World of Ashes (19 page)

             
“Incorporated Washington looks abandoned. There’s a fucked up looking Army checkpoint with about a dozen frozen meat-sickles around it. I don’t see any smoke.” He smelled the air. “Scratch that, I’m getting a whiff of something most dank.”

             
Allen laughed and blew out a huge cloud. “Veray Niiiiice.” He tried to imitate the character Borat.

             
Ethan took the joint and hit it. “You suck at rolling these.”

             
“I normally use a vaporizer.” Allen coughed a little. “But this’ll do in a pinch. This shit is so old though…”

             
“What if we grew it? I know, demented thought, but hear me out.” Ethan began. He’d written several college papers on Hemp and the travesty of American Prohibition. Nicole had made him quit smoking years ago though. It didn’t change his view on the subject, not even after there was no government left to enforce prohibition. How many people died in prisons and jails across America when the zombies came? Hundreds of thousands probably. How many of them were incarcerated for nonviolent crimes like Possession of Narcotics? Now ask yourself how many of them deserved to be eaten alive in jail with no hope to defend themselves. Exactly. 

             
“My dad used to grow his own pot.” Allen said. “He let all the plants die though.”

             
“With the world gone, there’s no manufacturing. Who’s gonna make medicine? There won’t be any more Ibuprofen, no Aspirin, no Vicoden or fresh opioides period. Penicillin and pain relievers are going to be more important than gasoline.”

             
“Wow.” Allen took a huge hit. “That’s fucking heavy, dude. We should do that. It would be much easier than salvage.”

             
“Yeah, the problem is convincing Duddly Dooright to let us. My brother has his head so far up his ass I don’t think it’s possible for him to see the light of day. Same goes for all the moron soccer moms and old people who don’t want to know the difference between weed and meth.”

             
“Why don’t we grow it out here?” Allen suggested.

             
“Because we’re in a nuclear winter.” Ethan pointed at the clouds. “There’s so much shit in the sky now we would need a large hydroponics bay to grow anything substantial. Farmers are going to figure this out next spring the hard way.”

             
“I guess a couple thousand burning cities can do that…”

             
“Yeah… We live in a world of ashes… We should stay here tonight. I saw some potato chips in the pantry and I’m gonna be fucking hungry in about two minutes.” Ethan laughed again, suddenly wishing there were a radio. Music was such an afterthought these days it had been a while since he’d been relaxed long enough to enjoy any. The kid’s Mp3 player was still on the dresser, fully charged. The metal-head who’d lived here before had a surprisingly broad taste in music, including Ethan’s beloved
Evanescence
. While Allen flipped through the porn magazines Ethan settled in for a well deserved nap with the ethereal acoustics of Amy Lee to drown out the horror.

              The meat-pops, as the two of them were calling the frozen zombies, made only the most half-hearted attempts to get to them as they wound their way through the new incorporated area of Washington. Most of the stores had been looted, but then those weren’t their target. A small strip mall gun store,
Nick’s Gun & Pawn
, had been a favorite place for Ethan to get cheap ammo and visit with other “gun nuts.” Looters had burned most of the strip mall down, including his friend’s shop. Private residences and off the path stores were where the goods could be found these days.

             
Ethan had expected more of the same, every third building being burned, bodies and trash and junk littered everywhere, but that was anything but the case when they rolled through old town Washington. The riverfront was almost pristine, though covered in hundreds upon hundreds of frozen undead. The firefights had never made it this far past the hospital and high school, which were both burned to the ground and micro war-zones unto themselves. That was pretty typical though. Schools and hospitals were where people had been rallying, and where the government had set up most of their aid centers. Once the Army pulled out those sites were either blown up by the retreating units or fought over by survivors until nothing was left. The impact craters looked like the two buildings had been hit with 1500lbs JDAMs*.             

“This is fucking surreal.” Allen
’s eyes seemed perpetually wide, the silence broken only by their voices and the gently blowing wind. Snowflakes that had accumulated overnight scattered across roads and train tracks toward the river, building small berms around the feet of the zombies.

             
“Yeah. They must have seen them coming out of the water and abandoned this part of town. Didn’t want, or have time to destroy it.”

             
“We should leave and report what we found.” Allen dismounted and grabbed the siphoning kit. He headed for a Ford pickup that was still in a parking space when Ethan saw a door open on the car next to Allen. His first concern was a hidden bandit, but it was worse. A zombie, mostly unfrozen from the lack of wind-chill in the vehicle, crawled out. Before Ethan could squeeze off a round or warn Allen it bit down on the ankle of the boy’s shoe.

             
He screamed and leapt up and over the truck, his shoe still in the infected man’s mouth. Ethan blew it’s head off and killed every zombie within a hundred feet of them for good measure. Then he turned the gun on Allen.

             
“Allen?”

             
“Yeah?”

             
“You know exactly what I want to know.”

             
“No, bro.” Allen breathed deeply. “I’m bleeding, but it only smashed my shoe against me. I think my heel’s broken though. There’s no way the teeth got through.”

             
“You’ll understand if I want you to stay on that truck for a while longer.”

             
Allen nodded. “Yeah, I’ll stay up here. Any chance you can toss up a new pair of socks and a bandage? And maybe a new pair of underwear? I don’t think these are… hmmm… ‘Fresh’ anymore.”

             
Ethan breathed a sigh of relief. The infection wasn’t instantaneous. You usually had five minutes before the rage phase, but in those five minutes the person was incoherent and often terrified as their blood began to almost literally boil. Allen was the picture of calm. Injured, but calm.

             
Ten minutes went by while Ethan checked all the nearby vehicles, keeping an eye on Allen all the while. “Are you okay?”

             
“No. My foot fucking hurts. It’s gotta be broken. I need to get home.”

             
“Okay, you get yourself situated on your bike and I’ll siphon the gas.” Allen crawled slowly off the truck and mounted his four-wheeler. He watched while Ethan filled their gas tanks and made the dressing on his foot tighter. “I guess we’re gonna have to start checking zombie’s shoe sizes. You’ll need a new pair.” Ethan tried to lighten the mood of near-death.

             
“Think we can swing back by the house? I left the stash there. Unless you have anything else for the pain?”

             
Ethan sighed, glad his friend was okay. “Yeah, sure. I can wrap your foot up in those Kleenex cozies while you toke it up. Asshole. You scared me.”

             
“I scared you?” Allen turned his ATV on. “You’re not the one wearing homemade Depends…”

Back home Ethan let Lee have it. Keith and Paula stayed outside, pretending to work on Keith’s new truck. They could hear every word, though they both knew much more about what was going on from Lee’s perspective.

             
“And who the fuck are you to send a kid to do this kind of shit? I mean, there’s very few people I’d rather have with me than Allen Broadwhick, but you don’t have the right!”

             
“Yes, Ethan, I do. Besides, you didn’t say no.”

             
“I shouldn’t have to. Is this because you’re a lieutenant? An
officer
, the fucking
gentry?
Fuck you.”

             
“No, I
was
a lieutenant in an organization that no longer exists. Here, I am the defacto Lieutenant Mayor and next week the official town Sheriff. There’ll be a vote in the spring and I have no intentions of running for any office, but for now I am making military decisions with the authority of Mayor Kenly. Make any sense to you?”

             
Ethan leaned in real close over the kitchen table, “Military decisions? Are you fucking serious?”

             
“Yes, Goddamnit!” Lee had had enough of Ethan’s attitude, as if their scuffle a few weeks ago hadn’t already settled it. “Military mother fucking decisions. Why? Because since you’re so obviously convoluted in your ripe old age you can’t come to grips with the fact that we’ve been at war since Twenty Twelve! Remember the Nogales Riots? I was there, Ethan. They were zombies then, and they’re still zombies now. I have the experience and expertise that this town needs. So yes, Military fucking Decisions.”

             
Ethan swung at Lee again and struck only air. Lee grabbed his brother’s arm and slammed his head on the kitchen table. Ethan fell to the floor and kicked Lee’s legs out from under him. On his way down Lee dropped his elbow into Ethan’s ribs. The fight was over, Lee emerging the victor this time.

             
Both brothers lay on the floor, breathing heavily when Keith and Paula came back inside. Paula raised an eyebrow. “Again?”

             
“I guess I’m a slow learner.” Ethan groaned.

             
Lee hauled himself back into his chair. “Look, Ethan, the zombies aren’t going to last forever. Current estimates put their physical half-life at something around another year before those exposed to the elements rot beyond the point of mobility.”

             
“Yeah, tell that to Allen. He almost got his fucking foot bit off yesterday.” Ethan took the seat across the table, trying not to wince at how bad his ribs hurt.

             
“Is he okay?” Paula asked, careful as she sat down and cradling her belly. She was glowing most of the time, no one looked better pregnant than Paula.

             
“He’ll be on crutches for a while. None of the infected saliva or blood got into his system. It bit his shoe off and crushed his ankle mostly.”

             
“I’m glad he’s okay, but Ethan, a lone sheriff’s department cannot continue to defend this town. We need to start putting together an Army.” Lee went back to their original subject. Ethan’s glair was murderous. “Ethan… I know the U.S. Army wasn’t a good experience for you-”

             
“I could name a few others who might feel similarly… They’re dead.”

             
Lee ignored his brother’s comment. “Yeah, I know. You got screwed. And then they screwed you again when they drafted you back in. I get it, I really do. If it had been me in your position you know damned well I would have made all the same decisions you did.”

             
“Really?” It wasn’t much of a question. “Unlike you, I’d have made sure you got transferred away from that unit. I’d have done anything for that.” Ethan cleared the air, exposing his real animosity toward his brother.

             
“That was beyond my power and you know it.”

             
“Screw you. You were so busy sucking someone’s cock at the Pentagon you never returned a single phone call. Hell, you didn’t even know I was deployed until Mom told you at Thanksgiving!” There was a long silence while Lee absorbed what his brother was saying. Since the subject had been so taboo Keith and Paula had never asked.

             
“…yeah…” Lee nodded. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have done something. It wouldn’t have taken anything more than calling in a favor.”

             
“I’m sorry. What happened?” Paula couldn’t stand it anymore.

             
“I got discharged from the Army. I was covering for someone who was abusing cough meds because he’d gone insane after our unit abused his closest friend until she killed herself. Probably a great deal of my downfall was because I refused to kiss the Colonel’s ass and say I was sorry when they dragged me through the mud.” Ethan said quickly, not breaking his glair at Lee.

             
“Why did you do that?”

             
“Because they destroyed him. Our unit did. Took everything from him. One bullshit charge after another, none of them with even the slightest shred of evidence. They took his stripes, took his team, cut everyone in the platoon off from him. All he had left was taking his own life or to self-medicate. The man had been through three deployments. He wasn’t okay anymore. I know it’s against government doctrine and even common sense, but when faced with the untenable alternative of allowing myself to turn my back on a fellow Soldier I chose to go with my loyalties to the man and the NCO he was when I met him. Maybe falsely believing he would ever snap out of it. Was it wrong?” Ethan shrugged. “Man has already judged me. I’m not really sure if I care if God has a different take on it.”