by Damon Novak
It had belonged to Tanner, and it ran like a top. It’s just that you didn’t wanna have a couple drinks and drive home in it, because you’d get pulled over in a New York minute. They inevitably searched the car for weed, which is exactly why Tan had several hidden compartments inside, along with a shitload of Smelly Proof bags.
Those things really work, too. You could have a freakin’ drug sniffin’ dog an inch away and he’d just turn around as nonchalant as you please and keep on lookin’.
“Y’all stay here while Sonya and I go inside and make sure it’s clear. If we were to run into a whole group of those damned things, it could get dicey tryin’ to get around ‘em on our narrow docks.”
“I’m armed,” said Lilly. “Hurry it up, though.”
Sonya got out and I said, “Hey, you wanna recon the office?”
“Sure,” she said. “We’ll be right back,” she said to Georgie and Lilly.
She came up behind me, a double-handed grip on her gun. I had my 12-gauge. I hoped somethin’ would step in front of me.
But hell no. Nothin’ did.
No sense in wastin’ time. I ran back along the boardwalk, careful not to slip in the black residue that still coated everything, and got back to the Rover. “Come on!” I shouted, running around to the back. I grabbed the gun bag and whatever else I could carry as they got out and made their ways up the dock toward the office.
By the time I got there, Lilly was out the side door cranking up the generator.
“No power?” I asked.
“No, I just prefer the stable, smooth power a generator provides,” said Lilly.
“My bad,” I said. I was pretty sure I’d used the term the right way. Mainly because she followed up with “Definitely.”
Lilly came back in a second later, the Honda generator running smoothly and quietly. It was a 5000 watt, so could run everything we had out there, including the candy and soda machines. I originally believed we had plenty of propane, ‘cause we sometimes cooked hot dogs and hamburgers for our customers in season, when things got busy.
Now I wasn’t so sure. Generators burn a lot of fuel, and if the power stayed down, we’d be screwed in short order.
In my head, I wondered if Tanner and Clay would still be alive if we’d never left the day before. You know, second guessin’ and all. I have no idea what woulda happened to Pa.
Probably just the same outcome.
Ω
CHAPTER TEN
The minute we got to the shop, I almost wished we hadn’t gone there. Not sure why. Maybe it was because I felt responsible for everyone, and I didn’t feel up to it.
Sure. I get that Georgina can use a gun, and I damned sure know Lilly and Sonya can – Sonya’s a cop, for God’s sake. She’s probably a helluva lot better shot than me, ‘specially with a handgun.
Still. I couldn’t shake the feelin’ that I was supposed to come up with the next plan. At the moment, I was fresh out of mental schematics.
Once we walked in, before we’d even unloaded everything, Lilly ran into the back room and slammed the door. I figured she needed some time; hell, I needed way more time than I had, which was almost nil.
Of course, I needed time to process losin’ my brothers, but worse than that, I had to wrestle with bein’ the one to pull the trigger that killed ‘em – dead already or not.
Then there was my Pa. Hell, I was barely over losin’ my Ma, now in the span of an evenin’, I’d lost my Pa and brothers too.
I know I had that mini-breakdown after I’d gotten the guns out of Georgina’s safe, but it wasn’t enough. I wondered if any amount of time would ever be enough.
I tried to focus on the fact that my sister was still alive. As good a thing as that was, it just wasn’t enough. You see, I’d never lived in a world where Clay and Tanner didn’t. I was already beginnin’ to realize how much I relied on them, their advice, their goddamned teasin’.
Yeah, believe me. I learned a lot from gettin’ teased by my older brothers. It might seem cruel if observed from a distance, but no matter how bad they fuck with you, your brothers still care about you more than any friends you got.
So when they tell you not to do stupid shit, it’s usually because they did the same stupid shit a few years earlier.
That’s a life lesson you can believe in.
After our second load in, there were only a couple things left, all lightweight. I knew it was clear from the shop to the Rover, so I asked Sonya and Georgina if they’d mind gettin’ the rest of the stuff while I went in to see Lilly.
I knocked.
“Yeah?”
“Lil, you alright?”
“What do you think?”
“Can I come in?”
“You and I both own this place now, so do what you want.”
I sure hadn’t thought of that. Didn’t wanna think about it. I opened the door. Lilly was sittin’ on the rollaway bed, leanin’ against the wall. She had a smoke between her lips, but it wasn’t lit.
I reached into my pocket for my lighter and slid the window open. By the time I sat down beside her, she had her pack in her hand, offerin’ me one.
Despite the fact that I hate smokin’ in front of doctors, I took one. “Thanks.”
“I won’t have Tan and Clay bumming them, so you’re welcome.”
I looked at her and saw the tracks of the tears that had run down her face. I pulled a Marlboro from the pack and stuck it between my lips, then lit hers and mine.
We smoked in silence for a while. If there was ever a pregnant silence, that was it. I’m sure a thousand words passed through our minds in that couple of minutes.
None made any sense. They still don’t.
“Lil,” I began, with no damned idea how I was gonna finish what I’d started.
“What are we going to do?” she asked, finishing my thought for me. When I turned to look at her, she was already studyin’ my face. Her expression was pleading. I didn’t have an answer, so I just shook my head.
“Cole?”
She never called me that. It was CB or I was asshole, but I was hardly ever Cole. “I know,” I said, like that was an answer.
“No, just listen to me,” she said. “Cole, I can’t lose you. You know that, right? Because if that happened, I’d take that gun and I’d put it in my –”
“Stop!” I said. “Don’t even put those words out there, Lil! There’s a reason we got this far through this thing, and I don’t think it’s just so we can die later. We’re gonna make it.”
“What’s that look like, Cole?”
“Would you stop callin’ me that?” I asked. “It’s drivin’ home how different things are.”
She scooted around, her legs crossed, her eyes intense. “Tell me what that looks like, CB. Us livin’ in a world where people are going crazy and dogs are lying dead in the street. There was a deer, too, remember. What about the rest of the animals? Jesus, Cole!”
She broke down into tears for the second time in as many days, and I took the cigarette from her fingers and flicked it out the window.
“We’ll figure things out, Lil. You and me, and whoever else wants to help. That’s what we’ll do.”
She turned her face toward me as she dug another smoke from her pack and jammed it between her lips. Holding her hand out for my lighter again, she said, “You don’t have a clue, CB. I wouldn’t expect you to. We lost our entire family yesterday! Tanner, Clay and Pa! How does that translate to us figuring things out?”
I started to get pissed on top of all the sadness inside me. I knew this was just Lilly dealin’ with things, but it scared me, and to be honest, it made me mad. It made me believe, deep in my soul, that if Lilly didn’t think we could make it, then I really couldn’t see us gettin’ through this thing.
I got on my feet. I was bone tired, but somehow, I needed a good height advantage over her to get my point across.
“You know what? Your bullshit is what’s gonna get us killed. You know me, Lil! You know I’m a
lways full of hope. I’ve always believed the best waits around every corner for me, no matter how many dead ends I go down.”
“So where –”
“I’m not done yet!” I screamed. “I’d fuckin’ appreciate it if you wouldn’t kill all that hope off with your defeatist attitude, because you’ll seal our goddamned fate!”
She snatched the lighter from my hand and lit her cigarette with shaking hands. I didn’t even realize I had it out until she took it; it was instinctive, when I saw her pull out the smoke.
“Where was that hope when you shot Tanner? How about Clay? Was any of it leaking over my way when I had to shoot Pa? Did you ever think maybe we should just throw in the towel now?”
In her voice was anger. In her eyes, I saw only fear and doubt. I shook my head and sat back down beside her. Slipping my arm around her shoulder, I stroked her blonde hair, and she tilted her head toward me, resting it on my shoulder.
I whispered, “It never crossed my mind to give up, Lilly. All I could think of was you, especially when Clay turned into one of those … things.”
“They’re zombies, CB.”
“Zombies aren’t supposed to be real, Lil.” I pulled my arm from around her shoulders and eased her off me. Leanin’ forward, I turned to look at her.
“What is it, CB?”
I shook my head. “I was thinkin’. Maybe they’re completely destroyed, beyond any recovery, and for sure gonna die. But they’re not dead yet, maybe. It could be there’s … I don’t know, some insane levels of adrenaline surgin’ through their bloodstreams, so they look too torn up not to be dead, but they’re really still alive. They just look so horrible, everyone thinks they’re zombies.”
“Pa’s eyes were clouded white, with fully dilated pupils behind them, CB. You already described that choking growl, so stop trying to undo what’s happened by making shit up! Zombies weren’t real. Not before. But now you know they are.”
My mind went to our final airboat tour. In my mind’s eye, I saw the head and torso of Mary Singer’s husband in Ol’ Stanley’s mouth, his one arm reachin’ out for us as the gator swam by.
My dumbass explanation went back out the window. I had to stop my idiotic pingpong game of acceptance and denial. I took a deep breath and let it out, leanin’ back again and settlin’ in. “I guess I gotta give you that one.”
“Head shot does them in, like in the Romero movies and The Walking Dead?” she asked.
More evidence. I nodded. “So far, it’s stickin’ pretty true to the legends.”
She took a huge breath – perhaps the first she’d been able to grab for a while – and let it out slowly. After staring out into nothing for maybe two full minutes, she said, “We need to see if Denny’s still alive. If he is, he’s going to be wondering where Sally is.”
“He might know already,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Lilly. “But if Denny’s still alive, we need to find out. We’re going to need our friends if we’re going to get through this.”
“We are,” I said. “I’ll try to get him on the radio. Guess I should get back out there anyway. Sonya and Georgina might start to worry.”
To my surprise, I heard Lilly laugh. I turned to her. “What the hell could get you to do that now?”
“Start to worry?” she said.
I smiled myself, and nodded. “Touché, sis. Touché.”
Ω
“What about the military?” asked Georgina. “They have to be working on a plan.”
“We have a frequency we use during emergencies,” said Sonya. “So far, nothing’s been on it. I hear an occasional COMS check, but it’s the same person, and they’re not using official protocols.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t sound like they use official communications on a regular basis. Sounds like a civilian.”
“Got it,” I said. “Nothin’ else? Did you try to answer ‘em?”
“Yes,” said Sonya. “They never answered. I might be out of range. I can pick them up, but just barely. Lots of static.”
“Them?”
“I heard a man’s voice once, and a woman’s voice, but she came right on his heels, so they might be together.”
Lilly walked down the hall toward us. “It’s right around lunchtime. Anyone want some pork and beans?”
“How you doin’, sis?” I asked.
“I’m dealing,” she said. “Considering. Lunch?”
I checked my watch. It was one o’ clock. On the button. “I could do some beans,” I said. “While you heat ‘em, I’ll go grab Pa’s ham out of the shed.”
“Canned ham?” asked Georgina.
I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “Sorry, no. Ham radio. Dad hasn’t used it for years, and it’s as old as him, probably, but it worked last time he had it out.”
“Our dad was a tinkerer,” said Lilly, using a manual can opener on a can of Van Camp’s beans. “The first airboats we used were junkers he bought from other companies. He spent a year rebuilding them from scratch. They ended up better than the boats the other companies kept. He always had that ham radio on, scanning the frequencies, seeing who was out there. He picked up the space shuttle once. I swear, you’d have thought he planned it, he was so proud.”
I smiled at the memory. “I’ll be back,” I said. I pushed the door open and walked down the boardwalk to the shed. I used the keyring clipped to my belt loop to unlock it and pulled the door open. I spotted the box right away, on the bottom left shelf. While I was there, I inspected the rest of the shelves for anything else that might come in handy. Filter sets for the generators, extra boat parts. The shed was 10 x 15, so had room for lots of stock. I spotted the cattle prod Tanner had brought home, for whatever fuckin’ reason, a long while back.
Pa always kept every box for everything he bought. And when he was done, he always put whatever it was back in the box, no matter its condition.
This box was so faded, I couldn’t even tell what it said anymore. I walked in and pulled it down. I closed the shed but didn’t lock it up again. Didn’t seem to be any reason.
As I walked the boardwalk back toward the office, I saw about a 5-foot gator pacin’ me in the water, about twenty feet away. I looked over at him, grateful he was still alive. I wasn’t sure if it was a regular or a newbie, but if all this blew over, we didn’t need a barren swamp. We’d still have to make a livin’.
“Got it,” I said, openin’ the door to the shop. Georgie was at the candy machine. The door to the machine was open, the keys hangin’ from the lock, and she was choosing her particular candy poison.
I turned away and walked around the counter to set up the ham while Lilly stirred the pot full of pork-n-beans. When I heard the clunk of candy droppin’ in a vending machine, I looked over to see Georgina bendin’ down to retrieve a Payday bar.
She looked at me and smiled. “I know I could’ve just grabbed it, but I have a theory that candy from a vending machine tastes best after it falls about three feet.”
“Mitch Hedberg,” I said, smiling, recognizing the comedian’s bit. “He died way before all this shit happened.”
“I was a fan,” she said. “I always wanted to listen to him during surgery, but I stuck with instrumental music. Laughing while holding someone’s life in your hands isn’t considered proper behavior.”
I slid the old ham radio from the box and put it on the table. The cord was so old it was fabric-coated. I checked it for frays before plugging it in and found none. Pa was a stickler for keepin’ things in good workin’ order.
The casing itself was once an avocado green, now faded, with spots of rust nearly obliterating its former hue. When I plugged it in, the tubes inside started to heat, and the dial eventually glowed a pale yellow.
I turned the volume knob and heard static.
“I’ll just leave it on. If Denny or anyone else is out there, maybe they’ll scan frequencies.”
“I don’t know shit about that thing,” said Lilly, spooning t
he beans out into four separate bowls. “There’s some here for everyone. With what’s going on out there, we don’t know how long we’ll be safe here. Everyone should eat as much as they can.”
“Agreed,” I said. “And about this radio, Pa was clearly remiss in his ham radio trainin’,” I said. “Couple o’ know-nothin’s, we are.”
As Lilly put the bowls up on the counter, we looked at Sonya and Georgina, who both shrugged, the old, ‘Well, don’t look at me,’ thing. We’d just have to figure the ham radio out through trial and error.
Georgina put her candy bar down on the lobby table and took her bowl of beans and a plastic spoon. She was beside Sonya while we all ate our late lunch.
“There really should be some preppers or something on that ham,” said Sonya, between bites. “It’s all you hear, you know. When the big one hits, the world will be owned by short-wave radio broadcasters.”
“Must’ve hit harder than anyone thought,” I said, checkin’ my watch. “Man, it’s two o’clock already.”
I wolfed down the rest of the beans, findin’ I was hungrier than I realized. When I was done, I walked over to the candy machine and pulled out a Snickers. I stuck it in my shirt pocket. “You know what? I’m runnin’ over to check on Denny. It’s twenty minutes there, and I can’t just sit around here like a lump. Wanna do it while we have plenty of light, in case somethin’ goes wrong.”
Lilly put her bowl down and stared at me. I stared back. “He’s got fuel tanks, too,” I added.
“Take someone with you,” she said. “and I don’t mean me, either.”
I looked at the two ladies and jerked my head toward the door. “First one who gets their hand in the air.”
For some reason, I didn’t expect either of them to volunteer after what we’d already seen, but Georgina’s hand shot into the air. I saw Sonya’s start to rise, but when the doc beat her to it, she caught herself, droppin’ it back into her lap.
“I’m like you,” Georgina said. “I sit around too long, I start to get antsy. My hands are used to being busy, plus you helped me.”
