Carl drew back his hand to start again, but I shook my head and he stopped. He shrugged, grabbed the girl by her hair and threw her to the floor. He planted a knee in the center of her back and dug some duct tape from his pack, taped her wrists together behind her back. She did not fight. She did not struggle. When Carl was done, he yanked her to her feet.
“Nash?” he said. “Request permission to piss all over this wench so she at least smells a little better.”
Morse took a picture of her.
“Request denied,” I said.
“All right,” I said to my troops. “Let’s take a five.”
“I’m all for ten,” Texas said.
“Yeah, I need to sit down a minute,” Mickey said, dropping into a booth and crossing her long bronze legs, making sure I saw her do it.
I did.
And Janie saw me looking, too.
We ate some MRE spaghetti and pork and beans. Nobody’d had breakfast and we were hungry. I sat there watching the girl and had a smoke, maybe feeling sorry for myself and the shell of the world at the same time. I was looking at the big picture and seeing me and my people, all the other scattered bands, as insects crawling over the rotting cadaver of some dead beast. I think, essentially, the analogy worked.
I closed my eyes for a moment and all I could see was that formless gray pestilence getting closer. The Medusa. I had the shakes. My heart was pounding. I had an overwhelming urge to vomit out everything I had bottled up inside.
“Okay,” I finally said. “Break’s over. We got shit to do.”
We all got to our feet and right away, I was feeling that same old bit again, that we were being watched. I just couldn’t shake it. It wasn’t The Shape and it wasn’t that girl, so then what?
I remember Mickey looking over at me, telling me with her eyes that she was feeling it, too. And then I heard a thudding report out in the streets and it took me almost a split second to realize it was the bark of a rifle.
A hole opened in the plate glass window.
We all dove down, except the girl and Morse. Jesus, stupid harmless Morse. Now he wasn’t a fashion photographer doing spreads for Newport News and Spiegels, no, now he was a combat photographer. For as those rounds kept chewing into the dusty windows and they fell apart like candy glass, shattering amongst us, Morse just stood there with his Nikon to his left eye, working his telephoto and f-stop, trying to get a good shot for Newsweek or Time.
I yelled for him to get down. I don’t remember what I said, but something about getting his fucking head down and then there was another report and a slug caught Morse right in the telephoto. Lucky shot or really good aim, I didn’t know. But I saw that camera fly apart and blood and meat blast out the back of Morse’s skull. He folded up and died without saying a word. I told everyone to shut the hell up. Somebody out there had a long-range rifle, maybe a. 30-30 or a. 30.06. I wanted them to get closer so I wouldn’t miss.
Silence.
No sound out in the streets and none in the cafe. After a few moments, I heard a couple voices calling out there. Sounded like kids, teen-agers maybe. We stayed put, drew those bastards in. And they came, muttering amongst themselves. I whispered for the others to just get ready and I rose up behind one of the booths so I could get a look. Sure, maybe a half-dozen kids and some older guy with a rifle. They didn’t bother sending out a scout, they came towards the cafe in a group.
“Get ready,” I whispered.
Mickey had her Browning, Texas had his Desert Eagle. 50. I had my Savage 30.06 and Carl had his AK.
I watched those peckerwoods converge on the diner. They were quite a crew. They were all long-haired and so filthy that you couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls. They carried pipes and axe handles and baseball bats. From the stains on them, I figured they knew how to use them, too. The older guy kept his rifle up, urging the others forward. As they made to climb through the shattered windows, we came up shooting. We drilled three of them before the others even knew what happened. The old guy started shooting and killed one of his ratpack with a wild shot, but did no other damage. We kept shooting and pretty soon they were all down. Even the old guy. Mickey had jacked a couple rounds into his right kneecap and he was done.
Carl hopped out there first, kicking his rifle away.
I followed with Mickey behind me. A couple of those teenagers were still alive, vomiting out blood into the street. They smelled so bad and were so dirty, even Janie wasn’t rushing to their rescue. They looked like Neolithic savages, filthy and bruised and pockmarked, their teeth rotting from their mouths. The air stank of gunpowder, violent death, and voided bowels…but I don’t think they were infected.
Carl was kicking the old guy when I got there.
I told him to stop. Mickey had done quite a job on his knee. It was blasted to mucilage, one of the bones sticking right through his pant leg like the end of a shattered Pepsi bottle.
“Filth! Trash! Fucking garbage!” he yelled at us. “Y’all ain’t nothing but trash and dirt and cunting animals, that’s all you is!”
“Shut the fuck up,” I told him.
He just stared at me, eyes simmering with hate. “Think you’re something all special, eh boy? You ain’t shit.” To prove that, he spit. “You…you and these animals…y’all don’t know what yer in for. No sir, y’all ain’t got a clue. But I know. Yes sir, I know.”
Texas Slim was kneeling next to him. “So why don’t you elaborate, kind sir.”
“Hell he say?” the old man wanted to know.
“He wants to know what we’re in for,” I said.
The old man laughed with a bitter, resentful sound. “Idiots…y’all don’t know, do you? Ha! This town ain’t gonna be nothing but a boneyard come tonight or tomorrow or the next day! It’s coming for all of us! Coming out of the east, yes sir! And there’s those here that want it to come! You see all them sick ones? They been pouring in for weeks! For weeks! Some have died, but others is hanging in just so they can see it! Look it in the face when it comes home to roost!”
“Look what in the face?” Mickey asked him.
The old man offered her a grin of brown, rotten teeth. “The Devil,” he said. “The Devil.”
Everyone bristled at this, but none of them were surprised. I had talked with them about it and they had not needed my words. For inside, they knew just as I knew.
Mickey came over and wiped some dirt from my cheek. You should have seen how she did it. She licked her fingertip and then drew it real slow over my skin.
Mickey wanted me and I suppose I wanted her again, too. I mean, really, how could a guy not want Mickey? She was a pin-up girl, a centerfold. She had the tits and the ass and the legs, was darkly pretty and seductive. You could just imagine how many guys had whacked off over pictures of her in magazines. Yeah, she was hot. So hot a picture of her in your pocket would have burned a hole in your pants and started a brushfire in your crotch.
But the truth was, she scared me.
She really did.
While Janie turned her head when I called up The Shape and it took its sacrifice, Mickey liked to watch. She really liked to watch. Death and violence got her off. Maybe it always had or maybe it was something the end of civilization had unlocked in her. I didn’t know, but I did know that she had some seriously scary psychosexual issues. She liked to watch The Shape take its offerings of meat and blood. She liked shooting people. She liked looking at the aftermath of bodies and shattered anatomies. And right then? Looking down at those dead teen- agers? She was getting off. If we weren’t there, she would probably have masturbated. Her nipples were standing hard against her t-shirt and I was willing to bet that if I slipped my hand down the front of her cut-offs, I could have slid two fingers into her without much trouble.
She was looking from the bodies to me, the hunger all over her. She looked like she wanted to take a bite out of something or have something take a bite out of her.
Janie was watching this, of course.
I caught her eyes once and quickly looked away. Something in them made me wither. I had slept with both girls now, Janie repeatedly.
Trust me, it was no notch on my belt. Because it was always there in the back of my mind, that dread
