So Long, Lollipops (An Until the End of the World Novella) Read online

  He’d stay low and run the bike back through the maze of cars. The road turned at the end of the bridge, and he’d be long gone before they moved the truck and came after him. They might not even bother. He leaned out and fired again. This time there was no answering fire, but he heard soft thuds, like sneakers on concrete. They came again in a quick patter and then stopped, similar to the racing of his heart.

  He made sure his feet were behind the pickup’s tire and peered beneath the truck. The noise came again, along with the clink of metal. Then, two cars ahead to his left, he saw the tip of a sneaker come out from behind a car. There was a soft swishing noise and the foot extended into the road, as if its owner had slid to the ground. The ragged bottom of a denim-clad leg came into view.

  Peter knew he was soft-hearted, but he didn’t want to kill living people if he didn’t have to. There were so few of them left. But he would. He lay down on the road behind the tire and lined up his sights on the fleshiest part of the man’s calf. He exhaled partway, just as John had taught him, and pulled the trigger.

  The explosion of denim and blood surprised Peter with its brutality. He’d pictured more of a puncture wound, like Nel had gotten, although that’d been near the edge of the meaty part of his calf. This .45 round had destroyed the man’s shin. He was zombie bait now. Peter found he didn’t care; his heart could be as hard as anyone’s.

  He reached for his bike but ducked when he heard footsteps between the agonized shrieks of the man he’d shot. Maybe there was more than one person under the overpass. But these footsteps weren’t racing to help their comrade, and they weren’t stealthy. They came from both ends of the bridge. The noise must have drawn Lexers.

  He stayed low, one hand gripping the bike frame, and waited. The footsteps on his side were closing in. They would have to walk past him to reach the cries of pain that had turned to grunts. The man was trying to stay quiet, but Peter imagined it was hard when your leg was almost blown off below the calf.

  Hiding was the only option. Peter didn’t know how many were coming and whether he’d be able to fight his way through. He slid under the truck, holding his backpack by the hand, and watched the Lexers approach. There were at least a dozen pairs of feet. Sneakers, bare feet with filthy, sore-covered toes and a lone men’s dress shoe walked past, intent on the man they could hear and smell.

  Peter reached into his pocket and fumbled with the bullets he’d put there, just in case. He fed them into his pistol, silently clicked the cylinder closed and watched as more Lexers followed the first. They fed by the rear of the truck, several tripping on the frame of his bike. The man began to make frightened animal noises. Peter spun so he could swivel his head in either direction. He could only see the back of the man’s legs as he pulled himself to his feet—or foot—and leaned on the cars to hop back the way he’d come. The hopping stopped, a few shots rang out, and two Lexers fell to the concrete. But Peter could see more feet coming, just like on his end of the bridge. The Lexers gained on the man. Four more shots came, and then he guessed the man was out because the hopping became wild and desperate. There was a high-pitched scream, so unlike the voice that had demanded Peter leave his truck.

  The man hit the ground, and Peter got a glimpse of his would-be assailant. Dark hair, thin face. A regular guy, maybe even a kind person. He dragged himself in Peter’s direction, mouth open, until a Lexer landed on him, and he howled as the teeth bit into his back. He caught sight of Peter under the truck, and his eyes went wide. “Help! Help me!”

  It was too late to help, but Peter wouldn’t have anyway. Some things were worth dying for, but this man who’d thought Peter’s life was worth less than nothing wasn’t one of them.

  Still, it was terrible to watch. They ate him alive, ripped him apart limb by limb, until one knelt by his head and blocked Peter’s view. Most of the Lexers passing him had reached the man. Now was his chance. He readied himself to run, but more feet rounded a car behind him. Maybe it was best to wait until they’d moved on. He could stay under the truck as long as he had to.

  And, with that thought, the universe decided to mess with him. A Lexer’s foot tangled in the bike frame, and it fell to the ground. Peter froze, but the black-rimmed, jaundiced eyes saw him. Its mouth opened, exposing chipped teeth, and it let out a moan that made the others stop in mid-stumble.

  There were no more screams from the man to cover this Lexer’s hisses, only the wet, quiet sounds of eating. The Lexer tried to drag himself toward Peter, but his feet were caught in the frame. Two Lexers fell to their bellies, and their faces, as pitted and rotted as the first, peered under the truck’s chassis.

  He had to run. He rolled into the v-shaped space between the pickup and the sedan he’d crashed into. The bike was a lost cause, but he clipped his pack firmly on his back. The sun half-blinded him, and he held his gun aloft until he could see. There were more than a dozen Lexers between him and the end of the bridge, all traveling along the space he’d driven through. He jumped onto the sedan, and then ran up the roof and down the trunk before he leapt to the next vehicle.

  Peter was three cars down before the ones eating noticed him. The maze that had gotten him into this mess was the only thing saving him now. He jumped from car to car, and then stood on the hood of a Taurus at the end of the maze, where a group of six Lexers waited. Head shots weren’t easy on moving targets, especially ones that moved so randomly, and only when they closed in did he hit three. A glance behind him confirmed about fifteen more would be there in minutes, so he moved his pistol to his left hand, pulled his machete with his right, and jumped into the three standing before him.

  The initial leap knocked one to the ground. He jammed his gun left-handed under of the chin of the one who’d grabbed his arm and sent brown gore rocketing into the air. A push on the other Lexer’s chest gave him enough clearance to drive the machete blade into its mouth.

  He tried to run but was dragged backward by the one he’d knocked to the ground, who’d snuck an arm through his backpack’s lower strap and now hung on, teeth snapping. Peter kicked like a horse, but this one wasn’t letting go. It was dead weight—dead weight with teeth. The other Lexers were twenty feet away; he was losing his head start.

  Peter unclasped the chest and waist straps in order to drop his pack. He might be okay without his supplies, although the odds got slimmer as he lost one thing after another on his way north. But all the supplies in the world wouldn’t do him any good if he were dead. In a last ditch effort, he gripped his machete, spun to swing the Lexer out to his side, and then brought the machete down and back in an arc. There was a crunch, the dead weight got even deader, and its grip loosened enough to yank away. The fingertips of the first of the approaching group of Lexers, covered in dried, crackled blood, grazed his arm. Peter barreled to the end of the bridge and ran west on the two-lane road. He was sweaty and terrified, but alive. Alive.

  After more than a mile, Peter stopped in the middle of the road and gulped water. His ankle felt okay, which made him thankful to have heeded Rich’s advice. He pushed his dripping hair off his forehead and walked to a nearby house. It had an SUV out front and a two-car garage that could have a bike inside. It might be too much to hope that the SUV would start. When he and John had gotten the van that they’d used to leave the cabin, the battery had been so dead that even with a jumpstart the engine would only click. It had taken a new battery to get it going. After five months it was likely a lot of car batteries were dead. He would have tried anyway, except for the problem of having nothing with which to jumpstart. Still, he’d look for the keys and hope for the best.

  He cracked a window on the side door of the garage with the hilt of his machete and turned the lock. There wasn’t a bike, but there was an ATV. A useless one, he found out, when he tried the key. A quad would’ve been perfect. Sometimes it was maddening to be surrounded by so many items that could save your life, if only they would just goddamn work.

  The connecting door into the house was un
locked, and it was still and quiet inside. Random items of clothing lay on the floor and a small cooler sat by the entrance to the country kitchen. Whoever had been here, a family by the looks of the pictures, had left in a hurry. Peter was down to the last of his water. The fridge was empty, so he checked the cooler.

  The stench under the lid was horrendous. The lack of oxygen hadn’t allowed for the decayed food to dry out, but it hadn’t stopped it from liquefying into mush that smelled like rotten teeth and death. It smelled like Lexers. There were a couple of cans of Pepsi on top of the cesspool of lunchmeat and fruit. He grabbed one, flipped it open, and took a swallow. The fizzy sweetness cut through the sour taste in his mouth. It might have been the best beverage he’d ever tasted. He wanted to savor it, but he was down to the last dribble before he took another breath. Nel would’ve killed for a can; he’d finished the last of the Pepsi in the nearby Wal-Mart and then gone into withdrawal, like James had from his dearly loved nicotine.

  Peter stashed the other can in his bag and took a few packets of soup mix from the cupboards. There was some canned food too, but he left it—he had enough food, and it was heavy. Why hadn’t the man under the overpass checked the empty houses? It didn’t make any sense. But nothing made sense if you thought by the old rules. Maybe the man had been crazy. Living alone for months would do that to you. Peter sat on the couch, map opened on his lap. He figured he was about sixty to seventy miles away from Kingdom Come. Maybe a two or three days’ walk, depending, of course, on what was in his way.

  A bike would be faster. He outlined a route in his head and looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. He could get in a few hours, but he’d need to find somewhere to sleep for the night. Also, he hadn’t gone that far from the bridge. He didn’t know how long the Lexers would follow his trail, but he was running on the assumption that they’d be close to catching up if they walked at one mile per hour.

  He left through the front door, tried the unsurprisingly dead truck and jogged up the road. This road would lead him straight through Waterbury and get him past I-89; of course he’d managed to get waylaid in the one part of Vermont that didn’t have a thousand dirt roads crisscrossing through it.

  He walked as quickly and quietly as possible. At one point, a group of Lexers stood in the road ahead, and he edged through the yards of homes. He could probably outrun them, but he wasn’t eager to try that again. Finally, he reached the bridge over the river he’d been paralleling. He considered swimming across the river and walking through the woods until he hit I-89, but without a compass or better map he might get lost. Those were some famous last words right there: We’ll line up the trees and follow them north. It’s a straight shot. No, he was sticking to the road until he was closer.

  Peter sighed with relief at the empty bridge. At least something was going right today. He was sure he saw a figure being swept downstream in the river. Zombies couldn’t swim, at least. He would’ve scoured the area for a boat if the river ran north, but the map showed it went west.

  Peter crossed onto Main Street and headed toward a house to check for a bike. He’d only come across a couple of kids’ bikes so far. He’d laughed at the thought of pedaling through Vermont on the purple Tinkerbell bike in one of the sheds he’d passed, but he damn well would’ve taken it if it’d fit.

  This house looked promising, though. The Subaru out front had a Share the Road bumper sticker and a bike rack. He was debating how to get into the garage with the least amount of sound, when he caught sight of a dark mass under the trees in the backyard. He stopped short and held his breath. They hadn’t seen him yet. He walked backward, placing one foot lightly behind the other, stopping whenever one looked like it might turn his way.

  He was almost out of sight when one did. The growl it let out carried across the road, and it moved his way. He didn’t wait to see if the others followed; he was sure they would. He spun on his heel toward the road that branched off Main. It was a dead end—he’d checked earlier—but it was on the right side of the river.

  It was a narrow paved road, with houses that might have contained bikes and a gas station store with possible supplies. He ran with the railroad tracks on his left and river on his right, until he spotted a foot trail over the tracks and into the woods. He raced over gravel and through the dark of a pedestrian tunnel, where a Lexer waited, alerted by the pounding of his boots. Peter’s eyes adjusted just in time to see its outstretched arms. There was no time to stop, so he slammed it into the wall and kept going, too caught up in his escape to be frightened.

  The trail continued into the trees and gradually narrowed until Peter wasn’t sure he was still on a trail. Tree branches smacked his face, and he nearly fell face-first onto a boulder in his path. Calm down. He forced himself to stop and listen, although his legs shook with the desire for flight. But blindly running into the woods was a stupid idea. He was full of stupid ideas when it came to this kind of stuff. A rich kid raised in New York City didn’t have the answers to these kinds of predicaments. Cassie had been raised in the city, but she wasn’t rich, and she wasn’t your average city kid. She’d still had all her dog-eared and much-loved survival books proudly displayed on her bookshelves when he met her. She’d brought only one out of New York and had given it to the Washington kids. They’d asked her to sign it, like she’d written it herself. He’d found it annoying at the time, but that was because everything had irritated him, including himself. Now, he thought it was sweet. Hank and Corrine had been good kids, like Bits. He hated that all the Washingtons had ever seen of him was a selfish, complaining man who acted more like a kid than the kids did.

  It was quiet on the path behind him. Maybe the ones back in Waterbury hadn’t seen where he went, and the one in the overpass—which he should have killed but didn’t because he was an idiot—didn’t seem to have followed. Well, that was good, considering that now he’d lost the path and had no idea which way to go. Listen for the cars on the highway and follow the sound, he joked with himself. It was pretty lame, but the fact that he could joke at all showed how Nel and Cassie had rubbed off on him; those two never stopped.

  North. As long as he went north, he’d be heading the right way. It was afternoon, so he kept the sun to his left and walked as straight as he could manage. According to his map, as long as he stayed due north and didn’t go up any mountains, he’d hit a road eventually. After what felt like just short of forever, he did. He was out of water, and he was saving that second Pepsi, so he filled his bottle at a man-made pond behind a huge, fancy house that boasted a huge, algae-filled pool to match. Whoever lived there had been loaded. He toyed with the idea of entering, but the Lexers, one of whom still had a dusting rag stuck in her apron pocket, rushed the window when they saw him. He strolled away. It used to be that the sight of any Lexer would terrify him, but now he saved his panicking for the ones who could reach him. You had to save your energy and adrenaline to put to good use.

  He passed more fancy houses, though none as big as the first. The iodine pills had to dissolve completely before he’d drink his water, and he was counting down the minutes. It would have been nice to have one of the hiking filters, since they worked faster and didn’t make the water taste awful like the iodine, but he was glad they’d thought to put the pills in each bag. Shitty-tasting water was better than water that killed you.

  They’d gotten sick on their way out of the city because he and Ana hadn’t filtered the water. It could have killed them all. Another thing to reminisce about and put in the Peter was a Jerk Book of Memories. He was heading for a lively bout of self-flagellation when he realized he had two choices—beat himself up about everything he’d ever done wrong or forgive himself and be who he was now. No one else held a grudge, so why was he doing it for them? He could make this his blank slate. If he made it to Kingdom Come, he would consider himself reborn.

  That was all great, but first he had to find his way to a main road because the roads these houses sat on were all loops. They weren’t on
the map, so he followed one west until he reached one that headed north. Then another, which dead-ended. He needed to get closer to the main road, to roads he could plot on the map, even though it might not be safe.

  He came upon a cluster of average homes. He liked these houses better than the big ones. They were more likely to have bikes in their garages and canned food on their shelves, like the house in which he’d spent his first twelve years. His parents had been well-off, but not rich. They’d lived in Westchester, in a nice house with plenty of space and a huge yard, but there’d been bikes in the garage and food on the shelves.

  A peeling, green farmhouse had a truck and a sedan out front in spite of the two-car garage. He hoped that meant the garage was full of junk, and that one of those pieces of junk was a bike. He didn’t have to break in; the door creaked open and nothing plowed into his machete. There, behind the dusty workbench, stood a men’s bike that looked to be a good size. He filled the flat tires with the pump he found and strapped the pump to the back of the bike using one of the many bungee cords that lay in a tangle.

  Whoever had lived there had been a slob, but a slob who had almost everything Peter needed. This was his lucky house. Maybe he should try for some more supplies inside. The front doorknob turned easily. Using the tried and true zombie-calling method, he called, “Hello? Anyone here?”

  Slow and dragging footsteps sounded. Two Lexers walked across the faded living room carpet. One appeared at the top of the stairs and promptly came tumbling down in its excitement. Peter didn’t wait to see it hit the foyer floor. There was nothing he needed badly enough, and by now his water was ready. He gulped a few swallows as the bodies hit the other side of the closed door. No panic, although he did jump. Then he got on the bike and moved on. It was nearing six o’clock, time to find somewhere to sleep. He didn’t want to get caught out in the dark.