He laughs and says, My uncle taught me when I was like fifteen. Shot his pistol at his place in Wisco.
More than I know, I say.
Then it’s on to the shotguns. I’m kind of hoping for the short one, for some reason I really want it to be mine. He finds the shells and slips them in one at a time. Maybe Typewriter senses my preference, because he hands me the mini gun. He nods for me to pump it. I do. The
chu-chunk
feels like I’m jerking off God. I still can’t believe what is going on—walking dead, death, guns—but the disbelief and the need to figure out my stupid life have morphed into something else, something one notch below on my brain function map. Now it’s acceptance and survival and a fucking short-barrel twelve gauge in my hands, a Glock nine in my waistband.
The first thing I notice when we step out of the Civic is the temperature, probably ten degrees colder than in the city, with a strong breeze. We stand under the overhead lights of a four-car station. One of the lights keeps flickering. This kind of freaks me out. I scan the squat gray brick building.
Advertisements for Marlboros and Red Bull cover the window. Just past the building, I see the dumpster, and next to that a rack of tires. Typewriter must see them too because he says, Fuck yeah.
Being in semirural Minnesota, the gas isn’t prepay, which I’m stoked about. I start filling the car and Typewriter stands at my side, gun pointing at an invisible enemy, at darkness, at nothing. They have to be out there and maybe they’re devising strategy, like how to flank us, how to attack from all sides, from above. I look at the top of the gas station and see nothing and I tell myself to calm the fuck down, that it’s only us, that we’re safe.
We make our way over to the rack of tires. I feel like having explosive diarrhea. Typewriter slips a step behind me. The tires are secured with a crappy Master Lock. I act without thinking and smash the lock with the butt of my shotgun. It falls to the ground. I feel about as cool as I ever have.
We roll a Bridgestone back to the car. The wind has picked up even more. Why didn’t we steal some warm clothes at Cabela’s? Typewriter starts working on the tire. In thirty minutes, we should be at the Albino’s place, and if he’s alive, great, if not, oh well, because he’s a fucking dick anyway, but what’s important is that I’ll be high. I’ll burn grams of shit, my head a fucking balloon, my body preorgasmic thuds of blood, and from there, once my head is taken care of, we can figure out what to do. I hope KK is okay. I think about my parents decomposing, their skin falling off sturdy bone.
Then I see two giant headlights coming toward us.
Type, I say.
He doesn’t respond.
Someone’s coming, I yell.
I point my gun at the blinding lights. I’m about to unload whatever I’ve got when the semi stops. Typewriter stands by me. He’s pointing his shotgun at the truck too. I can’t see what’s getting out of the truck, but I hear the door open.
Hello, I yell.
I’m expecting a giggle, a groan.
Friendly, a man’s voice calls back.
Kill the lights, Typewriter yells.
My finger presses against the trigger. I have no idea how hard I actually have to pull for it to discharge, but I suspect I’m close.
The fucking lights, Typewriter says again.
Ain’t here for trouble, the man says.
I can see his shape now. His hands are raised to about head level. He keeps coming toward us. I glance over at Typewriter, who has his shotgun in the crook of his shoulder. The man finally gets close enough for me to make him out. He’s an ugly motherfucker, skinny like the third world, with maybe two weeks’ worth of pubes covering his taut face.
Guns down, guys, not one of them, he says.
We keep them trained on him.
What do you want? I say.
Who are you? asks Typewriter.
Saw your lights, figured I’d stop and see—
Who the fuck are you? Typewriter repeats.
Shh, he hisses.
He extends his hand in the direction of Typewriter and
this seems like an aggressive move and I’m about to shoot because what the fuck do I know about this man and his intentions and how the world now stands?
Noise, man, noise.
Back away from me, Typewriter says.
Okay, okay, just keep your voice down. They’ll be swarming if you keep with the shouting.
Who’s
they
? I ask.
The man looks at me. It’s then I notice his eyes, deep like mine, sunken, like they’ve seen everything they possibly could and now are on the retreat. He’s either starving or smokes scante.
Everyone, let’s just keep it down. How long you all been here?
We don’t say anything.
Cuz I’ve found any longer than twenty minutes and one of ’em catches wind.
Typewriter’s eyes dart from swaying branches to a Doritos bag blowing along the pavement. My finger tightens even more. Typewriter asks if he’s the dude from the porn site.
The guy gives a snort. Tells him no. He grinds his jaw like he’s chewing a Starburst. He’s spun. He asks where we’re staying. Type keeps asking who he is. The guy is getting nervous, I can tell, how quickly his gaze shifts from me to Typewriter to our guns to the dark behind the gas station, and he keeps saying
shh
and he doesn’t like it one bit when Typewriter pokes him with the barrel of his shotgun.
Stop, I yell.
Both of them give me their attention.
I say, Please, tell me what the fuck is happening. We were holed away for a week, and we come out to this.
He stares at me like he thinks I’m full of shit. I raise my gun. He says, End of days. Apocalypse. Whatever you want to call it. Talked to a few truckers still left but you’re the first live guys I’ve seen in a week.
I can tell he’s scared, maybe not of us, but of everything. The speed coursing through his veins must be making shit worse. I ask if it’s just in Minnesota or America, if it’s terrorism.
He shrugs. He says, People just didn’t wake up last Saturday. Died in their sleep. Everyone, far as I can tell.
What about the … Typewriter stops, maybe feels stupid to say
zombies
.
Started two days after, the man says.
How? I say.
Whatever it was, virus or something that killed everyone, obviously turned ’em. But only the healthy ones, I think, the young, the able. Haven’t seen any old walkers.
Zombies?
The guy shrugs again. He says, Yeah, I guess. Call ’em Chucklers. Chucks for short.
It’s obvious this motherfucker thinks he’s clever.
How we know you’re not one of them? Typewriter asks.
Am I giggling?
Jesus Christ, I say.
He ain’t about to help you, he says.
Type lowers his gun. I don’t. I’m thinking about the twenty minutes of grace time the guy told us about. We’re probably
right at the mark. We need to get the tire finished, get away from this guy, and head to the Albino’s. Then I realize the trucker has got to be holding, and a taste would be about the best thing I could imagine.
I whisper to Typewriter that he’s spun.
The guy is telling us that we should team up, that three against however many is better, that we can cruise in his rig, and then Typewriter raises his gun again. You holding?
The man narrows his eyebrows. He shakes his head like he’s not following. Typewriter pumps the shotgun. He asks again—You holding?—and the guy puts his hands up in mock confusion. I’m thinking that it’s so fucked up, us junkies, our inability to get honest with anyone, how we keep pleading ignorance, innocence, even in the face of two loaded shotguns and worldwide death. This guy standing there like he has no idea what
holding
even refers to, this guy with eyes like train tunnels and a jaw like a gearshift, he will continue this act until he has no alternative. It’s a form of survival. I get it. I do it.
I tell him that we’re just looking for a teener to get back on the road.
He realizes he’s at the point where coming clean is the better tactic. He says, Can’t give you that much. ’Bout all I have myself. Can give you a ride for a trade, maybe for one of those there guns.
Not sure you’re in any position to be bartering, Typewriter says.
Come on, not with all this, the guy says, sweeping an open palm to the engulfing darkness. His tone has become more
singsongy, and he’s saying things about sticking together and only having a pistol himself and if we thought tweak was hard to get before, and I feel for this guy for some reason. Here he is driving the interstates alone in a semi, smoking meth and hoping to see another human, anyone. He might have a family, maybe a little boy and a wife back in Kansas or someplace, and they are either dead or undead and he’s just trying to connect. And here we are stealing the only thing he has left.
Okay, I say.
He grins at me.
No, not okay, Typewriter says.
Dude needs to be able to protect—
Motherfucker doesn’t need shit.
We’re fine. We’re set. Just get him a piece.
Typewriter takes a step closer to me and leans into my face and his breath is all sorts of sour. He whispers things about being smart and conserving. I say, Think about somebody besides yourself. Typewriter backs away, shaking his fat jowls.
We good? the guy asks.
I tell him to get his shit and we’ll get him a gun. He jogs back to the semi and Typewriter is giving me fuck-you eyes and I tell him to finish up with the tire. I reach into the shotgun duffle bag and take out a lighter one. I grab a handful of shells. The guy is back by the time I’m done and he’s holding on to a cellophane cigarette wrapper with a single shard. I know he’s just transferred it from a larger stash but I don’t say anything because we’ll be at the Albino’s in no time.
Travis, the guy says.
Chase, I say.
We shake hands in the form of him giving me the baggie. I can tell it’s decent glass when I place it in my pipe, the color a little chalky, but clearer than most. I use the torch lighter. I give myself the honor of first hit. I inhale and wonder if any part of my decision to trade had to do with being a good person, helping out a stranger and all that shit, or if I simply couldn’t wait thirty minutes until we got to the Albino’s.
Type and I pass the pipe. We don’t talk. Travis loads his gun. The overhead light flickers and the wind picks up even more. It’s coming from the north because with each exhale, the smoke slips past my face, back toward the Twin Cities and my dead parents and KK.
But for a brief moment, I’m not thinking about all that. I’m feeling the closest thing I can think of to God and he’s playing the samba inside of my body, his fingers gentle as they press on the backs of my retinas, my spine, the tendons along my hip flexors. I’m thinking that I love drugs more than anything. That they are the one and only constant in my life. Yeah, they demand a lot of attention and effort, but their love is legendary, their compassion endless. I hold each hit for hours, exhale for decades. The determination that comes with the onset of a high rushes back and I’m all about conquering the world and making money and finding happiness in the form of a loving woman who knows when it’s time to spread her legs and when it’s time to brush the backs of her nails across my cheek and then I’m thinking about this being the same thing as what God is doing to me now.
I love it when my heart rattles against my uvula.
I love it when my vision is a camera shutter.
I love it when I know that someday, I will do great things.
I love it when methamphetamines make things okay.
But I don’t love it when I start to hallucinate because the line between knowing it’s only the drugs and knowing your psyche is about to snap the fuck apart like a high wire is oh so delicate. The giggles. I hear them. I close my eyes and try to remember how I felt half a second before—glorious, about to take over the world—but it’s too late, I’ve switched. I’ve gone from high to completely fucked. I hear more giggles.
The guy, Travis, spins around, shotgun raised. Maybe he’s fucked too. But then Typewriter drops the pipe and I know the giggles must be real because he’s not the kind of guy to ever drop the pipe.
Travis says, We got to go, and Typewriter keeps repeating
fuck
. I point my shotgun in the direction of the giggles, the dumpster, the tire rack, but there’s just darkness and I realize we’re under the lights with open space on all sides. I have no idea how to hold the gun. Then demonic laughs come from behind us and we all spin in that direction and then to our right and I see these things coming out of the shadows, a hand here, a face there, giggles all around us. They’re closing in. There must be ten of them, kids and women and men, most of them naked or in pajamas and it’s not God inside my body anymore, but their giggles, loud like sick little kids burning ants, amazed at their power over another living thing.
They don’t shuffle like the ones in the movies. They walk in careful steps, spines straight, arms at their sides. Some laugh with their mouths closed, some open. I don’t know how
long I’m supposed to wait, how far my short barrel can fire, if the sound will attract more, and I’m thinking of these things, along with visceral images of their fingers and nails—ones that a week ago were braiding their daughter’s hair and ringing up packs of cigarettes at SuperAmerica—tearing into me, gouging out my eyes.
I want Travis to tell me what to do. Even Typewriter. Somebody to give me direction, tell me where to aim, when to fire, but my voice’s gone dry with fear.
We can see these walking dead motherfuckers clearly now under the overhead lights. I’ve locked onto one guy and it’s like his upper lip has disintegrated, the space between his nose and mouth gone, just flashes of white bone and tooth. He’s staring right at me and for a second it seems like there’s a person inside there, maybe still able to think and feel. Maybe he can’t help the giggles and missing flesh, maybe it’s something beyond his control, some outside force. But then he laughs really fucking loud and I don’t think I mean to, but I press a touch harder on the trigger.
The kick is worse than I would have thought. I take a step back and look at the guy. I’ve blown my load into his left shoulder. I have a clear view of his ball joint. He laughs. I fire again.