The Lost Gods (13 page)

“Fuck you. Fuckin' white
haired piece of shit.”

He spit a salty mixture of saliva, sand, and seawater onto its frozen, dead face. His whole body shook hard. He had to find new clothes fast.

The clouds were already growing dark and Jesse saw that he only had a little daylight left. He sneaked unseen through town and into the parking lot of the sporting goods store. The other screaming creatures were nowhere in sight. The glass panes of the store were intact. Jesse's searched his jacket. His hammer and screwdriver were still there. He smashed the glass with the hammer and entered the store. His heartbeat sped up when he noticed the kayaks mounted on the far wall. They sported their price tags. The kayak would have to wait. He needed new clothes.

At the east end of the store was the winter sports se
ction. Jesse found a waterproof jacket, ski pants, and thermal underwear that fit. He stripped off his wet, stinking clothes and changed.

There was a display case at the front of the store. He smashed the glass and grabbed a few knives, a compass, a waterproof watch, and a few LED flashlights and ba
tteries. He went upstairs and snatched a hiking bag off of the wall, as well as a camel pack and a life jacket. He searched the upstairs for guns, and was unsurprised to find that they were sold out. Jesse tried on hiking boots until he found ones that fit. Downstairs a revolving display caught his attention. He snatched a pair of aviator sunglasses.

Jesse removed one of the kayaks from a
hook on the wall. It was bright yellow and sleek. He set it down on the moldy carpet and grabbed a double-bladed oar. He secured the oar to the side of the kayak. There was a covered storage space in the center of the kayak, so he put his new bag in there and closed the lid. To his right was a small tent, still in the bag. He picked it up and put it in the kayak's storage. Jesse poked his head outside. No sign of reanimates. He went back into the store. As he did, Jesse saw some protein bars near the cash register. After filling his pockets with the bars, he hoisted the kayak onto his shoulder and left the shop. He crossed the town without issue and arrived at the waterfront.

It was full dark when he reached the small beach.
Thick clouds obscured the moon. All was quiet. Jesse found his gym bag undisturbed on the sand. He unzipped it and crammed all the food from inside into the new hiking bag. He could not fit his sleeping bag in the hiking bag, but there was some space inside the kayak behind where he would be sitting. Jesse decided that a wet sleeping bag was as good as no sleeping bag, so he left the bag on the beach.

He was parched and hungry. Jesse ripped open a pr
otein bar, and shoved the entire thing in his mouth and sucked down a can of sickeningly sweet mixed fruit. His teeth ached as the cold, sweet mixture found all his cavities.

Jesse embarked and paddled southeast to the Manette Bridge, leaving Silverdale to the reanimates. He paddled for hours, in the dead of night, until he reached a small waterfront restaurant next to the bridge.
Only a couple cans of diced Roma tomatoes remained in the ransacked building. Jesse ate one of the cans, and slept there for the night. He awoke a few hours later. Before he struck out into the unknown, he ate until he was full. It was the first time he had done so in months.

Jesse paddled through the cold waters of Puget Sound for hours. His shoulders, back, arms, and ass throbbed in pain. Despite the harsh circumstances, the sights were as breathtaking as always. The lush
landscape and scenery reminded him of the ferry rides he used to take into Seattle. Green islands surrounded him as the kayak cut through the water toward the Emerald City. Fog drifted above the mellow waves and icy wind bit his face.

He hugged the coastline, never venturing far from land, all along the peninsula. He paddled past cities and towns and rested only in remote areas. Jesse's sleep was usually undisturbed and deep. He felt as if he was relea
sing himself into the hands of fate every time he shut his eyes. He kayaked from Dyes Inlet, to Port Orchard Bay, to Appletree Cove, Mutiny Bay, and spent a night in Fort Casey State Park in his tent. He struck west toward Dungeness Bay, and eventually made it to Port Angeles.

Only once had a lone reanimate disturbed his sleep. It fell over on his tent and trapped Jesse inside. He en
ded it with a hard thrust of his new pocketknife, leaving a small hole in the tent. Unable to sleep further, Jesse freed himself from the tent and kayaked by flashlight.

A month passed before he rounded the tip of the peninsula and broke free into the Pacific coastline.

When winter hit, Jesse's beard was thick and wild. Atop his head was a matted mass of shoulder-length unruly hair. His muscles were lean and hard, and his body had grown more slender. His face was sunken and wrinkles began to form against his jutting bones. Soon the food ran out, so Jesse would hide his kayak a mile or so outside of a seaside town, and sneak in like a lone Viking hunting for plunder. He went hungry on occasion, as some towns were teeming with reanimates, but canned, dried, and vacuum-sealed food was abundant. When all was normal, Jesse had cautioned his friends against junk food and canned food. Now it was his staple.

His progress over the months was steady but slow. Hundreds of miles of ocean slid under the kayak's hull. He did not know exactly where he was, but his journey had simple directions: go south until he found her.

One evening, a storm came on fast and strong. Jesse drove inland. He needed to find immediate shelter. Thick fog obscured the details of the coastline. He rolled the dice and paddled hard toward land. He guided the kayak through a wide gap between two sandbars. The gap opened into a large bay. Hard wind made the waters turbulent. High waves threatened to drown him in the freezing waters. Tips of jagged rocks waited for his body to be dashed against them. Waves throttled his kayak and rain flew sideways in cutting sheets.

He dug deep and paddled his hardest. A violent wave broke on a nearby rock and drenched Jesse in briny se
awater. The force of the wave stripped the oar out of his weakening grip. Another wave struck the kayak and dumped him out. He swam out from under the vessel. He reached for the kayak, trying to grab onto something. His fingers slipped off the glossy surface. He reached out again and his right hand found the shock cord. He pulled himself up and clutched the seat with his other hand. He kicked his legs and pointed the aft of the vessel toward the beach. The waves did the rest.

The kayak smashed hard into a rock. Jesse lost his grip and a wave dragged him away from the boat. He turned toward the kayak, ready to swim hard, but before he could
start, a wave dumped him into the shallow waters next to the beach. He stood up, soaked and freezing, and scanned the area. He did not recognize his surroundings. Jesse powered through the waist-deep waters and picked up the kayak.

He tossed the broken, waterlogged kayak onto the beach. He was thankful that the hatch holding his equipment was intact and still closed. Jesse popped it open, grabbed his stuff, and left the cracked kayak on the beach.

Several hundred yards inland was a plain white building with no windows encircled by a battered-down chain-link fence. The front door dangled on one loose hinge. He checked the building for reanimates. It was clear. He stripped off his waterlogged clothes and stretched them out on an empty, warped particleboard table. Jesse locked himself inside one of the small, carpeted rooms and sprawled out naked on the floor. He passed out almost instantaneously.

…

When he awoke on the beach with the warm sun on his face, Jesse knew he was dreaming. It was another of her messages.

“This is where you must come,” she said. She was not in sight, but neither was the other woman.

“Why here?” he asked.

“Because this is where I am.”

“If you won't come to me, then why should I come to you?”

“Jesse, do you wish to save humanity or not?”

“The thought hadn't crossed my mind. I'm just one man. How can I save all of us?”

“One man can inspire millions.”

“What if I'm not that inspirational?”

“You inspired one man not to kill himself even though he faced certain death every day.”

“And he's dead now.”

“You'll all be dead, but that's the nature of your sp
ecies. You're born. You reproduce. You die. He died with dignity, and you were responsible for that. You steeled him. You propped him up when he was weak. You can do that for the others.”

“What others? All I see are walking corpses, and ev
eryone that trusted me is dead!”

“Every great leader tastes defeat. It is better for you to taste it now when failure is an option.”

“You're out of your fucking mind. I couldn't save Adam. I couldn't save a single person in a tiny town. How am I going to save the rest of humanity?”

“If you say it is hopeless, then it truly is. Jesse, know this: you have me. So come and gather me.”

“How? I barely made it this far?”

“Your kind are pack animals. Find your pack.”

“Where? Everyone is dead. The whole world is dead.”

“Not everyone,” she said. "Look for signs of people: signs of life.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but the scenery shifted to the dim interior of a small, rectangular room. Daylight was illuminating the thin gap between the bottom of the door and the dank carpet. Jesse rose and opened the door.

SEven

Eureka!

Jesse shouldered his pack and left the drab building with a persistent feeling that he was going to return to this same building alone and tired, only to head another several hundred miles south to San Diego. He was tired of the strange messages from that woman, real or imagined. The sea breeze wormed through the layers of his still damp clothing and sent him into an uncontrollable shiver. The storm had passed, leaving only blue skies and a blinding morning sun. He hoped the sun would dry his clothes. He would need new ones soon enough. The long journey had imbued his garments with the various unsavory smells of the sea.

He walked away from the building onto an unpaved frontage road. Jesse
trekked through the mud and puddles of rainwater. On his right was a highway and above it an overpass. A wild strip of bushes formed a natural barricade between the frontage road and the highway. With some effort, Jesse worked his way through the mass of branches and leaves onto the weed-filled grass shoulder beside the highway.

The highway was empty. He stood on the edge of the southbound lanes looking across it. She was south, but he had no idea where the nearest town to the south was. Before the storm, Jesse had spotted a coastal city and a small airport. He waited there for a few minutes wonde
ring whether it was better to risk being eaten by a bunch of reanimates in a small city, a bit larger than Silverdale, or to head south on the highway and die of exposure and starvation. His food had run out and his clothes were too damp to keep on if the weather stayed cold. The south felt like destiny. He knew he had to go that way, but he felt no immediacy to that desire. It was just a journey he had to resume eventually. Jesse stomach gurgled. His hunger trumped the salvation of humanity. He turned north and followed the highway.

As he headed north, Jesse ran scenarios through his head. He saw an army of starving reanimates tearing him limb from limb in front of the town hall of a quaint Northern California town. Another possibility was ca
nnibals stabbing him in the chest and cooking him on a giant spit, like a pig at a luau. Then there were the headhunters looking to prove themselves in the Post-Apocalyptic tribal patriarchy. Maybe there was a sex/death cult, or hippies, or no one at all.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he almost missed a large green sign that said:

Eureka 2

Arcata 11

Crescent City 85

“Eureka,” Jesse said to himself. His voice was coarse and weak from months of disuse. Since Adam had died, he had no one to talk to but himself. He would catch himself holding a one-sided conversation and cut hi
mself off midsentence. Am I going insane? He supposed he would never know the answer to that question, especially if he had already gone off the deep end. Maintaining his sanity did not seem as crucial as finding supplies for the long journey south.

As he walked, Jesse scanned the sides of the
highway. The sprawl of the small town crept up on the horizon. A large structure in the middle of a flat field east of the highway captured his attention. A tall grey building stood alone in the monotonous stretch of greenery. Jesse stopped and squinted. It was a stone structure of some kind. Jesse exited the freeway and crossed the field. Once he drew closer, he saw a wall surrounding a keep. It was a castle. There were shapes moving in the field near the castle as well. Jesse’s equipment jostled as he crossed the field. One of the shapes stopped moving, and Jesse heard a faint cry. It was people, and they were shouting at each other. His heart rate increased.

“Hey! I'm alive! I'm alive!” Jesse yelled as he broke i
nto a run: his eyes wide open and teeth bared in an awkward smile.

“I'm not a fucking zombie!”

“I'm a human!”

“Hey!”

He yelled as he ran. As he neared the castle, he could see people standing on top of the wall.

“Stop where you are!” a man yelled from the wall.

Jesse ignored the command and kept shouting and running. Something flew through the air in front of him. An arrow pierced the soft ground. Jesse slowed to halt and looked up at the people on the wall. The morning sun was shining over the top of the keep and Jesse could make out the outlines of four people.

“Whoa! Don't shoot,” Jesse yelled and raised his hands. “I'm not here to hurt anyone. I haven't seen any living people in months.”

“Who are you and where are you from?” said the man.

“My name's
Jesse and I'm from Washington.”

“Bullshit!” said another man's voice. He could hear them talking to each other, but he could not make out what they were saying.

“Can I come in?” asked Jesse. “I need to talk with you. I've come a long way and I need to go a long way further.”

“You can't stay here,” said the first man.

“Leave,” said another voice, a female one. “This is our home.”

Jesse choked up for a moment; a woman was alive. He had not seen or hea
rd a real woman since the beginning of the catastrophe.

“I just want to talk,” said Jesse. “Can someone come out here and talk to me? You can point arrows at me, or guns, or whatever. I just really need to talk with som
eone.”

Jesse set down his
pack, opened his coat, raised his arms up, and turned around to show them that he only had his hammer and screwdriver on him.

“See. I'm not here to hurt anyone and I'm not one of those things. I just want to talk.”

“Wait there,” said the first voice. “Don't move.”

He heard a gate unlatch and swing open. Three men came around the corner. Sunlight reflected off of their armor. They were all in leather and steel lamellar armor and carried medieval weaponry. Jesse smiled at the odd sight of them. The man in the middle was tall and broad and had a closed helmet, an ornate cuirass, and his legs and arms
covered in a thick fabric. Each scale of his polished armor glinted. The tall man unsheathed his broadsword. The other two men wore similar armor, but of a lesser quality. On his right was a rail-thin man holding a wooden bow with an arrow nocked. A battle-axe hung from his belt. The last man had an average build. He sported a flanged mace and plain shield.

“You guys mean business,” Jesse said.

“Yes, we do,” said the tall man. “What do you want?”

“I saw your castle from the freeway, and I came over,” said Jesse. “I haven't seen people in months.”

“Well, now that you've seen us. You can go on your way,” he said. The others remained quiet.

“I'm not here to
take your stuff or hurt you or anything like that,” said Jesse. He took a slow step forward. They dropped into fighting stances. Jesse raised his hands and stopped.

“Don't fucking move,” said the tall man. He raised his broadsword.

"I'm sorry,” said Jesse. He stepped backward a few feet. “I just want to ask a few questions.”

“Why? So you can go tell your friends and they can come and try to take our fort?” said the man with the shield. He and the one with the bow circled around.
They surrounded Jesse.

Tears welled up in Jesse's eyes and made them burn. He looked up at the sky and took in a quivering breath. He stood there in silence for a time.

“Listen, my friends are dead. My family is dead. My whole fucking town is dead. For all I know, my entire state is dead too. I'm alone. I barely made it out of the town alive, and I just kept going south until I got here.”

“Bullshit! You walked south from Washington? You'd have starved or gotten hypothermia or some shit,” said the man with the shield. He pointed his mace at the highway and said, “Get the fuck out of here.”

“It's not bullshit. I took a kayak from a sporting goods store and I went down the coastline,” said Jesse. “It took, I don't know how long, a couple of months probably.”

“I don't see a kayak,” said the large man. He let his broadsword lower to his side. The other men lowered their weapons in kind.

Jesse lowered his hands. His arms were tired from the weeks of rowing.

“It's broken. I left it on the beach. When the storm hit I had to come inland. I slept in some white building by the coastline a mile or so south of here.”

“None of this matters. I don't know why we're asking him this,” said the tall man. He shifted his gaze toward Jesse and pointed toward the highway as he spoke, “Just get out of here. We don't want you here.”

“Fine, I'll go, but I want to ask you a question first,” said Jesse and he grabbed the strap of his backpack. No one protested.

“Have you heard any strange screams?”

No one spoke for a moment.

“Is that a fucking threat?” asked the tall man. He raised his broadsword again.

“No, not from me anyways. My friend Adam was killed by these screaming things. I fought a couple of them too. They weren't like the others. They scream, and when they
do, it's like nothing else. It's loud and it's like something from a horror story. We ran into a few and managed to kill them, but there were more of them. They can fight and they're strong. They're dressed strange too.”

“I don't know anything about screaming ghouls,” said the tall man. “We can handle ourselves. Now get on your way before I forget my cordial nature.”

“Just consider it a heads-up then,” said Jesse.

The men did not respond. They remained in place as Jesse put on his pack and zipped up his jacket. Jesse held eye contact with the large man while he prepared hi
mself.

“If you change your mind about wanting to talk, I'll be in that small white building a few miles down 101 South. Just make sure to call out before you try to come in,” said Jesse. “I'm going to go into Eureka to find some food. Am I walking into a death trap?”

“Shouldn't be, we cleared it out a while back,” said the archer.

“OK. I hope you all change your mind,” said Jesse. He turned around and walked away. The archer and the one with the shield stepped aside to let him through. Jesse could hear them arguing with each other as he crossed the field.

The winter sun hung low in the sky, but it still dried Jesse's clothes. He walked stiff-legged into outskirts of Eureka. The grass on both sides of the highway had grown tall; the landscapers long dead. After a mile of walking, Jesse's legs loosened up a bit. Those months of sitting inside the kayak had weakened his legs, but his arms and shoulders were stronger than ever.

He scanned left and right, looking for signs of life or walking death. He saw neither. Instead, there was a v
ibrant ecosystem growing. A hundred billion dead humans were better for the environment than seven billion living ones. The trees and bushes had overtaken the landscape. The air was clear and smelled fresh. Cars, trucks, and motorcycles sat rusting on the deteriorating black belts of highway. The world of Jesse's ancestors was dead, but nature was flourishing in the absence of his countrymen. In a handful of months, the concepts of nation, patriotism, the American dream, and capitalism were all rendered meaningless. He was just a solitary human walking up a highway into uncertainty.

Jesse felt at ease with that reality albeit not with his circumstance. The burden of chasing happiness and economic security in the modern world had been lifted. It had been replaced by the burden of actual survival: ancient and pure. A task his human ancestors had shared for tens of thousands of years before the competition between individuals became paramount. As he walked up that
highway, he was free. Free from the stress of monotony. Free from the pressure to build a family or a business. Free from trying to keep his family, or Adam, alive in a world inhabited by constant danger. He was free to kill or be killed without judgment or constraint. He could open his arteries and die on the highway without failing anyone: except for her.

She was expecting him in San Diego that much he knew. His freedom vanished as quickly as it came. His mind tried to jump to another thought, for whenever he thought or dreamt about her a jolt of primal energy throbbed in his loins and heart. A mad rush of lust coursed through his veins and muscles. He felt like he was in heat and ready to charge into battle all at once: simultaneously virile and dangerous.

He shifted the straps on his shoulders, adjusted himself, and quickened his pace into Eureka proper.