Authors: Keith C. Blackmore
Gripping the wheel, Gus stepped on the pedal and hauled ass up the highway, knowing he couldn’t be any more than a day behind the killers.
With the sun dipping, he stuck to the main highway and weaved around deserted cars, heading toward the city limits of Annapolis. He scanned the shoulders for clues, anything to let him know he was still on course. Despair took up residence in his mind, as he knew searching the city could take weeks, something that he wasn’t sure Maggie or Thelma or the kids had.
The SUV crested a hill, and the decimated plate that was Annapolis lay before him. Even though he’d been higher than a Chinese satellite, purging the city by fire had seemed like a good idea at the time, but sober, Gus found it hard to gaze upon his handiwork. It had been his home at one time, after all, a city filled with memories, most good, some bad. Currently, it resembled a blackened tablecloth of steel and concrete, split wood and broken glass. Some of the taller buildings remained intact, casting tombstone shadows across an otherwise scorched landscape.
The whole of the city seemed to stare back at him. Hateful. Remembering.
Gus drove into the urban crater, determined to find Maggie, Thelma, and the kids. He became a steel-and-fiberglass missile, aimed at the dead city’s heart, rumbling with determination, revving willpower. The SUV coasted through the city’s outer limits, Gus’s face becoming a vengeful glower. Annapolis exuded waves of raw animosity, like an unchecked radioactive core. Nothing walked. Debris littered the road and quickly imposed a slower speed. He saw the ruptured streets, burst from beneath by powerful explosions of gas, all his handiwork.
The city hated him.
He knew it—didn’t give a damn.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he muttered, taking a firmer grip on the wheel. “Your boy’s back, bitch. Roll over and take it, and I’ll leave quietly.”
A collection of cars littered the road, sparkling in the setting sun. Gus drove up on a sidewalk before steering back onto the main drag.
“But make a move, and I swear to sunny Jesus I’ll twist your tits so hard your ass’ll squirt butter.”
A deadhead crawled right on the dotted line of the road. Its head was down, as if searching for its glasses at ground level. Gus didn’t blink as he lined up a front tire and rolled right over the undead, feeling his tire
pop
the skull like an aerosol can tossed into an open fire.
That was the only one. Nothing else crossed his path.
As well it shouldn’t
, Gus thought and scratched his balls.
Like a great beige shark, the SUV prowled through the sun-dried wounds and fissures of the streets, avoiding the arterial clogs of vehicles and taking the easier routes. The sun slipped from the sky, leaving a deepening evening blue. That worried Gus, agitating his misery over the missing people. Annapolis was the
last
place where he wanted to camp overnight. The thought of returning to his old house came to him, quickly dismissed with a snort that said,
Return to what?
He was too sentimental to go back, anyway, knowing he’d bawl his eyes out if he ever laid eyes on the old homestead. Such distractions weren’t needed—not right then.
An hour later, the sign for the 101 appeared in the glare of his headlights, and he drove for the highway.
Annapolis, as far as one frantic pass could confirm, was empty of life.
The open road beckoned.
Morning found Gus stopped just outside Windsor on a divided highway with a rusty-looking set of railroad tracks on his right. The Bay of Fundy tidal flats and saltwater marshes lay on his left. Tall yellow grass fluttered over mud banks singed with a collar of twinkling frost. The sun stared in through the driver’s window like a police officer’s flashlight, waking Gus none too gently. He’d slept in the SUV, seat lowered way back, with his baseball bat at the ready on the passenger side. The Nomex gear was a warm but bulky substitute for blankets. He’d cracked two windows, and while it wasn’t home, it certainly could have been worse. Sleeping outside a couple of years before would’ve attracted a whole lot of flesh-eating attention.
The morning faced him, and a pensive Gus stared back. He was in a hole, and the depth of that shit chute slowly dawned on him. Maggie and the rest could be
anywhere
in the province if they were still alive, and while there were only so many highways he could follow, the search would take time and burn gas, and every wrong turn meant lost ground.
Fuck me
, Gus mulled in frustration and eyed the unmoving traffic on the highway.
Gone.
They were gone—plucked from the farm while he was off searching for Talbert and his merry men. He cursed Talbert for going off to loot Mortimer’s shack in the first place. If Talbert had stayed back, five men would’ve been defending the farm from the cold-blooded sonsabitches who’d gutted the place.
The thought of never seeing Maggie, Thelma, and the kids ever again left him miserable. He got out and took a shivering piss on the side of the highway, gazing across a small body of water he wasn’t sure was freshwater or salt, and saw a smattering of houses situated on the opposite hillside.
Supplies. He’d need supplies.
Whatever had been of value on the farm had been either stolen or burned to the ground, and Gus wasn’t in the right frame of mind to root around ashes and memories to ferret out anything useful.
He tapped himself off and zipped, flabbergasted he didn’t even have so much as a single fucking roll of toilet paper to his name.
But Windsor, the town gleaming in the distance, potentially did.
Seconds later, the SUV rushed toward the sign designating the exit for the downtown section. Gus drove up a low hill and made the necessary turns before coasting into the outskirts of a commercial area. A few Victorian-styled houses, battered and flaking paint badly, stood on his left. A dusty Tim Hortons beamed at him from down a side street. Small businesses dotted the road on either side, occupying either single-story or taller buildings. Many of those were made of brick and metal and had only a few broken windows. A few doors lay open or ripped from their frames entirely.
Gus eased his foot onto the brake. More cars and trucks stank up the road. A motorcycle appeared at one point, lying right on the solid line, chrome bright in the sunlight. Ripped saddlebags lay nearby, the contents long since scattered or stolen. Gus killed the engine and lowered his window. A light breeze breathed on him, cold but not uncomfortably so, and the sound of it struck a melancholy chord.
It was Wednesday. Or Thursday, and a bright morning in November. Pensions might have been deposited into bank accounts today, generating a brief shopping frenzy. The Tim Hortons would be bustling, and though he didn’t really care for the coffee, one whiff of those percolating beans would have made him break down right there. Kids would be in school, maybe even testing before their Christmas break, so they’d be off the street. Bright morning chatter, casual sidewalk conversations, queries about last night’s hockey scores or when Martock might be opening the ski slopes.
Gus rubbed his chin and felt a sadness he’d thought had long since passed.
The place was desolate. Lifeless. A ghost town. Even the lack of gimps did nothing to alleviate the sense of emptiness. More than ever before, he felt he was about to violate a mass open grave. He couldn’t remember ever being that way when he lived alone. Perhaps, in the time spent on the farm, he’d become too accustomed to having people around, and that precious human contact had made him more sensitive to its absence.
Gus sat up and bit on the inside of his cheek. His entire world had been shitbagged overnight. He had to revert back to how he’d been, living alone on the mountain when the undead walked instead of crawled.
He laid on the horn and blasted that dreadful silence. Three times he sounded the horn, his eyes darting to the left, right, and rear in case someone tried sneaking up on him.
No one did, however. Not even after he waited five minutes.
“All right, then.” Gus fired up his ride.
The tires crackled over thin ice as it pulled alongside what looked to be a locally owned coffee shop, just a parking lot over from a sign announcing the Windsor Mall. Gus eyed the businesses listed on a roadside directory and stopped on one in particular, one that very much caught his attention.
The Leather Shop
.
He studied his coat. Underneath, he wore jeans, a black sweater, and matching motorcycle boots.
Christ
. He was never one for fashion, so why change now?
The air chilled him as he exited the vehicle, still wary of the streets. He took his bat and pulled on his helmet, wanting to find another with a visor, wondering if the mall might have something his size.
The glass door to the coffee place opened with a squeak, and he paused on the threshold. Gus entered a small sitting area filled with undisturbed tables and chairs. Bare beams crossed the ceiling, and decorative wreaths hung around the walls, nearly in season once again. Gus wondered about that. The apocalypse had broken out around late summer. He’d put down many a gimp in bathing suits. Perhaps the wreaths were up all year, but they struck him as being totally Christmas.
Bracing himself, he rapped the bat’s head three times off the nearest table.
“Hear that?” he asked the coffee shop, eyeing a small counter. Wire bins with torn sheets of wax paper lay behind the shattered glass displays.
“Anyone in here, you godforsaken fucks?”
No response.
He crept forward, feeling nostalgic for house picking. Back in the days of living off the mountain, he’d actually had a perverse feeling of discovery when scouring for supplies in other people’s property, a treasure hunter’s rush of finding something useful. Handy goods could be anywhere.
A quick search underneath the counter revealed nothing. The space underneath the barren cash register contained cupboards. Gus stopped at the swinging doors leading into the kitchen. Darkness ruled beyond, and he wasn’t feeling particularly brave.
“Hey,” he barked and slapped a door with the bat. It swung inward with a long squeal. Nothing moved.
Gus went inside.
He fumbled about until he discovered a washroom and three fresh rolls of toilet paper. A bottle of chemical cleaner was perhaps three quarters full, as well as a pump bottle of soap that flowed like glue. Gus gathered up the toilet paper rolls and returned to daylight, stacking them on the counter. He found a few heavy sacks of flour mixture––clearly labeled for making muffins––in the back of the kitchen. He knew three bakers in the new world. Anita Little was one of them. A man named Larry had also lived on the farm, as well as Scott––whose whereabouts were utterly unknown. Two of them were dead. Gus supposed he could have travelled into Halifax and searched for Scott, but truthfully, he didn’t want to see if the rat plague had reached the capital city—not after what he’d witnessed at his mountain fortress.
Gus left the coffee shop with the toilet paper and one sack of muffin mixture and loaded up the SUV. The crap wrap went into the back seat as he kidded himself that he had enough for a month if he stayed off the booze.
The mall was next.
The metal grate of the entrance protecting the glass doors had been smashed aside and left hanging like a drooping blind, as if someone had rammed a truck through it all. Gus parked and got out, grimacing at the mess. Dull glass glittered and crackled underfoot. Shriveled bodies carpeted the floor and walls as if the whole town had sought shelter at the mall. Some had their skulls smashed in or removed entirely from their neck. A breeze, full of regret, sighed through the shadowy cavern of steel and concrete and glass.
One carcass, a mall cop by his uniform, sat with his back against the wall just inside the entrance. He stirred and lifted his chin slowly. Gus watched the dead thing’s attempt to will its limbs into motion. The face resembled a melted mask, blackened and frightening. Gus crushed the head with a boot heel, grunted at having to stretch a leg up so high, and awkwardly regained his balance.
A clump of scalp matter clung to his boot.
Gus made a face at the clinging flesh and stomped, which didn’t dislodge the rag of skin. Huffing in disgust, he dragged his foot over the twinkling glass then wiped it on another body wearing a shirt and pants and yet another body with a denim jacket. At first, his efforts were slow and deliberate, but as he repeatedly failed to clean his boot, he put more exasperated energy into the swipes.
“
Goddamnit
,” he swore and tried to ignore it. The trouble was he could
feel
the scalp dragging along with each step. Gus grunted in annoyance, placed a hand against a wall for support, and used his other boot to vigorously pin the scalp to the floor and rip it away.
He freed himself in a few seconds, test-walked, and found his stride returned to normal.
“Worse ’n dog shit,” Gus muttered, making a note never to stomp in a head ever again.
Movement then. Even in the dim, cavernous halls of that retail crypt, he picked up on crawlers and drew back a few steps. At the absolute edges of the dark, fingers slinked into view and clawed at the floor.
Gus waited, but nothing came out of the dark.
Realizing the zombies couldn’t move, Gus still retreated a few more steps, toward daylight. Something about those fingers, moving like stunned crabs, repulsed him, creeped him out.
He needed a flashlight. No way was he going to go someplace dark without one. Not after what had happened at Mortimer’s. He got aboard the SUV and drove off, cruising the downtown area for a hardware shop. The minutes dragged on, and he realized he was wasting time, so he decided to go back to the basics and stopped at the first house on his right. He didn’t mind little houses like this gray-painted, two-story Victorian. A sunroom faced a front lawn that might have been the envy of the town back when people still lived. The grass had grown unchecked to knee height and presently bent over with frost.
Gus got to work.
By midmorning, he’d picked his way through four such homes, encountering not one gimp in his search, and locating a heavy, rubber-grip flashlight that took four D-cells. Gus thumbed the switch, but the beam was too weak to be of any use. Pocketing the flashlight, he went on the hunt for better batteries. He didn’t find any, but he did pick up two cloth grocery bags, the environmentally friendly kind, and stuffed in a kettle, along with five boxes of dried, cheese-flavored Kraft Dinner. He grabbed a set of Tupperware from a kitchen, including a set of spoons, forks, and knives. A can opener also went into a bag. On the second trip, he snatched a midsize pot and a no-stick frying pan.