The Great Wreck (35 page)

I
sat down on the bed and pulled out a jug of water and drank deeply. I set the
jug down and saw a few cans of spam, soup, and tuna with a tiny packed of
mayonnaise and some plastic spoons and forks. In the corner was a toilet. An
actual toilet! I wondered if it worked.

I went over and
flushed it and to my surprise the water whooshed down and was refilled again so
I undid my zipper and peed for what seemed like an hour, zipped up and flushed
the toilet.

I
felt almost human as I laid back on the cot and listened to James breathing and
mumbling in his cell. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying but it
sounded a lot like, “Goddamn retarded ass jockeys. Put me in a fucking cage?
I’ll put
you
in a cage. Along with
your
groceries
. And your mother.
Maybe your cousins, too. Goddam goat-fuckers…”

I
chuckled and hoped they never let that fucker out. I actually felt safer than I
had for months. I had a concrete wall on one side and three walls of bars
around me locked tight. There was no way the dead could get me. If they got in
I might die of thirst or hunger but I wouldn’t be eaten. It was cold comfort
but it was better than nothing. With that thought in my head, I fell into a
deep sleep.

I
woke up sometime later and saw that James had managed to crawl up on his cot. I
ate a can of spam and saw that the three men had left us alone. I finished my
can of spam and heard Marti came in. She pulled a chair up to my cell, spun it
around, and sat down in it with her legs spread.

Holy
crow.

Her
cutoffs were so short that I could see, well,
almost
to Christmas. If she spread her legs any further, I might
have trouble concentrating. She looked me up and down for a full minute.

That
made me nervous, those steely blue-grey eyes judging me, evaluating me as
though I was a horse to be bought or a steak to be cooked and eaten.

“Is
my fly open?” I finally said.

She
looked directly at my crotch for another good, long spell, “Nope.”

“Do
I have a second head growing out of my shoulder?”

“Nope.
Just wondering what you story is.”

“Same
as yours, I imagine,” I replied, “One day going to school, the next dead start
eating the living. Family dies, friends die, all of Los Angeles dies, the world
dies, and I get stuck with the one in a hundred million, fucking psycho who’s
still left alive. We get out of LA and head east. We hear there’s a place
called Sandia where a safe haven’s been set up. So here we are.”

Marti
nodded, “That’s about right. Except my mom and my little sister are alive. They
are already up at Sandia. They were up there when the shit broke out. I have
two brothers in New York that are probably dead.

“Your
dad?”

Marti
just shook her head.

“What’s
his story?” she asked pointing towards the prone figure of James.

“I
don’t really know. I don’t really care. Over the past few days I have
determined that James and I will be parting ways as soon as I can arrange it.”

Marti
nodded again, then stood up, “Doc will be down when he can to give you a look
over, then he’ll let you guys out.”

“Marti?
Don’t let James out,” I said.

“That’s
up to Doc,” she said as she made her way to the door.

“Hey!”
I called. Marti stopped and looked over her shoulder, “Did I pass?”

Marti
smiled and said, “Yep. See you later.”

I
smiled too and lay back on the bunk. As I made my plans to ditch James, I
surprised myself a fell back into a dreamless sleep for hours.

*
     
*
     
*

Sometime
later I woke up to James screaming at the top of his lungs, “Let me! The Fuck!
Out of here! You goddam pecker sniffers! You shit eating donkey diddlers! Let
me out of here you bunch of duck fucking, sack nuggets! Right now! Right
fucking now!”

And
so on.

I
didn’t know if our hosts could hear James and he didn’t seem to care and
continued on his rant for what must have been an hour until he finally lay down
on his bunk. Even from three cells over in the half-light I could see he was
shaking, “You ain’t got no right!” he yelled at the bars around him, “No
fucking right at all!”

He
looked over at me and whispered, “Something to see here, pork muncher?”

“They
might keep us in here forever, James,” I said in response, “Might keep us
locked up for the rest of our days.”

James
jumped to his feet like he’d been shocked, “Shut the fuck up! They have to let
me out. They ain’t got no right!”

“Who’ll
stop them? The police? A judge?” I asked, “No one, that’s who. They’ve got the
keys and were in the cage. That’s all the right they need,” I said as I lay
back on the bed and watched James bounce around his cell like a rubber ball,
“Hell, I kinda like it. I think maybe I’ll ask them to keep us here for as long
as they like. Maybe,” I said watching James shoot daggers at me out of his
eyes, “Maybe I’ll tell them we’re killers. What do you think? Real bad asses
that’ll kill them in their sleep if they let us out. What do you think about
that James? Think they’ll like to hear that? I think I can convince them to
throw away the keys to our cells and we’ll just die in here nice and quiet
like. That’s what I think.”

“Fuck
you and fuck them!” he screamed.
 

I
laughed out load. I actually laughed in his face, “Enjoy the quiet time while
you can James. We might be here a while.”

Turns
out “a while” was nearly a full day. I didn’t care. I had food, water, a
toilet, and a bed. I was snug as a bug in a rug as my Dad used to say. James
finally wore down and collapsed on his bed. I thought I’d heard him whimpering
maybe even crying. I think if they’d kept him in here too much longer, he’d
have broken and gone over the edge but the next morning one of the men came
down escorting and older man, a little on the heavy side and looking exactly
like each and every survivor in this world looked: dirty, half crazed, and low
on sleep.

He
pulled up a chair in front of my cell and sat down. The other man stood behind
him with his fully automatic rifle.

“Have
you been bit?” he said without so much as an introduction but I knew he was the
Doc, the man the others had talked about, “Come in contact with the dead’s
bodily fluids? Blood saliva, stuff like that?”

“No,”
I said simply as I sat up on the edge of the bed, “Thanks for the food and
water. And really, really thank you for the toilet. I haven’t felt this close
to normal since Los Angeles.”

Doc
laughed a bit, “Toilets are what separated man from beast,” he said, then
shifted subject, “So you did come from LA?” Doc said, “Marti told us that’s
what you said but I thought maybe she meant Los Alamos. Marti also says she
thinks was can trust you,” he said looking at me through his round glasses.

“I
guess so,” I replied. I really didn’t care either way.

“I
have to assume that, if you’d walk across the entire southwest to get away from
Los Angles that there’s nothing left there.”

I
nodded my head, “We did meet some folks headed west. They said they had heard
of a safe haven called Burbank. We didn’t hear about it when we were in the
city so it might just be a rumor.”

Doc
nodded, “It makes sense. Burbank was set up as a Green Zone. Remember those?”

I
did. A few years ago, a group calling themselves La Raza started driving trucks
full of explosive into government buildings all across the southwest. Said they
were protesting the U.S. government’s treatment of illegal immigrants. It got
so bad that city and state governments in Californian, Arizona, New Mexico, and
Texas started walling off hospitals, police and fire stations, and government
civic centers to keep them from being blown up by the truck bombs. Modeled them
after the Green Zone areas the army had built during the Iraqi Wars.
Eventually, the groups were hunted down and either killed or jailed but the
governments kept building green zones.

“So
we’re in a green zone then?” I asked.

Doc
nodded, “Yep. A small one. Didn’t help very much though. There were so many
dead that they actually broke down the south wall. After the initial outbreak
and everyone was either dead or gone, we found this place and got that wall
back up, cleared out the compound, and set up shop. We help anyone coming
through, keep anyone who wants to stay. Not many do though, they want to head
north and get to Sandia or east to Dallas Green Zone. A few are heading west to
see what’s there. Us, we’re waiting for the winter before heading up to Sandia.
Is that where you’re headed?”

I
nodded.

“Well,
OK then young man, I am Dennis Hark but the folks here call me Doc,” he said
and signaled to the man standing behind him, “And this is Birch.”

“I’m
Thomas Greenly,” I said getting to my feet, “How come you locked us up?”

“People
are strange, Thomas. They want to survive. They think that even though they’ve
been bit, and even though the infection is one hundred percent fatal in every
case we’ve seen, that they might be immune. They are not, son, so if you’ve
been bit, just show me and we’ll take care of you. Now, have you been bit?”

“No,
sir. Sometimes I wish I’d been bit early on and not had to go through what I’ve
been through since this whole thing started. Maybe I should tell you I’ve been
bit so you can take care of me and I can get out of this mess for good.”

Doc
nodded, “I’ve heard that so many times from so many different people that I
wonder if we are all in hell and this is our everlasting punishment. When a
person would rather be put down than survive…well, that’s pretty much the end
of the world right?” he said then continued, “We keep folks here for twenty
four hours when they come in. The symptoms of the infection usually show up by
then, but we’ve had cases…” he trailed off and said no more about whatever
cases he’d seen, “So, I don’t think you’re infected. Let this one out Birch,”
he said and moved his chair down to James’s cell.

“Now
this one, well, I don’t care if he is infected or not. I think we should just
keep him locked up good and tight. What do you think there, cowboy?” Doc said
sitting down in front of James.

James
rolled up and out of his bunk lightning fast and was on his feet with his arm
reaching between the bars but neither Doc or Birch jumped back and were well
out of his reach, “I think you all ought to lock up your women and little girls
because when I get out of here, I am going to fuck them all, then slowly cut
them into pieces, and feed them to the dead outside. I’ll record their screams
for you to listen too after I’m done with them.”

Doc
and Birch just looked at James until he dropped his arm and stood back from the
bars, “OK, then. That answers that question. How about this one: have you been
bit?”

“You’re
wife bit my dick. How’s that for an answer?” James said.

“Hmm,”
Doc replied unfazed, “You don’t look so sharp there, son. You have a spot of
the flu?”

“Well,
Dad
,” James replied sarcastically,
“I’ve been out on the fucking road for months running from the dead. I haven’t
showered since god knows when, and I’ve been eating food from a fucking can
with my filthy fucking fingers! So, yes I might have picked up a little bug
along the way.”

“I
don’t think he’s gonna behave, Doc,” Birch said, “We either should keep him
locked up, put him down, or toss him over the wall.”

“You
don’t have enough hair on your sack, you skinny ass flap, to come in here and
get me.”

“I
don’t need to go in there, partner. I’ll just shoot your legs from right here
and after you’ve bleed out a bit, then I’ll come in, drag you out, and toss you
over the wall where you can join your friends out there. I’m sure they will be
glad to see you.”

That
shut James up.

“Well,
I’m not for shooting a caged man, so we’ll just leave you locked up here for a
bit, young man. You have enough food and water for a day or two while we figure
out what to do with you.”

“Just
let me out, then. We’ll go over the wall and you’ll never have to us again,” he
said sullenly.

Doc
and Birched looked at me and were about to say something when Birch’s radio
squawked to life, “Birch, Doc. You need to come up here.”

Doc
looked at Birch, “Will it ever stop?”

“When
our hearts do if we’re lucky,” Birch replied then looked at me, “Come on kid.
Follow us up and after we see what’s going on, I’ll have Marti get you some
clean close and let you shower.”

I
didn’t even look at James as I walked by his cell. They wouldn’t kill James but
they weren’t going to let him stay. But he’d try to come back if I stayed with
them. So I’d have to go a few more miles with him. But when we were far enough
away, I’d slip off into the vast open spaces of the desert and leave him far
behind.

We
moved quickly up to the third floor of the county building and into a large
conference room. Marti was there with at least six other people all crowded
around a series of computer screens that had been bolted to the wall. Each
screen showed a section of the Green Zone walls that surrounded the government
center. Most just showed empty streets but the ones pointing south, well…

“My
god where are they all coming from?” a woman in her late thirties asked, “Doc,
are they all coming from Mexico?

Doc
walked up to the bank of screens and started flipping switches and moving a series
of joysticks until all the cameras that could look south were pointed at what
everyone was looking at.

I
don’t know. El Paso? Juarez? Austin maybe? I guess it doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that if there are enough of them, the south wall won’t hold.”