The Last Days of October (15 page)

Justin’s eyes were
wide, crazy.
 
He bellowed a prehistoric
battle cry.

The vampires
screeched and shuffled.
 
Unlike Mike,
these things didn’t talk.

They’ve degenerated, they’ve had nothing to
eat for days and they’re wasting away.

Heather grabbed
Amber’s shirt in one hand, the empty pistol in the other.
 
The main aisle clear now, she pulled them in
the direction of Justin and the door.
 
“Go,” she gasped, barely able to speak through the pinhole airway that
had been her throat.

They ran along the
main aisle, past the dark blocks of freezer cases and the expanse of spoiling
produce.
 
Justin covered their rear,
swinging the spotlight like a laser.
 
The
creatures stayed back.

With the generator
off, the sliding doors didn’t slide.
 
But
Heather, still shaking with adrenaline, had no trouble forcing them open.
 
Outside, the air tasted sweet and crisp, like
a perfect apple.
 
Amber collapsed against
the side of the truck, panting and gulping.
 
Justin took two steps into the sunlight, looked around for a moment and
then doubled over.
 
He retched.

Heather looked
behind her.
 
The entry doors were solid
black squares that made her colder than autumn could manage on its own.
 
Still not feeling safe, she opened the
passenger door and shoved Amber into it.
 
“Get in,” she said, “we need to go.”
 

 
“They set us up,” Justin said.
 
“Like we’re deer.
 
They’ve been tricking people.
 
They
hunt
.”

“Get in the
truck,” Heather said.
 
“We need to get
out of here.
 
Now.”

18.

Amber recalled their
small yard at the house on the naval base in Norfolk.
 
The Navy dressed its homes identically, just as it did its sailors.
 
Her friend Joy, who had moved from Pensacola
last year, said that for the first week or two she could only identify her house
by her mom’s car sitting in the driveway.
 
She lived in fear that her parents would drive off somewhere and she’d
have to walk around the neighborhood like a dumbass until they got home.
 
Everything looked the same.

Each of the
townhouses had a small flower bed and patch of grass up front.
 
Senior enlisted like Dad got end lots or one
of the single-family units standing alone on postage stamp lots.
 
As he transferred from command to command on
his way up the ladder, the Palmers had moved from a middle unit to an end unit
and finally, when he made Chief Petty Officer, a detached home.
 
This came with not only bigger bedrooms, but
a lawn large enough to justify the purchase of a gas-powered mower.
 
So Dad had gone out and bought one with
mental problems.

“That thing giving
you a hard time?” he asked, stepping out of the house.

Amber stood.
 
Old grass clippings stuck to her bare arms
and legs and dangled from her hair.
 
She
clapped her hands and tried to wipe them away.

“I can handle
it.”
 
She’d had a devil of a time with
it, cursing its obstinance as she adjusted screws, tested springs.
 
She had removed the shroud and sanded away
what she considered an inordinate amount of rust on the flywheel.
 
In the end, though, the mower simply hadn’t
had any gas.
 
She only discovered this
moments ago, after screwing with it for the better part of thirty minutes.
 
“I just adjusted a few things and topped off
the tank.
 
Figure it’ll start now.”

“Good job, li’l
lady,” he said in his best John Wayne.
 
“Now go inside and make me some pie!”

“What
ever
!”

He chuckled.
 
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his
denim shorts.
 
He wore a UNC
tee-shirt—even though he’d never gone to college—tucked in at the waist, and a
dark blue baseball cap from the U.S.S.
Albany,
his ship
.
 
He looked young for a man standing on the
brink of retirement.
 
“Think you can
handle all this stuff while I’m gone?”

“Done it before.”

“You have.”

Silence
ensued.
 
Amber knelt and pressed the
rubber primer button beneath the carburetor.
 
Cold fuel ran beneath her thumb.
 
Behind her, Dad leaned against one of the wooden posts supporting the
roof of the carport.
 
Amber felt him
watching.
 
She wondered if he had been
watching from inside the house and knew that he was about to leave his kingdom
with a princess that had spent half an hour of her life tinkering with and
cussing at a lawnmower that just needed gas.

“There’s something
else I’d like you to do for me while I’m gone,” Dad said at last.
 
“If you don’t mind.”

Amber stood
again.
 
“Sure.
 
What?”

“I’d like you to
keep an eye on your mother.”

“Of course.”

“No.
 
I mean…”
 
He picked himself up off the pole and walked out into the driveway,
removing his cap and rubbing the closely-shaven stubble of hair covering his
scalp.

“How
do I say this?” he asked, eyes closed.

Amber waited.

Finally, he
replaced the cap.
 
He stood for a moment
with his back to her, staring at something invisible across the street.
 
Then he turned.

“Your mom’s a
pretty woman,” he said.
 
“And she’s
young.
 
I know you think we’re both old as
dirt, but we’re not even forty yet.
 
Some
ladies are just having their first kid at her age.”

Amber looked at
the ground.
 
She kicked uncomfortably at
a chunk of old grass that had fallen from the mower deck.
 
“Um…okay.”

“Women get
lonely.
 
They like having a man
around.
 
They might joke and talk about
how great it is to get away from us for a while when we go out on a cruise, how
submariners are the best husbands in the world because they go off and you
don’t have to talk to them for weeks on end.
 
But when we’re gone, they get lonely.
 
So they look for company.”

“You think Mom
screws around on you when you’re gone?”

“No.
 
I didn’t say that.”

But by the way his
face turned red, Amber knew that yes, he had said that.
 
And if he hadn’t
said
it, he’d
meant
it.
 
He wanted her to spy on her mother.

“Good,” she said,
“because she doesn’t.
 
She goes to the
store, she reads books, she watches TV.
 
That’s it.
 
Sometimes she eats too
much and then feels guilty and goes to the gym.
 
But that’s it.
 
I’m serious, Dad,
it blows my mind how she can do what she does and not get bored out of her
skull…”

He held up both
hands.
 
“Great,” he said.
 
“That’s great.
 
I believe you, and I’m glad.
 
Okay?
 
But there’s stuff going on with people our age that high school kids
can’t understand.
 
And you might not know
it when you see it.”

“There’s nothing
to see.”
 
She felt suddenly dirty in a
way that grass clippings and lawnmower dust couldn’t manage.
 
Just having this conversation felt like a
betrayal.
 
“She wouldn’t know
how
to cheat even if she wanted to.
 
Which she doesn’t.
 
All she does is wait for you to come home.”

“She’s hitting a
difficult age.
 
And this is a strange
time for our family.
 
We’re about to hit
the point where there is no normal.
 
A
storm, if you will.
 
Things fall out of
place in storms.
 
People fall out of
place, too.
 
Get swept away from where
they should be, where they need to be.
 
Suddenly, anything goes.”

He looked to the
house.
 
Amber followed his gaze and saw
him staring at the window to the master bedroom, where Mom lay napping.
 

“Your friends are
kids,” he said, “and they’re single.
 
Boys can just walk up to you, flirt with you or whatever, and ask for
your phone number.
 
They’re direct,
because they can be.
 
That’s how it is at
your age.
 
You get on towards forty, when
pretty much everybody’s married, it gets different.”

“I don’t know what
you mean.”

“Women are
targets, okay?
 
And women your mom’s age
tend to forget that, especially if they’ve been off the market for a long
time.
 
They forget how things work, and
so they’re not on the lookout.
 
And they
fall victim to
worms
.”

Amber’s eyebrows
knit together.

Worms

He nodded.
 
“Every cruise there’s at least two or three
sailors has it happen to their family.
 
Guys try to jump in bed with your wife when you’re gone.
 
Any woman can fall victim to a worm.
 
Because worms are small and low, people don’t
see them.
 
Don’t know they’re there until
it’s too late.”

He hadn’t taken
his eyes off the master bedroom window.
 
Amber realized he wasn’t talking to just her anymore.

“Women get
lonely,” he continued, “and so they meet these nice guys, helpful guys.
 
Friendly guys.
 
You might hear her one day talking about Joe
or Herb or whatever from the gym or some class, something funny he said.
 
He’s just a friend.
 
Nothing to worry about.”

Amber looked
down.
 
Dead grass danced in a hot August
wind at her feet.
 

“Then you notice
she’s talking on the phone with him.
 
Does it during the day, right out in the open.
 
Man’s going through a divorce or a breakup,
something he needs help with, and so he opens up to her and leans on her for
support.
 
And she listens to this
shit.
 
Because she’s lonely.

“Then he starts
coming over.
 
Maybe he’s got kids and he
brings them.
 
Maybe not, maybe he comes
alone.
 
But now they talk in person, and
they talk a lot.
 
They laugh a lot.
 
And then, suddenly, out of the blue, you
don’t see him anymore.
 
You don’t hear
about him, and you never see her on the phone with him.
 
You know why?”

Amber didn’t
answer.

“Because now
they’re fucking.”

She recoiled like
she’d opened a container in the refrigerator to find some rotten, months-old
meat that no one had known was there.
 
“Okay, that is, like,
so
nasty.
 
You guys are
married!
”

The corners of his
mouth lifted, but his eyes didn’t rise with them.
 
The brim of his ship cap cast a shadow over
his face.
 
“Oh, that doesn’t mean
anything these days, baby doll.
 
Not
around here.
 
This is a Navy town.
 
Place is crawling with worms.
 
In the old days, the ships were made of wood
and worms ate their way into the hulls.
 
They weakened the ships, weakened the fleet.
 
But now the ships are made of steel, so the
worms had to go somewhere else.
 
They
went ashore.
 
And now they work on our
families.”
 

He reached for his
hip pocket then.
 
He had quit smoking
years ago but still reached for his cigarettes when something bothered
him.
 
Like this.
 

“I’m not asking
you to
spy
on her,” he said.
 
“But if you see a worm, pull him out of the
dirt.
 
Introduce yourself.
 
Ask him if he knows your daddy.
 
You see your mom acting funny, call her on
it.
 
Ask her who’s on the phone.
 
Just shine the light, Amber.
 
Worms like dirt, the deeper the better.
 
Light makes them uncomfortable.
 
So shine it.
 
Keep them away from my wife.”

Amber lay on her
bed, fully clothed, shoes on.
 
She had
considered changing into a sweatsuit or something more bed-worthy, but the mere
act of unbuttoning her jeans made her feel vulnerable and unprepared.
 
And it was cold in here now, the temperature
in her room sinking with the onset of night.

She turned her
mind to the past to keep it from playing outside, where a tiring sun cast long
shadows over the collection of buildings that had, for a time, been her
neighborhood.
 
Comfort existed in
memories of sunny days and things that made sense, but most of these memories
took place back in Norfolk and circled around to that afternoon last summer,
when her father had asked her to spy on her mother.
 
Because of the worms.

Keep them away from my wife.

Not
Mom
, not
your mother
, but
my wife.
 
The distinction struck her now in a way it
hadn’t before.
 
He should have referred
to her as
Mom
,
Mommy
or
your mother
.
 
Because she was Amber’s mother.
 
That was her role.
 
The essence of her being.
 
Right?

Nope.
 
She’s
his wife.
 
Emphasis on
his.
 
That’s
how he thinks of her.

“Hey.
 
Can I ask you something?”

Justin stood in
the doorway.
 
It had been his idea to
save further exploration for tomorrow; they had, he said, experienced enough
adventure for one night. What remained of the sun cast shadows over his lanky
figure and obscured most of his face.
 
Silhouettes of tree branches reached across his chest.

“Sure.
 
You can come in.”

He hesitated, then
stepped inside.
 
He took an immediate
sidestep to the left and stood with his back against her closet door.
 
She got the sense he would have stood in the
closet if he could have gotten away with it.
 
She had to prompt him to get him speaking.
 
“What is it?”