2017:
"I was an in-home caretaker," Mercedes says. "I was placed with Dante the day the outbreak happened. That morning he was bed-bound and kept alive with tubes. That morning I had to change him and rub his bedsores. I was watching gameshows in the other room when the news broke in about this...whatever it is...breaking out. And Dante started screaming in tongues. When I got there, he had ripped the tubes out and was thrashing around, still shrieking gibberish. Then he passed out. When he woke up, his palms were bleeding and he couldn't talk."
We're sitting on our bikes on the open plains of some vast midwestern stretch of nothing. Mercedes and I are as alone as we can be. The others are back by the fire. It's still dusk. Mercedes sighs.
"I appreciate you keeping me company on my watch," she says. "It's easier to stay awake when there's someone to talk to." She yawns.
"Apparently I'm a boring conversationalist," I say. She laughs. I laugh with her. It's a beautiful moment until we both cut our laughter short. She heard it, too. Shit.
"Rise and shine, buttercups," I yell back to camp. I draw steel. In the distance, carrying across the open fields, is the low grunting moan of zombies on the hunt. I can see their black silhouettes. Not many of them, but then. there never are at first. More will come, though. More always come.
I stand there, drawn and aiming. "Mercedes," I say without looking at her. "Get back behind the bikes." She's not armed and I don't want her anywhere near the bullets. I line up the sights, Loki staring at some fat dead guy's tiny head. I fire just as the tubbo reaches down, missing him but spinning the dead chick behind him. What is he reaching for? I shoot him in the chest, staggering him back for a second, allowing someone else to take the lead. "Sure would be nice if I had a little backup," I yell back. "Sigh," I yell. "Oh well," I yell. I pop the next guy in the face. They're closer now, and aiming's getting easier. And I can kind of see what they're chasing. Something small and golden brown is darting sporadically in front of them. Gutierrez appears in my peripheral, his shotgun Black Betty (bam a lam) cocked and ready to spray hot lead like a hose. I reach out and push the barrel down. "You might hit the doggie," I say. I see him give me a stupid look, but he keeps the barrel down. I get off a couple of shots before Lucas shows up. "Always late to the party," I say. He takes careful shots, firing short bursts at chest level. Not all go down, but they're pushed back. I pick them off one by one. The dog, I can see now that it's a longhaired miniature dachshund, has gained a considerable lead. I kneel down and the terrified thing jumps right into my arms, trembling. It's trying to lick my face and I'm trying to not let it. In any event, I'm out of the fight for awhile until I can get this tonguing creature under control. But, with the dog safely out of range, Gutierrez is free to bam a lam away. And I'm free to wrangle the dog, a lady if I'm not mistaken. And it's not long before the smoke clears and it's all over.
"Holy Christ," Lucas says. "Come here a minute. Check this out." We do.
There on the battlefield, twitching with his hip blown all to hell, is former NFL quarterback Brett Favre.
"It's him, right?" Lucas says. "Slap a uniform on him and he's a dead ringer."
"Yes," I say, "but which uniform should we slap on him?"
The zombie quarterback is trying to pull himself toward us.
"I think we need a shotgun play here," I say. Gutierrez rolls his eyes at me, but he complies with the double-tap.
"Wonders," I say. "They just won't fucking cease."
Mercedes scratches the dog behind the ears and I try to get her squiggling under control. The dog's squiggling, not Mercedes'.
"No tags," she notices.
"I guess we'll have to make posters," I say.
"She's a pretty badass bitch," Gutierrez says. "To be out here alone and to have made it this long."
"I think Gigi's got her named," I say. "Bitch."
"That's awful," Mercedes says, but Bitch's tail is wagging so the name will stay.
"Hell of a mascot," Lucas says.
"Mascot my ass," I say. "She's a bonafide crew member. Gigi, you think you could whip up a little jacket for her?"
He grins. "Next time we're in town I'll get some spare leather. She'll have to prospect first."
"No doubt," I say.
"What about me?" Mercedes says.
"I thought you were my old lady?"
"Fuck that," she says. "I want a jacket."
It looks like we're headed to town.
Bitch is at home nestled in the duffel bag with my clothes, her head poked out of the zipper-hole, her ears flapping in the wind. As we ride she looks up at me with a look of unfiltered admiration and love. It's nice to be felt of that way.
We're rolling up toward an off ramp leading to the next speed bump town, and we notice a peculiar pileup. All of the dead cars littering the freeway are headed out; there are no cars headed into town.
"Bad scene," Guillermo says. "We'll go around."
Except that the dead cars are living out their second life as a solid wall. In order to go around, we must go back.
"Does anyone remember where the last off ramp was?" I ask. "Pretty far back, right?"
"Doesn't matter, we have nowhere else to be," Guillermo says.
"Yeah," Lucas says. "But I hate backtracking. Just seeing the ass end of all the stuff you've already seen. It's depressing."
"Tough shit," Guillermo says. "When cars go out and none go in, that means go around. Simple as that. You know this."
I sigh. "Yeah," I say. "I know. But listen. Let me go in a ways, see if there's a service road or something that skirts this mess without having to go around."
"No," he says. Guillermo rarely asserts himself, but when he does there's no swaying him. He's laid back, but he's still got that Alpha male gene. We'll be backtracking.
"Aw, man," Lucas whines, but he swings his bike around.
The sound of static comes from somewhere in the mess of cars. "Stick around," a disembodied voice says. "Do you have any food?"
We linger. Strange voices coming from a pile of cars doesn't do much to illicit feelings of trust and goodwill, especially when there seems to be a camera somewhere in the mix as well.
"It's cool," the voice says. "I probably wouldn't trust me, either." Then the voice goes silent for awhile.
"What's the play here," I whisper to Guillermo.
He shrugs. "I don't know. It's risky, but we can't just avoid other people altogether."
"Still," I say. "It's a fucking blind chance we'd be taking."
"My name is Gordon Lipschitz," the voice pipes up, "and I've heard all the Lipschitz jokes there are so we can skip that part. I can't hear you. I didn't hook up audio. Didn't think it would be necessary for what the outpost is for, which is mainly just watching, I guess. Also, I'm not alone. There are others with me. Mostly women and kids and nerds. All the manly men went off guns blazing and either didn't come back or came back shambling monsters. Either way, we're not a threat. Of course I'd say that, right? But we're really, really hungry. Food supplies are gone. We've resorted to some nasty stuff. I don't want to get into it. But if you don't want to come in, could I maybe come out and trade or something? That is, if I come out, could you please not shoot me?"
We look at each other and nod. For added effect, we raise our weaponless hands in the air.
"Thank you," the voice says. "I'll be right out."
We wait. Bitch wanders off a bit to squeeze out a turd that's as long as she is, and I wonder at the way dogs always looks slightly ashamed when they're taking a shit.
After a minute or two, Gordon appears. He is an emaciated shell wearing a hooded sweatshirt that looks several sizes too big. He waves his stick arms dramatically above his head in the direction of the cars and a voice crackles out "I see you, Gordon." This voice is decidedly female.
"Hi there," Gordon says. Bitch runs up to him, barking, and Gordon flinches. She sniffs his leg, snorts derisively, then wanders back toward me. He keeps a wary eye on her nonetheless. "Do you have food?" he asks. We defer to Guillermo.
"We do," Guillermo says. "And you look like you could use some."
"We sure could," Gordon says.
Guillermo steps off his bike and rifles through his food pack, dropping can after can in a big pile. Gordon moves toward it, but stops when Guillermo steps between him and it.
"Finding food is not hard," the burly Mexican says. "There's plenty of cans like this just lying around everywhere. How could you let yourself get to this stage?"
Gordon shrugs sheepishly. "Cowardess," he says. His voice embodies shame. Guillermo assesses him, then steps aside.
"Take it," he says. "Take it all. We're not afraid to get more." He sounds equal parts disgusted and pitying.
"Thank you," Gordon says. I see the problem immediately. Gordon is too gaunt and weak to carry all of this.
"You guys stay here," I say. "I'll help the scarecrow haul this shit down the yellow brick road."
"Not alone," Guillermo says.
"Nope," I say. "I'm taking Loki. And the rape whistle. And Bitch. If there's trouble, I'll send Bitch out. If there's no trouble, I'll tie the rape whistle around her and then send her out. What do you think?"
"I don't like it," Lucas says.
"You don't have to," I say. "Just be there if I need you."
~
The wall of cars is not the town's only line of defense. The entire road into the city was transformed into a one-pathed labyrinth, each side piled high with debris until all that remained was a claustrophobic tunnel wide enough for two to walk abreast comfortably. It's a tight squeeze and slow going for the bike; every twist and turn makes my think that I'm going to get stuck. Finally, we reach the end of the road and stare down a warehouse loading dock. The heavy rolling door has thin slits hacked into it, murder holes, and I can see the tips of gun muzzles peeking out. Gordon tells them that it's okay, and the door begins to roll up. I leave the bike just outside and I start to go in, then realize that once that door comes down I'll have no way to send for help if I need it. So I tell him that I'll wait here and I dump all of the canned goods off next to the bike.
Figures come out of the darkness to grab the food. Gordon is the meatiest of them. He's right, they're mostly women, a handful of kids, and they're all in advanced stages of starvation. And they're absolutely not a threat.
I tie the rape whistle around Bitch's throat, no easy feat as she squiggles around excitedly trying to lick my face, and tell her to "go get Lucas. Go get Lucas!" She cocks her head at me, reaches back to urgently lick at her crotch for awhile, then looks at me head-cocked again. "How about Guillermo? Go get Guillermo. Mercedes? Dante? Gigi?" At Gigi, her head cocks the other direction and her tail whips up double-time. "Gigi, go get Gigi!" Bitch yips a punctuation mark and she darts back down the path like a furry little bullet. I laugh and I wait.
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