“Four days ago,” the man said.
Kelsey shifted on the smooth leather and found her voice. “What about it?”
He waved a hand toward the radio. “That show. Four days ago. Didn’t happen, I mean, they didn’t go on, they didn’t even cancel officially or anything, they won’t have to refund the tickets. But four days ago, that band was supposed to play, and I was supposed to take my daughter. She’s crazy about the lead singer.”
Kelsey had no response, and he seemed to expect none. They drove on, listening to the music and the DJ’s patter. Everything was old, she realized. It wasn’t a live broadcast.
“Because they’re all dead,” she said aloud.
The man’s gaze flicked toward her, then back to the road as though he were afraid if he looked away he’d somehow lose control even though he still drove no more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. “We’re all dead.”
“I’m not dead.”
“We are all dead,” he repeated. “Every last fucking one of us. Some of us are up and walking, that’s all.”
Kelsey was silent for a minute or so, watching the world crawl by outside. “I’m hungry.”
The man said nothing. She closed her eyes and let her head fall against the glass again. Her foot ached and throbbed, but so long as she didn’t move it, she could almost pretend it was okay. She listened to the sound of the engine and the cold air whooshing from the vents and the crunch and grit of the tires on the road. She wanted to sleep, but couldn’t quite manage. And slowly, slowly, the car drifted to a stop.
Kelsey opened her eyes, already knowing what she’d see. She sat up higher in her seat, glad she hadn’t bothered with the seatbelt. The man hadn’t put the car in Park, he simply let his foot slide off the gas. He still held the wheel, but his head had fallen forward against it. His shoulders heaved. She thought he was crying, but in another minute knew the choked sounds were laughter.
“We are all dead.” He laughed louder. “All of us dead. We are all dead.”
He turned to her, his eyes wide. Nostrils flaring. His mouth had cracked in the corners, oozing blood. His tongue, thick and coated black, crept out to stroke along his lips.
And then, yawning, he tipped back his head. He choked and screamed with terrible hilarity as the stuff exploded out of him. He shook with the force of it. He turned to her, his eyes wide and blue and stunned, his mouth split so wide she could see the glimpse of his jawbone. He lurched toward her, grappling. His teeth snapped a hair’s breadth from her nose.
Her fingers found the pen in his pocket. Mont Blanc, heavy and expensive, the sort of pen Kelsey had promised herself when she got her next promotion. He was choking on his own blood and scrabbling at the hole in his throat half a minute later. When she stabbed his eyes, one tried to come out stuck to the end of the pen but was pulled back by the taut bundle of optic nerves. She carved a slash through his cheeks, then across his forehead while he howled and slapped at her with crooked fingers. Then she shoved the pen straight up his nose, and his one good eye rolled backward into his head. His feet thumped, dancing, but his fingers went limp. She pushed him, hard, and he flew back against the driver’s side window hard enough to star the glass with the back of his head.
“Fuck you,” Kelsey said. “I’m not dead.”
29
Dennis had plenty of food, but he still lined up the sight and let his finger stroke lightly on the trigger. He wasn’t that fond of squirrel, the meat too gamey and too much work to get off the bone for his taste, but beggars couldn’t choose the horses they’d ride, right? Something like that, anyway. The food, even the stuff in cans and boxes, wouldn’t last forever. Best he get used to fending for himself now rather than later.
He didn’t shoot the squirrel. The shotgun would cut the thing in half, splatter most of it in a spray of blood and bone. There’d be nothing left to eat. Still, he could’ve shot it if he wanted to. He knew it. Instead, he eased his finger from the trigger with a whispered “pow,” and lowered the gun. Best to save the ammunition, though for now he had plenty of that too.
But he wouldn’t always.
Dennis had never been a Boy Scout, there hadn’t been time or money for that. No dad to take him to the meetings. But he did believe in the importance of always being prepared. You couldn’t argue with that, and anyone who did was a fool who deserved to end up hungry and cold. Dennis couldn’t say as he thought you’d deserve to end up getting your face ate off by the little girl from next door, but then again, when you were ready to tackle any situation you probably would be able to fend off a rabid toddler with a sudden taste for human flesh.
Everything was falling apart, and Dennis didn’t like that. A world without fast food burgers and cable television seemed like a sad place to him. But he wasn’t surprised, because he was prepared. He’d been prepared his whole life, thanks to his mother, who’d raised him on a steady diet of conspiracy theories and tin-foil caps. She’d honed him with late-night drills and hours of survival instruction, preparing him for everything from alien invasion to walking corpses.
He’d moved out from mom’s house when he was old enough to go away to college. Not that he’d gone, of course. Dennis had graduated from regular high school instead of being home schooled only because he’d convinced her the best way to learn how to protect himself was to be exposed to every possible sort of danger, which included mingling with possible clones, androids and pod people. Considering the types of kids Dennis had gone to school with, he wasn’t actually convinced none of them had been sprouted from pods. Especially the girls, who to a one seemed to him to be no more than an extension of some greater, mysterious being. Like the fingers on a hand, all of them mostly alike with their hair, their clothes, the giggle-gabble of their voices, the trailing laughter that followed him down the hall. Fingers curled to punch.
Mom hadn’t wanted him to leave. They’d fallen out over it. She’d accused him of succumbing to the pressure of an alien implant. Of letting the men in black pay him off. He hadn’t fought with her over any of it — there was no convincing her of anything beyond what she was certain she already knew.
He’d moved into a small apartment downtown, over the hardware store, close enough to his job at the local burger joint that he could walk. Small enough he didn’t have to spend a lot to furnish it, with windows in the front and back so he could always watch for an invasion. When the time came and the news shows left off talking about the weird tornados and started reporting about riots and soldiers and the government taking over, he’d done just what Mom had taught him to do, and secured all the entrances. He hadn’t bothered calling off work; even if the world didn’t end he was sure he could always get another job grilling kangaroo-meat patties. Maybe even one that didn’t require a paper cap.
Dennis had an arsenal under his bed and enough dried rations to last for months. He’d been a little lax in storing water, so he filled the tub as well as several jugs. Then, he waited. And he watched.
The back-and-forth scurrying of his neighbors amused more than scared him. Downtown saw more action in those few days than any other time except at the annual Punkinfest, but this time instead of costumed kiddies begging for candy and drunk high school students looking to hook up, the streets filled with people frantically trying to get out of town. More than three cars at the light caused gridlock. Dennis watched a fistfight break out between his high school gym teacher Mr. Porter and Mrs. Beasley, the lady who played the organ in the local church. Mrs. Beasley won when she kneed Porter in the nuts and then kicked him in the face.
That had been a week ago. Dennis hadn’t left his apartment, not even when the fire department came through banging on doors and shouting for the entire building to evacuate. Now he sat at his front window, looking across the street at the park and aiming at the squirrels who’d taken over. At some point, maybe sooner than he wanted, he’d be forced to chow down on squirrel surprise. But for now, he was okay.
He looked down at the body of a man w
ho’d sat on the roof of an abandoned car with his legs criss-cross applesauce four hours ago. Every so often he shuddered, and sometimes his nails scraped at the paint on the roof. Once or twice he tipped his head back, mouth open, to howl obscenities at the sky. He was completely naked, his body a roadmap of slashes and bruises, none of which looked fatal. Nevertheless, something had happened to him. Something bad enough to push him to the edge.
The man was dying.
As Dennis watched, the guy shuddered again, back arching as his entire body spasmed. His legs didn’t even uncross. His fists beat out a pattern on the metal. Blood spattered. He bent forward with a groan Dennis could hear from his apartment, and his forehead hit the roof with a metallic thud.
A dog trotted around the corner, its tongue lolling and tail wagging. It barked happily and headed for the man, who didn’t so much as lift his head. The dog whined, sitting, head tilted, looking up. After a few seconds it jumped up, paws scrabbling. Then it got down and circled the car, leaping up every now and then to bark and scrape at the car.
Dennis knew the dog, just like he knew the owner. Peppy and his owner Larry Fitz had spent a lot of time frolicking in the park across the street. Larry had also spent a lot of money at Bill’s Burgers,because Larry, like Dennis, was a bachelor and Larry, unlike Dennis, had apparently lacked a mother who believed in the importance of teaching her son to fend for himself.
It was like something out of one of those sappy women’s movie channel stories about the dog who either saves its owner from some sort of accident or, finding itself too late for that, mourning its death. At least until Peppy found a way to jump up on the car’s trunk, then the roof, and instead of taking Larry’s wrist gently in his mouth to lead him to safety, the dog tore off Larry’s face.
Blood and some black, pellety goo exploded from Larry’s face in a spray thick enough to cover the dog’s pale fur and turn it dark. The dog barked, leaping. Larry swung and punched, grabbing a handful of fur. Both man and dog fell off the car on the side away from Dennis, and he lost sight of what was happening.
He could hear, though.
Snarling and growling, not all of it sounding like it came from the animal. He sat, frozen until the dog appeared around the side of the car and sat, licking its chops. Until it turned its head to look up, up, up into Dennis’s window. Then, he moved, fast and silent, ducking out of the way so that nothing could see him. Not even a dog.
And then, Dennis wondered when in the hell everything his mother had warned him against had started to come true.
30
Kelsey drove. She drove and drove until the gas gauge hovered on E and a red light came on. A ping informed her she was close to running out of gas, and the car’s nifty electronic message told her she had another ten miles to go. Just ahead was a warehouse store that sold everything from apples to zippers. It also sold gas at special prices for members.
Kelsey coasted into the parking lot on fumes and drifted to a stop a few feet before the gas pump. She turned off the ignition. She woke up some time later to the endless, relentless, blare of the car warning her the door was open.
The passenger side door.
Kelsey rubbed at her eyes, thick and crusted with goo. Her seatbelt had cut into her neck. The keys dangled in the ignition. Her foot, not the one on the brake pedal, ached and throbbed. She looked to the open passenger door, then at the seat. On it was a single candy bar, a brand she didn’t like, and a pack of cigarettes. A brand she didn’t smoke.
She didn’t bolt upright. She sat up slowly, cautiously, deceptively sluggish though her heart had started racing and her hands shook. She’d have broken into a cold sweat if she weren’t so dehydrated. As it was, she swallowed against her dry throat, her tongue thick and furred. She shifted only her gaze to the right. To the left. Then to the rearview mirror.
Nothing.
Kelsey let out a long, shuddering breath. Feeling faint, she let her head fall forward against the steering wheel, which she gripped. She wanted a drink. She wanted a shower. She wanted a T-bone steak with mashed potatoes and gravy and sourdough bread and a salad with bleu cheese dressing…
Fatty…a voice whispered, tickling at her ear. Fatty, fatty boom boom.
“No,” Kelsey said aloud, without moving. “Be quiet.”
Something scraped alongside the car on the driver’s side and around the front bumper, where it tick-ticked against the metal like a set of impatient fingers with long nails, tapping.
Move it, Kathy. My God, why do you always have to be so damned slow?
Kelsey shook her head again, harder. Her dirty hair fell into her eyes. Her breath caught, thick in her throat. Choking her.
The ticking sound continued. It didn’t get any faster. It didn’t go any slower. After another few minutes, Kelsey realized it was probably just the sound of the engine cooling, not the maniacal tapping of her dead grandmother’s fingernails on the metal. Grandma was dead and gone, not crouched in the front of this dead stranger’s car.
You killed him. Like you killed me. Ungrateful little bitch.
“I’d do it again, in a second. In a heartbeat,” Kelsey said. “I would do it a million times, you old hag. I’d do and I would love it just as much the last time as I did the first.”
Something scraped along the front of the car. Kelsey sat upright, the fuzziness fading, replaced by an old familiar grinding sensation low in her belly. The first twelve years of her life had been spent with that burning in her guts. That ever-present fear. She’d vowed she would never feel like that again, and she would not let herself be afraid now. Whatever was out there could not be worse than anything she’d ever faced.
She opened her door, slowly. She didn’t put her foot out, thoughts of a grinning, slobbering mouth beneath the car just waiting to sink its teeth into her ankle keeping her in her seat for a minute before she was ready to move. When she did, it wasn’t nearly as graceful or swift as she’d intended the motion to be. Too many days without enough food and water. Too long without a good, real sleep.
She meant to push off from the seat and leap at least three or four steps beyond the imagined reach of the freak waiting to take a swipe at her. Instead, her foot came down on sharp gravel and her ankle twisted when she forgot she wasn’t wearing shoes. She went headfirst onto the pavement, hit the car door with her shoulder on the way down and managed to get only one hand up in front of her to break her fall. She broke her wrist, instead.
The pain knocked her more breathless than the fall, leaving her without enough air to even cry out. She rolled onto her back, cradling the wrist, her legs tangling and her feet still too dangerously close to the car. She couldn’t see anything in the shadows beneath the car, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to see.
Breathe through the pain. One in. One out. Focus, Kelsey. Focus on the sky, the clouds, that bird. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Oh, it hurt so bad. She’d broken this wrist before, “falling” down some stairs. Kelsey felt the lump under her skin, just grateful no bones had broken through the skin and that she’d be able to immobilize her wrist better than something like a clavicle or even a leg. She breathed in. She breathed out. The pain did not fade, but her focus sharpened, enough so that when the drooling, lurching thing did at last round the car’s back bumper, she had enough energy to get to her feet before it reached her.
The cardigan sweater, dress and long gray hair pinned into a high bun marked this as someone’s once-upon-a-time granny, but she’d become a wretched ruin. Dark fluid had spattered her bare legs, criss-crossed with varicose veins. She wore one fuzzy slipper, the other foot bare, the toenails thick and rippled. Her eyes and nose dripped with more black fluid, her mouth smeared with the same, though her lolling tongue periodically swept her lips. She grinned and reached out her arms.
“Granny gave you something nice,” the thing crooned. “Left it on the seat for you, dearie. Come here and give your granny a kiss.”
Kelsey shook her head and took a limping
step back. “Please. Don’t.”
Please, don’t. The whining, familiar voice buzzed, waspish, in her head. Kelsey swatted at it and kept moving slowly away from the grannything.
She ought to have known better. Pleading only made the grandmother angry. Begging only made her more cruel.
“Come give your granny a kiss!”
This…thing…looked nothing like the woman who’d raised Kelsey. Grandmother had been stylish, well-kept, slim and put together. A pretty veneer over a rotten and festering soul. The thing in front of her was everything she’d ever wished for in a grandmother, only it had all been wrecked and ruined and destroyed. Made into something horrible.
Kelsey scanned the ground for a weapon and found nothing. She turned to run, but the second she tried to put weight on her hurt foot the wound gushed hot and thick with pus and the pain blinded her. It pushed her to her hands and knees, and then her wrist screamed again.
Behind her, the grannything shuffled closer.
Kelsey smelled the stink of it. That sickly sweet and lingering odor of those flowers overlaid with the thicker, rancid stench of body odor and decaying teeth. Of something gone soft and moldy, awrithe with maggots in the hot summer sun.
As she watched another slow gush of that black fluid surged down the grannything’s thighs and spattered on the parking lot. The thing didn’t seem to notice; it clutched at the air and shuffled another few steps closer. The ruined housedress flapped open to reveal the grannything’s sagging, floppy breasts, its belly distended and mottled with blue and green and gray.
“Please don’t,” Kelsey said, and again. “Please, don’t. Please. Don’t.”
“You sound like a moron, Kathy. Just like your mother, your goddamned mother. Please don’t. Plllllease. Oh, you make me sick, you know that? You make me so sick, with your whining. Your baby whining. You know what baby whiners need, don’t you? Baby whiners need diapers.”