by S L Mason
What he was suggesting made my stomach roll. Someone would have to go through his pocket where he kept his keys.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get the keys,” Arty volunteered. “You don’t have to do anything; it was my idea.”
A lump formed in my throat and saliva filled my mouth. Arty knelt down on the ground in front of Pastor Rollins’ dead body. He touched the front pockets on either side. The one on the left had what he wanted.
I watched Arty trying to work his hands into the pocket, but Pastor Rollins was small. Arty has big hands. There was no way he was going to get his hands inside. He looked up at me, and his eyebrows creased in frustration.
“Sorry. I can’t get them out.” He pulled back, dusting his knees off, only to rub them in blood. He worked his hand across the fabric of his pants over and over; he was desperate to rub it off.
Tears rolled down my face. I could do this. Don’t think about him like a person. It was a mannequin. If I took them from behind, I wouldn’t see his face. It wouldn’t matter so much. I’d reach in and grabbed the keys. Deep breath in through my mouth and out my nose.
I squatted down behind Pastor Rollins, and slowly I worked my hand into the pocket of his black polyester slacks. The body was cold, and I kept looking away, trying to focus on the buildings across the street. His body was stiff. I wiggled my fingers around in the pocket, but it was empty. I removed my hand and took a deep breath. I started again on the other side.
No matter where my eyes landed, it was another dead body or severed limb. Nothing I did would take my mind off digging in a dead guy’s pocket.
My fingers encountered a metallic object with etching, the key. I clasped it between my thumb and my index finger and pulled it out.
Just as the keys freed from his pocket, his body fell over on its side. He held shape like a stone statue. Lifeless and immovable.
I screamed and couldn’t stop; it kept coming.
Arty was next to me with his arms around me. “It’s okay. You did good. You got the keys. It’s okay, you didn’t hurt him.” He whispered.
My breath came in gulps. “He’s okay? I didn’t hurt him?” The light breeze turned my hot tears into cold trails of water down my face.
“No, you didn’t hurt him. Nothing can hurt him anymore. It’s okay. Let’s get the Jeep, and let’s get out of here.”
The rumbling of an engine broke the silence of our macabre death scene. We both dashed toward the parking lot and the hedge there. Cowering behind the hedge, I peeked through only to spy a big black Escalade with gold trim, slowly driving by. All of its windows were down, and they had guns peeking through the openings.
It was amazing how quickly and easily society broke down.
Arty tapped me on my shoulder and then pointed toward the black Jeep in the corner. We crouched behind every vehicle, moving slowly until we reached the Jeep. He opened the doors, and we both climbed in through the driver’s side. We hunched down to wait for the Escalade to leave the area.
“Shit,” Arty exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?” I looked down at the steering wheel, pedals, and over all the dials before my eyes landed on the gear shifter.
“Stick. I can’t drive stick.” His shoulders slumped down. He was emasculated.
“You know, my dad said something about that couple years ago. He said ‘kids these days don’t know what’s important.’ ” I smile at him and snickered.
“What are we gonna do? I don’t I want to go back for more keys, do you?”
A ghoulish shiver gripped both of us.
“Don’t worry. My dad taught me. I’ll drive.”
He exhaled a breath of relief, and we traded places. My left foot slowly released the clutch, putting us in reverse. The Jeep crept backwards, and I waited for the front end to clear the car next to us. When I pressed the clutch back in, I shifted into first gear and we took off.
CHAPTER 5
Driving down the street, I did my best to make sure I didn’t look at what was on the road. I drove around the bodies, pretending they were logs, downed trees, or sticks left on the road—anything so I didn’t think about the dead people lying in the street. It was working until we reached the grocery store.
It was a giant shopping plaza with a grocery store and other big box stores. Dad called them the McMansion stores. The parking lot was a bloodbath. Hundreds of bodies lay out like Lincoln Logs in front of the permanently blocked open doors. People had left their carts everywhere. Flies swarmed around the bodies, creating a loud, buzzing noise. I pulled my shirt up over my mouth to deaden the rancid, gagging stench. Arty reached over and turned off the AC and all the fans, and then he closed the vents. But the sickly-sweet scent of rotting flesh worked its way through the cracks. CJ Jeeps weren’t known for being airtight. I pressed my foot down harder on the gas pedal. We didn’t gain speed, but the RPMs shot through the roof. I pressed my left foot to the clutch and shifted gears, causing the Jeep to lurch forward.
We soon entered a commercial district. There weren’t many people logs on the roads. I drove as fast down every street. It didn’t matter if the light was red, green, or purple—I wasn’t stopping.
Finally, Arty reached over and touched my arm. “It’s okay, Sarah. Slow down. I think we’re past the worst of it. Take this on-ramp to the highway. I don’t see dead bodies on the road.” Arty’s hand grabbed hold of the holy-Jesus bar as I made a sharp turn, crossing two lanes of traffic to make the on-ramp.
Cars were on the shoulder on either side of the highway. When the Fae had come down out of the sky, they all pulled over? They made the drivers get out of their vehicles and…
Every Fae I’d seen was male. Didn’t they have any girls? Was that why they were taking all the girls? I shook my head. It was too gross to think about.
I drove for about an hour. I worked my hands back and forth over the leather of the steering wheel. Driving was good. How we thought we could walk to Athens was a dumb idea. If you could drive, you should always drive. If you can’t drive, then you walk. I looked at my shoes, and I realized what a moron I was. Little canvas shoes encased my feet. I might as well have not even been wearing shoes. I couldn’t walk far in these, even if I wanted to; they didn’t have arch support.
We should’ve gone back to my house. We could’ve looked for my parents. Then I wouldn’t be driving down the road wearing the wrong shoes and hoping for the sign of a sporting goods store. One of the billboards on the side of the highway advertised for such a store. Even though I knew a plaza was probably going to be wall-to-wall, dead bodies, I couldn’t walk anywhere in these shoes. We had to dump this cheap crap I was wearing.
“You sure you want to go in the store? I see you eyeballing that sporting goods store.” I saw Arty gripping the door handle and whitening his knuckles.
“Yeah, see my shoes?” I slammed my left foot on the clutch and downshifted with my right, grinding a gear as I went.
“Yeah, I guess mine aren’t in much better shape.” Arty’s tennis shoes were probably about a thousand years old. The rubber was peeling back in various directions. I thought he’d thrown them on to run out the house. Who pays attention to their shoes at the end of the world? Normally when we hung out, it didn’t matter which pair he wore. Now it did.
I took a right turn at the end of the off-ramp and drove fifty yards down the road, heading toward the sporting goods sign. I slowed down to turn into the parking lot when Arty’s hand landed on my forearm.
I noticed the vehicles had pulled up into a line in front of the store. Twenty men wearing saggy Chino pants and bandannas around their heads stood out front with guns—gang bangers. The store was clearly taken; there was no way we were getting in there for a pair of shoes. My heart shifted gears with the Jeep as I tore out of there. A bullet ricocheted off the back end.
But I had to have a pair of shoes. I wouldn’t get far with what I had. My soles were too thin, and if my feet became wet, well, forget about it. Let’s not even talk about foot r
ot.
“Arty, get on your phone. Look up the nearest biker store.”
He gasped. “So you don’t want to go to the sporting goods store because it’s being guarded by a gang, but you think it might be a good idea to go to a biker store because that might not be guarded by a gang?” The sarcasm dripped from his voice. I didn’t mind being mocked if I deserved it, and I did.
“All I know is this: you can walk a pretty good distance in a pair of biker boots. Most of them are steel-toed, and if you kick somebody with them, it’s going to hurt like a motherfucker.”
Arty shook his head and seemed to agree. “Turn left up here.”
“That’ll take us to a mall?” The muscles in my legs and arms tensed in anticipation. I ran through all the moves I’d need to do to shift gears and get the hell out of there in a hurry. I wasn’t that great a driver, and this was the longest I’d ever been behind the wheel of a stick shift.
“Yes, there’s a lot of stores at the mall. Something else they sell at the mall, shoes—lots and lots of shoes. Really good hiking, walking, and kicking the crap out of people shoes.” Arty liked to make fun of me, but I didn’t like to shop at the mall. It wasn’t my favorite place.
“Yeah, that’s assuming that the mall isn’t guarded by armed guards too.”
“Every major department store at the mall sells shoes. We just need to get into one of them.”
I guess Arty was right. It’d be easier to sneak into one of the entrances of the major department stores and snag a couple of pairs of shoes. If we were lucky, the shoe department would be right next to the door.
We discovered the mall was guarded on one end. I stayed on the perimeter road, doing no more than eight to ten miles an hour. The perimeter road was lined with trees providing shade that we used for cover.
“Hey, have we got binoculars in that backpack?” I took my foot off the gas, allowing us to coast.
“I don’t think so, maybe.” He leaned over the center console to rummage through the backpacks. “Holy crap, your dad really was prepared. Was he a Boy Scout?” He snickered.
“No, he was an Eagle Scout.” I snickered back.
Arty put the binoculars to his face, scanning the mall entrances. He extended his right hand, pointing off to the far left.
“Pull over there. By that bunch of cars near the door, and I don’t see anybody around.”
This end had cheaper stores like the stores no one wanted to shop at. I wove around the parked cars in the parking lot. Funny how we all seemed to park together in clusters near the doors. No one wants to park in no man’s land and walk a thousand miles. I pulled in between a big black truck and a silver minivan. With no car parked in front of us, we could pull straight through for a quick getaway. Keeping low, we crept from one vehicle to the next. We made a quick dash to the door. Before Arty could reach for the handle, I pulled him back.
“Can we watch for a few minutes? There might be somebody inside.” I felt the valves in my heart opening and closing, pumping blood to every vein. My eyes darted from the glass doorway to the shaded perimeter road. We were so exposed. I was terrified someone was going to drive by and see us.
But no one did. The store looked deserted so we snuck in. We wove our way around the clothing racks, stopping every few minutes to listen for footsteps or noises until we reached the shoe department.
Arty leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Are you kidding me, sandals? All they have is sandals? Huaraches aren’t going to cut it for me, you can’t walk anywhere in those.”
I threw him a half smile as I surveyed the collection of strappy sandals and mule style wedges. I pointed to the exit of the store and the rest of the mall. We moved that direction, and I peeked out. It was deserted, and as luck would have it there was a high-end shoe store right across from the department store.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and counted to three. I scanned the hall and made a dash for it. I seized a pair of Timberland boots. They worked for me since they were easy to lace up and had good ankle support. They looked kind of like something my dad would’ve worn. Arty got a similar pair. I grabbed some stainless-steel water bottles so we could use them to warm food by throwing in the fire. Arty patted my back, and we headed out.
Working our way back through the department store to the door we’d come in, we crossed the outdoor section of the department store. I pulled a fleece jacket off the rack and tied it around my waist. Arty grabbed a pop-up tent and threw it over the shoulder. There were so many supplies that we could’ve used, but I didn’t want to be weighed down.
We waited at the sides of the doors for signs of movement. When we saw nothing, we headed back to the Jeep. I did my best to make sure I wasn’t looking around too much. While dead bodies littered the parking lot, but I was perplexed why the store had been empty. “Why did they all go outside?” My hands gripped the steering wheel.
“Maybe the Fae told them to?”
I think Arty was smarter than he let on. It made perfect sense why all the cars were parked on the side of the road and everyone was out in the street. They sang, and people walked out like zombies. They did whatever the music told them too. It was awful. How come it didn’t work on me? I heard the Fae singing, and I stopped for a couple of seconds. But then I was like no big deal and suddenly I was able to run. Was I immune?
CHAPTER 6
I thought we escaped out of the mall situation pretty well. We had more supplies and good shoes. Now to head off into the wild blue yonder. I was pretty sure Arty and I were gonna be okay. As long as I didn’t think about what happened to my parents or where they could be.
All we needed to do was find a good building to hunker down in, until the sun went down. It was only 2 p.m., and we had plenty of time to find a place.
Hindsight is 20/20. I should’ve realized that going on the main roads was stupid. I should’ve realized that eventually, someone from the mall would’ve spotted us leaving the area. But I was only seventeen. I wouldn’t officially become an adult for a few months. How was I supposed to know? I wasn’t checking my six. I didn’t look behind me, and I should’ve looked behind me. I should’ve known. Arty should’ve looked behind us, but neither of us had done any of that.
We turned back on to the main thoroughfare heading toward the highway. It was a good plan, and it should’ve worked. All we needed to do was keep going toward the highway, right?
I looked in the rearview mirror. The sunlight glinted off of something in the road, but I ignored it. There were always little bits of trash left over from car accidents, and some of it was reflective. I rolled across something, and the wheel yanked to the right and left. The back into the Jeep fishtailed.
It was one of those police spike strips; the kind they throw down when they want to stop somebody who’s driving too fast. They pretty much shred your tires. Usually, in the movies, the vehicle goes across a strip, and they swerve and flip up in the air. The car rolls over and over, and it seems like everybody inside the vehicle should die. But they’re all just fine with a few bumps and bruises. They get out of the car, and they run from the cops.
That wasn’t what happened; the movies were all bullshit. What happened was I didn’t see the spike strip, and I drove right over it. Yeah, it shredded my tires. Blood thundered in my ears as I slammed my foot into the clutch and shifted gears. I was worried I’d lose control of the Jeep. My skin crawled with the screaming sound of metal.
“Oh, fuck, fuck!” Arty kept cursing over and over again.
I felt the squished rubber underneath the rims sliding us this way and that. I yanked the wheel to the left and then again to the right, trying to keep us in a straight line. My arms ached, and they shook as I gripped the wheel, white-knuckled. But then the vehicle righted itself suddenly, and all that rubber that was on the rims was gone. Instead, the metal rims ground as it slipped across the asphalt. There was no way to stop.
“Holy shit! Stop the Jeep!” Arty had one foot up on the dashboard, and his han
d on the headrest of my seat.
“If we stop the Jeep now, whoever put that out there is probably going to kill us. Anyway, without any rubber, you don’t have brakes. You can push all you want on those rims, but they’re not going to stop. We’ll slide down the road or grind or whatever it is until the momentum of the vehicle stops.” I pumped the gas with my right foot, keeping us going without grinding the ground.
“Whoever put that spike strip down can have all this shit. I don’t care.”
I didn’t stop, and I wasn’t gonna stop. I didn’t care what Arty said. Whoever shredded our tires wanted whatever it was they thought we had. Maybe the Jeep, maybe something else, or maybe me. Fear butterflied in my belly. “Pull up MapQuest, and tell me where the nearest neighborhood and take us there. We need to find another suburb.”
Arty fingers worked across the screen of his phone. “If you can make a left turn without flipping the car, turn left and then left again two streets from now.” His eyes never left the screen.
I did as instructed, and we were transported from the commercial district into a quiet sleepy suburb. All the dead log bodies were on the road again. I didn’t want to, but I drove over them, slowing down with every bump. I couldn’t swerve as I was trying to make sure that we were able to stop. Whoever was following us was gonna find us pretty quick. Between the screeching sound from the rims and the burn lines in the asphalt, we weren’t hard to follow.
If we didn’t stop soon, the sparks from the metal grinding on the ground would heat up the Jeep’s gas tank and start a fire or better yet blow up.
There it was, what I was looking for: a four-wheel drive, Chevy pickup truck. My father would’ve approved. It was a dually with diesel, which meant we were more likely to find fuel for it. Most people go straight for the gasoline vehicles. They leave the diesel alone.
The Jeep slid to a stop about two houses away from the truck. I saw the owner’s dead body lying in the yard. I looked at Arty, and I knew what had to be done. I had to do it.
