I wondered how many times Smith had put a hatchet through somebody’s head before the epidemic started. Killing seemed to come easy to him.
“Let’s take a look inside.”
I followed Smith towards the post office building. We climbed the front porch steps and I was grateful for the shade the overhanging roof provided. Smith leaned on the window shutters and cupped his hands around the gaps, trying to peek inside.
“Can you see anything?”
“Nah, it’s too dark and there’s not enough space to see inside. Let’s try around back.”
We followed the pathway that led from the porch to a small picket fence marking the boundary between the store front and the owner’s private property. Smith opened a small gate and we moved towards the rear entrance. A steel plated door stood underneath a small overhead porch to the left of the building. The remains of a long since tended garden lay to the right. Clumps of overgrown grass were isolated amongst dry dusty patches where the plants or flowers had died and shriveled.
A long, one story building with a corrugated tin roof protruded from the main construction of the post office at its far end, making the whole structure shaped like a letter ‘L.’
Smith rattled the door and inevitably found it locked from the inside.
“There’s no way of hacking that open,” he said.
I studied the low level roof.
“If we can get on top of that low level, we may be able to climb up the main roof and get in those top windows somehow.”
Smith nodded. “It’s worth a shot.”
I thought I’d try my hand at scaling the post office outhouse but Smith ushered me back. He slid a rusting, free standing barbecue next to the low building and hopped up onto the grill’s sides. The metal frame creaked under his weight. Spot let out a shrill whine as he watched Smith haul himself onto the corrugated, tin roof. Either Spot wanted to climb onto the roof himself or he was worried. The poor little guy had lost his best friend, Sherman today so I supposed he didn’t want anyone else to come to any harm.
Smith’s boots clanked along the corrugated tin roof. He hacked the hand axe into the asphalt tiles on the main post office building and hauled himself up the steep incline. Spot and I stood in the heat of the sun, watching Smith climb the roof. It was slow going and I hoped the hatchet wouldn’t suddenly dislodge itself from the tiles and Smith would tumble down onto the ground. We couldn’t afford any injuries to exacerbate our shitty predicament.
Finally, Smith reached the ridge of the roof and sat astride the apex summit. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand and lit a cigarette.
“Good view from up here, kid,” he called down.
“See anything interesting?”
“Looks like there’s a small town further down the highway, maybe a mile or so.”
“You still want to get inside the post office?”
“Well, I’m up here now, kid so we may as well have a look inside. In my experience, most post offices have some sort of weapon to defend themselves from bandits. Especially in rural places like this.”
“Okay, Smith. It’s your call,” I said.
“I’ll go inside and let you in through the door.”
“Front or back?”
“Whichever one I can get open, kid.”
Smith flicked his cigarette butt into the air and moved his leg over the roof apex so he was sitting on the tiles facing the front of the building. Spot and I walked back around the front and watched Smith shimmy on his backside towards the top of the roof window furthest to the left.
He scrambled around the window frame and crouched on the sill. Spot rumbled and whined and shuffled backwards and forwards. I bent down and ruffled his head to try and calm him down.
Smith peered through the window glass before smashing the pane with the hatchet. Shards of glass tinkled into the room beyond. Smith took out all the jagged edges of the pane before hauling himself fireman style through the open frame and out of our vision.
Spot and I moved under the front porch and waited for Smith to open the door. I found a book of matches on the veranda and slipped it into my back pocket. We waited for what seemed like ages and I lit a cigarette, trying to stall my impatience.
I’d smoked around half the cigarette when I dropped it on the porch in a state of sudden shock. A muffled gun shot rang out inside the post office building.
Chapter Thirteen
“Smith...Smith, are you okay?” I yelled and pummeled the front door with my fists.
Smith sometimes had an annoying habit of going rogue when we faced some sticky situations. I hoped this was another one of those times and he wasn’t lying shot somewhere inside. I had no weapon of any kind; no transport and I didn’t know the area in this hostile environment.
“Shit,” I spat.
Several scenarios ran wild through my brain. What the hell was I supposed to do?
Spot’s ears pricked up and I heard a clank from inside the building. Unless rodents were running amok inside, I was pretty sure someone was moving around in there. Spot let out a lone, shrill bark.
The noise seemed to come from the back of the building. Spot and I hurried around the side and back through the gate between the picket fence. The back door stood halfway open. The interior of the building was dark and uninviting. I could make out shapes of bulky right angles, maybe boxes or kitchen closets. I slowly put down the canvas bag by my feet.
Spot’s hackles rose on his back and he growled, low and long.
I looked around for a weapon of some sort. Anything that I could defend myself with. The only thing close to hand that resembled an item of combat was a thin, bamboo cane still stuck in the ground at a sloping angle. I pulled the cane from the dusty ground and held it out in front of me as though it had miraculously turned into a rapier sword.
A sturdy figure loomed from the blackness and stood in the doorway. I recoiled in shock for a fraction of a second until I blew out a sigh of relief.
“Have you turned into Harry Potter now, Wilde Man? Are you going to whip me to death or turn me into a frog with your magic wand?” Smith mocked.
I tossed the cane back into the unkempt garden.
“I heard a gunshot in there.”
Smith moved out of the gloom and into the sunlight. I noticed he was carrying an old style, double barrel shot gun.
“I found this inside.” He lifted the shot gun slightly to show me. “It’s not exactly top of the range in modern warfare but it beats a hatchet in a game of
who can kill each other first from ten yards
.”
I’d never heard of Smith’s game and wondered if he’d ever played that particular party piece for real.
“Who were you shooting at?”
“Only a rat. I got a little spooked in there in the dark. I found the shot gun under the counter, then I saw something moving in the corner. Turned out, it was only a damn rodent munching on some old candy bar.”
“So you shot it with a shot gun? Wow! That’s a bit extreme.” I shook my head and reached for my pack of cigarettes.
“When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, we used to get overrun with fucking rats at times. I hate the creepy little motherfuckers.” Smith shivered and pulled a horrified face.
“You hate them worse than zombies?” I asked, lighting my smoke.
Smith shook his head. “At least you can see zombies coming. Rats just sneak up on you out of the dark.”
“Rats don’t sneak up on you,” I scoffed, blowing out smoke. “They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
“Whatever, it still doesn’t take away the fact that rats are sneaky little bastards.”
I sniggered and flicked my ash. Unearthing Smith’s phobia was a new and enlightening source of amusement.
“Do you know rats can survive without food for fourteen days? And they don’t have a bladder, so they’re constantly pissing and shitting themselves.” Smith babbled waving his free hand around and pulling a serious face like he was trying to convince a court room to pass the death sentence on the whole of the rat population. “They can also jump six feet into the air.”
I giggled at Smith’s unfounded sincerity, not knowing or caring if his facts were true or not. The rat species would still inhabit our planet long after the human race died out.
“We had rats in London too,” I said. “When I was growing up, we used to see them running around the tracks in the underground train stations.”
“Fucking exactly.” Smith’s voice pitched a few octaves higher than normal. “Those fucking things spread the bubonic plague in Europe in the 1300’s, wiping out most of the human population.”
“So?”
“Well, duh! Look around you, Wilde!” Smith shrieked, waving his arms like a windmill. “History seems to be repeating itself, don’t you think?”
I knew what Smith was getting at but his logic seemed a little skewed.
“Rosenberg said this epidemic was a form of flu. Swine flu and bird flu mutated into some kind of fucked up virus. That doesn’t have anything to do with rats or the bubonic plague, Smith.”
“How do you know that for sure?” Smith pointed at me with the end of the shot gun.
“So you’re saying this whole zombie apocalypse was caused by rats?”
“I’m just saying it’s a possibility.” He shrugged and thankfully slid the shot gun behind his head and horizontally along his shoulders.
I shook my head.
“That’s probably something we’ll never find out in our lifetime,” I muttered. “Are we going to have a look through this post office or stand out here all day arguing about fucking rats?”
“All right.” Smith nodded and turned to the back door.
The afternoon sun began to dip towards the horizon, casting long shadows across the garden. Smith led the way into the back of the post office. I guessed the former owners lived at the rear of the store and in the upstairs rooms.
“Is there any food in the store?” I asked. “That fish soup or whatever the fuck it was left a bad taste in my mouth.”
“Yeah, it was fucking disgusting. I think there’s some soda and candy. I didn’t have time to take a real good look around.” Smith led the way through the gloomy corridor towards the store.
An overwhelming stench of damp and dust hung in the air.
“You were in here for ages,” I argued. “What’s upstairs?”
“Empty bedrooms. Nobody seems to have been here for a long time.”
“Maybe they just moved on at the start of the outbreak.”
“Well, if it was me, I’d have stayed put here,” Smith said.
The corridor opened out into the store front, around twenty square feet in size. Sunlight squeezed through the gaps in the wooden shutters, allowing just enough light for us to see our way around.
Free standing racks of post cards flanked the front door and the counter stood directly in front of the corridor. I imagined the hubbub of noise and chatter that once echoed through the store. Local people talking about the weather, the hurricanes, tourists and the cost of stamps, groceries and gas. All gone forever now.
Smith mooched around the store, poking and prodding at boxes and racks of items on the shelves either side of the counter.
I spotted a rack of potato chips and candy bars to the left of the counter. Not the healthiest diet in the world but we had to eat. I led Spot around the counter and pulled down a big pack of chips, opened it and tipped the contents on the floor. Spot snaffled up the potato chips, crunching each one in his teeth. I munched my way through a couple of chocolate candy bars that tasted a little stale but still edible. ‘
Beggars couldn’t be choosers
,’ as my mother used to say.
I briefly thought about my estranged parents. I’d had no contact with my mother in London and my sister in San Francisco since the outbreak. My dad had offered me the chance to board his yacht in Battery Park Harbor in New York with disastrous consequences that I firmly pushed to some dark and forgotten corner of my mind. I’d shot the reanimated, undead body of my father through the head onboard that yacht. No matter how many times I’d tried to justify my actions to myself, I always felt a pang of guilt and sorrow. I’d also led the others in our small band of survivors to their deaths in New York City, with false promises of a secure sanctuary away from the zombie hordes.
“Hey, look at this,” Smith barked, snapping me from my inner turmoil.
I turned my head, gazing in Smith’s direction.
Smith held up a bunch of folded papers. “Tourist maps and places of local interest.” He waved the maps and smiled like he’d found a winning lottery ticket.
I found it hard to be enthusiastic and hoped my gloomy mood would lift soon. Spot let out a loud belch which made me giggle.
“Go easy with the junk food, you two,” Smith said. “We may have to move out of here soon and I don’t want you two suffering with belly cramps.”
I took a few packs of chips and chocolate bars and stuffed them into the canvas bag alongside the bottles of bourbon and carton of cigarettes, our accumulation of worldly goods.
A refrigerator that obviously hadn’t cooled anything for a while, stood to the right of the candy racks. The shelves were half stacked with cans of soda and juice. I took out a can and popped the opener. The sweet soda tasted good, even though it was lukewarm.
“Any beer in there?” Smith asked.
I shook my head and tossed him a bottle of juice.
The shelf next to the fridge contained tacky tourist items, such as key chains and toy plastic alligators and snakes. I found an ashtray with an ‘
I Love Louisiana
’ logo emblazoned across it. I poured some juice into the ashtray and put it on the floor for Spot to drink. The three of us guzzled our drinks in silence. I noticed the prone body of Smith’s rat lying between the potato chip racks and hoped the rodent’s blood hadn’t sprayed across the packs we’d already eaten.
Smith pulled a child’s knapsack from a shelf and zipped it open. He put the maps and papers inside then tossed the bag onto the ground in front of me.
“We need to ditch that cloth bag. It’s too cumbersome when you need two hands free,” he said.