“John?” her mother says with some concern, but he ignores her. They drive into HBellingham.
• • ">
The streets are cluttered with abandoned cars and the Tahoe weaves through them delicately like a show horse through barrels. Julie presses her face to the glass, scanning the windows of houses for any sign of movement. Most are boarded over. The ones that aren’t boarded are broken. She sees movement in one, a sluggish shape lurching in the darkness of the living room, but she says nothing.
“Where does Nikki live?” her father asks in a genial, optimistic tone that draws a cold look from his wife.
“Downtown,” Julie says quietly. “Holly Street.”
They turn right on Holly, the thoroughfare Nikki always talked about in her letters. She made it sound like it was Mardi Gras every weekend, she and her college buddies gathering in riotous numbers, linked arm in arm but still stumbling into the street, blocking traffic and laughing, singing, trying to forget the world crumbling around them. Julie had always wanted to see this street. To watch her friend drink and flirt and to learn first-hand how people keep living.
But Holly Street is paved with corpses. And other, less rotted corpses stagger through the mess like scavenging dogs, picking for scraps on the bones of their friends.
“What’s the address?” her father queries loudly as the Tahoe runs over a body, his voice not quite masking the crunch.
Julie can’t speak.
“Address?” he asks again as he swerves to hit a creature chewing on a little girl’s foot. Its brief grunt of surprise, the thumps and cracks as the big SUV grinds over it…
“Twelve-Twelve,” she whispers.
Her mother is silent in the front seat, keeping her eyes carefully hidden from the mirror.
“Is this it?”
The Tahoe rolls to a stop, its tires crackling on gravel and glass. Julie rolls down her window and regards the old house. Front porch lined with moldy couches. Beer bottles and cigarette butts, muddy boot marks on the crooked walls…it was probably a ruin before the collapse, but it’s a different kind now. Not the kind created by an excess of life. Not the result of seven young people crammed into a small house, desperate to enjoy themselves before the world they just inherited burns up. The windows are empty holes lined with glass teeth. The front door is wide open and creaking in the breeze, and everything inside is dark.
“Nikki?” Julie manages to croak, despite the obvious. “Hello?”
Her father shakes his head and puts the truck in gear. Julie makes no objection as they pull away from the house. She says nothing as they make their way back to I-5.
“Was that really necessary, John?” her mother mutters.
“She needs to understand.”
“Understand what? That all her friends are dead? That the world’s a pile of shit? Christ.”
His reply is the rev of the truck’s engine as they merge onto the freeway.
Audrey Grigio twists her head around the seat to look at her daughter. “I’m sorry, honey.”
Julie doesn’t meet her gaze. She stares out the window as her friend’s city recedes, giving way to pines and cedars, deep valleys and high mountains silhouetted against the browning sun.
Dear Nikki,
I can’t believe you’re gonna be roommates with Zack. He’s totally still in love with you! Won’t that be weird? I guess it’s good that you’re all sticking together right now, but ultht now,how do you deal with stuff like that? It’s bad enough sharing a class with a sappy boy but a house? What if he hears you having sex and kills himself? Haha.
I’m sorry about Toby. It sounds like it’s getting pretty bad over there. Are you gonna stick it out? I hope you’re being careful. It’s really dumb that you’re 21 and don’t know how to shoot yet. Do you really want an 11-year-old teaching you how to take care of yourself? :-)
So, I have some big news… We’re leaving New York. The whole east coast is falling apart, so we’re gonna head west and see what we find…maybe all the way to Canada! I won’t be able to get your letters on the way but I’ll try and send a few if we go along your uncle’s route. (I think the only reason he’s still delivering is cause he likes me so much, ha!) Dad doesn’t know what the rest of the country is like right now, it might be even worse than here so I’m kinda scared. But if we make it up north, maybe you and me can actually hang out! Try and stay alive till I get there okay?? :-)
Your friend forever,
J. B. G
“What about these?” Addis asks, holding up a pair of pruning shears.
“Too small.”
He grabs a power drill. “This?”
“Nothing electric.”
He picks up a nail-pull bar and holds it out. Nora considers it. “Nah. You need to be able to pierce a skull without much windup. Something with more focused weight.”
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead as she and her brother browse the aisles of a hardware store in search of weapons. Their parents took the guns. Nora would like to believe it was for safety, that they didn’t trust her not to shoot herself or Addis by mistake, but no. They’ve seen her shoot a militia sniper out of a seventh-story window, calmly aiming the family Glock in the dim morning light while they were still trying to untangle their blankets. She can find few excuses for her parents, and she wonders what she will tell Addis when he’s old enough to demand real answers.
“How about this?”
He hefts a big, oak-handled axe. He bunches his lips into a tough-guy scowl and takes a test swing, making a woosh sound with his mouth. The axe slips out of his hands and crashes into a display of detergent bottles, spewing milky blue Tide all over the floor.