Running Red (2 page)

I set down the slingshot. Hanging off the side of my hiking pack is a small hand axe I would normally use to cut firewood. I take a pair of work gloves out of the front zipper pocket of the pack and get busy protecting the ebb of humanity from one less runner.

Two

Yuki never strays too far from my side. I don’t keep her on a leash because there is no point in it. Besides, it keeps us both free in case we encounter another runner. Yuki can sniff them out long before I can spot them. If she’s not chasing runners, she’s chasing other critters. Sometimes as we walk I toss a tennis ball off into the brush or down the road. It keeps the hike from getting dull for either of us.

Yuki is a Yellow Labrador I found on the near empty streets of my home city. She was wet and hungry and had been sniffing a bed of gray slime, pawing at it. Yuki’s nose had gone up and she had snapped her head around to stare at me. Her dark eyes searched mine. Her tail stayed frozen parallel to the street. I could see her nostrils flare and contract as she investigated me. When she was sufficiently certain I wasn’t infected, she gave me a single bark. I clapped my hands and called to her. I didn’t know her name and just said, “Here, dog. Come here, dog.” Wary at first, she eventually came over when I opened the cellophane around the glazed donut I took from my pocket. It was supposed to have been my dinner.

Yuki had sniffed the packaged pastry. Lifting her eyes, she had stared at me as if offering an apology, as if she knew it was all I had to eat. I waved it front of her.

“You have it, dog. There’s more, I’m sure of it.” I had looked around and wasn’t so sure that was true. It had been nearly seven weeks since the outbreak of the rash. Any stragglers like me would have pilfered most of the food by then.

We’ve learned what to eat, and when. Morel mushrooms should only be eaten when they are hollow from stem all the way through to the tip; if it has a milky substance in it, the mushroom is poisonous. Berries have been in season. When we pass an abandoned farm I’ll rummage for whatever is growing wild. I’ve learned that Michigan was the sugar beet capital of the world when the world mattered. It was also home to a ton of soy and corn.

“Here you go, girl,” I say. I toss the ball as far as I can. Yuki takes off after it. The ball bounces two or three times as goes off into the brush. When she chases the tennis ball into the brush, she spooks out a doe. The deer stops in the far right lane of the northbound road we’re on. She’s looking back at Yuki and hasn’t realized I’m there. I have only a few seconds to spare if I want to spear her; venison steaks would make a good dinner.

Slowly and softly, I squeeze the plastic clips of the hip belt of my backpack. I slip my arms out of the straps and lower the pack to the ground. I kneel and unzip the bag as slowly and silently as I can. The handle of the firing sling of my atlatl pops forward. I grab it and then fish out one of the darts. I stand slowly and feed the dart into its grooves. I’m cocking back my arm to fling the dart forward when Yuki comes thrashing out of the brush, the tennis ball in her mouth. The doe bolts forward and runs off up the road. She’s too far away for the spear to be effective. Her white tail waves goodbye to two days’ worth of meals.

I cover the twelve miles to the village of Kawkawlin in less than five hours. It is an event free hike along the median. The Interstate is peppered with abandoned accidents. There are bodies in some of the cars; I can see and smell the corpses. Some of them have gone to seed and are covered with a slick, gray, oily moss. This is residual from the rash. This is the fungus eating its last meal because it couldn’t find another carrier to infect. Soon spores will grow that will produce a pollen that is as contagious as the latching. To be safe, I pull out a white pollen mask, the kind with the elastic band on the back, and fit it over my mouth and nose.

I’m not supposed to scavenge when I come across scenes such as these. The public service announcements explained I should set the cars or buildings on fire. Burn out the infection. Cauterize the land.

I used the last of my charcoal fluid on the runner twelve miles behind me. I will need to replenish my supply in Kawkawlin. For now, when I pass an accident scene, I keep the mask over my nose and mouth, not only because of the oily smells wafting from the accidents but also because I’m hoping I don’t inhale any microbes.

This is the forgotten world I live in now: encountering other nomads, scavenging what I can from homes and gas stations, and wandering. I’m old enough to remember the days after the hurricane destroyed New Orleans and how quickly humanity deteriorated: less than two days. Thirteen months after the rash swept over the world I live in the days of Darwin. It might not be the fittest that rebuild this world—just those who kept away from those trying to be the fittest.

Sometimes I regret not leaving the city when I had the opportunity. I’m not certain when the last busses rolled out of Grand Rapids for what was once called Wyoming but is now universally known as the Safety Zone. Military trucks had thundered along the streets. I had heard the calls for evacuation every sixty minutes for a little over eight hours.

But I couldn’t leave.

At the time, I was living in an apartment with my older sister and her five-year-old daughter. I could have fled and gotten into a truck, but I waited for Jessica and Charlotte to return. I couldn’t abandon them. When I was lost, Jessica had taken me in. She worked a day job in a corporate office and placed Charlotte in a nearby nursery school. I worked at a sub shop next door to our building and took night classes working towards my GED. It wasn’t that I was dumb; I was just a bad student. I never saw the point of doing any of the work; I had the smarts, why waste all that time doing bullshit busy work? When my own parents threw up their hands because they couldn’t, as they said, get through to me, I left. Jessica had been there for me. I owed it to my sister to be there for her.

I guess she thought I could take care of myself.

I can’t blame her. Charlotte is her world. She had to think of her daughter first, didn’t she? Isn’t that what a responsible parent would do?

A large billboard at the foot of the exit ramp to my destination greets me. Kawkawlin: Home of the Velodrome. On it is an image of a steeply banked, oval track. Three figures race against one another on bicycles. One wears red, one wears white, one wears blue. Each figure flashes pearly white smiles. A happy, smiling crowd cheers from the stands. The infield is filled with coaches and a smiling blonde girl waving a checkered flag. In the corner of the sign are five interlocked circles. Kawkawlin is an official training ground for the U.S. Olympic team.

Yuki and I hike up the exit ramp. It occurs to me that when I rode in cars, I never paid attention to the gentle rise of the road. I’m pretty certain the ascent was to slow cars down as they left the open freeway. Likewise, the return ramp sloped down for the opposite effect. On legs supporting a hiking pack, it is a bit of a struggle. I would have cut through the triangle of field between the service station and the road, but a rusty barbed wire fence prohibits the shortcut from happening.

At the top of the ramp, there’s a green sign. Downtown Kawkawlin is three miles to the east. Larkin is 16 miles to the west. There isn’t much option for me. If we went to Larkin, we’d pass houses, maybe a gas station halfway there. I need to be smart and just do what I call a walk-through: Go into the nearest store, grab, and go.

A single convenience plaza stands on the south side of Wilder Road. The Get Gas sign is rendered in letters leaning to the right to give the impression doing your business as quickly as possible. “Get your gas and go!” it says.

There is no glass in the door and I know this probably means it has been picked over. I’ve learned a lot about surviving since I left the city a year and a month ago. One thing I know for certain is to never pass up a store. Even if the food is all gone there is bound to be something I can use, like matches, lighters, charcoal fluid, or duct tape.

I undo the snap of the black leather sheath hanging on my belt to make sure the knife I carry will be accessible should I need it.

Yuki and I go down the hill. The rusted fence ends where the convenience plaza lot begins. We touch the far edge of the cracked asphalt of the Get Gas service center, where I stop to remove the hiker’s pack from my back. I kneel down and Yuki trots up to me.

“Yuki. Check.” I point at the store.

Yuki turns her eyes to the store. She looks back at me.

I point a second time at the store. “Yuki. Check,” I say. This time the dog trots up to the door. She stops, sniffs the air inside. Her tail is full mast, rigid, and jabbing at the sky: she is exhibiting caution. Yuki takes a hesitant step inside the door, sniffs again, and then disappears all the way inside the shop. A second later she gives off a single bark. It is her way of telling me “all clear.”

I loop the strap of the backpack over one shoulder and hurry across the lot. I don’t like being out in the open any longer than necessary. Whoever broke the glass out of the door didn’t bother to unlock it. I twist the dead bolt and pull on the metal handle.

Yuki is busy eating something she’s found on a lower shelf. I don’t bother to look, although from the crunching, the food is dry.

I go first to the coolers, which are now nothing more than glass door cupboards. The beer and wine compartments are all empty. I am not surprised. The same can be said for the pop coolers. What I find in the slanted shelves are plastic jugs and bottles of white and chocolate milk. I pass on those.

The next door’s glass has been busted. Bricks of cheese are sprinkled with safety glass. I brush away some of the chips. Mold. I want nothing to do with anything like that. There are metal racks coated in white rubber where once upon a time sandwiches grew. Little plastic signs indicate ham and cheese, Italian sub, roast beef. These packaged meals have long since been plucked off the wire shelves.

I am just about to surrender when I see several stacks of unpacked boxes in the back. There is a storeroom behind the shelves where the employee used to stock the racks and shelves and sleeves. I go around to the alcove of bathrooms. There’s a large metal door that says, “Employees Only.” I pull on the handle and the door swings open. I am about to step inside when Yuki growls. I hesitate.

“Yuki. Check,” I say. Yuki leans inside and sniffs. She looks back at the glassless front door and then looks at me. “She wants to leave,” I think, but I can’t. I need what’s inside those boxes.

“All right, girl, we’ll leave. But first I need to look inside those boxes, okay?”

Yuki whines. She looks at the front door. When she looks back at me, her eyebrows rise and fall. I reach down and pet her, reassure it will be okay. I hold the door open and she goes into the back room. I let the door swing closed behind me. There is no worry about getting locked in. Most of these doors have a safety on them to prevent any accidents. Besides, if it was necessary, I could get out through one of the glass doors.

There is a horrible smell inside the stockroom. It was once a walk-in cooler, now it’s a sweat box. There are eggs, milk, and other perishables. At one time the stench would have been a lot worse, but now the room just has the smell of garbage.

The boxes that have caught my eye say “Sports Drink” on the side. It’s not any of the name brands. The owner of the service station probably got a deal on some knock-offs. Doesn’t really matter. I need to keep up my hydration levels. If I could, I’d take all seven crates with me, but I know that is impossible.

The label on the bottle says “Electric Berry.” It’s neither electrifying nor berry flavored. It’s warm, flat, stale, and I think I should have maybe shaken it first. I pour the rest of that bottle into a white, plastic bucket for Yuki. It’s probably not the greatest thing for her, but she needs to hydrate as well. Yuki sniffs what I pour and then looks out front from behind the glass door. A dog knows when it wants to eat or drink, I remind myself. If she wants it, she will drink it.

I shake a new bottle of Electric Berry. This new one tastes a little better, but I’m sure it would be more electric if it were chilled to the proper temperature. It’s why all of those big, orange containers on the sidelines of football games were filled with ice. No one would drink this crap warm unless they had to. I had to.

Midway through a swallow I realize Yuki is hunching down. She’s baring her fangs again. I set the bottle down on the flap of the top box and crouch down behind the wall of boxes. I pull the backpack next to me and call softly for Yuki. I hear her whimper. I know she’s trying to protect me, but if someone or something comes in and sees a dog inside the cooler, he, she, or it may come around like I did to investigate.

“Yuki,” I say. My voice is a little louder. She stops her whimpering. She trots around behind the box. Because I’m at her level, she licks my face. “Stop that,” I say. She continues to lick me. It’s the salt from the drink, I think. Now she’s interested in what’s in the bucket. Thankfully I’ve placed it behind the rows of cardboard boxes.

“Hey Lucy, I’m home,” someone says out front. His Hispanic accent sounds forced. Someone laughs; maybe it’s the guy who spoke. Yuki looks up from the bucket. I put my hand over her muzzle.

“Dude. What are you talking about?” a new voice says.

“It’s what Ricky always says to Lucy on the show.”

“What show?”

“
The Lucy Show
.”

“What are you talking about?” I hear one of the far cooler doors open and close.