The Apocalypse

Chapter 22

Neil

Montclair, New Jersey



From the floor of the suburban kitchen Neil blinked up at a world that couldn't possibly exist. It was a world in which he was still alive. He had fainted when the robber turned-would-be-murderer had shot him with the giant shotgun, only there hadn't been an explosion as there should have been.

Instead there was only a clicking sound.

“What the f*ck?” John said, turning the shotgun on its side and seeing that the port was open and empty. “You charge in here with an empty gun? You come to save a girl from zombies and you don't even check to see if the f*cking thing is loaded?” John broke down laughing until he cried. “Oh what a f*ckin Rambo you are,” he said still chuckling as he tugged out a pistol from his waistband. “I think I'm doing the world a favor by killing you. It's survival of the fittest out here and you're a genetic misfit that needs to be culled.”


With this he lowered the gun to point at Neil, who had done nothing but lay there cringing and feeling stupid. But Neil was saved for a moment longer when outside the heavy revving sound of the monster truck could be heard: louder at first and then fainter. Sadie had driven away.

“What the f*ck!” John cried and raced from the room. “She's stealing my f*cking truck!”

Neil sat up as John ranted, and when he did the .357 slid out onto the floor. John didn't seem to notice it as he stormed back in and punched the refrigerator, sending gaily-colored magnets flying. Neil picked up the gun, thumbed the safety off and said. “Don't move. This one is loaded.”

John's anger turned to surprise as he saw the gun, but he wasn't afraid of Neil. No one was afraid of Neil, not even when he held a gun in his hands. “You gonna shoot or what?” John asked. He was angled slightly away from Neil and his gun was at the floor.

“I want you to drop your…” Neil began, but then John turned swift and agile and shot. An angry bee zipped past Neil's ear.

In a panic, Neil flinched, pulling his own trigger more by accident than design and John fell over clutching his throat as a gout of red sprayed the refrigerator. “I'm sorry!” Neil cried coming to kneel over the man as he fell. Even as he said it, John went limp and ceased to breathe. “Oh I killed him. I killed him! I didn't mean it, I swear.”

He hugged himself feeling an urgent need to both vomit and evacuate his bowels and before he knew it, he was crying. It made no sense to him and really he didn't try to make sense of it. Crying seemed the only thing to do just then and so he went with it, until eventually his tears ceased and he was forced back to the reality of his unreality. In this world a man didn't cry after shooting another man.

He went on with his life.

“I'm not a genetic misfit,” Neil said, running a sleeve across his face and trying to be tough. “Who's alive and who's dead? Huh?”

He went through the pockets of the dead man, doing his best not to look him in the face, and came away with two clips for the gun that had fallen from his dead hand.

Figuring he was going to need every bullet and every gun, Neil took them all. The shotgun, though it was empty, he slung over his back and then he stood and stared around him, not knowing what he should do. The outside world was terrifying yet the little suburban home was no castle and offered scant protection.

What he needed was a ride. With light steps he went to the garage and was disappointed to see only a little Toyota Tercel parked there. After the monster truck, the Tercel looked like a toy car. Still it was better than hoofing it and so he scrounged around the house until he found some keys and then he was on the open road…except the street was blocked with cars and zombies.

Neil performed a very delicate K turn and drove toward the hole in the fence where he had parked the monster truck. That thing had been too big to fit in the gap but the Tercel slipped through neatly and then Neil was off with a sudden idea.

Sadie had left John for a reason, and what's more she hadn't narked on Neil concerning the hidden .357. Maybe she wasn't so bad. She was resourceful and very brave, qualities that Neil seemed to be lacking. Maybe she would let him take up with her.

This was his hope as he tracked her throughout central Jersey. It was easier than he could've imagined. At the edge of the football field he saw fresh muddy tire tracks heading north on Garland Way. This street came to a four way stop and down the road to his right he saw a zombie that was near cut in half; it had been run over by something very large.

“He-he!” Neil giggled and took the right. The next clue took longer to find. So many of the roads were blocked that he had to go to each and inspect them before turning around to go to the next. After twenty minutes he found what he was looking for.

A Porsche that had been a part of a pile-up had its rear crushed inexplicably. Neil banked over a low hill and across someone's flower border and then paused to take in his choices: to the east and north, more houses. To the west a strip mall. He went west and found the monster truck. Sadie had used it to punch a hole in the wooden planks covering the front of a convenience store. Neil honked his horn, a light and friendly: meep, meep, and then parked behind the truck.

Before he could get out, however the truck coughed blue smoke all over the red Tercel and then began to back over him with a throaty roar. Neil screamed and dove out of the car just as the driver side was flattened.

“Oh it's you,” Sadie said, squinting down at him. He lay in a spatter of glass clutching himself and thanking God that his bladder hadn't let go. “I thought you were John.”

“No. I'm me,” he replied, feeling tiny next to the great truck.

“Why didn't he kill you?” she asked. “That's all he talked about. I'm going to kill that bastard! It got dull I tell you. Hey, look out behind you. There's a stiff right there.”

She seemed so relaxed that Neil was casual about turning and there was a zombie five feet away and rushing at him quickly. Another scream ripped out of his throat as he pulled the .357 and fired at point blank range. It was a heavy-duty gun and the zombie fell to the ground with a gaping hole coming out the back of him.

Immediately it started to get up again and Sadie snorted, “You have to shoot it in the head, dummy.”

“Oh, I didn't know,” Neil said, taking aim at the creature struggling to get up. He pulled the trigger keeping his face turned partially away, yet still somehow managed to hit his target, sending grey-pink brains scattering across the parking lot. “That's gross,” he said feeling his stomach turn over.

“Yeah, but they're zombies so what do you expect?”

They sort of just looked at each in a silence then. Neil because he had shot her friend and he didn't know how to bring it up, and Sadie, because awkward silences didn't seem to faze her.

Finally Neil just blurted, “I killed your friend, John. It wasn't really my fault, and he was going to kill me too. Honestly you could say he was hoist with his own petard...I just wanted to let you know.”

Sadie looked skeptical. “Are you sure you killed him? You're not just saying that to impress me?”

“I am sure,” Neil said, a little defensively. “It was like an old fashioned duel. He shot and missed and then I shot and didn't. I don't know what's so hard to understand. His body is back at that house, you can go see for yourself.”

She looked back the way she had come and then gave a half shrug. “For your sake I hope he's dead. That guy had a mean streak in him a mile wide. It's why I left. He was bad news. That and he kept trying to, you know. He was always like, Come on Baby. We have to procreate for the sake of the species. What an a*shole. I think the species is better off with him dead.”

“Well he is dead,” Neil said again.

“That's what you said.” She gave him an expectant look and then asked, “So are you just going to stand there all day? We got incoming stiffs.”

“I can come with you?” he asked happily, climbing into the truck. She refused to budge out of the driver's seat and he had to basically climb over her, but since they were both small and trim it wasn't so bad—except for the fact that she kept her pistol trained on him as he did.

“As long as we have an understanding,” she said, indicating the gun. “Like I told John, the only gun I want anywhere near me is this one. So make sure you keep your hands to yourself.”


Neil held his hands up to show how harmless he was. “I respect your lifestyle choices. I'm a very modern man.”

“When you say lifestyle, are you suggesting I'm a lesbian?” Clearly his look made it obvious and she rolled her eyes. “I'm not a lesbian. Wow, some modern man you are. I just don't want to have to play that game. If I like a guy, I'll let him know.”

“Sorry,” Neil said, sheepishly. “I didn't mean to imply anything. And thanks for taking me on.”

“It's ok. I don't like to be alone, which is strange because I used to be the ultimate loner. In High School, I was a junior by the way, anyway, I was the most closeted person. It probably was because I was all Goth and everyone thinks Goths are all, like freaks. But here we are and I have all the chance in the world to be alone and now I can't stand it.”

As she spoke she backed over the remains of the Tercel and was now tooling up a street, driving aimlessly. “So how old are you,” she asked.

Neil got a twinge the way she said old. “I'm only thirty-four. So, do you know where you're going? Do you have a plan?”

“You don't look thirty-four,” she said, giving him a long look. “You have a baby face. Anyone ever tell you that?” Many people had, almost all of them perspective women he had his eye on. He nodded, not wanting to continue on the subject and she let it go. “And I don't know where I'm going. This way, I guess.” She pointed down the road.

“I think we should go west,” Neil said. “There are fewer people out there, which means fewer zombies. What do you think?”

She gave him a shrug and said, “Sure. West it is. What did you mean earlier when you said John was a petard? What's that? Is that like a retard?”

He had to laugh and she smiled back showing straight white teeth. “No, I said he was hoist with his own petard. It's from Hamlet.”

A groan ran from between her lips. “Hamlet? That's Shakespeare isn't it? Well you can count me out. He puts me to sleep.”

This put the conversation on hold for a while and Sadie drove the great beast of a truck until they came to I-80 which was dreadfully clogged both ways and littered with soldiers, both dead and undead. They had to settle for a zigzagging route, that reminded Neil of sailboat tacking into the wind. They'd go north till they found a good route west but when that clogged up they'd swing south until they found another. And so on.

Eventually gas became an issue. Neil emptied the last of the jerry cans into the tank while Sadie watched, blowing tremendous bubbles with her gum. This lasted them a good thirty miles of back and forth, however by the time they found an open spot to gain access to I-80 they were getting low again.

Sadie pulled over at a tangle of cars and said, “I'll keep watch while you go check em for gas. The hose is in the back.”

“The hose? To siphon with? I don't know how to siphon gas. Do you?”

“John always did it, but it can't be too hard. He was a petard remember?” She tried to be cute about it but Neil was nervous. When it came to direct hands on projects he was notorious for being mechanically inept.

Neil tossed down each of the jerry cans and then fished around beneath the mayhem in the back for the hose. With Sadie keeping watch, he went to each car and found a few with tanks that were nearly full. “Here goes nothing.”

When it came to siphoning, he only knew that he had to suck at one end of the hose while keeping the other end within the fuel, but after that…

After that came vomiting. The fuel wasn't easy to bring up from the tank and when it did he sucked it right into his lungs. It was horrible beyond the telling and he choked and then began to vomit up the franks and beans he had for lunch. Sadie came over with a hunting rifle over one arm and a bottle of water.

“You're not very good at that,” she commented, handing over the water.

“Maybe you want to try it?” Neil groused, between hacking coughs.

“You're the man here, not me.”

“Yes I guess I am. Sorry, but this tastes horrible,” he said.

She gave her patented half-shrug, lifting only her right shoulder. “John used to put his thumb on the end between, you know, sucks. And then when it got close he'd put the end down into the plastic can.”

Neil tried this approach, biting back a wave of crankiness over the fact that she had failed to mention this little helpful hint before. And then the gas came gushing along the tube and he sat back feeling a touch of competence.

Sadie climbed up on the car and began rocking it. “John used to have me do this. I don't know why. So what did you do before? I'm betting you weren't a mechanic.”

Why did it seem that she put him down with every sentence? And why did he care? She was a kid, who was exactly half his age. It shouldn't have mattered at all, but it still did.

“I was a corporate raider,” he answered. “I was one of the most feared men on wall-street.” He had hoped that she would be somewhat impressed, but she set her lips and raised an eyebrow.

“I may not know what a petard is, but I know what a corporate raider is. I saw Pretty Woman. I know what Bane Capitol was. You destroyed companies for your own greed. You fired people just so you could make a buck.”

The gas fumes were giving him a head-ache and he didn't think he could win with this girl—and again the question of why he would even want to came to mind. It certainly wasn't sexual. She was nothing but a kid.

“If that's what you think then you should probably try reading a book, maybe learning something instead of watching movies. Corporate raider is a fancy and not a very descriptive name for what we really do. I was in mergers and acquisitions. And we not only saved jobs, but created them as well.”

“That's not how it is in the movies, and before you get all high and mighty they told us about corporate raiders in school too.”

“Teachers never had to make a bottom line, do they?” Neil replied and again attempted to boost his image in her eyes. “Let me explain as easily as I can. Let's say you had a bunch of grapes. If one got moldy it might spread to the rest and ruin all of them, so what do you do? You cut the one off to save all the rest. In essence that's what we do. Yes, we fire people, but when the rest of the company starts picking up and doing better they hire people back.”

She raised an eyebrow and said, “Well it sounds awful boring either way. I bet you're glad that's over with.”

“No, I don't,” Neil said, dropping his chin. “My life wasn't great…I mean on a personal level it sucked. I was lonely. But I was happy with my work. I made good money and I could point to many successes where I helped people. I figured the rest of my life would turn around eventually. You know a girlfriend and maybe a family. But now, I think I'm built even less for this world than the old one.”

“I think you're doing fine,” she said, with a little smile. “You're a survivor and there aren't that many people left who can say that. And look: you have this fine truck and all this food and you have me for a friend. What more could you need?”

“To find a way west,” he answered. “And somewhere to bath. I feel gross with all this gas on me.” His needs were met; that evening he bathed in a clear lake in the middle of Pennsylvania, and after, the two slept soundly high up in the monster truck—she in the front, he on the long bench in the back—and neither stirred as an army of zombies crested like a wave at the top of a hill and flowed around them.