Heartland Junk Part I: The End: A ZOMBIE Apocalypse Serial (5 page)

Jennie slapped
open the screen door and joined us on the front porch. Rivet
ignored her, and she watched him scan the street for a moment
before looking down at my hand.

"Is that a
ballpoint pen?" she asked.

"Yeah. It'll
work," I said defensively.

"What're you going
to do with it? Sign a check to make them leave?"

"I can, you know,
poke them with it. Gouge out an eye."

"Better than
this." She hefted a bright yellow umbrella still in the store's
plastic wrapping from when I'd bought it years ago. I noticed she
stood with me between her and Rivet. "We ready?"

"Ready as I'll
ever be," I said. "Let's go, Rivet."

Finally, he turned
to us. The sun was dipping slightly in the sky behind him and from
the left, outlining his features in severe golden light. One eye
glinted at us from the soft shadow cast by the bridge of his nose.
He looked almost majestic, in a disheveled way. Somehow, that
chipped wooden porch with peeling paint felt like a dock at the end
of the world. A neighborhood I'd known my entire adult life had, in
the blink of an eye, become an unknown, a dangerous realm where
shadows held killers and danger lurked just beyond the visible.

Then the moment
passed and I couldn't help feeling foolish. It was just a regular
afternoon and we were taking a stroll down the street. My
imagination would do me in one of these days. I brushed past him
and started down the cracked concrete walkway to the street.

"Come on," I said
over my shoulder. I heard the creak of the wooden stairs as they
followed me down.

On the street, I
cut left, heading toward Bloomingdale Lane and Janet Wazowski's
lone green pickup. There were no sounds on the street, the entire
neighborhood seemingly caught in a muffled hush. Even the footfalls
of our rubber sneakers sounded mute on the asphalt. Jennie and
Rivet quickened their pace to catch up and sidled up beside me, one
on each side. Maybe it was the surreal atmosphere that had
descended over the afternoon, but the three of us floated away from
the curb and, in a straight line, marched boldly up the center of
the street.

Was the world already ours? It felt that way. I'd be lying if
I said there wasn't a little thrill working up my spine. I was a
child again, playing guns and swords in the sparse woods down by
the trickling creek full of runoff from the uptown manufacturing
plants. Crouched in the weeds, every sense tuned for the crack of a
twig or the whisper of fabric sliding across a tree trunk, Nerf gun
spray-painted black at the ready in my tiny hands. Ready to take
down the approaching threat, the enemy at the gates, the
world
, if
that's what it took.

A calming sense of
nostalgia settled over me as Jennie, Rivet, and I paraded down the
middle of the deserted street, pen and umbrella and drugs at the
ready. Why had we even grown up in the first place? We hadn't asked
for it, for this so-called gift of adulthood. Life had been so much
simpler as boys, before the jobs and worries. Before the junk. Just
me and Rivet making adventures as we went along, never stopping to
appreciate the opportunities laid before us in a wide swathe. The
future was distant, and we were young. We had only to conjure a
dream to make it true.

You learn a lot
growing up in a small town, but one thing you never learn is how to
really experience something. To us, Joshuah Hill was a jumbled
canvas onto which countless generations had tried to paint their
own Rockwell of normal life. Kids laughing in washtubs, a happy dog
sneaking away a sock. Smiles, nostalgia, infinite shades of dusty
brown. It wasn't real, though. That was the problem. None of those
paintings stuck; they just smeared under each new rain and left the
canvas a little dirtier, a little more worn, than before. Nobody
ever, truly gave a shit about Joshuah Hill, so as the years passed,
nothing actually changed.

The junk was our
whitewash. Just our own version of it, like so many others that had
come before it. Painted it clean, like. Ready for our own
projections. Maybe that's why it was so easy to get into the stuff.
After awhile of hopscotching from one part-time to another, the car
wash, the washed up bowling alley, hardass Mr. Collins's general
store, you run out of steam, and you run out of options. Every
job's just the same picture with a fresh coat of watercolor.

Truth is, we
sucked at life. We grew up with starry eyes filled with cities and
lights, but those visions eventually faded. Postcards and movie
sets. They weren't real. Couldn't be, to us. Life doesn't always
begin in Joshuah Hill, but that's where it ends. We have the
cemetery to prove it.

Rivet was humming,
on my left. I told him to shut up and he told me to put it in
writing. I jammed the pen in my pocket, incensed. I peeked into
Janet Wazowski's pickup as we passed, then scanned the shuttered
windows of the house behind it. Everything was empty, dead. The
street, the houses. Not even dogs were barking.

"Hold it," said
Jennie as we neared the Bloomingdale intersection. "You guys see
that?"

"Why aren't there
any birds?" Rivet asked, head tilted up. "The sky, the power lines.
Where the fuck did they go? Here, pigeon, pigeon, pigeon..."

"Look, guys. Back
here," Jennie insisted, ignoring Rivet and backpedaling a few feet
to the old pickup. "See that?"

There's an active
sandstone quarry up north of Joshuah Hill. Most kids my age,
twenties or so, they'd be finding their careers up there about this
time. They blast once or twice a week, and the fallout is this fine
particle dust that settles over everything in Joshuah Hill in a
thin, brown layer like a sugar dusting. You don't sweep every day,
the dust builds up and gets over everything, on the counters, in
the cushions. Shades of brown, right? So this truck we were looking
at, you could tell it's green by the sides, but since Janet never
used it, the hood and cab roof had accumulated about a quarter-inch
of sandstone dust, making it into a half-hearted chameleon trying
to blend in with the street.

And right on the
edge of the hood, down in front where the metal meets the
headlight, was a long, smeared handprint in the dust that showed
the green metal beneath. A little chill ran up my back and I
reached into my pocket to grip my trusty BIC.

"So, what?" Rivet said from behind us. "I swear, you guys are
jumping at every—
BOO!
" He
shouted it, leaping forward. Jennie jerked visibly. Rivet
chuckled.

"Fuck you, Rivet!" Jennie shouted. "Why don't you take a bite
out of my
fucking face
again! Go ahead, get it over with. I'm so done with this,
both of you. I'm going home."

"Jen," I said,
trying to keep my voice low and reassuring. "We have to stay
together. Rivet's an asshole, but he was just kidding. See? He's
sorry." I arched my eyebrows at Rivet, who mumbled something that
could have passed for an apology in a thorazine clinic.

"He bit. My ear,"
said Jennie. She was shaking, and her eyes were reflecting the
light more than they had a moment ago. "Maybe I was in shock
before, but you know what? That little fact is starting to hit home
real quick. He's a quack, a real bitchtits psycho. I guess you
don't know, Ray. Don't even know what your friend is really like.
You know what he said to me when we were dating? He said..."

"Jennie," Rivet
cut in. "I'm sorry, right? I said that. Can you calm down before
you say something you don't mean?"

"I damn well mean it,
Ritchie
." Rivet twisted his little stud earring, something he always
did when he was nervous. Whatever was happening between them right
now, this wasn't the best time. I saw the handprint on the Ford's
hood again out of the corner of my eye. I was nervous, too, but for
a different reason.

"How about this?"
I offered. "We head back to the house for awhile, just to clear our
heads. Sit down. Think. Have another hit." I eyeballed Rivet, sure
that the last would get his attention, but he kept glancing at
Jennie and twisting, twisting that little stud. "We shouldn't be
arguing out in the open like this."

Jennie rounded on me. "You too, Ray. Give it a rest with the
zombie thing. We got freaked out, but get this: We were high!" she
yelled. "That doesn't happen. Rivet's just off his meds again.
That's
it
."

"...meds?" I asked
Rivet. "What's she talking about."

"Like she said, she's high," Rivet said. "Let's get
go—
fuck
. What
was that?"

"It wasn't funny
the first time," Jennie glowered.

"No, there's
somebody in the house. Janice's house, there."

"Janet," I
corrected.

"Whatever. There
was a face in that little window, on the door. Someone's watching
us."

His words hit us
slowly, like something brushing your ankle before you realize it's
a hand under your bed. I squinted at the window, but didn't see
anything. The lights were off inside, and the glare was all wrong.
I could have imagined a million faces in that tiny square of glass,
none of them real.

"Back to my
house," I said. "Something's not right. Janet works weekdays."

"Maybe she's sick
today," Jennie said. "Or maybe Rivet's an asshole."

"Come on..." I
urged.

"Guys..." Rivet
whispered. "It's still there."

I squinted again,
puzzling past the shapes and reflections, and I saw it: Just the
half-dome of a pale, partially shadowed face and one wide eye.
Staring straight at us. I stepped back involuntarily. I couldn't
tell if it was Janet Wazowski.

"Christ," I
breathed. "My house. Let's go."

"Let's check it
out," Rivet said.

Jennie looked fit to strangle a hog. "Of all the dumb,
dipshit,
bullshit
suggestions, Rivet."

"I'll just knock
and call a 'halloo,' " Rivet said. He was already walking across
the lawn.

"Rivet," Jennie and I both hissed. I knew what he was doing.
Knew it and hated him for it. He was getting back at Jennie for
bringing up the medication, whatever that was about. He was halfway
across the lawn now, strolling up like a neighbor for a cup of
sugar. I couldn't see anything through the window anymore,
but
someone
was in the house, and I'm not good at much, but I'm terrible
at shaking a feeling I've been having all day.

"Ahhh," I intoned
indecisively, glancing at Jennie.

"Don't you even
think about it, Ray," she warned. She'd backed up a few steps and
edged sideways so the pickup stood between her and the house.

"But
what
if?
" I said.
"Isn't that always the question? You told me that in eighth grade.
What if? And...shit. Two's better than one." I took off across the
dead lawn in a brisk trot, covering the distance quickly to catch
up with Rivet just as he ascended to the cracked stone
stoop.

"Heidy ho," he
said softly, failing miserably at nonchalance. He was twisting his
earring hard enough to get a friction burn and staring holes
through the door. The window, clearer now that we were closer, was
empty.

"She gets it,
Rivet," I whispered. "You made your point. Game's over."

"Game's never
over, Rayman," he replied. I cursed him silently. It was our
childhood goodbye when we parted ways at dusk after playing in the
woods after school.

"I hate you," I
said, but without feeling. He smiled sideways at me. I couldn't
help grinning back. "Just get it over with."

"Halloooo-
ooo
,"
Rivet crooned, then rapped loudly on the door. Inside, the muffled
echoes faded quickly into the shadows, as if they'd collapsed into
a pile of black velvet. Nothing moved on the other side of the
door.

"There," I said. "Nobody home.
Now
let's go."

I turned away just
as the door creaked open.

"RAYMOND, isn't
it? Can I help you?"

Janet Wazowski was
heavy in the way you figure a retired linebacker's heavy. She
wasn't round, just thick from top to bottom, like a barrel someone
screwed a couple fence posts to the bottom of to act as legs, then
topped up with the kindest manakin head they could find. No neck,
just the head, sort of perched there on her shoulders.

I'd only ever
spoken to Janet a few times, mostly when I was downtown working the
register at Collins Hardware, but she'd always struck me as one of
those people with a genuine streak of kindness. One of the other
part-timers at the hardware store, Skinny Lenny, called her Janet
Frankenstein once and I'd threatened to take him out back and feed
him a few knuckles if he ever said it again. He did, so I did, and
he kicked my ass. Lenny was a smackhead, too, just not one of the
decent ones. I doubted he'd really been born, just crawled from an
asshole pit somewhere down in the Meadows. Dick Collins fired him
later for taking an early bonus from the register. Junkies were
such lowlifes sometimes.

I turned back
quickly at Janet's voice, ready to apologize for interrupting her,
and froze.

She looked a mess.
Pale face, sweaty. Bloodshot eyes. Deep wrinkles. She was in her
forties, but right now she looked like she could have been
collecting her pension. Despite her large frame, she had these
twiggy little arms and they were shaking like a papery cicada shell
in a high wind. Even so, she smiled at us and asked again:

"Anything I can
help you kids with?"