------------------------------------
“So, why were you
hitting your head on the wheel?” Phoebe
asked Mitch as they neared the outskirts of Clifton. The question seemingly bore no real interest
to her, merely appearing to be a child’s attempt to ease the silence from the
truck. She sat, indian style, dancing
the bear in her lap by tugging both of its fuzzy paws into the air.
Mitch checked the
rear view mirror. The dead had either
lost their scent or had found a more interesting one to ravage, either way,
they were gone, at least for now. He saw
only the string of bars on Main Street disappearing behind a low grade hill.
“We lost em!” Mitch said, glancing over at
Phoebe. He watched as her head bobbed
left and right, playing a tune in her head that the bear danced to. Must be catchy, Mitch thought.
Gravel ground underneath the passenger side front tire, vibrating the truck as it skidded
along the shoulder.
Mitch hurried his
eyes back to the road and corrected the truck back to the pavement.
“Eyes on the road, please,” Phoebe said, smiling, focusing on and setting the bear
upright in her lap.
Mitch smiled and
squinted his brow.
“Your dad taught you a lot about driving, huh?”
“No,” she said. “Well, yeah, but no. This one time, he let me drive on his lap and it was so fun!” Phoebe said, twisting
her whole body to face him, keeping her legs criss-crossed. "He told me," she stopped, losing her nerve, "eyes on the road, sprout. Keep 'em always forward, always looking, always watching, and you'll do alright."
Mitch looked over to
her, catching her stare, then looked back at the road.
“I don’t know what
you’re talking about.” Mitch said,
utterly bewildered.
Phoebe reached up and patted Mitch's forehead. Her fingers came away salty
with sweat and she rubbed it on her jeans.
“I asked you something, Mitch. Two times. Why were you hitting your head?”
“I didn’t hear you
the first time.” Mitch lied. Who is this girl, Mitch asked himself
again. His eyes danced around the road,
hoping she would leave it at that.
“Ok,” she said, turning herself back to face
forward. “But I know you heard me that
time. You don’t wanna talk about it,
that’s fine, but...” she crossed her arms,
squeezing the bear tight.
Mitch steered the
truck left, following the bend of the road.
They sped along the southernmost tip of Clifton, which was made up of
dozens of fenced in backyards that ran east and west.
“You have to go faster!” Phoebe demanded, perching up onto
her knees, gripping the door handle with her tiny fingers. She bit down on her lower lip and
scanned the countryside. “I’m not gonna
make it. Pull over. I can pee in the ditch.”
“You’re not peeing in
a ditch! We don’t know how many of them
could be out there. They could snatch
you up when you’re wiping. We’re almost
there, I promise. Just hang on a few
more minutes. Okay?”
“We don’t know how
many are at the gas station either.
Could be a big Ole death trap!” Phoebe said. "I...have...to...pee!"
“I’m not pulling
over. Forget it, it ain’t happenin.”
On his right, the gas
station slowly came into view. It sat by
itself, a hop away from highway 57, surrounded on three sides by golden
cornfields aching to be harvested. Its
red roof gleamed darker in the dying sunlight.
The front of it, made up entirely of windows with two glass doors smack
dab in the center, reflected creamy orange light in thick square blotches. The gas pumps lined the front drive, covered in grime and muck. Mitch caught a whiff of the corn stalks, an earthy sun-baked sweetness.
“Told you. There it is,” Mitch pointed.
“You think they still
have ice cream? I want a dilly bar!”
Mitch’s stomach
bubbled with hunger.
“Oh! You know what I could really toss back? A peanut butter blizzard!”
“My dad used to bring
me out here after my soccer games, even if we lost. He said I deserved it for just getting out on
the green. Unless we won! Then he would get me a dilly bar for every
goal I scored.”
“What’s the most you
ever got?”
“Three.”
“Three whole dilly
bars! Wow!” Mitch said in innocent admiration. “That’s pretty impressive.”
“Yeah. We didn’t win that game, though. But I had ice cream coming out of my ears by
bed-time,” she said with a fading
smile, “with a heck of a tummy ache. Mom wasn’t happy about that but dad, he read
me an extra bed-time story until I fell asleep.”
Phoebe all of a
sudden became very quiet.
Mitch looked over at
her. She stared at the gas station, lost
in the memories with her father. He
figured he should say something.
“You miss him, huh?”
Phoebe nodded her
head in agreement, keeping her focus on the gas station.
“Do you miss your
dad, Mitch?”
His father’s last
phone call rang in Mitch’s mind. Don't be dumb, Mitch. Take care of your
mother.
Sorry, dad,
Mitch apologized in his head. I hope
you’re up in heaven together. I’ll
prolly be there soon.
He wiped away a
single tear swelling in his eye.
“He never took me to
get ice cream or anything like that. My
mom was always the one that uh…”
A laugh of
realization escaped from his gut. Why
did I even fucking leave her alone, after everything she’d done for me.
“She always did the
fun stuff with me. I remember her being
the one to always take me to the movies, or to fourth of July fireworks. She used to clean houses when the family was
a little tight on money. Sometimes she’d
let me come with, prolly cuz I was too young to be home alone.”
Mitch turned the
truck into the gas station’s entrance.
He circled around the parking lot and the gas pumps, checking to see if
any of the dead would spring from the shadows and attack. If so, he’d take the truck out and away,
maybe even let Phoebe pee down the road.
As they circled,
Mitch said, “Anyways, she let me watch movies on their big screen TV’s, play
with their children’s toys. One time,
she even let me take one home. I didn’t
know it back then, but that’s stealing,” Mitch laughed. "My mom let me steal!"
He circled the parking
lot three times, ready to slam the gas if a sloppy faced zombie came,
but none did.
Through the windows
of the gas station, it looked empty. No
dark shadows passed, darting about from within.
The ceiling lights inside were off, but the soda and water coolers still
buzzed with fluorescent bulbs.
Mitch parked the
truck along the front door.
“My dad never took me
to work with him. Not once. He loved me, I know he did, but in a
different way I guess. Musta thought all
that stuff was in mom’s job description.
I miss him, just not the way you miss your dad.”
He missed him mom,
terribly, though that was only just an hour ago. He squeezed the steering wheel with his
palms, fingers curling around it harder.
“Can I go pee
now?” Phoebe asked, bouncing up and down
in her seat.
Mitch let the
thoughts of his mother drift away as he released the steering wheel.
“Absolutely.”
Phoebe pulled on the
door’s handle and pushed with her shoulder, opening it a bit.
“Listen,” Mitch said, reaching out to halt her
dismount. “If I say run, you book it
back to the truck and lock the doors.
Got it?” he said, lowering his
head and stretching up his eyebrows.
“Got it, Mitch!” she said, scurrying out of the truck, teddy
bear in hand. Her tone was one of
compliance and not understanding, like most children who have something on
their mind.
“You better get
it!” Mitch said, exiting the truck and
rounding the front to meet her at the gas station’s double doors. The cool evening air licked at Mitch’s
cheeks. It carried with it the same
tangy spice of coming rain Mitch sniffed earlier. He looked up to the sky. The rolling purple thunderheads were closer,
lightning bolts dancing and flickering within their bellies.
He tugged the 9mm
from his waistband and flicked off the safety, giving the gun a once over. The weight felt good in his hands. It helped ease the tiny shred of fear
percolating in the back of his head.
The front door, in
need of a good oiling, groaned as Mitch pushed it open, holding the gun out in
front. The droning of the air
conditioner and the coolers drowned out their footsteps and panted breathing.
The building was
mostly dark against the setting sun.
Soft white light flickered, humming from the drink coolers on the far wall,
opposite Mitch and Phoebe. In the center
sat a horse shoe shaped counter, lined with candy and lighter displays, topped
with registers and a cigarette case, mostly empty.
“Smells clean,” Mitch smiled, surprised.
Phoebe danced in
place, holding her stomach.
“Bathrooms over
there,” Mitch pointed, past the
register counter, in the corner where the hall branched off.
She was on the verge
of exploding. Phoebe sprinted for the
hallway, disappearing around its corner.
“Wait for me!” Mitch shouted. He dipped his head low and looked around.
He jogged to the
hallway and peeked down at the bathrooms.
The women’s door slid shut, Phoebe already through. He dug his free hand into his pant’s pocket
and decided to wait, leave her in some privacy.
If the dead were in here, they would’ve already shown themselves.
It was surreal, being
in there. He felt that at any moment,
the clerk would emerge from the backroom, boxes of candy bars ready to be
stocked in hand.
The toilet flushed
inside the women’s restroom after a quiet moment, filling the empty hall with whooshing echoes. He felt a smile coming on, having missed the
sound of a flushing toilet. Strange.
Phoebe shrieked,
pushed open the restroom door, and rammed into Mitch’s side, clinging to it like
a rubber tourniquet, sobbing. Maybe they
wouldn’t have shown themselves. Somehow,
he couldn’t explain it, they seemed smarter than movies and books portrayed
them. They’d shown they could problem
solve. A shudder ran down Mitch’s spine,
letting go the repercussions of such a thought.
He aimed the 9mm at
the bathroom door, shifting his feet to steady his weight. Any second, he thought, it’ll burst through,
mouth frothy with blood and teeth ready to rip into flesh, rend muscle from
bone. Squinting his eyes, he prepared
for the wall of rotted stenches to blast into his face. But it didn’t.
A minute went by,
then another. His pits were soaked,
beads of sweat dribbling down his sides.
He took one hand from
the gun and clutched her back.
“It’s ok.”
Mitch peeled his eyes
from the bathroom door, glancing down at Phoebe. Her face was flush, eyes sparkling with
tears.
“What happened?” he asked.
Phoebe sniffled and
said, “I was washing my hands and…” she
sniffled again. “A spider crawled down
the mirror.”
Mitch let his nerves
unwind and slowed his breathing.
“A spider? That’s why you screamed?” Mitch asked.
She rubbed her eyes
with her hands and nodded. Her face had
returned to its peach rouge, eyes still glossy but drying.
He crouched down
beside her, face level.
“If that spider comes
out here, I’ll squish it!” Mitch said, scrunching
in his eyes and nose. Phoebe smiled and
nodded again. “I hate spiders too. They’re gross and crawly, and hairy.”
“Ok!” she said.
“Feel better now?”
Phoebe smiled wider.
“You hungry?” Mitch asked, standing up and lending her his
hand to grasp.
Phoebe took his hand
and squeezed, pulling him from the hall and down an aisle.
“Guess that’s a
yes.”
Mitch’s stomach
gurgled, crying for a decent meal, and as he looked around he knew he was in
the wrong place for that.
Displays were packed
with chips, beef jerky, and salsas.
Others were stuffed with candy bars and trail mixes. It would satisfy his sweet tooth, if he had
one. He craved a turkey loaf, slow
roasted and drowning in chicken gravy, surrounded by mounds of mashed potatoes
spewing even more gravy from their summits.
To smooth it down, a tall glass of chocolate milk, dark brown with extra
sweet syrup lining the bottom.
Instead, he sighed,
grabbing a red handbasket with black folding handles and began slinging in
packets of wrapped sausage sticks and spicy cheese puffs.
Together, they went
up and down each aisle, throwing in whatever they thought would soothe their
stomachs. Piles of bags of chips
crinkled, growing higher and higher in Mitch’s basket.
Phoebe wildly grabbed
from boxes and peg hooks, dashing by anything that was a health bar or had
nuts in it.
Mitch shook his head
with a smile from cheek to cheek when he realized it. This was what kids her age dreamed
about. She was a kid in a candy store,
and he wasn’t parent enough to tell her when enough was enough. So, she went on, and even when the basket
overflowed with junk, she made space for more still.
He handed her the
basket, letting go of it when he was sure she could bear the weight, and told
her to hide behind the register counter, out of sight of the windows.
“I’ll be back in a
sec,” he said. “Just eat and try to be
quiet. Okay?”
She didn’t
answer. Phoebe had already torn open a
bag of chips and began shoveling ruffled and fried potatoes into her cheeks, only
chewing when there wasn’t any room left in her cheeks. Mitch wondered how long she’d been hiding in
the truck, how long it’d been since she’d eaten.
He watched her eating
for a moment as the sun finally fell beyond the horizon, leaving them in nothing
but the fluorescent light from the coolers.
Mitch walked, gun on point, into the backroom. The
generators pumping power and cool air into the coolers hummed like a choir of
burly men, droning on endlessly.
The refreshing air
was welcomed, that’s for sure, but the light would attract the dead if they ever
caught wind of it. He didn’t have enough
bullets, and he thought about scrounging around for some, but he didn’t think
it was that kind of gas station. You’d
have to go great a deal farther south to find one like that.
He squinted in the
darkness, searching for a breaker box.
In the dark, he made out a cleaning station with hoses dangling like
limp snakes, a deep industrial sink, deep enough to bathe in, with mildewy buildup around the rim, and to his right an office through another doorway.
His foot nudged loose
a broom stick leaning against the wall as he stepped forward, thwacking it
against the gritty floor.
Mitch shouted,
blindly backing into the wall behind him, clutching his chest as it heaved with
fright. The nudge was so soft, so
subtle, he didn’t know he did it.
Shit, Mitch! You gotta take it down a notch.
He shoved the cold
steeled barrel of the 9mm, down to the hand grip, into the back of his pants,
having almost fired a shot on accident.
“You’re good,
Mitch. Just take it easy,” he said, controlling his breathing.
Once he’d calmed
himself down, he crept past the office’s doorway. A single window on the left dimmed the room
with a milky moonlit glow. The silvery,
glossy sheen of the breaker box glimmered on the wall in front of him. A desk and filing cabinet clung to the wall,
beneath the window. The room was tiny,
like a bigger than average closet that’d been converted to an office.
Mitch crossed the
room, ramming the meat of his thigh against the edge of the desk and stumbled
to the grey box.
“Son of a
bitch!” he grumbled. His thigh throbbed as the muscles became
knotted under his flesh. He rubbed it
for a moment, spreading the pain, and started with the box. The latch came free with a metal clink,
screeching while Mitch opened it fully.
He wished he brought
a flashlight, but in the seeping moonlight he saw there were no labels next to
any of the black switches, so it didn’t matter.
He’d have to do this blind, and hope, and pray he didn’t turn on any of
the immensely bright pump lights. On a
clear night, the white glare they cast could be spotted from at least three miles
away.
His finger flowed
over the two rows of switches, strumming like a guitar while he contemplated
which one to start with. It stopped in
the middle of the second row.
Mitch took a deep
breath and clenched his eyes shut tight.
He opened them a sliver and flipped the switch to the right.
Please, God. Don’t let the sign outside burst to life.
The lights above his
head and in the backroom flickered to life with tiny clicks. Static filled the room, white noise
scratching the air from a portable radio on the desk beside him.
“God!” Mitch squealed, grasping his ears to shut out
the noise. Then he flipped the switch
back to the left, coating the room in silence and dark again.
He went down two
switches and snapped that one alive.
The ground around the
window outside went white, glistening the grass blades from a light source
above the building, or from the other side.
The intense brightness spanned the back lawn, spreading up and along the
first row of towering corn stalks bordering the far side.
The pumps!
He saw it in his head, every zombie in a three
mile radius, dropping the arm or the leg they were chewing on, turning toward
the bright glow hanging in the distance.
Mitch turned off the
switch then started flipping through the rest, deciding to finish it quick,
like a band-aid.
Then it hit him. The cooler was already running. The switch would already be on. He thumbed through the others for no
reason.
He pinpointed the
only one that was switched in the on position, and turned it off while shaking
his head, pissed at himself.
The droning of the
generators slowed to a grinding halt, and almost instantly the cool breeze
died, giving way to a humid cloud sweeping through the backroom and office.
Phoebe sat amidst a
crowd of empty chip bags and peeled candy wrappers. Her fingers were powdery with dry cheddar
flakes, chocolate streaks circled her lips like a terrible attempt at putting
on lipstick. She leaned against the
counter behind her, patting her belly.
“Why did you turn
that off?” she asked, sitting herself
forward.
Mitch grabbed a candy
bar from the basket and squatted beside her.
“You know how moths
are attracted to light?” he asked,
ripping open his candy bar.
Phoebe cocked her
head to the right and squished in her nose.
Mitch recognized it as her thinking face.
“Well they are,” he said, taking a bite and chewing. “It’s a mating thing.” A tiny peanut crumb launched from his mouth
from talking with his mouth full.
“Mating?” Phoebe asked.
He’d clearly lost
her.
“Well if the light’s
on, the gooey men will think we’re here, and we don’t want that. So, it’s best we just leave it off.”
“Then why did you
turn on the big light, then turn it back off?”
“That was an
accident. Didn’t mean to do that
one. Let’s just hope no one saw it, cuz
we’d need more than just this little thing,” Mitch said, pulling out the gun from behind and setting it on the floor
beside him. He finished off the candy
bar and tossed the wrapper into Phoebe’s leftovers.
Phoebe rested her
head in her hand and yawned.
“You look
tired,” Mitch pointed out, yawning
himself.
“So do you.”
Mitch thought about
the last two days, the butcher, his mom.
He reminded himself that he’d smashed his grandmother’s mirror into
mother’s head. When they locked eyes, as
Mitch drove by the house, he stared into something that was no longer his
mother. He vaguely remembered it smiling
at him, whatever it was inside his mother’s body.
A shiver shimmied
through his spine, sending goosebumps pimpling his neck and arms.
Mom…
He sifted his hands
through the basket, washing his hand through the crinkling chip bags, and
snatched out another candy bar. Tears
began swelling in his eyes. He looked at
Phoebe, checking to see if she’d catch the watery buildup.
She lay on her side,
using her stuffed animal as a pillow, fast asleep. He wondered what she’d been through, where
her parents were, if they were alive or walking dead.
What am I supposed
to do, mom? Take care of this girl? I thought we help others by helping
ourselves. That’s what you said.
“That’s what you
said,” Mitch whispered to himself. He wiped away a trickling tear from his cheek
with his thumb and tore open the candy bar.
He thought about
leaving, getting in the truck and just driving.
To where? He didn’t know. He supposed it would be the same anywhere. Hiding, running, dying. It didn’t make a difference. It boiled down to where you wanted to die,
where you chose to give up.
He couldn’t leave
her. Even in this world, the world they
found themselves in where rules didn’t matter, where even if you were dead you
could still stumble around feeding off of the living. It was wrong, leaving her.
If anything, this
little girl that had hidden in the back of Rickerson’s truck for God knows how
long, she gave him a reason to procrastinate, to leave the decision up in the
air about where he wanted to die. He wasn’t
ready to answer that question, and he was certain it hadn’t even crossed this
little girl’s mind.
Mitch didn’t feel tired as
he munched on a delicious combination of caramel and chocolate, but his eyes
felt like dumbbells. He didn’t even
realize he’d drifted to sleep until he heard metal clattering together outside.
Mitch awoke with a
gasp, scrambling for the gun on the floor at his side, feeling like he’d only
closed his eyes for a second. He’d
almost fired off a frenzied shot when he realized the hollow clanging was
coming from outside.
He shuffled to his knees
and pulled himself up to peek over the register counter. What he saw through the front windows
shoveled a lump into his throat. He
couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The
tears were back, and with full force, readying themselves to stream down his
cheeks.His rotted mother, stringy hair covering the sides of her putrid face, stood beside a gas pump, head cocked and smiling.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join us again next Saturday for the next episode in Mitch's Story - Episode 8 - "Home on the Range"
No comments:
Post a Comment