Back on the country road the next morning, the July sun rose with our spirits as we put more distance between us and the forest. We followed a curve in the gravel path that led us back to the highway, the unplanned detour that had at least allowed us to find more weapons to supplement our dwindling ammo supply. I’d taken the smaller of the two bags of ammo we had when Tarah and I left the truck at the junkyard, the one that contained boxes of shotgun shells. But after taking inventory, there wasn’t as much as I thought. Sam had his pistol, but no ammo. Sue didn’t have a firearm and Tarah fired hers as though there was an endless supply in her bottomless bag. In this new world, there was always something for her to shoot, and she rose to the challenge at every opportunity.
Continuing south, the rural setting gradually changed to suburban as we approached the city, farm plots turning to a grid of blocks. Streets widened, more recently maintained with sloping curbs instead of the sharp concrete corners that dented car tires. The ubiquitous strip malls appeared with pizza places and convenience stores, mostly closed and boarded or looted and burned.
As expected, we also encountered more people wandering around, looters and scavengers were ducking enemies just like we were, a new common thread of humanity. They’d watch us just long enough to gauge hostility and then go about their business after our eyes passed them over for the road still ahead. We kept looking for any usable vehicles to get us off our feet but we found most of them with no keys, or on fire, or already burned out. Many of the first-choice vehicles, parked in the closest spaces along the street and otherwise usable, the National Guard had disabled by slashing all four tires as they passed through the area.
“Why do they do that?” I asked. “They ruin the cars for everybody.”
“A disabled vehicle isn’t a threat,” said Sam.
“Neither is an abled vehicle that’s just sitting there.”
He shrugged. “That’s just how they do it. Minimizes the threat. The one time they don’t do it and some enemy gets in a truck nearby and runs ‘em down.”
“At least it’s a sign there’s military around,” said Sue.
“Only that they were here at one time, passing through,” said Tarah. “We don’t know anything more than that.”
Sue Spirit sighed. “You’re always so inspiring.”
“At least I’m not trying to fake it.”
Sue stopped walking. “Wait. What does that mean?” When Tarah didn’t stop to respond, she caught back up to her. “I’m not faking anything. You think I wanted to be like this…getting sick from the sun? Having intuition that brings nothing but bad news? If I could choose to be fake instead, I’d probably jump at the opportunity. And so would you.”
Tarah, not expecting the pushback, kept her head high, as though angrily staring at the sun. She saved her threats of violence for Sam and me, at least, which I took to mean that beneath her cold, seething exterior was someone who liked us deep down. Maybe Sue was too nice to shoot. It was hard to tell. Sue almost always covered herself under robes or capes or whatever flowing material she carried around that made her look like a ghost, as she tried to keep the UV rays off her skin. And she rarely spoke, unless it was to agree with Sam, though I could hear their occasional whispered conversations as they walked ahead of Tarah and me. But to my relief, Tarah was picking her battles after all, saving her ammo for the revs and her threats for me and Sam.
We approached an intersection and came across two young men stripping parts from a disabled military truck and tossing them onto a faded blue tarp splayed out across the cracked cement. The two were similar enough in appearance to be brothers, down to the short hair, slim noses, and jaws. They both had a little gray in their cheek stubble, but one had more than the other and he was the one Sam addressed.
“Hey bro, what’s the easiest way to Bridgeport from here?”
The two men looked at each other from their perch atop the open truck hood. The older one stopped twisting a socket wrench to look around, as though getting his bearings. “Bridgeport? Just keep heading southeast. You’re almost halfway through town, so you can either pick up the business loop or just keep heading straight on Henderson past the interstate.”
“Thanks.” Sam turned back to us. “Same thing my map says, I’ll have you know.”
The younger one spoke, wiping his greasy hands with a dirty towel. “Why the hell are you folks going to Bridgeport? Most folks we see are running from Bridgeport for their lives.”
“Anything you know we should know about?”
He scoffed, as though shocked to have to provide such information. But sometimes, one man’s horror is another man’s challenge. “Buddy, it’s Ground Zero there. Rev City. They’re flooding through the streets. Instead of piranhas swimmin’ in a river, the revs are the river.” He shook his head, still trying to take it in. “Pretty stupid to go there, if you ask me.”
“Yeah, pretty stupid,” said his partner, smiling.
Before anyone threw a zinger at the two gents who were just trying to be helpful, I spoke up. “I’m looking for what’s left of my family. What would you do? You look related…would one of you go there to look for the other?”
The man shrugged, nodding. “Yeah, I get it. Well, anyway, watch for a group of revs about a mile down on the left, by the city parking garage. There was some kind of protest when this was all going down and it’s still pretty hairy through there, all the way to the river.”
Sam waved. “Thanks.”
“Sure. If you change your mind, head west over to Camp Jackson. Some folks are fightin’ ‘em off pretty good from the Guard base there.”
“Maybe the same Guard who rolled through here,” Sam said, still hopeful. “Is that where you’re coming from?”
“Nearby. We’ve been trading with ‘em. It’s amateur hour right now, but gettin’ organized by the day. Might turn into something…with more people involved.”
“Sounds promising,” said Sam. “Thanks for the info.”
We continued southeast down Henderson Avenue, hugging nearby walls when we encountered too much activity to remain in the open. The buildings were older here, many vacant for some time, with faded “FOR LEASE” signs hanging below windows covered in old newspaper. Here and there stood diners with signs offering lunch service or bakeries, most of the stores emptied of their goods.
We approached a ramp that led into a parking garage four or five stories high, the path forking to guide cars to either the first level or beyond to the second. Sam and Sue continued walking while Tarah and I paused near the entry gate, causing them to stop and turn around once Sam noticed they’d gone further ahead. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Is this the parking garage those guys were talking about?” Tarah asked.
“Let’s check it out,” I said. “Garages are for cars. Ergo, there are likely cars in there. Maybe one we can take.”
“Do you know how to break into and hot wire a car, by chance?”
“OK, OK,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking about all that. Just that we could get a car in there.”
“Even if you did know how to break into a car,” said Tarah, “we’d get to fight off every revenant in the city you just attracted to us with the car alarm.”
“Let’s keep going,” said Sam.
We continued down the street until Tarah stopped us. “Hang on. It’s been about a mile, right?” She raised her rifle and looked through the scope. “There’s some movement down the street at…what is that building…City Hall?”
Beyond the parking garage stood a tall brown building in a nondescript style, eight stories tall, near a small complex of similar generic, bureaucratic facilities reveling in their lack of aestheticism. Across the street, a high wall too tall to climb wrapped around an industrial complex, coming up to the sidewalk.
Sam looked around. “I don’t see another way around. And we’re not getting over that wall for cover.”
“We can head back to the last intersection,” said Sue. “We might find a better way a block over.”
“Let’s scout ahead a little more and if it’s too active, we’ll turn back.”
We passed the parking garage and approached the neighboring building on its narrow side. The building’s address, 51111, was displayed high in large white numbers near the upper corner of the building’s two sides I could see from my position.
We kept to the side of the building closest to the street, creeping along the line of tinted ground-floor windows until we came upon trees and manicured bushes planted between the building and the street, finding a dead body hanging in the branches of a thorny bush, extremities splayed out as though a scarecrow caught in a net. He wore colorful clothes of red and white and several buttons with cheap political slogans pinned to his jacket…an entire opinion condensed down to a few words of snarky agitprop, crafted to provoke.
Hearing revenant activity from the far side of the building, we kept to the bushes and scouted around to gauge our options going forward, worried about being spotted. If we kept south, we were exposed until we could make it to the smaller building across the street, which contained an open parking lot we’d have to risk crossing.
The walls of the parking garage we’d passed met the building on its far side, with a concrete staircase switching back between the ground and the garage’s top level, where a large white tent stood and, enjoying its shade, a tight group of revs congregated like bored passengers at an airport waiting for a flight. A handful of stragglers like the one caught in the bush had left the confines of the tent—perhaps at night—and wandered down the steps, where they spread out across the grounds, attracted to any noise nearby.
All dressed in similar political gear, with poster board signs littering the ground around them, a few of them woefully misspelled:
“FREEEDOM!”
“LIBERTY OR TRANNY!”
“Must’ve been protesting against the evacuations,” I said. “Sad to say, they didn’t live to see the irony.”
“Perception bias,” Tarah said. “Disbelieving anything unless it happens to them.”
“Wonder if they believe it now.”
“I doubt they believe anything.”
“Death…the ultimate nihilism.”
We turned away and Sue Spirit stepped right into the open arms of the body hanging in the bushes she’d forgotten was there. She glimpsed of its tangled, outstretched arms and screamed as it swung with her body weight, feigning movement. My stomach dropped.
Anticipating the revs nearby to come to investigate, we ran toward the building across the street to a white box truck in the parking lot with “Mr. Shred-R” printed on its side. Sam reached the truck first, climbing on top of the cab from the front, using the wide bumper as a foothold. Then he helped Sue and me climb up and, of course, Tarah shook off any help and jumped up last. Once we were all aboard the top of the truck, we found ourselves immediately surrounded, as though standing on a log in a pond full of alligators. Fortunately, the revs couldn’t figure out how to climb, expressing their displeasure with frustrated, snarling blood lust. This didn’t stop a few from trying our path upward, only to be blasted away by Tarah’s rifle.
Momentarily safe, we set our bags down and peered wearily at the horde below.
“Where are we gonna go now?” Sue Spirit asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sam replied. “Yet.”
“This might be a dumb idea,” I said, “but these things are like goldfish. Maybe if we kept quiet and out of sight, they might eventually forget about us and move on. The sun’s out so they’re probably not that comfortable and they seem to have a sense of self-preservation. If they don’t see us, maybe that instinct will kick in and they’ll start looking for some shade.”
“How long do you think it would take?” Sue Spirit asked.
“I don’t know…a couple minutes until something else distracts them?”
I watched the revs organize within the truck’s shadow, forming an arc. From the periphery, a few who couldn’t fit wandered off from the group, shambling far enough to see us on top of the truck and then return, a cycle that continued until I looked away, no longer amused. “I guess my plan isn’t working,” I said. “They’re just coming back after they see us again”
Suddenly, gunshots reverberated across the walls of the office complex, creating a chaos of creatures scattering in all directions as the echoes led them astray. I spotted someone at a side door of the nearest building—a glimpse, really—an arm appearing and disappearing inside the door between shots. I kept my eyes on that side of the building, waiting a beat before the door opened again and a skinny arm stretched through the door’s opening to toss firecrackers on the street nearby. The crowd of revenants, frenzied by the blasts, hurried to that area and away from our position.
“This is our chance,” said Sam. “Let’s get over to that building.”
With Sam and Tarah in the lead, we climbed down from the box truck and made a break for the building’s entrance while firecrackers from our savior inside the building continued to pop around the corner. We reached the covered entryway and I heard the metal door slam shut. A few moments later, a small silhouette appeared on the other side of the tinted glass doors, flipped the lock, and pushed the doors open for us, revealing a small old lady in a light blue uniform, a name tag from “Triple C Cleaners,” listed with her name below on a white strip from a label maker.
She didn’t step aside to let us in but instead, sized us up, making me a little nervous with the restless horde nearby. Shaking her head solemnly, she sighed and waved us in. “Just what I needed…a buncha dipshits walkin’ around like Hell hasn’t bubbled up from the depths. Getcher asses inside before you get us all killed!”
This was Mary Swearington. And she lived up to her name.
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