Heartland Junk Part I: The End: A ZOMBIE Apocalypse Serial (8 page)

Rivet
—Nine
cans of food (sweet corn, pears, carrots and peas, sweet corn,
black beans, sweet corn, asparagus, tuna, sweet corn). Two
flashlights. One pack of D batteries (seven). One first aid kit.
One steak knife. One shovel. One fireplace poker. One roll of duct
tape (reflective orange). One length of twine. One cigarette
lighter. One magnifying glass. One James Rollins paperback. One
bandana (pink). One can opener. One fork. One spoon. One cooking
pot. One water bottle. One miniature trowel. One pair of plastic
safety goggles.

Me
—Six
cans of food (coincidentally, identical to Jennie's stash). One
meat cleaver. One axe. One cigarette lighter. One bottle of
cabernet sauvignon (dusty).

Duffel
—Seven frozen Lean Cuisines (various flavors). Twelve cans of
Coca-Cola. Twelve cans of food (pears, sweet corn, asparagus,
asparagus, black-eyed peas, okra, sweet corn, peaches, black beans,
tuna, black beans, olives). Scotch tape. Masking tape. One coil of
braided rope. Three steak knives. Three forks. Three
spoons.

Rivet groaned as
he hefted his bulging backpack and slid his shoulders into the
straps. We were at the front door, gathered around Janet's body. An
eggy, sulferous smell had already begun to work its way into the
air around it, and a few black flies were buzzing at its perimeter.
Jennie kept swatting them away from where they were landing on her
blood-tinged head wrap.

"Why'd you need an
extra fork?" I asked Rivet. He looked at me through the safety
goggles. They were that old-fashioned, boxy kind with a white
elastic strap. He'd stretched the pink bandana over his scalp and
tied it in the back. Just a safe, gay pirate.

"In case we get
separated." Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I
grunted. Sure.

"Everybody ready?"
Jennie asked. She was in front, her hand poised over the doorknob.
We'd already moved the shovel that Rivet had wedged behind the
door. I shifted the axe in my hand. It felt good, solid. I nodded.
My other hand held the duffel.

Rivet raised his
shovel over his head and tapped it against the ceiling. "Onward and
upward."

Jennie cracked the
door a smidge. We crowded close, pressing our faces to the
hair-fracture aperture. Rivet bumped his safety goggles into the
doorjamb and cursed.

"Dammit, move
over, Jen," he said, and flung the door wide. Sunlight streamed
into our dark world. Jennie flinched, and so did I. In a little
over an hour, we'd become earthworms, albino denizens of a deep
cave. The sunlight hurt us. I squinted, looked around the empty
yard, and the moment passed. Just another beautiful day in Joshuah
Hill, the hemorrhoid scrunched down America's ass.

I fingered the
jingling key fob we'd unearthed from Janet's back pocket, hoped
again that one of the keys on it matched the Ford, took a deep
breath. "Let's go."

I pushed open the
glass storm door and sprinted across the yard, feeling Jennie and
Rivet behind me. We reached the dusty pickup and I swung around it
to get to the driver's side while Jennie and Rivet fiddled with the
handle near the house.

"Locked!" Jennie
called.

"Working on it."
In the house, I'd singled out three keys that looked right for the
Ford. I tried the first one. It wouldn't even go in. Second one. It
slid into the keyhole below the handle, but wouldn't turn.

"Lock and load,
Rayman," Rivet hissed on the other side of the truck. "Get us in
there."

I thrust the third
key into the hole and tried to turn it. Nothing. I pulled. Shit. It
was jammed. I yanked again, and the key snapped in half, its front
still wedged in the lock.

"Shit!" I
yelled.

"That better be
triumph," Rivet returned.

"I broke it."

"Broke
what?
"
said Jennie.

"The lock, the
key. Shit!"

"Back to the
house," said Rivet. "We'll take the other car." He and Jennie
started across the lawn.

I ran around the
back of the truck to catch up and saw it. God, we were idiots.
"Guys!" I yelled. "Come back." Without waiting, I vaulted the
sidewall and landed in the bed of the truck. Rusty springs squealed
as the truck shrank under my weight. I slipped in the thick
covering of dust, but I caught myself and reached the back of the
cab.

On these older
Fords, there's a sliding window in the rear windscreen. They've got
little plastic latches that lock in place when you slide the window
all the way shut.

This window wasn't
all the way shut.

I dropped my pack
and the duffel and the axe into the bed and, worked my fingers into
the narrow opening, slid the window all the way open, then wormed
through headfirst. The small cab was hot and stuffy from sitting in
the sun, but I was in. My cheek pressed into the hot vinyl seat
cushion, then slid across it as I pulled my legs through the
window. My head left the cushion and thumped the floorboard; my
foot kicked the ceiling.

"Like a swan!"
Rivet cheered. "Way to go, Rayman. Open, open, open."

I reached over and
pulled the inside door handle, disengaging the lock. While Jennie
gently placed her pack into the bed beside mine, Rivet hauled me
right-side up, and then we were all in the cab and Jennie slammed
the door shut and locked it.

The gunshot echo
of the door died in the stuffy air faster than a dream, leaving us
in breathless silence. I scanned the street, the yard, the
neighbors' yards, the intersection, the road beyond.

"Not a single
fucking zombie!" Rivet exclaimed. "Come on!"

Jennie laughed,
the sound loud and genuine. I looked at her and caught the bug. For
the first time today, she looked happy. The chuckle caught in my
throat at first, as if unsure of its destination, then burst free
all the louder because of it. My laugh spurred Jennie into
hysterics, and I joined her. We were way too fucking high for
this.

Rivet made a show of being nonplussed, but Jennie threw her
arms around him, giggling, and he finally cracked a smile. I
realized he still had his bulging pack on his lap and, Jesus,
the
shovel!
Sticking straight up between his knobby legs in the tiny cab.
I lost it again.

"Har har." Rivet
calmed down first, like usual. Jennie and I finally tapered off,
Jennie wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.

"Sorry," Jennie said, smiling. "I guess I just expected...I
don't know. More zombies. After all that. I mean, it was
intense
,
guys. Running all the way to the car. I was scared." She raised her
hand as if she were voting as a member the "scared"
group.

"Me too," I said.
"I had this idea that they were all around us. When that key
broke," I laughed again, "I thought we were goners."

"Speaking of
keys...," Rivet prodded.

After two tries, a
key slid smoothly into the ignition and turned. The engine coughed
to life. The gas gauge read half full; a minor miracle, since I
don't think Janet had driven this truck in months.

"Onward?" I
glanced at Rivet.

"And upward," he
said, peering straight ahead through the goggles.

A left on
Bloomingdale and then a right on River Street had us motoring along
the back way to downtown Joshuah Hill, three and a half miles
away.

As we passed Mrs.
Winters's house, I swear I saw her pull aside a curtain and wave.
She looked just fine.

THERE WASN'T a
single car on the two-lane highway until we were nearly to
Carrborough Street, but near the point the sparse homesteads grew
more dense and transitioned into regular houses, we saw a white
Cadillac SUV on its side in the ditch on the right side of the
road. Jennie was the first to spot it. She sucked in a breath and
held her hand over her open mouth. The undercarriage was facing the
road, facing us, and the two top tires were spinning slowly, as if
the accident had just happened. There was nobody in sight, but I
slowed anyway as we approached.

"Should we stop?"
I asked. I brought the truck to a crawl. The Cadillac was directly
beside us now. Exhaust rolled in ghostly plumes from the tailpipe.
The engine was still running.

"No," said Rivet
with finality.

"What if someone
needs help?" Jennie argued. "They could be hurt. You know they
can't call an ambulance."

"What if 'someone'
turned freak-a-boo behind the wheel?" Rivet said. "We're leaving
them. Go ahead, Ray."

"I don't see
anybody..." I said. Fuck it. I dropped the brake pedal, then
shifted into park and cranked up the parking brake below my door.
"I'm gonna look. Real quick. You guys stay here."

"No, you're not,"
said Rivet. I gave him a sidelong glance, then opened the door and
stepped out.

"Be careful, Ray,"
Jennie called. "Don't get close to it." I nodded. Rivet scooted
sideways to the steering wheel. "You need to run, go to that side
and I'll gun it." Jennie slid into the middle of the bench seat,
leaving the passenger side open. I grabbed the axe from the bed of
the truck and walked toward the Cadillac.

It had fallen at
an angle to the road, putting the hatchback door at the rear
closest to the asphalt. The driver's side door was pressed into the
ground. The pavement ahead of the pickup was scuffed and streaked,
so I figured the Cadillac must have come from town. Was it worse
over there? More people than our little neighborhood, that was for
sure. We should be heading the other direction, away from town,
into the plains. Find a farmhouse somewhere far away from everyone
else. Hole up. Wait it out. I shouldn't be here, shouldn't be out
of the truck.

Beyond the wrecked
Cadillac was a white, three-story bungalow. The Cadillac's grill
had dug a wide, earthen trench through the edge of their scrubby
front lawn. No sign of movement from the house, nor from the
neighbors adjacent to either side. Where the hell was everybody?
Not home? Scared to come out? Freak-a-boos already, trapped in
their own homes?

Gripping the axe
in both hands, muscles tensed, I stepped to the roof side of the
toppled vehicle. I could hear the engine idling under the hood, but
that, the prattle of the Ford behind me, and my heavy breathing
were the only sounds. Every other noise seemed to have been
whitewashed into oblivion. The Cadillac had a sunroof, but first I
stooped to look through the rear window in the hatchback. Sunlight
streamed through the passenger windows, now at the top of the
vehicle, illuminating most of the interior. I didn't see anybody,
didn't see any movement.

I moved along the
side of the Cadillac to look through the sunroof. Beyond the glass,
I could see the two front seats and the middle seat behind them as
if from a top-down view. All were empty. I breathed out and
loosened my white-knuckle grip on the axe. Blood flowed back into
my fingers, into my limbs.

"Nothing here," I
called, turning back to the truck. Jennie and Rivet were watching
me through the window. I started toward them. "Let's go."

Jennie screamed, and my first thought was that something had
gotten into the truck. She banged the window, pointed at me.
Get in here.
Help.
I started
to run just as something grabbed my ankle and pitched me foreward
into the grass.

I shut my eyes
reflexively as my face smashed the spindly grass, saving my
eyeballs from the dry, needlelike blades, and then rolled onto my
back and kicked out. My tennis shoe smacked a face. The grip on my
ankle loosened. I scrabbled back, hands and feet. Axe? Shit, the
axe. The man was on his belly, legs still out of sight behind the
hood of the Cadillac. Crawling toward me. Teeth gnashing. A long
red crack split his forehead, blood still wet, dripping. Over his
eyes, blinding him.

He got his knees
under him and lunged, hands out, chest sliding over crunching
grass. His teeth nipped the end of my pinky and I jerked back. I
heard wet phlegm rattling in his throat, saw bits of grass scabbed
to the wet blood on his face. His feet kicked, sliding, gripping.
He lunged forward again and I kicked straight forward, snapping his
head back. I rolled away from the Cadillac and lurched to hands and
knees. In another world, Jennie screamed. An engine roared. Tires
squealed. Were they leaving me? Was Rivet leaving me? I couldn't
look. The axe was in the dirt under the man. He ignored it and
clawed at the SUV's roof, using it to pull himself up. He gained
his feet, then dropped back to his knees and gripped his face
tightly. An immense full of howl of pain and sorrow surged out
between his fingers, rattling my bones.

Watching that
moment of profound struggle, I felt a wave of pity wash over me. He
was still fighting it. Whatever darkness was rising to claim him
from within, he still had a sliver of sanity left. We could help
him, I realized. Maybe I could hold him still long enough to get
some pills down his throat. He wasn't gone yet.

The man crumpled lower, dug his elbows into his ribs and
touched his forehead to the ground, fingers clawing over his eyes,
now merely whimpering. Jesus, it was awful.
Get the pills, Ray. You can save
him.

An engine roared again, and the Ford
soared
over the ditch beside the road and struck the
man. The truck crunched into the Cadillac and scraped along the
roof, metal shrieking, leaving a thick red smear across the white
SUV and a garden-hose splash of crimson all the way to the top of
the roof.

It was over as
abruptly as it started, but the sight of the blood carved a deep
scar inside me. Maybe my empathy tied us together in some invisible
way, me and that man. Twined a thread of our souls into a single
strand. I wonder if, if our world hadn't gone to shit, someone
would have found a way to measure empathy, quantify it, like
electricity or radio waves.