Wormwood

Turning his back reluctantly on the two bodies they’d left in front of the pharmacy, Shane got down on his hands and knees and peered under the magazine display. As he’d feared, the rack had no fender or baseboard to keep things (like dropped subscription cards or loaded revolvers) from disappearing underneath.

He reached as far as he could into the narrow space, his arm wedged halfway between the elbow and shoulder, and felt around. His penlight was highlighting the final issue of Modern Bride magazine, the cover shining back in his face, brilliantly glossy, adorned with a young and fetching bride who was blissfully unaware of what was going to happen to the world before the glow of her honeymoon wore off. Shane wondered absently where she was now, at this moment: dead, or doing things like he was? Things impossible to imagine two short months ago.

Groping, his fingers combed through the dust bunnies and slipped cards to touch on small things — a coin, a screw, a mashed cigarette butt, wisps of cellophane — but nothing remotely like a fallen pistol.

“This is crazy,” he muttered, an uncomfortable feeling like a hairy tarantula crawling down his spine. He pulled his arm back and rested on his knees, glancing up and down the aisle.

“You okay down there?” he called and Larry rasped something to the affirmative, his voice too weak to do more than sigh. Shane looked at the axe lying at his side and a thought occurred to him. Holding the handle by its butt-end, he pushed the head deep under the display and raked it sideways, sweeping out a dusty arc of clutter. Moving methodically down the rack, the gun came spinning out on his third try, caught between the pages of an old Mad magazine.

What me, worry?

“Got it!” he exclaimed, picking up the revolver then nearly dropping it again as a loud series of gunshots came booming up the aisle.

He looked toward Larry and saw a slumped figure standing frozen in a muzzle flash, the flare of light imprinted on his eyes, fading quickly into another.

By the time he started to move it was all over.

12

Shane found Larry lying at the intersection, flat on his back and trembling from the sudden flood of adrenaline. Sprawled beside him was a man in a pink shirt with a gray hole flowering out of the top of his head, his right arm lying amid a clutter of Clairol boxes.

Shane swore, his penlight moving between the two of them.

All told, four shots had been fired. Where the other three had gone neither of them knew or cared to investigate, but Larry apologized for using so much ammunition.

“I just couldn’t help myself,” he wheezed, the pistol clutched to his chest, the barrel still smoking.

Shane crouched and exchanged the 9mm for the revolver, telling him not to worry about it, that it probably wouldn’t make any difference in the end. He avoided looking at Larry as he said this because by now they both knew this was a lie. Every bullet was important, and most especially the last one. The last bullet was the only sure way to keep from coming back; this was a truth. There had been no need to discuss it, it simply was.

Reloading his pistol, Shane ruminated on the possibilities this might give credence to in the new world, this concept of the final bullet. Would it come to be carried separately, religiously, like a rosary or St. Christopher’s medallion? A modern-day good luck charm to be touched and kissed against its eventual need? Prayed to and offered up when necessary?

This one certain inoculation against Wormwood.

Shane shook his head and glanced down the aisles, deciding they were pressing their luck.

“We’d better get moving,” he told Larry.

13

As they moved toward the front of the store, a faint blue light — twilight, Shane realized — began to filter into the aisles, giving them a better view of the shelves sliding past.

It looked like a storm had recently passed through, one as violent and capricious as a tornado; a sucking mass that left vacant gaps alongside shelves hardly touched: a run on aspirin and analgesics beside a full stock of cold remedies and cough drops; a need for bar soap but not deodorant; razors but not shaving creme. A vast and sobering void where the tampons and disposable diapers had been.

She was right, Shane thought, thinking of Rachel.

Orderly rows slid into chaos and vacancy before coming back to order again. Panic and Necessity shopping arm in arm for Doomsday.

Shane stopped at the first aid supplies long enough to see that bandages and gauze tape had both been hot ticket items, with nothing but bar codes and sale tags to show they’d ever been there. What he found instead were cotton balls and pantyhose. No rubbing alcohol or peroxide, but an untouched rainbow of dental rinse and mouthwash.

“What are you gonna do with these?” Larry wondered, clutching the items blearily to his chest as Shane dragged him toward the front of the store.

“Just hold on to them,” Shane answered, leaving him to wonder.

14

There was a woman’s silhouette propped up behind the checkout register near Aisle 7, one that neither Shane nor Larry noticed until they were almost within arm’s reach of her.

“Jesus!” Shane swore, dropping Larry’s legs with heart-thumping haste and fumbling for his gun. Amid the screams and curses, he pointed the muzzle breathlessly at her head and lifted his penlight. The silhouette turned into a plump redhead by the name of “Dawna”; one who, by reason of her brown apron and nametag, had once worked as a checker for the Fred Meyer Corporation.

Her short, matronly body seemed to be swaying ever-so-slightly, as if she had been waiting there at her post for days. She seemed not to notice Shane or the gun or even the spot of light on her face.

“What’s going on?” Larry demanded, invisible now on the floor.

“There’s a woman standing here,” Shane answered, though in a whisper, as if he was afraid he’d wake her.

“Shoot her!” Larry hissed. He had his gun out now, though the bulk of the check- out counter prevented him from getting a clear shot at her.

“I’m not sure if she’s dead!” Shane objected, the beam from his penlight playing over her. The counter itself blocked her from the waist down, but from what Shane could see she looked whole and undamaged. There was a line of dried blood running from the shadow of her ear to her collar, but it hardly looked fatal. And there was no point in wasting a bullet if he didn’t have to.

Cautiously, he tucked the light under his arm and reached for a magazine. Rolling it against his side, he used the end of it to prod the freckled flesh of her left arm.

Quick as a rattlesnake, she snatched it out of his hand, skimmed it over the dead iris of her scanner and let it fly over the end of the counter, its pages fluttering like the wings of an indignant bird. This completed (as if she’d been told by God to wait for them), Dawna toppled over into the darkness beneath her register.

Unnerved and surprised, Shane uttered a short, uncertain laugh, his heartbeat a dull thunder between his ears. He leaned over the counter on tiptoe and looked down at her, the penlight trembling.

Her eyes were wide, unblinking, gazing past him toward Heaven; her head strangely foreshortened, as if a