Running Red (3 page)

“
The Lucy Show
,” the first speaker says. “There’s a bunch of discs back in the house.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing?” Another door opens and closes.

“Yeah. Cage has one of those battery operated DVD players.” He stops his story too abruptly. “What?”

I can tell from the way the blabbermouth speaks something has changed between the two out front. There is no way of knowing what the predicament is until I hear the blabbermouth speak again.

“What bottle?” he says.

“Shut up, you idiot,” the second speaker says. He says it in a whisper full of frustration.

What I hear next sends my stomach down to my toes. It is the racking of a gun. Probably a shotgun with a slug now in its chamber. A slingshot and a knife aren’t going to be of any value against a pump-action shotgun.

I look Yuki in the eyes and put a finger to my lips. It’s a futile gesture. After all this time I think she understands me, but truth be told, she’s just a dog. Anything she does is just a trick I’ve taught her. My fear is she’ll trot out from behind the boxes and the mighty hunter out front will fire his round into her.

To my surprise, Yuki flattens down on the floor, her nose between her front paws. Her eyes stay on me, and I think I see concern in the way her eyebrows dance. Now I’m the one being silly, thinking I understand the subtle nuances of a dog’s dancing eyebrows.

The cooler door behind me opens. “Come out, come out, whoever you are,” the first speaker says. He laughs. It is a high pitch giggle. “Friggin runner. Blast those boxes.”

“Dude, it’s not a runner,” the second speaker says.

“How do you know?”

“Because a runner doesn’t need to drink.”

“How do you know, Professor Know It All? Plants need water to grow, right?”

I’m betting their frustration with one another will buy me just enough time to get the jump on them. If I don’t do something, they will storm the stockroom and I’ll be found. I fit the wrist rocket on my arm. I don’t want to kill either of them, but I need to send a message.

I fish a metal pellet out of my pocket and place it in the cradle. Instead of aiming at the gunman, I shatter the glass of a cooler door two down from where they stand.

“What the—” one of them says.

“I’m coming out,” I yell.

“Throw out your gun,” the second speaker says.

“I don’t have a gun,” I say.

“Bullshit,” the first guy says.

“Did you hear one?” I ask.

“Maybe you got a silencer,” the first one says again.

“Dude, shut up,” the second guy says.

“Your friend is pretty dumb,” I say. I put a second pellet in the leather cradle.

“Hey, don’t call me dumb,” the first guy says.

“Silencers are a Hollywood myth,” I say.

“She’s got a gun, Aubrey.”

“Dude, shut up.”

“Why don’t you just blow her away?” the dude asks. He clearly doesn’t trust me.

“Back off,” his accomplice says.

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

“No one has to shoot anyone,” I say. I’m standing up, the rubber tubing stretched taught. My right hand grips the handle of the wrist rocket. My right arm is a lethal weapon. All it needs is for my left hand to release the leather cradle.

The one with the gun, Aubrey, stares back at me. He’s wearing camouflage pants, an olive green tank top. He has dark, wavy hair and crystal blue eyes. This boy is farm bred, sinewy from daily labor. His chest pulls the tank top tight and his arms are sculpted. It has been so long since I’ve seen a boy my age, I feel my cheeks warm.

His partner on the raid—Dude, as Aubrey keeps calling him—wears pants that are either long shorts or short pants. If they weren’t so baggy, I’d think they were capris. A wide-brimmed sports cap is cocked sideways at the two o’clock position on his head. He holds the door open. Aubrey leans in and looks at me down the barrel of an over-and-under shotgun. He’s killed before, I think. He might do so again.

“Man, why don’t you waste her?” Dude asks. “Man, she don’t even have a gun, just a little old pea-shooter.”

I speak evenly. “One day you’ll run out of bullets, but I’ll always have stones.”

“Just frickin’ waste her, Aubrey,” the dude pleads.

I see Aubrey’s cool, blue eyes shift ever so slightly at the dude. When his blue eyes swing back to me, I’m smiling. “Before you do, at least let me peg him once with my shot,” I say.

Aubrey laughs. He lowers the gun. I lower the slingshot.

“This ain’t cool,” the dude says. “Denny’s going to be pissed.”

“Who’s Denny?” I ask.

“Guy back at the house,” Aubrey says. “Come on out from back there. We’ll take you to him.”

Normally I would reject the invitation. There’s something inviting in Aubrey’s eyes. I find myself suddenly starved for human companionship.

“Let me get my backpack. I’ll meet you guys out front. You have a car?”

The dude scoffs at me. “As if,” he says.

“All right. Let me load up on some of this sports drink.”

“I’ll grab a case for the house,” the dude says.

“I got it,” I say. “Go on out front.”

The dude eyes me. “I think she’s hiding something.” Aubrey looks away from the dude to me.

“This time he’s right. I was in the middle of taking a piss when you two showed up. I’ve got the bucket right here.” I slide the bucket I used to give Yuki some of the sport’s drink out past the boxes with my foot. “You want to come smell it?”

“No, we’re good,” Aubrey says. He nods his head at the front door. The dude, reluctant to trust me and for good reason, goes out. Aubrey closes the cooler door and follows. I immediately drop down to the floor. Yuki has been extremely patient with me. I take her head in my hands and lift her eyes to mine.

“Yuki. Stay.” I look at her. “Yuki. Stay. I’ll come back for you. You have food and drink here. Yuki. Stay.”

She whimpers. I ruffle the top of her head. “Yuki. Stay.” It hurts a little to say it. There is no way to convey to the dog that my biggest fear is that this Denny back at the house will want to cook her and eat her. Meat is scarce.

I put on my backpack, grab a box of the sports drink, and prop open the door of the stocking room. I stack two crates and leave my companion of the last thirteen months. I know if I say come she won’t hesitate to join me, but I can’t. I don’t plan on staying with Aubrey or the dude or Denny at the house any longer than I have to. I might get there and turn right around and come back.

But I have to go. Someday the rash and the runners will be gone and the world will slowly return to order. When it does, we’ll all have to fit in again. Maybe that time is coming sooner than expected. I have no idea of how wrong I am.

Three

We hike another mile along Wilder Road. There are wide-open fields on either side of us that, a year ago, were filled with beets or corn or soybeans. Now they are overgrown with wheatgrass. The wild weed gives the landscape a pale yellow glow. Out in the field to our right is a large, olive green truck. Camouflage designs have been painted on its body. Military, I think. There are tandem wheels on it. Serial numbers are painted on the hood. A torn, dark green canvas is draped over a frame on the back of the bed. It looks very much like one of the military transports I saw rumbling through the city.

We eventually go north on Euclid Avenue. During the walk I learn the “dude” has a name: It’s Matt. He prefers Dude. Matt, who seems to be obsessed with how well I fit into my jeans, pulls a wagon behind him. It’s a rusty Radio Flyer with wooden fence-like pieces fitted into brackets along the inner sides. The crates of sports drink fit snuggly on their ends in the wagon. Apparently Denny hates to have scouts come back without any booty.

We pass a brown sign that says Velodrome 1. To change the subject from Matt’s hormonal driven, spontaneous rap about my ass, I ask if either of them have ever been to the Velodrome. Neither says anything at first. I catch the look Matt gives Aubrey. Matt smiles and laughs at some private joke.

“Oh, you’ll see it soon enough,” Matt says. He stops the wagon to open a carton of the cigarettes he took from the convenience store.

“You better not do that,” Aubrey says.

“No one’s gonna know,” Matt says. He burns the end of a cigarette with a disposable lighter. The inhale calms him. He holds up the carton. “It’s how we found it. We took it from her.” Matt smiles around the cigarette and flips it up between his lips. He lifts the handle of the wagon and walks north on Euclid.

“I don’t smoke,” I say, and then think, “Anymore.”

Aubrey touches my elbow. It’s electric, and not in a hurtful way. It sparks something inside me I didn’t realize I missed until I feel it. I stop walking. I don’t realize it at first, but I am stroking my skin where he touched me. I rub my hands together like I’m wiping them clean.

“Come on,” Aubrey says.

“What did he mean ‘I’ll see it soon enough?’” I ask.

Aubrey studies me. His blue eyes are magnetic. There’s something in them that he’s keeping from me. He cradles the shotgun in one arm and puts a hand on my arm. For a second I think he’s surprised at the muscle I flex under his touch. I don’t mean to, it is completely involuntary. It’s just been so long since I felt someone do that I react defensively. Aubrey’s hand drops.

“We should keep up with him,” Aubrey says.

“Who is he? He your brother or someone?”

“That dude?” Aubrey shakes his head. “Nope. Just some guy who’s living with the rest of us at the house.”

“Whose house is it?”

Aubrey swings his hand out, indicating the houses on the outskirts of town. “Whose houses are any of these? When the trucks came in and hauled everyone to the Safety Zone, people just left these behind. I think some tried to take extra food with them. We’ve found a lot of bags and suitcases packed with canned goods and bottled water. But I guess they were either too heavy or the evacuators said they had to leave them.”

I look at the empty yards, the silent windows that stare back at us. Once upon a time people lived comfortably in homes like these. I never did. Mine was a prison without bars and I wanted nothing more than to be out of it.

Now I wanted nothing more than to be a part of one.

“People will move back into them one day,” Aubrey says. It’s like he’s been reading my mind.

“Someday,” I say.

We walk on; the stillness of what would have otherwise been a regular summer day surrounds us. We might be on our way to watch the NASCAR of bike racing at the Velodrome.

“So who are you, anyway?” Aubrey asks.

At that point I could tell him anything. I could be like James Gatz and reinvent myself. I don’t see the point of clinging to what has been lost. None of us will ever be the same as we were before the rash. There are parts of it I don’t mind losing, but there are some things I wish I still had.

I can’t bring myself to lie. “My name is Robin Willette. Everyone calls me Robbie.”

The boy with the cool, blue eyes looks around the empty world. “Everyone?” His smile momentarily blinds me. It’s dazzling, and it makes his eyes dance.

“Everyone back in my hometown.”

“Where’s that?” he asks.

“It’s way over on the west side of the state.” I wave my hand off at the horizon.

Aubrey tucks his shotgun under one arm. He catches my hand and does something only those of us from our part of the world can appreciate. He opens my right hand, palm up, and says, “Show me.”

I laugh. Okay, maybe it’s a giggle. I poke my palm indicating where I’m from. “It’s near here.” It’s silly and childish, but it feels so damn good to laugh and talk and be with someone my age. And to touch. My hand cupped in his makes my cheeks burn.

He laughs and points at a spot on my thumb. “Port Austin.”

I take his finger like a pencil and draw an imaginary line from his town to mine and back to the crook of his thumb indicating where we both now stand in the world. “How did we wind up Kawkawlin?” I ask. I’m not really looking for an answer. Holding his hand, I try to keep my eyes from looking up to see his face.

Aubrey breaks the spell by trying to answer my question. He takes a step back and shoves his hands into his camo pants’ pockets.

“I was working on Mackinac Island when the outbreak started. You know how it went. A few cases of the rash here and there. Then the videos went viral. Everyone was posting. Fewer and fewer people started coming to the island.”

“So you left?”

Aubrey shakes his head. “Not at first. A bunch of us thought maybe we were isolated from it because we were on an island.”

“Let me guess. Someone ran into a runner.”

“There was this college girl. She was walking back to her apartment one night after being out with her friends. Her apartment was off on the east end of the island. She had to go past the docks to get to it. Runner came at her off a boat that was docked there for the night. It latched onto her before the state cops could get to her.” Aubrey stops walking. He looks at me. “You ever seen a runner latch onto someone?”

I nod. “I saw one grab a guy so tight I heard bones snapping. I wasn’t sure if it was the runner’s bones or the guy he latched onto.”