Authors: David Berardelli
My instinct kicked in. She was about to grab something. Her thigh muscles
tensed and she turned her face slightly to her right.
Christ, I don’t wanna do this.
I snatched the automatic and put three quick
holes in a horizontal pattern across the center of the door. A loud shriek issued,
and a machine pistol clattered to the pavement near Carla’s white sandals, which
quickly pitted with blood. Carla dove for the pistol, her head disappearing behind
the door. As soon as it reappeared, I put a hole in her forehead. Her sunglasses
split in two and flew in opposite directions, as her head jerked back.
I put three more quick rounds in the gap between the door and the frame, just
above the rifle barrel that had appeared. A scream blasted from the inside of the
van. The barrel jumped in the air, whacking the roof. The rifle came back down,
slapping the driver’s door, then the running board, before landing on Carla’s still
form.
Long red hair appeared beneath the doorframe, stopping when it touched the
pavement. Two hands slid down. I waited. A female body slid out head-first,
thumping the macadam then landing across Carla.
My gun pointed out, I approached the bloody scene. I suspected my shots had
all been kill shots, but I’d seen countless training films and heard horror stories of
the enemy successfully operating a weapon after sustaining mortal wounds.
The body lying on the console was another young blonde. One of my shots
had hit her in the side of the head. I kept my gun trained on each body while
tapping the two on the bloody pavement with my foot. I tapped the third on the
shoulder with my gun.
No reaction from any of the bodies. I drew nearer, squatted, and felt for
pulses. There were none.
I finally put my auto on safety and returned it to my waistband. I bent over,
picked up the redhead, draped her over my shoulder, opened the side door, and
dropped her onto the seat. She was solidly-built, and it took considerable effort. It
was also messy. I’d clipped her high in the chest, and the massive blood loss
quickly stained my shirt. I left the other blonde lying across the front seats.
Just as I got into position to pick up Carla, Reed walked over. When he saw
the blood on my shirt he backed up, spun around, and doubled over, coughing and
hacking away. Once he got it under control, he cleared his throat. Then he
straightened and turned back around. His features had gone pale again. “I d-don’t
see how ... how you d-did that.”
“I just aimed and…”
“I didn’t mean that!” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I meant, how
could you…?”
“They were going to kill us. Just like those looters in Cocoa.”
“I know. It’s just ... well…”
“These girls all had guns—like the looters. Make no mistake—females are
much more dangerous. You know that.”
Reed made no comment.
“I’ll bet they already whacked a slew of other guys before stopping us.
Probably used the same shtick, too.”
Reed stared at Carla, a pitiful expression on his face.
“Is that all you’d like to know?”
He just nodded.
I grabbed Carla beneath her armpits, pulled her up, and draped her over my
shoulder. She was solid, too. I opened the side door and flipped her gently onto
the seat, next to the redhead. I stood there a moment, looking at the three females
now dead by my hand. I no longer felt remorse. I was tired of being judged. This
damned plague had reduced life to a savage existence. I saw no reason to waste
my time explaining my actions.
I circled around to the van’s rear door and opened it. Crates of booze, food,
and ammunition filled the back.
“My God.” Reed had followed me. “They had more stuff than we do.”
“They’ve definitely been busy. Let’s take along a couple of these crates.”
“Just the food, right?”
Knowing how he felt about beer, I figured he wouldn’t want to load up on the
booze.
“You’re talking about the alcohol, right?”
“Actually, I’m quite fond of Scotch.”
“Really? I figured since you don’t like beer…”
“Beer makes me pee too much. What would
you
like?”
“I usually drink rum or bourbon.”
While Reed moved the booze, I set about looking for ammo. I found six green
canisters shoved against the seat. There were also boxes of shells for .38, .357, .
44, .45, 9 millimeter, .22, 30-30, and buckshot for various shotgun gauges.
Wedged between the canisters and the driver's seat was a small cooler. I
opened the lid. It took me a few moments to realize what I was looking at. Then it
hit me. It was a pile of human penises. Carla and her brood had been preying on
the men they’d met on the highway. Most of them probably hadn’t had any sex
for a while, were hungry and not thinking clearly. Carla and her gang enticed
them, murdered them, and looted what supplies they could find. Once they
acquired their booty, they separated the manhood from each of their victims for a
trophy and tossed it in the cooler. I had no idea how many lay on top of the bag of
ice, nor did I want to count them—but the pile was impressive.
Disgusted and nauseous, I slammed the lid shut, picked up two heavy
canisters and lugged them to our van. I now felt less guilty for killing them.
Reed was shoving a crate of bottles into an empty space in back. He’d also
brought over a crate of canned goods. I pushed the canisters in his direction then
went back to pick up the machine pistol. I tossed the assault rifle into the tall
grass off the shoulder. I hated assault weapons. They reminded me too much of
Brighton Beach.
Before getting back behind the wheel, I pulled off my shirt, wiped myself
down, and swapped it for a clean one from my suitcase.
“We’re just going to ... leave them here?” Reed asked.
I stuffed the bloody shirt into one of the Walmart bags we used for garbage. I
saw no reason to tell him about Carla’s disgusting penis collection. “You want to
toss them in this van, drive them to the nearest cemetery, bury them, and say a
few words about what fine people they were and how much they meant to us?”
The hopelessness and sorrow showed prominently on Reed’s pale features.
He obviously needed to be reminded of the situation.
“You have to remember something. It’s extremely unpleasant, but it’s the
truth. It’s what you told me in Cocoa, when I suffered that brain blip.”
“There’s no one to drive the ambulance,” he said softly, gazing at the bloody
pavement. “No one working the hospitals.”
“There’s nothing left. Never forget that.” Despair and sorrow filled my being
as well, as soon as the words left my throat.
Engulfed in an eerie stillness, Washington sprawled before us on the other side of
the Potomac River, its remaining survivors as shocked and bewildered by the
plague of death as those we encountered in Florida and all the way up I-95.
The sun had already dropped low in the sky, turning pink and lifeless among
the shredded clouds brushing silently around it.
I’d passed dozens of vehicles pulled over or stopped on the interstate and
back at the Beltway. Only three were moving, inching about at a snail’s pace,
their affected occupants struggling to control the last precious moments of their
lives.
I pulled onto the side of the road just before the 14th Street Bridge to survey
the situation. The gas gauge had drifted steadily toward empty. Once again I
faced the risky task of finding a place to fill the tank.
As we had approached the D.C. metro area, I also worried about being
stopped by a cop. My driver’s license was current, but if the cop checked the tag,
he’d discover that it didn’t belong to the van. Any working databanks would
know I was driving a stolen vehicle. A search would follow. The cop would find
the guns, the ammo, and the booze, as well as my illegal Walmart acquisitions.
The garbage bag containing my bloodied shirt would not help my situation.
I had to face facts. If I was stopped, I’d have to shoot the cop.
The realization terrified me. I’d always been a law-biding citizen and had
risked my life for my country many times in my brief military career. Aside from
a couple of speeding tickets picked up during my hectic teen years, my record
was clean.
But in the last few days, I’d stolen food, guns, sporting goods, money, and a
van. I’d also killed eight people.
I’d done what was necessary to survive. Very few people still functioned and
were probably doing the same unforgivable things I was doing. But that didn’t
make me feel less guilty, and it sure didn’t make me feel any better. I was brought
up to respect others, the law, and my country. And no matter what happened to
society or the rest of the world, stealing and killing just wasn’t right.
“I’ve been wondering about those women,” Reed said.
“Why?”
“I think about people, Moss. It’s the teacher in me, I guess. I’m always trying
to get a fix on things. Even as a kid I’d always wanted to find out why something
happened. Everything’s important in the great scheme of things. Background
influences everything. Maybe Carla had a rotten childhood and…”
“Background means nothing in a catastrophe. Everyone’s lost everything, and
the primeval urge takes over. Fight or flight becomes the order of the day. Most
people don’t even realize what that is until it’s too late. Getting a fix on mass
chaos is impossible. And it doesn’t solve anything.”
“I can’t help wondering what she was before all this happened. Where she
came from. If she had family, friends. She might’ve been a teacher, for all we
know. Or a software CEO. Or maybe even a lawyer.”
“Now she’s dead.”
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“I shot the woman. Killed her and her friends. They were all young and
pretty. Now they’re rotting in their van. Yeah, it bothers me.”
“But ... you were ...
taught
to kill.” Reed said, sounding confused.
“They taught us how, when, and who to kill. They even instructed us to seek
professional help if we found we couldn’t cope properly in society. They
neglected to teach us how to kill without feeling badly about it.”
“Even though you were forced into it?”
“We were ordered to eliminate the opposition and proceed with our mission.
Do it quickly and efficiently, and then forget about it. They didn’t feel the need to
guide us through an acceptable period of mourning for those we killed. That
wasn’t in their budget.”
Reed fell silent.
I decided to avoid going into the city, where the streets might be impassable
by now. I didn’t want to risk getting trapped by a marauding gang. I also didn’t
want to chance running into a military roadblock. So I backed up the interstate a
few hundred feet and took the exit onto the George Washington Memorial
Parkway. I remembered that it ran along the river and headed northwest toward
the affluent Virginia suburb of McLean.
After about five miles I took the first exit, which spilled me onto Dolley
Madison Boulevard. The first service station we passed, right off the parkway,
had been ransacked. Office furniture lay on its side in front of the building.
Broken bottles and crushed beer cans trashed the area near the service islands.
Someone had shattered the glass facing of both pumps. The plate glass window of
the office had been shot out as well.
I passed by the entrance to the Central Intelligence Agency. I saw no activity
—something that frightened me quite a bit. If the U.S. Government was no longer
functioning, we truly were on our own.
I drove a couple more miles and turned into downtown McLean. I found
another gas station. It had been similarly pillaged. Chairs, tables, and office
supplies covered much of the front lot. Trash had been taken from the cans and
scattered.
The third station appeared just as unpromising. There were only two pumps.
Three vehicles sat in line on one side, an old pickup on the other, its driver
slumped over the wheel. The body of a man lay on the pavement in front of the
office doorway.
Three larger stations at the crossroads appeared in even worse condition, as
though there had been a full-scale riot by people trying to buy gas and get out of
town.
I meandered through the shopping center and past rows of once-grand threestory townhomes. Wide-open front doors revealed the dark emptiness beyond
their marble foyers. Toys and discarded furniture lay on the overgrown front
lawns and in front of garages. I spotted a few souls just sitting in their driveways,
staring out at the dying world with glazed, unseeing eyes. No one moved.
I realized I probably hadn’t needed to worry about being pulled over.
I headed back onto Dolley Madison and toward the glistening towers of
Tysons Corner, with its twin shopping malls and opulent office buildings. Again,
there were no signs of normalcy.
Finally I saw a station that looked open. The only activity was a scrawny
black Lab that had stopped to sniff a wrapper on the cracked pavement. As soon
as we pulled in, it trotted across the road and disappeared behind an overgrown
bush.
I stopped next to one of the vacant pumps. A sloppily handwritten sign on
yellow paper taped to the front of the pump said CASH ONLY—PAY INSIDE.
I dug into my pockets, peeled off five twenties, and stuffed the rest of the wad
in the console between the seats. I pocketed the hundred and grabbed the .22
Beretta beneath the seat. I checked the clip, took it off safety, and slipped it in my
front trouser pocket. It was the smallest gun I had and the easiest to conceal. I
didn’t like relying on such a tiny gun, which was good only for close work and
rarely accurate beyond twenty feet. But I didn’t want to walk inside with anything
larger. It would show under my clothes, and if whoever had scribbled the note on
the pump was still functioning, he’d consider me a looter and shoot me.
I glanced at Reed in the rearview. “Anyone in there?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“He sees only one man. He thinks it’s the owner.”
“Any guns?”
After a pause, Reed nodded once.
My scalp tingled.
Pull yourself together. You have to get gas. There’s no other way
.
“If I don’t come back out in a couple of minutes, get the hell out of here, get
on the Beltway north, back at the bottom of the hill, and keep driving.”
Reed said nothing.
“You can drive, can’t you?”
“Of course I can drive.”
“Then be ready.”
“You think it’ll come to that?”
“At this stage of the game? Yeah. It just might.”
“How will I know if ... if I should ... if you’re…”
“Tell your friend to follow me inside. If something happens, you’ll only have
a few seconds to get away. If it gets nasty in there, he might come out blasting.
Understand?”
Reed’s nod was slight. I could tell he was scared.
I took a couple of deep breaths then got out and stood beside the van, waiting
for my nerves to settle down. I took another deep breath, told myself things
would be just fine, and forced my feet to start moving.
As I trudged across to the office, I heard and saw nothing. No traffic buzzed
by. No other sounds drifted over with the cool evening breeze. A few pungent
odors wafted over from a dumpster, but didn’t frighten or alarm me. A soursmelling dumpster won’t kill you. I focused my gaze on the darkness of the open
doorway just ten yards ahead.
I paused a few feet from the threshold. In my present state, I remembered old
westerns I’d seen as a child. I envisioned myself as the wandering gunman
stopping in for whiskey and a few supplies before getting back on his horse and
riding off.
It wasn’t a farfetched thought. Modern times had somehow reverted back to
how things were two centuries ago. I’d stepped into a situation that could easily
turn volatile. Although it had been over a hundred years since barroom gunfights
had been the norm, the tide had shifted, bringing back its ghosts. To survive, I
had to expect any conceivable scenario. My only solace lay in my
resourcefulness, instincts, and the tiny automatic in my pocket.
The large room was arrayed with merchandise shelves that were now mostly
empty. Likewise the upright freezers that used to be filled with food and beer, a
couple of junk-food machines and a cold drink cooler, which stood against the far
wall, next to the green door marked RESTROOM.
A Middle Eastern man in his late fifties—from my Brighton Beach
experience I guessed he was Pakistani—bent over the counter, smoking a
cigarette and working what looked like an Arabic version of a crossword puzzle.
He was beefy, broad-shouldered, and balding, and he wore a white tee shirt. A
double-barrel shotgun sat on the counter, inches from his elbow. It was pointed at
the doorway.
“I need some gas,” I said.
He took his time sizing me up. I couldn’t tell if he was affected or trying to
decide whether I was trouble or a potential customer. He slowly straightened to
his full height, which was around six-two or -three. He pushed a thick plume of
gray cigarette smoke in my direction.
“Got cash?” he asked in a low, raspy voice.
“Sure do.” I slowly reached for my pocket.
His left hand jumped for the shotgun.
My pulse raced, and I froze. “I’m only going for my money.”
He nodded, but his hand stayed where it was. I pulled out the hundred and
held it up. He raised a bushy black brow. “How much you need?”
“I figure about ten, maybe twelve gallons.”
“Hundred bucks. Just put it on the counter and I turn on the pump. If you
need more, it all right. But I switch it off when you finish, and I turn it back on
when you pay more.”
I did as he said, then backed up.
He picked up my hundred with his right hand then took his left away from the
shotgun. My nerves immediately stopped jumping around. He counted the money
then moved to the register. He opened the cash drawer, put the cash inside,
slammed it shut, and pressed some buttons. “It is on.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t want to turn my back. I began backing up again.
“No, you are all right,” he said, raising his hands.
“I take it you’ve been robbed once or twice.”
He snorted. “Wish it
was
only once or twice.”
“That bad?”
He jerked his head to his left. “I nail a stupid fuck couple days ago with
shotgun then toss his ass into dumpster. Then I figure how stupid that was. Has
not been garbage pickup in weeks. So, had to close station, dump him in back of
pickup, haul him somewhere else then haul ass back here so I don’t get robbed
again.”
I turned toward the door.
“Mister?”
I turned back around.
You just give me money?”
“You just put it in your register.”
He frowned.
“Problem?”
He tapped his scalp, signifying that he couldn’t remember.
Suddenly I pitied the poor guy. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He pointed to the shotgun. “Time come when I can’t remember my own
name? That when I use this.”
“Get roaring drunk first. It might help.”
He nodded then lit another cigarette and went back to his puzzle.