Humanaty's Blight

CHAPTER SEVEN

We spent the next twenty minutes studying the map and making suggestions back and forth like a pair of giggling little girls planning a surprise party. Do this. No, try that. What if we . . ? The suggestions came fast and furious.

It made total sense to drive across the northern part of Marysville to reach the coast and work our way to the beaches, which was the far longer route but probably safer. In other ways, it made sense to ride the motorcycle to the south end of Marysville and cut across where there were only eight or ten blocks of suburban streets to ride through. Either way held advantages. And disadvantages. We went back and forth as we explored all the possibilities.

Sue pointed out that on the southern way was a road that was a straight shot through that part of Marysville which led directly to Priest Point. If we went that way, we could ride quickly through the suburb and part of downtown and spend less time in danger of meeting people.

As we were getting ready to walk the motorcycle back across the shallow river, she asked if I’d reloaded my gun after shooting the two men who had followed her at the house where we’d taken the motorcycle. I hadn’t. Her casual comment was a stern reminder that we lived in a new world where a full clip at all times was another golden rule. It was both silly and stupid not to have a full magazine in the gun when I had a pocket full of shells. The magazine ejected with a solid click and a full one replaced it. The half-empty one joined the last full magazine in my belt. I’d refill it at the next chance.

That made me think again of the thirty-two Sue carried. The requirements for her to survive had changed, too. Even in the last two days. A lot had. For the ride ahead, if we met with resistance, we needed some heavy firepower to carry that would intimidate others who would recognize and fear the weapons. Besides, her few shots left would last long and we had no more shells for the gun.

Was reminding me about my mistakes in not reloading her way of making me think about replacing her pathetic little gun? I didn’t blame her if that was her intention. If so, she had done well, and I should shut up about it before speaking. I needed her input.

We started the bike and used the engine to help move it along as we pushed it back across the river, with me again working the throttle. At one point, the tire spun and sprayed water, soaking me. As we crossed the deeper part of the river, the end of the exhaust pipe went underwater and burbled before reaching the other side and draining. I mounted the bike at the edge of the pavement, and so did she, fearful the water had damaged the engine.

As we accelerated, she waved to the hillside where the man who had given us the salmon lived. It was a nice gesture and I hoped he saw her. I kept the speed down, my eyes on the surrounding area. At a dirt driveway a half-mile down the road, I turned in and rode up the slight hill.

At the top of the driveway, there stood a house. There’s a different look to an empty house, even an unused driveway with new grass growing in the unused ruts. The house we found at the top of the small hill appeared abandoned—only worse. The large front window was broken. Only jagged spears of glass remained. One wet, limp curtain hung outside and moved gently with the breeze. Clothing, pots and pans, and even some furniture littered the lawn. I doubted the owner had done all that.

“Someone was here before us,” Sue said as she eyed the scene.

I shut the motor off and pulled my Glock free. It was not a job for the twenty-two. Sue followed me to the front door. It stood open a few inches. Instead of immediately going inside, which might get me killed, I moved to the far side of the house, then to the rear to examine all entrances. The back door stood wide open, banging a little as it hit the doorstop as the wind pushed it. The garage sat off to one side about twenty feet away, the siding and style didn’t match the house. It was obviously different construction, and not as good. I looked inside and spotted a red gas can. The motorcycle gauge showed a half tank, but I didn’t know how far that would take us—or how far we needed to travel if things went sideways. Maybe all the way to Canada. My orderly mind shouted at me to fill the tank, just in case.

Nothing else unusual caught my eye. I used my ears and nose to confirm what I saw. “Carry that gas to the bike and see if you can fill it.”

“And you?”

“I’m going inside.”

She lifted the can and hurried to the front where we parked. I went to the rear door and burst inside, rushing ahead, ready to shoot anything that moved. That showed what two weeks of anarchy can do to a man who lived alone too long. A person, dog, raccoon, or pretty much anything alive was going to be shot before it could harm me.

Nothing moved as I darted through the kitchen into the living room and down the hall to the bedrooms of the one-story structure. I drew a breath and gagged. The stench of death filled the rank air. Rotting flesh and other foul odors I did not want to identify. I bent, puked, and was forced to inhale the foulness again. My stomach again revolted, but I held it in and headed for the last doorway in the hall and threw it open. Whoever had died inside was no longer there. Blood and ocher smeared the wood floor where they had been dragged away from the bathroom by someone or something unknown. From a few smeared tracks, I suspected a bear, but that was a guess.

If there had been corpses inside the room, I’d have slammed it shut to keep some of the smell from filling the house. The room held two large windows and a straight-back chair sat at a dressing table. I swing the chair and broke out the first window, stuck my head outside and caught a lung full of air that didn’t gag me. I used the chair to break the next window on the adjoining wall too. A little cross breeze helped improve things.

My search began. A nine-millimeter without an obvious manufacturer was in a bedside drawer. I grabbed it. Inside the closet was a safe. I had no time, skill, or interest in opening it. A shotgun stood in a corner; boxes of shells were stacked neatly on the shelf above. I took one box of shotgun shells and two boxes of nine-millimeter that would fit the new gun and my own gun.

The dressing room table caught my attention. A jewelry box sat below a tall wooden unit that held dozens of necklaces on display. I upturned the jewelry box and rings, bracelets, and other items spilled out. Those things had probably meant a lot to the person who had lived here and had died in the bathroom a few steps away. The rank smells increased as I moved closer to the bathroom door. I wouldn’t open it for anything. I left all the things on the table. They were valueless. A can of beets was worth more.

On the way out, I paused in the kitchen long enough to locate the canned goods in a cabinet. I stuffed soup, stew, and barbecue beans inside the front of my jacket, zipped it to like a kangaroo’s pouch and went outside. The air smelled wonderful after the foul stench. Sue was setting the gas can aside after topping off the tank.

“Broke a couple of windows? Temper tantrum?” Sue teased.

“Couldn’t breathe.”

I dumped most of the food items into the saddlebags after tossing out more stuff from the previous rider that we would never use. I refilled my partially empty jacket pockets with new, shiny shells and felt relieved. The magazine in the gun, the two in the holster on my other hip should be enough for anything, but a handful of loose bullets in my jacket pocket felt comforting. We rolled the bike down to the paved road instead of starting the engine. Sue carried the shotgun in her other hand.

We were in a catch-22 situation. We had weapons we’d never fired, which could cost us our lives because if they didn’t work, or we didn’t know how to use them. We were essentially betting our lives that the previous owners had them in proper working order, or that there was not a safety, or the firing pin removed, was a poor wager. Inexperience with the guns was a poor excuse. I drove slowly down the driveway and stopped at the edge of the road as I explained to Sue, “We’re going to test-fire the new pistol for you and the shotgun. Quickly. Then we’re going to ride away before anyone can react.”

“Won’t that attract people we don’t want?”

“If it does, we’ll be gone when they get here. Right now, you need a lesson.”

She nodded. She attempted to hand me the pump shotgun. Instead, I handed her five shells. Only three would fit. The type, if not the manufacturer of the shotgun was vaguely familiar. I reached for it. A threaded screw let me remove the lower part of the barrel where a wooden plug that was fitted inside fell out. It was designed to restrict the number of shells the gun would hold fell out. I reassembled the barrel and this time five shells slipped neatly inside. The old hunting rules in Washington State about how many shells were allowed in a gun didn’t apply anymore.

Then I leaned the shotgun against the bike and explained the workings of the nine-millimeter. We ejected the magazine and counted twelve bullets. I hadn’t seen a spare magazine or holster, and a quick check revealed mine were not interchangeable with her gun, despite them using the same ammunition. “Ever shot either of these?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, we want to ride out immediately after shooting, so let’s do this quickly. We’ll stop down the road and reload, not here. You’ll shoot one shotgun shell, pump another into the chamber, and fire again. Then, without pause, set the shotgun aside and fire three shots from the nine-millimeter. Bang, bang, bang. I’ll have the motor running and you’ll get on. Carry the shotgun across your thighs. Put the pistol in your waistband.”

“If we run into trouble?”

“If they’re that close, use the shotgun until empty. After that, don’t reload. Use the pistol. Carry spare shells for both in an outside pocket. Now, for the three shots, you need to hold the pistol in both hands.” I showed her how. “The shotgun is different.”

“Will it knock me down or rip my shoulder off like in the videos?”

“You’ve heard wild stories. Here’s what is really going to happen. If you put the stock firmly into your shoulder, it will feel about like this.” I gave her a short punch on her shoulder. “If you hold it loosely, it will knock you off your feet.”

She planted her feet, bent her knees and pointed the shotgun at a small decorative tree at the edge of the driveway. I could see she was scared. And determined. After a quick glance at me for a reassuring nod, she pulled the shotgun tight to her shoulder and then added a little more pressure. A moment later, the small tree in front of her exploded. She worked the pump and fired again.

“Damn,” she muttered as she handed me the shotgun and reached for the nine-millimeter. The mailbox ten steps away was her next target, and she put all three slugs into it as if she had used the pistol a dozen times before.

A few seconds later, the gunshots still ringing in our ears, we rode off. I had never twisted the throttle fully, but the bike was heavy, huge, and intended for the open road. It had power to spare. We went a few miles before pulling off down a dirt road into the trees and around a slight curve where we were out of sight from the main road.

Sue reloaded. I turned us around and went out on the blacktop. We rode for ten minutes or more. Ahead were houses, crossroads, and even smoke rising from a few chimneys or outdoor fires at the edge of the suburbs. The first fire we passed was the remains of a Toyota, the tires still smoking a greasy black. There was the main state highway that went in the direction we wanted to travel, but I avoided it. If I was one of them, that’s where I’d set up an ambush. The smaller, residential streets were safer in that regard. At least that was my theory.

The problem was, those same people I was worried about may have known what I’d think and set their traps on the secondary roads. Or, they were hiding there and protecting their turf and I was about to ride into it as if I was the king of Marysville. I only had one life to give to a wrong decision—but making no decision would cost me my life for sure. I couldn’t sit still.

At a vacant field that may have been a small cattle pasture, we flashed by at least twenty tents and what looked like fifty startled, men and women who were camped in a field that had been a pasture. I didn’t see any children. Nobody pursued us. Evidence of destruction was everywhere as we got closer to the center of the town. Burned out cars, the smoking ruins of a few houses, one still with a few flames licking the roof. The few people we saw were dirty, tired, and fearful. More than one scurried away when they saw us.

We went south, along secondary roads. A shot rang out. At first, I ignored it, thinking it was aimed at someone else, but then I spotted a man on the side of the road ahead taking aim at us with a rifle intending to shoot again—from a closer distance.

I hit the brakes, front and rear, slid along the pavement to the next cross street and turned the bike so fast we almost tipped over. Sue gripped my waist so tight I couldn’t breathe. I went two more blocks before turning south again. Another shot rang out, a flatter sound and off to our right. It may have been fired at us—or not.

I didn’t think it was meant for us. Then, as we approached a larger intersection, five people rose up from behind an overturned car. All held guns or bats. All wore determined, evil expressions as they watched us approach the last few yards. I tried to turn the bike, but it was too late. We were almost abreast of them when they surprised us.

I twisted the accelerator and barreled ahead at full throttle. The bike responded like never before and I feared dumping Sue off the back, despite the tall chrome riser. The shotgun behind me blasted once, then again. Sue fired at them from less than fifty feet. More than one fell. Two more stood up from behind a burned-out hulk on the other side of the street, right in front of where I’d turned. They had expected me to go past the first group. I hunched down and kept to the middle of the road.

Sue fired the shotgun again, and again. Then one last time. Five shots. That was all she had in the gun. But one of them standing behind a burned-out car was aiming a shotgun of his own.

Sue was quicker. I saw where her first two shots from the new semi-automatic struck, low and to his left. She corrected and the next two shots were higher and right next to him. He dived for cover as she fired again. Then again.

We rode on. Sue twisted and turned herself in the seat behind me, upsetting the bike’s balance. I glanced back and found herself inserting more red shotgun shells. I didn’t dare stop and was not a good enough bike rider to go faster than we were. Someone took a shot at us from the roof of a house. The bullet struck the pavement in front of me. Ahead, the road was blocked with a tangle of cars, an obvious roadblock. Five or six people up there waited for us to get closer, five or six. All held weapons.

I turned left and went between two houses, turned away from the ambush at the next street, accelerated to over fifty miles an hour within two blocks despite my lack of skill with the bike, and then locked up the brakes to slow enough to turn right. I bent low behind the windscreen to make my body smaller as I twisted the throttle more. A backhoe came into view next to the road. It sat beside the curb on a residential street with a pile of dirt the size of a truck in front of it. As we neared the backhoe, I wondered what was happening there. Had a construction project been interrupted? The dirt looked freshly dug, slabs of blacktop from the road had been piled along with the dirt.

I locked up the brakes in sudden comprehension and spun the bike around to face the rear, barely managing to avoid the wheels jumping the curb. We turned raced ahead and turned again, more watchful of traps. The backhoe had dug a trench across the street, I didn’t know how deep. What I did know was that if we’d rode on ahead another hundred yards, the bike couldn’t have jumped the space.

A group of people, mostly men, were huddled together, cheering on two people in the center of the crowd who were fighting in the parking lot of a convenience store. Most held fifths of booze they waved in the air like trophies they’d won. One of the fighters used a shovel for a weapon, the other a short chain. At our appearance, they turned to look. All of them.

“Go,” Sue shouted in my ear.

I went. The bike leaped ahead with a roar as I gave the accelerator a hard twist. One man pulled a handgun and was raising it to point at us when Sue fired her shotgun in his general direction. The men fled or dove to the ground. We raced past.

I judged we had managed to worm our way most of the way through the residential area and the street we wanted that cut through Marysville to take us to Priest Point should be directly ahead, but we couldn’t consult the map to be sure. Getting lost in a violent suburb we were in sounded worse. If it came down to it, I’d head for any open space and reconsider. Maybe we could sneak through the city after dark.

Sue pounded on my shoulder. I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw two motorcycles following behind us. They were at least three blocks back, so I added a little speed and watched for the turnoff.

I saw it. There was a streetlight at the intersection, not that it was working. I slowed and turned right, peering down the road to make sure there were no blockades ahead. When I was satisfied and glanced in the rearview mirrors, the two bikes had gained on us and were only half a block behind. One waved a pistol and fired at us. The other struggled with trying to aim a rifle, an impossible task on a motorcycle. I ignored them and accelerated away as they slowed to make the turn.

Neither had counted on Sue. Behind me, she turned and used her new nine-millimeter. She took several measured shots, one every ten seconds or so. She didn’t hit either biker, but they dropped back to nearly a block in distance. They saw the flashes and heard the retorts. She shifted her weight and reached around me to draw my gun from the holster. If they thought she was out of shells, they were wrong.

She shouted in my ear in a voice that almost sounded happy, “I’m going to shoot at the pavement in front of them. I should be able to hit the ground, huh?”

The image of shots striking the pavement in front of them should scare a reasonable person, and many less than reasonable. It would scare me far more than shots that passed by unseen. She used her left hand to pull one of my spare magazines free. They roared closer, whooping and shouting, their guns waving in the air. They believed we were out of ammo and easy pickings. She waited. The Interstate highway came into view, another choke-point I was worried about. I concentrated on the road and possible ambushes. It was a natural place to set one up.

One of the bikers fired a shot at us.

Sue fired one shot at a time again, twisting in her seat to draw a bouncing bead on each rider. They were surprised she had more ammo or another gun and attempted to pull back. With her third shot, one bike fell to the side, slid along the pavement with the howl of metal on concrete. The rider rolled over and over a dozen times, it seemed to me. The other pulled up and went back to his friend.

There was nobody to stop us at the Interstate ramp. We roared through the intersection at sixty and then we left the city behind. We had an open road ahead, even if there were a couple of turns that scared me. Within a minute or two, we were on a two-lane road that twisted and wound along the shoreline of the bay, a hundred yards or more from the water.

Three miles later, I slowed and turned down a driveway to the left. A mailbox had a name printed in sloppy black paint on rust, so there was a house down there—or had been one. We couldn’t see it. We rolled slowly down the rutted driveway. Before the house came into view, I ran the bike into a thick stand of underbrush that hid us. We raced back to within a few yards of the main road.

I grabbed my gun from Sue, motioned for her to stay put. I used my foot to smudge the telltale tire tracks in the dirt. It was taking too long, so I dropped to my knees and used both hands to smooth the dirt, working backward. The motorcycle’s tire track almost disappeared.

As I entered the foliage, the sounds of at least four dirt bikes came down the road from the direction we’d come. The engines roared, but the bikes came at a slow pace as they searched for us. The riders raced their engines with the clutches pulled to make all the noise. They sounded mean. Angry. Probably their intent was to scare us.

I couldn’t tell if any of them was the survivor of their encounter with Sue. She was at my side, reloading her weapon and mine. Her fumbling fingers had dropped several rounds, but we ignored them.

“What do we do?” She asked.

I held up my twenty-two. “Nothing, until one of them comes down the driveway. They think we went on ahead but they could come back and make a more careful search.”

They had continued on past us until the sounds of their bikes nearly faded to nothing. Then, shots rang out. Rifles and pistols. A dozen or more shots in all. A small war had broken out.

The motorcycle engines again grew louder, but they didn’t return as fast as they had gone—and that reinforced my thoughts. The pitch of the bikes had changed, too. The time to return seemed twice as long. Then longer. Only three of them came into sight far down the road. There were three, not four, and I assumed one had been shot and left behind. At each driveway, which was not many, one motorcycle left the main road while the others took turns waiting.

They were looking for signs of us, often two driveways or small access roads at the same time, always leaving one man on the pavement to prevent us from fleeing. A fleeting thought of trying to escape on our motorcycle occurred and was quickly vanquished for one reason. I was not a good rider.

“Three against one,” Sue said from my side, so close she was pushing me into the open. Her trembling was a vibration of fear.

They were still a few hundred yards away when I turned to her and took her by the shoulders. “No, three against two. And those are much better odds. But if one of them comes down this driveway alone, we’ll be here waiting. That will make it two against two.”

“You’ll shoot him without warning? In cold blood?”

I gave her a stiff nod. That was another new rule we lived by. I’d give him the same chance that he gave us. I said in a voice so lacking in humanity it chilled me. “A good man a few weeks ago would never do what I’m about to. If that makes me less, so be it.”

“What are you going to do?”

With my heart deadened, I pointed to a place across the driveway and nearer the road. Vines and briars tangled in a mass as tall as a person. Around that grew various weeds and grasses, almost waist-high. “You go over there. Lie down. They’ll never see you. Wait until I shoot, then come up firing at the one waiting up on the road. No warning shouts. Just shoot. Don’t hesitate.”

“We could order them away.”

“The second they see you, or what I’m going to do, they will begin shooting. But even if a warning would send them away, they’d return with a dozen more. If it makes you feel better, wait until one of them shoots me dead, then start defending yourself.”

She stood as if her feet had grown roots, her face paler than its normal tan. Just as I was about to speak again, to apologize for my abruptness, she spun and sprinted across the driveway to where I’d told her to wait.

I knew depending on a fourteen-year-old to defend my life was crazy in the best of circumstances. I planned for the worst when I slipped closer to the driveway near an old stone planter in the shape of a wishing well. Round rocks had been cemented in a ring a few feet in diameter, a sagging decorative wood roof was almost hidden by vines and creepers.

From there, the driveway was about twenty feet away, the road fifty. I got down to my left knee and bent lower. Not because I was going to watch them approach, but because when I stood, it needed to be quick, so quick the nearest rider would have no chance to react.

One bike was investigating a side road and was out of sight. Two of them rode together directly at us. From the peek at the road I’d chanced, only the two were in sight. Their bikes growled as if trying to wake the dead. At the top of the driveway where we hid, one ordered the other to search it for signs of us, at least that was the way I interpreted the body language and the pointed finger.

One wearing a jean jacket and black, shiny boots that rose almost to his knees turned into the driveway. I double-checked my little twenty-two again. The safety was off. The PVC silencer in place.

The rider came down the road slowly. The bike pulled to a halt, the driver bent to examine something in the dirt, probably a footprint one of us had left, or a partial imprint from our motorcycle tire. The rider planted both feet beside his bike and started to turn and call to his friend that he had found something.

My shot traveled only twenty feet and struck his helmet near the earhole. The sound was a bit like a quiet clap of the hands. My mind registered that the silencer worked.

No matter, the twenty-two fell from my hands into the dirt as I pulled the nine-millimeter free from my holster. My finger was on the trigger to shoot the rider on the road in his chest as it came to bear on the other rider.

Sue’s gun fired first. Her bullet struck his head. We’d have to talk about the certainty of firing at the center of mass later. Headshots are for zombie video games. Then I remembered I’d just made one too.

With the sounds of the shots, the third motorcycle was coming our way. We couldn’t see him yet but heard the roar of his engine. He would come at us at full speed.

The first biker to fall, had a rifle in a scabbard probably originally intended for a horse saddle. It was attached to the bike’s frame with white zip-ties. I darted out and pulled the rifle free. The wooden stock was heavy, old, and in my impression was that it was well-used. It had a scope.

The rifle was bolt-action. Not knowing if a shell was in the chamber, I worked the slide. From the corner of my eye, I saw one shell ejected in a blur of brass. Another loaded as I worked the slide forward. As the rifle butt hit my shoulder, the scope revealed the man on the oncoming bike, leaning low over the handlebars. A quick glance over the top of the scope told me he was about a hundred yards away, a doable shot for a rifleman.

Doable and certain are totally different values when my life is depending on it. As excited and revolted as I felt, I’d never hit him at that distance. I lifted the rifle again. The rider came back into view on the scope, closer already, a handgun clearly visible. He was not looking at me, but at Sue.

I shouted for her to hit the ground and waited for a few more precious seconds. He filled the scope, the crosshairs centered on his chin. I wished he would turn and flee. His hand, the one holding the gun, came up. My index finger squeezed, and all kinds of things happened. But first, there was a crack so loud it might have been thunder. The rifle pounded into my shoulder like the punch from a big man.

As my eyes flicked above the scope, his body left the bike. Because of the impact or because of his muscles twitching like when electricity is applied, I didn’t know. The bike seemed to ride out from under him, continuing on for a while, before angling off the road and disappearing into the forest on the other side of the road. The rider hit the pavement and rolled like a limp red rubber ball.

I checked the man at my feet to make sure he was dead, a task I should have done sooner, then ran to Sue. She was already walking in the general direction of the man she had shot, and she smelled of vomit. That was a good sign as far as I was concerned. A natural reaction. A human reaction.

Turning her shoulders to the dead guy I’d shot in the driveway, I said, “Go see if you can get that bike into the woods and out of sight.”

I went to the road.

A look behind told me the first man I’d shot was dead. He lay beside his motorcycle. I went to the other, the one I’d shot with the rifle, and found what had been a man in a tee-shirt emblazoned with the stylized image of a middle finger held high. No helmet, no leather. He’d fallen at probably thirty miles per hour and if my bullet hadn’t killed him, the pavement pounding and ripping his unprotected body had. He was a bloody tube of meat.

Using a fireman’s carry, I got him onto my shoulder and off the road where he couldn’t be seen by searchers. His bike was long gone, on a ride of its own into the thick underbrush. There were no skid marks or other signs of what had happened. I went to the other side and checked.

On the road was a puddle of drying blood. I scooped a handful of dirt and sprinkled it on the blood. The dirt absorbed most of the blood, and as it dried, it would change color and be hard to see.

Again, I scuffed tire tracks from the dirt driveway and found Sue had hidden the bike. She had her hands under his armpits and was struggling to pull the dead man into the edge of the trees. I grabbed his collar and together we dragged him out of sight.

She held up the rifle I’d used. “You might need this.”

I took it and ejected the empty shell by working the bolt again as if I’d done it a thousand times instead of one. I saw and felt the next shell enter the chamber. It was as large and long as my middle finger. The rifle was probably for deer or elk. Maybe dinosaurs. It had stamps in the metal, crowns that probably meant England, and dates. The latter ones were nineteen-forty-four. World War Two. A lot of hunters used surplus guns from the war.

She said, “Nobody else in sight.”

Damn. With the noise the rifle had made, everyone in the county must have heard and I’d been stupid enough to be involved with the morality of killing instead of defending us. I lied, “I know.”

“Shouldn’t we go somewhere and hide?”

We were standing in the forest, in dappled shade. “No. From here, we can keep an eye on the road. It’s better than most places to ambush people.”

Her voice came softly and with resignation, “I know. Do we have to?”

“Only if they come for us.”