The Last Mile (4 page)

He turned to leave, but as he reached for the doorknob, Caroline spoke for the first time since she’d taken to their bed.

“Owwwww…”

He turned back to face her, hope and fear surging through him in equal measure. Hope that she might at last be coming out of her awful trance, and fear of what she might say.

She didn’t take her gaze off the TV, but the hand that worked the pie server slowed, as if she couldn’t talk and mutilate at the same time.

“Owwww…siiiiiide.”

Dan frowned. “I don’t understand.” He took a step toward her, intending to climb onto the bed and lean close to her mouth so he could hear her better, but then he stopped himself. He loved her yes, as much as ever, but he didn’t know if he could bring himself to get that close to her the way she was. And what if she decided to put that pie server to another use? Like stabbing him in the eye or slicing his carotid artery? Hating himself for it but unable to do anything else, he remained close to the door.

Caroline’s face twisted into a mask of frustration, and for the first time since she’d taken hold of that first fork, she stopped violating herself. Her brow wrinkled as she concentrated. With great effort, she forced the words to come.

“Go…owt…side!”

An icicle of fear lodged in Dan’s spine as he realized what she was saying.
Go outside.

“I…I can’t, sweetheart. If you knew…if you
saw
…”

Caroline turned her head a fraction toward him, and he could tell from her eyes that she was looking at him. More, she was actually
seeing
him.

“Outside.” She spoke through gritted teeth, as if the effort of speaking clearly was almost more than she could bear. “The Masters…wish it. Help us. Help…ME!”

This last word came out as a shrill cry, and Caroline’s head snapped back to face the TV once more, and she yanked the pie server out of her bloody cunt, sending an arc of blood splattering onto the screen. Then with a howl she plunged the pie server back into herself and returned to ravaging the red-raw hamburger that Dan had been inside so many times, the gateway through which Lindsey had entered the world. Even if the rules were different now, how much of this could Caroline withstand before her body finally couldn’t take anymore and her mind shattered into a thousand screaming shards? Assuming, that is, the latter hadn’t already happened.

Dan opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, then closed the door softly behind him. Moving with slow, deliberate motions as if he were a robot on autopilot, he headed down the hallway and turned left at the foyer. A few steps more and he was standing at the front door.

From the living room, Lindsey called out, “Dad?”

Dan wanted to answer her, but his voice wouldn’t come. He kept hearing Caroline’s words echoing through his head, the horrid whispering of the television serving as an eerie background chorus.

Outside. The Masters…wish it. Help us. Help…ME!

Dan reached for the deadbolt, turned it. Unhooked the chain. Gripped the doorknob. Started to turn it.

He heard Lindsey running toward him, shouting, “No, Daddy! Don’t do it! Don’t leave me!”

He watched, little more than a passenger in his body, as he turned the knob all the way and shoved the door open. He heard Lindsey’s bare feet slapping on the foyer’s tile as she ran toward him, undoubtedly intending to stop him, but without hesitation he stepped onto the porch.

The nightmarish conglomeration that had been standing on his lawn in front of his picture window now stood at the end of his porch. Impossibly, its exposed jaw grinned as it reared up on its hind legs. The udder-head looked at him, smiled, and said, “Moo.”

And then she opened her upside-down mouth wide and vomited forth a stream of greenish yellow milk that struck Dan full in the face.

* * *

You CAN’T get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant,
she thought, for the simple reason that there wasn’t much left. She sat at one of the Pasta Pavilion’s back booths, leaning forward, arms and hands flat on the table, fingers interlocked, chin resting on the point where her two middle fingers connected. She’d sat in the same position for hours, and her lower back hurt like a bitch, but she didn’t care. What did it matter anymore? What did anything matter?

After what everyone was calling the Arrival—though how they’d all come to agree on that term or even exactly what it meant, she had no idea—Alice had managed to get inside the restaurant, which was a damn lucky thing because it seemed as if half the fucking town had the same idea. So many people had wanted in, wanted to escape the dying birds and the horrible scrutiny of all those goddamned
eyes
that Jordan, one of the managers, had finally locked the doors, locking everyone else out. Unfortunately, the flip side was true as well: he’d locked them all
in
.

Sometimes she wondered how her parents and younger brother were doing. She’d tried calling them on her cell not long after Jordan had locked the doors, but the phone was dead—just like her family probably was, too. She knew she should grieve for them, but then again, she didn’t know for
sure
that they were dead, did she? Besides, it wasn’t as if she really liked them all that much. They were pains in the asses, mostly, her brother especially. The only good thing about the Arrival happening when it did was that she hadn’t ended up stuck at home with them.

There was no electricity in the restaurant, probably none anywhere, she figured. What light there was came from the windows. Jordan had put the blinds down, but the slats were angled partially open to allow some illumination in. There’d been some argument about that initially. The others who made it inside before Jordan locked the doors—Alice didn’t think of them as customers, since she sure as shit wasn’t going to serve any of them—were uncomfortable with leaving the blinds open even a bit. One man, a fat middle-aged guy with thinning red hair who’d been gorging himself regularly at the Pasta Pavilion ever since Alice had started working there, summed up the group’s feelings quite succinctly:
We don’t want to let everyone else know we’re in here, do we?
And by
everyone else
it was clear he really meant
all those fucking THINGS out there!

And then Fatty had put his fleshy hands on the rolls of flab insulating his hips as if to say,
What do you have to say to that, Mr. Man?

Jordan had looked at Fatty as if he’d like nothing better than to sink his fingers into the doughy skin of the man’s neck, feel around until he finally got hold of the asshole’s windpipe, and squeeze the life out of the stupid fat fuck.

But Jordan had more class than that. He was, after all, the manager. In a calm voice, he’d said, “Those windows aren’t fortified, sir. Anyone could break through them if they wished. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit here in the dark, wondering what the hell might be sitting next to me.”

In the end, the group voted to let Jordan keep the blinds partially open during the day, and at night…well, it didn’t matter since the sun hadn’t set since the Arrival. So the blinds stayed partly open all the time. Alice admired Jordan for not taking any shit from Fatty and the rest, but she wasn’t sure she was happy with the way things turned out. The restaurant was still pretty damn dark inside, and from time to time people—at least, Alice
hoped
they were people; she didn’t look too closely—came up to the windows and peeked inside. Everyone made sure to stay well away from the windows then, huddling in the shadows at the back of the restaurant, even hiding under tables sometimes. Shit, some of the people had crawled beneath the tables right after the Arrival and had stayed there ever since. No one, Jordan included, could coax them out, not even to go to the bathroom. They’d been pissing and shitting in their pants, and the air in the restaurant was getting pretty goddamned rank. And the fact that none of them had been able to bathe since the Arrival didn’t help the place smell any better. What she wouldn’t give to take a shower now, even a cold one!

Alice didn’t shift her position, didn’t raise her head as she moved her gaze slowly from left to right, checking out the restaurant’s interior for the bazillionth time. Every booth was filled, as was every chair, and for each person that had a seat, two more were stuck sitting on the floor. In the gloom, the people looked like shadows, only their differences in height and weight giving them any individuality. No one spoke, no one moved. They just sat. Partly to conserve energy as there was little food left. Most of the restaurant’s supplies had spoiled not long after the electricity went out, and since there was no way to cook without power, ingredients like flour and spices were useless. Hell, the kitchen didn’t even have regular can openers, just electric ones, making it a bitch to open cans of stewed tomatoes and the like. But opened they’d been, then rationed out—thanks to Jordan—and devoured. Now there was nothing left but salt, pepper, and packets of artificial sweetener. The water was gone, too, and while they still had a few bottles of wine, Jordan was hoarding those for “an emergency,” he’d told her, though considering what had already happened to the fucking world, she wondered just what the hell would have to take place for him to consider it an emergency.

But another reason—probably the main one—everyone sat quietly was because they were all waiting. Alice, too, though she wasn’t sure what for. But she sensed that things were happening out there in the world…the World After, Jordan had taken to calling it. Though when she’d asked where he’d come up with the phrase, he’d just shrugged and said, “I don’t know. It just seems to fit, you know?” Things were changing outside, and when they were finished…well, that was what they were all waiting for, wasn’t it?

Someone whispered her name, so softly that it was little more than an exhalation.

“Alice.”

She turned her head to look up, the motion sending a jolt of pain down her stiff neck and into her spine. She grimaced, but when she saw that it was Jordan standing next to her table, she smiled. Jordan was twenty-six, seven years older than Alice, and he had an aura of confident maturity that she found sexy. He had a trim body, not too skinny, and broad shoulders. He was taller than she was, but just a little. That was good; she didn’t like it when guys towered over her. Though she knew it was dumb of her, she equated physical distance with emotional distance. Jordan had high cheekbones, a strong chin, and the cutest puppy-dog-brown eyes she’d ever seen. She’d always thought he was cute, but she’d never had the hots for him before. But seeing how he’d taken charge since the Arrival, how he
did
things while everyone else just sat there—including, too often, her—how everyone listened to him, as if he were a natural leader…she didn’t know if she could legitimately call what she felt for Jordan love, but it was a serious case of like, no doubt.

She sat up, her back pitching a bitch at being forced to move after being stuck in one position so long, but she ignored it.

“Hey,” she whispered. “What’s up?” Not something wrong, she hoped. More wrong than things already were, anyway.

“Could you come back to the kitchen with me?”

She couldn’t detect any hint of what he wanted. His voice was calm, his words without any particular inflection. Nevertheless, she felt a little thrill upon hearing them.

“Sure.”

He smiled and held out his hand to help her up. She didn’t need any help, even with her sore back, but she took his hand anyway. And after she was standing and Jordan didn’t release her hand, she made no move to take it from his gentle grip. Slowly, he led her through the maze of shadowy figures sitting silently on the floor. Some of them looked up as they passed, a few even asked what was going on, but Jordan didn’t answer and no one pressed him. As they neared the kitchen, Alice realized she was trembling, and the crotch of her underwear was damp. She’d seen movies in which people got incredibly horny in dangerous situations. Something about the stress excited them, she supposed, the knowledge that they might die any moment driving them to experience life intensely one last time. She wondered if that was what was happening now between Jordan and her. She imagined him leading her through the swinging doors and into the kitchen, turning around, grabbing her waist, pressing his mouth to hers and kissing her passionately. She imagined tasting him, feeling the wet warmth of his tongue circling hers, hearing his passionate breathing, his pelvis pressed against her, his cock growing hard…

He escorted her through the swinging doors just as she’d pictured, but once they were on the other side, he made no move to embrace her. Instead, he let go of her hand. There were no windows in here, so she couldn’t see anything, but she heard a rustle of cloth that told her he was reaching into his pants pocket. She heard him take something out, fiddle with it for a moment, and then she heard the sound of a striking match, followed closely by the orange-white flare of flame. She squinted as light stabbed into her eyes, and she turned her face away from the burning match—

—and that’s when she saw the body.

Fatty’s bloated corpse lay naked atop a counter next to a cold, useless oven. He’d been cut open from chin to crotch, skin peeled back, ribs sawed away, the glistening-soft secrets that he’d carried hidden within him since before he was born now revealed in all their squishy-wet glory.

She turned to look at Jordan. He looked suddenly shy and uncertain.

“I know…it’s kind of gross, right? But we have to eat
something
. And the human body’s like, what? Ninety percent water or something? So we can get liquid from him, too.”

Alice continued to look at Jordan for close to a full minute without speaking. When did he lure Fatty back here? How had Jordan killed and…and
butchered
him without anyone hearing anything? Of all the questions swirling through her mind, though, the one she asked was “Why him?”

“Well, he’s fat, so I figured we’d get the most meat from him.” He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Besides, he pissed me off. We have to eat him raw, though, since the ovens don’t work. And we have to eat soon so he doesn’t spoil. Soooooo …what do you think?”