I said “We have some food on our bike. Come on let’s eat something.”
“Ok,” she said, finally steadying herse
lf. “Thank you.”
We walked her over to our bike. It was untouched. I opened the cooler taking out a bag of meat. Mindy grabbed three bottles of
water from the pack. We stood by the bike eating. We were all starving.
“You got any aspirin in there?
My neck is killing me?”
I looked at her. “Did you get bit?”
“No. But when you tackled me, I think I pulled a muscle in my neck. It’s stiff as hell.”
“Oh sorry,” I said.
“It’s ok,” she said rubbing her neck. “It’s better than being dead.”
Mindy smiled kindly.
“Thanks for saving my life, “the lady said. “If you wouldn’t have knocked me down, I might have ended up like my guys…so, I want to thank you for that, at least.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“What guys?” Mindy asked, curious.
“My son and my husband.
They’re both dead on the highway over there.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mindy said as she
touched the lady’s arm.
She started to cry a little. “We were heading toward Omaha after evacuating from Salt Lake.”
“Salt Lake?” I asked. “What happened there?”
“We don’t know. We were told to evacuate. It was all over the radio. They were saying that a nuke had gone off in Seattle and another was believed to be in Salt Lake. They didn’t know if it was an accident or what. They just said that the whole city needed to evacuate immediately. I don’t think a lot of people believed it;
but my husband did thank God. He was terrified. He pushed us to leave and I’m glad he did because…because Salt Lake was hit – and that was so long ago now…we’ve been going nonstop. I’m so tired. So tired.
“He wouldn’t let up. We kept going on and on. He would siphon fuel and we’d just keep going. We’d drive along until we’d come across a washed out bridge or somewhere we couldn’t cross. He would always find a way around it.
He’s good that way, you know.
“We heard something on the radio. He always had it on, listening, hoping to hear something, anything. Then we heard Omaha…safety. So we went with it. It was the only thing we had heard for so long. They said Omaha was safe. We were going there but then this traffic jam…and the van over-heated…”
“You’ve been on the road since August?” I asked.
“Has it really been that long?” She wiped her forehead with her dirty sleeve.
“My God. We stayed in a cabin in the mountains when the snow hit. We had a home,” she said, smiling slightly, reminiscing about something.
“Why do you think they nuked Salt Lake?” I asked again.
“I don’t know. I didn’t think we were at war with anyone – at least I hadn’t heard of any flare ups with any other countries.”
“We’re from Washington,” I said. “We escaped the nukes around Seattle.”
“Oh my God, you survived? Did anyone else make it out ok?”
“There were some others yes, but they didn’t make it afterword. One didn’t want to go on and the other fell off a bridge.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Mindy said “We’ve met others too but they were killed.”
“By ramblers?”
“Yes,” I said.
She looked at us. “Are you going to Omaha, too?”
“No. We’re heading south.”
We were silent then for a minute as we ate more of our dried chopped beef.
“The safe zone in Omaha sounded good,” she said. “That’s where we were going.”
“Is it a military safe zone?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“Just a guess,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Donna.”
“Donna,” I said staring at her, “I’m Dan Kingsley. Please don’t go to Omaha. Come with us.”
“And I’m Mindy Thompson
…Kingsley,” Mindy said. “And yes, please don’t go to Omaha.”
She stepped back a step, looking at both us closely. “You seem so serious. Especially how you talk like that. There’s something wrong…why do
n’t you want me to go to Omaha? What do you know about it?”
“About Omaha, not a thing,” I said. “This is the first we’ve heard of it. As a matter of fact, you’re the first person Mindy and I have seen since…wow, it’s been a long time…well, since Denver.”
“What’s wrong with Omaha? Why don’t you want me to go there?”
“I’m betting it’s corrupt.”
“What’s corrupt about it?” Donna asked.
“We’ve dealt with the military,” I told her. We told her about Moses Lake, Washburn, the soldiers, FEE-FEEs. We told her how two guards helped us escape.
“You think Omaha has the same thing going on that a place in
Montana
did?” Donna asked wide eyed. “That’s a long way apart! There’s no way they could be connected – especially if it’s been nuked.”
I gave her a stern smile. “Mindy and I are not going to Omaha.”
“Well you don’t have to! I just met you! How can I know if
you
two aren’t corrupt?”
“We’re not.”
“You’ll die if you go there,” Mindy said. “They have gas chambers.”
“You don’t know that!
How could you
know?
I’m going there! Anywhere has to be safer than out here!
I closed the small cooler on the back of our bike and finished my bottle of water. I got on our motorcycle. I said “Donna please, do
n’t make me beg.”
She snorted a laugh. “Beg all you want. I’m going to Omaha whether you like it or not.”
I sighed. “Ok.”
Mindy looked at me, her mouth open. “You’re letting her go?”
“Her mind is made up.”
Donna folded her arms nodding.
Sighing, Mindy got on the bike with me. I started it up. “Last chance, Donna. You can come with us. We’re heading south, away from all this shit. Come with us. Your chances of survival are better.”
“How could you know?
No. I’m going to Omaha.”
I drove of
f.
Mindy thumped me on the shoulder. “Go back there and
get
her.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
At York, we headed south. The southbound lanes were clear. The northbound lanes were backed up nearly to the small town of McCool Junction; 8 miles to the south.
It got warmer the further south we went. It was still c
old as the wind blew past. Whenever we stopped, we had to take off a couple coats.
In Chester, Nebraska we slept on the second floor of a house which was connected
to a
Foote Café.
The café looked like it was still in business even though everything was turned off or had rotted. Some of the tables still had plates of food on them. The food was long ago grown over with mold. Glasses that once held drinks were now empty. Straws covered in spider webs stood crooked in the cups. The windows were covered in half-open blinds. Dust billowed up into the slats of sunlight as we walked through the café. At one end there was an old jukebox. The glass was covered in caked dust.
Mindy asked me, her voice catching “Is everything in this world dead, Dan?”
I turned toward her, stopped and hugged her. “Not everything, hon.”
“Will things ever
be the same as they were before?”
I didn’t answer for a minute.
Then I said - and I believe this still to this very day: “I hope not.”
JOHNNY
The following morning we left Chester at dawn. The roads were clear. Every now and then we would pass some stalled vehicles. The gas tank on the bike was at three quarters of a tank. We didn’t need to stop to siphon fuel anytime soon.
Normally, I kept the speed on the bike at a steady 30 mph just in case we came upon an unexpected wreck or damage on the road, but in Kansas, the road was flat. There weren’t many hills to speak of. I actually got the bike
up to 50 for a bit.
Around noon we pulled into the small town of Concordia. There was a C-Mart gas station as we came into town. Mindy said she
needed to go to the bathroom. I pulled in and killed the bike.
The town was quiet. There were a lot of trees in town. I listened for birds, but there was nothing; other than a slight squeaking noise. I thought it was probably a swing on a porch bench nearby swinging in the slight wind. The temperature was probably 62 degrees. It was pleasantly warm for the first day of June.
When Mindy had finished her lady business, we went through the C-Mart. All of the shelves had been looted. The cash register stood open, money inside. The place looked the same as all of the other shops we had gone through. Nothing was new here. All of the glass that had been in the store windows was now all smashed across the floor. I figured it may have broken during a storm or when looting had become bad in the town.
Mindy let out a quiet scream.
A young boy, no older than 10, was hung by the neck in one of the drink coolers. All of the shelves had been removed from the cooler. A noose made of black electrical tape was strung around his neck. His feet were swaying slightly. The boy was naked. His penis had been cut off.
The boy didn’t look like he had been killed by a zombie.
Actually, he didn’t look like he had been dead that long. There was no decay on his body. His eyes weren’t sunken in.
“My God,” Mindy
said her hand over her mouth.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, taking her hand.
We went back outside.
Mindy’s hand gripped mine tight. When I looked at her, she was standing, pointing, her
other hand covering her mouth.
She was pointing down the road. There were people hanging from light poles on the street.
Naked. Men and Women. All of the men had their penises cut off.
We heard the sound of approaching motorcycles. Quickly, we ran back into the C-Mart. There was a door leading into the back through swinging doors. We hunkered down behind some old boxes and waited.
It was almost midnight by the time Donna Mattingsly finally made it to the ci
ty limits of Omaha, Nebraska. There were three soldiers who met her as she came into the city.
She asked them “Is there somewhere safe I can go?”
“Yes ma'am,” one of the soldiers said. “We have transportation to the base. You see the Greyhound bus over there?” He motioned with his rifle.
Donna saw the bus. It was ru
nning. She saw people inside.
“Yes,” she said.
“That will take you to the base. It is safe there.”
“Thank you,” she said. She went to the bus. Inside, another soldier was sitting behind the wheel. H
e nodded to her as she got in.
The rows of seats had some people in them. Some were crying. Some smiled at her as she walked past and sat in an empty seat. The bus wasn’t full at all.
A young woman sitting in front of her turned around and smiled at Donna. She said, “We’re safe now. We don’t have to worry about getting eaten anymore!”
Donna smiled back. She was so exhausted.
The bus sat there for two hours waiting for more survivors to show up. Donna slept as the bus left. Another bus pulled up behind as hers left. It waited for more survivors to show up.
When her bus stopped at the closed gates of the military base, Donna woke up. Looking out the window, she saw soldiers lining the sides of the road. They were all armed with machine guns. There were also high barbed wire fences on both sides of the bus.
Somewhere deep inside the base, the bus stopped. A strong, lean looking soldier came in when the door was opened. He was sharply dressed in his military uniform. His gun glistened in the bus’ overhead lights. He was wearing a gas mask. As he looked over the group of survivors he said “Welcome to Offutt Air Force base. You will be safe here.”
Many of the passengers clapped happily.
We heard someone come into the C-Mart. Their feet were crunching on the broken glass near the front of the store. Mindy was grabbing my arm tightly.
“Where’d you hang the fuck?” someone with a brash voice asked.
“In the cooler.”
The footsteps walked across the floor. We heard a gun cock followed by a shotgun blast. There was a thud as someone hit the floor. Then only one set of footprints walked back out of the store. A motorcycle fired up. We stayed hunkered down in the store until the sound of the motorcycle was gone. It sounded like it went west.
“Is it
Skin?”
Mindy asked me, her eyes wide.
I shook my head no. It couldn’t be.
We stayed there a few minutes longer. I dared a peek out through the swinging doors. There wasn’t anyone around. Taking Mindy by the hand we went back into the store. A dead man was lying on the ground next to the cooler with the dead boy inside. The dead man had been shot in the head. “Jesus” I muttered. “What the hell is going on in
this
town?”
Mindy whispered “Let’s go.”
Hurrying now, we got back onto the bike. Mindy was looking back over her shoulder as we headed south on 81. The town was small. We were on the south outskirts in a matter of minutes.
I got the bike up to 50 again. We rounded a small curve in the road. There was a roadblock ahead of us. Two police cars with their lights flashing were parked nose to nose in the middle of the street. On either side there were two men and a woman. All of them were holding shotguns. As we approached, one of the men on the right side of the road leveled his shotgun at us. He motioned for us to slow down.
Mindy’s grip tightened around my waist.
“Calm down,” I whispered. “Let’s just get through this.”
Donna Mattingsly was going through interrogation. She was in a group with five other strangers. All of them had been stripped naked. They were now standing in front of a soldier who was demanding that they piss in a cup.
“You have no right to do this to us!” one of the strangers yelled at the soldier.
The soldier slammed the butt of his rifle into the man’s jaw. Donna heard it break.
“You piss when we say you piss, FEE-FEE!” he yelled at the bleeding man.
A cup was rudely shoved between Donna’s legs. She obediently urinated in the cup. Another soldier wiped her when she was finished.
She thought to herself:
If I do everything they tell me, maybe I might be allowed to escape like those other people did.
She obeyed everything they
told her to do.
When they led her and the other survivors into a room with a black door, a sharply dressed officer came in the room. He offered them hospital gowns to put over their naked bodies.
The sharply dressed officer introduced himself as First Lieutenant Lee Washburn. He told them he was here to answer any questions they might have.
Donna was quick to speak up. She asked
“If I do everything you say, will you
release
me? Can I go free like some people did before?”
Washburn was immediately shocked. He didn’t know how to address the question. It honestly threw him for a loop. He asked “Who was let free?”
“It was a couple I met,” Donna said. “They said they had been let free by some guards in Moses Lake.”
“This couple,” he said, picking up a notepad,
“When did you meet them?”
“A few days ago near York,” she said politely as possible. She genuinely wanted to be free just like the others.
“Was there anyone else with them?” he asked
“No, it was just a man and a woman. Their names were Dan Kingsley and Mindy Thompson
.”
“Did you know where they were going?” he asked, leaning toward her.
“Yes. They said they were going south.”
“Did you tell them you were coming here?”
“Yes, but they didn’t want to come here. They told me it was corrupt. I didn’t believe them.”
Washburn pulled a small pistol from his belt. He pressed it against the side of her head. She cringed.
He asked “What else did these escapees tell you?”
“
Escapees
? They said some guards set them
free
.”
“Ma’am, I used to be the commanding officer of the Moses Lake facility. If guards allegedly let these escapees go, then the guards would no longer be with us. They would have been hanged
for disobeying a direct order! No, Ma’am, they were
not let go
!”
Washburn pulled the trigger. Donna went down into a heap. Washburn then shot the rest of the survivors in the room. When he was finished he walked quietly to an adjoining room. Inside, at a computer terminal, he typed in the names Dan Kingsley and Mindy Thompson.
Surely it can’t be
, he thought.
Not the man who survived the plane crash.
It was.
Washburn initiated a manhunt. This man needed to be stopped. He was the carrier of the MCON virus. Dan Kingsley was the reason behind the zombie outbreak and the destruction of the world.
I pulled slowly up to the blockade.
The man with the shotgun stood his ground. He leaned to the right to check out Mindy as we pulled up.
I shut off the bike, kicked down the kickstand, crossed my arms and sat there.
“Where ya headed?” the man with the shotgun asked. His lower lip was protruding. He was chewing tobacco.
“South,” I said.
“Ya can’t pass here,” he said as he spat. “You need permission to pass through Johnny’s land.”
I laughed. “Really? I thought I was driving through Kansas.”
“Used to be Kansas,” he said. “Ain’t
no more.”
I stuck my thumb back toward Mindy. “My wife and I
are wanting to pass. We don’t want anything, just to go through.”
“Johnny decides who goes or stays.”
“Let me talk to him then.”
The man with the shotgun shot the ground. “It ain’t that easy, chum” he said.
“You can’t demand
nothin
. You gotta show Johnny your
worth.”
“I got dried meat in the cooler,” I said. “I have some bottled water. That’s all I have. Is that worth enough?”
The man stepped closer as he leveled his shotgun at my chest. “You tryin to be smart?”
“Nope.
Just want to get through.”
A radio in one of the police cars sent out static. A voice came over the radio. “West
border is clear. Going east.” It was the same raspy voice we had heard in the C-Mart.
The man with the shotgun stood there with his gun trained on me
“How long are we going to have to wait for Johnny to show up?”
“MEL!”
the guy with the gun shouted. “Get Johnny out here!”
One of the women got into the police car with the working radio. She left the door open when she got in. “We got crossers on the south border,” she said into the microphone.
“On my way,” the same voice responded.
Mel got back out of the car. She slammed the door. “He’s on his way,” she said. She was skinny. She wore skin tight frayed jeans, a flannel shirt and a cowboy hat that was
too big for her head. She looked to be about 18. Many of her teeth were rotted out. She had short sandy brown hair.
“Let’s have your weapons,” the guy with the shotgun said.
“Can we just pass?” Mindy asked.
“You keep quiet back there, honey,” shotgun
guy said as he spat more chew.
We sat there for a few minutes
waiting for Johnny to show up.
He drove up on a brand new Harley. He had jet black hair. He had a black bandana with a white skull painted on it. The bandana was tied around the top of his head – probably to cover his receding hair line. His arms were covered in spider tattoos. When he talked, I saw that one of his top front teeth was crooked and slightly yellowed. His voice was raspy. He
wore dark sunglasses and chewed his gum open-mouthed.