wound.
Chapter 24
The pair walked slowly, watchfully down the street lined with ruined and burnt shops and offices. To Ethan, most of the town was like a large strip mall that stuttered. There were no high-rise buildings, at least none taller than the four-story courthouse, and all of the shops were one or two floors, some with apartments and others with offices. It was more like a concentration of suburbia in the middle of wilderness and farms than a real town.
Shannon had no particular opinion about Black Water; it was a town like many others. Because she seemed instinctively to know how to get around the place, she must have lived here at one point…and for some time. She was not the type of person to go searching every street and road near her home, but discovered them as needed and when time allowed. Shannon reasoned she must have lived here for at least a couple of years.
The road curved a bit and then sloped downward and into the parking lot of some small store. Before it stood a large neon sign slowing rotating, which read ‘Sir Speedy Convenience, the store with hours you keep…’ on both sides. The obligatory Bud and Bud Light ads were stuck to the inside windows surrounded by the fleeting, failing hopes of just about every cigarette manufacturer’s advertising budget. The rest of the building remained hidden by the structures on the side of the street.
“That’s the local drug store?” Ethan asked, pointing down the hill from inside his jumper pockets.
“Yeah.”
“And you remembered it was here but not where you live?”
“Yeah.”
“That must bug you out.”
“Yeah.”
Shannon sounded as if she were becoming annoyed, so Ethan fell quiet.
They shuffled on in silence, watching the Sir Speedy Convenience blossom into a full-fledge grocery store from behind the buildings. It had a large but mostly empty parking lot. The vehicles that were there had suffered extensive vandalism, some were even turned over. The rest had not a single solid window or tire filled with air. They were hollowed metal behemoths who had lost a battle with their creators.
Shannon looked at the somewhat lanky asylum escapee next to her. He was attractive enough—honest looking in his face and eyes—but it was a hospital after all. “So…why where you in that hospital?” she asked gently.
Ethan looked at her a moment, “I saw some things that they didn’t believe, and they think I killed my girlfriend,” he said flatly.
A bolt of fear shot through Shannon before she reasoned herself to a fragile calm. She had just blasted a nerd in the streets, like in a movie but with much more gore. “Did you?” She wished immediately she could take that back, but Ethan answered quickly enough for her.
“No. It was a monster. I tried to kill the monster.”
“I see, and…what did this monster look like?”
“Which one? There were three that I counted…well then there was Madison, so four—but others were in that cave, also.”
“Cave?”
Ethan stopped at the very edge of the parking lot, his eyes locked on a number of heads hanging from the store’s facade. Driven into the mouth of each was some enormous nail, more like a railroad spike and all of them were upside down, their hair hanging limp and scabby. “This is insane, really…”
Shannon’s eye locked on one of the faces, one that she recognized even though it was hanging inverted. She could not remember who it was. She knew only that this woman was important to her, someone who had played a major role in her life, but someone she just could not remember. Nevertheless, the sight of her head hanging on a storefront filled Shannon with a smothering sorrow. “I know her…” she said softly as she pointed on the third heard from the left.
“Who is it?” Ethan asked before considering.
“I don’t know,” Shannon replied, as a tear broke free of her eye, “but I know she was important to me.”
“Let’s just get in there and get what we need, alright?”
“Yeah,” Shannon said in a sad voice.
They walked beneath the heads and into the store. The lights still worked in many isles, and the stock was for the most part still on the shelves. The problem that faced them now was that everything seemed to be aged by years. The strange aging that had been going on outside made him wonder if the food might no longer be edible.
“Alright, I’m going to go look for food. You head over to the first aid stuff and get what you need to take care of yourself. We will meet back here in a few minutes,” Ethan offered.
“I don’t know what I need,” Shannon whispered, still fighting with the unremembered head nailed to the front of the store.
“Ah, well, where are you hurt? Is it just the face?”
“No, they raped me.”
“And you hurt…down there?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
She looked like a lost child, a puppy too brutally beaten to come when his master called. “Do you have any bleeding?”
“I don’t think so, not sure though…”
Ethan’s head swam. He had never had to deal with something like this, even as a volunteer medic. In rape cases, they regarded the groin as evidence unless the patient’s life was threatened. He knew the mechanics, though: bleeding, infection, bandaging. It would have to do.
“Do you want me to take a look?”
“No, Ethan. I got that part,” she shot at him dryly.
“Fine, you will need some panty liners and two douches, one vinegar and the other saline. Are you menstruating?”
“No.”
“Then that should do. You might want to take some Tylenol or ibuprofen for pain.”
“You need anything?”
“No, I just need something to eat. Back here in five minutes?”
“Yeah,” Shannon replied as she worked her way down an aisle.
Ethan walked towards the left side of the store were the large browsing refrigerators stood in a silent row. They were still powered and the foods within still frozen. This, to him, was a good sign. As he rounded the last fridge, he was presented with the dairy section: a collection of molded cheeses, bloated cartons of milk, and a sickening odor.
Ethan coughed back a deep belly gag and turned back toward the dried goods. Perhaps granola bars or candy had survived. He walked the length of a few isles, testing the foods with his hand, finding most in a dried ashy state. That was until he reached the processed desserts isle with the cellophane wrapped treats. There, in the middle, were his coveted Twinkies, along with Ding Dongs and Susie Q’s. They appeared to be fine, untouched by age. He tore open a box of Ding Dongs, removed the plastic, and tried it. He then collected a number of boxes and continued searching for bottled water.
“Ethan! I got what I need!” Shannon called from the front of the store.
“I’ll be right there; just looking for water!”
“There is a pallet of it up here! Didn’t you see it when we came in?”
Ethan turned back to the front, not bothering to answer such a silly question. He grabbed a wool coat from a stand he passed and a pair of work boots in his size. He carried all of this in a stack up to the registers.
“What kind of drug store sells coats and boots and fishing tackle?” he asked Shannon.
“This store has everything. Mr. Jerkins runs his store like a miniature Wal-Mart.”
