American Apocalypse Wastelands (7 page)

I moved toward the woman. Keep in mind that everything happened in under a minute. Fat Boy was still on top of the woman, but was no longer pumping. He was also as much red as white. The red splotches, plus a few pieces of gristle, were from his buddy who had been waiting his turn.

I heard the woman moan. No, it was a keening sound. It was the sound a puppy would make if it got its nose jammed into a fan. It made me angry.

Fat Boy twisted around enough that he saw me coming. He looked ahead. The woman's clothes and holster, including the gun, had been tossed into a pile about six feet away. Fat Boy was going to go for it. That made me happy. It was considerate of him to give me a clear shot. I didn't want to hurt the woman underneath him any more than she had already been hurt.

He didn't leap as much as slither over her body. I let him get about halfway across her—unfortunate for her, I suppose. Watching his hand reaching out like a drowning swimmer for the gun, I pretty much blew it off. It looked like some of it remained—not enough for him to get his palm read, that was for sure. He rolled off her, got to his knees and then, to my surprise, to his feet.

“You son of a bitch!”

I shrugged.

“Oh, Jesus! Do something! I'm hurt!”

I heard Ninja say, “No shit.”

The woman continued to shriek from where she lay.

I cycled a new round and was getting ready to finish Fat Boy when Night zipped past me.

“Goddamn it, Night!” I yelled.

I started moving toward her and Fat Boy. My first thought was that she was going to help the woman before we were done with Fat Boy. He must have thought she was coming to help him. We were both wrong.

Her hand went to her belt and the fillet knife. Fat Boy had his arm up in the air. It sprayed bright red blood like a flabby white fountain. For some strange reason I found myself thinking of the Fourth of July. He had to be going into shock.

Night got to him, reached out, grabbed his now flaccid cock, and whipped her fillet blade across it. It looked like a clean cut.

She held it up in front of his face and screamed, “Rape this, you cocksucker!” She shook it in his face, walked past him, wound up, and threw it into the creek. If he hadn't gone into shock a minute ago, he certainly had now. His eyes rolled back until all I saw was white, and he went down like a clear-cut tree.

I turned to Ninja. “You see what she just did?”

He nodded.

“That just wasn't right,” I said

He looked at me surprised.

“Yep. She should have put a hook in that worm before throwing it into the creek.” I grinned at him and winked. He didn't get it at first. I shook my head and started toward Max, who was looking at the bow.

 

Night knelt down to comfort the woman. I held back. I didn't think she needed another man in her face right then.

Ninja had disappeared in the few seconds I had my back to him.
Damn
. I looked at Max and turned back. I figured Ninja was puking his guts out in the bushes.

The woman got up and looked at the dead man with the arrow through his neck. She screamed again, a much higher-pitched scream. She took three steps to her clothes and the holster, bent over, and came up with the gun.

Time froze.

I saw Night open her mouth, the word “No” forming, as the woman took the pistol and inserted the barrel into her mouth. She pulled the trigger and dropped.

I moved quickly to Night, who had frozen in place. I think I heard Max say, “Shit.” I knelt down next to Night, holding her close.

“C'mon, honey. We need to go.” She resisted at first and then stiffly got to her feet. I kept my arm around her and turned her away from the woman's body. I started walking her to the creek.

I heard Ninja scream, “You motherfucker!” I looked back. He was standing over the body; in his hand was one of his shirts. He had gone to get the woman something to wear.

I didn't have time for him. That was going to have to be Max. I could feel Night shaking. I started talking to her. Nothing much. Just a string of “It's going to be okay. It's alright,” as I led her away.

Max moved toward Ninja. But of course it wasn't over. I don't know if it was death throes or not, but Fat Boy started twitching like he still had some life in him. Whatever it was, it didn't last. Ninja walked up to him, pulled out his handgun, and removed the top of his head.

CHAPTER EIGHT

We didn't have time to deal with emotional issues. Max got us moving. I realized later that it was the only sane way for regular people to cope with dispensing and seeing others suffer violent deaths. You had to get busy; keep your mind focused on the present—and the next moment.

I wanted Night away from this. She didn't need to see it. At the same time, I held her next to me, making physical contact, trying to quiet the shaking that convulsed her.

We heard Max yelling, “Night! Night!”

She pulled away from me. “Yeah, Max?”

“Get your ass over here. We got work to do!”

She paused and glanced up at me, looking for something. To this day I don't know what she expected—or wanted—to see. Whatever it was, I don't think it was there.

“Coming!” she yelled, heading toward Max and the bodies. I stood there watching her walk, shrugged, and followed her.

We walked back to where the stink of death was already drawing flies.

They always came: the big, fat, black flies. The kind of flies that crunched and squashed when you swatted them, leaving a nasty little stain.

You never saw them until blood was spilled or the latrine got its first load. Then, like magic, they appeared out of nowhere. I imagined their maggots hanging in clusters, like grapes in secret places, where they slumbered until the right smell called them forth. Then, they would burst free and, like ugly butterflies, they would take wing and follow the scent.

I hated flies. When I was bored, I would take a flyswatter and kill every one I came across.

Max had us toss the bodies into the bushes and the bikes into the trees. He had Night fetch water from the creek to wash down the bloodiest spots.

“What about the bone fragments?” I asked him.

“Leave them. I'm more worried about what it looks like from the air. Police the brass, though.”

Ninja and I tossed bodies, and Night watered the whole area. Max took over the watch. It would have been awkward to be surprised by a county park crew, if they still existed, or a random passerby, while tossing bodies. Let alone any remnants of the gang.

Ninja was bothered by the idea of tossing the woman in the bushes with Fat Boy and everyone else. “Shouldn't we bury her? And her friends?”

I could tell that “friends” was an afterthought. I bit my tongue and, instead of biting his head off, decided to try my kinder and gentler approach. “No. No time.”

“Oh.”

I sighed. “You want to say a prayer?” He nodded his head. “Before or after we toss her?”

“After.”

“Okay.”

We tossed her. He stepped forward and bowed his head. “Dear God, please look out for her. She seemed nice. Let the rest of these assholes, except for her friends, burn in hell. Amen.”

I added my “Amen” to the chorus.

We silently went back to work. Afterward, I took the machete and used it cut some branches to cover up what the bushes didn't. We washed up in the creek.

We took nothing in the way of personal spoils from either group. We all decided, without talking much about it, that it was all tainted. Plus, we were maxed out as far carrying any more weight.

Ninja asked hesitantly, “Why don't we take the bikes, Max? I mean, I understand why we don't go through their stuff but …”

“Night, you want to answer that?”

She replied flatly, “Because we don't want to cover a lot of ground quickly if it means at the end of the day that we die just as quickly.”

Max nodded. “Ninja, there is a time for speed, but this isn't it.” He grinned at him. “C'mon, what better way to see Virginia than by humping sixty pounds of gear while you sweat your ass off? You got point. Gardener, take drag. Let's move.”

We started down the trail again.

 

The next few days proved uneventful. We faded into the woods if we heard helicopters overhead. There wasn't a lot we could do about them. There was even less we could do about the drones that were up there somewhere.

We rolled out of our bags before dawn. We would just sit, weapons up, and wait for about twenty minutes until Max gave us the sign to fix breakfast.

When I had a chance to catch him alone, I asked him, “What's up with the morning meditation routine? I mean, I doubt if any Tree People are going to come storming into camp. Hell, they usually don't wake up until the sun pierces their hangovers.”

He looked at me quizzically. “You really think we're the only people moving around out here with some kind of military training? I'm not worried about the ones we spot. It's the ones we don't that will be the problem.”

Not a lot I could say to that. So I didn't. I was somewhat cranky for a while in the morning anyway.

We usually ate a cold breakfast. In the morning the only hot thing we had was tea or coffee. We ate just one full hot meal a day now, a hot lunch cooked over a backpacker's stove. At dinner, we made tea but ate our food cold. We didn't want to spend any length of time where we sent the smell of food out into the breeze.

I don't know about the others but I could now clearly identify everyone just by smell. Even their farts had become familiar. It wasn't that we stunk as much as each of us had a signature odor.

I could easily recognize Night; she had the most complex smell. It would change before and during her period. When her period was over, it would revert to what I thought of as
her
smell. I never told her, but during her period she smelled like Chinese food.

Max had a heavy smell. It was dark, with undertones of black licorice, metal, and gun oil. Ninja smelled like a
sweaty kid, the beach, and a public Laundromat. Me? I don't know but I am sure there was a smell.

For some reason I didn't sweat as much as the others. Probably because I found that the heat and the load didn't bother me much, especially when I got into the rhythm of moving.

I asked Max about it, since he didn't seem bothered either. I liked getting into the rhythm, but had also noticed it numbed me to the flow. I lost a little of my edge.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Max said. “It's actually pretty common.”

“Shit. I thought I was special.”

He laughed. “The only thing special you got going for you is Night.” He paused and became more somber. “Some guys will get into the rhythm and then drug for the awareness edge.” He shrugged. “It works until it doesn't.”

“So what do you do?”

He went silent for a bit. “I'm not sure how to explain it. Nor do I know how I got there. I think it was always there for me, waiting.” He paused again. We were sitting on our haunches. I had come to relieve him of the watch. He took a pine twig and used it to scratch at the ground.

“Look, don't get all twisted up about it. Think of it like this. The big
You
plods on while the little
You
rides along and does the watching and listening. After a while you will even be able to detach him and let him fly above you to watch.”

Then he leaned closer to me and whispered, “It also helps if you keep your head out of your ass.” I heard him laughing to himself all the way back to the camp.

 

Max told us that when we walked point, it was our call whether to “stop and talk” or “freeze and fade” us if we ran across other groups or individuals. This led to a discussion of what the hand signs for these would be.

I have to admit the whole hand sign thing amused me at first. Then I got to thinking about the usefulness of it. I jumped from that to wanting to invent our own secret language. I started talking about it whenever we took a break.

To my surprise, no one gave me a hard time about it or called me an idiot. Not that they had a problem letting me know when they thought I was being too offthe-wall. They just had different ways of doing it. Max would catch my eye and give a short shake of the head. Night had her public and private versions. Ninja, well, he never thought anything I said was completely stupid. I liked the kid for that.

We didn't come up with a lot of additions, probably because there were only so many signs you could remember in a day. We did create signs that could be used around strangers. We had SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE and I DON'T TRUST THEM and LET'S GO SOON.

I also liked the idea of inventing our own sign language because I figured I could create a special sign for Night and me. I planned on calling it the LET'S +SLIP AWAY FOR A QUICKIE sign.

Night was relaxed about a lot of things, but asking her the question in front of the others just didn't seem like the right way to go about it. We also had the problem of standing watches. One of us always seemed to be on watch when we weren't walking.

I showed Night the sign I created. It was actually three signs done very quickly. I thought it was very subtle. She
thought it was funny but she agreed to watch for it. I was delighted—and in a hurry to try it out.

The chance came soon enough. Max called a thirty-minute break the next day around midafternoon. We moved up into the woods and dumped our packs. Ninja had his boots off as soon as his ass hit the ground. Max picked a stalk of grass and began chewing it. I caught Night's eye, grinned, and let my hands speak their magic. She grinned back and I stood up.