It was after three in the morning when we finally pulled into Searsport.
“Now what?” Azile asked.
“I’d rather just ditch the damn truck, but we’re still ten miles out. However, if we get too close, they’ll hear us coming and if we stop then and don’t show up they’ll get suspicious. How many of those driver’s would recognize you?” I asked, the beginning of an idea forming in my head.
“Kong, Horatio, and maybe four or five others. Why?”
“I think we play the odds.”
“Whose odds? Vegas odds? Because those are never good.”
“So you have the potential of nine people knowing you including Tomas and Eliza, I only have two. When I tell you to pull over, do it, then I’ll drive.”
Azile’s expression was dubious at best.
“It’ll only be for a little way,” I assured her.
“Kong will recognize you. I mean he’ll recognize that you don’t belong, I mean,” Azile explained.
“That will have to be a problem we deal with later. First things first, there’s a dry cleaner at the center of town, pull over when I tell you.”
Between how ill-fitting and smelly my clothes were, Azile didn’t have a comment about my wanting to change.
The sound of the idling truck barely masked the plate glass shattering as I threw an ashtray stand through it. It had been months since police had come to any crime scene and still I looked around guiltily, old habits die hard.
“Hurry up!” Azile said through the window. “And no suits.”
“What are the odds they’ll have jeans here?” I asked her.
“At a dry cleaners? Just hurry,” she reiterated.
I stepped into the blackness of the store, the echoing engine vibrations were slightly disorienting. The long ‘ess’ of plastic wrapped clothes was directly in front of me as were every conceivable nightmare I could think of. I was convinced a horde of zombies laid in wait. I quickly moved behind the counter and scooped up a handful of clothes off the rack. I brushed anything that looked remotely like business wear off to the floor. I wasn’t left with much to choose from.
“Who dry cleans a skull cap?” I asked the non-existent attendant. Someone was still in my corner as I grabbed the small bag off the line. It covered my Eliza blocker perfectly and gave me sort of a World War 2 James Dean look. Hey it’s my mind I can live in any fantasy I want and this way I could get rid of the dreaded Yankees cap.
There was a long sleeved shirt that didn’t look too bad; it had the name of a bar on it, Rollie’s or something close to that. It was a little snug when I put it on, but nothing like my previous duds, and I knew this was clean. Now I needed some pants that didn’t look like I shopped in the boys’ department. This was proving a little more difficult. First off, most of the clothes were women’s, I thought I should still be alright, Maine is known for its stout women. They were of the power suit variety though and then I came across not what I wanted but what I could use.
“They still make Chino’s?” I asked holding the pants up to the near non-existent light. It was difficult to tell, but they looked brown from where I was standing. I turned so that I wasn’t facing Azile and quickly stripped out of the old and into the new.
I ran back to the truck much more comfortable than when I had departed. The brightness of the dome light took some time to adjust as I got back in my seat.
“Well you look good,” Azile laughed.
“My pants are purple,” I said horrified.
Azile was laughing, but she didn’t really let loose until she had me show her the back of my shirt.
“What?”
“It says you won a wet t-shirt contest.”
“Are you kidding me?” I pulled the shirt over my head, and dammit if she wasn’t right. For reasons known only to me, I looked at the care tag, ‘dry clean only’. “Why the fuck would they make a wet t-shirt, shirt, dry clean only?”
“You want to get different clothes?” she asked.
I did and I didn’t. Nothing happened and I didn’t hear anything in there, but that dry cleaners just didn’t feel right. Plus, being this close to my family, I just wanted to get there. “Let’s go,” I told Azile, taking one last look back.
“Last chance,” she told me.
I sat steadfast. When we took the final road before my father’s dirt road drive I had Azile pull over.
“It’s not far is it?” she asked as I ground the gears into drive, forcing rather than allowing. The truck was bucking like a bull with his balls cinched tight—although, if my balls were cinched I’d probably just be crying in a corner.
“You should hide,” I told her as I came up over a small rise. Trucks were lined up on both sides of the roadway, zombies were everywhere. Occasionally I would see a human, but for the most part, they were staying out of the way of the zombies. I eased the truck into the back of the last truck in the line. And by ‘easing’ I mean ‘tapped’ the bumper and by ‘tapped’ the bumper I mean did damage that would have entailed exchanging insurance papers in an earlier version of the world. The noise should not have gone unnoticed, but the sound of gunfire was prevalent. It didn’t stop the owner of the truck from coming out of his cab to investigate.
“Hey, you fucking nimrod, what is your problem?” he yelled as he hopped down, shying away as a couple of zombies checked him out, then moved on.
“I’m real sorry,” I told him.
“Oh, you will be, dipshit,” he said as he moved closer. “Get out here!” he shouted as he walked past the damage I had done to his rig.
“I’m trying…the seatbelt is stuck.”
“Let me help you with that!” he said angrily as he opened my door and hopped on the running board.
The light glinted off the silver of the chain he wore around his neck. I snatched it before he could react, then I pushed him with my hand on his face off of the truck and onto the pavement. Zombies swept in before he could sound the alarm. It was gruesome being this close to a person being eaten, the sounds of lips smacking and teeth cracking into bone. I hoped no one else would notice the zombie congregation as they knelt at the altar of flesh.
A few zombies looked up at me as I came out of the truck. I put the vial around my neck and they went back to the business of orally eviscerating my accident victim. I hastily walked to the back of my truck and moved the latch. Fritz was no longer clutching the cat, for better or worse, the vermin had decided it was better off on its own, I’m sure the stringy thing hadn’t tasted any good, but I won’t lie and tell you I wasn’t happy to see it gone.
“Oh thank God,” Fritz said. He was huddled up against the doors, nearly falling out as I opened them, snot, tears and the drool of the closest zombies covered him from head to toe. I ripped the chain from his neck quickly closing the door to his screams. The trailer rocked a little as Fritz became a late night snack.
I climbed back into the truck and handed Azile a necklace. “Take this,” I told her as I handed it into the back of the sleeper.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Do you really want to know?” I asked back. She accepted it without a response. “I’m going to see if I can find anything out.”
“What about me?”
“I’ll lock the doors. I should be right back, if I’m not, consider me lost.”
Her eyes got big at that statement.
“Azile, if that’s the case, unhitch the damn trailer and get out of here, just leave. If you do stay close enough to figure out what happened and you see Eliza leave, go west or north, just get out of here. If not, come back. Whoever is left standing will take you in.”
“Mike, I came here to kill Eliza. I’m not leaving until that’s done.”
“Okay, let me see what I can find out,” I told her as I got back out of the truck making sure to lock both sides
