Early Thaw (2 page)

In her panic to get inside, she’d been blocking Leslie’s view of Mrs. Senior Shitizen. When the permed and bifocaled little angel began gumming her bloody teeth against the window, he screeched like his ass had ignited; his little broomstick body appeared to work on its own as it pulled the shifter into D and stood on the gas. Pearls twirling, Grandma spun and smashed into the rear panel, finding new use, short seconds later, as a squishy floormat for her many travel pals. Leslie, pumped full of adrenaline and screaming in mind-fried little gasps, watched the whole wet and nasty unfold in the rearview mirror.

Val thought it prudent to remind him that he was, in fact, still piloting thousands of pounds of car. And veering toward a big metal dead-people hive, no less.

“Hey! HEY! Pay attention!” she snapped, slugging him in the arm. “That can’t be the first one of those you’ve seen.”

Leslie’s hands were shaking on the wheel; in his epinephrine-fueled freak-out, he was having a little trouble controlling timbre. “
NeverthatCLOSE
! Shewas
REALLY
…they…were…
all…REALLYCLOSE!
”

“Uh, yeah. Maybe next time you can be a little quicker on the draw, Ace?”

The car arced left through the parking lot, skimming past the horde and toward the exit. Val watched each pair of lifeless eyes follow the Caprice as it lumbered through a maze of crashed cars and debris.

Beyond the lot, the road was relatively clear. Within a few minutes, the low, uninterrupted droning of the engine calmed her, and she let herself sneak a few glances at her new acquaintance. Sad sack. Probably mid-40’s. His clothes pegged him as a dweeb: high-water khakis; huge, round glasses; Garfield tie. His short-sleeve button-down was monogrammed on the arm: Denver Janitorial Supply. Salesman.

“So, hi,” he stammered, his eyes now all but bolted to the road. She shot him a fakey smile she wasn’t even sure he noticed.

She was struck by how utterly uncomfortable he looked. Granted, God had smashed the crazy-shit piñata, but something told her this was as calm as
Leslie
got. His left foot drummed arrythmically against the floor mat. Allergies or force of habit kept him sniffing every few seconds, dry little inhalations that collapsed his dagger of a nose. Hands welded to the wheel at ten and two, he made long, exaggerated blinks to keep beads of sweat from his eyes.

A few days before, she would have avoided this guy like a used bathing suit. Now, though, even in his glorious weirdness, he reminded her of how the world was supposed to work.

“Thanks for not taking off back there. You don’t even know me.”

“No problem. Us healthy people have to stick together, right?” Leslie forced a smile onto his face, though it promptly melted to a grimace as the old Chevy rounded a tight curve. “Whoopsie— looks like it’s gonna get a little bumpy.” A fresh ripple of nervousness tightened his fingers around the wheel.

‘
Whoopsie’?
, she thought.

Her body slumped against the polyester fur of the door panel as her strange new pal aimed the Caprice at a narrow space between two SUVs and quietly reminded her to “hold on.” One of the vehicles had assholed a sedan so badly it was difficult to tell the two cars apart; the owner of the other— a Subaru wagon or something— had apparently tried to offroad before getting his front tires stuck in the ditch. She could tell from hundreds of feet away that the resulting gap wasn’t quite Caprice-sized— a thought she confirmed as they scraped against the Sedan Utility Vehicle, smashing the Chevy’s passenger-side headlights and ripping her mirror from the frame. A minute passed before she could unpucker several important orifices.

“Wow. I’m sorry, but I really hate this fucking giant car.”

“That’s okay,” peeped Leslie, still shaking. He pointed a thumb at the backseat. “I don’t plan on using it much longer.”

Val craned her head. Behind her in piles that eclipsed the rear window were tins of cashews, cheap aluminum pans, bags and bags of jerky, and a couple water jugs.

“Stocking up, huh? Me too. Not a bad idea, considering.” She unwrapped a peanut butter cup and stared out the window. Though pines boxed them in on either side, curling plumes of smoke were visible beyond the treetops. Val counted nine before she realized the game wasn’t exactly comforting.

Leslie spoke in a whisper. “I already tried the north entrance— couldn’t even make it past Upper Falls. Road’s completely blocked with cars. Some of ‘em were on fire, and every person I saw had the…was, you know…
mumbling
.”

Ambushed by the understatement, Val snorted incredulously into her chocolate. “By ‘mumbling,’ do you mean trying to kill and eat anything that wasn’t already dead?”

Leslie nodded.

“Yeah, Leslie,” she said, wiping chocolate from the corner of her mouth. “I’ve seen a few “mumblers,” too.

“They’re everywhere,” conceded Leslie, suddenly looking sadder than she thought possible for someone wearing a cartoon tie.

She didn’t want sad. Spent several days there already. “Well, south and west aren’t happening— West Thumb is one big bloody meat pie. So, what, we’re going to Cody?

“Oh, no way. There’s no way we’d make it to Cody. That road’s bad enough under normal conditions.”

Val squirmed a little in her polyester throne as, suddenly, the backseat Costco started to make sense. They were in a car, though—they were moving. This was progress, right? He couldn’t be thinking about…

She tried to sheathe the razors in her voice. “So, um, where are you driving, then?”

“A trailhead,” he said, grinning like he’d just found candy in his pocket. “About ten miles from here. Leads to Thorofare creek. There’s a cabin there— saw it on a backcountry hike I took a few years ago. It stays warm. The hot springs generate electricity and keep it warm.”

“So, what, you’re gonna hang out for a week or something? Wait till this all boils over?” Val started fidgeting with the window switch in anticipation of the answer she didn’t want to hear.

Leslie, aglow with comic-book masculinity, was oblivious to her anxiety. “I’m going to stay there as long as I need to. If it’s weeks, great. My guess is more like months.”

He was making complete sense, of course, and it infuriated her. “You can’t seriously be planning that,” she screeched. “People die out there from falling into
water
, for Christ sakes! There’s bears, moose, bison—lots of stuff that wants to kill you or fuck you up. It’s like a little Australia!”

“I’ve been driving around for almost two straight days,” he answered, his eyes still locked on the pavement, “and things have only gotten worse.” He seemed suddenly, strangely, resolute. “Every time I get to a campground or touristy spot, I see hundreds of those things. Almost didn’t make it back from Old Faithful, the crashes were so bad. You’ve seen the roads. You’ve seen the bodies everywhere. What other options are there?”

She was rabid in her panic. “We get out! See who’s still kicking around out there! You’ve got a working car…granted, it’s a piece of total shit, but it’s big enough to at least push stuff out of our way! Let’s leave and get some help!”

Leslie clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Think about it: if this stuff’s happening in
Yellowstone National Park
, it’s happening everywhere. And the more people there are in an area, the more…
ex-people
there’ll be. Here, we have a chance.”

“’We’?” repeated Val, her rage bubbling over. “There is no ‘we,’ Leslie, unless you’re talking about you and Garfield there. If you’re gonna Thoreau it up, that’s fine, but I’m getting the fuck out of this park.”

Val’s words—screamed, more than spoken—hung in the air for a few silent seconds. As they passed a cheery yellow VW bug with its front end smashed into a tree, she did her very best to ignore the shadows thrashing around inside.

“Well, you’re welcome to the car,” said Leslie, sighing. “Like I said, I won’t be needing it. But you might want to memorize where the trailhead parking lot is, in case ‘getting the
f
out,’ as you put it, isn’t as easy as you thought. I’m guessing you’ll have to turn around pretty quick.”

“Thank you, Leslie, for your expert analysis. Jesus, do you even know how insane your plan sounds? And no offense, but you don’t exactly look like the backpacking type. You look like the type backpacking types have to save.”

Feeling a sudden, desperate need to establish her credibility, she added, “I
know
—I work for the Parks Service.” She neglected to mention the length of her employment.

Both were quiet for a long time, their eyes fixed on unfolding tableau of mayhem ahead. Leslie finally broke the silence.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

She growled her answer. “Valerie.”

“
Valerie
. Can I call you Val?”

She stared at him, stared right into his eyes with a livid intensity she’d previously reserved for drunken douchebags at trivia night and one particularly dickish boyfriend. His head swiveled from the road to her face, smiling obliviously and waiting for her answer. Like a dumb goddamn puppy.

Silent, she looked back at the road.

Val sloshed the corn onto two plates, covering sophomoric drawings of Old Faithful’s plume in lumpy yellow mush; after months staring at it in the pantry, they were finally getting around to eating the stuff. Leslie’d be coming back in a half hour or so, and it’d still be pretty warm. Good enough, anyway.

On the countertop, the walkie-talkie was buzzing quietly where she’d tossed it. She couldn’t make anything out, but the constant flicker of lights on the display indicated he was rambling about something. She used to listen halfheartedly as he shared his mind-blowing communiqués from the field—“light snowfall from the southwest last night” or “bird chirping somewhere in the area”—but nowadays she just let him play soldier and turned the volume down. Today, her tolerance wasn’t even substantial enough to get past some bullshit about “ambient temperature.” Like he knew what the fuck that was. Not that she even needed to listen: with every mumbler pop frozen firmly to the ground, the only thing he had to worry about was the Park’s insane topography…and he’d pretty much learned that lesson already. Besides, she figured any real emergency would be indicated by more than five minutes of mic silence.

Neither of them had really mastered the art of ice fishing yet, so today they’d have to rip through more of the trout jerky she’d made months before. It wasn’t good. But November was the last time they saw open, fishable water, and they’d decided to hook as many of the little bastards as they could, in preparation for a winter they’d assumed would be harsh.

Sashaying sardonically over to the far counter, she opened the metal bear box where they stored the dried fish. Her nose had never really healed right, but as the top swung open on its hinge, she said a little prayer of thanks for the deviated septum and accompanying impaired sense of smell. She plucked out four little fillets and relatched the box.

***

She’d roared out of the lot, dumping gas into the Caprice’s oversized engine. Anxious and eager, she half-believed the faster she went, the less accurate Leslie’s prediction would be.

She felt slightly guilty leaving him at the trailhead like that—it was probably the last time anyone would see him alive. Stooping from the weight of his immense pack, he looked like an anemic Atlas. He was calm, though—almost happy to get started—so the sight of him in the rearview mirror was faintly unnerving.

For one, he was definitely better prepared. Ripped jeans and a long-sleeve weren’t doing much to keep her warm at night; even now, the late afternoon air was starting to stipple her forearms with goosebumps. If she had to sleep in it, maybe she could keep the car warmer than the visitor center storage closet had been.

She rolled up the window. The resulting smell of dirt and days-old sweat reminded her that personal hygiene had taken a backseat to not getting her ass bitten off—
hafta find a shower soon
, she thought, and checked the damage in the rearview, as she’d done thousands of times.

This time, though, she was met with the existential shock of not entirely knowing the person staring back. The girl she saw there looked too callow to be real. Bleach-blonde hair. Beryl eyes. Freckles just starting to fade with the summer sun. She even had charcoal trails of eyeliner on her cheeks. Little girls nomming on their moms, and she was still wearing makeup? It didn’t make sense.

Speed
did
seem to make sense, though, so she pointed her toes and took the 45 mph road at something around 60. Frost heaves and potholes weren’t much of a hindrance for the car’s capable suspension—POS though it was, she had to give it that. In fact, after the first four miles of relatively open road, she actually started feeling good. What if this stuff was only going down in Yellowstone? What if the fine folks of Cody were busy buying cheap shit at Wal-Mart, gorging themselves at the Pizza Hut buffet—totally oblivious to the crazy her world had become?

At Sylvan Lake, though, she started counting the cars. Bellies bared, upside down in ditches; crumpled—almost poured—around trees. Bits of glass adorning the blacktop in cheap jewelry. Smoke, fire, and melted shapes she didn’t want to think about.

Blood, too. There was lots of blood.

She gulped air. Some part of her brain recognized the danger of hightailing it past an ever-increasing number of accidents, but she inured herself to the tightening in her gut and pushed the pedal harder. The Caprice rolled over fenders, torn rubber, and unidentifiable, crunchy bits of cars.