by J. Thorn
"What now?" Mia asked from the sidewalk.
"There's a hose around back." He dashed down the side yard, fumbling with the latch on the back gate. Hot smoke tickled his lungs. He opened the spigot far as it would go and stuck his thumb over the hose nozzle to jet water at the flames. Fired from two floors below, the spray mostly spattered the wall and the open bathroom window. What little reached the roof disappeared into the shifting wall of yellow and red.
"The whole block's on fire," Mia said from the gate. "We have to get out of here."
Raymond bared his teeth, face heated by the flames. "I can't just leave it."
"The rest of the street's being redecorated as ash. Even if you can save it with one hose, do you know how to patch a roof?"
"It can't be that hard."
"Raymond!"
He turned. Her brown face was paled by the flickering light. The hose drooped in his hand. "It was my mom's."
"And the last thing she'd want would be for you to die trying to save it." She touched his shoulder and lowered her voice, barely audible over the rumbling, snapping fires. "There are other houses out there."
He let out a long breath. Dropped the hose. Water soaked his untied shoes. "Is there anything you need inside?"
"Yeah. But I'll live without it."
Out of habit, he closed the gate behind them. "I know where we can go."
Fires burned along the hill, throwing wavering light on the clouds of smoke above the city. Raymond stopped at the red light on the PCH, frowned, looked both ways, and pulled through. Down by the esplanade, the sea air was cool and soft and damp. The city had rebuilt the sidewalks just a couple months earlier, installing upscale stone trash bins and planting cacti and flowers amidst the fresh cement. Without maintenance, how long before the upgrades washed away?
He swung south, wound his way up the cliffside road to the dark manor where he'd fled a murder, and parked outside the gates.
"What do you think?"
Mia squinted at the pillars flanking the front porch. "Is this where you were working security?"
"Pretty, isn't it?" He nodded to the high white walls and their whip-thin pines, the circular window near the top of the four-story turret, the all-glass extension to the left of the house complete with reflecting pool. "Gates, cameras, even a panic room."
"And a body in the living room."
"Wrong."
"I thought you said they killed the owner?"
"Two bodies in the living room."
"Damn it." She slapped her palms to her thighs. "At least we know the owner won't be coming back."
"Unless this turns out to be a zombie thing."
"Don't even joke."
Raymond scaled the wall, punched in the gate code, and pulled the car into the quiet drive. Far down the hill, a yellow blanket of fire smothered their old home. The door to their new one stood open. Raymond could smell the nauseating cloud of death from the front steps.
"Oh wow," Mia said. The bodies had bloated, blackened and reddened, become swollen-fingered things that looked like God's failed lab experiments. Rusty blood caked the carpet. The paintings, statues, and TVs were all gone, hauled off by Bill and Craig or any other looters who'd come through in the meantime. At least that made it easier to get around.
"I'll go get the cleaning stuff," Raymond grimaced. "Want to bring in our gear and find us a bedroom?"
She shook her head, black ponytail metronoming. "I'll help. We have to start getting used to the bodies sometime, right?"
He found bleach, towels, rubber gloves, trash bags, air freshener. Murckle's limp arm squished when he grabbed it, releasing a fresh bloom of old meat. Raymond fell back, gagging.
Mia nodded at the trash bags. "Maybe we should wear those ourselves."
"Wish we had some goggles. And boots."
"Or one of those power suits from Aliens."
They tore holes in the bottom of two bags and slid them over their heads. Static lifted strands of Mia's hair into a black halo. Sewage leaked from Murckle's clothes when they swung the body onto a layer of plastic bags. Learning from this, they pulled bags over Hu's head and legs and rolled him into another layer of black plastic. Mia crinkled her nose and fitzed copious sprays of air freshener into the high-ceilinged foyer.
"What now? Raymond said. "Fling them off the cliff?"
"No way. You want a bunch of rotting bodies below our beautiful new home? How am I supposed to eat fish when I know they might have been nibbling on these guys?"
"Could bury them if we can find a shovel. Bet Murckle's the kind of guy who hired out all his yardwork." Gloved hand covered in goo, he wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. "The lighthouse."
"You're not a sea captain. I am not living in a lighthouse."
"It's out on that big point. We drop the bodies off the cliffs there, they won't wind back up in the bay."
She nodded. "They'll make your car smell worse than it already does."
"So steal us one that doesn't offend your delicate olfactory sensibilities."
"Maybe I will. Go pop your trunk."
His grin lasted until they hauled Murckle's body out to the car. Mia's grip slipped on the steps and he let go, too. The corpse smacked the top step and thumped down to the walk.
"Hang on, will you?" he said. "These aren't the groceries."
She gave him a look, but held tight until they manhandled the body into the trunk. They dropped Hu's in beside it without any problems. Raymond peeled off his gloves and trash bag before getting behind the wheel. The road spooled along the cliffs down to the silent lighthouse. Lights pricked the shore of Malibu to the north. They dragged the bodies to the cliff's edge, spray misting their faces.
"Should we say something?" Raymond panted.
"They sounded like jerks," Mia said. "Maybe it'd be better to say nothing."
Instead, they rolled Murckle's body over the edge, then Hu's. The trash bags flapped in the wind on the way down, disappearing into darkness.
The house stunk as bad as when they'd left. Mia poured bleach over the stains, covered them in towels, and walked over them to soak up the residue. Raymond opened windows and the shuttered vents beside them. The sun rose. Clouds rolled in from the sea, gray and low. Rain spattered the windows as they went to bed.
The rains extinguished the fires. They seemed to extinguish the city, too. A few times a day, Raymond heard the crack of gunshots, the moan of engines. Once, a helicopter blatted across the sky. Besides that, everyone had disappeared.
Murckle's house didn't have much in the way of food. The Ralph's up the PCH had been hollowed out, but they came out with rice, soda, crackers, fruit juice, eggs, potatoes, green peppers, and a couple loaves of Wonder bread. They continued on to a CVS and loaded up on soap and shampoo and deodorant and razors, on floss and toothpaste and batteries, on chips and tequila and candy bars. Mia hopped the pharmacy counter and, reading off a list cobbled from the internet, bagged up antibiotics, birth control, painkillers, and cough syrup.
"We should go to Home Depot," she said.
"Oh, did you want to redo the master bathroom? I thought it looked a little cramped, too."
"They have that huge garden section. The food in the stores won't last forever."
"I'm so glad you've got a brain to match your ass."
"Be more glad I'm taking that as a compliment."
They went everywhere together. That was the deal. He carried the revolver, she carried a knife; if she was keeping guard while he gathered supplies, they switched weapons. From Home Depot they took baskets of seeds and two flat orange carts loaded with seedlings and cuttings for raspberries, bell peppers, basil, orange and lemon and avocado trees. They took seed packets of cilantro and mint and carrots. They took shovels and pots and soil, filling the car, and spent the rest of the day weeding and planting and fertilizing, sweating through the afternoon, cooled by the steady inward breeze off the bay.
They adapted faster than Raymond would have guessed
possible. In a way, the Panhandler had been too big to grapple with its subtleties, had struck too fast to deny. Like their old house, the world had burned down overnight. It hadn't rotted for years while Raymond shrugged off the mold in the walls and the termites in the foundation. It was gone.
So what use was it to pretend otherwise? Between driving and looting and cleaning and planting, Raymond barely had five minutes at night to be saddened with thoughts about lost friends and relatives. In a strange way, his life with Mia was hardly any different than it had been for the last six months—the two of them, together, building something they meant to last. Most of the time, he was happy.
In part, it was the house. The approximate size of everywhere else he'd ever lived put together, it had stone floors, lush carpets, a four-story turret, spiral stairs with a gleaming black iron rail, a deck on the second floor and on top of the roof, and, most stirring of all, floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ceaseless sea. He'd loved how close the water had been to the house in Redondo—he could walk to the beach in five minutes if he hurried, which he usually had—but from the deck of the old house itself, he'd only been able to see thin strips of blue between the condos on the horizon. Late enough at night for the blatter of cars to fade away, if the wind and surf had been right, he'd been able to hear the breakers whomping the shore, a cacophony like titans tearing down the walls around them.
From the house on the hill in Palos Verdes, he could hear the surf in his sleep, the seals arping from the empty marina, the harbor bell clanging forlornly. If he opened a vent, he could smell the salt. If he opened a curtain, he could see the waves stretching until the Earth curved away. It was where he'd always wanted to live. Mia found him there on the back deck, just watching, all that sun on all that water. He wiped a tear.
"What's wrong?" she said. "Just too beautiful for you?"
He shook his head. "I miss baseball."
"Jesus. Seven billion people die, and you're sad because a few of them were baseball players?"
"We used to be so safe. So prosperous. We paid money to spend three hours watching men mill around on a grassy field."
"You remember what made that world possible? A handful of men who let millions starve so they could buy homes like this one."
"Yeah," he said. "But they're all dead now."
A few days after they moved in, Raymond woke and found the toilet didn't refill when he flushed. The sink spat air and a few fizzing flecks. The lights wouldn't flick on; the clock by the bedside showed a blank black face.
There was no longer anyone at the controls.
12
Walt leaned in against the trunk of the tree and reached for the knife on his hip. Downhill, boots crunched through leaves. A man chuckled. Walt didn't hear any dogs, which seemed like a stupid oversight if these yokels were at all serious about tracking down and stringing up strangers in the middle of a forest that could have been straight out of Middle Earth. If he'd been killing interlopers, he'd have dogs. Big baying ones that would put the fear of God in his quarry. With these fools, all he had to do was wait for them to pass by.
He smelled chlorophyll. His stomach growled. A leaf fell, clicking through the branches. He saw nothing but leaves and dirt and creeping vines. Leaf-crunching footsteps faded downhill. Walt edged out from behind the tree.
"You take one more step, better make sure you enjoy it," a voice said from the trees. "Because it will be your last."
"What are you guys?" Walt froze. "The spirits of the woods? What do you care if I'm out here?"
"Disease can't spread if everyone stays put." The man raised his voice. "Mark! Harold! We got our little bunny."
"You guys have been out here too long. The virus is done. Everyone's dead."
"You shut your mouth and keep it shut."
A bearded man with a puffy green coat and a rifle crunched up the leaf-strewn hill. He leveled his gun at Walt from ten feet away. "What do you think you're doing out here, kid?"
"Going to Los Angeles."
The man's beard ruffled in a grin. "You gonna be a movie star?"
Walt shrugged. "I'll probably have to do porn first."
The tree beside the bearded man shook and rustled. A leg jutted down from the screen of branches. A bald man with glasses swung onto a low branch, dangled his legs, and dropped to the ground.
"Just let me go," Walt said.
"No, I don't think so," the bearded man said in his high rasp. "On top of putting all our lives at risk with sickness, you been trespassing. And when there's trespassing there's stealing. You hang a thief, pretty soon the other thieves quit thieving."
"Either that or, feeling threatened, they gang up and eat you with rice and sliced ginger."
The man with the beard shook his head. "Lewis, will you tie this punk up already?"
The bald man knelt and rifled through his backpack. Cold anger slithered through Walt's veins. "Let me go or I will kill you. I'll leave your bodies in the woods where no one will know you died."
Lewis emerged with a rope and a grin and wrestled Walt's hands behind his back. Rough fiber sawed over his wrists. "You hear that, Harold? What should I tell your wife? Wait, my God! I'll be dead, too!"
Harold smiled through his beard. "You're soft, kid. Soft like mud."
As Lewis bound Walt's hands and took away the knives on his hip, a chubby teenager—Mark, presumably—hiked up between the trunks, huffing.
"What took you so long?" Harold gestured to his bags with the barrel of the rifle. "Grab his stuff."
"Who's the thief now?" Walt said.
"Just taking back what's ours."
"The only thing I have of yours is the dirt between the treads of my shoes."
Harold leaned in and slugged him in the gut with the butt of his gun. Walt doubled over, gasping, tears oozing from his eyes. Rage roared over his pain.
Lewis snugged the ropes tight, jerked his wrists. "All set."
"I'll kill your son, too." Walt nodded at Mark as the kid hoisted his bags over his round shoulders. "Right before I kill you. Not over some bullshit about apples and trees, but because it's what you deserve."
Mark's bulging chin dropped.
"Christ," Harold growled. "Let's get him back to town before I shoot him before we can hang him."
Lewis shoved Walt in the back, sending him stumbling downhill. Afternoon sunlight trickled through the colander of branches. Harold lit a cigarette, the smoke trickling back to Walt's nostrils. He wanted one. He slipped in the loose leaves. Down on the road, they shoved him into the back of a pickup truck and slung his bags in behind him.
"You too, Mark," Harold rasped. "I don't want to waste gas chasing him down if he decides to hop ship."
"I hate riding in back," Mark said. "It's so windy."
"Get your ass up there or I'll strap you to the hood instead."
Mark mashed his lips together and clambered up into the pickup bed. Walt stared at him, the folds of skin on his neck, the plump softness of his wrists. The three men piled into the front. The engine rumbled alive.
"Harold's your dad?" Walt said over the wind and the rattle of the truck on the road.
Mark nodded, eyes slitted at him. "Sure is."
"Your dad's a bad man."
"He's just trying to keep us safe."
"Do you think I'm a threat?"
He shrugged. "You said you'd kill us. I don't consider that something a civilized person would say."
Walt snorted. "Nobody's civilized when men with guns are planning to hang them."
"Well, maybe you shouldn't have broken the law."
"How the fuck was I supposed to know there were laws? Do you have 'No Trespassing' signs posted in the middle of nowhere? Are you doing flyer campaigns? Sailing around in a blimp with a sign saying 'STAY OUT! WE'RE CRAZY AS SHIT' flapping from the tail?" The truck jolted, clacking Walt's teeth together. "If I had a couple friends and a couple guns, I could declare it illegal to walk down the street without doing a little jig, and if you didn't jig, by
God, I'd spackle the walls with your brains. I could declare—"
"Shut up!" Mark kicked his heel into Walt's shin. "You're crazy. I don't have anything to do with this. Just be quiet."
Walt stared at him across the jouncing truck bed. The sun drifted below the hills. The wind blew cold on his skin. The truck pulled into a Shell station on the edge of town. From the blank streetlight, a body twisted from a rope, toes transcribing half a circle as they slowly rotated right to left, left to right. The truck doors creaked open. Harold popped the tailgate down and gestured at Walt with the rifle.
Walt smiled. "You want me to help you kill me?"
"All right, then." Harold handed his gun to Lewis, hopped up in the truck, grabbed Walt's bound hands, and dragged him out the back. Walt scrabbled; his ass clunked hard on the bumper. He dropped into the gravel, knees stinging. Harold yanked him to his feet. "Can you walk on your own, big boy? Or you want me to drag you around until I'm carrying the stubs of your arms?"
Walt got up. Harold jabbed the rifle into the middle of his back, marching him beneath the street light.
"Hey Lewis, get the rope?"
Lewis pushed his glasses up his nose. "What rope?"
"The one we're gonna wrap around this boy's neck, smart guy."
"I don't have a rope."
Harold planted his fists on his hips. "How the hell you going to hang a person without a rope?"
Lewis spread his palms. "How was I supposed to know we were gonna be doing any hanging? I don't walk around with water skis just in case somebody shows up with a boat and a river."
"Christ on the cross." Harold flung an arm at the gas station. "Mark, you take him in there and you watch him till we get back." He quirked his mouth at Lewis. "We're gonna need two ropes, you know. Second's for you."
"Hell," Lewis said.
"You're going to leave me alone in there with him?" Mark said.
"He's all tied up," Harold said. "What's he going to do, shoulder you to death?"
"Well what if someone else comes by?"
"Oh, for Pete's—Lewis, give him your pistol, will you? Will that keep the boogeymen away?"
Lewis patted his coat pocket. "Why don't you give him your gun?"
