Once we left the revenants from Sticks’ house behind, we turned a corner and pulled up to a crowd at Roger’s Market, an indie grocery with ten aisles, five registers, and a shallow selection of name-brand items or their generic equivalent. Panic hung in the air like a toxic cloud; a few stragglers entered the store, but many more were leaving, with carts full of whatever was left and at that point, there didn’t look to be much. Dented cans of creamed corn were kicked around the floor though eventually, even those were scooped up by people who understood found and unwanted items were good for bartering, an investment in the future that someone who loved the shit out of creamed corn wouldn’t be unable to find any. And there would be a can for trade, with the added pleasure of making a creamed corn-lover’s day.
Roger’s parking lot was a mess of cars, as though toys tossed by a child, overflowing into the street, where we had to stop the truck. A strange brew of civil chaos had formed, where people kept their manners but not their timidity as they retrieved what they wanted to own, whether on a shelf or another’s shopping cart. But so far, people weren’t looting from each other. Not everyone was armed but those who were made it known there would be some violent resistance to any personal thievery, with rifles slung openly over shoulders and pistols in holsters like cowboys of the Wild West.
Sam leaned forward to look around. “Can you see a way around this mess?”
“Let’s hang back a minute,” I replied. “Sticks and Travis could be here. They probably shop here.”
Sam shifted into Park. “You just saw their house, right? They wouldn’t be taking any groceries back there. Anyway, Tuesdays are the best day to shop…not with crowds like this. Looks almost as bad as Sundays after church gets out.”
“Except with fewer zombies.”
“You might want to find some wood to knock on after that statement.”
A crowd of people wasn’t going to prevent me from looking for drugs, though I knew my chances were slim and anything useful would be long gone. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get to Chuck’s the day before, I would have stopped at a pharmacy on the way, myself. So, I persisted. “I’ll just take a quick look around and if they’re not in there, we’ll head to Plan B.”
“We have a Plan B?”
“No, but the first step of every plan is to start one.”
“I’m not sure if that’s true.”
We locked the truck and strapped on backpacks in the slim chance we’d find something useful to add to them. Walking through the lot at a determined pace, I checked faces in the crowd but saw nothing recognizable but fear in every set of eyes I caught. A few I’d seen around before—friends of acquaintances we’d run across at neighborhood bars—but no one in our circle who’d know Sticks or Travis or their whereabouts. Most of these people didn’t have much of a chance against the revenant horde and many knew it, though the instinct of survival was paramount over the chance of actually surviving. Many also knew they were too late; the “doomsday preppers” had already bailed with their bug-out gear and were long gone into the new frontier. What was left over in town was what would be fought over. And no one could be blamed for trying to live.
As we approached the entrance, a clamor erupted from the back of the building and screams rang out…then gunshots. The store emptied quickly; snarling revenants hurled themselves at the unfortunate as they poured in from a rear delivery door, corralling many shoppers/scavengers within the narrow aisles. From there, carnage exploded in a shock wave of violence, rattling the shelves and sending shivers across my skin.
Sam and I ran with the crowd until it thinned out and we veered off in a different direction, hoping the revenants would keep after the larger group. I was slower than Sam, focusing on the back of his head to keep track of his path as we weaved down alleys and empty streets. We bolted down a main street of broken storefronts, their decline settled in long before the revenants. Rounding a corner, I saw most of our pursuers busy with fresh kills, looming over them like giants before ending their lives as they knew them…and effectively doubling their number.
We reached the far side of the next block and slowed our pace once we realized we were no longer being chased. Sam was well ahead of me, bent over with hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, his shotgun propped against the outside wall of a coffee shop. I was in worse shape; I’d stopped moving as soon as I reached the curb, my head throbbing like a sore pimple. Whiteness again washed across my vision.
Then I heard my name—as though whispered in a tomb—blowing right into my ear holes and chilling my spine. But it wasn’t a graveyard wind. It was a throaty gurgling, coming from behind me.
“Neil.”
I turned, questioning my hearing just as I did my sight. Standing across the street was a familiar figure, once a man but now a revenant, at the crossroads of a metamorphosis between life and death. I focused on him as I peered through the whiteness of my vision but came away with few details. Dark splotches of blood spattered across his ratty clothes, his hair was matted and crusty, and outlines of deep wounds revealed themselves through the holes and tears of the stiffened fabric.
I heard raspy breaths as his lungs rejected the very air keeping him on this side of the lifeline, but I was still far enough for a head start if he made a move. I wasn’t sure how I was going to see ahead of me more than ten feet, but I knew I could run from any footsteps I heard.
“Travis?” I asked, squinting. “Is that you? Buddy, you look like you lost a fight with a grizzly bear.”
“What the hell happened to you guys?” Sam asked him from his position on the curb, twice as far from him as I way. “Where’s Sticks?”
Travis’s voice fell out of his mouth like crushed gravel. “Find the bridge of bones in the city of the dead.”
In my near-blindness, I searched for life or some sense of humanity in his milky-white eyes and failed. I’d step no closer, though part of me wanted to show compassion to someone so familiar…a hand on a shoulder or a hug. And Travis, despite his transformation, was trying to help, but found himself caught between two worlds—a being and a non-being—a final contradiction in a poor working-class kid’s life.
“Bridge of bones?” I asked. “What the hell is that?”
“There’s only one city within walking distance,” said Sam.
“Bridgeport? Travis is talking about Bridgeport?” I turned back to Travis. “Is this ‘bridge of bones’ in Bridgeport?”
“They took him away…they took him…” Travis brought his hands to his temples as though a migraine was cleaving his brain and then whatever restraint he’d mustered dissolved into heaving shrieks, his eyes on me as they lost the fire of life.
We didn’t stick around; Sam jolted down the block and I kept at his heels like a peeved Chihuahua until I heard a gunshot from above, coming from somewhere above, in one of the buildings that lined Main Street. Stumbling while trying to look up, duck, and run from Travis at the same time, I caught sight of a rifle barrel poking out from the upstairs window in the building nearest to us.
The sniper’s shot missed and Travis continued his warpath.
Sam smashed his shoulder into the front door of the attached building next to the sniper’s nest. The decaying door frame gave way with a loud crack and a blossoming explosion of dust, paint chips, and splintering wood…along with newer pieces of wooden reinforcement behind it.
The two of us piled inside like roaring drunks home from a long bender. The empty storefront we’d entered had once been a café, but the dusty, bare counters signaled long-ago use. A staircase lined upward along the left wall, leading to a balcony that exposed the upper half of the room upstairs, where crude holes in the walls allowed access between the neighboring buildings on the block, like a parapet.
We bounded up the heavy wooden staircase, at times scrambling on all fours. A young woman with red hair in a short brush cut pivoted around the corner at the top of the stairs, holding a rifle only slightly thinner than she was. She swung the rifle up and Sam and I jumped to the side of her line of fire, my left hand pushing Sam to the top and the other gripping the wooden railing as we passed right by her without a word between us. I had no breath remaining for introductions, as it was.
Travis charged up the stairs and made it a third of the way before the woman pulled the trigger and the hammer clicked loudly, even more so from the weight of the misfire’s consequences.
“Shit,” she said, calmly. Pursing her lips, she flipped the rifle around and bashed Dead Travis on the forehead with the buttstock. Stunned, Travis fell against the rickety railing with his (un)dead weight, snapping the railing loose. He tumbled to the ground floor, his head hitting the side of a dusty countertop before crumpling to the ground. Our former friend flailed briefly and then fell silent, his dislocated head twisting to reveal a large indentation in his skull…the kind that wouldn’t buff out, even if you rubbed some dirt on it.
The café returned to its previous gloomy silence, though it lasted only a minute. The woman moved quickly, rustling through nearby boxes of jumbled supplies. “Now I have to secure that door you idiots just plowed through or we’re gonna be dead meat walking.”
With my sight clearing in the shaded room, I ran downstairs and attempted to close the door, which was bent at the loose hinges and no longer flush with its frame. Sam had done a number on the wood, but not as much as time had.
The sniper disappeared into the next room and returned with a hammer and a fist full of nails. She looked at Sam, who remained on the balcony. “Hey Captain America, grab some of that wood and bring it down here.”
Then she moved to the doorway. “Brace yourselves in case this hammering attracts more undesirables. Besides yourselves, I mean.” She pounded nails into the frame and then into the plywood covering the empty windowpanes near the top of the door. After Sam arrived with more boards, she nailed two pieces over the top in a cross pattern and then placed her head close to the door to listen. I heard the screaming and gunshots typical of our new environment off in the distance, but nothing close.
She wiped her brow with a forearm. “I hope that wasn’t as loud outside as it sounded in here.” She looked up at the staircase. “I’m gonna have to cut the stairs down, too. But first, figure out what the fuck is wrong with Bessie.”
“Bessie?” asked Sam.
“The rifle that knocked your friend there in the noggin.” She looked us over, shaking her head at the two goofs who’d invaded her inner sanctum. “You make quite a pair.” Then she started up the stairs. “Come on up if you want. You can leave, but not through that door, in case you didn’t just see me nail the fucker shut.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She didn’t stop her climb. “What’s it matter?”
“I like to know who I’m dealing with.”
“Knowing my name isn’t going to help anything. Deal with that.”
“Looks like I’ll just call you ‘Freckles,’ then,” I said, mostly to myself. I didn’t want to get shot, after all.
Sam and I followed her upstairs to a large rudimentary living area, with plenty of choice sniping spots looking down the street, both out front and across the parking lot behind. A dirty mattress hugged the corner of one wall, unappealing even as a place to put down your weapon, lying next to bags of clothes and a cracked plastic tote that was filled with enough canned food to look heavy.
“I’m Neil. This is Sam.”
She moved to the far wall and pulled a handful of bullets from a green canvas bag. Then she pulled what looked like a grenade attached to her vest with a velcro loop and tossed it on the mattress, nonchalantly, where it bounced once or twice.
She eyed us suspiciously. “I’m Tarah. You can stay here until it’s clear, then head wherever you’re headed. It’s not safe here and I’m not safe with you here.” She took a breath. “No offense, but you came close to ruining my day bringing your problems out there in here.”
“We’re heading to Bridgeport,” I said, looking at Sam. “That’s where we’re headed, right? I mean, a bridge of bones in a town called Bridgeport makes sense, right?”
He held up a hand. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“What do you mean? If that’s where Sticks is, then it’s the place to go.”
“As far as what Travis said. And Travis was dead.”
“Has a corpse ever lied to you?”
“Look, we don’t know for sure if Sticks is really there…or why he’s there…or what it’s even like there. I’m assuming it’s not pretty. And it’s a couple of hours south.”
“Bridgeport’s probably a slaughterhouse,” said Tarah, her rifle resting on her lap. “Cities would be the worst places when things fall apart. It’s bad enough in this shithole town. Look what happens when a group of them finds a group of people…like you just saw. Multiply what you just saw by thousands—maybe tens of thousands—and you might come close to what’s going on in Bridgeport.”
“What choice do I have?” I asked. “Are we supposed to just wander the countryside covered in furs and tarps, pushing shopping carts around a wasteland, forgetting my brother exists?”
“No, but we should find some allies, such as the mighty United States military. You know, people trained for that kind of shit.”
“I’m fine with that. And while we’re looking for them, we might as well head south and we’ll eventually run into some military, right?”
Sam sighed. “If it’s more than we can handle, we’ll switch to Plan B and prioritize finding some troops.”
“I’m glad you decided what Plan B was going to be.”
I appreciated Sam’s optimism, though I wasn’t there with him. I’d expected to see more military by now, at least according to my imaginary large-scale emergency awareness.
“Before we go south, we’re gonna have to backtrack,” I said. “Our supplies are with the truck at Roger’s.”
“It was stupid to stop there,” said Sam, “getting tied up with everybody else. I know better than to follow the herd, but that’s still exactly what we did.”
I scoffed. “How were you supposed to know? This is our first apocalypse. And it was my idea. I was hoping to find our people in less-than-dead condition. My bad.”
Tarah peeked through a crack of shifted drywall and then back to us. “Those supplies. Are they too valuable to leave behind?”
“I’d say so. Food and ammo.”
Tarah’s head perked up.
I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe some ammo for you?”
“What kind of ammo?”
“Gun ammo.”
“What kind? Caliber?”
I shrugged. “I’m not a gun scientist.”
“No doubt about that.”
“Look, I know you want us out of your hair and I don’t blame you. Your intuition’s pretty accurate. But with these revenants running around, we’re all in this together. Even undead can manage to understand the power in numbers.”
“Revenants.” She cracked a smile as she peered from the hole in the wall. “Good name for ‘em.”
“What do you call them?”
She stuck her rifle out of the back window and popped off a round. A death groan erupted outside. “Targets.”
“How dramatic,” said Sam. “Where’d you get the grenade?”
She smiled. “The best thing my daddy left me before he checked out.”
“Checked out?”
Here was the first time she showed any emotion other than irritation. “The ‘revenants’ got to him early. Took a chunk out of him like it was nothin’. I had to…take care of it…along with the crowd we were with. Now there’s just me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m nothing special. Most of us have lost someone by now. Where are you families?”
“Our families gave up on us long before any of this happened.”
“Well, I made a promise to my dad that I’d take down as many as I could, as long as I could. I guess you’d call it a ‘vendetta.’ I’m saving that grenade to take out as many of them at one time as I can. I don’t know when that will be—or even if it’ll ever happen—but if the opportunity ever shows itself, I’ll be ready.”
“Is it live?” Sam asked.
“The grenade? You wanna find out?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Here’s your opportunity. Let’s use it on the revenants at Roger’s and we can get our shit back.”
“You’re a good enough shot,” Sam said to her, “and a brave American. We could use your help.”
“Help with what… killing yourselves? You’ve seen what they can do. You can’t fight or run from them all.” She glanced out of the window, always watching. “I can hold ‘em off long enough here…even if it doesn’t get better out there.”
Sam looked around. “How long do you think you can hold out? A block over, a mob is killing anything that moves. They could head this way chasing a flock of birds or some terrified stray cat. How many rounds do you have to take them on?”
“We have plenty of supplies you could use,” I said. “We just need to get to it. Help us out and you can walk away with some of it.”
She moved to a stool brought up from the café downstairs, placed near a window with a wide view of the back lot. “I don’t think so, boys. I think I’m safer up here than out there running around with you two. At least for now.”
I threw up my hands. “Well, we shouldn’t waste any more daylight,” I said. “Let’s get going.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ve cleared out,” Sam said. “Then we can get in and out before scavengers and looters start snooping around.”
We thanked Tarah for her help and she led us down the narrow stairs to a rear doorway that allowed access to the street.
Then we were back in the open air…with the Targets.
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