Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

XIX

The cold tore at Mortimer’s bare ankles, whooshed up his pant legs to do fierce, shrinking things to his genitalia. He shivered and trudged, favoring the leg with the shallow arrow wound. The winding, narrow road twisted and curved through the forest away from Saint Sebastian’s and toward nowhere he could guess. He assumed the asphalt would eventually take him to some village or town. He’d settle for a farmhouse where he might beg a scrap of food.

He could not shake the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ruth. Poor girl. What should he have done for her? Ultimately another victim of the world’s implosion. After growing up in her sterile cocoon, how could she possibly face the unyielding totality of an entire planet?

Or maybe she was just a wack-doodle.

Mortimer hugged himself tighter, trudged on, tried to keep his teeth from chattering.

He passed three dead farmhouses before he realized it might be a good idea to scavenge. Even if he didn’t find food, he might possibly find something warmer to wear. He might even stay in one of the abandoned dwellings for the night and try to get a fire going somehow.

The next two farmhouses produced nothing of value. In the third, Mortimer attempted to pull down a thick set of yellow drapes to use as a blanket, but the material disintegrated in his hands.

By evening, he was exhausted and starving. His feet hurt, and every muscle ached.

The next farmhouse had no front door, all the windows smashed out. He found only barren rooms and hard wooden floors inside. There was a fireplace but nothing he could use to start a fire. He’d read a number of frontier guides that demonstrated how to build a fire without matches, but he couldn’t remember anything that would allow him to strike a spark out of thin air with his bare hands.

In the bathroom, he found a dirty plastic shower curtain still hanging. He tore it down and used it as a blanket. Mortimer spent a long uncomfortable night in the tub.

Every limb was sore and stiff when he awoke. The leg with the arrow wound was the worst. Not for the first time, Mortimer thought how much simpler and safer and more comfortable it would have been to stay in his cave. Or he could have stayed in Spring City, bought back his house from the crazy old lady.

The idea of tracking down his wife seemed useless and arbitrary now. And yet Mortimer could not quite picture himself turning back, living easily and without direction, drinking his fortune at the Spring City Joey Armageddon’s.

He stretched, stomped the feeling back into his legs and hit the road again.

Two more farmhouses and still nothing. He felt he might soon eat his shoes if he didn’t find food.

He arrived at a larger county road that crossed his at a T intersection. This would certainly lead to some kind of town, and Mortimer brightened microscopically. Another farmhouse sat at the head of the T intersection. Maybe Mortimer would get lucky. He went inside.

The first thing he saw was the dead body.

Mortimer was still not quite used to seeing dead bodies.

The corpse sat at a desk. The desk faced the front door. The dead man had fallen forward. He clutched a revolver in his stiff, dead hands. He didn’t look quite as mummified as the dead doctor back at Saint Sebastian’s, but he’d clearly been there a long time. A brown-red bullet hole above his right temple.

He couldn’t take it, and he shot himself.

Mortimer’s eyes fixed on the gun. It was like finding a bar of gold. Next to the man’s head was an ashtray with a book of matches in it. Fire! And what was that on the end of the desk? Ravioli. A fucking can of Chef Boyardee Overstuffed Ravioli.

Mortimer almost flew to the desk, arms outstretched.

The floor vanished out from under him. Falling. Flailing limbs. Rope tight across his face. He was tangled, swaying, bobbing up and down in the musty darkness.

After a few seconds, Mortimer stopped his struggling, tried to turn his head and assess his situation. He hung upside down in a large net. That much was obvious. A trapdoor must have dropped him into a net, and he now hung in the basement below. The only light came from the still-open trapdoor above. He craned his neck, tried to see what was in the basement.

Bodies. Dozens of dead bodies in a pile.

Oh…shit.

He heard something and froze. It had sounded like a bell. He struggled, heard the bell again and froze again. Experimentally, he twisted and shifted in the net. The bell sounded.

It’s connected to the net, he thought. Come and get it.

He renewed his struggles more frantically. He had to get out before they came. Whoever the hell they were. Mortimer didn’t want to find out. He managed to struggle right side up, reached up between the thick net ropes to see if he could feel how the thing was put together. Maybe he could untie it.

Footsteps up above, the wooden floor creaking. Mortimer held his breath. A black silhouette appeared against the square of light above him, stood at the edge and looked down at him through the trapdoor. Mortimer saw the vague outline of a firearm cradled in the man’s arms.

“He got any weapons?” called a voice.

The silhouette turned his head to answer. “Nope. Go get him.”

“Right.”

Another set of footsteps crossed the floor. The sound of a door swinging on rusty hinges, followed by the muffled clomp of boots coming down stairs. A door swung open, and light flooded the basement. A man in jeans and a heavy flannel shirt approached Mortimer. He was pale, red hair, medium height, small black eyes and yellow teeth spread out with gaps. Late twenties. On his shoulder rested a wooden baseball bat.

“I’m gonna let you down, okay? You try anything, I’ll bash you good with this.” He hefted the bat. “You understand?”

Mortimer nodded.

The man looked up at the silhouette. “Bobby?”

Bobby shifted the firearm to point at Mortimer. “I got him covered. Go ahead.”

The bat wielder went to the wall, untied a rope and slowly lowered the net to the basement floor.

“Untangle yourself.”

Mortimer spread the opening in the top of the net, shimmied out of it as he stood.

More footsteps up above, the quick patter of high heels. A woman’s voice. “Did you get one?”

The one called Bobby said, “Just stay back, Sue Ellen. We got it handled. Floyd’s down there with him now.”

Floyd said, “You want me to search him down here or bring-”

Mortimer bolted for the stairs, ignoring the pain of his leg wound. He got three steps before feeling the sharp smack at the base of his skull. He went to his knees, his head swimming, eyes going unfocused.

“I told you not to fucking do that, asshole.” Floyd’s voice sounded like it was down a well.

“You got him?” Bobby called.

“Oh, I got him all right.”

Another smack to the back of the head and everything went black.

Mortimer awoke with the sensation he had only been unconscious a minute or two. The back of his head throbbed. He turned to look into the eyes of a sallow, glassy-eyed corpse. His suit jacket and shirt were off, and the cement floor was cold on his back. He was barefoot.

He raised his head, saw a woman holding his shoes.

“You must be Sue Ellen.”

She turned, shouted up the stairs. “He’s awake.”

Mortimer wished he wasn’t.

Boots hammered down the stairs while the girl looked down at Mortimer. She was a sight. An emerald-green cocktail dress, a big white sun hat, black silk gloves, fishnet stockings, satin pumps. She looked like she was auditioning for a community college production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Her face, pretty in a flat, plain sort of way, was ruddy, her brown eyes dull, her expression a bit too slack-jawed. She blinked at Mortimer, still holding his shoes. She didn’t seem very concerned that Mortimer was conscious.

Maybe that was because Floyd and Bobby stood next to her now, Floyd with his baseball bat and Bobby with what Mortimer could now see was a single-barreled shotgun. Bobby had thinning hair the same red as Floyd’s but a sharper, angular face and hard, probing eyes of bright blue. Like Floyd, he wore jeans and flannel shirts in layers.

The three of them gawked at Mortimer like he was a farm animal with a mildly interesting disfigurement.

“What are you going to do with me?” Mortimer asked.

Bobby shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Sue Ellen?”

“Nothing hidden in his shoes,” she said. “And I already went through his pants pockets. I’ll look in the jacket.” She picked it up, started turning the pockets out.

“Let me go,” Mortimer said. “I don’t have anything you want.”

“Shut up,” Floyd told him.

“If nothing else we can put him on the bicycle line,” Bobby said.

Floyd pointed at Mortimer’s thigh with the bat. “He’s got a bum leg.”

“He’ll heal up okay.”

Sue Ellen squealed. “It was in his jacket pocket.” She held up the pink plastic card she’d found. “Wow. A Platinum member.”

Bobby sighed. “Hell. Okay, then. Give him back his shoes.”