Judgment Day: Part 15

Molly had twisted in her seat and was staring at him. “You okay?”

“We can’t trust anyone,” he said hollowly, “If we find them, we can’t trust them. Every man for himself…”

Molly rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the rain-swept parking lot, “Well, that’s the way it was yesterday, Daryl. Only now you can’t call the cops.”

She was getting her wits back while he was losing his. He continued loading the van. Getting away and going underground as soon as possible was the best thing to do between madness and monsters. Wait out the season and see what happened. There was a lot of country to get lost in and, when the world got back on its feet, it would come to him. But for the next few weeks, everyone would be a monster in one way or another. The self-absorbed, enraged mentality of the daily commuter wasn’t an artificial mindset. Daryl was convinced of that. It was a part of what people were, at the core. He was saying as much to Molly as he loaded the van and, when everything was done, she was watching him again.

“You’re falling apart?” she asked.

He clicked his tongue, wondering about the answer to that question.

“I’m with you, Daryl. But you’re being paranoid.”

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” he replied, and old joke, but neither of them smiled.

Molly turned around again as he slid the door closed. He climbed back into the van.

“Want to pump some free gas?”

“Free’s always good,” she replied. “So if this is just a localized thing, are we going to get arrested for looting?”

He turned towards her, then shrugged and tried to smile. “I’m sure they’ll understand our motivations.”

“So the end of the world, and we’re going shopping.” She rolled down her window and gazed out at the row of cars frozen in their last rush hour as Daryl weaved his way towards the gas station at the end of the strip mall.

“No matter what we find today, we’re still clearing out of the city before dusk.” He said distantly.

She watched him drive, her eyes hot on his skin, “Crazy to say, but it sure seems like you’re relishing this.”

“You’re wrong.” Daryl opened the door and jumped outside. He leaned on the seat and looked over at her, “You ever read The Chocolate War?”

“No,”

“We’ll have to pick up a copy. A great study on what I call ‘grey lives’. People lost in the routine. I tell you, Molly, I feel like I was peering through some murky film up until last night. I’ve been waking up tired for years…” he turned away and stared at the gas station for a moment. “I wouldn’t say I’m relishing this, though I do feel awake. The first day of the rest of our lives, huh? I don’t expect you to come with me –”

“To get gas?”

“No, to the country. Tonight.”

“What the hell else am I gonna do?” She sounded angry, then she nodded. “What now?”

“Fill up the van. Check out the station for any containers that you can fill up with gas. Just in case things aren’t as easy from here on out.”

“Easy?”

“I’m going to run across the street to that Radio Shack. Get us a CB.” Next door to the Radio Shack, across the quiet street, was a pawn shop. Daryl had fired a gun once during college, on a weekend in the wilderness with an old friend. Where was that old friend now? So many people that he hadn’t spoken to since he had graduated. Year in and year out living the path of life and quietly losing touch with everyone and everything.

Molly climbed out of the van and opened the gas tank. She glanced at him and, biting his lower lip, he stalked off into the street towards the line of run-down stores.

Nobody was broadcasting on the regular radio, except for the EBS tone. But that was automatic. If people were chattering, they’d probably be on the CB or shortwave. He didn’t know much about it, but it would be easy to use, easy to pick up off the store shelf. He didn’t yet know if he would reply, or broadcast a message, but if there was some chatter they might be able to get news and a better grip on the range of the problem…or even what had happened. They had come out of a dark tunnel into this world, other survivors may have been topside, may have seen what had done this. Perhaps they were quarantined or something. Perhaps a large group of people had already headed to the country and were on top of the situation.

In Radio Shack, he loaded a shopping cart with equipment, then rolled it through the door and down the sidewalk to the pawnshop. Across the street, Molly was filling red containers with gas. He waved at her and she stood up, the gas nozzle in her hands, just watching. Everything seemed calm. The abandoned cars along the road, headlights still shining through the March rain, made it feel like he was walking through a picture. In the awkward silence and death, it was strange to see Molly working around the gas pumps. Her movements seemed alien, irreverent. The sound of his cart on the concrete set his teeth on edge. It was as if the two of them were bounding, shouting, through a church.

Inside the pawnshop, a body stood guard. A fat man, eyes dry and staring in death, was sitting beside the door, his head bent forward, a puddle of vomit covering his lap. Daryl paused, fearing that the body would rise at any moment and pull a zombie one-two on him. Then he set the cart so it wouldn’t roll away and walked past the corpse, watching it warily, and headed to the main counter. A rustling sound in the corner brought a scream to his throat and he leapt onto the counter, only to watch an old alley cat rush across the floor and out past the corpse. He blinked, took a shuddering breath, and looked down at the glass counter that he was sitting on. Among several knives, a nasty looking hunting rifle and a cop-looking revolver lay out on display. He lowered himself behind the counter and kicked in the lock, looking up at the corpse in the doorway when the doors to the glass case cracked and shattered.

“Sorry, man,” he muttered. Part of him waited for a response. Anything. Absolution for the theft from a benevolent ghost, an angry roar building in a scratchy throat, a bloody, vomit-stained hand twitching. Would any of those things be more welcome than a corpse? He shook his head. Yes, they probably would be. The death of the city was too much, a mind-blowing impossibility. It was beyond imagination, even though he’d seen it in movies, read about it in books, dreamed about it after ingesting those stories. The real thing was too damn quiet, and none of these people deserved to lay dead in their doorways – unburied, no one left to mourn them.

He found some ammo, but no other guns. Of course, he doubted he could use either of these guns effectively. The revolver would be easy enough, point and shoot, but the rifle looked a little complicated. Had he even grabbed the right ammo? But a runner didn’t need a gun. He’d hit his house, a final tour of the old life, if only to set his mind at ease and look at the bodies of his old friends, then he’d hit the interstate and head north. Washington and her suburbs were surrounded by country. Cows and farmhouses and lonely land were only about an hour up the highway. By dusk, even if the roads were difficult to navigate, they could be in West Virginia, or the countryside of Pennsylvania, or just hunkered down at an old house in western Maryland.

He slipped past the corpse, grabbed the cart and pushed it clattering along in front of him towards Molly and the van. She was leaning against the back doors, arms crossed, watching him until he pulled up alongside her. Then her eyes moved down to the rifle on top of the cart. She stepped back from its barrel.

“I’ve had my fill of hand to hand combat with super-monsters, thank you.” He pushed the cart around to the side door and put the guns in behind the passenger seat. “These are better than a piece of pipe.”

Her silence was unnerving. He took the revolver and loaded it with the bullets he had found. Then he pointed the gun back towards the monolithic parking garage and squinted, like he’d seen a thousand actors do in a thousand movies.

“Do you know how to use them?”

“I know how to load it.” He hefted the gun in his hands.

“It’s unloading it that counts, I think.”

“That’s the easy part, right?”

She nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Are we ready to hit the road?”

Molly threw a mock salute, a brief smile playing across her lips, but it quickly collapsed into a frown. Daryl hesitated, not sure if he should say something, wanting to touch her. Instead he clenched his jaw and climbed into the van with the CB kit in his lap. The antenna trailed up through the window and he snicked it tight against the metal roof, the CB itself was easy to assemble. Plugging into the cigarette lighter, it popped to life when he turned it on and spun the dial, but there was nothing to listen to.