Gideon climbs down. “How many of you are here?” I ask.
“Enough.”
He’s on guard. Understandable.
“Listen, I get that you don’t know us, but I promise we’re good people.”
“I hope so.” He holds out an arm, and a little girl, maybe about seven years old, runs to his safety.
“It’s just you two, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer.
“It’s okay, sweetie, we won’t hurt you.” I smile at her, and she hides her face into the side of who I assume to be her brother, though they don’t resemble each other. I hold out the bottle of tequila to him. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“Yeah, I already polished off everything they had here. Had to move on to banging spray paint n’ shit.” He takes it, unscrews the cap, and guzzles, then he wipes his mouth and holds out a hand. “Logan.”
Gideon and I take turns shaking it, and I’m caught off guard by his attractiveness, the intense, dark blue eyes that draw me in like moths to a flame. He has a name in cursive on his collarbone, but I can’t read what it says.
“Is she your sister?” Gideon asks.
“No, all my family’s dead. I found her a few weeks ago hiding out in Costco. She still hasn’t talked yet, so I’m not sure what her name is, but I call her Missy. She doesn’t seem to mind it.”
I crouch to her level. “Hey there, Missy. How are you, sweetheart?”
She studies me, doesn’t answer, but in her eyes are many shared pains.
Logan waves us on behind him as he scoops Missy up on a hip. He’s not a small guy by any means, though he doesn’t appear overly muscular. He carries himself like someone who has been through some shit, and I mean even before the world fell apart. You’d almost have to be that to survive for this long in the aftermath.
Empty spaces dot the rows of products, but from what I can tell, they have a lot of supplies left. He leads us through the store to what I assume was once an employee lounge. There are two pallets set up now, as well as two fold-out chairs and a table, and a bulletin board with “Employee of the Month” at the top, and smiling faces of the folks who once worked here, who are dead now, most likely.
Logan drops Missy onto one of the beds, and she snatches up a teddy bear, then huddles with it in the corner. I take my new dugout from my zippered jacket pocket and sit in one of the chairs while Gideon takes the other. He sets his rifle down to remove the one from his shoulder. “It’s loaded.” He hands it to Logan, who has retreated onto the other pallet. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any extra ammo to give you.”
“That’s okay, that’ll work. Thanks.” Logan drops his head for a second before swigging more tequila. From the layer of grime on his neck and face, I’d say it’s been a while since these two have bathed. Should we offer to bring them with us? The thought of being responsible for them out there makes me rethink the safety they already have here. It’s safer for me, too.
“You’re the first live ones I’ve seen in over three weeks,” Logan says. “The last group that came here didn’t want to be civil, so I had to take a few of them out before the others retreated.” He stares into his hands and there’s obvious remorse there.
I hand him the filled bat and my lighter.
“Hot damn. Thank you.” When he hits it, he sinks, releases, as if he’d been waiting months to breathe. When he exhales, his expression softens and he seems much younger.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Turned twenty-two sometime last week, I think. Lost track of the days.”
“Damn, happy birthday, dude,” Gideon says, and I echo him.
“Thanks.” And he gulps more tequila. “This helps.”
“You were twenty-one when it happened,” I say. “How did you not get the vaccine?”
“Refused it. Told those assholes to get fucked.”
“Good call.” Gideon shakes his head and glances at Missy. “Real good call. They can’t exactly fine anyone now . . . You been here the whole time?”
“Nah, I was at home for a while, at my apartment, but then I ran out of food. I went to Costco to get some food and supplies, and that’s where I found Missy, shivering on a shelf of stuffed animals. She wouldn’t even move; I had to carry her here.”
“You traveled at night?”
“Yeah. We would’ve stayed at Costco if we could’ve, but there were dead fucks everywhere, and the front door was jammed open. The only thing keeping them from strolling right in was a wrecked car.”
“Holy shit. Where was this?”
“The Costco about four blocks from here. I carried her on my back until we found this place.” He takes a swig from the bottle, followed by a cringe. “Goddamn, that’s nasty as fuck. But good as hell.” He removes his black bandana to reveal short, dirty blond hair a couple of inches longer on top than the sides.
“I know what you mean.” I chuckle. “We were just talking about how much we hate tequila—”
“As she’s gulping the tequila, she’s telling me this,” Gideon says with a laugh.
I reload the bat and return it to Logan. “But that’s how it is these days, right?”
“Yep.” Logan sighs. “You take what you can get.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Gideon puts an arm around my shoulder, and for a moment, there’s a hint of normalcy, as if we were everyday people having an everyday conversation with a new friend around a bottle of Cuervo Gold and some good bud.
A giggly trip down memory lane.
Nine
“Honestly, I thought we were the last ones left.” Logan picks up a pack of cigarettes from the floor. “Been thinking that for days. Nice to know we aren’t alone.” He gets choked up, but covers it with a gulp from the bottle.
“Was anyone here when you got here?” I ask.
“One dead fuck—the guy who boarded up the place, I assume. I shot him, then tossed him out the back door and boarded it up, too, with some shelving. Good thing they had a small hardware section here. Lots of chemicals and aerosols, useful stuff. Tools, too.” He peels the cellophane off a brand-new pack of Camel Wides, and my mouth waters.
“You got another one of those I could get from ya?” I ask.
“I have more packs of cigarettes than God,” he says. “Here, have three.” And with a sloppy toss, he throws them to me.
I catch one of the three packs, and fish the other two from the floor, setting them on the table. “Awesome, thank you.” I give one a few thumps against my palm and open it with a deep inhale. Mmm, smells so good. I extract one, light it up, and melt into a long inhale. It’s the freshest thing I’ve had in days.
“You’ve had to be on watch pretty much twenty-four-seven by yourself, huh?” Gideon asks.
Logan takes another hit. “I haven’t slept in weeks. Ever since I found her.” He blows out a cloud of smoke, and Missy watches intently, sucking on a finger.
“Wow, dude.” Gideon shakes his head, then he looks at me. “How the hell have you survived this long?”
“You’re serious?” Gideon leans forward, intrigued, as am I.
“Yeah, I was fascinated at a young age. Good thing, too. I’ve used a lot of skills I learned on the internet. I grew up without a dad, so I spent years teaching myself all the things my ideal dad would’ve taught me. I was determined not to let that be a weakness.”
“That’s one way to empower yourself, man, nice,” Gideon says.
“Yeah, well, my mom was a drunk prostitute. I raised myself.”
“I can relate,” I say. “Foster kid.”
“Ah.” He nods. “When I was younger, I had a good friend who was a foster kid. Nicest kid you’d ever meet, but the dude was fucked in the head. Schizophrenic, I think. Killed himself last year.”
Gideon drops his gaze to his lap and shakes his head, and I share the spontaneous moment of silence for a boy we never met, but whose pain resonates with my own.
“You prepared yourself for the world now without even knowing it.” I take a drag off my cigarette and French inhale, relishing the smoke burn through my nasal passages.
“Yeah,” Gideon says, “if you’ve survived this long, and kept a little girl alive, you’ve got a pretty good chance of making it.”
“Maybe. But what kind of life . . .” Logan trails off into another swig from the bottle. I refill the one-hitter for him and hand it back.
“Thanks.” He hits it again, sinking into his pallet with the exhale.
“Would you mind if we talked privately for a few?” Gideon asks.
“It’s fine, man, go ahead.” Logan waves a hand, then swigs more tequila.
Gideon and I leave the room and stand beside the fully stocked pharmacy.
“Listen,” he says in a hushed tone, “these guys have been through hell. And with the way he’s drinking and smoking, on top of sleep deprivation, I bet he’s out before too long.”
“I feel so bad for them.”
“I do, too. But it’s safe here—for now, at least. We can leave them another gun, go scope out the church, and if it’s legit, we’ll come back here for them. Clear out as many supplies as we can. Before we go we can also unload some of what we have in the Lincoln and leave it here.”
Murray's Law Page 5
