Jess couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. They sat down to the same bland, but edible meal and Jess’s spoon threatened to fall right out of his hand. When they were finished, several large men entered the room to move those assembled into their respective work detail. Jess couldn’t help but feel like some kind of an inmate. A particularly unhappy handler had been assigned to Jess. Big as a linebacker, the man guided Jess down a long hall by the back of his arm while the others walked free from help. They went to a garage where other people were standing in front of a white van. Whereas most vehicles had windows around the length of its hull, the windows on this van were covered up by sheets of metal, bolted crudely to the sides. The thing looked like a makeshift tank and it didn’t take Jess long to realize that this was intentional. Large rivets kept the metal in place, shielding anyone inside from potential assault.
Inside the garage there were five others, all men. All of them were motioned to take a seat on a bench against the wall. Jess did so without fuss.
Roscoe walked in.
“I hope you guys are going to show more energy than this,” he said, swinging himself around so that he was standing firmly with the van at his back and the six men before him. He brought a watch on his wrist up under his face.
Jess’s watch.
”For some of you, this is your first or second day here.” He stared straight at Jess. “I like to call this place the Quixote Castle. You will earn your keep in return for your safety, lodging and meals. In two weeks’ time, if you wish to leave, you may.”
Jess looked at the men beside him. None of them returned his look. The boy was present. Surely the rules didn’t apply to him if he had already been here for a week, but he said nothing.
“The six of you are here to assist us. We make regular runs out into the towns to find resources that allow us to continue to exist. If we’re to live, we need food. We need supplies. You will be our runners, which is how you will earn your keep, and if you choose, your right to leave.
“Runs are timed. You spend no more than one half hour at one site. You come back when your vehicle is full of supplies or at the end of the half hour; whichever comes first. The only person with a gun will be the driver and me. Anyone trying to run or otherwise break away from the group, may be shot.”
Roscoe nodded to a man who must have been the driver. The guy who was standing beside the door of the vehicle, a gun holster visibly hanging from his belt. He was a middle-aged black man with a closely trimmed beard and tattoos running up and down his long, heavily veined arms. He spoke in a deep voice that did not carry well, but he spoke so slowly that everyone concentrated to hear all that he was saying. None of them wanted to miss a word when it came to these orders.
“We’ve got three stops scheduled today. The first is a grocery store on the edge of town. It’s a large shop for this town but if you come from the big city like me, you’ll think it’s a glorified corner store. The same family’s been running it for the last 30 years but they probably ain’t around anymore. There shouldn’t be any problems but we don’t really know what to expect. We’ve hit two of the other big stores in the city in the last few weeks and we done good. There was only one zombie in the back room of one of the buildings, so that’s what we have to watch out for. You’ll be partnered up and will have to watch each other’s backs. The second place we’re going to is a retirement home just off the main strip. There’s a hundred rooms in this joint and a kitchen big enough to feed every one of them. Even if there are infections inside, we’re talking about people who used canes and wheelchairs to get around, so they’ll be at a double disadvantage.”
“What are we supposed to do if we come across these infected people?”
The driver had been leaning with a single hand against the van the entire time he talked. He never mentioned his name, which seemed to be the way people did things around here. He pushed himself away from the white vehicle and stood upright, appearing at least seven feet tall as he did so.
“They’re not people. They’re dead, at best. Any one of us would prefer death over that. Secondly, what you do is up to you. Hopefully you’re all smart enough to be able to assess a situation and make a decision. We’ll be giving you basic, but very useful weapons. You run, or you cut the thing’s head off right there. But you have 30 minutes at both sites to get as much as you can and get back to the van. If you’re late, we leave you. You come back with nothing, and we might leave you too.”
Roscoe moved to the driver’s side. He had a small black device in his hands and was quickly pushing buttons. Jess quickly realized it was some kind of a smartcard, and it seemed to be working.
We’re ready to go,” Roscoe said, and he started to walk away. Then he stopped a moment, and said: “Oh, one more thing. I’ll be taking a nap on the way there, so keep your hobo music down.”
The driver went over to the side of the garage and all the men saw where he was going. There were six thin swords resting against the wall. They looked sharp and swift enough to be Japanese. Samurai swords, or something like it. The driver picked one up and swung it around a few times like an expert martial artist. Then he did one quick sweep in front of him, uttering: “Motherfucker.”
He then held it aloft for all to see clearly.
“Aim for the neck with these. They’re sharp enough that if you get enough speed behind your swing, they’ll clear take their heads off. That’s about the only thing that seems to stop them. And if you get any ideas about trying to use them on me, well that’s why I have a co-driver who will be watching you all. And we also have our own weapons that work a little quicker than yours do.”
He tapped the gun at his side. It looked like one of the models that were insulated for the use of electric bullets. If the bullet didn’t kill you, it could still deliver a jolt of electricity that froze your limbs for three minutes so that chances were, a second shot would finish the job.
The others finally turned their heads - looking at the man beside them.
“So, what are you waiting for? Come and get them!”
The men all one-by-one walked over to the swords and picked one up. They were motioned into the van and sat in pairs with the swords between their legs, not quite sure which way to turn the blades but deciding all the same that their testicles didn’t like having a sharp edge in their direction.
The van was like one of those prison buses Jess saw in old movies a few times. Three rows of padded benches in the back, no seatbelts and a thick metal wall separating them from the drivers. There was a small window-like opening that the driver could slide back and forth but it was not big enough for anyone to get through, other than maybe an arm.
The metal sheets appeared to be welded to the outside frame of the van. There was one small exposed slit that only afforded a long pinhole view of their trip. This was large enough to get an obstructed view of the land that passed by and small enough that nothing more than a few fingers could reach inside.
The driver was actually handling the wheel of the vehicle, turning it this way and that as they drove about.
“How does he know how to do that?” someone said in the back.
“Twenty years ago the programs used to malfunction all the time. My old man said you’d be sitting there reading the paper and an alarm would ring, telling you that the vehicle was in manual mode. That guy’s got enough grey hair that he might remember some of that.”
The lad sitting beside Jess was the same young kid that he had sat with at breakfast. In the dim light present in the back of the van, he looked like he couldn’t quite grow a full beard, but was trying. He gripped the handle of his sword with both hands and almost seemed to be shaking.
“Where you from?” Jess said.
The kid turned slowly and his eyes were downcast, making only fleeting glances up at Jess as he spoke.
“Originally? Kingston.”
“What were you doing here?”
“I was heading out to find my parents. My girlfriend didn’t make it.”
“Well, it seems there are a bunch of survivors here, so maybe your parents will be okay. I guess you should just do this job, serve your time and get out of here.”
The boy mumbled something that Jess couldn’t make out. He was reminded of that thing that Michael used to do when he was frustrated. The communication just kind of stopped, and the answers were forced and garbled, half-hearted and without any hint of enthusiasm.
The rest of the men seemed equally consumed with silence, presumably concentrating on what was ahead of them. Their heads were all cast down, bobbing slightly with the movement of the vehicle. Jess had almost wished that one of them would stick the driver in the back with their sword but the van would have gone out of control and besides, the presence of Roscoe, though out of view, visibly startled most of the other men.
The electronic device Jess saw earlier was on the dashboard, secured within the dash in some dedicated slot that seemed a perfect fit. Vertical and horizontal lines rotated with the car’s movements.
“My son has one of those, I think. That’s the newest PAL, right?”
“Nobody asked you to talk,” the driver said, looking at Jess from the rear-view mirror. “Don’t even fucking look at it.”
“Just making small talk. I barely knew how to use the old version I had.”
Jess was trying to get him to talk – trying to elicit some information. He knew he had to be careful.
“Roscoe didn’t seem too sure that you know where you’re going.”
The driver grabbed the device and stepped on the brakes a moment, just enough to make all their heads roll forward for an instant.
He laughed at their reaction to the move and replied: “He thinks I need the GPS to find these places. Haven’t needed it yet.”
The big man’s hand extended out and he put the device back in the dashboard.
“I still use paper maps,” Jess said. “Only problem is trying to fold them back up.”
The kid beside him laughed and the others followed, nervous laughter but laughter just the same.
“What the fuck is going on!” Roscoe’s face appeared in the little square window. His eyes were thin and piercing, looking at each one of them, face by face almost daring any of them to speak.
One of the guys in the back pulled a flask out of the glove box and took a long drink. He passed it to the man beside him who drank and then handed it to Jess. Jess drank, gasping as the whiskey scalded the edges of his throat going down. He closed his eyes, almost forgetting how good it was to know that this liquid would soon calm his nerves and soothe his rapidly pumping heart. Jess passed it on and soon all of them had taken a gulp.
Just one drink
, he thought.
That’s all they were going to give him.
If we were in Quebec
, he thought,
grocery stores would have beer and booze.
“So what’s the plan here guys?” Jess whispered.
No one answered for a short time. Everyone seemed to have their heads concentrated down on the handle of their swords, one tapping a rhythm on the handle, others holding it like they were afraid it might fall out of their grip and cut their leg off.
“Like I said, you’re to go in, find and bring back food and other useful items,” the driver said. “You come across one of the infected, you fight or run, but you better not come back empty-handed. I don’t care if you’re running for your life; you better grab something on your way out.”
His voice was low like a vibration and seemed to hit each of them in the stomach rather than the ear. He talked about as slow and smoothly as the old Muddy Waters album that filtered through the van’s speaker system. Reception of radio transmissions playing music had stopped long ago but the driver seemed to have a stereo that played CDs and the mix of harmonica and foot-tapping drum work seeped out of the speakers as though they were in some smoky bar in the south.
The others didn’t seem overly talkative, perhaps due to the unsettling situation they faced. Jess at least convinced them all to partner up in advance with certain rules related to watching out for each other. Each team was assigned to taking a third of the store. Not knowing exactly what that third looked like but realizing that it would likely be rectangular in shape with long aisles dividing up the layout seemed the logical thing to do.
The supermarket wasn’t very super, and although it was on the outer edge of town, it didn’t take very long to get there. It was roughly the size of a high school gymnasium; not big by any standard that he was familiar with. It was a standard box with a sign painted in orange over the front doors: Phil’s Foods.
Jess was accustomed to having doors that opened all on their own at these types of stores. The doors here only had a small framed glass window and brass doorknobs. They didn’t sense you as you approached, nor did they open of their own accord.
There were few windows inside and no lighting. Though it was dark outside, it was even darker inside the store. The only other items that they were given aside from their swords were LED flashlights, which the men immediately turned on. There were six white beams swinging about the interior which cut thin swaths through the darkness. The air was chilly. Dust seemed to be floating everywhere, kicked up by their feet. Each of them scanned the area for moving shadows, quickly at first and then in slow, trained movements. They formed a kind of semi-circle with their backs turned to their partners before slowly fanning out. Jess could hear the kid’s rapid breathing behind him.