ZWD: King of an Empty City (8 page)

             
I stepped closer and saw a pill bottle that had fallen from Tommy’s hand. I picked it up and looked at Johnny slumped over into his lap like he’d just lain down there to take a nap. They’d overdosed on something, sleeping pills, pain pills. There were several different kinds of pills in the little bottle and on the floor. They probably had given the same to the dogs, the whole family going out at once. Woodenly, I moved to the other side of the bed to clear the bathroom and closet. On the floor next to the bed was a pitcher of some sort of drink with two tumblers on a silver tray that said “Vegas Baby!” The pitcher was filled with dead flies too. The men had poisoned themselves and had cocktails to finish it off.

             
As I came out of their closet, she was on her knees weeping. Her body shaking and sobs muffled by her scarf. I started crying too. I just stood next to her and rested my hand on her head with my back to the gruesome scene on the bed. “I don’t think I can do this,” she muttered. “I don’t think I can.”

“Go outside and wait on the back steps. I got this,” I offered. She went downstairs. I went into the bathroom to wash my face. They still had hot water. From the walk-in closet I took a bed sheet and piled on the other little dogs, Maxi Brown and Bobo, then carried them downstairs. Next it was Tommy and John. I just loosened the sheets on the corner of the bed and dragged both their bodies to the floor. Then I tied the sheet around them and dragged them down the stairs. Once outside, I carried everyone across the street to the corner of the parking lot and piled them there with a few dead branches. From their gardening shed, I took the gas for the mower and poured it onto the sheets and lit them. It was an awful stench; the oily clouds of smoke were black and the bodies burned for a long time. We sat there and watched. We didn’t say any words over their bodies.

             
As the fire burned down she turned to me, and burying her head into my shoulder said, “We need a tent, I don’t want to sleep in a house tonight.” I had no idea where to get a tent.

              “Who do you know who has one?”

“What about that Jewish family that lived on the corner near Paris Towers? Remember when we talked to them one time, they said were going to go on a religious camping retreat. It looked like they had a tent. At least they had kayaks. They probably had a tent, don’t you think?”

              “Worth a shot. Get your gear.”

I hadn’t even thought about Paris Towers. An apartment building they erected in the middle of the historic district before people started trying to preserve the integrity of the neighborhood’s old look. Some considered it an eyesore; others thought it was just a place for reprobates and crooks to gather. Now I wondered if it was filled with zombies. God, I hoped not. That was a lot of places to clear. As the pyre burned down and the smoke rose the rumble of the black truck came to mind and I wondered how many other people, good people, bad people, were looking at the plumes of black smoke rising up and pointing down at us. Time to get moving. We headed off in search of a tent.

The house she was talking about was four blocks down and over from the Safeway. We trotted and talked as we went running in the middle of the street. Somewhere in the distance we heard a few gunshots in very rapid succession. There were different guns being fired. It was a gunfight. The sounds traveling to us were faint, so we knew this was happening several miles away, but it didn’t make me feel any better knowing that someone out there was heavily armed. At the corner, we turned and walked the remaining blocks to the house she was talking about. It was an old gingerbread-style house that had been recently repainted and sold. Sitting there on the corner under all the old trees it looked like a postcard for an early winter day. The sun shone out from the clouds for just the briefest moment, letting rays bathe the house in shafts of light through the leaves that still clung to the branches.

We reasoned the tent might be in the shed in back if it were still there, so for the first time I got to use my newly acquired lock-picking skills on the master lock that barred the ten-foot privacy gate to the backyard. After ten minutes, a bobby pin, a screwdriver, and finally the ball-peen hammer, I got it open. I read the book on lock picking, but it didn’t mean I could do it on the first try. We didn’t waste time with the lock on the shed. I just used the hammer.

             
To our surprise and delight, there was the tent, sitting in its travel bag along with a box that had one of those picnic tents, a pavilion thing with the screened walls. There were camping stoves, lanterns, sleeping bags, volleyball nets, hammocks, and everything else you could think of to go on a small expedition to the Amazon jungle. Or, to move to the roof of the Safeway. I loved these people, whoever they were. We grabbed two of the backpacks off their hooks on the wall and started packing them with all the camping gear we’d need. First-aid kits still stocked, tarps, ponchos, fire starter kits, water purification tubes, solar thermal blankets. We read the names of every item we found aloud so that each of us would know what we’d found here in case we decided we needed to come back. With two backpacks loaded down with stuff and carrying the tent between us, we headed back to the roof of the Safeway. I was feeling better about life in general. We retraced our steps, moving slower. Along the way I had an idea about the ladder to the roof that I ran past her.

             
We got to the roof, which was no easy task. Climbing a ladder isn’t easy with seventy pounds on your back. Thunder cracked and rumbled in the distance as we dumped everything on the ground and tried to figure out how to set up the tent. Light rain, more drizzle than anything, filled the air. It wasn’t even a drizzle really, just sort of a wet mist.

             
We finally got the Coleman Weathermaster six-man tent up and used cinder blocks to anchor it to the roof. We rested for an hour, ate, and then I went searching for the supplies I needed to secure that ladder. I knew I could have found most of it inside the Safeway, but there was no way in hell I was going in there alone. Besides, I could find everything I needed inside Tommy and John’s place, and unless someone went in after we left, the place was clear.

The string was still in place across the door and the tape was still secure on the doorframe when I got there. The sun was setting by now and I didn’t want to take long. I grabbed a decorative gargoyle with eyes that lit up when you walked by from the bookshelf. The two key fobs from their key baskets near the back door, some of the wires from the back of the stereo, a string of Christmas lights from a downstairs closet, jumper cables from the trunk of Tommy’s car, and a few other items.

             
Back at the Safeway roof, I started using what little I remembered of my high school electronics classes and started stripping live wires. From the roof, I ran jumpers to the top of the ladder and rigged a breaker between the building’s electrical system and the jumpers. Using the key fobs, I could turn the electricity to the ladder on or off and the lights from the gargoyle’s eyes would let us know if it was hot or not. The gargoyle sat near the ladder on the roof. In the morning I’d rig the Christmas lights up so we could tell from the ground whether the ladder was electrified. Anyone who tried to climb that ladder while it was hot would get electrocuted. Now I felt safe up here on the roof.

             
While I worked by the light of a flashlight held in my mouth, she spent time making our tent a home. When I got done with the ladder she had two canvas folding camp chairs set up and was sipping a bottle of water. Darkness had fallen and with the clouds in the sky you couldn’t see any stars. The streetlamps still came on and each one had a large iridescent halo around it, while the rest of the world looked like we were looking at it through a layer of gauze.

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 10

ZWD: Dec. 10.

Two doors down they have a fireplace and skillet and fresh ranch dressing. Again we eat like kings tonight. They were bow hunters. Bonus! I got an idea.

The first night in the tent on the roof of the Safeway was great. I hadn’t slept that well in a long time, not even in the library. I know I slept deep and hard because I woke up with a sore throat, the kind you get from snoring in a deep sleep. The air outside was crisp and from the roof the fog made the rest of the world look almost mystical. You couldn’t see the street below, it was so thick. Just streetlamps with their misty halos and treetops popping up out of the foggy soup that covered the ground. The houses and buildings looked unreal—giant geometric blocks scattered along unseen paths in an orderly manner. We were in an alien world.

              It was still early and the sun hadn’t come up fully yet. I believed that when it got higher in the sky it would burn off most of this fog and ruin the illusion. I looked around while walking the edges of the building. I’d forgotten my work from yesterday and when my eyes came across the two red glowing dots staring at me through the thin mist on the roof, I jumped a little. I’d forgotten that I put the gargoyle there to protect us during the night. Now it only reminded me of the things I had to do today. First and most important, come up with a rooftop toilet. The list just got longer.

              We went back over to Tommy and John’s to gather some stuff and to use their fabulous bathroom, then back to the roof to rig up the Christmas lights so we could tell if the stairs were hot while we were gone.

Later today we were going to cross I-630 up Main Street and visit the hardware store just on the other side. I was sure they’d have a multi-meter tool somewhere in there. I was betting that a lot of survivors hadn’t gone through the store and said, “You know, when I’m surviving the zombie apocalypse, I always grab a multi-meter TS300 to get me through.” No, there should be a meter there still.

              The fog had thinned a lot by the time I finished with the lights and we walked around to the front of the store we called home. The corner where I’d burned Tommy and John’s bodies was still smoldering. Smoke streamed off the pile and disappeared in the fog. She took the Ice Pike and shoved it into the pile, poking around for a moment till she found their skulls, and pulled them out. I didn’t know what kind of grim ritual she was going to do now so I just watched. I had to admit I was worried she was going to go a little Marlon Brando on me from
Apocalypse Now
, grabbing those skulls. But she wrapped them in a cloth and we went back to the guys’ house. She stuck them in the dishwasher and started it, and then we left. I didn’t ask her what she had in mind; we just left the washer running and went to the hardware store.                 

              The hardware store is just a few blocks up the street from the Safeway. I didn’t think it would be too much trouble getting the meter and whatever else we might need. Since I hacked into the Safeway’s power supply, I thought some power tools would come in handy. We crossed I-630 on the Main Street Bridge, and the fog was so thick, you couldn’t even see the tops of the eighteen-wheelers down there. Everything was quiet, a very spooky kind of quiet.

              The hardware store is just across the bridge scattered around in several buildings that make up the whole. The main store that holds all the normal handyman merchandise is this squat tan building with a red roof that sits against the sidewalk and stretches back to the next building thirty yards away.

              The building itself was locked down still. The glass entrance doors had metal shutters pulled down over them and the padlocks that opened them were recessed in metal stanchions so you couldn’t hit them with a hammer and bust them. None of the outside fire doors had locks you could hit or pick. They were all metal doors, so there was no kicking them in. No windows, no skylights that I remember on the inside. We weren’t getting in. I was disappointed, but after the streak of good luck we’d had I should have known it couldn’t last.

               Across the Main Street Bridge, over I-630. The fog was thinning and you could see the other side easily. Below, still a thick soup of fog. We’d stopped to look down at it when we heard someone yell, “Try to get down to the Escalade.” We tried to pick out where it was coming from. There were places where the fog swirled several times as if something were moving very fast in short spurts.

“No, no, no. Go back!” came another voice.

“Where is one?” yet a third.

“Who stops their car at an angle on the highway?”

“I hear them, stay quiet!”

“Where are they?” came the frantic voices from the soup below.

The swirls darted up and down the highway track below. We listened in silence, not offering any help. We couldn’t if we wanted to. We couldn’t see them to direct them away from danger and we weren’t going to guide them up here. We knew what their plan had been. They were going to follow I-630 till it split a few miles down the way and turned into I-40, then work their way out of town. That’s what every abandoned car’s owner had in mind. Only these guys were doing it on foot. I guess they were seeking shelter in cars as they went. They stood a chance in hell of making it and that was about the only chance they had.

We turned to go back to my kingdom when we heard someone scream down there. We both paused a moment and listened intently. I hoped we’d hear a fight and they’d all get free, but instead we heard someone say, “It’s Chris, they got him. Run, run, run!” My heart went out to Chris, whoever he was.

               Before we started looking for a toilet system, plywood, food, and clearing houses—our normal to-do list, with all the other things on it we had to do—we went back to Tommy and John’s house, where she took the skulls out of the dishwasher. The ash and sinew were gone. They weren’t bone-white like you see on television or in museums, but they were clean. She pulled a magic marker from a kitchen drawer and wrote their names on their foreheads. On the right side she wrote their birthdates and on the left the date this zombie mess started, 10-22, since we didn’t know when they died. We carried the skulls over to Broadway and the Mount Holly Cemetery, placing them in the doorway of a mausoleum. The mausoleum was a big structure near the back of the cemetery, just off the road. We’d crossed a little fence about knee-high to get to it. Above the door in garnet block letters was the name SMITH. The gems were darkened with age. How appropriate that the name should be so generic. Across from the doorway was an obelisk that had a marble angel perched on top, its wings spread wide, arms stretched out. In its right hand there was a scepter of God and it looked down at our skulls with a moss-covered green face. The moss trailed down from the eyes like green tears. The inscription on the obelisk was unreadable with the exception of a few words that said, “I will give you rest.” I didn’t take much comfort in that. “Ready?” I asked the angel.

She wiped the tears from her eyes, and then nodded and we headed back for the ornate fence we crawled over to get in. As I was about to drop to the street I heard a rustling in the bushes somewhere in the graveyard. Looking up I saw a quick glimpse of a child running over the crest of a ravine and disappearing behind a monument. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. He was moving so fast he was gone before I could even point him out.

             
We moved from Mount Holly Cemetery west on Daisy Bates. We weren’t really talking, each lost in our own thoughts. I was thinking about the kid and wondering if it was the same one from the base house earlier. We’d gone a block when I remembered all the things we had to do today, so we turned up Arch. We stopped in front of this saltbox two-story house with a porch that stretched across the front. It sat at the end of the street on the corner of the block. An old green Chevy truck sat parked in front of the garage in the back and from Arch there was a side door that led into the house, probably the kitchen. Air conditioning window units stuck out of windows all over the house. We decided we’d start with it today and moved to the shed.

             
The shed had a lock on it and I was about to break it with the two-pound sledge when we heard the pump action of a shotgun being loaded. When we turned to see where it was coming from, this voice from the back porch of the house said, “You got no business here. Go on with yourselves before I kill you.” All we could see was a the barrel coming out of the shadows resting in the palm of an old, wrinkled black hand that faded into the shadows of the porch. The voice was steady and calm, just like the barrel that was pointing at me. I didn’t want to make either one of them angry.

             
“Hi, how you doing?” I offered.

“I’m fine. Now go before I kill you.” The barrel moved up a little and I could tell he was shouldering the shotgun, ready to fire.

             
“Sorry, we didn’t know anyone lived here.”

             
“Well, we do,” he barked.

             
“It’s hard to tell what houses are empty, you know, there’s no sign saying someone lives here.”

             
“Now you know. Now get the hell on before I lose my Christian mind!”

             
We moved to the street and like the eyes of Jesus following you across a room, the barrel of his shotgun followed us. I thought I could vaguely see someone else standing on the porch with him in the shadows, both hands raised like he was training a pistol on us. Later she said that there were at least four people on that porch with guns, but I didn’t see them. I tried to make friends as we moved slowly to the street. In hindsight, I can see I could have chosen better words.

“You said we.”

              “What?”

             
“You said, ‘well, WE do.’ When I said we didn’t know anyone lived here. So your family lives with you?”

             
I was almost to the street when he fired, maybe ten steps away. The shot hit about a foot away from my feet. I almost shit myself.

             
“WE DO LIVE HERE!” he barked at me with emphasis and he patted the stock of the shotgun that was pointed at me. The gun rose and leveled again. “Now GO before WE kill YOU!” he emphasized again. We stepped into the street and lowered our hands, but still kept them visible. We trotted down Arch Street to the fourteen-hundreds block and stopped about midway down. It’s kind of hard to tell just when you’re out of someone’s personal space in a situation like that. Just how far do you go before you’re no longer a threat to the person with the gun pointed at you? I guess some people didn’t get the word that I was the king now.

              We walked three blocks before we remembered what we were supposed to be doing and started looking for a house to clear. There was this little gingerbread house that caught her eye, so we chose to clear it. This time we went up to the door and knocked before we started doing anything foolish. Nobody answered, so we moved around the back to see if there were any signs of entry. The windows were sort of high, so I bent down and she crawled on my back to look into one that had the curtains drawn open to let in light. While she was trying to look in I looked over to the house next door and saw from my low vantage point that hanging on the wall, in proud display, were three bows on a gun rack and a trophy buck mounted on the wall above it.

             
We quickly moved to the other house and started investigating. A light was on in the room, a little desk lamp sitting next to a leather chair. The room, she said, was filled with hunting stuff. There was a gun safe and trophies, hunting magazines, and books. Whoever lived here was an avid outdoor enthusiast. The light had me a little concerned and I have to admit I was questioning my morals as I ran around to the front door. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I didn’t get those bows.

I rang the doorbell and waited a little bit, and then I knocked and waited. Then I pounded and waited. I thought I heard something move inside, so I pounded again. Then I ran along the side of the house, banging on any window I could reach. These old houses in the Quapaw are built up high and you can’t just stand there and look into a window. Often they have a bush, usually with thorns, planted under the windows. But on the side of the house where the driveway was, there were no plants and I could stand on my toes to reach the windows, so I did and I banged on the glass. At the back door I opened the aluminum screen door and banged on the inner back door. I took a moment to listen. When I heard nothing, I pulled out a cold chisel and the two-pound sledge. I placed the chisel at the base of the doorknob.

             
“What are you doing?” she whispered. I’d made a lot of noise and it was bound to attract something or someone. I don’t know why she whispered.

             
“I don’t want to get shot at again,” I said in a normal voice and brought the hammer down. The lock broke. I’d switched out the chisel with the screwdriver and worked the mechanisms in the door till it swung open. Taking a moment, I switched things out till I had the machete in hand. Then I moved into the house. She was behind me with the Ice Pike ready. We went down a small dark hall that intersected with two rooms, one on either side. The one to my right was the trophy room and it was empty. The closet door was open and I could tell there was nothing in it. To the left was the kitchen. We did a quick sweep of it and moved through the house. I loved the stairs in this place. They started at the front door and swept up the wall with a banister that looked like children should be sliding down it at Christmastime. No murder spot there.