He drove slowly, nervously looking for any signs of damp asphalt. His spirits lifted when he saw the entrance ramp to the highway. He was anxious to start moving south again, regardless of how much his new vehicle smelled of smoke, or how bad his foot was starting to hurt. He rolled down the window and spat a mouthful of salty blood out the window. He probed his swollen tongue against his teeth, wincing at the puncture.
The southbound entrance was first. It swept to the right and gave Robby a long acceleration lane uphill to the level of the highway. Long shadows from the streetlights stretched across the road. He stopped at the first one. He knew it must be a shadow, but the dark pavement could have been wet in that shadow. He crossed it at a crawl, ready to jump out of the Chevy at the first sign of trouble. Nothing happened.
He accelerated again and drove through the second shadow, although he still braced himself when his tires crossed the dark patch of asphalt. The highway here was mostly clear. This part of the road had soft, grassy shoulders and the few deceased cars had veered off the travel lane when their drivers expired.
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Robby saw the wet trail across the highway from quite a distance. He’d been watching for it. On the other side of the center divider, it looked like the trail blocked the northbound lane as well. Robby put the car in park and left it running. He made a quick stop at the trunk of the Chevy, where he retrieved the jack handle from underneath the spare tire. Then he limped over to a gray Volvo, run aground on an embankment on the right side of the road.
The exploded-eye corpse behind the wheel of the Volvo was a man—Robby guessed he was about his father’s age, which meant about forty-something. The guy looked short. He wore wire-rimmed glasses with little circular lenses, which were now covered from the inside with eye-goo and blood.
Robby stood on his right foot. On his left foot, only his toes touched the cold grass.
“What size do you wear?” Robby asked the corpse through the Volvo’s window. His lacerated tongue felt thick in his mouth, but it also felt good to move it around. “I’m about a nine. Does that sound right?”
Robby swung the jack handle and smashed the glass next to the corpse’s face. He raked out the remnants of the window with the end of the bar and then leaned his head through the window so he could figure out the lock. The door wasn’t even locked. Robby laughed and tugged at the handle. The Volvo emitted a low “bong, bong, bong,” to let Robby know he was opening the door with the ignition engaged.
Robby tried not to step on any of the auto glass with his bare foot as he knelt next to the car to untie the corpse’s shoes. The guy wore ankle-high hiking shoes. Robby approved. He pulled the left one off the man’s foot and held it bottom-to-bottom with the sole of his foot. It looked a little big, but better than nothing. He thought for a second and then took the sock as well before he moved on to the next foot.
“I think these might fit,” he said to the corpse. “Thanks.”
Robby stuffed the socks down into the shoes and slung them over his shoulder to head back to the running Chevy.
“You know what?” he asked, turning. “I’ve got one more question for you.”
Robby smiled—he liked the way his voice sounded on the quiet highway.
“This will just take a second,” he said as he approached the Volvo again, dropped his new shoes and jack handle on the roof, and reached past the steering wheel. “If you’ve got enough battery to sound that bell, maybe you’ve got…”
Robby tried to turn the key off, but it wouldn’t turn past a certain point. He wrinkled his brow and thought through his limited knowledge of cars and driving.
“What’s wrong with this thing?” he muttered under his breath.
He heard his father’s voice in his head. "
Gotta be in Park, Robby. Key won’t turn unless it’s in Park.”
“Ah,” Robby said. “Pardon me, sir.”
Robby leaned in farther and tried to move the gear shift lever towards the dash. It went as far as neutral and then stopped.
“What now?” Robby asked.
He heard his father’s voice again. "
Foot on the brake. Think, bub.”
“No shit,” Robby said to the corpse. He felt like he was playing Twister with the gray Volvo and the barefoot corpse.
“Left foot, brake,” he said. He slid his bare foot alongside the corpse’s feet and depressed the brake. Then the gear shift slid easily up to Park. With that accomplished, Robby turned the key off and then back on. When he pressed it into starting position the Volvo’s engine fired to life. The gas gauge climbed slowly until it reached three quarters of a tank and then it leveled.
“I’ll be damned,” Robby said. He clapped the corpse on the shoulder and turned the car off.
He grabbed the shoes and jack handle from the roof and turned to hobble back to the Chevy. It took him less than two steps to reconsider. The Chevy was smelly, small, and unreliable-looking. Aside from some eye-splatter, the Volvo looked clean and efficient.
“Thank you sir, I believe I will,” Robby said. He wrestled the corpse out of the Volvo and dragged it a couple of feet away from the door. The man’s glasses flopped back up onto his forehead, and Robby stepped briefly on an uncomfortable piece of glass, but otherwise the procedure was quick and easy. Robby slid behind the seat and found he didn’t even need to adjust the seat. He backed away from the embankment—the sure-footed Volvo didn’t slip at all on the grass—and made a big u-turn across the southbound lanes. He stopped one more time to shut off the Chevy, but he kept the jack handle from the trunk. Before retreating north, Robby took a minute to put on the new shoes and socks. They fit even better than he’d hoped. He used his old sock to mop up some of the eye-juice splattered on the inside of the windshield and then tossed it through the shattered window.
Robby drove north in the southbound lanes until he got to the first police turnaround where he could switch to the northbound lanes. Even though the cars were off the road, it bothered Robby to head towards the fronts of other cars and see the backs of all the signs.
He took the first exit and probed some of the local roads looking for another way south. Robby didn’t get far. Before long he found a wet streak of liquid across each road. The highway seemed like the only road safe enough to travel on, and he would have to go back to the north.
He kept a close watch for any more damp pavement. It got harder to be sure as the sun went down. The headlights tried to turn on automatically, but Robby found the override and turned them off. He didn’t know what kind of attention they might draw, and he didn’t want to find out.
Soon he came to, and traveled over, the bridge back to Maine. He passed the bucking bronco U-Haul, and then the wrecked car with the little boy in the backseat, but they were both in the southbound lanes. Robby observed them like animals at the zoo—sure, they might be dangerous, but they were way over there. He convinced himself they presented no immediate threat to his side of the bridge.
“We’ve gotta stop soon, Volvo. It’s getting dark, and I need some shut-eye,” Robby said. He shifted his eyes quickly from mirror to mirror as soon as he finished the sentence. Somehow it felt natural to talk to corpses, but completely creepy to talk to an empty car. Robby decided to keep his mouth shut and hoped the crawling-skin feeling would subside soon.
He drove north until he found a rest stop. The parking lot had a decent number of cars, and scattered corpses here and there. Most of the
bodies were in a loose grouping near the visitors center door. Robby pulled right up to the curb near the door and shut off the Volvo as he peered around in the fading light. He saw no sign of carrion-feeding puddles ready to wreck his car and eat his shoes. He listened to the still evening, but didn’t hear any city-wrecking tornadoes within earshot. The corpses would have unsettled him even a few hours before, but now they seemed almost comforting. With corpses still around, the puddles must not have arrived, or so went Robby’s deduction.
Robby flipped down the visor and slid aside the door to expose a vanity mirror. A light flicked on, but Robby turned it off with the switch. He’d intended to use the mirror to get another view of the highway behind him—he wanted to be able to see every direction at once—but once he caught a glimpse of his eyes, he couldn’t look away. His eyes, framed by the little mirror in the visor, looked just like his Dad’s eyes.
He heard his dad’s voice in his head again. "
Go on inside. You can get something to eat and use the bathroom.”
Robby tested his punctured tongue against his teeth and glanced over at the small pile of bodies near the door.
“They won’t hurt you. You’ve seen plenty of bodies today. Nothing to be afraid of.”
Robby grabbed the keys from the ignition and took one last look at his eyes in the mirror before opening the door. They still looked like his father’s eyes, and they still glowed with a confidence Robby didn’t feel.
“Robby?”
“Yeah?” he asked aloud—responding to a question only in his head.
“Look in the trunk. This car is tricked out and well cared for. You’ll find an emergency kit with a flashlight in the trunk.”
His father’s voice was right. Robby found a kit of useful tools and a flashlight in the trunk. He moved the kit to the back seat of the Volvo and took the flashlight to the door of the visitors center. The new shoes felt weird to walk in. They were comfortable, but weird. His left foot still felt a little sore, but Robby was able to walk without much of a limp. He rounded the corpses and pulled open the door to the visitors center.
He didn’t need the flashlight until he got to the bathroom door. The big glass wall on the front of the building let in enough of the fading light for Robby to get around.
In the bathroom, Robby tried to not swing his flashlight around too much. The dancing shadows created by the moving beam made the dead people seem to shift. A guy near the urinals had shot an impressive double-shot of blood from his eyes against the tile wall before he slumped to the floor. Another man had fallen forward into a urinal. His chin was propped up on the porcelain scoop.
Robby stepped over the arm of a man who had flopped backwards while washing his hands. He approached the nearest stall. After using the bathroom, he made his way quickly out the door.
At the far end of the lobby, a small convenience store sold snacks, newspapers, and souvenirs. Behind the counter he found shopping bags. He filled a couple with shirts, sweatshirts, food, and water. They didn’t sell socks. Shoes were one thing, but the thought he was wearing a dead man’s socks still bothered him.
He stood examining the coffee mugs, thinking about nothing at all, when he heard a noise outside. Robby shut off the flashlight and listened. His eyes adjusted rapidly to the low light, but all he could really see was the outline of the glass doors at the other end of the building. The noise had been a muffled thump, like a bag of sand landing on a wooden floor.
Robby shuffled slowly towards the doors in the dark. He slid his feet along the floor, conscious he would hit a corpse or two on his way out. The only sound he made was the crinkling of the swinging plastic bags which held his supplies. Robby inched his way over to the doors in the dark. He stepped over several corpses on the way, but he did it without having to turn on his flashlight. He stood by the door for several minutes looking out into the evening. The clouds diffused enough of the moonlight so he could make out shapes in the lot. The Volvo sat near the curb, waiting for Robby. He took a deep breath and pushed through the doors. The three corpses near the outer door let him by with no mischief.
Robby got back in the Volvo and shut and locked the doors. His eyes, blinded by the dome light from the vehicle, took several seconds to readjust to the dark.
“You should move away from here, Robby,”
his father’s voice counseled.
“In case that liquid shows up and tracks my footprints?” he asked, looking up to the visor mirror.
“Exactly,”
he heard inside his head.
With the headlights off, Robby drove very slowly to the far end of the lot. He backed the Volvo into a spot bordered by a patch of grass meant for walking dogs. He shut the car off and checked again to make sure the doors were locked.
The clouds overhead moved fast. Robby could tell because an occasional break in the clouds let through bright, sharp moonlight. The view changed from soft blue to sharp black and white until the next set of clouds diffused the light again. Before him, the lot looked like a very complex model built by a very morose child. It possessed all the right elements—cars, buildings, people, trees—but it looked too still in the moonlight. It was an underexposed still-life.
Robby ate chips on the right side of his mouth and draped sweatshirts over his legs like miniature blankets.
He glanced up every now and then to look for his father’s confident eyes in the visor mirror. It was too dark to see the resemblance, but Robby looked anyway.
“I trust you’ve abandoned your local extinction idea,”
his father’s voice asked.
“Yeah,” Robby whispered in the dark. “It was just a working model. I told you that. Just a theory to test and use for decision-making until more evidence could be collected.”
“And what does your evidence tell you now?”
“Looks like something or someone malevolent has decided to take over,” Robby whispered.
“Thing? Or things?”
his father’s voice asked.