Heartland Junk Part I: The End: A ZOMBIE Apocalypse Serial (4 page)

"I thought we'd
OD'd you," Jennie said. "I was so scared."

"Maybe you did, hun, but you did the right thing. Maybe you
didn't know it, maybe you
were
trying to kill me, to stop me from killing Ray, but you
thought fast." He kissed the side of Jennie's head, and she
flinched visibly when his mouth came close. He looked at her with a
strange expression. Anger?

"Another
question," I said. "What happens when we come down?"

"That I don't
know, bro," Rivet said.

"Another
question," I said. "Is it just us, or is it happening to other
people?"

"I don't
know
,
bro," Rivet replied. He was starting to sound angry. "I don't
fucking
know
."

"It's a rhetorical
question," I said.

"Then keep it to
yourself. How's that helping?"

"It's something we
need to think about," I snapped back. What was wrong with him?

"All we need to think about is keeping ourselves good," Rivet
glared at me. "Who cares about those people? This is
us
, man."

"Come on, guys,"
Jennie tried to mediate. "Let's calm down. Ray has a point," she
added gently, stroking Rivet's arm.

"You're on his
side?" Rivet jerked his arm off her shoulders. "Figures. That's
what it is, isn't it? Sparking the ol' flame."

"What? No. Rivet,
listen," I jumped in. This was ridiculous. "The only way we'll
figure out what's happening to us is if we know if the same thing
is going on out there." I gestured out the window.

"You know, I
haven't heard any traffic in awhile," Jennie said.

"There, see? That's thinking," I said. "I haven't either. Of
course, it's usually pretty quiet around here in the mornings, but
still, not
this
quiet."

"Who lives around
here that doesn't go to work?" Jen asked.

"Mrs. Winters
lives over on the next block," I said, getting excited. "She's
retired."

"Jesus, listen to
you two," Rivet said. "Aren't you guys just cozy."

"Dammit, Rivet," I
said, raising my voice.

"What?" he said, leaning forward. "
What?
"

" 'What' is you're
being an asshole while we're trying to come up with some sort of
plan."

"
We don't
need a plan
,"
Rivet shouted. "There's nothing weird going on. We all kinda
freaked out, sure, but that's like, what, cabin fever. Temporary
group psychosis. It's
over
, man.
Do you feel anything weird now? It's gone. We
fixed
it."

"Yeah," I
retorted, "and for all we know you're the one who infected us in
the first place."

"
Infected?
This isn't a goddamn video game, Ray. Nobody infected
anybody. I've apologized a thousand times, and I'm going to keep
apologizing for awhile, because you know what? I really
am
sorry. But you can't sit there and
pin this on me. You felt it, too."

"And that's
exactly
why we need to figure out what happened!" Now I was shouting,
which definitely wasn't helping the situation. I've known Rivet
most of my life; he doesn't back down from a frontal
attack.

"Look," I continued more softly, "I don't think I'm alone in
saying that
nothing
like that has ever happened to me. Am I?" I looked back and
forth between them. Jennie shook her head. Rivet gave a grudging,
"No."

"And for the three
of us to experience it at the exact same time is most likely—not
definitely, but most likely—a little bit more than coincidence.
Right?" They each gave a quiet affirmative. "So let's do this," I
went on. "Let's just call some people. Does that work? Let's just
make a few calls and see if anyone's experienced anything weird
today."

"We have to know,
Rivet," Jennie said. Rivet stared out the window for what felt like
ages before turning back toward me.

"Okay," he said.
"But I don't have a phone. I couldn't...you know."

I nodded. He'd
missed too many payments. We'd all been there once or twice. I
turned to Jen. "How about you?"

"Yeah," she said.
"I got it."

"Great," I said.
"Start dialing. Mine's upstairs, I'll run and get it."

I took the stairs
two at a time while Jennie pulled her phone from her jeans pocket.
My Droid was lying on the bed. I tried Foley first. He was my
dealer, so I figured if I got him, I could also get something else
to tide the rest of us over for awhile. That would at least cheer
Rivet up. The ringer blipped once then cut to the deep rhythmic
beeps of a busy signal. That was weird. Usually it just went
straight to voicemail if he was using it. I tried my sister next,
but got the same thing.

"Anything?" I
yelled down the stairs.

"It's all busy,"
Jennie's voice called back up.

"Same," I said,
running back down. "Google something. YouTube. Find some news."

"Data's down," Jen
said immediately. "I already tried."

"TV," Rivet said
robotically.

"I don't have
cable," I said. "Just Netflix." I lifted my phone and punched
Foley's name again, hoping something had changed. Nothing had.

"Okay," I said.
"Rivet was right earlier. Let's not get freaked out about this. We
still don't know anything for sure. Might just be a service
hiccup."

"Do you really
believe that?" Jennie asked pointedly. "I don't know about you
guys, but the coincidences are piling up a little too high for
me."

"Murphy's Law,"
pointed out Rivet. He seemed to be in a daze.

"Could be," I
agreed. "Whatever can go wrong, will. One thing derails, and
suddenly it feels like everything is. But let's be logical here.
We've got food. Power's still on. Last we checked, the water was
still on. Even if it turns out to be something serious, we're good
here for awhile."

"For awhile,
sure." Rivet seemed to snap back from wherever he'd been. "But for
how long?"

I gave him an
appreciative glance. He caught it. With enough time to think, Rivet
always came around on the right side of things. He was smarter than
the junk ever gave him a chance to show.

"What do you
suggest?" I asked, deferring the decision to him.

"First we're going
to fill everything we can find with water. Cups, bottles, buckets.
The bathtub." He snapped his fingers. He wasn't looking at anyone,
just gazing intently at the wall as he spoke. "Definitely the
bathtub; get it full. Just in case we lose water later, you
know."

"Good thinking,"
Jennie said. "A person can only live without water for three
days."

"Where'd you hear
that?" Rivet looked at her sharply.

"I don't know,
Facebook I think."

"In three days
you'll be alive, yeah, if you're pretty healthy, which we're not.
But at the end of two you'll be as good as useless. Even the first
day you'll be feeling like hell."

"What's with the
sudden enthusiasm?" I asked.

"Just thinking, you know. Covering our bases. If this
does
turn out to be, well,
serious, the last way I want to go is dying of thirst."

"Agreed." Jen and
I said it at the same time. We looked at each other and smiled.
Rivet looked annoyed.

"
Then
,"
Rivet said, "we'll go pay a visit to your Old Lady Winters." He was
taking charge, which was the only way he'd be happy about any plan
right now. But it was better than fighting, and I was okay with
letting him lead.

"Sounds good to
me," I said. "Jen?"

She nodded.

"Alright," I said.
"But I'm not going out there without a weapon."

"For the last
time," Rivet's voice was exasperated. "There aren't any zo–"

"I'm with Ray on
this one," Jennie cut him off. "It'll at least make me feel
safer."

Rivet looked back
and forth between us and was about to say something, then seemed to
change his mind. "Okay," he finally said. "Nothing wrong with a
little security."

"Great then," I
said, clapping my hands and standing up. I felt invigorated now
that we had a plan. Anything was better than languishing in my
doubts. I was still riding pretty high, but the edge had worn off
and the heavy feeling was definitely sloping away. It was a perfect
time to get started.

"I'll scrounge for
bottles," I said. "Recycling wasn't supposed to come until next
week; there should be some around."

"I'll get upstairs
and clean the tub out." Jen was following my lead. "I've seen how
Ray lives, and I'm not drinking any water from that without a
bleach scrub first."

We were turning to
leave when we noticed that Rivet hadn't moved.

"You helping out
with this master plan of yours?" I asked.

"Of course, but
first things first." He held out the little brown baggie. "Who's
hungry?"

"I FEEL like an
idiot."

Rivet slapped me
on the shoulder. "You'll be fine, bub. You look like John
Wayne."

We were standing
on the front porch of my house waiting for Jennie to join us. We'd
taken it easy with the dope this time. Just a tiny pinch for each
of us. Maintenance doses, Rivet was already calling it. Even so,
water collection had gotten sloppy. Jennie'd gone upstairs and
scrubbed about a quarter of the tub before giving up and turning on
the faucet, then she'd come back down to help the rest of us fill
every glass, bowl, and coffee mug in my kitchen. Rivet had gotten
this idea to, and I quote, "save counter space" by building a
pyramid out of the filled drinking glasses.

"There," he'd
turned toward us, smile radiant and eyes glassy. "We can just take
what we need from the top and work our way down." But when he
turned back around, his knee bumped the cabinet. For a breathless
moment, the entire shimmering glass structure teetered and it
seemed like it would hold, then it came crashing down. Half the
glasses shattered and water and splintery shards sprayed over the
kitchen floor.

We were in the
middle of yelling about it when Jennie clapped a hand to her mouth
and raced out of the room. Rivet and I both turned toward the sound
of her feet thumping up the stairs. When she came back down, her
face was sheepish and her sneakers were sloshing with every
step.

"Left the tub on
too long," she'd mumbled as she went back to filling up coffee
mugs.

By the time we
finished with the water, we had twelve coffee mugs, seven glasses,
two water bottles, a milk jug, and a bathtub full of water of
questionable quality. We made a unanimous decision to save the tub
for bathing, then set about finding weapons for our dangerous quest
to Old Lady Winters's.

And now here we
were on the porch, waiting for Jennie.

"Seriously," I
said. "An absolute idiot."

"Don't be so hard
on yourself," Rivet was scanning the street for activity. So far,
we hadn't seen a single person or vehicle on the road. My house was
in a quiet suburb that was a tad on the lower edge of middle class.
There weren't any posh community guidelines about stuff like how
short to trim your lawn or where your trash bins had to be placed
on the curb, and most of the residents didn't give much of a shit
about those things anyway.

Directly across
the street from us was a dilapidated yellow bungalow that was
sagging dangerously on its foundation. Could have been sold to a
blind family as a split-level, but even real estate agents didn't
stoop that low in Joshuah Hill, so for the past two years it had
sat empty while its front lawn grew up like a jungle. Most of the
windows had been nailed up, but a few of the boards had been
removed by neighborhood teens and junkheads. Two broken windows in
the front glared out across the street like a pair of menacing
eyes. It had always given me the creeps. I looked away and up the
street, where the houses were in decidedly better condition. That
was where actual families lived.

Down the other way
was an oblong cul-de-sac with a few more vacant homes in various
states of disarray. My house was the first one on the street that
was lived in, and as such it felt at times like there was a plague
creeping up the lane from the cul-de-sac on the right and my home
was next in its path of destruction.

If I was forced to
be honest, my house wasn't in much better shape than any of the
vacant ones.

"What if we
actually run into trouble?" I asked Rivet. I looked down at the
object in my hand. "This won't do anything."

"Poke 'em," Rivet
said, eyes still down the street. "What's that car doing?"

"Where?"

"There at the end,
the truck near the stop sign."

I squinted into
the afternoon sun and saw a little green Ford pickup parked at the
curb near the intersection with Bloomingdale Lane.

"Oh, that's Janet
Wazowski's second car. I think it used to be her husband's. Or
ex's; she's divorced. She uses her Mazda and leaves that one parked
on the street."

Rivet silently
resumed his search.

"They'll be right
up on me before I can even touch them," I spoke into the strained
silence. "Wouldn't a knife or something be better?"

"If there
isn't
anything wrong, a junkie walking down the street with a steak
knife is going to get the cops called on us. And we can't afford
that." He patted the chest pocket of his button-up shirt as if to
prove his point. He'd wanted to bring the junk in exchange for
letting me and Jennie carry weapons. When I'd calmly pointed out
that it wasn't his goddamn place to decide whether
we
could arm ourselves, he'd gotten
sullen and uncooperative, so of course I had to let him have his
way.