300 Miles to Galveston

Customer Reviews

I'm not a huge zombie fan, but this is the kind of apocalypse I could get behind...

Jim Raney, January 17, 2013

…Start with a classic zombie flick—one that doesn't take itself too seriously—something like Shaun of the Dead. Weave into it a taut, deadline-driven race across an inhospitable stretch of Texas. Add literary references to Homer and Joyce, along with the author's sharp eye for authentic Texan characters. Leaven with light social satire and a willingness to flaunt the obvious cliches.

What we have here is a fast, fun read, full of cinematic action and just a hint of country-music camp.

J’n, December 23, 2012

For a first book you hit the top with me! Had me hooked at the very start. Could not put it down. A whole new way to write a sf/horror/tense story...

Really great book. Looking forward to more books, so write them fast! Well worth the money.

Florence Hager, December 30, 2012

I appreciate the balance you managed to find between deep, serious looks into human nature, and humor...

I read this in one sitting today, and enjoyed it very much. Congratulations on a great first novel!

ChandCar, December 27, 2012

300 MILES TO GALVESTON

By Rick Wiedeman

300 MILES TO GALVESTON
Copyright © 2012 by Rick Wiedeman
All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

www.rickwiedeman.com

For Prof. Al Wachtel,
who helped me find my voice,
and my daughters Chloë and Rose,
who have to listen to it.

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Chapter 1: Salt the Meat

Chapter 2: When Girls Wore Skirts

Chapter 3: 4-6-6-3-2-9-3

Chapter 4: Ulysses

Chapter 5: Shiabu

Chapter 6: Long Spear

Chapter 7: Half a Bottle of Advil

Chapter 8: Fearfully and Wonderfully

Chapter 9: 100 Chinese with a Sword

Chapter 10: The Polunsky Devils

Chapter 11: Skid Steer

Chapter 12: Forever Hers

Chapter 13: Foil Hats

Chapter 14: Hide until You Hear English

Chapter 15: Stay

Chapter 16: Manifest

Chapter 17: Message Repeats

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719)

Chapter 1: Salt the Meat

Eventually you run out of bullets, even in Texas.

Kurt Fullmer looked at the gun’s profile. There was no point in keeping it; he just wanted to admire it for a moment. It was beautiful, one of the last wheelguns made, a five-round .40 caliber rimless revolver. He ran his other hand through his thinning, brown-and-grey hair. Kurt hadn’t heard a shot fired in two weeks, and hadn’t found ammo in a month. His 39 year old body felt old as he watched blood pump from the Rottweiler’s throat.

I need to keep moving
. He was on the edge of his clan’s territory, and the shot was going to attract someone.

No one thought about running out of ammunition, coffee, or garbage bags until two weeks after they were gone. That’s when it set in: the lump at the base of the throat, the wobbly feeling in the hips, as if the body was falling apart along with society. Two weeks was how long it took for the mind to accept that
I don’t know how to make ammo, coffee, or garbage bags. I only know how to shop for them.
That’s when an awesome perspective took over – that mix of dread and sublime beauty few had felt since the Middle Ages, outside of war.

Even during the boredom and horror of war, people knew there were more bullets, if only in a warehouse in Germany; more guns, if only being cast in a forge in New England. People knew there were experts somewhere who made fine machines. This knowledge was society’s foundation. People who worked with steel, people with thick hands and dirt that never seemed to get out of their nails made everything else possible. When the world they built quit working in 2037, the thought-leaders and cloud-sellers evaporated like ghosts in sunlight.

For Kurt, the world was like an empty church, silent and waiting. Every detail was amplified. The odd moments like this burned brightly, even if the moments of terror made them fade quickly.

He touched the gun, like a beloved pet that had died, and tucked it back into his coat pocket. He wondered if he should keep it. Anyone who saw him with a gun and thought he had ammo would try to kill him for it, and he had little to back up a bluff besides two fists, one with two broken fingers. Sure, he had a knife, but everyone had knives, and with no functioning hospitals with antibiotics, no one wanted to get cut. Plus, a knife wasn’t good against two guys with bats.

Cutting the skin along the joints of the Rottweiler’s black-and-tan hind legs, he sawed them cleanly off the body. That was the most meat for the least effort. He didn’t have time to field dress the animal, and with the hole he’d just blown through its digestive tract, the chest was filling with stomach contents and bacteria that would foul the meat unless he could flush it with fresh water, and that was too far away. It was best to take what was easy and keep moving.

The leg meat fit neatly into two plastic Wal-Mart bags which he tied and put into his backpack. As he took a final look at the bloody sidewalk, he felt empty. He’d always hated that dog. The fact that its owners had wandered off, leaving it desperate enough to dig under the fence and go hunting, formed no sympathy within him. Still, pets shouldn’t have to be shot on sidewalks, even if they were the animal version of jerks.

Kurt recognized this as one of the pleasures of the new era: You didn’t have to wait for a toothless response from a homeowner's association or a piece of paper from animal control. If you had a problem with the neighbor’s dog, you dealt with it directly, after considering risk and reward.

Risk: Attracting people with a gunshot.

Reward: Not getting his throat ripped out by a big dog, or getting infected from bites that would tear into his forearms. Also, four pounds of fresh meat.

Time to go.

* * *

Hold the staff in even thirds. One hand up, one hand down.

It was good that this principle was ground into Sophie Fullmer’s skull, because her 13 year-old instincts would have had her choking down on the five-foot long mop handle like a bat, which is no good when two people are coming at you from different directions. Maybe she’d hit one as the other tackled her. Maybe she’d miss and take too long to correct it. Short, sharp jabs were the answer.

Her grip on the mop handle tightened, her skin creaking against the lacquered wood, as the two teenage boys circled. Her hair clung to her forehead, her eyes tight and unblinking. Cicadas buzzed absently in the nearby trees, but she couldn’t hear them over her heartbeat.

The bigger boy made his move.

Thrust forward, look over shoulder, thrust back.
It felt odd to do it with tennis shoes on, in a field with grass and rocks and all the other imperfections found outside the
dojo
, where the endless barefoot exercises took on an aspect of the religious. She thrust her hips forward with her hands, driving the top, rounded end of the mop handle into the divot of the bigger boy’s throat with the guidance of her right index finger. He let out an awkward gasp for a boy his size as his body jerked backward.

She glanced over her shoulder. The smaller boy was almost on her. She drove the bottom, screw-threaded end into his stomach, then brought her hands back and swung the far, smooth end of the mop handle, whistling with speed as her hips rotated. It smashed into his temple.

The bigger boy who had been struck in the throat clawed at the grass for a moment, then stopped moving. Blood dripped from the smaller boy’s nose and his left eye was solid red with burst vessels. He collapsed, his eyes still open, but his pupils were wide and unfocused in the afternoon sun.

Sophie backed away, watching them, then turned and ran. At the edge of the park, she stopped next to a Mexican white oak tree, rested the mop handle against its bark, and threw up.

Get home.
She spit a few times, then took her mop handle and walked across the street – left past the chain link fence, right where the guy always parked his truck in the yard. She walked with casual purpose, not jogging, not concerned, just as if she had someplace to be. She held the mop handle at the bottom third, tucked behind her back. That way of holding a staff never made sense in class, but now she got it.
I just want to walk home with my weapon, not look like I’m out for a fight.
As she climbed to the front porch, she deftly spun the handle to her left hand, dug her key out of her front pocket, and went inside.

Dad’s not home yet. Good.

At the screen door across the living room, her little black dog leapt for joy, over and over like popcorn.

* * *

It started on November 17, 2034, during the peak of the Leonids meteor shower, which was spectacular that year. After that cold, windless night when Kurt, Kristine, and Sophie had laid in the crunchy park grass in their winter coats and stared at the open sky together, no one was born, and no one stayed dead.

Worldwide, all pregnancies ended, the unborn dissolving back into their mother’s bodies. When other people died, whether children or adults, they rose ten minutes later, placid, but mindless. These were called Angels. A terrible few came back insane and furious, staggering around as if blind, grabbing and biting like angry infants. These were called Devils. In the early days they were chained in back yards, but eventually they were put in prisons. Room was made by legalizing recreational drugs – first marijuana, then everything. Nobody cared anymore. The illusion had been broken. Life made no sense without death. “Drink paint if you want to,” was the consensus. “We’ve got bigger problems.”

None of these new prisoners needed to eat more than a handful of food a week, though they liked chewing it. None used the restroom as often as normal people. They only needed a little water, and didn’t care if it came from a stainless steel toilet without a seat.

They also didn’t need to be exercised – some were in constant movement, some sat still for days. They didn’t have visitors, except for church volunteers who came to pray for them, which they were more and more comfortable doing from the administration building once they heard the echoing howls and grunts and sounds of bone hitting iron bars.

It was common for Devils to break their forearms between the bars or smash their noses against the cell walls, but that didn’t matter, either. Somehow, they always healed in a few hours, and they never got infections.

Replacing drug users with Devils saved the state and federal governments billions of dollars a year, but as no one was being born, and no one was truly dying, it would not work forever. It just slowed the doomsday clock. The hands would still reach midnight, and all the politicians, correctional officers, and prayer circles knew that. By 2036, the average Texas prison was packing four Devils into each six by eight foot cell.

However, most did not come back as Devils. Most were kept at home, and eventually led to cemeteries, which had become reservations for the dead with high fences and security gates. The nicer ones played Yanni and John Tesh instrumentals from the early 2000s through outdoor speakers that looked like rocks. All of Yanni and Tesh’s music had been rights-released during the Copyright Freedom Act of 2020, co-signed by the US and China to temper their economic war.

As the recently-dead’s clothes became ragged and shrunken from exposure, the Angels were usually covered with plastic rain ponchos, out of respect. White quickly became the preferred color, so they looked like Halloween ghosts in every season – walking into each other, sitting under trees, but always with a slight smile on their lips. They were fed by automated troughs, set up near decorative elements like welcoming statues of the Virgin Mary or Greek-styled cement benches. After a few weeks of experimentation, cemetery managers figured out that their favorite food was Honey Nut Cheerios. Each needed about a cup a week.