Containment (15 page)

She said quietly to Danny, “I’m sorry, Danny. I guess I kind of lost my cool.”

Danny didn’t say anything. He was thinking, however, that he agreed with Emma. Why wouldn’t Maggie share any of the gas she had? It just seemed like a safer thing to do. They could fill up both cars with what she had and then get moving. They could get away from all of this and leave it behind them. He wasn’t sure about the Christian charity thing that she had said. He didn’t remember a whole lot about that from church. He remembered coloring pictures and eating snacks at Sunday School. He remembered the stories about Noah and Job and the Garden of Eden. He remembered singing songs. That was about it for him. Maybe Christian charity was what the adults talked about while the kids were downstairs in the classroom.

He put his hand on her shoulder and looked over at the Fred Meyer entrance. Those things were still there and the buzzing in the air was getting louder. “I think we should get going again. The sound is getting louder so I think more of those things are coming this way.”

“What?”

“I can hear them. They’re coming.”

“Hey everyone, the kid...I’m sorry,
Danny,
says that he can hear them coming. We should get moving.”

Jerry nodded and agreed, “Yeah, I think he’s right. I guess I was hearing it too, but didn’t pay enough attention to realize what it was. Those three over there are probably acting like a homing beacon for more of those things.”

Without having resolved anything, the group split up and went to their respective vehicles. They were moving again without any real direction, but Neil was relieved that the confrontation was brought to a temporary close, if not to a more permanent solution. It felt good to be moving again and to put the parking lot and anger behind them.

Emma sat in the back and didn’t say much. She was still angry but she was quiet again. She kept looking behind her at the car following them. She imagined turning herself around in the seat and firing her pistol out the back window at Maggie and Malachi. In her mind’s eye, she could see their car swerve and veer off the road out of control. Her thoughts didn’t get any darker than that. She knew that her fury would subside and that these ugly musings were neither realistic nor healthy, so she closed her eyes and tried to let go of the hostility.

When she awoke, they were stopping near what looked like a parking lot but she knew that it was actually a street that cut through Midtown in Anchorage. She was unaware that she had dozed and woke feeling a little disoriented.

“What are we doing?”

“We still need gas,” Jerry replied.

They sat for a few seconds in the stopped van without anyone saying a word. Danny lifted his new rifle from the floor in front of him and laid it across his lap. He was ready but it didn’t seem anyone else was.

He looked over at Jerry and Claire, and then to Emma and Kim. They all looked exhausted, like his mom and dad did every Christmas morning after all the presents had been opened.

Claire asked no one in particular, “So we have to do this, huh?”

“No,” Neil said flatly. “We don’t have to but we’ll probably be on foot soon if we don’t. What do you prefer?”

She didn’t need to answer and neither did anyone else. Regardless of the need, there didn’t seem to be much enthusiasm in collecting the gas. Their failed attempt to siphon gas from the collection of vehicles at the Fred Meyer parking lot didn’t inspire much confidence. Of course, there were a lot more cars here and a lot more possibilities.

Jerry finally said, “Okay, let’s get going. We work in teams again?”

Dr. Caldwell said, “Yes. Two teams of three. One spotter, one siphoner, and one toter.”

Neil said, “Okay, how about—”

Dr. Caldwell cut him off. “How about you stay with the van this time. You can find the bungee cords in the back and get the top ready to load the full cans. Meghan, you stay at the wheel in case we have visitors and have to get out in a hurry.”

Neil started to protest but his fatigue caught the words in his chest and buried them beneath his momentary relief. He felt guilty about sending folks off on an errand of his choosing, but even the guilt couldn’t find a voice.

Malachi was out of Maggie’s car and joining the group as it formed next to the van. Dr. Caldwell began, “Okay, how about Emma, Malachi, and I...”

Emma, still not ready to be near the police officer challenged, “Yeah, that’s not gonna work.” She could have outlined all the reasons why, but she didn’t feel the need to open that argument again; at least not there on the street.

“Okay, how about Jerry, Emma, and me. And then Kim, Art, and Malachi. We each take a couple of the large and a couple of the small cans with us. There’s no messing around out here. We get what we need and we get the hell outta Dodge, okay?”

Everyone nodded his or her head. Malachi nodded his head too, but he shot a concealed sneer over at Emma. Since his wife, he didn’t think he had ever had the same feelings of animosity toward anyone that he harbored toward Emma. She dug at him every time she could and he was getting tired of it. He hoped there arose a time in the future where she really needed help...
his
help, and he would just turn and walk away. He hoped that she begged for him to save her. He could see her surrounded by reaching, grabbing, clawing hands and hear her voice calling out to him to save her, but he wouldn’t. He would smile down at her and revel in her desperation. The thoughts made his head swim for a moment and he teetered on his heels a bit.

Dr. Caldwell asked, concerned, “Malachi, you okay?”

“Yeah, just tired I guess.” He looked over at Emma who was walking away and was relieved that she didn’t see him start to swoon.

Each group walked up to the closest cars and, of course, there was no fuel in either. The same was true of the next and then the next pair of cars. Several cars later, Dr. Caldwell found a tank that was nearly full, based upon the fact that they were able to siphon out enough gasoline to fill two of the five-gallon plastic containers and start on one of the smaller three-gallon jugs. As he looked around the car, he noticed that there were no keys in the ignition, while in the previous cars there had been keys.

He called out to the other group, “Hey, look at the ignitions of the cars. If there aren’t keys there, then we stand a better chance of getting gas.”

Art nodded as he looked into the next driver’s side window. He wasn’t expecting the spectacle in the front seat that he saw. There, sitting slightly hunched over into the passenger seat, was a decaying corpse. Clutched in its discolored right hand was an automatic pistol.

“Jesus.”

Kim asked him as she walked up, “What? What’d you find?”

Art just stood there looking down at the dead body. It was a woman who appeared to have been heading to work based upon her professional dress. She still had a cup of Kaladi Brothers coffee in the cup holder on her dash. On the seat next to her lifeless hand was a wallet opened to a family photo and next to that was a cell phone.

Kim looked in the window and gasped, surprised that after all that she had seen, she could still be startled. “Do you think she could be one of them?”

Art was already shaking his head, “No. I think she did it to herself.”

Malachi was standing there now, but was not offering any comments. He was looking around at the other cars and trying to stay focused on the task at hand, which, for him, was becoming increasingly more challenging. Staying moving as he was seemed to be helping, but there were cracks in his reality that were separating him further and further away from everyone else, including his new friend Maggie.

Kim asked, “Why do you think she did it?”

“It could have been anything, given the situation. Maybe she was trapped and scared. Maybe she was already planning on doing it and it just seemed like the right time. Maybe she was on the phone with the family in the photo and heard those things getting to them and she couldn’t bear it. Hell, does it really matter?”

“The keys are still in the ignition, so she’s got nothing for us.”

Kim looked at him in disgust. “That’s a little cold isn’t it?”

“Would you like me to say a prayer for her and for every corpse we come upon? That’s a lot of praying.”

She thought about it and responded, “No. I guess not. I just...I’m just afraid that the longer this goes on, the less sense of humanity we seem to be holding on to.”

“I get what you’re saying, but I guess I’m just more interested in being alive than in retaining something like my humanity. When we’ve gotten through this I promise to say a long prayer for all the people that we come upon but until then...”

Kim nodded her head and moved to the next car. “Hey, no keys. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Art snorted. “In a different time and in a different world, getting lucky had a whole different meaning.”

“Just like a man. Even now on the eve of extinction, all you can think about is sex.”

“Hey, you’re the one that brought it up.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I like to think of myself as just complicated...complex...an enigma to be unraveled but never solved.”

“Is that a line that you’ve used before? Because it sounded rehearsed.”

Art smiled. “Yeah, and it worked more than it didn’t. Does it really sound rehearsed?”

Kim just chuckled and opened the car door to release the gas tank lever.

There was enough gas in that car to partially fill one of the five-gallon gas cans but that was all. They moved deeper into the line of cars and farther away from the van.

Jerry shouted to them from the other side of the car-choked street, “We’ve filled all of our cans, so we’re taking them back to the van. We’ll go grab some more cans and be right back.”

Back at the van, they filled the vehicle’s tank with one of the five-gallon cans and most of one of the three gallon cans. Neil said to Dr. Caldwell, “I’m already feeling better about this. Maybe we do stand a chance of getting out of here after all.”

Dr. Caldwell felt the relief in his gut too. “Yeah, I think we should go back out there and refill these two cans. Do we have any other cans in there?”

“No, we’ve just got water jugs that we grabbed from Fred’s. If we get the other group’s gas cans back here and refill yours, I think we should be okay. That’s a lot of fuel, especially since the van is full again. That will buy us a lot of miles.”

“But will it be enough?”

“Only time will tell. Besides, there are bound to be other cars out there. Hell, so far things seem to be going much better.”

Art, Kim and Malachi came upon a couple more corpses in cars while they searched. Apparently, the first woman who took her own life wasn’t alone in her decision. In another car, a woman had taken an overdose of some kind of medication, the empty bottle of which was still sitting in her lap. And in the car next to that, a man had done similarly as the first, by shooting himself in the head. His suicide was much messier, as he had used a much higher caliber pistol. The inside of his window was stained a dirty, disgusting brown.

The three of them came to a big Ford pickup truck and paused. Kim said with concern, “I think we’re getting a little too much distance between us and the van. Maybe we should call it quits and head back.”

Art agreed. “Okay, let’s check this big truck out and head on back.”

“Deal.”

They popped open the gas tank and started to draw out the gas. They filled one of the three-gallon tanks, deciding to fill that first because they hadn’t had much luck so far in filling the bigger ones. Working together, they were able to lift and balance the empty can so that the short rubber hose could reach the opening. They stood there, each doing his or her part, as the malodorous but essential liquid filled the plastic container.

Art said to Malachi playfully after several seconds of quiet, “Kind of reminiscent of standing at a urinal isn’t it?”

Kim asked, “Excuse me?”

“Well, there are certain things that guys do and don’t do at urinals.”

“And?”

“I guess standing here without saying anything and listening to liquid pouring into the can just made me nostalgic for those simpler times when I guy could stand quietly and pee at a public restroom.”

Malachi, of course, hadn’t said a word but instead cocked an eyebrow at Art. He didn’t like talking about things as personal as that with a woman around. It just didn’t seem right; like he was breaking some kind of established rule of politesse.

A few seconds later, their smiles faded after hearing a rhythmic clicking that appeared to be heading toward them. The sound started very faint but grew with each moment.

Art looked at Kim with a question in his eyes that Kim actually asked, “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know but I don’t see anything. If it was one of those things, it seems like we should be able to see them long before they get close to us. Let’s get this can full and then get on back. We can just say that we got all the gas that we could.”

Kim, still looking in the direction of the sound, asked, “You sure?”