Authors: Keith C. Blackmore
Gus paused and listened each time he returned to the SUV in the street. Bodies, like wisps of cloth and skin, ravaged by the elements over the years, lay facedown or on their sides. Nothing moved, and Gus remembered what Talbert and his boys had reported to the folks on the farm.
The dead weren’t a problem anymore. Not in the least.
The rear of the SUV quickly filled with supplies, and Gus took stock of everything before getting inside and driving a little farther down to the next collection of houses. He could’ve walked but didn’t feel like leaving his ride too far behind him. That tempted fate.
And Gus needed her on his side.
He parked ass-first in a paved driveway, driver’s side lined up with the front door. This house gave up some duvets, which he heaped into the back seat, four plastic liter water jugs, and another two rolls of toilet paper. A rifle was also present in the living room, held in the papery hand of the individual who’d last used it to exit the world via gunshot. The top half of the skull appeared like a broken flower pot––and Gus wondered why the hell the long-gone wore smiles in the afterlife. Those eerie grins spoke to him, last messages to the living.
The guy had a family gathered around, two children with weedy hair clinging to their heads. They sat on a sofa with blown-apart pillowcases over their heads while the wife relaxed in a stretched-out recliner, sporting a hunting rifle hairdo—one more family who had decided that the easiest way out was suicide.
Gus moved on, trying not to dwell on it.
Unable to find any ammunition, he left the firearm. Also, prying the item free from the guy’s fingers seemed like bad mojo.
A basement door opened without a problem, and Gus peered down carpeted steps to a landing, a discarded slipper, and blackness beyond. He didn’t like going into basements, and that one felt spooky. He took two steps down, hating the squeal of old wood, and thought,
Fuck it
before returning to the kitchen. Cans of food lay stacked in cupboards, but he left those, wary of long-expired dates. One cabinet hid a heavy-duty spotlight flashlight with a weak beam, the lithium battery near the end of its existence but still serviceable.
After finding little in the kitchen, he wandered back to the basement stairs, took a none- too-pleased breath, and went down.
The slipper on the landing wasn’t a slipper at all. It was a crushed rat. The discovery froze Gus on the steps. He swung the flashlight beam throughout the rest of the basement, sweeping it one way and then the other, seeing other squashed invaders.
“Little shit stains better not be down here,” Gus warned. “Y’hear me? You better not.”
He toe-flicked the unmoving fur stains of the rats, screwing up his face, glad he wore boots. The wavering beam illuminated a good section of the basement and revealed a laundry area and a washroom (another four rolls of crap wrap). A short hall led to a stylish arch with a rec room beyond, containing a modest gym, a pool table, and a comfy-looking sofa set arranged around a wide-screen TV and a fireplace. A discarded duffel bag lay crumpled in one corner, and Gus prodded it repeatedly before opening and examining its folds. Ancient hockey gear filled it, which he emptied onto the floor. He wasn’t that much of a pack rat just yet.
He clacked the cue ball off a knot of multicolored cousins and listened to the resulting soft chatter. Poking around revealed a stack of
National Geographics
but nothing else of interest. The rats appeared to originate from a displaced drainpipe, which Gus believed was the only entry point in the whole basement.
No shells for the rifle. The toilet paper came with him, and already his asshole felt that much more loved. Gus stashed everything in the duffel bag and returned to the surface.
The larger flashlight would have to do until he found something better.
He saddled up and drove back to the Windsor Mall.
The lack of noise seemed to hum in his ears.
Gus stood at the dark mouth of the mall’s entrance. Geared up and carrying his flashlight, he paused before thumbing the power switch. The beam flared to life, making the search seem official, and he cautiously walked inside.
“Hey!” he yelled after walking ten feet into the retail cave. “Just takin’ a look around, is all. Doin’ a little shoppin’ on credit. That’s all. So stay the fuck back.”
He waited, fidgeting on the crinkling glass. The bodies carpeting the floor didn’t move. The police officer lay toppled on his side.
“Fuck it,” Gus muttered and moved deeper, getting a better grip on his bat. The beam revealed withered heaps of cloth and flesh, which he navigated past, feeling more than a little nervous. He passed a huge, smashed bulb containing a crane and claw and plush toys; furry little limbs stuck out from the scruffy-looking mass. Gum and candy dispensers stood in a two-tiered wall, cracked open, their booty scooped out. More ravaged bodies. He flashed the beam toward a CLEARANCE SALE sign outside an Eager Andy’s chain store. A mound of corpses blocked the glass doors from closing. One of the bodies, a ghoul dressed in a white T-shirt and cargo shorts, slid off the top with all the grace of a crocodile taking to water. Its blackened skin appeared leathery in the light. Gus speared its skull with one quick jab.
Two more crawlers attempted to pull themselves out of the flesh heap before Eager Andy’s discount shop, but the weight of the dead piled atop their lower spines prevented them from reaching freedom. Stick-like arms fluttered weakly in the flashlight’s beam as if searching for car keys.
Gus dispatched those as well.
Tables came into view farther along the corridor, filled with waxy smokestacks of candles, some tall, some reduced to puddles. The residents had turned the place into a refuge of sorts until it was finally breached. Gus found a box of long-necked barbeque lighters on one table, which he stuffed into the duffel bag. He then regarded Eager Andy’s, wondering what the hell Andy had been so damn eager about, and climbed over the clump of carcasses blocking the entrance to the shop. The dead cluttered the wide aisles. Gus waded through, having to go around heaps of unmoving flesh at times. The shelves still contained some household knickknacks but nothing that grabbed his attention.
Hurry,
his mind urged.
Five minutes later, he gave up and hunted for the Leather Shop.
The glass doors to the hole-in-the-wall outlet lay wide open. He ignored the fancy bags, wallets, and shoes, and homed in on the pants. A quick search brought up two pairs his size and another two pairs of a size a little bigger, so he could double bag himself. A biker jacket hung off a rack, a little too large for him but with an underlayer of a sweater or something, it would be perfect. These he grabbed, as well as a pair of belts.
With his booty, he made his exit.
A head or two lifted weakly, as if pulled up by their scalps, but Gus didn’t bother engaging them, focused on the glowing entrance and the parked SUV.
He walked, hairs on his neck standing on end, waiting for unseen deadheads to pounce.
But nothing did.
Once more, Gus loaded and arranged his booty in the rear of his vehicle. Sweat soaked his clothes underneath the Nomex. He gazed back at the depths of the mall and mulled over his next move. The sun beamed overhead, marking noon.
It was time to leave and get searching.
Gus just wasn’t sure of where to go.
He left Windsor, driving back to the 101. As the town disappeared in his rearview mirror, dreadful doubts uncoiled in Gus’s mind. Too much time had passed. He’d taken too long with his modest outfitting.
The trail might’ve gone cold.
The idea that the killers hadn’t holed up in Annapolis seemed solid, but it only made him wary about following the highway down into Halifax.
If any time remained at all, Maggie and the others didn’t have much.
The kilometers whispered past in the barely heard hum of tire rubber. An abandoned collection of metal and glass periodically tangled the highway, forcing him to drive slowly. Gus’s stomach informed him it was about to tear a rib off if he didn’t eat soon. He couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last.
Has a day passed
?
When did I eat last
? There were five boxes of KD in the back, and he had the means of cooking the noodles—all he needed was water. Rolling timberland rose up on both sides of the highway. A dirt road passed by on his right, snaking through the brush to parts unknown. A blue sign stood on the shoulder, informing him that Exit 3 was approaching, but that didn’t interest him at all.
The next sight did.
Gus stopped on top of an overpass with a lonely squeal of brake pads and got out. Feeling like the last man on the planet, he eyed a small body of water to the right of the lanes running underneath. A large eighteen-wheeler was nose down in the ditch on the opposite side of the highway. The long container had stayed upright but jackknifed across two lanes, with the hood of a car lodged between a set of trailer tires. Four smaller cars were scattered around it.
Gus gazed up and down the divided highway, seeing no movement and hearing nothing. He shook his head in wonder at the spectacle below the overpass. The road had seen some excitement. He could make out the head of the truck driver, facedown on his steering wheel as if bashing his forehead in frustration.
Gus returned to his vehicle, backed up, and drove down Exit 3. He stopped along the cement wall bordering the pond, got out, hopped the barrier, and made his way down to the water’s edge. He sampled it, swishing a mouthful around before swallowing, and hoped it didn’t give him cramps or worse. More went down the hatch, and when he’d drunk his fill, he got to work.
Gus warily filled the three jugs and a cooking pot. It took a couple of trips, but he carried the water back to the SUV, as well as some brushwood he’d picked up along the highway. A short time later, he started a small campfire with the butane lighters. There was nothing to hang the pot from, so he held its handle with his gloved hand until the water boiled, wishing he’d had the foresight to grab a grill.
The trailer kept drawing his attention.
The Kraft Dinner cooked in a short time, the powdered cheese plopping into the mixture like an orange nugget. There was no milk or butter, and he could taste the age of the macaroni, but it went down fine. A small amount of leftovers went into a Tupperware dish.
Once fed, Gus let the fire burn itself out while he studied the tractor trailer across the quiet lanes. He pulled out his bat and regarded the vehicle. That lengthy, white storage box called to him.
His boot heels clicked on cracked pavement as he crossed the highway, checking both ways, making a mental note to inspect the cars for fuel. Though the cars of the day had security measures to prevent the siphoning of tanks, there was no safeguard in place to prevent him from cutting into the gas tanks. Fuel stabilizers and other additive mixtures still kept octane levels high well after the apocalypse. With the millions of combustion engines abandoned and cluttering roadways, housed within stylish fiberglass and carbon fiber shells, finding a fuel source wasn’t difficult. It was only a matter of drilling into a tank and having a receptacle in place or drop cloths to soak up the gas. Gus didn’t have a drill, but he did have a hammer and spike, which would get him into most plastic tanks. The metal ones ran the risk of sparking when he punctured the tank, but after four years, he was still popping.
But all that would happen after he checked out the trailer.
He crossed a sloping median of yellow grass. A few shriveled bodies decorated the asphalt like fallen scarecrows. The door to the truck’s cab lay open, the seat buckle keeping it from closing properly. Gus pulled it open, ready to be jumped, but when nothing happened, he hauled himself inside, pushing the dead driver aside, and took a look around. A neat bunk with barely a sheet out of place tempted him to stop for the night. He searched a set of panel wood drawers and left the canned food therein. A notepad PC had swung out on a platform attached to the bed, and when Gus pushed it, he discovered suction cups keeping it in place. Overhead compartments spilled clothing when opened. The rig was an automatic stick shift, but the dash was a mystery of dials and gauges that he left alone.
The sound of his heels slamming the pavement carried, enough for him to stop and listen. Feeling overly paranoid, Gus went to the rear of the trailer, sensing a prize within. He ducked under an open door of the trailer and spotted a ring of rocks marking a fire pit on the pavement. He pondered that for a second before looking into a spacious cavern on wheels––stocked with a living room set. Gus pulled himself into the interior and inspected a deep-earth-brown sofa that had its protective covering torn away, its cushions stained. The corners of a wooden coffee table were scuffed bare. Dusty boot prints tracked across the flooring, at least four different treads. A posh queen-size bed lay at the back. The mattress’s plastic covering had been torn off, and boot prints stained the cloth surface, as if someone had worn their footwear while sleeping.
Someone had used the trailer as a very comfortable campsite, right across from a nearby water supply. Gus turned to leave when he spotted—sticking out behind a black sedan—a pair of very small feet, wearing slippers with scuffed bottoms, toes down in the dirt.
Getting bad vibes, Gus hopped out of the trailer and cautiously approached the body.
He edged around the car and stopped with a chill. The gaping hole in the back of the woman’s head momentarily distracted him from recognizing her gray hair. When he realized he’d found Thelma, the air left his lungs, and he slumped against the car. Sweat coated him in a cold, miserable dew. After a moment, he rolled her over to confirm it was her. Wide eyes stared back, flat and lifeless and caked with dirt. In death, she appeared utterly shocked, her little mouth open, as if she hadn’t expected the trigger to be pulled.
“Well, Jesus.”
Feeling weepy and sick to his stomach, Gus lifted her and transported her to the back seat of the black sedan. With infinite care, he tucked in her legs, tried unsuccessfully to close her eyes, and covered her with a blanket from the trunk. Her limbs weren’t stiff just yet, and the skies were without crows, so she hadn’t been dead for very long. He closed all the doors and windows and gazed in at her, feeling like a cold shit for leaving her that way.