Zombie D.O.A. (51 page)

“Do you miss her? Rosie, I mean?” Kelly asked when I was done.

“Yes” I said. “Yes, I do.” And although that was true, the Chris Collins that still missed Rosie was a different man to who I was now. He was someone who seemed to me more like a casual acquaintance than a past version of myself.

“I’ve got something I want to tell you, Chris.” Kelly said suddenly. “Something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time now.”

She paused, and I raised my eyebrows prompting her to continue.

“I love you, Chris,” she suddenly blurted.

I didn’t mean to laugh, but this sudden admission caught me totally unawares and I couldn’t stop myself.

“Well, I’m glad you find it funny,” Kelly said crossly.

“No, wait, Kel,” I said still giggling, “I didn’t mean it like that, you caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

“Well, I do,” Kelly said adamantly, “So you can take it any way you like.”

“Listen kid,” I said, “It’s just a crush, you’ll get over it, once you’re in Flagstaff you’ll meet someone your own age and…”

“First off,” Kelly said, “Stop calling me kid, second, don’t tell me how I’m supposed to feel.”

“Okay, I apologize. I didn’t mean to patronize you, but seriously, I’m old enough to be your father.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Because it’s normal to father a child at ten years of age.”

“I mean, have you ever even had a boyfriend?”

“Is that important?”

“Look Kelly,” I said, “I’m flattered, I really am. You’re beautiful, and you’ll make some man very happy some day.”

“Just not you,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes.

One our fourth day in the diner, Giuseppe got up and took a few tentative steps, struggling as much with the awkward splint I’d fashioned for him as with his damaged leg. That night a dust storm kicked up and threw itself at the diner with the fury of a Z attack.

Somewhere during the night, Kelly crept over and cuddled up to me. She started kissing me, and after a while I kissed back and we made love for the first time on the floor of that greasy diner, in the New Mexico badlands, with a storm blowing like the furies of hell outside.

I’ve heard it said that there is plenty of water in the desert if you know where to look. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that knowledge available to me and we ran out of water on day five.  By day seven we’d drained the juice from all the canned fruit Hooley had packed us and I was seriously concerned about Giuseppe who lay on his bed and seemed to be barely breathing.

“I’m going to have to set out in the morning, see if I can find help,” I told Kelly that night before we went to bed.

“And how far do you think you’re going to make it, in this heat, without water?”

“What’s the alternative? Stay here and wait to die?”

“Well if you’re going, I’m going too.”

“And what about G, I’m not leaving him behind.”

“Of course not,” Kelly said. “Never. So we all stay and wait, someone’s bound to come by sooner or later.”

“You’re right,” I said, but I didn’t share her optimism and I fell asleep thinking I had to go in the morning.

Sometime during the night I woke. The diner was in pitch darkness, and I could hear Kelly’s steady breathing beside me, and Giuseppe’s raspy breath a bit further away. Something had woken me and after a while I heard it again, the spluttering sound of an engine.

At first, I thought it was a Harley, and I was briefly terrified that the Dead Men had found us. But then the sound came again and it definitely lacked the deep-throated Harley rumble. I hoisted myself up using the side of one of the booths and now I could see lights out there. I took the AK and walked to the window, drew the blinds aside and looked out. There were two men standing on the road in the lights of their vehicle, clearing the barricade.

“What’s happening?” Kelly said from behind me.

“Stay there,” I said, “Someone’s outside.”

I slipped through the door and skirted around the building in the dark, coming up behind the vehicle, an ancient VW Camper with something attached to the roof.

I crept forward, keeping close to the vehicle, and now I could hear the men talking.

“This is like totally, bogus,” one of them was saying.

“Totally,” the other agreed.

I stepped forward, breaking cover with the AK in a firing position. One of the men was pulling a rusted old fender towards the side of the road. He dropped it instantly and threw up his hands. “Whoa, dude, watch where you’re pointing that thing,” the other man said.

“We need a ride,” I said

“Totally dude, no problem. Just don’t shoot us okay.”

“I’m not going to shoot you, unless you make me. Where you headed?”

“San Clemente, dude. Catch some waves.”

“You got any water?”

“Totally. Perry, give the man some aqua.”

One of the men climbed into the camper and came back with a bottle. “Wait here,” I said. “You drive off and leave us and we’ll die out here.”

I ran back to the diner cradling that bottle like it was precious cargo. Kelly met me at the door. “What’s happening?” she said.

“I got us a ride. Here, drink some water.”

She shook her head. “G needs it more.”

I poured some water into Giuseppe’s bowl, then had a sip myself and passed the bottle back to Kelly. The dog’s breathing was barely perceptible. I scooped some water from the bowl and wet his muzzle. Then I took some in my hands and held it for him and he lapped it up.

There was a knock on the door and when I opened it, one of the men was standing there, “Dude we’re ready to roll, whenever.”

Between Kelly and I, we got Giuseppe to the camper and we pulled away from Sal’s Diner forever. We stopped at the Audi to pick up the rest of the gas cans, and then we drove off into the darkness. I sat on the bench with Kelly cuddled into me and Giuseppe’s head in my lap and I fell asleep marveling at how little it actually takes to make a person happy, and how fragile that happiness is.

When I woke
we’d stopped and there was faint light outside. I eased Kelly’s head from my shoulder and slid from under Giuseppe and lowered his head gently onto the bench. He opened his eyes and looked at me and I knew in that moment that G was going to make it. He had a determination in those eyes, a will to live, and I knew that this tough old dog had some running in him yet.

Outside I found the surfers squatted around a smoky fire, brewing up some coffee. “Dude,” one of them said as I approached.

“Hey,” the other said, “you want some coffee?”

“I’d rather have some water if you have any.”

One of them passed me a bottle and I downed it is a single dram.

“Name’s Chris,” I said, “I just wanted thank you guys for giving us a ride.”

“No prob, I’m Ted, this is Perry.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said and shook hands with both of them. “You guys from California?”

“Uh huh.”

“What are you doing out here in New Mexico?”

  “We got an Apache dude out of the reservation, grows the sweetest weed you ever sampled. Say, do you partake?”

“No,”

“Pity,” Perry said, “this stuff is the like, way…Hey, you mind if we do a jay?

“Not at all,” I said.

“Bonus,” Ted said.

They lit up and passed the joint between them, then offered it to me.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“That chick traveling with you, she like have a boyfriend?” Perry asked.

“Yes, she does,” Kelly said from behind me, then slipped her hand around my waist and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Sorry dude. I didn’t realize.”

“Bogus, dude.” Ted said and gave him a disapproving look.

“Listen,” I said. “We need to get to Flagstaff. I know it’s a bit out of your way, but…”

“No, problem, dude. It’s on the 40, we can swing by there and pick up the 15 at Barstow, then…”

“That’s the 19 dude,”

“I’m sure it’s the 15, whatever. We can hook up with the I-5 via Lakeland.  That way we give L.A. a wide berth, way wide.”

“What’s the deal with L.A.?”

“Dude, stay out. Z central. We used to surf out at Redondo, but after a while you’d be catching a wave and you’d see the Zs like waiting on the beach for you to come in.”

“So we moved, like way down the coast towards Pendleton, but then these like fascist, pseudo-soldiers chased us off.”

“Total reactionaries,” Perry agreed.

“Pseudo soldiers?”

“Yeah, you know like corporate guns for hire.”

“They’ve got a base down there?”

“Dude, they’ve taken over the entire marine base.”

An idea suddenly occurred to me. “You guys ever surf a beach with a white house set up against the cliffs? An old three storey house with three parapets.”

“Totally dude, that’s at P.V.”

“P.V.?”

“Palos Verdes, bitchin’ waves.”

“Are you sure dude?” Perry said. “I could have sworn that was Leo Carrillo?”

“Yeah maybe. We were doing a lot of weed back then. Hey, you mind if we do another jay?”

Ted lit up, took a pull then passed the joint to Perry who did likewise.

“You know what,” Perry said. “I believe you’re right. It was P.V. I remember you were so stoned, you reversed into that road sign, like totally totaled it.”

“Yeah, I remember that now,” Ted said and they both started giggling.

We reached Flagstaff after dark. The city had been turned into a fortified encampment with razor wire, watchtowers, armed patrols and sentries at all access roads. I half expected them to ask us for a password, but the sentry only asked Ted if he’d been drinking. “No sir,“ he said, “we don’t indulge.”

  The sentry shone a light into the cab. “What’s your business in Flagstaff,” he asked.

“I live here,” Kelly said. “Kelly Capshaw, Janet Capshaw’s my mom.”

“Kelly?” the guard said, “Christ girl, is that you? Your mother’s going bust a gut. She’d given you up for dead.”

That little interlude earned us an armed escort to Kelly’s house, a modest bungalow on a quiet street.

“Brace yourself, here comes the drama,” Kelly said as we approached.

The guards had obviously radioed ahead and the lights of the house, including those in the front yard were turned on. There was a woman on the lawn wearing a nightdress that looked like it belonged on the catwalk at the Milan fashion show. She was smoking a cigarette, which she quickly stubbed out as the camper came to a halt.