The Last Mile Read online

  He leaned down and gave Lindsey a kiss on the top of her head. She flinched as his lips touched her hair, but she didn’t pull away, and for that Dan was grateful.

  He stood. “I think I’ll go check on your mother.” He didn’t ask Lindsey if she wanted to come. He didn’t want her to. She hadn’t seen her mother since a few hours after the Arrival, and Dan intended to keep it that way.

  Lindsey didn’t reply, didn’t do anything to acknowledge he’d spoken. He considered telling her not to peek through the blinds, but she rarely left the chair since the Arrival, and he didn’t want to remind her of what was waiting outside. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile but felt more like a grimace. Not that it mattered since she wasn’t looking at him. Then he turned and left the living room, and though the blinds remained closed, he nevertheless felt the cow creature’s unsettling gaze upon him as he walked past the couch.

  They lived in one-story ranch. A nice home, nothing fancy and not huge, but big enough for the three of them. While it was the most house they could afford, they wouldn’t have been happy with anything bigger, for they were a close family and liked spending time near each other. At least, they used to.

  Dan walked down the hall, his nose wrinkling as he passed the closed door of the hallway bathroom. Without running water, they had no way to flush the toilet, and since it wasn’t safe to go outside—or even open a window to dump the contents of a makeshift chamber pot—the stink was starting to build up. He knew he was going to have to do something about the toilet soon, but he didn’t know what. Plus, there was another problem. The filthy toilet was beginning to draw insects. Roaches, Dan figured, though he hadn’t actually seen them. The last time he’d opened the bathroom door, he’d shined a flashlight inside and heard the scuttling of what seemed like hundreds of tiny legs as the scavengers fled the light. Shuddering, he’d kept the flashlight turned on while he pissed, but when he finished, he’d heard a soft ululating sound, as if a multitude of tiny voices was singing. The tone had struck Dan as one of gratitude, as if the singers were thanking him for providing them with more nourishment.

  Dan had rushed out of the bathroom, slammed the door, and hadn’t opened it since. The next time he’d had to urinate, he’d gone out into the garage and pissed in a corner.

  He thrust the thought of the roaches’ singing from his mind—he was getting real good at not thinking about things, especially bad things—and continued down the hall to the master bedroom. This door was shut, too, though it wasn’t locked. Across the hall, the door to Lindsey’s room was open, just as it had been on the day of the Arrival. Lindsey hadn’t been back inside since, but Dan had gone in once to get a sleeping bag out of her closet. He slept on the couch at night, and he spread out the sleeping bag on the floor for Lindsey, though she preferred to remain in the chair. Whether she slept, he didn’t know. She was awake when he nodded off at night and awake when he opened his eyes in the morning. Dan slept in the living room to keep an eye on Lindsey, but mostly because he couldn’t bring himself to sleep next to his wife. Not anymore.

  He opened the bedroom door, stepped inside, then closed the door behind him with a soft click.

  The curtains were drawn, but the room was illuminated by the blue-white glow of the television set atop Caroline’s dresser. Despite the fact that they had no power, the TV still worked. It had turned itself on a couple hours after the Arrival, and no matter what button Dan pushed, it wouldn’t turn off. He’d even pulled the plug from the outlet, but it made no difference. The screen displayed nothing but dancing white-and-black static, but instead of the loud crackling that usually indicated the lack of a signal, a susurration of whispers filtered out of the speaker, sibilant, liquid syllables spoken in a language that Dan didn’t recognize, but which hurt his ears to hear.

  Caroline lay naked on top of the mattress, pillows stacked beneath her head so that she could see the TV screen. Lying next to her was the utensil drawer from the kitchen. When she had first seen the flickering static and heard the whispering voices, she’d stared at the TV for several moments before going to the kitchen, removing the utensil drawer, and bringing it back to the bedroom. Dan, having heard the clattering of metal as she pulled the drawer free, had followed her down the hall to their bedroom, asking her what was wrong, what are you doing? But she hadn’t answered. She’d placed the drawer on the bed, taken off her clothes, then climbed onto the mattress, slid her feet toward her ass to raise her knees into the air, let her knees fall to the side to spread her vagina, then reached for a fork.

  Dan had yelled at her to stop, had rushed forward to grab her hand, but she turned on him, snarling like an animal, and jammed the fork into the back of his wrist with surprising strength for such a petite woman. Blood welled forth, he shouted, “Fuck!” and cradled his wounded hand against his chest. He stood in shock for a moment, staring down at his wounded wrist, while Caroline put the fork to another use.

  Now Dan watched as his wife furiously masturbated with a pie server. She thrust the spadelike object in and out of the ragged ruin of her genitals with sickening moist squelching noises. She hadn’t removed the comforter when she first lay down several days ago, and the bottom half of the bedclothes was covered with blood both old and fresh—wet crimson splashed over a layer of brown crust. She should’ve died soon after beginning her masturbatory marathon, Dan knew that, but no matter how much she injured herself, how much blood poured from between her quivering legs, she grew no weaker, no paler. Despite the copious amount of blood she’d lost, she didn’t appear to be in danger of death, which was good since Dan doubted that, even if they had phone service, anyone would respond to a 911 call. At least, not anyone they wanted to respond.

  The horror of Caroline’s condition was more than ample proof that the rules were very different in the World After…if there were any rules at all.

  The bedroom stank in a different way than the hall bathroom, but the stench was no less rank: the sour-gamey odor of blood, sweat, and cunt, mixed with the burning ozone smell of hot electronics. But though the stink should’ve sickened him, for some reason he found it less offensive than the bathroom. His stomach didn’t roil, his gorge didn’t rise, and—most disturbing of all—his penis grew partially erect.

  This was the reason he didn’t want Lindsey to see her mother…that, and the fear that she might succumb to the awful whispering coming through the television. Like mother like daughter, right? Why he should be resistant to the foul influence coming through the set, he didn’t know. Maybe it was because he was male. Or maybe it was because whatever force that was behind Caroline’s self-mutilation required that she have an audience. (He had yet to learn about the Masters, though he would, and soon.)

  “Caroline? Sweetheart? Is there…” His gaze strayed to the utensil drawer, and he saw that the spoons, forks, and knives were all neatly arranged in their proper slots, and they were all covered with blood. Some of it fresh, most of it not. His bile did rise then, and he had to swallow to keep from throwing up. The fact that he’d eaten little the last few days helped. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he finished.

  She hadn’t responded to him before, and he had no reason to think she would now. But he had to ask, had to try to make contact. Whatever had happened to Caroline, whatever had possessed her, she was still his wife, and he loved her. He waited several moments, but she continued to ignore him, staring at the snow on the TV screen and stabbing the pie server into the ragged ruin of her sex.

  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…sii
iiiide.”

  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.