“Man, that was great, huh?” His face was split by a smile. “Next time we need to wear a mask. You know those full-faced air-filter masks, the expensive ones? Well, they’re free now, right?”
Sal and Ron were standing and brushing themselves off.
Ron looked a little perturbed. “You should have given us a heads up.”
“And ruin the show? Come on, man, you know this was the most awesome thing you have ever seen.”
Ron smiled. “Yeah, it was. Sorry, maybe this whole friend dying thing has got me down. You guys didn’t know Bill like I did. He wasn’t a bad guy…well, shit, he was, wasn’t he? I never knew he hit Mary. Had I known…”
“Well, he wasn’t my friend, he was an asshole, so forgive me if I ask you not to ruin my moment here.” Jeff was pulling stuff from the rubble. “Aren’t you guys curious as to how the Great Jeff-ini took this ramp down without touching it?”
“Of course,” they echoed.
Jeff held up one of four hydraulic jacks he had set under the ramp. They were surprisingly small for what they could do. “These jacks gradually lifted the bottom of the ramp and caused the top to slip from its moorings. Then it just crashed down.”
“Amazing.” Sal was shaking his head. “I feel safer already.”
Ron and Sal started helping him move all the gear from the rubble.
“So if we take the other ramp and the stairs down, how do we get back up?”
“We’ll go up before we start the jacks. Then I’ll show you the new elevator system.”
Ron and Sal looked at each other and smiled.
“You mind sharing your grand plan with us?” Ron asked. “Maybe we can help. And seriously, that was dangerous. We should know what’s coming next time.”
Jeff didn’t reply. He was still smiling.
Panicked female screams came from above, and Ron winced. “Oh crap. They think we’re dead, I bet.”
Sal chuckled as Ron yelled reassurances up to his wife. He leaned toward Jeff. “I think you might be too young to understand this, but the ladies aren’t going to think this is nearly as cool as we did.” And then he addressed Ron. “We can’t let them know he almost killed us, or they will hate him—sorry, kid. We have to tell them we knew what was coming and take the heat for not telling them.”
“You’re right.” Ron sighed. “I’m going to get hell for this.”
“I don’t understand.” Jeff looked amused. “Are you guys messing with me?”
“I don’t understand it; I just know how it works.” Ron winked. Sal chuckled, but he also wished Maria was here to be mad at him.
Donna’s voice echoed down. “What the hell is this?” She was standing on the edge of the hole on the floor above. She looked pissed and was looking right at Ron. Mary was next to her. She was feigning anger and looking at Sal, and he was happy there was someone in the world to be mad at him. Sal smiled at her, and she smiled back.
Ron looked at Jeff as if to say,
Pay attention
. “We just took this ramp down like we discussed. We did it in seconds without touching it. Do you want to know how?”
“Hell no! What I want to know, before the fact, is the next time something is going to make me pee my pants and think my husband’s dead!” Donna turned and walked off. Mary followed.
Jeff nodded. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”
Sal smiled and patted him on his back. “For a genius, you sure are dumb. You’ll never understand, that’s what you need to understand.”
§
A crowd of the infected arrived after the first ramp came down, so they led them away in the van and circled back. They set the jacks and brought the other ramp down same as the first. The stairs proved easy to bring down. They had to lead the infected away a few times and were done as the sun was dropping. They were on the second floor when the last stairway fell.
“Now to the new elevator.” Jeff walked off. He took them to a spot where nothing seemed to be and stopped.
“This is very rough. I think it will need to be rebuilt, added to, etc. Anyway, here it goes.” He reached behind one of the exterior columns and produced a large plastic box with buttons on it. It was hanging by a thick black cord. The buttons were large. There was a red one and a green one and a few smaller ones. He pressed the green button, and a soft whirring came from above. Slowly, a large chunk of concrete lowered into sight. Jeff pushed the red button, and it stopped.
“OK, like I said, rough, but you see the potential here, right?”
“Of course.” Sal was smiling, already thinking of ways to attach a platform and stabilize it.
“Oh, this is going to be great. Thanks Jeff.” Ron patted Jeff on the back as they all walked together up the ramps to their home, chatting about other things they wanted to accomplish.
Ron and Sal hadn’t forgotten about the bikers, and the threat of them lingered in the back of their minds constantly. Ron was reminded of the physical and emotional damage done to him. Sal could see the bruises on Ron’s neck, the abrasions on his wrists, and, during unguarded moments, the expression on his face that was a mix of sadness, anger, and fear.
26.
Costco was the shit! The shit in the best sense of the word. Everyone loved the giant, brightly lit land of plenty. If they didn’t, they were either lying or stupid. Banjo was an avid fan of the place and was even a card-carrying executive member. There was no better place to be during an apocalypse than Costco.
So it made sense that there would already be people there. No matter, Banjo had expected it. He had already stopped the bus and dipped his wick, then discussed what the plan would be for dealing with any occupants of their new home. Jeeter and Fats were already sated and nodding off, so he had to rouse them.
Some of the girls were starting to come down and were a bit jittery and moaning lightly. Banjo had what they needed. In fact, Jeeter had two saddlebags stuffed with enough drugs to send him away for ten life stints, had it been a few weeks earlier. Banjo had personally stuffed the bags himself after killing the dealer. Once the shit had started going down, he knew it was every man for himself and got a head start on the looting. He knew what commodities would be hard to find in a zonked-up world. He now had two of them.
He rolled up to the Costco and cut the engine. Three men with rifles were on the roof.
According to plan, Banjo walked out alone. Jeeter and Fats had already left the bus. Jeeter was all lit up on a full baseball, and the cocaine would fuel him for his mission. Fats was given a few hits to help him keep up, but all he really needed was for one of his brothers to take the lead and he would act accordingly.
Banjo walked up to the two large metal roll-up doors and looked at the roof. “Hello! Hey!”
The small man-sized metal door to the right of the giant roll-ups opened a few inches, just enough to let a douche wearing wire-frame glasses and a polo shirt pop out. The three men on the roof were all looking over the edge, guns on the biker. Banjo made no sudden moves and stopped a few yards from the door.
“Hey, friend. I’m traveling with some ladies that need medical attention.”
“We have no doctors here. What’s wrong with them?” The douche was squinting at the sun. Apparently it was dark in there, even with all the skylights.
“Withdrawal. Really harsh shit. We have no drugs, a good thing I guess, so we’re all starting to crash. We need lots of OTC, ummm, over-the-counter drugs to help ride it out.” Banjo was relaxed, standing with his arms loose at his side.
“Make a list and I will see what I can do.”
“Very kind of you, sir.” Banjo smiled a friendly smile but not at the kindness of the man, at what he was going to do to him. “In the meantime, I want you to meet the girls. You will see they are no threat and maybe let them in to freshen up?”
The douche looked up, eyes wide, as five completely naked strippers walked off the bus. They smiled and vamped, spun, stuck their chests out, and gave little waves to the men.
Now there was a commodity not stacked on pallets within the walls of Costco,
Banjo thought. Straight or gay, male or female, a completely naked blonde was something that drew attention. Five completely naked blondes demanded attention. In fact, for a straight man, five completely naked hot blondes woke up old mister dick, and he was a bastard. Mister dick was a monster, and when he was hit with a jolt of energy powerful enough to raise Frankenstein, even angry villagers couldn’t bring him down. He didn’t give a shit about safety, logic, right or wrong, promises made, and least of all did he care about his host organism, said straight male. When old mister dick started talking, there was no shutting him up.
Banjo could tell the douche was straight, based on the smile that broke his head in half. Mister dick was at the wheel now and only cared about one thing. Douche relaxed and let his guard down. He was as good as dead.
Banjo covered the distance to the door in a flash and hit the douche square in the face. The guy never saw him coming. Banjo busted through the door, grabbing the stunned man with an arm around his neck, and the door banged shut. The men on the roof were powerless to do anything.
Seconds after the attack, as they were processing what had happened, they heard the sound of crunching gravel behind them. They were too slow to react once again.
Fats tackled one man and threw him to the ground, landing on top of him. He grabbed the man’s face with both hands and started squeezing. It wasn’t clear from the way Fats held the man’s head whether he was trying to blind him, strangle him, or rip his face off. In any case, the result of Fats’ attack was the man’s death by suffocation.
Jeeter was on his target at the same time but made quicker work of him. He went for a man clearly frozen in confusion, kicked out with his steel-toed boot, and hit him in the gut. Then he shoved him backward over the edge of the building. The thirty-foot drop and headfirst landing was a sure kill.
Jeeter spun and saw the other man was trying to surrender, but Jeeter would have none of that. He rushed him, bent low, hit him in the gut with his shoulder, and heard the air rush from his lungs. The two flew a couple of yards, landing on a skylight, which made a loud pop as it split. They both dropped through into darkness.
Jeeter landed on top of the man, about fifteen feet below the skylight on the top of a high shelf. They landed on a huge cube of plastic-wrapped canned goods. The victim was hurting, but Jeeter was so amped he didn’t miss a beat. He started kicking the guy hard until he rolled off the high shelves and landed on the shiny concrete floor.
Jeeter jumped down and landed next to him. This time his fried and amped brain did note that the hard surface caused some discomfort as he landed on it, but nothing to worry about. He jumped to his feet and kept on kicking the guy.
He noticed there was a can in his hand he must have picked up at some point. The short-lived and temporary high was fading. He looked at the gory mess on the floor, dropped the bloody can, and started stumbling through the dark building. He walked right into a well-lit circle; about thirty people were staring at him. Most screamed and ran off into the darkness. Two men came at him and grabbed his arms.
Jeeter just waited, knowing Banjo and Fats would soon appear. Sure enough, there was Banjo at the edge of the light, a gun pressed to the douche’s head. The douche was bleeding from a cut to his forehead. Fats soon showed up, all sweaty and panting. There were ten or so people left in the circle, staring at them.
“Now listen up!” Banjo shouted to the dark store. “All of you have thirty seconds to leave peacefully. If there’s anyone left after that, I will shoot this douche in the head, and then we will hunt you down and kill you too.”
For a moment, there were voices yelling in the dark from every height, angle, and distance. “Fuck you!” and “OK, OK, we are leaving” and “Everybody, we have to go!” and “I need my medication!” and “Please don’t hurt us!” and “There’s enough here for us all to share” and on and on.
“ENOUGH!” Banjo roared. “Everyone leave the building and start running. Now!”
There was a cacophony of jumping, squeaking of shoes, thumps, running, and falling objects, and the light from the door jumped and danced with the shadows of a desperate exodus. The folks at the biker’s feet stood and left as quickly as possible. A moment later, an old man walked into the light.
“I need my meds or I will die.” He had his hands up and was walking sideways toward a spot in the circle of cots and boxes. He never took his eyes off Banjo as he picked up a tan duffel and backed away quickly. “Thank you,” he said as he stepped into the darkness. Fats made a move to brain the old man.
“Fats, no.” Banjo stopped him. “It’ll be another body we have to move out of here. Let him go.”
Fats nodded and backed down, and Banjo released the douche. “Take off, man.”
The douche ran like he’d never run before. He flew through the door and out into the daylight, squinting. He held his arm up over his eyes as they adjusted, and what he saw froze him in place. Fanned across the parking lot were the dead, squatting over the bodies of his group. It looked like no one got away.
The closest body was a young man, not more than twenty years old, and a corpse was busy pulling the flesh off in patches to get to the meat. The wet tearing was only slightly less grisly than the sight of the corpse pulling the innards out of the chest cavity until it found the heart. It sat back and started chewing.
As it moved away, he saw another corpse, a very young girl no more than ten. She sat on the ground next to the young man, wearing a dirty party dress, her hair matted with blood. She held one of the young man’s forearms, her feet against his rib cage, and pulled and twisted. The sound was the same as that of a raw chicken being torn apart, only louder and the visuals making it infinity more horrifying. She twisted and pulled, the joints popping and cracking, until the arm came out of the socket. She pulled, stretching and ripping the muscle and tendons, until the arm separated from the body. She held it to her mouth with both hands and started tearing large hunks of red meat from the limb with small cracked teeth. She barely chewed, swallowed the hunk, and ravenously attacked the arm again, tearing off another large hunk of meat.