Cotton Crossing

  “What?”

  “I don’t think it can see.”

  The bumper kissed the thing’s middle. It hissed, staggering away and dropping to all fours. It lolloped in the same direction it’d come from, the fringe on its jacket fluttering merrily. Right before it dropped into the roadside ditch, it halted and looked over its shoulder, teeth bared, yellowish foam spattering its cheeks. A boneless shiver went through it crown to heels, and Lee was sure the creature was making that dry growling noise. It was a good thing they couldn’t hear it over the engine and through the windows. “Jesus,” he breathed. His legs finally unlocked, and he was absurdly glad he was sitting down. His knees, once they unlocked, felt a bit mushy.

  “Yeah.” Juju sounded just as shaky. “The goddamn Pocalypse, Lee. I’m tellin you.”

  Lee Quartine did not disagree.

  Bad Dodgeball

  Dishes drip-drying, the beds checked and little things put away, and a blessed, very hot shower—he had good water pressure out here, at least—didn’t take very long. Dialing everyone she could think of from Lee’s landline didn’t either. There was still a tone when she picked the handset up, but even the local numbers didn’t ring. There was just a long silence after she punched series of numbers in, then three oddly spaced beeps and a return of said tone.

  Trying to raise anyone over the state line just got her dead air, and dialing 911, after she reasoned the current events might not qualify as the dictionary definition of emergency but were still severe enough to warrant tying up the phone lines, just got a busy signal.

  So she roamed the living room, Traveller pacing behind her and making small whuffling noises as he nosed at the worn but religious vacuumed carpet.

  The single bookshelf in the house was child-sized, but it held an interesting assortment. Two Bibles, one of them an antique leatherbound monster that had a family tree on blank, creamy pages in the front, entries going back to 1802. Quartine used to be Quartaigne, no wonder he pronounced it like he did. The extra “ag” disappeared around 1860. It was pretty amazing to hold the book and think about other hands on it, to see the changes in the copperplate script. There were birth and death dates. Lee’s father had an entry, his name and birthdate written in a fine flowing style but his death filled in with blue ink and a decidedly modern set of cramped numbers.

  Seeing that gave her an uncomfortable feeling of prying, so she reluctantly closed and re-shelved the Bible. The other one was a red leather modern King James, mass-produced and not nearly old enough to be intriguing. There was a Pilgrim’s Progress and a Dr Gunn’s Family Medicine, the first downright antebellum and the other giving her a few moments of teasing on-the-tip-of-the-brain trouble until she remembered her Mark Twain.

  “Oh, wow,” she breathed, but the other shelves called, as well. Cookbooks—Fannie Farmer, and the familiar Better Homes & Gardens’ red plaid. Band of Brothers, and another couple of books on World War II. There was one old battered plant identification manual, a copy of Preserving It Right, some Chilton’s auto manuals. There was half a shelf of bird identification guides. Did he like birds, or was it someone else?

  She couldn’t decide between the first edition Fannie Farmer or the Dr Gunn’s. Then she spotted a fresh, brand-new road atlas, and all other considerations became secondary.

  The dog’s nose was at her ankles the entire time, and when she settled on the ancient, sagging brown plaid couch, he gave her a look of such pitiable sadness she couldn’t help but laugh, a thin little sound in the snowbound quiet. The fridge hummed and the fan atop the woodstove made a low thrumming, and she’d been inside long enough that the house no longer smelled foreign. The entire place was like Lee himself—worn down but clean, everything in its proper place, and stuck about twenty years ago.

  Not that she was complaining. Ginny patted the cushion next to her. The dog almost levitated, and the next few minutes were full of his cold, wet nose in her face and his little crooning noises. She’d had no idea a dog could talk, but this one certainly did his best.

  First, she opened it to the central map of the entire United States. Her finger tapped down, everywhere she’d heard mentioned on the podcast.

  New York. San Diego, San Francisco. Seattle. Denver. Houston. New Orleans. Major cities. Starting at the coasts and working their way in, maybe? Who knew? The urge to piece things together and make wild guesses was well-nigh irresistible, but it wouldn’t get her to her parents any quicker. More than once she caught herself tensing to get up and grab her laptop, before she reminded herself Lee had no wireless and probably not even a dialup connection. There wasn’t even a modem jack on her laptop, either. Take away the internet, and even a librarian would have some trouble. Contrary to popular belief, they tended to be early adopters of new technology, instead of starchy old greyhairs lacking any sense of humor.

  The most wickedly funny people she’d ever met were in Information Services, really. It was like coming home. She winced, tapping near where Lewiston should be on the map. It didn’t rate a blip on the big spread.

  So whatever it was had reached the Crossing as well as several large cities. That didn’t bode well. Nothing about this boded well, up to and including Lee Quartine looking at her the way he did. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful, it was just…

  Ginny shook her head. Traveller began to snore, his snout wedged under the atlas on her lap. None of this got her any closer to her parents and to Flo. Were they holed up in the sprawling ranch house behind its low brick wall? Hopefully the gated community had shut down and someone could be sent for groceries. It was ridiculous to think all the infrastructure had broken down, right? There were at least two retired doctors in the neighborhood, so if Flo hatched…

  She reached for her phone, again, despite knowing there was precious little cell service out here, but her hand stopped halfway. Her parents were okay. So was Flo. She had to believe that. They were probably worried sick about her, because even though she was a disappointment, she was still a Mills.

  And they loved her. She knew they did, just like she knew she loved them. Aggravation didn’t mean there wasn’t affection.

  “Fuck,” she said, softly, a long aggrieved slide of a word with a short sharp consonant at the end, chopping it off. Lee had probably taken the truck keys with him. Maybe that was a good thing, because Ginny was seriously considering throwing her suitcases and cooler in and taking off.

  All it took was a disaster to make her contemplate auto theft. So much for the survival of ethics in extreme circumstances. Of course, the situation could get a lot more extreme, couldn’t it.

  “You don’t have any imagination, do you.” She lifted the atlas a little, peering down at the sleeping dog. “Must be nice.” I think I have too much. And God only knew what had happened to the nice old man who had sat in Lee’s truck and chatted at her that chilly flat-tire night. At the time she’d wished he would be quiet for at least five minutes so she could think, but now she was grateful he hadn’t…and a little ashamed of herself.

  She wondered about her library patrons, too. And her coworkers. Oddly enough, it was Mrs Harmon she was thinking about, the old biddy who had only a foggy idea how email worked. Was she shambling around her house with a foaming mouth and parts of her gnawed off? What about her husband, and their very favourite word?

  Oh, crap. Ginny set the atlas aside and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook. She was extremely glad there was nobody but Traveller, fast asleep and cuddled up next to her, to see her cry.

  * * *

  Traveller squeezed through the door as soon as it was even remotely possible to do so, and careened off Lee’s porch in a series of bounds. He stopped, two or three leaps away, and looked over his shoulder at her, his mild brown eyes wide, as if he suspected Ginny was playing some sort of prank on him. As if he’d never seen snow before—she couldn’t help but laugh again, a guilty sound half caught behind a cupped hand.

  For all the snow, it wasn’t that cold. Her breath made a
cloud in the crispness, and the trees stood out in stark detail, each bough lined and limned. The air seemed clearer, and paradoxically thicker, full of pine and ice and freshness, a bouquet like a good white wine with an apple undertone. There were probably fewer combustion engines working to dirty it up. Either that, or it was that Rocky Mountain High bullshit, though the mountains around here weren’t nearly as big.

  Her mother liked John Denver. Oh, what a voice, even if he is one of those long-haired boys! Her father, of course, would sniff. If it wasn’t Perlman playing, he didn’t think much of it. Flo liked hip-hop.

  Were they okay? Had the baby been born? Boy or girl? If it was a boy, Mom and Dad would be over the moon. A grandson. Flo would be the favourite forever, world without end, amen. A girl would be petted and spoiled, the first grandchild after all. Bar or bat, Mom would start planning the mitzvah either way. It was never too early to worry, in her book.

  It was a relief to find her grainy eyes simply wouldn’t produce more tears. Ginny waded in Traveller’s wake, her boots turning soggy. They were supposed to be weatherproof, dammit, but tiny chilly fingers touched her toes.

  Traveller yipped and bayed, working in circles around her, his tail held high and going fast enough to blur. She turned left to head for the barn—there had to be a snow shovel in there, and it occurred to her it would be a good idea to clear a path. Physical activity was good for you, right? It lowered stress hormones, and by God she was probably swimming with them. It was something she could do instead of sitting inside with the atlas and working herself into what her mother would definitely call a mishegoss.

  The small door was unlocked, and she stepped into cold, sawdust and oil smelling dimness. Once her eyes adapted, she found everything was ruthlessly neat, just like inside the house. It really wasn’t that surprising. Lee Quartine seemed a very precise sort of person. There were canvas-covered shapes—drill press, bandsaw, other machines. A tractor and a trailer, the concrete under them swept clean, right in front of the larger garage door, which had an opener with a single yellow eye. There were toolchests and pegboards, everything hung neatly and logically. A cherry-red riding mower. Well, with all that open space out there, mowing by hand could take hours.

  A long, heavy wooden work table held a pile of what she thought was a mess before she realized it was a microwave, taken apart. Was he trying to fix it, or just curious about how it worked? This guy could fix a flat tire, drive in snow, and he knew what to do when someone was shooting all the way down Main Street.

  Still waters ran deep.

  She found a red snow shovel, head supported by two exactly-level nails, and wasn’t surprised it was a heavy-duty metal one. Getting the thing down was a workout; she almost dropped it on the tractor and swore under her breath. As if someone, anyone, was around to hear.

  If something happened to the guys while they were out getting another vehicle, or whatever it was they were really after, she’d have to take the dog, Lee’s truck, and the atlas. The gun cabinet in Lee’s bedroom, tall and glass-fronted, probably had something in it she could use.

  The thought of pointing a gun at one of those…at, God, something like Amy McCoy, or her husband…Jesus. And what about other survivors like her? Basic logic said some of them might be unpleasant people, and even if they weren’t, they were likely to be just as frightened and disoriented as she was.

  That was how accidents—bad ones—happened. Were the hospitals overwhelmed, or full of fevered, mouth-foaming people and…

  She decided not to think about that just at the moment, slipping through the barn’s small door out into bright snowglare. Traveller’s cries had taken on a peculiar stridency, and she blinked furiously, waiting for her eyes to adapt.

  When they did, she lost every bit of air in her lungs. It just whooshed out, like she’d been punched, or taken a bad dodgeball in the stomach.

  Traveller stuck his hind end in the air, his front half down, and barked. It was the classic hey-come-play-with-me you saw dogs do all the time.

  The problem was, he was less than six feet from a big, slumped, orange shape. A man in an orange hunting vest. A big man, too, with a generous pot belly and a bullet head, the type the good ol’ boys around here kept shaved high and tight even if there was no military in their background. The new arrival stood, his jaws working idly, his eyes—oh, God, his eyes were film-scabbed over, cloudy-blind. His hands—no gloves, even in the cold—worked, clenching and releasing just like his jaw, but not together or alternately. They were just a little unsynchronized, and it was that tiny wrongness that threatened to empty Ginny of her breakfast.

  Traveller barked again, wriggling his back end, and his voice turned insistent, demanding. Either he was saying play with me or he wasn’t sure if this was a threat.

  Ginny could have told him, if she spoke dog. Because the lower half of the man’s face was spattered and smeared, not only with foam but with torn strips of something like hamburger and clotting, smeared blood. The man’s knees bent, and through the soup her brain had become, one thought slipped through sharp and bright as a knife.

  They’re so fast. Oh God, he’s going to eat the dog.

  “Traveller!” she shrieked. “Run away! Run away!”

  The dog cocked a single floppy ear at her, but the man jerked like she’d hit him. His head made a weird craning motion, muscles in his neck and shoulders working in ways they weren’t supposed to, and it occurred to her that he might not be able to see, but he heard just fine.

  “Traveller!” she called, again. Get its attention. Get it away from the dog. “You stupid dog, stop that! Run away!”

  Trav barked again, wriggling, the end of each yip going up questioningly. The man wavered, shifting back and forth on his big feet. One of his boots was missing, and part of the sock on that foot had been torn away. The flesh was bluish, the toenails black against snow. Frostbite. Gangrene would set in soon. Why didn’t he have both his shoes?

  “No.” She took another couple steps, gripping the snow shovel. “No, you don’t. You leave the dog alone. You leave him alone!”

  Before she finished yelling, the sick man jerked forward, with impossible, spooky speed. His hands, big, raw, and already starred with spots of frostbite, turned into claws. Traveller yipped and danced away, throwing up a fan of snow, and Ginny hitched the shovel over her head and bolted forward, her boots slip-sliding, the soft dense white dragging at her ankles, halfway up her shins. “Noooo!” she howled, hoping she was loud enough to distract the thing.

  Sure enough, she was. It dropped to all fours and streaked for her, half-crippled hands slapping down, its body turning sideways as the legs worked more efficiently than the arms. Snow flew, and Ginny suddenly realized she had no goddamn idea what to do next.

  Traveller, dimly grasping this turn of events was not optimal, skidded to a stop and half-turned to take a look. His tail stilled, pointing straight up, and his wonderful nose was no doubt untangling a sudden drift of chemical terror.

  Ginny slipped, her left leg going out from under her. She regained her balance with a lurching leap her childhood ballet teacher might have congratulated, and the thing was right in front of her. This close she could see the collapsing of the eyeballs, the gray filminess wrinkling slightly over the sclera, and the chunks of…god, it had to be meat the thing was chewing on, two deep scratches breaking from the corners of its mouth as the jaw worked, and worked, and it tried to get ever larger mouthfuls of air, snow, anything. It was splitting its own cheeks to cram more in what locals would call its pie-hole.

  She swung the snow shovel down hard, still yelling. Not words, but a high piercing scream of effort, falling dead against the snow-carpet. The world slid sideways at impact, the metal shovel-head cracking partly against the thing’s shoulder, one curved edge shearing through thin facial tissue and grating on weirdly spongy skullbone.

  A hollow gonging noise filled their little bubble of snowy quiet, and the thing made a rusty, irritated growl. A human throa
t shouldn’t have been able to produce that sound, and the sheer unreality of what she saw pushed Ginny back two slippery, heaving steps.

  The thing hunched on all fours, shaking its head. Foam spattered, and crumbs of wet, half-chewed gristle flopped between its nicotine-stained teeth. Its throat was a ragged mess, a suppurating hole gaping on the left side. It should have been bleeding out in buckets with that kind of wound, but instead, it oozed a weird darkish fluid.

  Ohshit what do I do now where’s the dog oh god ohgod what next—

  The rusty, hissing, growling noise thrummed in its chest. Its gray, spiderwebbed eyes rolled. Ginny staggered back, her breath high and hard and fast, puffing out in white clouds. She had to get the dog in the house…but these things, they could break through a door, right? She’d seen one do it.

  It twitched toward her; Ginny screamed and brought the shovel down again. This time the curved blade hit square-on. A wet melon sound of breakage splattered fluid, brainmatter like gray oatmeal, and ivory chips on the trampled snow. Something was wrong with the blood, it wasn’t bright red. It was almost maroon, and thicker than it should be.

  That particular observation only occurred to her later, because she was already lifting the snow shovel again. Traveller, suddenly very sure this was not a delightful game of walkies or chase, approached in stiff-legged dashes, and when he arrived, he began to growl, an impossibly deep sound for a dog his side. It said I mean business, and the thing’s caved-in head twitched as it slumped.

  Ginny shrieked and brought the shovel down again, so hard she bit her tongue when the impact jolted her arms. And again, because the body toppled sideways, and Traveller’s growl turned even deeper. The thing’s pudgy arms and legs spasmed, the orange vest scratching at yellowed grass beneath the snow.

  “OhGod,” someone was saying, between deep sobbing breaths. “OhGod, oh God, ohGod.” Ginny realized she was saying it, in a breathy, unsteady whisper, tasting blood from her bitten tongue.