Zombie Bitches From Hell (25 page)

“Kent? Kent?”

It’s Tim.

“Tim, what the…” I go out of the tent and Tim
calls, “Up here.” He’s in a tree.

“Man, I thought you were dead.”

“Me too, but that fucker missed me. Well,
sorta, I got a gash in my arm, but it’s nothing. I’m coming down.”
He climbs out of the tree. I go over to him. I hug him.

“Welcome back,” I say.

I strip myself clean, showering for too long,
using too much soap, too much shampoo, luxuriating in the lather
and the normalcy of the act. I find clean clothes in a metal
cabinet; fresh underwear, thick socks, cargo pants, undershirt,
flannel shirt, ski cap, parka and an empty backpack.

“Your turn,” I say to Tim.

“No thanks, Captain. I’m hearing too many
noises out there in those woods. Let’s just get outta here.”

I grab a pair of boots, size 11, from a row
by the door and put them on quietly before slipping into a nearby
tent and finding a supply of canned food; tuna, sardines, ham,
chicken, small tins of pure protein. I fill the backpack half-full
then slip from the tent, crouching low to the ground as the fires
still burning the arena platform to the ground illuminate my
path.

My eyes land on a nickel-plated .38, lying
close to the gnawed-on bones of a skinhead’s hand. I grab it and
slip it into a pocket before slinging a loaded rifle across my back
and making for the shattered hole made by the zombies and finding
it barren, littered with fresh bones.

“Let’s get back to the balloon,” I say.

If the bitches are heading west, which they
are, to the land of blood and honey, we’re going east to where the
balloon set us down. I pry the bloody axe handle from Buckwheat’s
savaged paw, wrap the business end in a skinhead’s discarded wife
beater and dip it into the flames, lighting my path with my
improvised torch.

Outside the gates I can breathe again, the
copper stench of spilled blood dissipating from my assaulted
nostrils, the mountain air crisp and clean as dawn approaches
silently over the Berkshires to the west.

“Tim, let’s say a prayer for Hadley,” I
say.

We both stop and bow our heads in silence. To
whom or to what we are silently speaking, neither of us knows.

CHAPTER 21

We’re about 200 miles from the Cape and
there’s been no contact from Jen, but I expect that. The sun set
and we’re floating over Massachusetts at about a thousand feet
using the GPS and our eyeballs. The moon is bright and small silver
gray clouds lie in the distance like the smoke from an old steam
locomotive, thick, billowy and all in a row seemingly sticking
together. They’re a group of blind men holding hands as they follow
a leader into territory unknown. Blind leading the blind. Don’t
they all end up in the ditch?

The yellow and red and brown trees all look
gunmetal gray in the light of the rising sun. I was missing Hadley,
remembering the good days when she played with MG near my feet. And
Jen. I understood pilgrims, making long journeys through hostile
territory for a spiritual union, for some experience of the great
beyond. Maybe they were just fucked up and looking to get out of
Dodge, to get away from a wife and some scraggly kids, a beat up
old farm on a rocky hillside in France. Those Crusaders were
looking to get somewhere or get away from somewhere. That was me. I
was both getting away from a life that was a zero and going to a
life…maybe one that was less than zero. I could cheeseball it as
good as the next guy and imagine me and Jen with some kids in a
three bedroom, two bath house in a neighborhood with cars in the
driveways and loads of shit in the garages. A place with satellite
dishes and people going to church on Sunday mornings and putting up
Christmas lights on the roof in December and maybe not taking them
down until March. That whole “Honey, I’m home,” sorta bullshit life
that maybe wasn’t/isn’t life at all but the habit of life, the
notion of life, the shadow in Plato’s Cave kind of life—just an
image of what could be or what might be or what should be but you
get so used to the humdrum of it, to the repetition that you don’t
know if it’s life or maybe just breathing and doing all the
supposed tos. Maybe this ramble is what I mean and it all is just a
path from cradle to grave and no one knows whether it curves or
bends or goes over bumps or you take a wrong turn and you’re in a
goddamned river up to your ass in drowning and when you say,
“honey, I’m home,” maybe no one is there to hear or care. I’m
thinking I want someone to hear and to care and if that is not Jen
then I can’t ever face the breathing again.

I’m quiet, of course and Tim says, “I hope
this wind stays steady. We’re moving good and we got plenty of gas.
Going to make it, I think, pal-o-mine. We’re making it to Cape Cod,
wherever and whatever the fuck that is.”

My only thought is to get to Jen even though
I have no idea what lies in wait for me, if anything. We’re heading
toward the coast and likely, the bitches are all heading into the
heartland. Thank God for small favors and granting wishes that he
probably has nothing to do with. Just an old-fashioned way of
looking at things. I mourn silently but don’t exactly miss the old
days. Don’t know why. Don’t ask. My approach will take me away from
humans, away from outposts and camps and fires and klieg lights and
the danger posed by my fellow man.

We have enough food, if careful, to last a
short while. I keep thinking maybe I should just settle in the
woods below, a life of solitude, of getting the lay of the land, of
putting the road behind me and life as a mountain man ahead of me.
I sense Tim feels the same way. But who can read minds anymore? And
what would the pages say? I know there are pockets of what used to
be called humanity still out there. Christ, I’m heading toward one
at the brink of this continent. Jen is hiding from something. Or
someone.

I’ve tried the social route; it didn’t work
for me. Now maybe it’s time to embrace the solitude of life on a
desolate planet, of wariness and silence. Let the skinheads and
religious fanatics inherit the earth; I’ll settle for the
mountains, the stars, the trees and the uncertain future.

CHAPTER 22

We had a tail wind of over 40mph so we
dropped to five hundred feet. Off to the north, I could make out
the hulking cubes of Boston as the sun setting behind us cast its
long orange beams through the deserted metropolis. To the south,
the ragged New England coastline hugged the gray Atlantic, white
caps in neat rows marching out to sea, white mist from the off
shore winds like witches’ hair.

“We got to land, boss,” said Tim. “This is
the Cape. See that strip of highway? It goes mostly the whole way
to Provincetown. But about forty miles out it makes a hard turn
northward—it’s the hook of the Cape. Where P-town sits.”

I looked at the GPS map and saw that Cape Cod
was like an arm raised into a fist aimed at Europe.

“Yeah,” said Tim. “The Cape is shootin’ the
bird at the rest of the western world.”

“Let’s take it out as far as we can. We’ll
land, tie her up and make it on foot to P-Town. Maybe find a
vehicle.”

“You never know,” he said.

It had been over a week since I heard from
Jen. All I knew was that she’s in the basement of a dinner theater
on Baker Street. Shouldn’t be hard to find. Even at the lowest safe
altitude we could make, the wind would push us out to sea and we’d
never get back.

A half hour later we saw the curve of the
highway northward and Tim began the descent. Long rows of white
houses fringed the coastline and made me think of summer days by
the shore, sailboats, surfboards, swimming. Chicks in bikinis. Guys
with Frisbees. Beach blankets. All gone. All fucking gone.

The gondola dragged its bottom for a few
hundred feet along the sand and came to a rest near a light house.
The sun was nearly set behind us and the red brick glowed with the
waning light. We jumped out and tied the gondola to the stakes as
the balloon deflated. Tim folded it and we took some extra steps to
secure it because we didn’t know when or even if we’d be back to
claim her. We buried the silk in about six inches of sand far
enough above the high water mark to be certain it would be all
right when we returned.

We walk over to the lighthouse, which is
locked. Tim kicks in the door and we are out of the wind and
weather for the first time in a long time.

“Let’s head up,” he says as he starts up the
spiral stairway that looked like it could go to the moon.

“Not yet,” I say. “There’s probably a galley
over here. Let’s see if we can cook something up.”

We walk over the creaking oak floorboards to
a kitchen that looks like it sits on the edge of the world. The sea
stretched out to a gunmetal horizon and whitecaps blow away from us
from the strong off shore winds that had been so kind in getting
the balloon this far east. It was a blessing of sorts, if you can
count anything a blessing in the middle of the end of the
world.

The refrigerator was full of moldy food and
hadn’t been running for months from the look of it.

Tim opens a pantry and there is a shitload of
every kind of Campbell’s soups known to man. Black bean, tomato,
chicken noodle, pea, beef barley. It is heaven in tin, heaven in
red and white.

“Man, this is great. Let’s find the can
opener. See if the burner on the stove works.”

Tim turns the knob and the hiss and smell of
propane, the gas that saved our asses, hits our nostrils like manna
from heaven. He turns it off and finds a big box of old-fashioned
wooden matches in a drawer. He strikes the match and the burner
comes to life while I pour two cans of soup into a pot that was
sitting on the drain board.

“Guess they left before the big hit,” I
say.

“Must’ve.”

I find a box of Saltines that is sealed and
still relatively fresh. We sit across from each other at a table
that looks a hundred years old. Two old rain coats hang from hooks
on the wall over two pair of high water boots. On a small table
nearby are some hats and gloves. A barometer hangs on the wall near
the window. As the light dwindles, Tim finds a kerosene lamp and
lights it. The wind begins to howl and the waves march in like
legions, white capped and relentless toward the rocks, smashing up
against the base that this lighthouse sits on. I fell
simultaneously safe and exposed, snug but vulnerable.

“This wouldn’t be a bad place to stay, you
know,” I say.

“Maybe not. There’s plenty of food. Probably
plenty of propane. You can see for miles in every direction. My
guess is you could fish off these rocks. It would be a waiting game
but there are worse things to do.”

“Yeah, and worse people to meet,” I
respond.

“You thinking about this as your last stand,
Captain?”

“I don’t think hanging onto this rock is the
way to spend the rest of my life.”

“Got a better way?”

I look at Tim maybe for the first time since
this all started. Look into his eyes and I see him for the good man
he is. It’s not an adventure anymore, not a tale of true grit or a
story of men against the odds. It’s about two guys that are human
trying to figure out what that means now that humanity doesn’t
count for much.

“I’m going up top to take a look out the
glass,” Tim says.

“Wait a sec,” I say. I see that there’s a
hatch door in the floor of the kitchen. I open it and look down
into a cellar that’s pitch black.

“Hand me the lantern,” I say. Tim hands it
over.

I climb down a soft almost rotten wood
stairway and the light casts its feeble beams into an earthen and
rock basement, damp and smelling of the sea. There is row upon row
of canned food of every type from beans to ham to canned fruit. On
one row of metal shelves are six cases of beer.

“Shit. I knew it,” I yell up to Tim.

I shoulder a case and head up the stairs, the
light of the lantern casting a glow on Tim’s worried face which
begins to crack into a smile.

“I knew you were a Captain in another life,”
he says. “Maybe even an admiral.”

The stairway to the light box is like a
corkscrew. It is black wrought iron and quivers slightly with every
step and our footfalls echo up the tube.

“Now you know how a wad of cum feels when
you’re about to shoot a load,” Tim says. Maybe he’s more of a
dumbass than I just thought. On the other hand, maybe he’s
right.

We get to the top and the clouds are almost
black, illuminated from behind probably by the moon and there’s a
strange luminescence over the water, a greenish glow like a
trillion fireflies on a hot July night in the backyard.

“That’s algae. That green light,” Tim
says.

The wind has died down some and we look at
the mechanism of the light. It’s a huge silver backed mirror like a
bigger version of a flashlight you keep in the nightstand drawer
knowing full well the minute you need it, the batteries will be
dead. From up there we can see to the horizon which I’ve heard is
only thirty something miles before the curvature of the Earth gets
in the way. Landward we can see up the coast; small white houses,
docks and boats moored, bobbing up and down, ghosts of another
time. Nearby is a large fishing boat, decked out with all the bells
and whistles, moored to the dock of a large white house squatting
behind some short trees bent away from the sea like girls turning
their backs to the wind.

“Now that’s a ride,” says Tim. “The masts
must be fifty feet tall.”

Turning more toward the west as we walk the
perimeter, the land looks completely empty, devoid of any life of
any kind. Toward Provincetown to the north and west, there’s a glow
in the clouds but, again, it’s probably a trick of Mother
Nature.

“How far to P-Town?” I ask.