by Jason Offutt
Hunger gnawed at Darryl. He thought of leaving the window to find something in the room, or search the cleaning cart for melted, moldy mints, but he didn’t move. He sat in the motel room chair, and stared through the slight part in the curtain at the room across the highway. An hour later, or was it two, the Cowboy walked from the motel doorway, a bag of food and booze in his arms, Maryanne close behind him, her rifle pointed at his back. Darryl stared at them. Stared as the Cowboy retrieved his shoe. Stared as they got into Maryanne’s LeBaron. Stared as they pulled onto the onramp. He watched until the brown car disappeared up the northbound lane. Darryl smiled. She was gone. The bitch, the devil, was gone. He stood and stumbled on legs that had gone numb hours ago, fell onto the bed and watched as blackness overtook him. He never realized he’d pissed himself.
Darryl didn’t know when he woke. It could have been an hour later, or a week. The sun stood high in the sky when he pulled back the curtains an inch. Maria still lay in a rotting pile outside his window, the squirrel (had there been a squirrel?) long gone. The door to the motel room across the highway still hung open, but the brown LeBaron was gone. Gone. Darryl had seen Maryanne and the Cowboy drive away. He was sure of it. “Fucking A,” he whispered, pushed the Cowboy’s .44 into the back of his loose jeans and stepped out of the room on wobbly legs.
That was hours ago. Darryl slunk down the steps of the motel’s outer walkway and into the semi-crowded parking lot, staying low and behind cars, working his way to the convenience store at the edge of the motel’s parking lot. People had already raided the store, but packages of pork rinds and potato chips, and cans of chili and Progresso soup with pull-off lids still dotted the shelves. Darryl sat on the floor in the convenience store and ate chili until he was full. He packed the rest into plastic bags, grabbed a 30-pack of warm beer, and walked outside, the amphetamines out of his system, his head clearer than before he met Maryanne.
“Hey, mother fuckers. This is my town,” he wanted to yell into the now darkening St. Joseph sky, but didn’t. Even though he’d watched the LeBaron drive out of sight, Maryanne and the Cowboy might still be out there, waiting for him. He threw back his shoulders, bearing the weight of his groceries evenly in both hands, and walked toward the gas pumps. A decomposed body covered in black goo lay on the pavement, a dry rusty stain spread from beneath him. Next to the guy was a Mustang; probably a 2010 from what Darryl could figure. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t going to pick up chicks in St. Joe tonight anyway. The keys to the car sat inches from the owner’s fingertips, a dark blue US Bank debit card shown through the black layer that had once been thriving, gray fungus. The man was on his way to pay for gas when the Piper got him. How long ago? Two weeks? A month? “Thanks for the gas,” Darryl said as he picked the keys off the asphalt, loaded his groceries in the passenger seat and started the engine. He popped a beer and took a drink. It was time to go.
Darryl drove north. He didn’t know why. Omaha was north, and Maryanne was going to Omaha. Darryl turned off Interstate 29 and onto U.S. 71. Interstate 29 went to Omaha. Maryanne would be on Interstate 29. U.S. 71 went to … Well, Darryl didn’t know where the fuck U.S. 71 went, but it probably didn’t go to Omaha. The long gray strip of U.S. 71 snaked its way over the hills of Northwest Missouri, past dark farmhouses, and fields filled with corn and soybeans no one would ever harvest. As the Mustang shot up the rural highway Darryl shoved the first CD he pulled from the sun visor into the stereo. Bon Scott’s shrill voice poured “Highway to Hell” through the open cab.
“Yes,” Darryl whispered so Maryanne didn’t hear him. She could. He knew she could. And if she could hear him, she could find him. If she could find him she could–
A taillight.
Darryl shoved both feet onto the brake pedal, his open beer dropped to the floor, foam quickly soaked into the carpet. The Mustang screeched to a stop in the middle of the highway. A vehicle somewhere in front of Darryl topped a hill and disappeared, its white and red lights vanished from sight. Maryanne. Maryanne. Maryanne. Maryanne and her soulless smile. Maryanne and her cold, frozen eyes. Maryanne and her hungry pussy. Maryanne and her gun. Darryl pulled his car onto a gravel road and behind a lonely tin barn, gently shifted the gear into park, and killed the engine. Maryanne was close to him, close enough to feel gnawing at the base of his brain. Darryl crawled into the fetal position and screamed for hours.
July 10: Barton, Missouri
Chapter 20
The woman’s clothes didn’t fit well. Nikki stood before the full-length bedroom mirror and smiled grimly at the sky-blue sun blouse festooned with daisies, and baggy jeans held tightly onto her waist by a long brown belt. The owner of the gardening clothes had about thirty pounds on Nikki, or at least she did. The owner and her husband sat out back in lawn chairs, looking over their once precious garden, gunshots taking their lives before the now blackened mold could. By the rate of decomposition, they must have been out there for weeks, watching from pecked-out eye sockets as weeds overtook their green beans, sweet corn, and pepper plants. Nikki walked from the master bedroom and into the mudroom on her way into the back yard. She propped a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, shoved a pair of worn leather gloves into her back pocket, and grabbed a basket. If she was going to bury these poor people in their own garden, she was sure as shit going to pick any food that was ready.
Nikki stopped in Barton by accident. As she shot up U.S. 71, away from Exeter, away from the crazy Preacherman with his crazy smile and crushed nose, probably burning to death in the hell of his own church, a light flashed in her rear-view mirror. Headlights. Headlights were somewhere over a hill behind her. Hot night air pushed against her naked skin, her clothes now ash miles behind her, she knew danger followed. As she drove, the remnants of the Preacherman’s drugs worked their way out of her system, she felt more vulnerable than the day the Greasyman stormed into her house, a day that now seemed like months ago. She flicked off the Harley’s headlights and turned onto a paved rural highway, a sign reading “Barton: 2 miles” lost in the darkness. Nikki cranked the accelerator and shot away into the night, praying like hell a deer didn’t walk in front of her bike onto the highway that was barely visible under the light of the waning moon.
Barton caught Nikki by surprise. The flash of a green highway sign flipped past – “Barton: Pop. 245 – freezing her breath in her chest. Then the town jumped into her vision, a dark jumble of long-empty storefronts, and a few dozen houses grew suddenly from the blank fields around her. Nikki released the accelerator and slowly braked to a stop in front of a weather-worn “Welcome to Barton” sign in a small, weed-filled city park, the “t” missing. Welcome to Bar-on. As she sat on the Harley, bearing the weight on her left leg, the bike sounded frighteningly loud in the darkness. She shut off the engine.
Silence rang in her ears, the kind of silence people must have heard before cars, before trains, before civilization. It was the kind of silence she knew probably now covered the world. A coyote yipped somewhere in the night, miles off, but the yip carried forever. As Nikki stood in the street straddling the bike, more detail of the town grew out of the darkness, the vehicle back on the highway behind her briefly forgotten. The town may have actually boomed sometime, possibly during the First World War. A bank, a few grimacing stone faces stared from intricate brickwork, and a small string of two-story brick businesses – all probably long empty – ran along the main street, foreboding darkness stared at her from empty windows. As fear grew through her, Nikki felt her nipples grow hard despite the heat of the Midwest summer night. She fired up the Harley, the engine alerting her presence to anyone who might be left in this tiny town, and moved slowly down the main street.
Past the storefronts, yards thick with trees masked the dark, blank homes of the town; Nikki imagined corpses covered in that strange gray mold lying on the floors of some homes; crazed, scraggly bearded madmen stared at her from the windows of others. At the end of the street her heart began to pound and she stopped the bike. Elec
tric light poured from the front windows of the last house.
Nikki dropped a basketful of red bell peppers into a strainer in the spotless kitchen sink. There were plenty more in the garden. She figured she’d freeze as many as she could. There were large Ziploc bags in the pantry and lots of room in the huge refrigerator, the freezer taking up half the unit. It would be a shame to waste all these fresh vegetables. She turned from the sink and took a cold bottle of Aquafina from the refrigerator; with the few spoiled leftovers fed down the garbage disposal, the rancid smell had dissipated quickly, which was good. Nikki planned on making a hell of a dinner and there would be leftovers. The harvest, she realized, might spill into tomorrow. Apart from the two rows of red peppers, four rows of sweet corn, and six rows of green beans, Nikki found carrots, onions, tomatoes, celery, strawberries, and some root she didn’t recognize, but this was enough food to last her for months. Actually, some of the tomatoes could probably use a few more days to ripen, she thought. The Marstens have sat out there for a while now; a couple more days couldn’t hurt.
Solar panels lining the roof relaxed Nikki as she stopped the bike next to the mailbox, its door wide open and crammed with mail and the local shopper newspaper. There’s a reason the lights are on, she realized; as long as there’s a sun, they’re always going to be on. The yellow glow streaming from the wide-open plate glass window dimmed once it reached the street, but was enough to illuminate “Jack and Jan Marsten” on the side of the mailbox. It didn’t look like the Marstens were home. She sat on the big bike and stared at the house, the large flat screen TV black, the couches vacant. But where were Jack and Jan? Away to visit relatives when the Outbreak hit? Were they in body bags at the St. Joseph hospital, stacked like warehouse boxes along with her father? Then panic again gripped her. Were they still in the house, alive, waiting for someone to find them; waiting for her like the Preacherman? She slid off the bike and pulled a ball-peen hammer from the saddlebag where her father stored his “road tools,” and walked toward the house in dark silence, wondering if Dad would have ever pictured his little girl carrying one of his tools with the thought of crushing someone’s skull.
Nothing moved in the living room. Nikki walked as close as she could to the periphery of the light streaming from the large front window, holding the rubber grip of the hammer handle in her white knuckled fist. She moved slowly around the house, looking into windows like a peeping tom. All the shades were open wide. A computer sat in sleep mode in an office, a screensaver rolled through pictures of grandkids that would never pose for another picture. Jeans and a sun shirt were laid out on the tightly made bed in the master bedroom, waiting for someone who would never put them on. Nikki rounded the corner of the house, the master bedroom giving way to a darkened guest bedroom; enough light poured through from the open hall door to show the bed, vanity, and a large framed photo of an elderly couple she assumed were Jack and Jan holding hands on a white sand beach.
The crack of a nearby branch swung Nikki’s head to her left, her fingers tightened on a grip that had started to relax. A doe stood at the edge of a tree row that ran along the back of the yard. It looked at Nikki briefly, then walked into the yard, this naked woman holding a hammer apparently not a threat. Nikki slowly followed the deer to the back of the house. A light popped on, and flooded the back yard as the deer crossed the lawn. The deer froze, its white tail twitched slightly. The light, Nikki prayed was controlled by a motion sensor, covered the yard. A garden hose snaked from the side of the house toward a large, weedy garden passing two lawn chairs parked next to a wheelbarrow filled with empty beer cans. People sat slumped in the chairs, the backs of their heads opened wide by the exit end of a shotgun blast. The deer, comfortable with the new light, walked slowly toward the garden, past the lawn chairs, and started chewing on a stalk of sweet corn.
Nikki, holding the hammer like a club, stepped away from the house and slowly moved toward the garden.
“Jack? Jan?” she said softly. The deer looked briefly at Nikki, and resumed eating. She released a heavy breath. She’d seen dead people get up and walk before, she didn’t know if she had the nerves for that tonight.
“I’m not going to hurt you; I’m just looking for someplace to sleep tonight, okay?” As she stepped closer, the sweet smell of rotting flesh touched her nose. A month ago, Nikki knew she would have broken down crying in the yard. Now she was just relieved the Marstens wouldn’t mind her sleeping in their bed. Nikki turned from the couple staring out of dead faces at a deer eating from their garden and walked to the house. The sliding glass door was unlocked. She pulled it open and walked into the coolness of air conditioning, locked all the doors, crawled into the Marstens’ bed, and fell quickly to sleep.
The rest of the garden, except for a few dozen tomatoes, took well into the afternoon. “Thanks, Jack. Thanks, Jan,” Nikki said to the dead couple, her newfound clothing wet with sweat. “I’ll take care of you tomorrow.” She hefted the basket of vegetables into her arms, walked past the Marstens and into the house. Despite the dead owners in the back yard, Nikki was ready to move into this house permanently. It had electricity, new appliances, water that most probably came from a well, and was close enough to larger cities she could run to for supplies, but far enough away to hide. As she took a shower, the steaming hot water caressed her body. She anticipated the cold blast of air conditioning that would hit her as soon as she stepped out of the shower and onto the bedroom floor. A smile grew on her lips; she felt good, relaxed. As she ran a wash cloth over her shoulders, she thought after she picked the remainder of the tomatoes and buried the Marstens, she would explore this out of the way, tiny town. But not today.
She stepped out of the shower; a different Nikki Holleran stared at her from the long bathroom mirror. She’d lost a few pounds since the Outbreak hit. As she turned back and forth, hands on hips, her stomach looked flatter than it had since junior high school, just before she filled out her last puberty growth spurt, and became Thickie Nikki. She also needed to shave. But her face had changed the most. It was a grim, joyless Nikki that looked back at her. She wondered if she’d ever be happy again.
Dinner was baked red peppers stuffed with hamburger Nikki had found in the freezer, and browned in a pan, sautéed with chopped onions, and celery. After she put away dinner and cleaned the kitchen as spotless as Jan had left it, Nikki ate strawberries in the living room, a glass of chilled Chardonnay on the end table beside her. Tonight, she knew, she could relax. Relax and be human. As she flipped through the shows the Marstens had DVRed, she grinned. Jan was a fan of “Project Runway.” Nikki wanted something mindless to watch. Something to help her hide from the Marstens, the Preacherman, the Outbreak, the Piper, the spreading gray fungus, her dead father, and her sad, hard face. When the sound of a truck engine touched her ears, she threw herself down on the soft couch and cried.
July 11: Barton, Missouri
Chapter 21
Nikki lay on the Marstens’ floral print couch, the sound of a truck engine grew closer, her tears soaked into the cushions. Why? Why here? Why now? The engine suddenly died in the late Missouri afternoon. Nikki’s body tensed under Jan Marsten’s lavender bathrobe. The truck wasn’t gone; it stopped. Someone was here in this village, her haven, and everyone was a threat. She sat up and turned off the plasma-screen TV with a click on the remote control, and drained her glass of Chardonnay, the cool white wine sweet in her mouth.
Voices. Nikki slid off the couch and crawled to the great front window she’d left naked, the burgundy curtain pulled to the side. Dumb, dumb, dumb, Nikki, raced through her head as she looked around the house to see if there was anything to betray her presence. Doors were locked, TV off, kitchen cleaned. Light still poured from the summer evening sky. It was early; there was still at least two hours of good daylight left, so electric lights, even if the Marstens had something on a timer, weren’t a problem – yet.
Three people stood around a red Ford F-150 at the spot Nikki first stopped in town
, by the small, weed-choked park, a ramshackle sign welcoming visitors to “Bar-on.” Two men leaned against the bed of the truck, one holding a beer, the other in a gray uniform, the kind with a nametag sewn over the left breast. The third man, a thin figure, stood motionless as a statue, or a robot. They all seemed to be staring silently at the house, at Nikki. Her stomach churned, fear stirring the dinner and Chardonnay into something volatile. Why? Why this house? she wondered. Then she saw her Harley next to the mailbox – right in the street. They must know, she thought. Despite the cool air of the living room, a trickle of sweat ran slowly down the center of Nikki’s back. What are they doing?
A fourth head appeared. A thin woman in her 20s, with long auburn hair, stood from the front of the truck and called out something to the men. They pulled their heads from the Marstens’ house and started talking as she walked from the front of the pickup, adjusting her cargo shorts. Nikki exhaled. She was peeing and they simply turned their heads. She watched as the Mechanic, the Redneck, the Robot, and the Librarian stood talking. Eventually they started pointing at buildings. Someone said something that made them all laugh – all but the Robot. The Mechanic reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out an aluminum baseball bat, the Redneck grabbed a six-pack of beer, took a can and handed another to the Librarian, and they walked toward the town’s only café.
“What the hell are you saying?” Nikki hissed. The four strangers stepped on the café porch, the Mechanic tugged at the door handle. The door didn’t budge. He shook it, then stood back and kicked the door with a booted foot. It still didn’t move. Nikki reached up, slowly unlatched the Marstens’ front window, and slid it open an inch, the hot July air collided with the manmade coolness of the house.
