Read Xombies: Apocalypse Blues Online
Authors: Walter Greatshell
Xombies: Apocalypse Blues (47 page)
“Be glad there ain’t,” said Russell, gingerly touching his bruised neck.
“It’s gotta be that viral thing they talked about—viral progression,” Sal said. “The cities got so full of Xombies, they reached, like, critical mass. Once there was nobody left to infect, there was no reason to stay, so they scattered outward across the country. Maybe there aren’t any left here.”
The boys’ chests swelled with hope. “Is that
true
?”
true
?”
“I don’t know. It’s just what I heard.”
“God, I hope you right, man.”
Staying off the exposed waterfront, they followed a shaded inner street with fewer doorways. This led them to a second highway underpass, one older and darker than the first, a sunken hollow, its corroded iron girders busy with roosting pigeons. There were peeling psychedelic murals on the walls, ads for funky-sounding businesses: CAFÉ ZOG, OLGA’S CUP AND SAUCER, ACME VIDEO, Z-BAR. Cars sat dead in the road, their windows broken and doors wide open to the elements. Pigeons were roosting in them, too. This was not a good place to be; it didn’t feel safe. The boys could be cornered there in the dripping wetness, trapped amid the rust and rank birdshit. “We shouldn’t have gone this way, man,” said Kyle. They walked faster and faster, trying not to panic, not to run . . .
. . . and emerged in the light of spring. Before them was a tiny hillside park with a veteran’s memorial, benches, and maple trees. Dew glistened on the grass. But the boys hardly noticed any of that. They were more interested in what lay just beyond: a bright red-and-yellow gas station—a Shell station—with a sign reading FOOD MART.
Now they ran.
The coolers were dead, the ice cream melted, the milk curdled, but nearly everything else in the place was edible, and the forty boys made a valiant attempt to eat it all. It was a treasure trove more welcome to them than King Tut’s tomb, and as perfectly preserved, not in natron but sodium benzoate:
Snack cakes and pies, puddings, nuts, cookies, crackers, canned meats and cheeses, beef sticks, jerky, pickles, salsa, pretzels and potato chips galore. Candy! Whole cases of chocolate bars, chews, sours, mints, gum. And drinks: bottled beverages of every kind—energy drinks, soda pop, fancy sweetened teas and cappuccino, Yoo-Hoo, or just plain water—all free for the taking. It was a teenage dream come true, an all-you-can-eat paradise of junk food. All the cigarettes they could smoke, too, if they wanted them, and a few other vices besides.
“Can this stuff make us sick?” Freddy Fisk asked through a mouthful of minidonuts. “It must be pretty old by now.”
“I doubt it,” Sal said, munching Fritos. “There’s enough chemicals in this stuff to last until doomsday.”
“Then it’s
definitely
expired.”
definitely
expired.”
What they didn’t eat, they stuffed into ditty bags they had brought from the sub. They sacked the store until all that was left was money and auto accessories. Sated, idly scratching lottery tickets, some of them were already starting to feel that perhaps it had been a mistake to eat so much, so fast. Of that junk.
Damn.
Damn.
“I don’t feel so good, man.”
Sal was consulting the selection of maps. “Well, don’t croak yet—we still have a ways to go to get back.”
“You guys go ahead, I’m staying here—
urp
.”
urp
.”
“I think we all staying here,” Russell said. Something in his voice made them turn around to see what he was looking at. The front windows of the minimart overlooked the little memorial park and the elevated highway just beyond. Until then, the boys had not been in a position to really see Interstate 195—it had been an abstract concept, no more alarming than the underside of a bridge. For the first time, they had a good view of it. Freddy G vomited—
whulp!
whulp!
The highway was a river of death, a glacier of stalled metal, curving away as far as the eye could see. Thousands upon thousands of cars and trucks jammed bumper to bumper, all dead silent, the diamond bits of their smashed windows glittering in the morning sun. The interstate had become a colossal junkyard, a graveyard for humanity’s mobile aspirations . . . when graveyards no longer stayed filled.
Silent, dead, but not entirely still. There was darting movement there. Not the movement of cars, but of bodies—naked blue bodies. Catch them in glimpses: the wink of shadows scurrying between the lanes, a flash of scary Zuni-doll faces. And darker shapes looming beneath the overpass—jumpy silhouettes blocking the light, flushing out the pigeons. Rushing down the on-ramp. They were
everywhere
.
everywhere
.
Feeling his insides turn to water, Sal thought,
No way, no way, dude. Nuh-uh, no way, oh, no, no, no, please, no . . .
No way, no way, dude. Nuh-uh, no way, oh, no, no, no, please, no . . .
What he said was, “Guys? Can we, uh, get moving?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walter Greatshell has lived in five countries and worked many odd jobs across America, including painting houses, writing for a local newspaper, managing a quaint old movie house, and building nuclear submarines. For now, he has settled in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife, Cindy; son, Max; and cat, Reuben. Visit Walter’s website at
www.waltergreatshell.com
.
www.waltergreatshell.com
.
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