The two of them looked at one another. The man holstered his pistol. He got off his motorcycle. He asked the woman “What should we do with these two?”
She said “Kill em or let em leave. I don’t give a darn either way.”
“Don’t kill us! We didn’t do anything to you!” Mindy said.
“What do you
got
to keep us from killing you,” the man asked, walking toward Mindy.
I broke his concentration by saying “There’s a bunch of food inside. Why don’t we go inside and talk it over.”
They both lit up. “Food? Where?”
“It’s in the lobby of the hotel. There was a continental breakfa
st.”
They looked at one another. The man said “Alright, let’s get something to eat, but you two are coming with us.”
“We already ate,” Mindy said.
“Girl, shut up!
You’re coming with.”
We led them back into the hotel. The man and woman followed with their weapons trained on our backs.
They ate quite a bit including some o
f the fruit that had rotted. They told us to sit side by side on one of the couches nearest the food as they ate. They didn’t ask us any questions, just watched us as they fed themselves.
I figured the man to be about 50. The woman looked older. It may have been because of her long gray hair. The man had a
wallet on a chain on his belt.
When they were finished, the man wiped his mouth with his forearm. He said, “So you two
came over Shit Mountain, huh? How the hell did you survive?”
“We were inside a car…”
“Bullshit,” he said quickly, grabbing his shotgun again and pointing it at us. “I don’t believe it. We’ve been driving up from the south, trying to get around this thing. We’ve seen so many cars, trucks, semi-trailers along the edge of this thing. All of the vehicles have been crushed or mangled. No one could’ve survived in a car – nor could have anyone survived the pressures or crushing of that thing! If you would have been in a car, then something else would’ve crushed
it
, like a house, or a building or a flipping slab of concrete for that matter –
or
the windows in the car would’ve been stabbed by something flying, like a street sign post – or it would have shattered and cut you two into little pieces! There’s no way you two could have survived such a thing.”
“Everything didn’t get caught up in the wave of the blast,” I said. “It was like a huge shove, and some stuff got pinched under the shove, I guess.”
“Oh so it was a blast,” he said, a sly smile on his face. “What blew up? What kind of force is there to cause such a catastrophe?”
“A nuke,” Mindy said.
He laughed. “So you survived a nuclear blast
and
a huge wave of shit?”
I thought about saying “
and a jet plane crash”
but thought the better of it. Instead I simply said “Yes.”
“Do you believe any of this, Vera?” he asked her.
Vera lit another cigarette as she leaned back in her chair. She shook her head. “Nope.”
I said “The nukes were launched to undo the flip of the poles. When the poles flipped, it caused a change in the cellular level of the brain stem. That’s what caused all of the deads to attack…”
“Excuse me,” he interrupted. “I ain’t no rocket scientist. You have to talk in plain English.”
“The magnetic poles of the earth flipped,” I said. “I don’t know how, but we were told by the military that the poles flipped. That caused the brain stems of anyone who
died to flip as well. That’s what caused the deads to show up.”
Vera looked at me through her cigarette smoke. She asked “What are
deads
?”
“Zombies.”
I hesitated. “You mean… there are no zombies here?”
She continued to stare at me. “There never
were
any zombies.”
“Then where are all the people?” Mindy asked.
“Most people are dead. When this all went down, people were told to evacuate,” the man said. “They ran from the push.”
“You mean the push from when
the mountain crashed through?” I asked.
“No, before that,” he said. “There was a push in the air. It happened before the mountain came through.”
Vera said quietly “It looked like the horizon flipped over.”
“Hold on,” I said, sitting forward on the couch. “You’re saying the horizon flip happened
before
the mountain crashed through?”
“Yea,” the man said.
“A week or so before the mountain. The flip destroyed everything.”
“Oh my fucking God,” I whispered. “There were two nukes launched that day, not just o
ne.” I put my face in my hands.
“You two should hear yourselves talk,” Vera said. “You sound like blooming idiots.”
Folding my arms I shook my head at her. “You simply don’t understand – well, we don’t either. I don’t know if we ever will.” I thought for a second. “Ok, so, the nuke that caused the mountain here was supposed to reverse the brain stem – or at least that’s what the military told us.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” the man said, “but something happened to the horizon. It came from the southwest like a huge light. The light went up and up over our heads. The earth shuddered. The trees all shook. We were knocked off our feet.”
“It was a nuke,” I said. “Something like it happened to me in Seattle and to Mindy in Spokane. The military told us it was a nuke.”
“Well listen, we came from Worley, down south,” the man said. “Everything’s destroyed down that way. We were gonna go east on 90 after we stopped here.
We been lookin for food. We got the bikes on the other side of the lake there. There were six or seven bikes. Don’t know what happened, but we ‘borrowed’ them since our car lost power.”
I looked at Mindy. “Washburn lied. He said there was going to be two nukes launched. One was – the one that caused the mountain here – but where was the second?”
“Salt Lake City,” she said. “Remember, he said there were reports of survivors there.”
“So they’re nuking anywhere there are survivors?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Jesus.”
The man and woman were sitting there, listening to us. I said, “Um. It’s interesting that car ignitions don’t start but motorcycle ignitions do.”
He chuckled, “No wonder you couldn’t
get any of those cars out there to start. Look at them - they’re all newer models. If you find something made before 2018, it should start fine; remember, they did away with car batteries after that.”
“That’s right,” I said.
That explains why the yachts wouldn’t start either
, I thought. I looked at him sternly. “Do you still think we’re a threat to you?”
He appeared to be genuinely shocked by what I asked. He said “Why….no.”
“Then would you mind lowering your weapons on me and my girl.”
“I apologize,” he said, “but we weren’t sure about
you two. You I chuckled a little. “Ok, I’ll call them zombies. I got the term ‘deads’ from someone I met on the road. Basically, I’m trying to understand why there are no zombies here. This place has been hit by the push. Shit is destroyed. But where are all the zombies?”
“Just be thankful there aren’t any,” Mindy said. “In a way, this place seems pretty safe compared to what we’ve been through.”
“I can agree with that,” I said. “But you haven’t seen any zombies at all?”
“No. Not one,” Vera said. “We’ve seen a lot of dead people, but none up and walking around.”
“Maybe the switch hasn’t happened yet,” I said almost to myself. “Maybe it’s a slower turnover.”
“What do you mean?” Mindy asked, touching my arm.
“Well, if everyone is dead…and there are no zombies…maybe zombies are still to come. Like an awakening.”
“Or maybe they won’t rise at all. Maybe everyone will just stay dead,” Mindy said.
Mason asked, irritated at our zombie talk, “Where are you people headed?”
“Somewhere safe,” I said. “And this, so far, is pretty safe.”
“We’re headed to Cheyenne. My brother lives there,” Mason said. “Last time we spoke, my brother’s wife had a heart attack. This was days before the ‘flip’ as you call it. I wanted to get out there before she died and be there for my brother.”
Vera added “We can’t raise them on our phones any longer. Signals are all dead.”
“You don’t want to use your phones,” I said. “Not a good idea.”
Mason asked “Why not?”
“Just trust me,” I said. “Throw your phone away.”
Mason reached into his pants pocket. He pulled out his cell phone. He flipped it on and put it to his ear. “Yep,” he said. “No dial tone.” He threw the phone over his shoulder. It landed on some tile behind us. It shattered into several pieces.
Vera pulled hers out of her jacket. She, too, flipped it on and put it to her ear. She said “I got a dial tone.”
“Hang it up,” I said quickly.
She looked at me, he head cocked a little bit to the side.
“Vera, hang up the phone,” Mason said, a little louder.
“I hear something,” she said, her eyes staring straight ahead. “There are voices.”
“Hang up the god-damn phone, Vera!” Mason said, standing up.
She still listened. “They’re saying something about a place called Moses Lake. It’s a recording. They say it’s safe there.”
I grabbed the phone from her and smashed it on the ground at our feet.
“Why the hell did you do that?” she hollered at me.
“Because we’ve been there,” I said nearly shouted. “We’ve been to Moses Lake. It’s not safe. It’s a prison camp. They gas people to death there.”
“Wouldn’t it have been destroyed by the nuke?” Mindy asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, I have no idea. This is all so confusing.
The nukes. Jesus. Let’s just hope that Vera’s phone call isn’t being traced right now.”
“But I didn’t call anyone,” she said. “It was a recording on my phone. The dial tone stopped. There wasn’t any ringing on the other end. Then some voice started repeating over and over that this place Moses Lake was a safe harbor for anyone trying to escape the MCON something-or-another.”
“MCON virus,” Mindy said.
Mason was still standing up. “MCON virus?” he asked.
I sighed. “It’s a long story and it’s something I don’t want to deal with any more. I hope it all was destroyed with the nuke or nukes. Now, you were saying something about going to Cheyenne.”
“Just hold on,” Mason said as he approached me. “Tell us about this virus.”
I told them about it. I told them everything that had happened to me from the beginning of this nightmare. I told them about the plane crash, Norm and Tara, the yacht, meeting Ski, Mindy and Cindy, Marge. I told them about Moses Lake, Washburn, our escape, the virus and the mountain.
When I finished, Mason said “Well son, you’re either a damn good liar, or you’ve been through some shit. I’ll pick the latter; and since we’re all infected with this virus, I’ll stick with you to the end of it.”
I shook his hand. “Thank you, Mason.”
Mindy stood up and gave him a hug. Vera stood to the side of us, smoking another cigarette, her arms folded, looking slowly back and forth between Mindy and I. Neither one of us ga
ve Vera a hug or a handshake. She didn’t look like she believed us or trusted us; and now her husband was on my side, believing everything I told him.
I guessed she would have to find out for herself.
We agreed to stay another night in the hotel before we started out for Cheyenne. Mindy and I stayed in a room a few floors above theirs. We made love again that night in our own room on a soft bed. It was so much better than on the t
owels on the side of the pool.
During our love making, Mindy looked deeply into my eyes. She softly said “Dan, I love you.”
This time, it was my time to cry when I said “I love you, too.”
CHEYENNE
We rode motorcycles.
They were easier to maneuver through the mountain passes. There were a lot of wrecks as well as more large boulders that had tumbled into the roads during the shift. The mountain air was chilly. Mindy sat behind me on our bike, her hands wrapped around my chest. Her touch was soft to me. Occasionally she would whisper “I love you” to me or sing soft songs that I didn’t recognize.
They were sweet to my ears.
Ma
son and Vera were ahead of us. Mason still didn’t have a shirt on. I bet he was getting cold from the wind blowing on his bare skin.
As we travelled eastward, the destruction of the world remained. I began to wonder how far damage radiated outward after a nuke was dropped. It seemed to go on forever. I wondered if there was something else involved. How could there
be so much damage for so far? Was there a massive earthquake, too?
In
Missoula we stopped for fuel. The gas station had collapsed but the pumps were still standing. Instead of using the pumps, Mason quickly siphoned some gas from a couple parked cars on the side of the store. One part of the gas station was still standing. Inside, Mindy and I found a few cans of soup on some pre-looted shelves. All the rest of the food that had been left in the store had gone bad. The cash register hung open. It was full of money. No one had taken the cash.
We took the soup cans out to Mason and Vera. Mason had a manual can opener. The soup tasted badly, but it was better than nothing.
It was scary to think that soon all food would be bad. The soup was our nourishment as well as our drink. There wasn’t any bottled water in the store, either. In the back of my mind I wished we would come across a fully stocked grocery store, but I knew the idea was useless.
Surprisingly, we didn’t see one dead person since leaving Coeur d’Alene. There was wreckage everywhere, and no bodies; not even
wild-life. Birds didn’t sing in the trees.
It took us four days to get to Cheyenne. By the time we got there, we were equipped to camp anywhere. In Billings there had been a hunting store with all kinds of camping goods. Tents, sleeping bags, guns, ammo, kerosene lamps, a flash light, you name it. Mason’s bike was big enough to hold most of the gear behind Vera. Of course Vera wasn’t too happy that Mason had to carry all of the gear on his bike. Mason said he didn’t mind at all.
We kept our own tent and sleeping bag on our bike. We only used one sleeping bag anyway s
o it didn’t take up much room. Mindy would lean back on the folded gear when we were on the road.
Mason said he trained himself to look
for the best vegetation to eat while hiking. I ribbed him about it; told him not to wipe his ass with it after he took a shit out there, but he would always come back to camp after scavenging in the woods. He’d bring a few handfuls of mushrooms or berries that we could eat. He would cook the mushrooms on a small grill he picked up in the hunting store.
Mason was quite the character. He would tell us stories around the campfire every night after dinner. He would tell us about his days in the service as a Navy submariner, the places he’d been, and the people he’d met. He was very anti-government, as well. He told us that he thought this entire fuck up of the world was the government’s fault. He kept referring to a story he heard about some zombie-like virus that had started in Uganda – much like
Aids. He blamed the World Health Organization for what had happened. He said it was probably done on purpose to
lighten the load
of the world’s population.
Mindy and I got a kick out of him. He never wore a shirt, even when it got chilly on the mountain passes. Vera never t
old him to put one on, either.
She smoked a great deal. Anytime we stopped for fuel or a rest, the first place she would go would be into any kind of store to pick up some cigarettes. She was a chain smoker, lighting one after the other, watching us through the smoke as we talked. She rarely said anything. Mason said it was normal for her. She didn’t speak much since her father died back in 2014. Her and her father had been very close.
We filled plastic bottles with water from open streams in the mountains. We figured the water would be fresh enough to drink – and if we had the MCON virus already, getting it again from the mountain streams wouldn’t add to its effect – or, at least, we hoped it wouldn’t.
In the four days it took to get to Cheyenne, we didn’t see anyone at all.
My guess was that the dead hadn’t turned yet.
Cheyenne was destroyed, just like everything else. It looked like it had burned as well. Everything was charred, almost as if a fla
sh fire had engulfed the town. Most of the buildings and homes in town were burned to their frames. Blackened trees stood here and there, all of the leaves had burned away. Even the grass had all been burned to the root.
We got to Mason’s brother’s house. It had burned down too. The h
ome stood alone on a large lot.
Mason dropped to his knees in the remains of the burned black grass. He said “I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry I let you down.”
Vera put her hand on Mason’s shoulder. She told him it was ok.
Mindy stood next to me, her hand in mine.
We lowered our heads.
Mason insisted on looking for his brother in the ruins of the burned house. While he did that, Vera stood in the yard, smoking, while Mindy and I went back to our bike.
Mindy whispered to me “Now what are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know. We came down here for Mason.”
Sh
e put her head on my shoulder.
There was a grumbling behind us. A burned zombie was reaching for us. The fire had burned all of the clothes and most of the skin off of the zombie’s body. It stunk. Its skin was charred black. Mindy screamed.
Vera turned around quickly, almost dropping her cigarette.
Mason looked up from the ashes, his forehead and chest covered in soot.
The dead had risen.
A shot rang out. The right side of the zombie’s head blasted open as a bullet from Mason’s pistol obliterated it. Rotten brain and blood splattered everywhere.
“That’ll teach you for messing with my people!” Mason hollered from a window of the burned house.
I asked Mindy if she was ok. She said yes.
I looked around for more zombies. Down the gutted street, hundreds of burned zombies were walking toward us, hands outreached, burned, blackened.
“Mason get out here. We need to move!” I shouted to him.
Mindy and I quickly got onto our bike.
Vera was ahead of Mason and was already getting on.
Mason ran out of the house. He tripped
on some of the burned wood on the ground. He fell flat onto his face.
“Dammit!” I yelled. Getting off the motorcycle, I ran over to Mason. The zombies were now entering the yard of the house. There was an excitement in their gargling voices. Mindy started screaming for me to hurry up.
I yanked Mason to his feet. We both ran over to the bikes and fired them up. Vera was screaming in horror.
We sped out of the neighborhood, the zombies on our trail. Mindy’s grip on me was very tight.
At the end of the block, we came face to face with more zombies.
Hundreds of them. It looked like an army had formed while we were away. All of them were burned. The skin hung from their arms. The smell of burned flesh was nauseating.
“Where’d they all come from?” Mason hollered.
They were coming back to life. Everywhere we looked zombies were shambling along.
We drove around the large group. Ahead there was an entrance ramp going back up onto the highway. A zombie was pushing out o
f a burned car along the curb.
Mason took the onramp. There was a chunk of broken curb in the middle of the ramp. Mason accidentally ran over it. It was a hard jar. Some of the supplies fell off the back of his bike. Vera grabbed Mason around the waist as they went up the ramp, her hair
blowing out behind.
Mindy and I followed. We avoided the curb completely.
Up top, the road was clear other than the usual destroyed cars and damaged guard rails. We went quickly, speeding away from the burned zombies.
We kept going south.
That night we stayed at a motel in Fort Collins, Colorado. We sat together in the lobby, discussing plans for the road ahead. We used candles for light.
Outside, it was getting colder. The roads were quiet. We hadn’t seen any more zombies since leaving Cheyenne.
Mason found a road atlas behind the main desk. He was thumbing through it. Vera,
of course, was smoking a cigarette. Mindy and I were on a long couch in front of a coffee table covered in magazines. I was sitting, she was lying down. She had her head on my leg. She was messing with her fingernails as we talked.
There was a Coke machine in the lobby that we had broken into. We all were drinking warm sodas.
Mason said “So, where do you want to go?”
I said “The safest place we’ve been through so far was Billings. No one was there. There was a hunting store. We could go back there, get some more supplies. Find a shack or abandoned house somewhere up higher in the mountains to live in.”
“Coeur d’Alene was safe too,” Vera said. “It was closer to home. The hotel was safe.”
Mason took a drink of his soda. “Yes. It was. Or, we could go to the Gulf. We’d have the ocean to fish in. We’d have fresh fish there. There would be beaches to walk on. I always wanted to retire there.”
“A girlfriend of mine moved to Galveston,” Mindy said. “She always used to text me on
Go4
chat. She wanted me to come visit her sometime. She always said it was so nice on the Gulf but I never could afford the trip down there.”
“That’s one option,” Mason said. “Billings would be ok, too, if you wanted to live on mushrooms and berries the rest of your life,” he added. “There’s no food up there.”
Vera said “We could go through that mountain of debris in Coeur d’Alene. There would be plenty of supplies in it.”
“And dead bodies,” I added. “It would probably start to stink really bad after a while.”
She inhaled her cigarette but didn’t reply.
“Which one would you
choose, hon?” I asked Mindy.
She got up on an elbow, looked at me and said “Anywhere and everywhere you choose.”
“I love you, Mindy. I’ll go anywhere with you, too.”
Mason smiled. “Why don’t you two get a room?”
“We will soon,” Mindy said smiling. “Don’t you worry.”
We all laughed, except Vera.
“Mason, I want to go home,” Vera said. “I want to go back to the place where I was most comfortable.”
He sighed. “Let’s sleep on it, ok people. I’m bushed. We had a long day.”
Mindy sat up. As she stood, she picked up a magazine that had been on the coffee table. She said “Hey, here’s an idea…” She was holding
Denver Magazine.
On the cover there was a picture of one of Denver Colorado’s newest downtown skyscrapers. “What if we stay in the top of one of these buildings?”
Mason scratched his bald head. “What would we do for food?”
Mindy said “Surely there has to be restaurants in the top of some of these buildings. I bet they would have a lot of food in walk-in freezers. There would have to have dry goods stored there.”
Mason said “But the walk-in freezers wouldn’t be working now...”
“I realize that, but there would be dry goods. If we found, let’s say, a room with a balcony, we could grill food on the balcony.”
I was smiling at Mindy. I liked the idea.
She continued “We could climb to the top of the building. I know it would be a long climb up the stairs, but we could lock ourselves in there for a long time. We could block the doors with furniture. We’d have to jam the doors closed so zombies couldn’t get in. Zombies would take a long long time to climb up the staircases.”
I asked “What building in Denver has a restaurant at the top?”
Mason said “I’ve never been to Denver. Cheyenne was the furthest east I’ve been.”
“How about you, Vera?”
I asked her.
“I grew up in Chicago,” she said. “We moved to Worley when I was 16.”
Mindy was flipping through the magazine. “Here we go. The
Trango Tower
is Denver’s newest skyscraper. It has a mall, a sky terrace…” She kept reading. “Luxury condominiums…and the top floor has a world class restaurant offering a 360 degree view of the Denver area. So we could eat in the restaurant, cook in the sky terrace, and have a luxury condominium to live in…” she read more. “Has a fitness center...a health spa.”