Behind him on the same bike was his woman. She was thin. She wore biker leather gear. She had skull earrings and a skull earring pierced into her lower lip. Her head was shaved. She leaned way back on the bike with her legs spread when Johnny got off. She looked like she was either in agony or severely depressed as she lit a cigarette.
Johnny walked over to Mindy and I. He looked us over. Then he looked at the shotgun guy. “What’s this, Teeg?” Johnny asked him.
“They want through,” Teeg said.
Johnny chuckled. “This is my land,” he said as he chewed his gum. “Where do they get off thinking that they can get what they want here?”
“Excuse me, Johnny?”
I started.
In the blink of an eye, Johnny whipped out a switchblade, flipped it open, and had it at my jugular vein. I felt the cold steel against my neck.
“You’re speaking,” he said to me quietly. “I don’t believe I gave you that right.”
Johnny’s woman got off the bike. She saucily walked up next to us. She took Mindy by her hair, pulled her head back, and looked right into her face
.
“Net, get back on the fucking bike,” Johnny told her.
Net gave Johnny a shitty rotten tooth grin. She looked Mindy’s face up and down for a few seconds, then let go of her. “She’s cute. She would work.”
“Teeg, take the girl.”
“Let’s go,” he said, pointing at Mindy. “You’re coming with me.”
Mindy didn’t say anything, but I know she was shaking her head, telling Teeg no. Teeg grabbed her by the hand and roughly pulled her off our bike.
The whole time Johnny had his switchblade to my neck. I knew that if I made one wrong move, I would be dead.
My mind raced back to Mits. I remembered the arguments that Mindy and I had had about her. I remembered how I had embarrassed myself in front of Mindy and Mason. If I would have stood up to Mits at that time none of the embarrassment would have happened.
But this is different!
I thought to myself.
There’s a lot more people here. If I even
try to do anything, my throat will be slit!
“Dan…
” Mindy said. “
Dan!”
Teeg led Mindy to one of the police cars. He shoved her into the back seat. He then got in, steered the car onto the road and drove back toward Concordia.
I was left there with Johnny, Mel and one other man.
“Ok Tom you know what to do,” John
ny said.
Tom came toward me. He had a base
ball bat.
He knocked me over the head with it.
I went out cold.
I don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke up I found myself alone locked inside a dirty jail cell. There was very little light. I could barely see beyond the gates. On the right there was a dimly lit hallway through a locked door.
My head ached.
I was naked.
I had all my fingers and toes, and my cock thankfully.
But I was alone, hungry…and where was
Mindy?
I sat in the cell for a long time. I only ever saw one other person. It was only one time during the day; or night. I never knew which it was.
The person was Mel, the girl from the r
oadblock with the cowboy hat. She would bring in a tray of food, set it on the floor outside the cell and leave. She never spoke to me.
The food wasn’t good. I ate it to keep up my strength.
It was always the same. A cold chicken leg, some lumpy mashed potatoes, a few green beans and a small carton of milk. The only piece of silverware I had was a small wooden spoon.
Days – weeks, I don’t know for sure, passed. Mel would come in the room with my tray of food. Then she would leave.
It went on and on like this.
And on…
And on…
The cell stank. The toilet didn’t flush. There was no running water. The only protection I had was one single blanket. It was never washed. It smelled like my sweat. My beard and hair was getting very long. I hadn’t bathed in I don’t know how long. My teeth were covered in scum.
At night, my blanket barely kept me warm. The jail was so quiet. The only thing I ev
er heard was the wind outside.
Once I thought I heard the distant sound of helicopters. I tilted my head to the right as I listened. It was far away – but familiar. The sound was a light chopping sound. I knew it was real. It wasn’t a dream. I listened for the longest time. After a while, the sound faded away.
Mel came in. She left the plate of food. Then she left. She always wore her stupid cowboy hat.
The door outside – or whatever was
beyond the hall – was locked. Mel had to use a set of keys to get in.
Silent days and nights.
Nothing to do but sit in my nakedness, or sleep with my blanket. I didn’t have anything to write with, no chalk to tally my days on the walls. There was nothing to do but stare at the dirty walls around me.
Why was I here?
Why keep me alive? What was the sense of it? Mindy was gone. Why keep me locked up in a single cell? Was it a joke played by Johnny? Did they want to see how long I would last like this? Was it a test? Was Johnny some psycho mad scientist doing strange tests on people? Was he doing the same thing to Mindy in another cell?
Was Mindy alright?
Was she even
alive
?
My mind would roam into thoughts I never found welcome. I would see Mindy being tortured by Johnny, his long switchblade at her n
eck, cutting her skin slowly. I would spend hours worrying about Mindy – my wife, my lover. I cried for her. I banged the back of my head on the wall so many times worrying, wondering if she was ok.
I wondered what had happened to the little boy in the C
-Mart. Why was he hung there? Why cut off the little boy’s dick? Did Johnny do it? If he could do that to a little boy, then what was he doing to Mindy? Did he have her strung up somewhere? Did he beat her on a daily basis? Did he rape her? Did he make her intMy mind would race on and on. I had no answers. It was all guessing. I really didn’t like the answers my mind freely gave me.
Why had Net - the girl
behind Johnny - been in pain? Or was she just aching from riding on his bike for too long? Was she mad, sad, hurt? Her name...what did ‘Net” mean? Did it stand for
Annette
? Did Mel stand for
Melanie
?
I would try to change the channel of my thoughts; like trying to change the channel on a TV. If I didn’t like what I was seeing, I’d change my mind channel. Change it to something
else.
My thoughts would always come back to
Mindy. I missed her terribly.
Rachel crept back into my mind, too, but I quickly shooed those thoughts away. I didn’t need her haunting me in this cell, too.
I turned my mind back to other things anytime her thoughts came around. What had caused the end of the world? Why weren’t there any more zombies – or sleepers, or stalkers or ramblers… stiffs…or
deads,
like
Tara
had called them?
Tara and her piercings. She must have been a slut. Taking her pants off in front of me after she pissed her pants
. I laughed.
So alone.
So alone in here!
Where was Mel? Where was Mindy? Where had all the people gone? All the people in the world… there has to be a lot of people alive somewhere – there
has
to be. Did Donna make it to Omaha? Was Washburn there? Did she go through the three steps?
Wh
y did they nuke Salt Lake too? What was the common factor? Why nuke Seattle and then Salt Lake? Was it just to kill zombies or to kill off the virus? Was the virus even real?
Just Mindy and I, and all of these people
in Concordia couldn’t be the only people alive in the world. Why had Johnny set up roadblocks on the outskirts of his town, but not a roadblock on the north side? We came from the north side…we didn’t seen any roadblocks. Surely Johnny had seen more people.
What was he trying to keep out – or was he trying to keep people
in?
The day after I thought I heard a helicopter, Mel came in, crying. It took her a long time to unlock the door as she came in. It sounded like she dropped the keys a few times coming in. Most of the food on the tray had spilled on the way into the jail cell.
She set the tray on the floor in front of me. Bawling, she fell onto her ass. She
scooted back against the opposite wall as she buried her face in her hands, weeping horribly.
I didn’t care what was wrong with her as I looked at her. I didn’t care what had upset her. I wanted to see her dead. She was my enemy. She was a part of a group who had locked me up for no reason. The group ha
d taken my wife away from me. I honestly couldn’t have cared less about Mel or what she was crying about; but I took it as a chance to get on her good side.
I need her to trust me,
I thought
. If I earn enough of her trust, maybe one day she’ll get close enough to the cell door. Close enough for me to reach out and grab her. Break her neck. Get the keys. Get loose.
Find Mindy!
In the kindest voice I could muster I asked “Are you
ok?”
She looked up. Her tears stopped. A voice had spoken to her – a kind voice in a jail cell beneath a dirty blanket. Mel’s hands were covered in makeup. Wiping her eyes, she stood up and quickly left. She locked the door behind her.
That was a start.
The next time I saw her, I offered a kind “Hello.” She didn’t even acknowledge me as she walked in, putting the tray of food on the ground outside my cell. Her cowboy hat was tipped down so I couldn’t
see her eyes. Was she crying? We had no eye contact.
As time went by, I became her gracious
friend. I would say “Thank you” anytime she brought food in - even though I had never said it before. Or I would say “Hey, that sure smells delicious” or “I hope the chicken tastes as good as last time.”
I’m not sure how long it went on. Nothing was happening. She always had her cowboy hat tipped down.
Then I started asking different questions. I asked her about Mindy. I’d ask: “Have you seen my wife?” or “I sure miss Mindy – have you seen her?” or “Can I give you a message to give to my wife?” but, she never seemed to even hear me or even care.
I’d ask her personal things. I’d try to get her to talk about the way the world ended. I asked her if she had heard the helicopters. I asked her why she liked to wear a cowboy hat.
I’d use the wooden spoon to make little pictures in my mashed potatoes. I’d make snowmen with the mashed potatoes and the green beans. I tried so hard to get her attention.
But, it seemed, to her I was just a speck on the wall that needed to be fed.
For months I tried everything to get her attention, but it was fruitless. I started getting out of bed with my blanket wrapped around me when she came in. I wanted her to see that I was a person, not just a voice talking to her from the shadows.
I began to wonder what I could do differently to get her to trust me – or at least talk to me or even
acknowledge
that I was there. I was going stir crazy.
Sometimes I hummed when she came in – some song from the past that everyone in the world had known. Something that had been popular, but it didn’t make a difference.
I’d be at the cell door with a smile, wrapped in my blanket, but nothing happened.
I racked my brain, trying to think of any
thing to get her attention.
She’s a rotten person,
I thought.
What would a rotten person like? What would a rotten person want to see? What could I do to make her think I was a rotten person just like her?
I’d use bad language when she’d come in. I’d say “That fucking chicken leg tasted like horse shit,” or other obscene things; but it didn’t do anything for her. I remained nothing but a shadow behind the cell bars.
And then it dawned on me. I am embarrassed to even write this, but it’s what I had to do to get her attention.
The next time she came in, I stood naked by the cell door.
Mel noticed. She looked at me for a few seconds with the tray still in her hands. She looked down at my cock. She thumbed her cowboy hat up, looked me in the eye, smiled at me crookedly through her rotten teeth. She put the tray down on the floor, turned, and left.
Evidently, this was the trick that I needed to do to get her attention. And so, I did it. Every time I heard the outside door unlocking, I would go stand naked next by the cell doors. After a d
ay or so, she got used to it. It became normal for her to see me naked. I needed to think of something else to do.