The Apocalypse

Chapter 26

Neil

Columbus, Ohio



Sadie's choice in music was nearly enough for Neil to find his own ride westward. Every song seemed to consist solely of grinding guitars, and if there was a singer, if they could be called such, it sounded as though they were part demon. He couldn't understand a word of their lyrics, but judging by the song titles it didn't seem worth it trying to fathom them out.

She complained of his music as well: said it all bored her and put her to sleep. Which was true enough. When it was his turn to drive she curled up next to him and slept with her mouth open. She was much prettier when she slept. There was an innocence to her that only came out then. Normally it was hidden beneath the heavy mascara and the black lipstick.

“You should try a lighter color of lipstick,” he suggested one afternoon. “I'm just saying that you would look better. Don't get me wrong you are very pretty right now, I just don't understand why you wouldn't want to be prettier.”

“Prettier for who? For the zombies?”

“I don't know, maybe we will meet some young men...now don't give me that look.” She had raised her eyebrows at the word men. “You know what I mean. I keep up my appearance for the ladies.” He did too. Every day since he had seen the first zombie rat he had shaved and dressed as he always had, very neatly.

Theatrically she grabbed the wheel and said, “Then you better turn around. I just saw a cute zombie-mama for you. She was barely chewed on. It was some prime zombie ass.”

He exhaled wearily over her profanity. “You never know where you'll meet someone is all I'm saying. There could be a boy right around the corner.”

There wasn't.

The army in the east had died fighting, trying to hold lines that were flanked and pierced in dozens of places by zombies that numbered in the millions. Bodies were everywhere attesting to the bitter struggle.

And they saw very few live people along the back roads of Pennsylvania, none of whom wanted the least thing to do with anyone driving such a farfetched beast as the monster truck. Yet they did run into a couple of people eventually, while looking for a pair of hair scissors for Neil. He hadn't had a cut in a month and thought he looked no better than a hippie.

“You should grow it out,” Sadie suggested. They were in the remains of a CVS pharmacy just east of Columbus, Ohio. The pickings in the store were slim. “Women like a man with long hair. You know like that guy from Braveheart, that old dude.”

“I don't look anything like Mel Gibson and no amount of hair extensions will change that,” Neil said. “Here we go, finally. Can you cut hair? I mean really cut like a stylist or have you only practiced on Barbies...get down!” he hissed suddenly, ducking behind a counter. “There are a couple of guys near the truck.”

She gave them a glance and then looked at Neil. “What do you want me to do about them? You're the man, remember. And you have a gun. You'll be fine.” She began to push him to the door and he went out in a slight panic. What would happen if they were mean?

“Hey there,” he said striving for a relaxed and easy going note, but hitting a combination psycho-killer and TV clown instead. The gun felt weird in his hands. Was he supposed to be pointing it at them? He didn't think that was very polite, so instead he just sort of played with it, twirling the heavy thing on his finger as if he was always doing creepy things like that.

The man was older and grey, maybe fifty. He was gritty looking with a long ponytail and dirty biker jacket on over dirtier jeans. He too had a gun, but his was slung. “This your truck? She's a beauty,” he said with a yellowed smile. Clearly he was a smoker and the acid breath that he spewed covered the distance between him and Neil in a second.

“Oh yeah. It's mine, or really it's my friend's, but you get it. My name is Neil,” he said holding out his hand and grinning in a sick sort of way because of the man's rancid breath.

“Chuck,” the biker said crushing Neil's hand in a hard grip. “And this is my boy, Charlie.”

The boy was a full head taller than Neil and seemed to have something to prove in the handshaking department as he tried to outdo his father in the creation of hairline fractures in Neil's hand. “Nice to me you both,” Neil said, struggling not to massage his hand when he stepped back.


“You too,” Chuck said, turning from Neil and looking at the truck with interest. He glanced up at an angle to see the inner workings of the thing. “What you got in there?” he asked.

After considering the question, Neil had to shrug. “You mean other than the engine? I'm not sure. Just the usual stuff I think.”

The father and son shared a look along with a smile. “I meant what size engine? Forget it. Would you mind if I popped the hood? It's ok, I'm a mechanic.” Without waiting for permission Chuck climbed up into the cab and triggered the latch.

“I guess it's ok then,” Neil said, staring about for Sadie. He felt oddly vulnerable without the girl near. Above him, the man touched here and there, giving hoses and belts a sturdy shake, while he squinted at all of the mechanical workings. As he did, he mentioned strange sounding words to his son, such as nitrous, coilover and leafspring. The boy seemed to understand and he gave Neil a wink, which Neil nodded to, though he knew not why.

Chuck eventually shut the hood and climbed back down. “So what do you want for her? I'm willing to trade quite a bit, though I won't go all out seeing as there is some damage to the springs. This isn't a true monster truck, but it's clear someone has been acting as though it is.”

“It seems pretty big to me,” Neil replied, getting defensive.

“Yeah, she's big, but she's only a custom job. Four-hundred CCs, and a premium suspension don't make her a monster truck. She ain't built to run all over every car that gets in her way. Now, as for a trade, I got some guns and ammo. Tons of gas and more water than I really need. I even have a smaller truck that would be more your speed. I'll throw that in as well. It's a Ford Ranger. A good truck.”

“I don't think I want to trade,” Neil said, feeling the gun again in his hands. He didn't like the look in the man's eyes; it was how all mechanics looked. As if they knew damned well that you didn't have a clue what they were talking about and that they knew they could rook you just like an oil-stained gypsy.

“Yeah I get that,” Chuck said, easily clapping Neil on the back as if they were old buddies. “It's understandable, but here's why you should: you got a leaking manifold. It could be just the gasket is bad, but the way the undercarriage is all dinged up I'm betting you got a dint in the manifold itself and that's going to spell trouble down the road.”

Neil had no clue what a manifold was or what it did. For all he knew it was a made up word—though it did sound familiar. “What sort of trouble are you talking about?”

“The kind that'll leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. And it ain't like you can call Triple-A now can you. So I say let's work a trade while you still got something to trade with. What do you say?”

Just then Sadie appeared behind the truck; Neil only saw her head and it was shaking vehemently. “No, I don't think so,” he said. “You're nice to ask, but we don't plan on traveling forever. We're going west. Maybe find a mountain town without too many zombies. I'm sure the truck will make it that far, especially if we're a little more careful.” This last he said for Sadie's sake; she enjoyed smashing over things way too much. He had warned her but like every other teenager in the world she thought she knew more than her elders.

Chuck shrugged a: What can you do? kind of shrug. “West? Maybe that isn't a bad idea. We just came south from Toledo and I can tell you, that's one direction you don't want to go. You can't swing a dead zombie cat without hitting another zombie. Here's a plan, me and my boy will team up with you and your partner for while. You don't think he'll mind, do you?”

“I don't mind,” Sadie said, coming out from behind the truck with the heavy shotgun looking like a bazooka compared to her thin frame. “As long as we come to an agreement before hand. What's ours is ours and what's yours is yours, and whatever we find from here on out we split down the middle. Kind of like a pre-nup.”

Chuck smiled at her and if she were closer he likely would've patted her on the head. “This is your partner?” he asked Neil. “This is her truck? I find that really hard to believe. She steal it?”

“No, she didn't steal it,” Sadie answered for Neil who hadn't known how to reply to the question. “You can't steal from a zombie. They give up all rights when they start eating people. But what's it to you where I got it from?”

“Feisty,” Chuck commented, earning him a giggle from his boy.

Neil went to Sadie's side and declared, “She is feisty and brave, and very smart. Now I don't think it's a good idea for you to come along with us if you can't be civil.”

Chuck blew out a long breath. “Hey, don't get your panties in a bunch. I meant nothing. Hell, it's good she's feisty. It should be a compliment these days. I was just wanting to know what sorts of people me and my boy are thinking of taking up with. Trust is going to be hard to come by, you know.”

“Oh, we know,” Sadie replied, eyeing Chuck as if he were a very large cockroach.”

“Ok then,” Chuck said and then paused to glance at his son. “I think this pre-nup idea is a good one. Though we should make allowances for services rendered. What would happen if your truck broke down? You wouldn't expect me to work on it for free, would you?”

“No, I guess not,” Neil said, scratching his neck absently with the .357. He looked to Sadie for agreement, but she made a face.

“I'm glad you aren't one of those mechanics who take advantage of women and noobs,” Sadie said with something close to a sneer. “But we won't be needing your mechanical expertise either way. If something just 'happens' to go wrong with the truck, I'm going to put her out of her misery. Lighting up a gallon of gasoline in the engine compartment should do it.”

Chuck stared at her in amazement and then he burst into a huge smile. “Woo-wee, you got a wild one, Neil! How did you manage to land her? I bet she's just crazy in bed.”

“What?” Neil asked, feeling the metal of the gun in his hand. It suddenly felt very heavy as though it wanted its presence known. “Sadie is not my girlfriend. We're traveling together as companions only, and I have to ask that you respect her. She is a very capable young lady.”

The mechanic stuck out his lower lip and bowed his head acknowledging his chastisement. “I'm sorry. I'm a kidder. Ask Charlie here. I like to joke around...and I can take a joke too. So if you want to razz me I won't take it personal. Listen Sadie, it's your truck. I won't try to take it I promise.”

This was a promise that didn't last.

They agreed to travel together, though they didn't get very far that day. It was late afternoon by the time Neil found and siphoned enough gas to fill both the truck as well as all the jerry cans. Then Chuck and his son wanted to pull over just before six. They were driving the Ford Ranger and said that they didn't sleep in it.

“We can't sleep in it, really,” Charlie told them as his father went to check out a little farmhouse off the highway. “The stiffs come and bang on the windows all night long. I hate it. You ever go to Red Lobster? I feel like I'm one of the lobsters that they have out front in the fish tank. I feel like the stiffs are pointing at me and saying: I want that one.”

“It's why I'm not giving up my truck,” Sadie said, squinting from the glare of the setting sun off its chrome. “We're so high up, the zombies pass right below us and don't even know.”


Chuck came hurrying back. Behind him came a parade of dead bodies. “Not this one,” he said with a high laugh. The next was better, and after Chuck shot a couple of the former occupants who were shuffling around in house slippers and staring vacantly with dead eyes, the father and son moved in and locked the doors behind them. They had asked Sadie and Neil to join them, but the two demurred as politely as possible.

“Did you see that pervert looking at me?” Sadie exclaimed, locking the doors of the truck one after another. “Man, he wouldn't stop. All through dinner, that's why I had to move.”

Neil had seen the looks. They weren't as bad as Sadie made them out to be, though to a seventeen year old who had never had that sort of focus on her before he could understand that it would be a little upsetting.

“And you want me to go and pretty myself up?” Sadie went on, taking a look at herself in the truck's useless rear view mirror—it was so high up that the only traffic it could effectively see were low flying airplanes. “No way. Just think how much they'd stare if I did.”

“They? Was the son staring as well. He's awful young for that.” The boy was fourteen and almost six feet tall.

Her right shoulder did its little bob and she said, “He looked some. He was a little bit more circumcised about it.”

A grin tried to creep across his face, but Neil fought it back. “I think you mean circumspect. Circumcised is a whole other word.”

“Oh yeah? I thought it sounded weird when I said it. What is circumcised? It sounds familiar...what? What's wrong? You look all weird.”

“I do?” Neil asked touching his face. “I guess it's because I never figured that I'd be explaining circumcision to a girl, I mean a young woman. It...it has to do with the removal of the, uh membranous foreskin of the male genitalia. It...”

Suddenly Sadie burst into a barking laughter. “You should see your face!” she said, hitting the steering wheel with her fist as she laughed. “Oh my stomach! Oh crap that hurts.” She continued to laugh until tears came and she fell over onto the seat.

“You know what circumcision means?” Neil asked, feeling relieved despite that he had clearly been the butt of a joke.

“Of course, you dolt!” she said as her laughter petered into a wheeze. “I'm seventeen, not seven. My friends and I used to put words like that into sentences to see if anyone would even notice. Though it never worked so good as on you.”

Neil didn't know what to think about that, but at least he wasn't stuck explaining the birds and the bees, something that had him in a sweat. “I thought I was about to have to give you The Talk.”

She snorted again. “I am good thank you. But when you do, don't use words like membranous or genitalia, it's either a wiener or a ding-dong. At least it is for normal kids. I can see your kids being all nerdy, walking around saying: I have to urinate through my genitalia...” Sadie stopped talking as she saw Neil's mouth turn down. She bit her lip before saying, “Hey I was joking around about the whole nerd thing. I think you're a real nice guy.”

“I am,” Neil admitted. “That's what all the girls tell me.” Sadie missed the bile in his words. In her mind being nice was a good thing—and it wasn't just her. Every girl he had ever met had labeled him a nice guy, which essentially meant he was harmless, like a neutered dog or a toothless shark. For Neil it was the kiss of death. Whenever a girl had called him nice, he might as well have died in her eyes, unless of course they needed a favor: a ride to the airport, moving her furniture, or dog sitting while she was off to Vegas with some other guy.

Not that Neil looked at Sadie that way. To him she was little more than a child, but it was the fact that even in the infancy of her womanhood she saw him as a eunuch to be used and abused and it bothered him.

“What's wrong? Really,” she asked, her eyes and her mind disconcertingly sharp.

“Nothing, nothing.” Nice guys didn't make waves. Instead they took the crumbs that life gave them and patted them into tiny cakes and pretended it was good enough. “I'm just getting sleepy.” The twilight had turned into true night at some point and now the stars and the zombies were beginning to show.

Out of the blue, Sadie mentioned, “You snore...but I guess you knew that.”

“Is it bad?” At her look he added, “How am I supposed to know if I snore? I'm asleep when it happens.”

After her half-shrug she said, “You're right, how could you know. It's not that bad. It's like you just breathe loud is all.

That night Neil snored again and Sadie just sighed at the sound.