Pray To Stay Dead (10 page)

“
Come on,” someone said, and: “Wow, man, I’m impressed.” And: “God, no, please no, please God…” And: “No, no. Please, no. No, no, no.”

Colleen squeezed her eyes shut and screamed until her screams became one with the screams of those around her. The fist in her hair tightened, and she was lifted and dragged forward.

“
Open your eyes,” someone said.

“
Open them, you cunt.”

She did. Shriveled and pale, Guy’s genitals were inches from her face. She could smell him. She looked up, and through her tears found his face, his eyes.

He tried to say something, but it was little more than an animal growl. Tears streamed down his face. The cords stood out in his neck. He struggled. He was strong. They were stronger.

“
Put it in your mouth.”

She screamed, and her face was thrust into Guy’s crotch.

“
Do it.”

She opened her mouth, took him in, sobbing around Guy’s limp penis.

“
Do it,” the voice screamed, the fist at the back of her head a knot of pain.

She closed her lips around Guy and worked him, gasping. Unseen, those around her yelped and hooted. Someone screamed, raw and incoherent and insane.

“
Why?”

“
Shut up.”

“
Oh, yeah. That’s it.”

“
Stop stop stop.”

“
Open your fucking eyes
.” Again her eyelids were pried open. Guy’s penis was small and pitiful, his testicles tight and close to his body. A large hand reached in and seized Guy’s penis, tugging it forward. A blade flashed, and Guy roared in pain and someone laughed and Colleen screamed and screamed, her eyes clenched, her mind collapsing.

One of them smeared something warm and wet across her face, tried to press it into her mouth, but she locked her jaw and wrenched her head away. Another blow to the stomach, and she gasped and one of their attackers crammed something—
god, oh god it can’t be it can’t be
—into her mouth. She wretched and gagged and it fell from her mouth and onto the ground between her splayed fingers.

A heavy boot pushed her to the ground. Colleen rolled, her head lolling, the stink of blood in her nose, her mouth filled with its taste. Guy’s dick lay curled and bloody and dirt-speckled on the ground. She frantically smeared blood from her lips.

And then thunder. Thunder and blood, and one of their attackers crumpled to the ground, a ragged hole in his chest. She rolled and clambered to her feet, and then someone was on her, hammering her back and neck and face and head. She struggled, but not for long.

Nine

He rolled through the small business district of Citrus Heights, eyes forward, trying to ignore what he saw. There were dead bodies in the streets, both walking and strewn across the road in tatters. Eyes forward, on the road, and a dead woman with a bloody smear for a face lifted its mouth from the open belly of a large dog to watch him pass. A bearded man clutching a small pistol walked toward her. Reggie rolled on, barely heard the pop of the gun behind him.

A heap of bodies burned in the parking lot of an In-n-Out, and a group of armed men clustered around a pick-up truck, stuffing their faces with burgers and fries, knocking them down with sodas. They tried to flag him down. Maybe they just wanted to ask him something—to see if he’d passed through Sacramento, perhaps, or if he knew just how bad things were on the interstate. Maybe they wanted to know what he was doing in their town. Maybe they wanted to pull a nigger from his truck and add him to the pyre. Who knew?

He wasn’t taking any chances. He kept on keeping on, and no one followed him. He wondered if maybe he should have taken a chance and stopped. He was getting hungry.

A line of abandoned cars and trucks blocked his path to the highway, stopped him in his tracks and cranked his heartbeat up a notch or two. His sideview mirrors were empty for now. If this were a trap, it had been abandoned. He contemplated pushing through, but the blockade was two cars deep, and he did not want to get stuck. He had no choice but to leave the main road. He consulted his map, and when he looked up, he saw three dead bodies walking toward his truck. One of them, an older man with a sunken stomach and a black and bulging post-mortem erection, was naked. One, a child still wearing a baseball hat, dragged its twisted right foot behind. Its small right arm dangled and spun from a thin strand of gristle. The third, trundling up the rear, was an obese man wearing only a pair of shorts. His enormous belly had been ripped open. Yellow fat and purple innards bulged.

Reggie turned left, slowly passing the dead bodies, which lifted their arms in an unintentional display of supplication, slack-jawed peasants begging for even a scrap of moldy bread. The small business district fell behind him. He passed an abandoned gas station. A hand-lettered sign taped to the pumps declared:

OUT OF GAS

PRAY TO JESUS!

He consulted his map once more.

“
Shit and fuck,” he said, tracing a finger along Hazel Avenue. He was approaching the American River. There were two small bridges between him and Highway Fifty. If one of them was closed or cut off, he just might be fucked.

“
Oh, well,” he said “Cross ‘em when I get to ‘em.” He turned right into a neighborhood comprised of small ranch style houses. Barring any unexpected obstructions, this was the quickest route to Hazel Avenue, which would take him south to a place called Nimbus, where he’d get onto Fifty.

Half the neighborhood had flown the coop, if the empty driveways were any indication. Aside from a few smashed windows, there was no sign of the wholesale looting and pillaging mentioned on the radio. Curtains parted and frightened faces watched his passage. A few folks had been smart enough to nudge their cars or trucks right up against their houses, barricading their front doors while making a quick escape easy.

He turned on the radio, caught the tail-end of a report from the Middle East. Over the past twelve hours, the powder keg of Israel had erupted. Within days, someone from within the PLO was reported to have said, Israel would be no more, and her people would be killing themselves upon the sands where the land met the sea. Gerald Ford said that Israel’s allies would not forsake her in this time of trouble. When asked about Vietnam, he was terse: complete withdrawal from Vietnam was possible within weeks. American troops were needed right here, in the cities and streets of the United States of America. No one challenged the contradiction inherent in his words.

“
Mother fuckers,” Reggie said, not entirely sure who he was cursing, and that’s when he saw the kid. Just a chubby white kid riding a yellow bicycle with blue wheels up and down the deserted street. It was a girl’s bike with a banana seat. Sparkly tassels hung from the handlebars.

As Reggie passed him, the kid looked up and flashed a listless smile. Ignoring the guy and his dog on the interstate had been one thing, but this?

“
Dammit,” he said, bringing the truck to a halt. He looked around. The coast was clear. He watched the kid approach the truck in his side-view mirror.

Beneath Reggie’s window, the kid brought the bike to a halt in style, braking hard with his right foot and planting his left foot on the ground, his back wheel skidding a blue half-circle across the concrete.

“
Nice move, kid,” Reggie said, rolling down his window. “Now what the hell are you doing?”

“
Riding my bike.”

“
I can see that, but what the hell are you doing? Don’t you know what’s going on?”

“
Yeah,” the kid said, and Reggie could see from the look in his eyes that he wasn’t very smart. He looked dull and stupid, like the kind of kid who would grow up to kick his dog and punch his wife, and Reggie cursed himself for stopping. To hell with this dumb white boy. He had a daughter to get home to. “Dead people are coming back to life.”

“
Right.” Reggie said, opening the door and getting out. “So why are you out here on your bike?”

“
I don’t know.” The kid shrugged. His eyes fell to the pistol at Reggie’s hip. “I guess I wanted to see one for myself.”

“
Have you?”

“
Yeah,” the kid said. “There’s one down at the end of the road. It’s trying to get up. I think a car hit it. Its guts are all smooshed out.” He made a face.

“
There are more back that way,” Reggie said, tossing a thumb over his shoulder.

“
You use that yet?” The kid’s eyes were still on Reggie’s Colt.

“
No,” Reggie said, looking around. “You should be home right now.”

“
I guess so,” the kid said. “Do you think you will?”

“
Will what?”

“
Use your gun.”

“
Jesus, kid, I don’t know.” Now it was his turn to shrug. Why the hell was he wasting his time like this? “Probably.”

“
You should go down the road,” the kid said, turning in place, looking back toward the end of the road. “Thataway. Shoot the thing. It’s pretty sad.”

“
Maybe I will.”

“
Can I come see?”

“
That something you want to see?”

“
I dunno.” The kid scrunched up his face. “I guess so.”

“
You don’t,” Reggie said. “It’s nothing you ever want to see. Where’s your house?”

“
Back there,” the kid said, tossing his thumb over his shoulder in obvious imitation of Reggie.

“
Are your parents home?”

“
My dad moved out last year,” the kid said. Somewhere far away, a machine gun ripped through someone or something. The kid winced, crouching.

“
Where’s your mother?”

“
She left.” The kid stared into space, his eyes going distant. More gunfire. The kid snapped back, looked Reggie in the eye. “She drinks a lot. She ran out of Blue Nun. She went to the store to get more.”

“
Jesus,” Reggie said. “How long ago?”

“
You shouldn’t use the Lord’s name in vain, mister.”

“
How long ago?”

“
I dunno. This morning. She told me to stay inside, but…” He shrugged.

“
Damn it,” Reggie said.

“
You think she’s dead?”

“
I’m going to take you home, okay?”

“
You think she’s dead?”

“
I don’t know, kid. I’m just going—you got a name?”

“
Steven.”

“
I’m just going to take you home, Steven, and then I’m going to go. My little girl is waiting for me.”

“
How old is she?”

“
Seven,” Reggie said, remembering the last time he spoke to her. The radio said that the phones were out across most of the country, but suddenly he had to try. At the very least he had to try. “How old are you?”

“
Eleven. What’s her name?”

“
Nefertiti.”

“
Weird name,” the kid said, and looked instantly sorry. “I mean, it’s kind of pretty.”

“
Don’t worry about it. Let’s get you home.”

“
I just live a few blocks that way,” the kid said, flapping his hand in the direction of his house. “I can get there.”

“
I’m sure you can,” Reggie said. “But I’m going to take you, anyway. And you’re gonna stay inside. Give me this.” Reggie put his hands on the bike’s handlebars.

“
What do you want with my bike?”

“
I’m just going to strap it to the back of the truck. Do you know if your phone is wor—”

“
Hey,” someone shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

Reggie turned, and it was too late to go for his Colt. The guy standing in the door of one of the houses that Reggie had taken to be abandoned had him in the sights of his hunting rifle.

“
I’m helping the kid, man,” Reggie said, freezing, raising his hands. “Just put the gun down and—”

“
You fucking sick bastard,” the guy said. His voice was slurred, and he was having trouble holding the rifle steady. Jesus, is that how people everywhere were reacting to this? By getting shit-faced?

“
Listen, man, I was just—”

“
You were just trying to get your dirty black hands on a little white boy, is what you were doing, you sick faggot. Get on your bike and go home, kid.”

“
Do it,” Reggie said, glancing at the kid.

“
Is that what you were…” the kid began, letting his words trail off. He looked at Reggie, fear and confusion dawning on his face.

“
Jesus Christ, no, kid, now would you—”

The guy opened fire, squeezed off five frenzied shots. At least two of them struck Reggie’s truck.

It was over quickly: Reggie leapt to his left, dropping and rolling and pulling his gun. His first two shots went wild, turning brick into powder and shattering a window. The last one caught the asshole in the stomach. The rifle hit the ground and the guy followed, wailing, his hands pressed to his belly.

Reggie got to his feet, looked around. The kid lay on his side in a spreading pool of blood, gasping. Reggie dropped to his knees and inspected the damage. The bullet had missed the kid’s heart, but judging by the sound of his breathing it had collapsed one of his lungs. Reggie could not find an exit wound. The bullet had bounced around inside the kid’s ribcage.