Early Thaw (4 page)

After the stunt, their life together in the cramped cabin understandably got a tad more uncomfortable (she knew she needed to tone it down, despite the fact that watching him squirm seemed somehow more entertaining than anything in her previous life had been), but they both slowly found comfort in the household roles that began to define themselves. She was the matriarch, the woman warrior, the one who kicked ass and took names. He, on the other hand, was like a friend’s little brother, the kid you just have to fuck with every time you see him. If he lingered around the cabin a little longer than she liked, she’d bray in disgust, “smells like old balls in here,” or “Did you steal my Kotex again, Leslie?”—stuff to remind him of his exceedingly tenuous place in their arrangement. He’d just snort that nervous nose-laugh and go back to whatever useless task he was immersed in. After puttering just long enough to preserve some personal dignity, though, he’d find a convenient excuse to clear out.

He was probably going a little nutty, but it was fun. Besides, he didn’t seem to be much worse for wear: the diminishing stock of black-plastic magazines at the trading post proved as much, though she pretended not to notice. She had no interest in finding out what he did out in the woods by himself, but she guessed it always involved one sort of gun or another. Though they ate together, scouted together, demolished ex-people together, and slept within two feet of each other, she kept interactions to a minimum. Leslie still made plenty of attempts at conversation, sure, but she’d developed the ability to dismiss him with a glance. It was a good system.

Even so, once, when they’d just come back from one of their grocery runs—and, between them, downed a box of tepid Franzia—he’d tried to kiss her. It was a vintage of weirdness she hadn’t yet tasted.

She told herself it was the because of the unexpected shock, but she’d actually gone with it for three or four seconds, a blossom of warmth and heat expanding in her chest. It’d been a long time, and, admittedly, she luxuriated in the electricity of connection. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his wolf tee. The cheesy redneck one with el lobo howling at the moon against the backdrop of another, semi-transparent wolf. The shirt he’d admired on the rack, talked about always wanting to own, without a hint of sarcasm. It was too much— she exploded in laughter, blowing air and spit into his face.

“I’m sorry,” she’d sputtered, between laughs. “This is surreal.”

“Of course. My fault.” Then he’d crumpled into himself, and, except for the occasional clank of pans or the click of the door latch as he went out to pee, stayed silent and morose for days after.

On the third day, though, he’d risen from his torpor like a skinny Rambo Jesus. Plucking the rifle from its spot on the table (and knocking two plastic cases of bullets to the floor), he announced that he’d be “doing solo missions from now on.” He would rid the area of mumblers—popsicles or no— for five miles around. Snow would not stop him, exhaustion would not stop him; he would become a one-man mumbler murder machine.

“Oh,” she had said, gravely, pinching her thigh to keep from spilling over with acidic giggles.

Let him have the illusion
, she thought.
More time to myself.

***

Things had started getting better in mid October. On a trip to the east entrance convenience store, Leslie found a .22 and ammo in the backseat of a truck—thank God, she’d thought, for that stupid fucking law that allowed any asshole to tote in a national park. Suddenly, their excursions into “busier” sections of Yellowstone became infinitely safer. Entertaining, in fact. Trailing a couple mumblers, they’d wait until they reached a clearing. She would plant herself as a leather-clad and safety-glassed Leslie, clapping and yelling to draw their attention, walked to one side of the open area. If the pair had lined it up right, she’d have easy head shots with plenty of time to refocus in between.

As commonsensical as it now seemed, the head shot thing hadn’t come easy. She and Leslie had both seen plenty of horror movies, but a Savini make-up job didn’t quite compare to the real-life version of a blood-drooling dead dude intent on chomping your insides. In her ever-present initial panic, she’d blasted off arms and legs, dumped round after round into “vitals”— the very idea was a joke now— until eventually she realized, really, to aim for the head. Hollywood had been right about that. Motion-activated doors and cheese from a tube: was there anything writers couldn’t predict?

The quarter-sized holes she thereafter began ripping through folks’ skulls never really bothered her, mostly because the stumbling, groaning mumblers chasing after Leslie didn’t seem much like folks anymore. More like gooey targets. When The Shit had been hitting The Fan for about a month or so, it even dawned on her that “killing” people was as much of a job as selling park passes had ever been. To break the monotony, she made a game of it. Individuals were one point. Because of their size and relative speed, little kids were five. Douchebags— the park visitors who’d died with gelled hair and artistic skull prints on their shirts— were 10. Sometimes she’d see just how close a mumbler could get to Leslie before popping it; she gave herself an extra point for any splatter on his face.

Once, just to fuck around, she’d trained the sights on Leslie after the last kill of the day. The safety was still off, but her finger wasn’t anywhere near the trigger. He’d screamed at her, nonetheless.

“What the hell, Valerie!” he’d gasped, breathless from running to her. “Why would you do that?”

He was livid. Spittle at the corners of his mouth. A beard of scant brushstrokes across his face. So thin, so fragile. She felt the familiar gut punch of pity and handed him the rifle, though she knew he wouldn’t do anything with it.

***

They passed October and part of November making corpses into
corpses
, melting into a rhythm of regularity that broke only with the first major snow. Volatile temps meant either mud or foot-deep drifts; both made for slow going, and they quickly lost their major advantage— after one blizzard, they were as sluggish as their targets.

In addition to strategy, the change in seasons also necessitated a change in wardrobe. Val’s mental map of the area produced stacks of cheap-cotton sweatshirts festooned with moose cartoons and pink track pants sporting YELLOWSTONE in bold across the ass, but standard tourist fare wasn’t doing much to keep them warm after five-mile hikes.

Sipping coffee one particularly frigid morning, Leslie broke from his usual monkish introspection by squeaking into the table:

“I know where we can get equipment.”

Val choked a little on her Pop Tart— she was used to mornings of silence. Demanded them, in fact. This was new.

“Where? What?”

“Ranger station. Coats, first aid, maybe some firearms.”

Firearms
, she thought.
He talks like a bad Cops episode.

“And
how
do you know this, Leslie?”

“Just remembered.”

She nearly prodded a little more but caught herself. It’d just make him feel important. After all, she reasoned, he’d known about the cabin— why wouldn’t he have inside info on all the other tasty spots?

Leslie sat daintily in his chair— couldn’t really help it, with his build— though she knew he was trying for the brooding, mystery-man look. His eyes darted up every now and then to see if she would take the bait. His stick fingers encircled the mug, their stems socketing into tiny, hairless hands and wrists. He wore an 80’s-styled, white Yellowstone sweatshirt she was pretty sure he’d grabbed out of a ladies’ discount bin by mistake.

Jeesus he’s a weird little fucker
, she thought.

They left early the next morning, earlier than she’d woken in months. Bitch-mood early. Plunging knee-deep into piles of snow, the milky sun not much more than a joke in the sky, Val sorted through a dozen sadistic fantasies that all concluded with her foot in Leslie’s ass.

“Pretty morning,” he said, in his wussy whisper voice. She kept quiet.

“Some of the snow’s melted,” he said, more sheepishly. She seethed.

When he tried a third time to get the chit chat going— some inane thing about south-facing rocks and radiant heat— she’d stopped him cold.

“Leslie, I’m fucking freezing. And I’m fucking tired. Freezing and tired, walking around this goddamn park looking for a fucking ranger station I don’t even know exists. Let’s just both enjoy some fucking quiet time, ok?”

He shrunk in on himself like he’d been popped. For a silent moment, he stood completely still, staring at his feet. Then he turned and started walking.

“It exists,” he squeaked, keeping his knobby little head forward.

And it
did
exist, but she figured that was beside the point. Hours later, after an eight-mile slog through snowy hell, an apology seemed unnecessary. Besides, she could tell from 200 feet away that this “station,” an 8’X8’ shack with one (smashed) window, had seen some rough action: scraped siding, ripped shingles, scorch marks where the wooden exterior had burned. Most damning, the door was wide open— never a good sign. She doubted they’d find anything useful inside.

The shack sat in a man-made clearing near the trail they’d been following, engulfed on all sides by lodge-pole pines. What looked like a streambed— hard to tell with everything covered in snow— curved past the far side. It was beautiful, she had to admit. In another life, this was exactly the sort of rustic setting she’d envisioned for herself: birds, deer, wood fires.

“At least they knew where to plant the shithole,” Val mumbled to the air.

Leslie, apparently envisioning himself as some kind of tactical genius, motioned for her to slow as they approached. His elaborate hand signals—Who the hell was this weirdo?— were so ridiculous and distracting, she was ready to erupt in another tirade when she finally spotted the source of his caution: a jellied streak of red extending out from the door jamb and disappearing under the snow.

Leslie signaled for her to stay put, but she had the gun and more balls than he’d ever known. She rolled her eyes and marched into the shack. The semi-frozen plasma sucked at her boot soles.

“Val!” Leslie whisper-yelled. When she pretended not to hear, he made a quick scan of the area and scurried in behind her.

Inside, everywhere was blood. On the walls. On the floor. On the tiny mattress that’d been wedged against the window. Streaks of deep red framing the room in grotesquerie, pooling on the fir floorboards. She’d seen gallons of the stuff since TSHtF, but something about the bare
reality
of the scene— the record of violence painted right onto the walls— made her stop and take note.

Leslie was already squirreling around the shack, but there wasn’t much else to see. A green metal cabinet stood in one corner of the tiny room, the only real piece of furniture besides the mattress and part of an overturned chair; she recognized chunks of the latter nailed haphazardly across the window. The guns were obviously gone, as was the box of first-aid supplies they’d hoped to find. From two lower drawers, though, Leslie began tugging out insulated pants, ski coats, thermal underwear. Two new walkie-talkies already sagged in his sweatshirt pocket. Crouching on his skinny haunches, he looked like a malformed imp-child tearing through Christmas presents.

“Val, can you give me a hand with some of these?” he squealed, already overwhelmed with the simple task of stuffing clothes into his backpack.

Why stop now
, she thought.

She stormed over to the cabinet and wrenched the door back— more to signal her control of the situation than offer any real help— but the dramatic sigh she’d planned caught in her throat as her hand closed around something sticky and wet.

She peeled her hand free and stared at her fingers. The gore had already licked its way into the creases of her skin, the ovals and ridges of her fingertips— backlit calluses, scrapes, cuts in thickening red. She’d never really looked at her hand before
;
now, she couldn’t seem to look at anything else. Against the cold, muted tones of winter, the color surged electrically into her consciousness.

It wasn’t her blood.

But it would be. Someday, it would be.

She turned toward Leslie. The tiny man was fumbling with his backpack’s zipper, tugging on the tab while trying to poke a bulging piece of black fabric under the metal teeth. His skittering little stick fingers crashed against one another, as if each obeyed singular synapses buried in separate corners of his squirrel brain. She could see beads of sweat forming along his thinning hairline: this was actually
hard
for him. Zipping a backpack was
hard
.

Val was suddenly overcome with a hatred that twisted her stomach. She looked at the red on her hand and thought about what it might be like to die staring into those idiotic yellow eyes. She’d always assumed, if the Shit really started flying, that Leslie’d be the one waving adios from under a pile of putrid ex-tourists. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was busy zipping a backpack or tying his fucking shoes when
she
came across a group of hungry—and they were always hungry— mumblers? What if the last sound she heard was that tinny little girl voice asking, inanely, “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” asked Leslie, apparently noticing her occupied expression. “You napping with your eyes open?”