THE COLLAPSE: Swantown Road (18 page)

Before falling back asleep, Stephen invited Pharoah the Protector to join him on the bed.  Tarra might be upset about it, maybe not.  But Stephen didn’t care.  The dog would keep the demons away.  Even if Pharoah left the bed to help investigate along with whoever was patrolling the homestead, the thought of him being there was enough. 

Stephen also made a mental note to ask Fish for a
huge
favor the next day.  

*****

A very sweaty Fish struggled a bit as he dragged Mickey’s cold, stiff, awful body by the feet out to the rectangular hole that he had dug in the Kessler back yard as requested by Stephen.  He glanced at Pharoah, who was sitting near the dirt pile adjacent to the grave, watching him curiously. 

“Want to give me a hand, if you’re not busy?”  Fish asked the dog. 

Pharaoh simply continued to watch.

“No?  Okay bud, no problem!  I’ll do it myself!  All by myself.”  Fish huffed, panted and laughed all at the same time. 

Fish called for Stephen just as the grisly corpse landed with a macabre
thump
as it met with the super moist and very chilly February-in-Washington-State soil at the bottom of the grave.  To Fish, the gruesome body was just another piece of trash. 
Good riddance.  I never liked you, anyway.  And, for the love of God, you fucking REEK!

Stephen came outside, he just wanted to see his nemesis one last time, defeated, at the bottom of the hole before his loyal best friend covered him up.  Tarra joined her husband for support, but made the Kays stay in the house.  She knew that Stephen only needed that one last thing for him to be right again.  Closure.

Chapter 19 – Terrible Things Happen

Once the burial was complete, Fish cleaned up with some of the cold hot tub water and readied himself.  He was anxious to get out in the new world to find some batteries.  Almost
too
anxious.  Stephen and Tarra had walked him out to the motor pool in the back yard.  He wanted to take his own monster truck, but Stephen protested.

“How much gas do you have left in there?”  He asked.

Fish replied, “A little over three-quarter tank.  I hardly drove it around at all on base.”

“We need to conserve that.  Take the Prius instead.”  Stephen suggested.

“Aw, c’mon!  I don’t want to take that go-cart!”  Fish argued.  Tarra laughed, but gave Fish a mean look in defense of her beloved hybrid.

“Ok, fine.”  Fish whined.  Then looked at both the Alexanders and said, “Who’s coming with me?”

Stephen and Tarra looked at each other, both shaking their head “no” at each other silently in agreement that neither of them would accompany Fish into the unknown.

“You’re on your own, buddy.  We can’t leave the Kays.”  Stephen answered.

Fish shrugged and said, “Good point.  Well, I’m outta here.”  Then he muttered under his breath as he walked toward the car, “By myself, again, just like burying the body next door.”

“What did you say, fool?”  Tarra yelled.

“Nothing.  Bye!  Love you guys!”  Fish replied with his infamous grin, and waved to them after he dropped his M-4 into the passenger side and got into the tiny vehicle.  He immediately slid the seat all the way back to accommodate his length. 
Was a midget driving this thing?
  Fish joked to himself.

“Love you, too!”  Stephen called back happily and waved as Fish crawled up the driveway in the Prius and took a right onto Swantown Road.  He even used his turn signal, for some odd reason.

Tarra said to her husband as they watched Fish depart, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Not sure.  What are you thinking?”  Stephen replied, curiously.

“That he’s going straight to Connie’s place.”

“Yup.  Either that or Chief Worts’ house.  Or both.”  He chuckled.

*****

The Alexanders had speculated correctly.  Fish’s first stop was the Constantine place.  He had debated going back to his own apartment to try to salvage whatever he could.  But he hardly had any food, and what he did have only consisted of a couple microwaveable meals in the freezer, which would have spoiled without electricity.  He wondered if his place had been ransacked, and guessed that it probably already had been.  Oh well.  Good thing he had packed up all his clothes and stuff for Stephen’s place before the shit hit the fan.

The apartment building that Connie had lived in contained sixteen units.  He almost was unable to get into the parking lot due to all the garbage and junk that was scattered everywhere throughout the lot.  Why were people so lazy and nasty? 
Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean that you have to act like it!
He thought to himself, disgusted, as he plowed the nose of the Prius in between two large, full trash bags and parked.  He shouldered his M-4 rifle as he left the vehicle and cautiously approached the apartment’s entryway, stepping over all the shit on the ground.

All was quiet until Fish had entered the building and took the stairs up to the second floor.  A bedraggled man and a woman emerged from a unit down the hall to investigate Fish’s presence, each armed with large butcher knives, but hastily scurried back inside their unit once they spotted Fish with his M-4 rifle.  He didn’t even need to point it at them. 

Connie’s door was wide open, it looked like as if it had been busted in.  The entire place had been ransacked for all it was worth.  There was no sign of her, the baby, or her greasy-ass husband.  Elsa’s apartment next door was also vacant and vandalized.  Fish half-heartedly looked around both places, sifting through the scattered effects on the floor for some batteries, and found nothing.  There likely wasn’t going to be anything of value in any of those abandoned units.  He was surprised that the man and the woman he had seen earlier in the hallway were still even living there.  How were they surviving?  

Fish was disappointed, but quickly left to carry out the rest of the mission.  He wondered if the Constantines had both went back to Texas.  Connie’s car wasn’t in the parking lot anywhere, that Fish could tell.  Traveling with a baby would have been a bitch, though.  Especially with everything that was going on in the country.

The next objective was Operation Worts.  When Fish was still on base, he had acquired Chief Worts’ address from one of the personnel recall rosters in the drawers of Stephen’s old desk.  Apparently Stephen’s replacement had kept everything in the same order that Stephen did.  Of course he did!  Stephen was a legend around there!

Fish proceeded through Oak Harbor toward the address.  There were hardly any vehicles traveling about, it was eerie. There were TSOSs all over town, but quite a few of the homes looked abandoned.  Most of the trash bags along the streets were busted open, obviously some desperate souls, both animal and human alike, have had their way with them.  Seagulls had taken over most of the roads, they were everywhere, hopping around without fear, happily pecking away at all the rain-flattened garbage strewn about. 

Fish saw the actual desperation for himself when he spotted a man and his two boys searching through some newly opened garbage bags along a curb.  How sad.  All three of them had stopped scavenging and kept an eye on Fish in the Prius as he drove past them.  They looked so downtrodden, yet optimistic at the same time, as if he was going to stop the car and throw them something to eat.  Fish kept his right hand on the 9mm in his shoulder holster as he drove by, just in case any of them felt a little froggy.  None of them appeared to have a weapon of any kind, and seemed harmless enough, so Fish just tossed them a quick, sympathetic wave and carried on.

As Fish got closer to the Worts’ residence, he slowed the Prius as he came across a sedan in the middle of the road.  The driver’s side door was open and Fish noticed a set of legs laid out on the wet street underneath the door.  Fish deducted that a struggle had ensued, since the open door’s window was bashed out. 
Why is this guy just sitting there on the cold street?  Is this a trap?

Fish surveyed his surroundings, and nothing else led him to believe that he was about to be ambushed, yet the unmoving legs on the wet street worried him.  He continued closer, his hand once again on the 9mm.  The Prius was narrow enough to easily sneak past the disabled vehicle and all the garbage along the curb, so he rolled down the automatic passenger side window and pointed the 9mm toward whatever was waiting for him on the other side of the door as he slowly rolled forward.

It was just a body.  A rain-soaked, bloody corpse of a man in his early twenties slumped against the front quarter panel of the sedan.  The thick, gray, hooded jacket he wore was sliced open in several places, and most of it along with the light-colored shirt he wore underneath was completely painted red.  The skin on his hands, neck and face was a purplish, ashy color, but at least his eyes were closed.  Fish was unable to determine whether the man was the attacker or the defender of the vehicle.  The poor bastard was most likely the defender.  He certainly did not go down without a fight, though.

Good lord, is everybody just gonna leave him out there like that?  What kind of people live around here?
  Fish thought.  Maybe they were afraid of whoever had done that to him.  Were they still around?  Fish decided to keep a vigilant, constant guard. 
I’m not going out like that guy.  No way, not me!  Anyone takes a single step toward this go-cart and they’re gonna take two in the chest.  Bottom line.

Fish also decided to keep the driver and passenger side windows open as he continued on, for listening purposes.  Plus, he could shoot straight through them without having to worry about Tarra being pissed off at him for breaking the windows.  With his long right arm, he could lean and reach all the way across the little car and out the window with the 9mm, if he had to.

*****

Back at the Alexander residence, Stephen and Tarra attentively awaited Fish’s return.  Stephen kept checking through the small window in the front door for any sign of him.  Tarra joked as Stephen made another check at the window.

“He’s not coming back any quicker, regardless of how many times you look out that window.”

“I know, I’m just worried about him, that’s all.”  Stephen replied, scanning the scene outside.  Just as he was about to leave the window and return back to the silent living room, he heard a call for help.  Stephen leaned in close to the glass in order to get a better angular look up and down Swantown Road, and spotted a woman pushing a baby stroller, approaching from the north.

“Well, what do we have here?”  Stephen said, quietly, almost to himself.  Tarra had obviously heard the voice outside, and went into the kitchen to lift the blinds.

The woman outside cried out, “Please help!  Anybody, please help me!  My baby is starving!  Help!”  She was screaming toward the Rudehouse place, not aware that it was unoccupied.

Tarra went to Stephen, and said, “I think we should give her something.”  And reached for the doorknob.  Stephen pushed her hand away and slid in front of her with his shoulder.

He said, “No.  This smells wrong.  What is that woman doing with a baby stroller all the way out here?  I’ve never seen her before.”

“Stephen, she has a
baby
, for god sakes.”  Tarra’s heartstrings were being pulled, and she couldn’t control her instinctive, motherly urge to help to a distressed child.

“Does she?  You don’t know that for certain.”  Stephen said, and removed his shoulder from the door as Tarra backed away.  The woman discontinued yelling at the Rudehouse place, and pushed her stroller along Swantown towards the Alexanders’.

“Oh great, here she comes.”  Stephen huffed.

The woman, presumably in her very early twenties, possibly even in her late teens, moved to the small concrete path that led to the Alexander’s front door and howled.

“Please, please, help me!  My baby is going to starve to death without food!  Please!”

Tarra gave Stephen a hard look, and said, “Stephen, we need to help.”

“No, stand fast.  Just wait.”  Stephen said, not looking at Tarra, and continued to watch through the front door window.

“Stand fast?  What the hell?  Am I in the navy now?”  She half-laughed, half-cursed.  Tarra really wanted to grab Stephen by his arm and pull him away from the door to let the woman and her poor starving baby come inside.  Stephen was prepared to let them starve, and that wasn’t right.  Tarra was almost convinced that something had snapped inside Stephen’s head after the assassination of their neighbor, and he had become cold-hearted overnight.

“I can see you people in the windows, please help me!  Please!  What’s wrong with you?”  The girl screamed. 

Suddenly, Pharoah started barking.  It wasn’t the happy, “I’m having a good time right now” kind of barking, either.  It was an angry, defensive one.

Stephen pulled away from the window, looked at Tarra and said, “See, something ain’t right!”  He pointed at the furious dog, but Tarra just sighed with dismay.  She wasn’t convinced, and still wanted to help the unfortunate soul.

The girl with the stroller heard the dog barking inside the house, and her face went flat with either frustration, or fear.  Stephen wasn’t sure which one.  Without saying another word, the young woman turned and pushed the stroller further south along Swantown and away from the Alexanders.  Pharoah stopped barking as the woman departed.  He walked around in a circle twice and then sat down.  Stephen wondered what the two circles meant, and made a mental note to ask Fish about it when he returned. 

“Good boy!”  Stephen praised the dog, and Pharoah returned the compliment with a single head nod.

Stephen watched from the narrow window in the front door and Tarra watched from blinds fingered apart in the kitchen window.  The young lady on the road cautiously looked back over her shoulder before crossing the intersection and pushed east up Loerland Drive toward Eddie Burgess’s driveway.  She nervously glanced back at the Alexander place before resuming her wail for help at the foot of Eddie’s driveway.

“C’mon Eddie, don’t fall for it.”  Stephen said quietly to himself.  Hoping the old war horse would be smart enough to see trouble when it presented itself. 

Tarra complained from the kitchen, “I bet old Eddie isn’t afraid of a little girl with a stroller.”

Stephen waved off the comment and watched in horror as Eddie came out of his house and approached the woman standing next to the stroller with a friendly wave.  He was going to help her.

“No, Eddie, get back in the house, damnit.  You’re smarter than this.”  Stephen said to himself again.  A second later, as Eddie was halfway down his driveway, the girl pulled a handgun from underneath the jacket she was wearing and shot Eddie multiple times in the chest.  He flew onto his back and laid motionless.

“No!”  Tarra screamed and ran for the door.  Stephen blocked it, and Tarra grabbed his arm to pull him away.  That bitch out there just shot Eddie Burgess!  One of the nicest men on the planet!  She needed to pay for that, and Tarra was volunteering to be the cashier.