Born to Die, page 51
Snow burns my eyes. Clogs my mouth. I rotate, flopping and twisting to keep myself straight. An instinct that pays off when I hit a tree. It drags up the side of my head and sinks into my shoulder at the crook of my neck.
Jarring impact that stops me dead.
Bones in my shoulder — maybe my collarbone — snap like a pine knot popping in a fire. My feet lift up as my lower back bends. Momentum trying to fold me up. Sliding snow goes up into my shirt.
A crashing follows me.
I slam back down onto the mound of snow and debris that came with me. Wriggle to get my other shoulder under me. Drag the rifle around. Walk my ass up to plant my back against the tree that tried to slice me in half.
I can’t breathe. Both hands are numb on a rifle that now weighs a thousand pounds.
The female is on her knees. Sliding on the crest of an avalanche of snow and frozen brush. Her arms are wide, and her fingers are splayed. Like she’s the host of some high-energy presentation. Her scarf whips out behind her.
I barely have time to process her Red Baron dive bomb. Just get the rifle up before she slams into me. As if it was tipped with a bayonet, the barrel punches into her stomach right under her ribcage.
Her weight and speed drive her forward, and the barrel bursts out of her back in an explosion of thick black fluid. Her speed and weight push her all the way up to rest against my forward fist holding the stock.
The butt drives into my gut, and if I had more in me than a little whiskey, I would have blown it into her screaming face.
Her blood splashes into my lap. Up into my face. Soaks both arms.
Deep lines in her face split the skin to the bone. Dark veins bulge like the roots of some dark tree from her forehead down to where her flesh is obscured by spattering blood.
She sits in my lap. Straddling my upper thighs. I finally hitch in a painful breath, and I taste the air she pushes out in an angry howl. Moist dirt and rotten meat.
Her arms flail blows against me. Her voice is joined by more at the top of the hill. I spare a desperate glance past her shoulder, but no other shapes stand there. Nothing else is coming.
Her teeth snap shut on the air in front of my face. I throw myself away only to smack the back of my head on the tree.
My vision grays, and my body takes over where my brain left off. My left hand on her throat to push. My right hand pulling the rifle back. Strength I didn’t know I had bends her body back. I lean forward as she arches over her heels.
The barrel slides out in a burst of spraying blood, and I put it under her chin. Does this thing have a safety? Is the barrel full of dirt or snow or this zombie’s guts? Will it explode in my hand? Will it fire at all?
A thousand more questions in the blink of an eye before I pull the trigger.
The crack of the shot is unspectacular. The bullet goes into her head. Do I have to cock it? Nope. Another bullet in her head. The first one must have softened it up. This one goes through to splatter the snow with a small fan of dark brains.
She collapses on top of me. Her final breath, a wet plume that carries that awful scent to my nose again. I lean back and close my eyes. Rest the rifle across her thighs.
If there is somebody around to hear that, I’m certain they did. I reach back to feel for the bag. Everything inside still there and nicely padded.
That’s a glass half-full.
Chapter Five
I thought I had just put my head back for a moment. Just a little rest before gathering myself for the trip back down the hill, but the sunlight scattering against every glittering white surface woke me.
I sit here with my eyes burning in a daze. Blinking away the tears.
I bend forward against cramping pain in my chest and stomach. Pull my hood down to shield my eyes.
The rifle is glued to my hands by frozen blood. I try to pull them free, but it tears away from the snow zombie’s thighs with the sound of a glutton stuffing potato chips into his mouth.
We are still posed as lovers. She astride me and bent back in ecstasy. Coated in the fluids of our tryst. It looks like she burst out of me. My numb legs swallowed by the frost and snow.
It takes several minutes and a lot of noise to get out from under her. Except for the cracking joints, tearing skin, and crunching snow, my sounds are a reflection of what we looked like. Just grunting and sweating through another round of lovemaking.
I’m such a little boy at heart. I’m suppressing laughter by the time I’m done. Imagining how it must sound to somebody at the bottom of the hill.
But when I finally get to my feet and turn around to look down at her, the mirth dies in my throat.
Who was she? What made her this way? What power or hunger turned her into this monster?
I press my forearm into my mouth. Against my nose as I sob in sudden despair. Will I end up like her if I don’t escape this place? I think of my deep scars. Patchy hair and dark hollows under my eyes. Then I imagine the horror on Val’s face should she ever see me again.
My snow zombie girlfriend got off easy. Unless she knew what she had become … deep down in the part of her that was still human.
I stagger to her side and drop to my knees. Her scarf is swept out to the side. Stuck to the snow. A spread of a rust-colored stain under her chin where the bullets entered.
As the tears dry on my cheeks, I untie the strip of cloth. Lift her head onto my right knee while I work it out from under her.
I’m probably being dramatic. Emotional anxiety at finding my torture extending out from Life Under. Then I flush from that selfish thought. Even if she was a jake, built out of the energy of the escaping Gossamer, she didn’t deserve this.
I lower my hood. Wrap the stiff cloth around my face, covering my nose and mouth. It sticks to my skin. Drips the melt of her sweat and blood into the creases and scars around my mouth.
I raise the hood back overhead, leaving a slit for my eyes. When I stand, her head slides from my knee and smacks into the snow. Sun blazes from her gaze.
I look around but don’t see that third snow zombie. Maybe he lost interest or fell along with his friend. All the way at the bottom. Tangled up together at the base of a tree.
I find a clean spot on the tail of my coat. Pull it up to dab at my eyes. Sling the bag and the rifle over my shoulder with a hiss of pain. I think the bones may no longer be broken — that Gossamer energy is like some calcium magic — but it still hurts like shit.
My right elbow pops every time I bend it.
I brace against the tree and turn around. Freeze in empty shock at what I see between the trees.
The view is clear for miles. Like the still, bright air is a magnifying glass.
Most of Wainwright is gone.
From the memorial — like in a directional blast that spread in a widening wave of power — there’s nothing but a sunken path of destruction. Like everything was torn down and plowed under.
Trees are bent at the edges of the spread. Snapped at the base of the trunks. Buildings crushed and tumbled into heaps. Another widening line shows roofs blown off. Windows without the gleaming of glass. Farther out still is the return of normal structures and plantings. Then the hills that surround us.
Snow covers much of the details. Drifting and blowing over the depressed center. Thin and scattered at the edges.
Shocks of color in the center of town where the carnival was. Jagged walls crumbling into the center of what was the courthouse.
I can’t see enough from here. The snow obscures too much, and my eyes burn from the white filling my entire view. I sigh into the scarf.
Every time I avoided what I was supposed to do, it ended up hurting me or somebody else. Whether I knew it or not. Like in the past, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, but I better get to it anyway.
I hold onto the tree as I start back down the hill. I should probably stop being such a selfish bitch. Try to find my friends. Even if they don’t call themselves that anymore. Even if they blame me for what’s happening here. I should find them and see if they need help.
My curiosity is inching past my fear.
Where to?
All the way across to the Stay Right? See if it still stands?
I shake my head. I don’t think there’s anything there for me anymore.
The carnival?
I almost shout, “Fuck no!”
Back to the memorial?
I look at it through the icy limbs as I descend.
Maybe I’ll skirt around the marsh to the edges of the farms heading out of town. That way, I can skip getting too close. Have a line of trees I can duck into.
It puts me in line with Pritchard’s place. If I’m gonna check, I might as well start where I saw him last.
Maybe I can find some stuff on the way. A place to sit and rest — though, after last night, I’m wired and ready. Fine. If not to pretend, then to plan. Instead of blundering through a panicked reaction to what’s happening around me, maybe I should actually think it through. Decide on a course of action.
That’s such an alien thought, I nearly sneer with disgust. But I do have some booze and a carton of cigarettes. I make a deal with myself. The first place that looks good, I’ll stop for a pull of whiskey. Have a smokey treat or two.
Make a plan. And as a reward for being an adult for the first time in my life, I’ll have some more whiskey.
A man can do anything when he puts his mind to it.
Chapter Six
The snow across the edges of the marsh — and in between its edge and the start of the trees at the bottom of the hill — is smooth and flat. Polished by a constant wind.
Once away from the Wainwright property, the ground roughens into small hills and dales full of mounds and drifts. I can only imagine what is beneath the sparkling surface.
I keep looking behind me. The Gossamer’s blast has leveled the trees that made that place secure from passing views. The crumbling remains sitting out in the open looks like a mistake. A volcanic rise of diseased flesh.
I follow a depression that stretches out to my right — an access road, or maybe a driveway — that would have been hidden if not for the flattened features fanning out toward the town. A few yards into it, and I reach the edge where the trees are all bent from the blast. Limbs torn off.
Then deeper into the thick as the snow builds up at the bases of the trees still standing, and I descend into the quiet shadows out of sight of the memorial and its destruction.
The lane continues into the shadows. The silence broken by clumps of snow falling from the skeleton fingers closing over me.
Glittering flakes hang in the air all around me. Peaceful and magical, I can almost pretend I have found a secret place on earth untouched by man or jake. Continuing feels right.
My feet barely make a whisper in the powder under me as I kick off to continue deeper along the path. I soon see evidence of what it is. The entrance into a secluded subdivision. A driveway branches off to my left. Decorative mailbox bent over on its metal pole. Trees thinning near the collapsed house hundreds of yards in. I can see a window. The gable of the house is still intact. The glass reflects the white around it like a cancerous eyeball.
Further down the lane and a driveway to my right is so thick with trees and snow, I don’t want to struggle through it. The bulk of the house rises up like an ice fortress. I hesitate, but something about it makes me pass.
Probably my own laziness. Or my fear. What would I have seen in that place?
I don’t feel my fingers anymore. Just the sensation that they are still there. My feet are leaden boxes. My lungs sting, but the air comes without effort. I could walk for days if I didn’t mind parts starting to fall off me. I don’t want to find out if the Gossamer will grow my toes back.
I’m cold, and my joints ache, but worse … I’m bored.
Another driveway on my right starts at a mailbox set into a brick base next to an intricate iron gate. It climbs through a cut on the trees to the hilltop, and I shake my head as I pass.
To the left is another deep property at the edge of the destruction. House barely standing. No outbuildings.
The snow in the air thickens. Falls in fat twirling flakes. The sky through the empty limbs is gray, and the light is diffuse. Clouds are bringing in more weather.
I’ll probably have to be less choosy, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
I see the end of the lane in the distance. It has become half a loop that will dump me back out onto the road — probably Old Bent Row if I’m seeing the outline of a covered bridge up there through the trees.
That puts me in line with the corn and bean fields at the edge of town. Miles of flat land with the occasional tree cover. A place in Wainwright unfamiliar to me. Just a way to track the seasons as I walk past. Marking years with each harvest.
I’ve gone east enough to be well past the edge of the ditch the Gossamer dug through Wainwright, but to my right is the steep rise of a hill. I’m right about Old Bent Row. There will be an old mill on a flat spot overlooking the bridge. A waterfall they blew up with lights every Christmas.
That means the last property on the corner and the private lane will be tucked into a depression next to the road. I squint into the growing dark, sagging in relief when I spy the dark wood fence I was hoping to see. I have no idea what’s on the other side, but I remember the metal roof that rises above the pickets. Walking by when the walnuts were falling from the trees, and the tin would ring like a bell.
The fence ends at a gap. An opening onto the property where the snow is churned into mud. Like a thousand people have walked through before me.
There are no footprints leading to or away. No sound beyond my breathing. Harsh and wet through the sodden scarf around my face.
Maybe a septic tank that cracked open underneath. A broken culvert? I skirt the edge, and on the other side of the opening is an uneven surface covered in undisturbed snow. Shapes outlined in white that my brain works on as I step to the side to put myself against the fence.
A junkyard. Or some hoarder’s collection. Vague shapes of cars and trucks. Mounds and piles that might be scrap metal or bicycles. I had no idea this would have been here. This seemed like a high-dollar spot.
I imagine the government trying to buy out some old redneck and his barn full of Mail Pouch Tobacco signs.
The metal roof I remember is above me under the hanging limbs of a barren tree. Snow drifted and scattered across the ridges of tin. Stained cinderblock walls under the eaves. A single window on the side I’m facing is covered in a sheet of swollen particleboard.
Around the corner facing the scrapyard is a rusty garage door with snow piled up two-thirds of its height. A smaller door next to it with much less snow against it. Cleaned by the wind, or maybe a broom to make it easier to get in and out.
Past another patch of dark mud is a lane leading to a trailer. Collapsed front porch. Dented walls and missing windows. I turn back to the garage.
The sky has darkened to charcoal. The wet snow falling on my head is soaking through my hood. Dripping down the back of my neck.
I unsling the rifle. Melted snow probably dripped out of the barrel. I head to the smaller door and try the knob. It turns with no effort. I open it, and the snow on the threshold falls inside.
A shiny spot on the floor. I point the rifle into the dark corners. Squint into the dark, but nothing stares in return. No sound but the ping of dripping water in the back.
I step inside and shut the door behind me. I back into the corner and wait for my eyes to adjust to the light coming in around the edges of the overhead door. The bad fit of the plywood over the window.
It looks like a workshop. Mechanics or carpenters. The slight odor of grease. Some chemical solvent smell. Acetone or maybe kerosene.
A long counter under the window. Covered in a glaze of frost. A laundry sink in the back corner. Water dripping from the corroded faucet. Still unfrozen by virtue of movement. The slight insulation of the concrete and block.
I gasp like a little girl given a pony for her birthday. There’s a candle on the shelf over the sink. A fat one with three wicks. Green as summer grass.
I rush over. A headlong run with my hand held straight out. I set the rifle on the counter. Drop my bag on top of it. Dig through the damp mess until I find the wrapped bundle of cigarettes and whiskey. The matches nestled inside.
I can’t be dark enough outside yet for anybody to see the light. Just for an hour or so. I pull my gloves off, and my hands are withered and blue. Like the snow zombie queen’s face.
I cradle the candle and the matches together. Move to the edge of my sad pile of belongings. Hold my breath as the match flares into brilliance. Squint into the flame as my shaking hand touches it to the first wick.
It lights with a sputter. The next one lights. Sizzles out. Lights again. The third one flares into existence without issue, and I extinguish the match just as the heat begins sinking into my skin.
I dome my hands. Watch the dancing flames through my fingers. The warm orange is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The pain of my nerves coming back to life in my fingertips is exquisite.
I work feeling and movement back into them. Slide the bottle and the cigarettes over. I peel the scarf from my face. Like getting bloody gauze to come away without tearing off the scab.
My knuckles pop under the pressure of getting the screw top off. One good swallow, and my throat and chest and belly warm.
The cigarette tastes like the opposite of snow. Like dry grass on a hot July day.
My back has been to the interior for far too long. Enough for something to have crept up on me in the dark, but when I turn around, there’s nothing there. I curse myself for being a dumbass. Laugh at myself for being so critical.
I clamp the cigarette in my teeth. Grab the candle and bottle, and I slide down to sit with my back against the cabinets under the counter. Cross one leg over the other. Set the candle by my knee.
I have another long pull of the bottle. Finish my cigarette while staring into the candle flame. My eyelids feel like a warm finger presses against them. The light narrows to a warm slit. I stub the cigarette out. Look at the light spreading warmth across the darkness of my closed eyes.
