Order of the Dead (34 page)

15

Alan wrote himself a mental note to show Jack how the tack really ought to be
eaten: mixed with peanut butter and something sweet like honey, which they had
painfully little of, or apple sauce or another fruit preserve, or, if there was
nothing of the fruit or berry or honey variety to be had, with cane sugar. That
was the best way to eat it, if you asked him.

He got in line and traded an elderly
box of oats and a potato for two packages of tack, which he meant to make into
a snack for the children later.

He thanked Albert for coming, and
asked him how they’d come by New Crozet.

Albert and Ronnie, who’d never gone by
either of those names before as this was their first undercover job, and, it
was going swimmingly if you asked them, acted out their rehearsed fable of how
they’d heard there was a town out in the middle-of-nowhere Virginia, where the
produce was fresh as could be and the people weren’t half-bad either, and
they’d already been held up nearby when their truck broke down just outside
Asheville, North Carolina, where the nearest settlement was, lovingly dubbed
Asheville Extended.

“So we were on our own sort of
extended stay,” Albert had said, “east of Asheville Extended, and some of the
good people there helped us stay whole and patched up our truck some, and they
told us about you guys over here. So we figured, what the hell. They said you
had darn good stuff, though you were a good stretch away.”

Larry Knapp had listened with a bit of
interest at first, but now he was just impatient. He wanted his turn with the
tack, because he really knew how to make the stuff tasty: what you do is you
take some of this here tack, get some sugar and beer or liquor if you’re lucky
enough to have it, and mix it all up into a pudding.

Teetotaler and water drinkers beware,
you’re missing out. But Larry could live with that, because that meant more for
him. What was good for the on-the-wagon gander was good for the off-the-wagon
goose, or some such dusty adage. The trick was to not use water, but to soak
the biscuits only in the good stuff. Any barfly worth his tequila salt knew
that.

The townspeople were trying the tack
and loving it. The biscuit was evoking much more fanfare than usual for the
worm castle that it was, and that was because it was different than the kind of
worm castle the townspeople had eaten before, most of which had come under the
Sailor Boy label, which had been made locally by a company called Interbake
Foods, based out of Richmond.

Until the outbreak, Interbake had made
most, if not all, of the commercially available hardtack, the kind of stuff you
could order online and, when that neat parcel showed up on your door, you could
tear it open and break your molars to your heart’s deepest content. That was
back when packages could be ordered and were delivered, of course.

Most of Interbake’s sales had been to
Alaskans, where tack had never really gone out of style, especially on light
aircraft, which had been required to carry pilot bread. When the outbreak hit,
there had been a run on Alaskan airstrips to salvage as many Sailor Boy Pilot
Bread boxes as could be had. It did have a long shelf-life, but it would expire
eventually, so why let it?

On this very market day, there were
still people living in Alaska, not many, subsisting on the remains of
Interbake’s commercial runs. The pilot bread was past its technical ten year
life, but if stored well and especially in cold conditions, the stuff could
last for decades. And the few people left in Alaska were having a go at drawing
out the crackery goodness.

Sailor Boy Pilot Bread had a different
taste than the biscuits the Tackers had brought to New Crozet. What the Tackers
were selling was much tastier, and surprisingly so for tack. What made Albert
and Ronnie’s tack so damn delicious was a subtle flavor, a hint of something
that the people of New Crozet couldn’t quite remember, like beef tallow…but
slightly different.

16

“This is really
good,”
Corks said to no one in particular, dragging out
the ‘good’ and with an inflection of surprise in his voice. The tack really
was, too, and you would’ve thought the same.

It was one of those rare times when he
had any appetite at all, so he was trying to take full advantage of the slight
peckishness and stuff himself with as much of the tack as he could.

The meat was falling off his bones a
little too quickly these days, and he’d about had enough of the ‘you’re wasting
away’ and ‘you’re all skin and bones’ comments, a good number of which came
from Senna, who was all about trying to make everybody eat more.

Tom had even half-threatened to take
him off the night watch. And then what the hell would he do? It’s not like he
could sleep much, and he had to do
something
that was useful to the town
or he’d lose his mind, or what was left of it, anyway.

Not quite smiling—he was actually
liking the taste of this stuff—he took another bite of the cracker, working his
teeth into it slowly so as not to break or chip any, and only after he’d soaked
the bite with saliva to soften it up. The Tackers had some thinner crackers
too, but he liked the thicker kind, the sort you had to work to get a mouthful
of.

Working on the cracker in the pleasant
late morning sunlight, while he watched the excited New Crozet townspeople at
market, he felt something close to happiness. It was good to have these things—the
markets. Better than that, it was
great.
It changed everyone, made
people light up again, sparking them with curiosity about the world and the
things that were outside the fence—the good stuff that was out there, anyway.

It was a world where glass jars were
treasures and having some coarse flour in the pantry was a thing to be thankful
for, and tack that was this superb, well that was downright glorious. He’d
traded some of his cornmeal rations—the New Crozet watchmen and other folks who
performed non-farming functions were paid with food or what passed for it these
days—for the tack, and it was so good that he decided to trade some more.

Standing in line and chatting with
some of the townspeople and visitors was a good way to occupy his mind, too,
and it would help him through until he was up for his next shift. Distractions
were what he needed, and he knew that. Still, the older he got, and the longer
he lived in the town, the harder it was becoming for him to fully engage his
brain, and thereby keep it quiet. That was the real challenge: shutting the
blathering thing up.

Corks’s rec-crew had dissolved just
over seventeen months before Alan and Senna left their crew, but he’d gone off in
a far more damaged state than either of them had. He was more sensitive than
they were, but perhaps that meant that he was normal, or just slightly more
fragile than normal, or maybe it was just the loss of his son that made it all
nearly unbearable.

Whatever it was, he didn’t have the
mental staying power of an Alan or a Senna, and he knew it.

He’d spent years trying to get better
at living in the post-apocalypse, and that happened just by virtue of being
alive, really, and he wasn’t the only one whose mind was a motor-mouth when it
came to reminding him of all the things that he’d done wrong, and of uttering
the names of the people who’d been taken out of his life.

Many survivors—
most
—heard these
voices, but they all seemed better able to block that out. He knew he wasn’t
the worst at it, that couldn’t be, or at least he thought that he knew that,
but everyone else acted like they were much better adjusted than he was. Maybe
that was all in his head too, just like the voices, but he didn’t think so.

It had always been an effort for him
to fit in with people in the old world, and whenever he stopped trying, he’d
fall back out and into isolation, like he was an ill-fitting puzzle piece that
could be jammed into place, but once you took your hand away, it would pop
right the hell back out again. Fitting in didn’t matter so much these days, and
he didn’t care about that anymore anyway, but maybe that was part of the
problem he was having, in that his mind didn’t seem to take to the normal
things that everyone else was able to lose themselves in.

The trouble was finding a way to keep himself
distracted. For a time he’d tried TV, but that hadn’t worked, and he didn’t
watch it anymore.

A few still turned the old boob tubes
on now and again. There was no TV left, not the live stuff, or anything new,
anyway. There were still some DVDs and VHS tapes here and there, and there were
plenty of working TVs and DVD players and more than enough juice to run them—it
didn’t take much—although when it came to tape decks, there were fewer and
fewer working ones every year.

The things seemed to be shriveling up
in a second extinction, as if the meteoric rise of the DVD hadn’t been enough.
He tried to force himself to read sometimes, but that too was a battle, because
he couldn’t make his mind engage with unreality anymore.

Whatever had enabled him to escape into
entertainment and find relaxation and pleasure there, that portal or star gate
of synapses in his brain, was gone, having folded in on itself years earlier.
And without the distraction of movies and TV shows or anything else to still
the thoughts, he did think, and darkness was often in his mind, a shade sewn
from guilt that he rarely took off.

You’d have thought that with enough
power to watch movies and play music, the townspeople would’ve been more into
the stuff, but they weren’t. They hardly used it as an escape at all.

Once in a while someone would turn on
a TV or play a song and all it seemed to do was reassure them that they didn’t
need or want the stuff anymore, that it was a thing that they’d shrugged off
when it stopped fitting right and the thing still didn’t fit, and wouldn’t
again. It was just like something you kept in the closet for years before
giving it to Goodwill, somewhat uncomfortable about the idea of giving it up,
but also certain that you’d never get any more use out of it.

And now it would just hang there,
because there was nowhere to take the ill-fitting costume of dramas and
comedies and action flicks. There was probably a zombie movie or two in the
bunch. How about that?

Corks thought on the dark suit that he
always wore and how he might get rid of it. He did want to get it out of his
life, or at least he thought he did. That darkness was always there, day and
night.

It was worse in the daytime, in fact,
when the sun lit up what was left of the world and showed him the shadows of
what was missing, just like the harsh light of day might show you all the lint
and stains and loose seams on your black wool suit. At least in the dark of
night, these failings were harder to spot. They were still there of course, but
as long as the moon and stars didn’t shine too brightly, they were hidden, and
he didn’t have to think about them quite so much.

He caught a glimpse of Larry Knapp.
Corks envied him. In fact, he envied him just as much as a man could envy
another. How could he not? That man could drink and forget. And it must have
been a damned good remedy, because he kept downing the potions as quickly as he
could brew them.

And on top of all of it he had two
wonderful, healthy children. He didn’t even
have
to forget, because he
could live in the now and be happy, but he chose to ignore the good he had and
focus only on what he’d lost and how he’d been wronged and let that consume
him.

But wasn’t that how it always was,
forget the good in hand and get drunk out of your mind to forget the bird or
maybe even
birds
still in the bush? Corks had tried to follow Knapp’s
example, but the drinking hadn’t done much to ease the hurt. In fact, it had
only made it worse. Maybe the drunk’s remedy wasn’t for everyone.

17

Speaking of, Larry Knapp was sauntering this way and that, grinning like a
fool. He was on a meandering course to nowhere in particular, and that was just
how he liked it.

He had a fistful of Nell’s Poppers and
dried and fried grasshopper and cricket mix, two Twinkies, tack tucked away in
his pockets, and a thermos of beer in his hands, and, given his condition, he
was doing an admirable job of keeping most of what he had in his grasp
most
of the time. And when he did drop some of the poppers or a cricket or two, he
bent down and did a gymnastic dance of scooping them up again. He was
surprisingly flexible at the moment, but all drunks were in that state.

There’d been a crick in his neck when
he woke up, but the drinking had helped that, a
lot.
The drinking, Knapp
decided as he grinned to himself, helped a lot with a lot of things. On top of
that little tidbit of awesome, one group of traders had brought Twinkies,
imagine the luck!

Were they still good to eat? Where had
they found them, and just how many years expired were they? Who knew?

What mattered was that the one in
Larry Knapp’s mouth right now seemed to be made of heaven—a faintly stale
heaven, like the clouds holding up the pearly gates had turned a tad sour and
the harps inside the gates were a bit rusty and some even had a booger or two
stuck to them, but Knapp didn’t mind that. He was still in heaven. “And tha’s what
counts,” he said, slurring his words amiably. There were times when his
drunkenness was almost cute, and his current condition was as close as it got.

The cup he was holding tried to jump
from his hand and do a little jig in the air. He tried to restrain it, and the
result was that some of its prized contents sloshed out over the rim and soaked
the front of his shirt. He felt the beer soak his belly.

“I spilled beer on my ’elf,” he
murmured, and chuckled to himself. He didn’t have an elf, but he realized that
he might like one. That’d be fine: an elf for his own, to do with as he saw
fit.

The elf could brew while Knapp slept,
and could sleep while Knapp brewed…and… He couldn’t think of much else at the
moment, but he was sure there were a lot of useful things an elf could be put
to work doing.

“I’ll look into it in the morning,” he
said, addressing himself. “If you want it ’un tight, do it your elf.” He
laughed again, more heartily this time, and this pulled a satisfying belch up
out of the depths of his stomach.

As drunk as he was, he was expecting
bubbles to pour out of his mouth like a stream from a fountain of suds, but
they didn’t. For the first time in quite a while, he felt at ease, and happy.

Unknown to Knapp, and unsurprisingly
so, but also to the other townspeople, there was now one missing from their
number. It had been known to that certain someone just short of his acquiring
said missing status, but he was no longer in any condition to appreciate that
he’d become a victim, of whom, or why. He was the first, but he was by no means
going to be the last.

In less than the time that it would
take Knapp to finish the feast he’d brewed and haggled for himself, two more of
New Crozet’s number would be taken, and after them, others would follow.