Blaze of Glory

girl, or even that dead boy you've been sitting on.'

MacHenry reached out to grab her, but she jerked away. 'No! I won't shut up. Maybe these things will go away. Maybe they'll move on. Look around you. We've managed to fortify this place so that even the flies can't get in. I've lived in North Carolina for forty years and never once had a place without flies.' Her face red, a tear coursed down her cheek.

'And maybe they won't go away,' Buckley countered. 'Maybe they're moving through the streets, searching everywhere for food. Maybe they're hungry, starving even. Maybe, just maybe,' he said licking his lips and making sure everyone was looking at him, 'we're the only food left in the entire city and every maggie within twenty miles is heading in our direction.'

'You don't know that.' Her fear made her ugly.

'Just like you don't know that you'll remain safe in here. Sure it looks good now, but what will you do when you run out of food or water, which, eventually, will happen. What then?'

'We'll make that decision when we come to it,” Gert held fast.

'By then you may not be able to.' He lowered his voice. 'Listen Gert. I'm dying here. There's little chance I'm going to recover, and even less chance I'll make it all the way to the ocean, but I'm willing to help everyone if I can. Sure it would be easier to let Samuel kill me or have me walk out into the hall to be with Sally. Sometimes when the salt in my gut is trying to claw back up, and the maggies are snap-crackle-popping out of my skin I wished I was dead. But what I'm talking about is a chance to live. You do want to live, don't you?'

'Of course I want to live,' she scoffed. 'Don't treat me like a child.'

'How much of a chance are you going to have to live when I'm dead, Grandma begins screaming from the pain when she runs out of crack, and one of you gets hurt, or worse, infected? Right now we're as strong as we're going to get. Every second after this one we're getting weaker.'

'But I don't want-' She never finished, instead she covered her face, her hands hiding the sobs that racked her shoulders.

Buckley stepped across the line of salt and placed a hand on her shoulder. 'I know, Gert. You shouldn't have to lose him. Listen, I'll go alone. I think I can make it. It's only just down the street, anyway.'

MacHenry slid next to Gert and put his arms around her. She threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in the crux of his shoulder. Buckley backed away and allowed them what privacy they could get.

'I'm going with you,' Samuel said.

'What?'

'You heard me. I'm going too. You can't do this alone. For these folks to survive, you're going to need me.'

'Okay.' Buckley nodded, happy that he wasn't going by himself. 'Just so you stay in front where I can cover you.'

'I don't think so. You stay in front. I don't want you going crazy on me.'

'Fine, but I get the shotgun.”

'No problem,' Samuel grinned, as he held up both of Bennie's 9mm pistols. 'I get these muthas.'

CHAPTER 17

There was a time when Sissy had wanted to be a school teacher. Her mother, her father, even her grandmother had told her that she'd be great with kids. So it was her lot growing up she'd been just a little more responsible than everyone else. When the other girls went to dances, she'd stayed home reading. When classmates called her for the rare sleepover-invite, she'd always declined, remembering how her mother ascribed association with the other girls as a 'slippery slope to dangerous waters,' as if the girls were crocodiles and she were the wayward lamb limping naively along the shore.

Her life had already been mapped out for her. Four years at Converse College, the all girls' institution in Spartanburg, South Carolina and her mother's Alma Matter. After that it was on to graduate school at Vassar, then on to a fellowship at Biltmore Academy for Girls located west of Ashville in the Smokey Mountains. All Sissy Buchanan had to do was show up, be polite, smile nicely and her future was secured. Sure she'd never been on a date with a boy, and sure she'd never gone to the movie theater, but that was a small price to pay for such a perfect future.

At least that was the pill she'd been forced to swallow for eighteen years.

Live for tomorrow.

Don't do anything you'd regret.

Set the example.

Be responsible.

Everything she'd ever done had been in preparation for the life that had been planned for her. And she hated her mother for it. Sissy had spent the best years of her life coddled in the promises of a bright future only to discover that the world had no future. There was no Converse College. Vassar was an abattoir of post-graduates baking in the noonday sun. Nowhere were children preparing for private school hurriedly gulping orange juice and toast before they hopped in their daddy's Mercedes. Instead they were… she breathed deeply as she tried to block the image…. instead they were all dead.

Where did that leave her? She blushed at the thought. Instead of dwelling on what she'd never have, she voiced the other thing that had been haunting her.

'It feels weird.'

'Everything feels weird, honey,' Gert said. She'd just put a clean sweater around the old woman's shoulders. No sooner had she returned to her place on the couch, than Grandma Riggs had lit up a rock, the sound of the smoking like a piece of gravel in a vacuum cleaner.

'No, what I mean is, we used to trust Mr. Adamski and now he’s…he’s-'

'Dead,' Grandma Riggs finished.

'The walking dead,' Gert added. 'Like a zombie.'

'It must be scary to know you’re gonna die like that.'

'I don’t know, maybe it's comforting.'

What an odd thing to say. Sissy turned and looked at Gert to see if she was kidding, but the woman was as straight-faced as could be. 'What do you mean?'

'That's what we want, isn't it? To know? Death isn't so bad, I guess. What makes it so scary is that we don't know when it's going to happen. We don't like surprises.'

'And now he knows.'

'And he isn't scared.'

'I still feel bad for him.'

'Are you scared girl?' Grandma Riggs stared blindly at her through blackened opaque frames, the result unnerving.

'Isn’t everyone?' she murmured.

'I haven’t been afraid of death for years.'

'But the drugs…' Gert began before she decided she'd said too much.

Grandma Riggs held up her pipe and beamed. 'This shit? This is for the pain, and the fun.'

Sissy blushed and looked away.

Gert smiled, crossed her arms and stared at the wall. 'If I knew I was gonna die,' she said, 'I think I’d be selfish. Maybe get a box of chocolates, some music, maybe MacHenry and me…'

'Poor girl,' Grandma Riggs whispered.

Gert's mouth opened as if to ask what the old woman meant, but Sissy spoke first.

'I don’t know what I’d do. I mean, I know I may die, but I don’t want to.'

'Then don’t,' Gert snapped.

'If only it were that easy. All the Maggies out there, I just don’t think we'll make it.'

'There's always a chance? Don't lose hope.'

'It’s true,' Grandma Riggs smirked, stroking her pipe. 'Jesus designs the playing field and makes all the rules,