Alive! Not Dead! (33 page)

The door slammed on Bart’s hand.  He felt bones crunch and skin tear.  Blood started pouring out.

“Fucking cunt!” he yelled.  He yanked the door
back open.  She tried to kick him away again but he cracked her shins with the crowbar.  She screamed.  In a few minutes, he had her out of the car, her arms pinned behind her back.  He pushed her limping toward his truck.  A dog was barking madly in the back.

He roughly gagged her, tied her hands behind her back and lifted her over his shoulder.  He let the tail gate drop.  The dog jumped out.  It obediently went to the passenger side of the truck.

She was struggling to get off of his shoulder, but he was just too strong.  He slammed her down onto the bed of the truck.  There was no padding.  Her back slammed onto the metal.  The truck bounced when she slammed it.  Bart tied her feet.

“Stay quiet back here, bitch, and I
might
go easier on you,” he told her.  He got into the truck, grabbed an old rag on the seat, and wrapped his hand.  It was bleeding pretty badly.  He didn’t think it was broken, but it hurt like hell.

On the way back to the meat market, he stopped at the small town pharmacy.  It looked like someone had broken into it.  The drive-thru window had been smashed.  He clumsily crawled through it, stumbled around a bit, knocked over a cart with boxes on it, and then found a display case with some bandages.  He quickly ripped one open, dripping blood on the floor as he did, then
wrapped his wound.

Back outside, it looke
d like the lady had passed out.

“Good,” he said.

He drove back to the meat market.

Inside, he told Dane and Jace what had happened.  He told them he was going to take the night off and
rest over at the Holiday Inn.  His hand hurt like hell.

“Tie her up,” he said, looking down at her. 
“Get her ready for the morning because when I get back I’m going to filet her alive for what she did to my fucking hand.”

FOR PETE’S SAKE

Mindy’s pregnancy became our focal point.

We needed to find another house like the one we had lived in near the casino in Oklahoma.  Mindy wanted to go back because it had been such a home to us, but I reminded her that that side of the earth was falling away.

She also wanted to go back to try and save Rosita but I told her by now it was too late.  She was probably already gone.

We kept our eyes peeled for a new home as we headed east away from Temple.  Again,
the roads were clear other than the ripples.  They seemed to be getting wider not taller.  We went through small town after small town.  Nothing caught our eye as a great place to stay.  We did stay in hotels along the way, but they weren’t good enough to make a home in.

There was damage along every ripple, too, so sometimes a town would be damaged but the next one wouldn’t be – or a partial bridge would be damaged or half of a
building would be destroyed.  The ripples were slowing us down.

We searched through rooms in the hotels we stayed at.  If we were lucky, we would find things useful for our travels.  In some suitcases we would find better clothes or shoes to wear; maybe some unused toiletries.  It was like a treasure hunt in a way, but not a
fun one.  We were constantly reminded of how dead the world was.  Sometimes suitcases had pictures of people in them with smiling faces; families together on vacations or getaways.

Mindy always kept an
open eye out for baby stuff.  It was rare to find anything new.  She really didn’t want to use anything already opened.  There were open bags of diapers, but she didn’t want to use them.  There were plastic baby bottles in some bags, but then again she didn’t want to use them.

She was being understandably picky.

One afternoon our luck finally kicked in.  There was a small out of the way shop in one of the small towns we passed through.  In the back of the store there was a rack of clothes with a SALE sign on it.  It was all maternity wear.

When we made it to Austin, two things happened.  One, Mindy started to show.  You really couldn’t tell unless you were really looking, but we were happy to see her bun in the oven actually showing.  It gave us a boost of excitement.  We didn’t know if Mindy had been eating enough food to give the baby enough nutrition.  Evidently we had.  She looked at her profile in any mirror we came across.  We started thinking about names but couldn’t really decide on anything yet.

The other thing was – we left the main highway.  We headed east on a two lane road through the ripple-filled flatlands.  Ninety miles later we stopped in Brenham.  We stayed at a Super 8 hotel.  Before we slept, we rummaged through some rooms, looking for anything useful.  Again, our searches came up empty.  We settled in for the night.  We watched the sun set through the trees.  Across the street to the south, on the other side of an overpass, there was a partially demolished
Sea
Land
seafood restaurant.

Mindy asked “I wonder if they have walk-in coolers in there?”

“I bet they do” I said “but they’re probably not working now.”

“I’m so hungry now, Dan.  The baby is taking all of my nourishment, and we really haven’t had very much to eat anyway.”

“We need to find something,” I said.  “And quick – and we need to get you some vitamins.”

“How close are we to Houston?”

“About 70 miles.  We probably won’t get there for another day or so.”

We averaged about 30 miles a day, sometimes less.  I never could trust the road and didn’t dare drive the motorcycle any faster than 30 mph because I didn’t know if a split would be on the next ripple.

I had my mind set on La Porte, one of the suburbs in Houston.  I had no idea why, honestly.  I pretty much just picked it out on the map – but it was right on the gulf and I figured there should be some boats there.  Why wouldn’t there be?

The next morning, I grabbed a flashlight we found in a house we had gone through days before and we walked under the overpass hand in hand.

I said to Mindy “This overpass must have been built with stronger steel.”

“How come?”

“Because it isn’t collapsed.”

She got a little laugh out of it.

We entered the seafood restaurant.  Right inside the entrance there was a large fish aquarium.  The fish had all died because the water inside the aquarium had not been cleaned.  Moss had caked the entire inside of the glass.

Next to it, lying with his back against the wall was a man with no head.  Mindy let out a little scream.  This was the first sign of a person we had seen since leaving Alvarado.

With the front door of the restaurant closed, the place grew dark quickly even though the sun was bright outside.  I flipped on the flashlight.  We cautiously walked through the place.

Strangely, there were a lot of corpses in here.

Some were slumped over tables with their faces in their plates.  Others had fallen backward in their chairs.  One corpse was lying in the aisle between tables.  It was a young girl.  It looked like she might have been a waitress because she was wearing a red t-shirt with
Sea Land
written across the back in large white letters.  There was a small notepad next to her too with dinner orders scribbled on it.

One of the walls of the restaurant had caved in causing the ceiling to crash down onto some of the patrons.  I shined the flashlight up into the rafters as I looked at the damage.  No sunlight was coming through the roof.

There was movement next to us.  Under a table.  Just a small scuffle.

I quickly shined the flashlight toward the noise.

Under a table we saw a young boy.  His red hair was mangled.  His clothes were filthy.  In his hand he held a small dirty toy Tonka dump truck.

“Hey,” Mindy said, leaning down toward him.

“Be careful,” I said.

“It’s ok,” Mindy told the boy.  “We’re not going to hurt you.”

The kid didn’t move.  He looked like he was about 7.  His eyes kept darting back and forth between Mindy and I.  Suddenly, he dropped the toy, sprang up and ran behind us.  He ran over to a dead woman sprawled backward in a chair.  He jumped up into her lap and put his head on her chest.

Her body was badly decomposed.  Her head had been crushed by something.  The back of her head was basically missing.  I could see that this boy had been sitting in her lap a lot.  Her body had a depression in it that fit his body perfectly.

We went over to him.  Mindy reached for him but he didn’t budge.  She went back, reached under the table where the boy had been, grabbed his toy truck, and brought it back over to him.  He took it.

“There’s your truck,” Mindy said kindly.  “I got it for you.”

“Thank you lady” he said softly.

“You’re welcome.”  She looked at me with a smile.  “My name is Mindy.  My friend here is Dan.  What’s your name?”

He was turning the truck over and over in his hands.  His fingernails had grown very long.  Underneath them, the dirt was thick.  “Pete.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Pete,” Mindy said as she hunkered down next to him and his dead mother.  She reached out to touch Pete’s head as a gesture of kindness.  He let her touch him.

We didn’t really know how to approach him.  Surely he couldn’t describe what had happened in a way adults could understand.  Somehow he had survived here all alone in this room of corpses.  I wondered what he had done for food.

Mindy asked how old he was.  He said “six and a half.”

Mindy was slowly getting him to come to her.  One of his hands was still holding what was left of his mother’s hand.  The other was holding the truck securely to his chest, but he was inching toward Mindy.

Finally he let go of his mother.  He grabbed Mindy’s hand.

She said “You want to go outside with me? The sun is warmer than in here”

He shook his head violently no.

“Why?” she asked, looking into his eyes.

He looked at me, then at Mindy.  He said quietly “There’s a bad man out there.”

We stayed in the restaurant for quite some time.  Pete finally came around to both of us.  He told us – in the best way he could – what had happened to him and his family.

“Mommy brought us here.  Daddy is working.  I like fish sandwiches.  The lady fell.  A man fell.  The building shook. The roof fell.  There were no lights.  I got scared.  Mommy was crying.  Mommy fell down.  The roof hit her head.  Mommy didn’t wake up.  I lost my truck.  Didn’t know where it went! It was under other man’s table.  I got it!”

I asked him “What have you been eating?”

He picked at his nose as he pointed at some double doors leading back into the kitchen area.

“Will you show us?” Mindy asked him.

He took Mindy by the hand.  He led us through the doors.  It was very dark in here.  The flashlight stabbed through the darkness.

Pete led us to a walk-in cooler.  He lifted a small plastic milk carton crate which was lying against the wall and he placed it in front of the
door.  Stepping onto the crate he was able to pull out on the handle of the walk-in door.  We felt cool air rush past us as the door opened.

“Daddy’s working,” Pete said again as he put the plastic crate back by the wall.

Inside the cooler, along one wall there were stacks of boxes.  They were full of mostly frozen fish sandwich patties.

Along the other wall, a frozen man leaned against a stack of the boxes.  He wore a shirt similar to the dead waitress out in the dining area.  He had long red hair and a red beard which was covered in frozen blood.

Pete pointed at him.  “Daddy is working,” he said plainly.

A long knife was sticking out of his chest.

We had no idea what had happened to Pete’s dad.  Seeing him sitting there with a knife sticking out of
his chest gave me goose bumps.

Evidently, Pete and his mom had been eating at the restaurant when the world collapsed.  When it did, she must have been killed by a part of the ceiling as it crashed down.

Pete, like his dad, had red hair and freckles.  His teeth were covered in scum when he smiled.  His hair had grown very long.  He was a good boy, and very smart for being only six.

He showed us where he had been going to the bathroom – under a booth in another dining room further back in the restaurant.  He also showed us where he put his food.  After
getting some out of the walk-in, he would lay several patties down in a line on a counter nearby to let them thaw.  Also he showed us a sliding-door cooler nearly empty of drinks.  He only liked the bottled water in there because it was easiest for him to reach.  He didn’t like the other ones because the bottles were too hard to get open.

Mindy and I asked if it was ok if we each could have one of his fish patties and we would share one bottle of water.  At first he didn’t like the idea, but then he shyly said it was ok.  He watched us eat and then laid down for a nap under the table where we had first seen him.

When he was asleep Mindy said to me “He sure is one smart boy.”

I agreed.  “Yea and to have survived in here all this time alone...”

“His Daddy must have showed him around a few times.  How else would he know about the fish in the cooler?”

“And to make sure is stayed closed, too.  That is very important.”

The fish didn’t taste good at all, but at least it was something to eat.

We sat there looking at him as he slept.

I asked “I wonder if the
bad man
is the one who stabbed his dad.”

“I don’t know,” Mindy said.
“Could have been anyone.  Could have been someone who passed through here long ago; I just hope he’s long gone – whoever he was.”

“Me too,” I said.  “You know, maybe we should try to find a house around here.  At least we know where to find some food.  We could set up a grille and cook the fish – it
would taste better cooked for sure.”

“Pete might know some other places in town where we could get some other supplies, too,” Mindy said.  “Like stuff for
babies
…”

I nodded, smiling, “Right.  Vitamins, stuff like that.”

Mindy nodded and put her head on my shoulder.  She said “I don’t like being in here with all these dead people.”

“I know,” I said.  “We’ll leave when Pete wakes up.”

She nodded and closed her eyes too.

When Pete woke up we asked him where he lived.

He shrugged.  “I dunno.”

Mindy asked “Could you show us where you lived? Do you remember where your house is?”

He shook his head no.

Mindy patted her belly.  “I need to find a pharmacy – some pills.  I have a baby in here.”

Pete looked at her with no expression.