Take it. May as well let him die feeling helpful.
“Thank you.” She collected the vial and he grinned and closed his eyes. She slipped the vial into a side pouch of her backpack. A moist whistle came from his throat, and then he grew quiet.
Outside, in the street, Chain Guy bellowed in that inhuman manner that meant he was about to indulge in his Number One Priority, following his purpose, as did all beings under God’s high heaven. Even Zapheads.
She sat with the suicidal pharmacist for another minute until his pulse stopped, and then crawled back to the front of the store.
CHAPTER TWO
Marvin the Martian is seriously underrated.
Campbell Grimes had always admired the faceless little Looney Tunes alien. Everybody loved Bugs Bunny. Bugs was a rabbit for all seasons, but just like Tweety Bird, Sylvester, and Porky, Bugs occasionally came up on the short end. Wile E. Coyote was admirable for his persistence and innovation, but that pencil-necked Road Runner always turned the tables.
Campbell despised the Road Runner, because the cartoon bird reminded him of Sonny Stanton, the Worthy Master of his Alpha Tau Omega chapter, back at the university. Stanton had a habit of sneaking up behind people and doing his nasally version of the Road Runner’s “meep meep.” What Campbell wouldn’t have given for an Acme Asshole Eradicator, patent pending.
Whereas, Wile E. Coyote was a hopeless slave to his hunger, Marvin had a more refined sense of the universal order. To the faceless little ant-creature with the push-broom on top of his Roman helmet, destruction was merely an aesthetic choice.
Now, looking across the dead expanse of interstate and the hushed vehicles sprawled along it like a child’s abandoned toys, Campbell figured it was a good time to borrow one of Marvin’s taglines.
“Where’s the kaboom?” he said, in a nasally cartoon voice.
“What?” Pete asked, barely listening.
“I would have expected more of a kaboom.”
“A doomsday asteroid would have sold more tickets. The world ends not with a bang but a whimper, right?”
“You’re an English major. You’re really not going to be worth much of a damn at this survival thing, are you?”
Pete took a swig of warm Busch beer and pushed dark curls of hair away from his face. “Hey, I’m here, but a lot of folks aren’t. I’d say that gives me major points.”
“Well,” Campbell said. “You must have been wearing your tin-foil skullcap when the zap came.”
Pete took another swig and hurled the empty can onto the grass median, where it bounced and came to rest in a sea of strewn clothes. “I’m not the one quoting Marvin the Martian, dude.”
“Score.”
Campbell booted down the ten-speed’s kickstand and shook the dust from the sleeves of his leather jacket. They’d had their pick of the rack at Triad Cycles, and while Pete had gone for an off-road bike with knobby tires, Campbell had chosen a utility model with a wire basket. It even had a small “Made in America” tag wired to the basket. Pete had needled him by calling him “Cheesy Rider,” but Campbell had a basket full of food and gear while Pete was stuck with whatever he could fit in his backpack.
Which was mostly beer at this point.
Campbell’s body tingled from the vibration of the ride. They’d logged twenty miles in the last three hours, slowed by occasional traffic pile-ups that forced them to go off-road. They’d spent the night in an abandoned VW van in a campground, afraid to build a fire. It was their sixth day out of Chapel Hill, one week since everything had stopped, and they were no closer to understanding what the hell was going on.
No signs of intelligent life, Campbell thought in his Marvin the Martian voice. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. No, not at all.
“Want to search any of these cars?” Pete asked, punctuating the query with a deep belch.
“My basket is full.”
“Might find something fresh. A pistol, beef jerky, more beer.”
“I already have a gun.”
Pete pointed at the revolver jammed in Campbell’s belt. “Aren’t you ready for an upgrade?”
“It’s enough.” Campbell had gone with the .38 because he liked to see the chamber. He thought it would be easier to keep track of how many bullets he had left, in the event he ever actually had to use it. Pete had adopted a Glock and seemed to draw great satisfaction from the clack made by driving the clip home. The guns had been courtesy of an outdoor supply shop that had been picked over a little, but apparently the survivor count was so low that supply far exceeded demand.
“What if somebody’s alive in one of those cars?” Pete asked.
“Unlikely.” Campbell scanned the interstate more carefully, bothered by the thought.
“Could be somebody like us. One of the lucky ones.”
“Damned if I’d call us ‘lucky.’”
“Maybe we should have stayed at the university. If anybody can figure this thing out, it would be our good old home-team researchers.”
“So what if they did?” Campbell grew annoyed, on the edge of anger, and he didn’t like it. Because that’s probably how they started out, when the wires melted and the brain circuitry zapped. When they started becoming them.
“Maybe they can come up with a vaccine or something.”
“This isn’t a goddamned case of the clap, Pete. And how are you going to get the crazies to cooperate? Blast them with your Explosive Space Modulator?”
“Jesus, dude, what crawled up your ass and pitched a tent?”
“Sorry.” Campbell punched the top of the sweaty helmet that rested between his legs. “The end of the world…I thought I could handle it.”
Pete rolled his bike forward a few inches. “It’s always easier in theory. Let’s give that Lance truck a try.”
The snack-food truck was parked on the shoulder parallel to the road, as if the driver had been prepared for the sudden loss of power. It was an older model, and Campbell suspected it had manual steering. Modern vehicles, dependent upon computers, had locked up or gone haywire. Hondas, Kias, and Fords were crashed or angled askew in the media. An SUV was upside down at the bottom of an embankment, doors hanging open. A twisted motorcycle straddled the guardrail, its occupant now a decaying lump of leather-encased flesh some twenty feet away.
“I don’t know,” Campbell said, feeling exposed and vulnerable. Or maybe it was the sight of at least a dozen corpses that caused his uneasiness.
“Chickenshit.”
“We’ve got food. Maybe we should just keep pedaling.”
“You still worried about roving bands of Zapheads? We don’t have to fight over it. There’s plenty for everybody.”
Pete was letting the beer talk for him. He’d downed at least a six-pack so far today, and the autumn warmth wasn’t sweating it out fast enough. Campbell understood his friend’s escapism, but personally, he preferred the survival buzz.
“Those snack crackers are loaded with preservatives,” he said. “They’ll be around long after all of us are gone.”
“Har har. Campbell made a funny.” Pete dug into a side pouch of his backpack and brought out a pack of Marlboro Lights. “The Surgeon General has determined the end of the world is hazardous to your health.”
“Don’t make me use my Space Modulator on you.”
Pete lit his cigarette and scanned the nearest vehicles. He exhaled a rising wreath of smoke and dismounted, then rolled his bike past a black Lexus with a personalized plate that said “SKIN-DR.”