Heartland Junk Part I: The End: A ZOMBIE Apocalypse Serial (9 page)

All I know was
that I felt a brief connection with that man, and then something
snapped inside me when I saw his insides smear across that
metal.

I rose to my feet,
knees shaking. The truck had stalled in the middle of the lawn,
just past the Cadillac. A rose had bloomed across its windshield.
Rivet tumbled out of the driver's seat and ran toward me, followed
by Jennie. I found it hard to focus on their voices.

"Ray, you
alright?"

"Did he hurt
you?"

"...tried to warn
you."

"Got that
sonofabitch!"

"You don't look so
good."

"Stand up, man.
There."

"Christ, you're
bleeding."

I looked down, but
didn't see any fresh blood, didn't feel any pain. Jennie was
looking at my face, and I wiped the back of my hand across my
forehead. It came away red. I stared. Jesus, it wasn't my blood.
The man had gone off like a cherry bomb in a mud puddle. If I'd
just moved sooner...

"You...son of a
BITCH!" I rounded on Rivet and shoved him. He landed on his ass,
shocked, goggles askew. I jumped on him.

"What the hell,
Ray!" He tried to fight me off. My hands went around his neck.

"Why'd you kill
him!" I roared.

"Ray!" I felt
Jennie's hands on my shoulders. I shrugged them off.

"We could have
saved him," I shouted. "He wasn't completely gone. We could have
saved him. We could have saved him."

The words rolled
out like a mantra, but each iteration found them streaming with
less anger and more sadness. I collapsed to the ground beside
Rivet, crying. "We could have saved him," I sobbed. So much fucking
blood.

"You're welcome, asshole," Rivet stood and brushed himself
off. "Last time I save
your
life." I watched through blurred halos of light as he stormed
back to the truck. Jennie knelt beside me and put a soft hand on my
shoulder.

"We could have saved him," I whispered to her. "Why didn't we
even
try?
"

"We don't know
that, Ray. What if we couldn't? He was trying to kill you, and
Rivet did what he thought was best. He did it for you. No matter
what you're thinking right now, remember that: He did it for
you."

This was all so fucked up. Was there a line with this shit?
Some border where humanity ended and the cannibal psychosis began?
Did any of it
mean
anything? It was all shades of gray, shades of brown, muddy
watercolors, pigment mixing, blending, dreary and dark, as if the
spirit of somber Joshuah Hill itself had possessed its citizens and
spurred them to bloodshed.

Rivet swore loudly
and Jennie and I both looked up at the truck. Rivet tramped around
the the front and lifted the hood, tinkered with something out of
sight, then flopped back into the driver's seat without shutting
the door.

"Piece of shit
won't crank," he called. He hopped back to the exposed engine,
banged something, and tried again. "Nothing. Must have blown
something. Dammit!" He was angry, and I had the idea that he was
taking his anger at me out on the truck. I got up to help, already
feeling foolish about my outburst.

"Leave it, Ray,"
he said. "It's shot."

"I'm sorry,
Rivet," I ventured.

"Save it." He
pulled my pack out of the truck and thrust it at my chest, then
grabbed Jennie's. The cat poked its head out of the half-open
zipper and mewed. Jennie trotted over and lifted it out before
taking the bag from Rivet.

"Who's a brave
kitty?" she cooed. The cat purred and nuzzled her neck. Why
couldn't I be that calm?

Rivet came out of
the cab with his overstuffed backpack and slung it on, then leaned
in for the shovel. He jammed it into the dirt and retied his
bandana, which had come loose in our struggle. Since I had the
least to carry, I grabbed the duffel.

"Titan's hungry,"
Jennie announced. "Anybody up for a lunch break?"

Rivet let out a
slow sigh of frustration, clearly eager to get into town. My own
stomach felt empty. Lunch sounded good. "What do you say, Rivet?
Quick lunch?"

Rivet steadfastly
ignored me. He said, "I guess I could eat, Jennie." Whatever, I
figured. Let him stew. He had a right to be mad at me.

Lunch agreed upon,
we broke into the house right beside us and microwaved a pile of
the Lean Cuisines, washed down with apple juice and milk from the
refrigerator. The frozen dinners were already getting soggy in the
duffel, so Rivet consented to trashing the rest of them. We
replaced the space with a dozen cans of beef stew. Rivet made a
quick search of the premises, but all he found was a bottle of
outdated antibiotic ear drops. Some people just don't get sick, I
guess.

"Find any
cigarettes?" I asked, comfortably full from the meal and aching for
a tobacco aperitif.

"Please tell Raymond I didn't find any cigarettes," Rivet
said politely to Jennie. She rolled her eyes and said, "And here I
thought
I
was your girlfriend. Do
you guys think we should look through the rest of the houses around
here? Could be some good stuff."

Rivet shook his head. "Waste of time. We hit that pharmacy,
we can do anything. Houses we're just pissing. No, we can head back
here for the night, but
after
we load up at Dinkins. One good thing: At least the power's
holding up."

As he said the
words, the overhead lights winked off, plummeting the kitchen into
shadow. Without the unheard hum of the refrigerator, the silence
quickly grew eerie.

"Just had to say
it. No, Titan, that's my food. Here, over here. Here kitty."

"We can still come
back," I said. "At least we know we can get in and there's nobody
else in here. We can also leave most of the food and the cat.
They'll probably slow us down."

Rivet nodded
agreement before he remembered that he was mad at me. A short time
later, we all shouldered our lightened packs and headed out on
foot.

THE URBAN district
of Joshuah Hill covers roughly two square miles and, due to the
ineffable wisdom of our founding fathers, somehow got mapped into
the rough shape of a lumpy pear on its side with a worm climbing
out the bottom. We came in on foot from the west, parallel to the
old railway farther north and Joshuah Creek to the south, following
River Street past the remaining suburban homes until the familiar
sight of the town park crawled into sight on our left. The hot sun
beamed down just behind us, pooling our shadows onto the pavement
under our feet and making me sweat. Rivet lifted his safety goggles
to his forehead and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. I
was getting thirsty, but didn't want to bother stopping until we'd
got what we came for.

Ahead, River Street continued into the fat bottom of the pear
and became Joshuah Hill's main street. I think its name was
supposed to change to 1
^st
Street somewhere in there—we had a
2
^nd
and 3
^rd
streets—but I guess someone forgot to mention that to the
sign-makers, so it was River all the way through. Of course, there
wasn't a river within fifty miles of us either, so it's possible
that nobody gave a shit either way when it came to naming the
avenues and byways of our quaint little community.

The park began on
the town side of Carrborough and ran about a block along the
northern edge of River Street. On the edge of the park closest to
the road was a small duck pond that cut under Safehaven Road and
nudged all the way up to Collins Hardware, and behind the pond were
several dozen green sugar maples, pecans, poplars, and white ash
that provided shading for the manicured lawn below. Normally, a few
elderly couples walked the mulch pathways or people-watched on the
hickory benches, but today the place was silent. Even the ducks and
squirrels seemed to have taken refuge.

We trolled up
River past the park, somehow back in the middle of the road,
astride the double yellow lines. By now we should be seeing the
murmur of activity that kept downtown Joshuah Hill alive during the
work week, but as with all else, the place was draped in
silence.

On the other side of River, opposite the park, was a steep
gully that led to a runoff ditch, then rose up again to a patch of
woods. It runs through a cement culvert under Troutman Boulevard,
then falls away from the road to make room for a row of small shops
and businesses—a barbershop, a delicatessen, a nail salon. Just
past the salon and the hardware store, 3
^rd
Street cut up from the south and turned
into 2
^nd
on the north side of River. Beyond that, we had the graystone
courthouse followed by the sheriff's department on our left, and
The Antiquey Torch, Dinkins Pharmacy, and H.R. Gibson & Sons
Law Firm in a pretty row on our right.

Parked cars hulked
in angled spaces on either side of River, and Collins Hardware's
little lot was packed to its four-car capacity, yet not a single
person was in sight.

"It's like a ghost
town," Jennie said. "God, I wish we hadn't left Titan. This is
creepy."

"It's hot enough
to bake a duck," Rivet said. "What is this, August?"

"July," I
corrected, not really thinking about it. Rivet's head was usually
weeks ahead or weeks behind, but rarely in the present. I was used
to it.

I could see the
courthouse about two hundred yards farther up now, and I knew
Dinkins was just opposite. Almost there.

Maybe it was the
heat, making me sweat. The walk, pumping my blood faster. I
stumbled. Jennie caught my arm and hauled me up, never breaking
stride.

"Whoa there,
cowboy. You're cut off," she joked. "All good?"

I
nodded, blinking away sweat. The domed top of the courthouse
dimmed, then came back, then seemed to
topple
, and my knee hit the pavement again. The road
tilted sideways. Was that a person ahead? Walking up a wall? No,
not a wall. Just River. My head lolled straight, and Joshuah Hill
corrected itself. Yeah, a person. I squinted. God, I was sweating.
Heat stroke? We'd only been out here fifteen minutes, couldn't
be.

Dimly, I heard
Jennie calling out, heard my axe clatter to the hard ground. Her
voice sounded so sweet, a spoon dipped in honey. Calling my name.
Calling...calling Rivet's name. Helping Rivet. I forced my head to
turn as if it were encased in cement, and saw Rivet on his knees,
one hand against the graytop, one hand pressed to his forehead.

Vitalaaaa.

What was Jennie
saying? Why was she whispering? When had the sky gone cloudy? It
was sunny just a moment ago. I shut my eyes, then snapped them open
in horror. A streak of painless white flashed across my vision,
followed by shadow, eroding the sunlit day from its frayed edges
and seeping across the buildings.

You are one.

Whispers, billions
of them filling my skull with demon flutters. A pit so deep and
black it seemed to take form, falling away inside me, pitching me
into it.

"
Ahhh!
" I
cried out and dug my thumbs into my eyeballs, willing the pain to
bring me back. My cheek was on hot asphalt, rough and gritty. Feet
were coming toward us up ahead, shambling in our direction. I
couldn't focus on them. Jennie was shouting, at me, at Rivet. She
hefted my head off the pavement and shoved something into my mouth.
I spat it out and caught her thin wrist. It wriggled in my grasp,
and I stared at the veins pulsing blue under Jennie's white flesh.
Ripe, juicy. Imagined the blood pulsing beneath, the way it would
taste, sticky in my throat. The colors of her flesh grew brighter.
The world beyond muted into gray.

Vitala.

A nibble. A taste,
and I'd be on my way. Hadn't eaten in hours. Just a taste. I
brought Jennie's palm to my lips and something smashed into my head
from the side. I let her go and toppled onto my back, stared into
the full glare of the sun, blinded. Hands tore my chin down and
shoved small, soft pebbles into my mouth. I gnashed at the hand and
bit through the pebbles. They crumbled, flooding my mouth with
bitter chalk. I breathed in and some kind of dust sucked into my
lungs, making me cough. I forgot the hand and rolled to my elbows,
hacking into the street, and the sudden motion brought me back into
a glimmer of sanity.

Pills. Swallow.
It was all dry grit on my tongue, but I slathered as much
saliva as I could and gulped down the thin paste. Gagged.
CONSUME
.
Swallowed again. My brethren were close. Gotta warn Jennie. Have to
join them. I could feel them coming as if they were a part of me,
streaming out of all the dark shops and stores. I squinted when
they squinted in the sudden light, saw Jennie and me and Rivet as
if through their eyes. Jennie was an old, and must die. Of course,
it was so clear.
Jennie is an abomination. She must be rendered. Nothing must
remain.

I lunged out at
Jennie's ankle, but the bitch was too quick and skipped away, then
kicked me in the head. I couldn't come to grips with myself, my
body felt foreign, alien, robotic. Useless. Why was my mouth so
dry? I spit, snarled. Rose to my feet. The old was in front of me.
It held a knife, no matter. Consume the flesh. Live in Vitala. I am
one. Behind the old, another of my brethren stood and reached out.
The old was unaware. It focused on my approach. Jabbed with the
knife. I felt none of it. Hunger, nothing more. Hunger to rend the
abomination. Only then will I be sated.