Eight

Sam—he really didn’t like to be called Samson; Colleen could see it in his face whenever Misty called him by his complete first name—looked happy when they agreed to come back to his place.

“Far out,” he said, smiling at them. “We’ll have a good time. My dad sells doors and windows that he pulls out of old houses set for demolition. Refinishes them and sells way marked up. He and my little brother are down in Elk Grove right now, on a salvage run, but they should be back soon.”

“Is your dad going to mind us being there?” Colleen asked.

“Oh, no way.” Sam said, shaking his head and looking solemn. “He’s cool, man. We bring friends home all the time. Dad likes to party.”

No one said anything, and Sam’s smile relaxed. It really wasn’t party time. Colleen glanced at Guy, hoping to silently communicate what she’d told him not long ago: she didn’t like this kid. He was weird. Guy’s barely perceptible shrug was a reiteration of his previously-stated response to the matter: what choice did they have? Any port in a storm, and the dead were only going to keep coming to Misty’s.

The group talked idly, their conversation shifting back and forth from what was happening in the world to what they’d do once they got to Sam’s house, and Colleen tried to tune them out. Daniel mostly listened and watched. Kimberly, no longer crying but still watery-eyed and pale, sat close to Richard, whose eyes shifted over to the front door as if he expected a dead body to come stumbling through it at any second, and he wasn’t exactly crazy to suspect that.

Crate was outside cleaning his mess and keeping watch, Charles sat behind the counter, watching television, and Misty was in the kitchen, making a bit of a racket and filling the air with the scent of flame-broiled beef. Lunch was on her.

They ate their burgers and fries with little comment, aside from the obligatory restrained moans of satisfaction.

“Thank you,” Colleen said, despite the fact that her burger was too greasy, the fries were over-cooked, the bun was stale, and she was trying to be a vegetarian. “You didn’t have to do this for us.”

“She’s right,” Charles said from behind the counter, and Misty’s gentle expression crumbled into one of annoyance bordering on rage. “Get your ass from behind my counter and get out.”

“All I’m trying to say is—”

“Out,” Misty snapped. Charles winced, and Colleen realized that he and Misty were in some way involved with one another. Or had been. The casual hostility with which Misty spoke to him could come only from familiarity, from intimacy.

Charles took his time leaving. They finished their food, gathered and threw away their trash, and thanked Misty for her hospitality.

“It was nothing,” she said. “But I think I’m going to close up after you leave.”

“Yep, you should,” Sam said.

“I’ll be here if you need anything, though.” She spoke to all of them, flipping a thumb toward the back of the room. “Just go around back and knock.” She looked at Colleen, lowered her voice and leaned close. “Sorry about not having the napkins, honey.”

“It’s okay. I’ll make it,” Colleen said, glancing at the television screen. A live shot showed the Tel Aviv skyline. Fire churned, spitting black smoke into the night. “I hope so.”

Outside, Crate had piled what was left of the Willits family into an ugly heap and was dousing them with gasoline. Colleen got the briefest glimpse of Junior before looking away, and her impression was of an armless flayed thing, its face frozen in an expression of wide-eyed surprise, and of a madly grinning blood-shiny mouth, the lips either pulled back in a startled death-throe-rictus or simply chewed away.

Bilbo Baggins sniffed at a small pile of what must have been brain-matter, and Crate threatened to shoot him on the spot if he did a stupid fuck thing like eating that dead thing’s diseased brains. His tail between his legs, Bilbo padded into the shade beneath the awning and threw himself onto the weather-worn boards.

“Take it easy, Crate,” Sam said, crawling into the van behind Daniel.

“You, too.” He squinted at them, fluffing his beard with one boney hand. He lifted his rifle and gave it a little shake. “First line of defense right here. They’ll come from that way, if they come. You all should be safe up the hill. I’ll hold them off.”

“How many bullets you got,” Richard asked, walking past Crate, leading Kimberly along as if she were blind.

“Enough for every man, woman, and child in town.” He smiled. “About three or four times over.”

“Jesus,” Richard said.

“Him too.”

Daniel was the last of them to climb into the van. He slid the door shut and sank into the seat next to Sam. Crate returned to his kills, tossing on a little more fuel.

Guy backed the van into the road and looked into his rearview mirror. There were no dead people. A gush of fire engulfed the Willits heap, and Harlow fell behind them. The trees pressed in, and the road twisted, angling upward.

“How far up?” Guy asked.

“About two miles, I think,” Sam said. “Not far. I’ll let you know.”

Colleen turned on the radio. A weary-sounding black man with the vocal affectations of an evangelical preacher was urging people to work together, to stop fighting, and to face the crisis at hand with faith and solidarity. She pressed a tape into the player, listened to about five seconds of Black Sabbath before turning off the radio.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Sam said, sounding a little too happy. Colleen turned around to face him, and she wondered if she was able to conceal her dislike for their new friend. His smile faltered, and she knew she had not been successful.

She did not care.

“Why do you say that?” She asked.

“I just do,” he said, shrugging. “Because I feel it. We’re going to be okay. You’re going to relax, and we’re going to be okay. And that—” he wagged a hand in the direction of the radio “—is all going to pass us by, just like every other horrible thing in the world has come and gone.”

“You really think so?” Kimberly asked.

“I do,” he said, holding his gaze on Colleen a little longer than he needed to before turning to face Kimberly. “We have the advantage. We’re up here, away from the cities and the hatred and the desperation.”

There was a joyous calm to his voice, the kind she imagined she’d hear in the confident tones of the pussy-hunting campus guru, or in the hushed proclamations of a religious zealot. Is that where they were going? To some oddball religious commune? Was Samson Niebolt going to try and woo them onto his dick with nonsense whispers of the hills and the trees sheltering them from the storm?

Kimberly looked at Sam with something like hope. Colleen faced forward. She looked at Guy and didn’t bother trying to whisper.

“We’re not staying long.”

She shifted her weight, uncomfortable. She could feel her flow increasing, feel her pad, her one last pad, goddammit, growing heavy with menstrual blood.

“Right up here,” Sam said.

The small handmade sign said NIEBOLT DOORS AND WINDOWS, and the narrow road was unpaved, just two well-worn wheel-ruts matted with pine needles. The van rocked and swayed up the hill. A dilapidated shed eased by on their right, and then the ground leveled out and the house came into view, a sprawling ranch-style brick structure that was easily fifteen or twenty years old. It looked completely out of place, as if it some giant had plucked it up from suburb on the outskirts of L.A. and Frisbee-tossed it up into the redwoods.

“It’s kind of funny,” Sam said. “My mom’s idea. She wanted a house that looked like a real house, is what my dad said she told him. I’m not quite sure what that means, but…”

“Is your mother…” Kimberly said, leaving her query unfinished.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “She died when I was five. In childbirth.”

“Oh, God,” Kimberly said, and Colleen knew that her friend was all but in Sam’s bed. “That’s horrible. Did the baby live?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, looking pleased and proud. “Connor. You’ll meet him. He’s, like, totally crazy, but I love the little bastard.”

Kimberly laughed for the first time in what seemed like forever, and Colleen looked at Richard in an effort to find some understanding in his eyes, some knowledge of what was happening. If such knowledge existed, she could not find it.

Guy brought the van to a halt beside the house and looked back at Sam, eyebrows raised. Sam nodded.

They filed out of the van. The road they were on continued, past the house, past several well-kept sheds, arcing right, vanishing into the trees.

“Where are the windows and doors?” Daniel asked, doing his patented head-whip.

“Back there,” Sam said, lifting a hand toward the sheds. “His workshop is further up the road. He makes cabinets and tables, and my mom had him build his shop way up the hill so she wouldn’t have to hear him sawing and hammering.”

There was a light breeze and the air smelled of smoke. Colleen looked in the direction from which they’d come, at the trail sloping away until the woods swallowed it, and for the third time in less than twenty-four hours she was overcome with the certainty that she was safe. She was safe and they were safe, and they would remain safe for as long as they stayed put. This time, however, her certainty did not seem desperate or irrational.

For reasons that she or anyone else may never know, the dead were getting up and society was falling apart. By providence or blind and meaningless coincidence, they were in the middle of nowhere when the shit hit the fan, miles away from any major population center, not home in Fresno. And they were safe.

They’d heard no news regarding their home town, but she knew it would vary only in small, inconsequential details from the news coming out of every major city on the face of the earth. She wondered if she would ever see her house, and again came the thought of her mother, not really dead and not really alive, lying in darkness six feet beneath freshly churned dirt.

 

 

 

Sam helped unload their luggage, which he placed in the dim entry room of the squat brick house he apparently shared with his father and brother. The place looked nicer on the outside than it did inside. The tile floor was dirty. To the left, just inside the front door, an old umbrella leaned in the corner, a heap of dirt-crusted boots lying before it, their laces splayed and entangled. The walls were bare. An empty vase sat atop a featureless little table. It was one of those quiet houses with a loud clock. A bead curtain obscured the dimly-lit room beyond the vestibule.

They followed Sam through the beads and into a large living room that smelled stale like the inside of the confessional at St. Anthony’s. Sam clicked on a lamp. The place hadn’t been redecorated since the fifties. With its boxy art deco cabinet and nearly round screen, the television sitting atop four skinny legs across from the stained and sprung couch looked to Colleen like it may have been older than the house.

“That thing work?” Daniel asked, reading her mind.

Sam made a face. “Not so great, man, but we never watch it all that much, anyway.”

There was a low coffee table between the couch and the television, its surface furry with dust.

“You can all crash here, I guess,” Samson said. “No one really stays here anymore, not since mom died. Dad lives in his workshop, mostly, but he still comes down here when he misses her. It’s pretty sad.”

“Where do you and your brother stay?”

“My dad built us all a little place further up the road. I’ll show you later.”

The place felt like a frozen moment, a fading memory grown soft around the edges and losing definition.

“I think I’d just as soon set up our tents and enjoy the fresh air,” Guy said, and Daniel murmured his assent. “We really don’t want to impose.”

“Sure,” Sam said. “I don’t blame you. The place is a mess. You can’t camp out forever, though, so maybe we can clean up a bit later on, right?”

“Maybe so,” Guy said. “Is there a phone here?”

“There is, in the kitchen, but it’s disconnected.”

“Okay,” Guy said, after a moment. “Is there a phone that isn’t disconnected?”

“Up at my dad’s workshop, yeah, but I don’t think you’ll reach anyone. I think they’re all dead now.”

“I’d still like to try.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam said. “We’ll head up that way in a bit. Last stop of the tour. Come on.”

“Wait,” Colleen said. “Can I use the bathroom?”

Sam looked uncertain for a second, uncertain and maybe a little worried, and then he brightened. “Of course.” He indicated the hallway at the other end of the living room. “First door on the right.”

Three of the four bulbs were dead, and the remaining one burned weakly behind frosted glass, offered little light. A dingy shower curtain concealed a claw-foot bathtub that seemed out of place even here, and the toilet bowl was dry, the water having long since evaporated, leaving behind a brown ring as the only evidence that it had been there at all.

Colleen pressed the plunger and watched as the bowl filled with the stagnant contents of the toilet tank. Pipes gurgled and knocked. She waited for the tank to refill completely and then flushed again.

In the cabinet beneath the sink, she found a roll of toilet paper and a stack of neatly folded face-cloths. She placed the toilet paper on the counter and took one of the towels from the middle of the stack. She thought about it for a second, took four more, and pressed them into her pockets. She removed a fifth towel and wiped down the toilet seat with it.

A few minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom, having disposed of her bloated and leaking pad and replaced it with one of the face-cloths.

In the living room, Sam tried to get the television to work. The screen displayed only a dim haze of snow. He battered the side of the old beast and tussled with the rabbit ears, and a voice and face emerged from the snow, another grim network newscaster.

“…dent Nixon is urging Americans to cooperate with local and state law enforcement. Sources close to the President say that tonight’s speech will outline his administration’s ‘plan of attack’ regarding the current situation, in addition to addressing concerns over recent statements by Russian President Nikolai Podgorny that—”

The rabbit-ears tipped backward and rattled to the floor behind the television, and the blizzard returned.

“Eh,” Sam said, turning off the television. The circle of snow shrank to a small wavering point of light. “We’ll get it working later, come on.”

They followed him out of the house and up the trail.

“He’s got a few hundred unfinished doors in there,” Sam said, indicating one of the sheds. “Some of them are good, but most of them are no good for anything but a nice big bonfire. We do that sometimes.”

They passed another shed, and Sam droned on about his father’s doors and windows, but Colleen tuned him out. Daniel moved close and tugged her shirt once.

“What?”

“How are you?” He asked, giving her his best puppy dog face.

“I’m fine.”

“Still mad at me?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m sorry, okay,” he said, and she rolled his words over in her mind a few times. Not the words themselves, but the tone in which they were uttered. He sounded like he meant it.

“Okay,” she said.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I already did it.”

“Did what?”

She nodded toward Sam. “Stole a few facecloths from his bathroom.”

Daniel laughed, and things were okay between them again. Maybe things wouldn’t stay okay between them for long, but they were okay between them for now, and that made her happy. Guy looked back with confusion on his face, and she stepped away from her brother.

“What’s funny?”

“Just patching things up with my idiot brother, is all.”

“He is an idiot,” Guy said. “But that’s good.”

They walked a bit more, and Colleen’s thighs and calves burned. The incline was gradual, but it was taking its toll on her underused leg muscles.

“Where the hell are we going?” Richard asked, stopping to reach down and massage his right calf. Colleen wasn’t the only one feeling it.

“Just a little more. I want to show you something.”

A little further along, they came across the first of the doors: thick metal beasts with small glass windows inlaid with wire mesh, rust-spotted and stacked three or four thick and leaning against several of the young redwoods that made up this part of the forest.

“What’s this about?” Daniel said, stepping up to one of the doors and touching the small window placed into the door at head height. Beneath the window, the number 17, now faded from exposure to the elements, had been painted. “These come from a prison or something?”

“You’d think so,” Sam said. “I thought the same thing, too, but they’re just from a school. Dad got them cheap, but now they’re rotting out here.”

“This what you wanted to show us, man?” Daniel said. “Some doors leaning against trees?”

“No, no,” Sam said. “I mean, yeah, I wanted to show you this, but I really want to show you where I live.”

“How far is it?”

“Not much. And when we get there, we’ll tighten our wigs, okay? All of us.”

“Okay,” Daniel said, sounding less annoyed.

Kimberly looked back at Colleen and, eyebrows raised, mouthed the words: “Tighten our wigs?”

Colleen pinched her thumb and forefinger together before her lips, sucking in her cheeks.

“Oh, yeah,” Kimberly said. “Good.”

The ground leveled out again, and three small cabins came into view, one in the center, at the end of the road, and one on either side of the path. There was a pick-up truck parked next to the cabin on the left.

Colleen took Guy’s hand and stopped. Kimberly looked back at them, and Colleen waved them on.

“We’ll catch up.”

“What’s on your mind?” Guy asked, stroking her cheek.

“I miss you,” she said, trying to gather together everything that was on her mind and say it in some way that made sense.

“You want to rest here a little while and then hit the road?” Guy said.

Colleen was momentarily confused, unsure if he meant here, in the middle of the road, or here, at Sam’s father’s place.

“I don’t know,” She said, after realizing he’d meant the latter. “I don’t think so. I don’t like Sam, but I think we’re safe here for now.”

“And then we’ll go home.”

“Home,” she said, and just like that, she needed him. She needed his mouth on hers, his arms around her. She needed to touch him and to be touched by him, and she cursed her body for betraying her with its poorly-timed reliability. She had friends who didn’t let their periods stop them—they’d fuck while lying naked on the grass somewhere or they’d spread a beach towel on the bed, or something, but that wasn’t for her and it wasn’t for him. It hadn’t been for her before, anyhow, but now?

In the face of what was happening, did it make sense that she was suddenly horny? That she wanted to find a clearing somewhere and bloody fuck like her nasty friends or, if Guy refused, simply pin him against a tree somewhere and suck his cock? She needed him inside her, one way or another, needed the comfort of that wet and awkward act to confirm that some things were as they should be, and there was happiness to be found.

“I can’t stop thinking of Chris, and I want to scream,” he said, and unknowingly shamed her. “He must be so scared. And my mom, God.”

“Your dad will take care of them.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes losing focus. He blinked several times, and she saw that he was crying. They pulled each other close and stayed that way until Guy told her that they should catch up.

Daniel and the others were in the clearing, laughing over something. Richard rubbed his calves, and Kimberly was doing squats.

“Damn good workout,” Guy said.

“I’m used to it,” Sam said, putting his fists on his hips like Superman.

“I’m not,” Richard said, sitting down in the dirt.

The curtains in the window of the cabin to their right fluttered. Colleen opened her mouth to say something, and her words became a scream. The door leading into the center cabin burst open, and a man with a shotgun rushed at them.

“Get down,” he screamed, sweeping the shotgun left and right and kicking Richard in the face. Head low, Sam walked over to the man and stood behind him, pulling the cowboy revolver from his belt. “Get the fuck down, all of you.”

Colleen screamed and Kimberly screamed, and though she held onto Guy, strong hands pried her away and pressed her to the ground. Richard rolled in the dirt, his hands pressed to his face, blood flowing between his fingers.

More men appeared, each brandishing a shotgun, and Colleen screamed and screamed, and someone punched her in the stomach. She tasted dirt and rolled onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut.

“God,” someone screamed. It might have been Guy or it might have been Richard, but it wasn’t Daniel, she knew that much, because she heard him crying. Kimberly’s squeals became pained and inhuman, and their attackers laughed and taunted and roared with animal pleasure.

“Hold him down,” someone said, and Colleen heard what sounded like the hollow-metal thud.

“No, no, please—” It sounded like Guy.

“Why the hell are you—” Daniel.

“…going to fucking kill you, you son—” It was Guy.

“Going to what, man?”

“Whose is he?”

“Right there.” This sounded like Samson.

Kimberly’s screams crumbled into sharp, muffled gasps, and now someone’s fist balled into Colleen’s hair and wrenched her head back.

“Open your eyes.” A growl.

“You’re going to kill me?”

The whoof of exhalation that could only come from a blow to the stomach, and still Daniel wept somewhere, between blows.

“He said open your eyes.” Hot breath in her ears and large hands on her face, fingers prying open her eyes. She jerked her head left and right, thrashing, slamming it backward in the hopes of busting a lip or smashing a nose. No luck, and through the tear-streaked flicker of her eyelids she saw two men pinning Guy to the side of the truck while another knelt before him, a shotgun resting in the dirt beside him.

“Come on,” someone said, and: “Wow, man, I’m impressed.” And: “God, no, please no, please God…” And: “No, no. Please, no. No, no, no.”

Colleen squeezed her eyes shut and screamed until her screams became one with the screams of those around her. The fist in her hair tightened, and she was lifted and dragged forward.

“Open your eyes,” someone said.

“Open them, you cunt.”

She did. Shriveled and pale, Guy’s genitals were inches from her face. She could smell him. She looked up, and through her tears found his face, his eyes.

He tried to say something, but it was little more than an animal growl. Tears streamed down his face. The cords stood out in his neck. He struggled. He was strong. They were stronger.

“Put it in your mouth.”

She screamed, and her face was thrust into Guy’s crotch.

“Do it.”

She opened her mouth, took him in, sobbing around Guy’s limp penis.

“Do it,” the voice screamed, the fist at the back of her head a knot of pain.

She closed her lips around Guy and worked him, gasping. Unseen, those around her yelped and hooted. Someone screamed, raw and incoherent and insane.

“Why?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s it.”

“Stop stop stop.”

“Open your fucking eyes.” Again her eyelids were pried open. Guy’s penis was small and pitiful, his testicles tight and close to his body. A large hand reached in and seized Guy’s penis, tugging it forward. A blade flashed, and Guy roared in pain and someone laughed and Colleen screamed and screamed, her eyes clenched, her mind collapsing.

One of them smeared something warm and wet across her face, tried to press it into her mouth, but she locked her jaw and wrenched her head away. Another blow to the stomach, and she gasped and one of their attackers crammed something—god, oh god it can’t be it can’t be—into her mouth. She wretched and gagged and it fell from her mouth and onto the ground between her splayed fingers.

A heavy boot pushed her to the ground. Colleen rolled, her head lolling, the stink of blood in her nose, her mouth filled with its taste. Guy’s dick lay curled and bloody and dirt-speckled on the ground. She frantically smeared blood from her lips.

And then thunder. Thunder and blood, and one of their attackers crumpled to the ground, a ragged hole in his chest. She rolled and clambered to her feet, and then someone was on her, hammering her back and neck and face and head. She struggled, but not for long.