Blaze of Glory

CHAPTER 24

They'd been walking for twenty minutes with Sissy now in the lead. After Little Rashad had spoken with her, she'd stood away from the group for awhile. When she'd returned, a flinty hardness inhabited her eyes, determination in her gaze.

Buckley trudged slightly hunched as he carried Grandma Riggs. Maggies had begun to pop along his lower back, escaping the salt-laced cellophane to fall sizzling to the ground. He'd tried to stop to fix the rent in the cellophane, but Grandma Riggs wouldn't let him. 'Let it be,' she'd said, so he'd trudged on.

Little Rashad followed with one hand grasping one of the chair legs, oblivious to Buckley's leavings. The boy was so exhausted, all he could do was allow himself to be led without care for reason nor destination, his eyes on a far away horizon.

Last came MacHenry and Gert, whispering softly to each other and laughing at some private joke or another. They seemed more like teenage lovers than doomed souls. Then again, teenagers were doomed souls.

The streets hadn't gotten any better. Once busy thoroughfares had become parking lots. Car doors had been left open. Bodies lay exploded where they’d fallen. They'd passed a Volvo with an open back door. Buckley didn't want to remember the blue and white plastic rattle that angled out from the pile of sludge in the baby seat. Volvos were supposed to be the safest car. Even at the end of the world a family deserved the expectation of safety. Yet even as he thought it, he realized how horribly manic it was to think that way, a part of him coming unhinged-or maybe too much secondhand crack smoke.

Caddies roamed like rare cattle munching on buildings as if they were tufts of wheat grass. The original maggies, the small name-sakes, were thankfully few. They depended upon human hosts it seemed and the one thing lacking in Wilmington these days were humans. Shops stood empty, windows shattered at intervals making the facade of a wealthy street seem more like a good-natured hooker with a broken-toothed grin.

At Seventh Street, a school bus had plowed into a fire hydrant, long gone dry. Schoolbooks and backpacks colored the street like sprinkled confetti. Here and there bones and hair, mingled with mud that had most probably pooled when the hydrant had first geysered free. Pooled, because of the gaping hole that had been torn in the road, by what, Buckley could only imagine. Filled to the top with red muddy water, the breeze stirred the surface like a lake. Miniature whitecaps formed, revealing skeletal hands and the occasional fleshy skull in the troughs of the waves. On the ground surrounding this earthy cauldron, red and black skirts flittered along on greedy winds like tumbleweeds. Buckley stared at a particular skeletal hand poking free of the water and couldn't help but sense that if the hand's owner were merely drowning, he could pull him or her to safety.

Everyone had stopped and stared at the scene knowing that the children had died, their remnants so unsentimentally strewn seemed disrespectful. Gert had moved to pick up one of the skirts as it drifted by, but MacHenry pulled her back. When they finally moved away, they were a more somber pair, the idea of a busload of children dying so horribly coating their conscience with hot slimy details.

With heads slung low, the group continued on another ten minutes, before they found a space devoid of death. Sissy paused and looked around. "I think we should stop here, huh?"

Buckley nodded. "Good idea."

Sissy, Gert and MacHenry took the opportunity to check their Super Soakers. MacHenry worked the mechanisms, while Gert pulled out some bags of salt. Here and there water had puddled from the run-off from Seventh Street, but out of respect for the dead, they left these alone. Instead they checked the radiators of the cars, draining them into the rifles. As they worked, all of them kept an eye on the buildings.

Little Rashad, Buckley and Grandma Riggs, who was fast asleep, plopped down in the shadow of a store front. A sign in the window read — PAULINE’S PULLED PORK. As Buckley finally divested himself of Grandma's chair, setting it none too gently on the ground and untying the ropes, he made smacking sounds with his lips. "Mmmm. Mmmm. I could do with some Barbecue. What about you, kid?"

"I could eat a whole pig," Little Rashad said.

"I’m with ya. What do you think the odds are that we can get us some pulled pork sandwiches, potato salad and a cold soda?"

MacHenry crossed the street and sat heavily beside Buckley. He glanced at the storefront, then shook his head. "Dream on, Adamski. Your days of pulled pork and ribs are over."

"Now that would be a reason not to go on living."

"It can't all be that bad," MacHenry said.

"It's not." Buckley smiled wistfully. "I'm just talking because I'm too tired to do anything else."

MacHenry glanced at Grandma sleeping in her chair. "Old Lady's heavy, isn't she," he said.

MacHenry nodded. "Anyone would be heavy after all the running we did. This back wasn't meant for transporting people. Hell, sometimes I do well just to get out of bed."

"How's the infection?"

"Not as bad as I thought it would be. I'm wondering if maybe the maggies have a set lifespan, because frankly, I should be dead by now."

"Set lifespan? You getting science fiction on me?"

"Kind of. Yeah, I suppose I am. Follow me if you will." Earlier Buckley had refused to believe that maggies had evolved from anything other than pure evil. But the more he saw, the more logic dictated something else. No matter how he hated Star Trek logic, he found himself embracing the possibility. "What if this is some sort of invasion, or even better, terraforming? What's the first thing someone would want to get rid of if they were going to take over the planet?"

"Reality Television?"

"Seriously." Buckley pointed at himself, MacHenry and the others. "Us. People. They'd want to get rid of all the people." Buckley chuckled. "That reality television comment was funny, by the way."

"Thanks," MacHenry deadpanned.

"The small ones came first almost wiping out the population. Hell, as far as we know, we're all that's left. With the exception of you guys, we haven't seen anyone else."

"Then came the caddies." MacHenry nodded slowly to himself. "Those things are here to eat the buildings. And if I take your theory to its natural conclusion, then the caddies are here to cleanse the earth of all structures."

"Removing the evidence of our existence so that someone else can build."

"Or someTHING else."

"Yeah."

"Damn. That's fucked up."

Buckley plucked a maggie from his neck and pressed it into the sidewalk with his hand. "Makes you wonder who it is that's making it all fucked up."

"You don't believe in fate? Or that God did this?"

"What'd we ever do to God to make it this bad?" Buckley jerked his thumb at Little Rashad. "What did he ever do to God? No way. This isn't about God. It's about something else, something else entirely."

"What about fate?"

"Bull shit. Fate's nothing more than a four letter word created by people who don't know how to use their brain." Making a face like a spastic child, "I tripped and fell down. It's fate. I didn't win the ball game. It's fate. I didn't get that scholarship. It's-"

"Lemme guess," MacHenry interrupted. "Fate."

Buckley rolled his eyes and nodded.

"I've always thought that fate was the invention of underachievers," MacHenry said. "I didn't succeed. It must have been fate, because it couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that I wasn't smart enough, strong enough or good enough."

Buckley held out his hand for a low five, which MacHenry accepted. "On that topic, you and I are in one hundred percent agreement, brother."

They were silent for a few moments, watching Sissy and Gert handle the water. The two had a system. Sissy would approach the car, and pop the hood, keeping her super soaker trained on the interior. Then Gert would unscrew both the radiator cap on top and the drain plug beneath. The green-colored water would be caught in a short bucket that fit neatly between the radiator and the street.

"So what you're saying," MacHenry said, "Is that this is some sort of War of the World's event. Instead of tripods, we have maggies, is that it?"

"I suppose that's one way to put it." Buckley stood up and adjusted the cellophane from where it had fallen away. "But then I'm just a garbage man. What the fuck do I know?"

"And I'm a used car salesman."

"To think that we're the brain trust that's supposed to figure out this mess."

"If that's the case," MacHenry said, getting to his feet. "Then we are most surely fucked."