As much as I like the place, seeing someone throw up in Songbird Café wasn’t exactly what you’d call “out of the ordinary,” and so we didn’t pay it any mind. Jonas did, but he’s got a thing about vomit. He mumbled something like “I’m gotta – I’m gonna use… mm. The bathroom,” and he got up and ran with a hand over his mouth. Some of the wait staff must’ve hurried over to help clean up, and the family of the old man who yakked were probably pretty concerned. Tick and I just went back to breakfast. Or well, I don’t eat breakfast, so Tick went back to breakfast.
Songbird’s got this thing called a Flightless Bird that Tick always gets. It’s like something that was created by somebody who hated breakfast and was trying to force everything down at once to get through it quicker; it’s scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, a sunnyside egg, a pancake, a slab of French toast, and maple syrup on a bagel sandwich. It comes with some fruit on the side, and Tick usually gives that to me. Most important meal of the day right there – orange slices like the kind you used to get after peewee soccer games. Maybe some overly bitter pineapple if the cooks are feeling generous.
We usually hit up Songbird about ninety minutes before work starts. Gives us plenty of time to eat and chat and show up on time for our shift at eight. We – especially me – can’t be late to that because of our boss, Dean. He’s a shithead. He acts like we’re on good terms now, but I can tell he still watches me more than everyone else. I can see in his eyes he wants to fire me. He almost didn’t even give me a job in the first place, even though I’m the only one on the site who actually went to a trade school. Jonas learned construction from his grandpa way back when, and Tick just learned on the job. And still, Jonas had to vouch for me after my interview to get this prick to reconsider. I’m not gonna slip up though. I’m a good worker, I pick things up quickly, and I remember everything I learned. If I’m being honest, I could do Dean’s job way better than he can.
What’s that? Oh, well it’s a nickname. Everyone just calls me Copeland, but my real name is Marshall. There was this kid at my middle school who was more popular than I was, one of those lacrosse team type guys, moved here from Arizona for sixth grade. His name was Marshall too, so people called me by my last name so we wouldn’t get mixed up. If I’m being honest, I never really saw the risk of that – we hung out in different groups, plus the guy was white as mayonnaise, but it caught on by seventh grade and I… I just got used to it. But you can call me Marshall if you want. Or Copeland’s fine.
And Tick? Why do I call Tick Tick? Everybody who knows him calls him that. Or I guess everybody who knows his mom. None of us have called him Wade since kindergarten. Even saying it now feels strange on the tongue. But anyway, the short version is that he and I were friends growing up, and his mom wouldn’t let him go play in the forest with us because she thought he’d come back covered in ticks and that he’d die of Lyme disease. I know, right? Have you ever even heard of somebody getting Lyme disease? And the funny thing was, she never brought up anything about the shit that could’ve actually killed us in the woods. Bears… or falling through a river in the winter… or pheasant hunters with bad aim, you know? It was only the ticks, but she was so paranoid about it that once she tied their screen door to a fence with a bike lock so Tick couldn’t sneak out while she was at the store. She’s crazy if I’m being honest. She doesn’t know about half the stuff we got up to together when we were kids, and she’d probably disown Tick if she found out.
And Jonas is just Jonas, we’ve never really given him a nickname. There’s never been a reason to. He’s just Jonas.
But where was I? Right, we were waiting for Jonas to get back, and the guy had just thrown up for the first time.
Tick said something like, “We gotta swing by a pharmacy on the way home. My dad’s running out.” Tick and I alternate who drives one another to work to save money on gas.
“Sure,” I said. “You good to pay for it?”
“Yeah.”
“I can spot you if you –”
“I got it.”
“Overtime?”
“No, new gig. Dog-sitting. I’ve been helping the Fitzpatricks next door with – wait, you think Dean gave me fuckin’ overtime pay?” Tick scoffed. “The fuck’s holding out on me for regular pay. I’d imagine you’d know that better than fuckin’ anybody.” That’s true. Dean’s bad with money for everybody, but he specifically delays my checks sometimes in the hopes I’ll snap at him and he’ll be able to get me off the site. It’s frustrating, sure, but I caught onto him pretty quick and now it’s almost like a game. One that he always loses because I won’t break, and he can only do it for so long before his higher-ups get involved. If I keep him doing it, the ideal scenario is his boss thinks he’s embezzling, and he gets the can.
But anyways, I just said to Tick, “Guess so. God, what an asshole.”
“Fucking asshole,” Tick muttered. He started back to his sandwich, then stopped and looked back up at me. “You know that if he fires you, I’ll fucking take his teeth out, right?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I know.”
"Anybody on the site would.”
“Jonas would?”
“Jonas…” he stopped and gave a dry sort of half-grin. “Jonas wouldn’t stop it. He hates Dean as much as you and I do but… you know. It’s Jonas. The day I see him beating the hell out of anyone is the day I know hell’s frozen over.”
I laughed. Behind us, we heard the same old man throw up again. Again, it wasn’t that strange. Songbird’s food is… it’s fine. The puking usually comes from that fact that it’s open twenty-four hours, so at this time of day it mostly caters to people who get up crazy early, or people who’ve been up all night. Hungover teens. Meth addicts. Sickly old people. You know.
Tick called across the diner, “Wild night?” I laughed.
One of the old guy’s family, a woman who looked like she was probably his daughter, yelled back, “Mind your own business! Fucking bums.”
Tick shook his head and went for his sandwich. He’s always been a messy eater, and nothing really shows it quite like a Flightless Bird sandwich. The whole thing just implodes at the first sign of pressure from his teeth, eggs come rolling out the back, leaking and dribbling over his fingers. You can try and keep a hand on the backside to stop it, but it never works. The bacon at Songbird is stiff and thick too, so it catches in your teeth. Tick always has to jerk his head to break off the bite. One bite in, half the sandwich is on the plate, it happens that way every time. It’s kind of horrible to watch, but it’s one of those things that’s so unappealing that it’s almost impressive.
Tick set the sandwich down, wiped his hands, and stuffed his hair back under that big earflap hat he’s got. It’s November, so his hair is about as long as it’s going to get. He always gets his hair cut the last day of the year to save money, so though January it’s almost a buzz, and by April you start seeing some brown strands from under his hat, and then by the start of winter it’s down to the bottom of his neck. He said he does it to save money for his dad’s medicine. There’s – what’s that? Oh, I always forget the name of it. Raza-something. His dad has Alzheimer’s, so it’s gonna be some kind of cognition improvement drug. But yeah, there’s all kinds of stuff Tick tries to save money on. Dude still uses candles at night like he’s in a Charles Dickens book or something. What else… well, I think he’s got, what, five unpaid parking tickets now? Yeah, sometimes he tries to save on the wrong things, in my opinion. I will say though, he’s good for the money. He takes forever but he always does pay me back for stuff. I know what him and his family go through, financially speaking, so I’m usually cool with the delay.
What happened next… I know it was around that time that Jonas came out of the bathroom. He was almost back to the table when his eyes got all big, and then we heard the same old man puke again. Jonas was back in the bathroom before it even happened. Tick leaned out of the booth to get a better look at the old man. I followed suit. The three of us have been eating there since we were middle schoolers, and I’ve never seen someone throw up three times back-to-back. Something weird was going on.
I… I suppose the next part is the part you’re interested in. It’s a little bit of a blur, if I’m being honest. It happened fast, like you always imagine it would. Basically, the old man threw up just… red. Like, matte red. It was fucking disgusting. Jonas might’ve died if he’d been there to see it. The old man collapsed then, just slipped over and wham, into the table. People started shaking him, begging him to wake up and all that, telling the waiter to call 911. And then he just… got up. The whole place was in a panic before, and then everyone just froze. Not sure if it was confusion, or fear, or relief that made it happen, but it was like the whole place was in amber. The waiter had a phone out, mid-dial. The old man’s daughter had a hand on his back. The only move was the old man, and even that was… it was sort of like a morning stretch after a night on a bad air mattress. All slow, creaky, but just filled with potential energy.
And then it fuckin’ went down. The old guy just whipped his head around and took a bite out of the daughter’s hand. She screamed, the family moved closer to stop the old guy, and he just full-on mountain lion pounced on top of one of them and started going to town on his neck. I’ve seen a lot of movies, so in my head at least I’m pretty desensitized to gore and stuff, but this was bad. I was more worried about Tick, though. He watches a lot of movies with me, even the horror ones I know he doesn’t like. He thinks I don’t notice but I see him turn away or watch the floor for some of the scarier parts. Whenever he thinks there’s a jump scare coming, he checks out his hands and sticks his head further back into the couch to muffle the sound. And with blood… it’s odd, he’ll look away if it’s an injury, but not if it’s a death. Like, if a guy gets shot in the head in a movie, nothing from him. But a shot in the shoulder, or the thigh, or the hand, the room will always light up from him checking his phone. If I’m being honest, I think it’s his mom’s doing. She can give you a good scare about damn near anything, and I’m almost positive she did a number on Tick about seeing your own blood.
Anyway, at first, I didn’t think zombies. I thought the old man just had a breakdown. I’ve seen how Tick’s dad has lost it a little bit over these last few months, and this… it was way more active, way more violent obviously, but the same core concept. Not knowing who you are anymore. The old man was running around, just trying to get his teeth into anyone he could see. Tick and I sprang out of our seats, and I ran to the bathroom and pounded on the door.
“Jonas? Jonas, get the fuck out of there!”
The voice in the bathroom sounded weak. “Dude, you know what I’m like. It’s happening at whatever pace it happens at, okay?”
“Jonas. Now!”
I glanced back at the other side of the diner. Tick had backed away from it even further, closer to my edge of the room. It was complete and utter chaos, but in the middle of it I could see the daughter, the one the old man had bit first, she was getting in on it too. And the other family member with half his neck chewed out. And a waiter. That’s when I knew. When you’ve seen as many movies as I have, you put it together pretty quick. People biting other people – the bites turn other people like them – that’s a zombie if I’ve ever heard one – an outbreak like that spreads quick – we need to leave. That was more or less my thought process. Like I said, it’s a bit of a blur.
I went to pound the door again, but it opened, just a crack, before I could. Through it, I could really only see a pair of green eyes and the brim of a maroon trapper hat.
“Copeland, please –”
“There’s fucking zombies in the diner, dude.”
“What’s that even mean, what are you talking about?” He opened the door a crack further. “What’s going on back there?” I looked back with him, in time to see the old man vault headfirst over the counter, and somebody started screaming on the other side.
“Jonas, we—” He slammed the door shut.
“Copeland?” Tick shouted. “We need to go!” I know, right? No shit, Sherlock.
I pounded on the door again. My palm was stinging from hitting it so much.
“I’m not going out there,” Jonas’s voice called from inside. “I’m safe in here, I can’t go out there.” I heard the door lock click. My first thought was, Jesus Christ Jonas, you didn’t even lock the door first? Seriously?
“And then what?” I yelled back at him. “You’re just gonna sit in there til you starve to death in a month?”
“It’ll be over before then,” he said. You could hear in his voice that he wanted that to be true. He’d had the same thought process I had, I’m sure of it. Just the conclusion wasn’t “we need to leave.” It was “this isn’t real. I’ll wake up soon.”
I turned back to the rest of the diner. Most of them were still on the far side, where the old man and his family were sitting a few minutes earlier. Between them and us was the door, these two plexiglass panes that swing outward. The daughter, she locked eyes with Tick, and Tick did what he does with movies. He looked away. Like an idiot. I started running toward him at the same time she did, and I grabbed one of the plates off the tables on the way. It wasn’t a great self-defense mechanism, or even a good one, but it was better than nothing. When I hit her with it, her face kind of split at the cheek, and she went down and slid along the floor. She bumped up against Tick’s foot, and I think that’s when he snapped out of it. He grabbed a chair.
When she slid, she left a mark, this long red swath on the linoleum, like the speed lines you’d put on drawings when you were a little kid to make something look like it was moving faster. Most of the blood went there, a little bit got on my jacket, on the wool collar part. You can see a little bit left over here. I don’t know if I was in shock or what, but in the moment, I just thought, I need to get the blood out. So, I grabbed one of the napkins and dipped it into my glass of water, and started wiping it off. It’s my dad’s old jacket, he gave it to me when I graduated high school. One of the best gifts he gave me, I think. Or at least the one I still use the most. I’m sure when I was little, I thought the Lego sets were the best gifts he gave me, you know?
“Copeland?” I looked back at the bathroom. Jonas was leaning outside of the door, eyes darting around the diner for me. He saw me, and his whole body sank with relief. When his eyes reached the rest of the diner, all of them bloody and writhing, I think it all clicked for him. He shoved open the door and started running for the parking lot. The rest of the diner caught the movement and started following him. It was like everything went into slow motion. You could see the window of opportunity closing.
“Tick!” I yelled – turns out I didn’t need to. He was seeing the same thing. He slammed into me right as the name came out of my mouth, grabbed me by the jacket, and yanked me toward the door. I remember dropping the glass of water I was using for my jacket. It shattered on the floor and splashed everywhere, and I remember feeling bad for the wait staff who was gonna have to clean it up later. That’s when it really hit me, I guess. Nobody was going to clean it up. It didn’t matter at all. I didn’t even need to apologize to anybody. That world was over.
I slipped through the doors last, and Tick slammed it shut behind me. Each of us propped our back against the doors to barricade them, and dug our feet in as the rest of the diner started to slam, one by one, into the door. Just… bang, bang, bang. I won’t lie, that was the scariest part of the whole thing. There was so much that could’ve gone wrong. One of our feet slips, one of them gets too much momentum, the glass isn’t strong enough, and this all ends very differently.
After I came to that realization about the glass of water in there, I really started to think clearly about the whole situation. Putting two and two together, you know? I’m really good at thinking of plans on the fly. I was a little bit of a chess club star back in high school, as if that was any sort of accomplishment at any other point in my life. The main thing I knew was that they needed to stay inside, or we were screwed. First thing’s first, we had to make it out of the parking lot. The plan came to me all at once, and I called out for Jonas. He turned to me from the curb where he was sitting, hands on his head, scrunching up the trapper hat. “I need you to run past those windows,” I told him. “Bang on ‘em if you have to. Keep moving, never stay at one window, but you gotta keep their attention.”
“Why?” His voice was quavering.
“Do it! We can’t hold the door against all of them, we need a distraction! Tick, when they leave to go after Jonas, go into my car and get my steering wheel lock. We can use that to hold the door.” He nodded.
Jonas can really fly when he wants to, he was on track in high school. And when there’s zombies chasing him, even with a plexiglass window in between them… Jesus. The banging against the door started to wane, and I grabbed both door handles and pressed in as hard as I could. Tick ran to my car and came back around a minute later with the wheel lock, and we slid it through both handles and clicked it shut. If the scariest part was having my back to the rest of the diner with them smacking into the door, the second scariest part was letting go of the door and hoping the lock would hold. Yeesh. I could literally see Tick’s heart pounding. I’m sure there was this feeling in his legs too, where your calves feel all warm and prickly, because you’re getting ready to hightail it out of there if you need to.
But it held. It was Tick’s idea to crouch behind the cars so they couldn’t see us anymore. I seconded – it was only a matter of time before they got through the plexiglass, and we could delay that without them trying to get at us.
Once we were all there, I asked, “You guys okay?” I know.
“Are you serious?” Jonas asked. His eyes were still darting around. “I mean… fuck. Oh my god, they… they’re just… oh my god.”
“Nobody’s bit, right?” I scanned them. Jonas never came near one, so I wasn’t very worried about him. The fabric of Tick’s green jacket was dashed red from using the chair, but he wasn’t bit. Jonas sort of fell against the car and sank into a sitting position on the ground.
“It’s alright, okay?” I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be alright. We need to get the hell out of here though.”
“Fuck that, we need to call the cops, or or or or an ambulance, or –”
“No,” Tick said, peering back at the diner. “That’s all done. That world’s over. We need to get out of town now.” Sometimes I swear Tick and I have a telepathic connection or something.
“Stop at a grocery store first,” I said. “One that has a gas station nearby. We’re gonna need a lot of gasoline, that shit’s gonna be like gold. But we’ll need something to put it in first, so it’d be better to stop at a Walmart. Tick, you go to get as much water as you can and any kind of big container we can fill with gas. Jonas and I can get food. Jonas, listen to me, we want cans and nonperishables. We’re the only ones who know right now, so we won’t need to be crafty about it, but we’ll need to be quick. Fill a shopping cart – two if you can manage it – dump it into the back of the car, then ditch the carts in the parking lot. We can sort it all later.”
Yeah, I’d thought about all this a little. Most of it you pick from movies you’ve seen, but some of it’s instinct and some of it’s the on-the-fly strategy part of my brain. A lot of making a good plan is knowing how much of an advantage you have, you know? If we’d found out about a zombie outbreak at the same time as everybody else did… I think we still would’ve been fine, but the plan would’ve been way different, a lot more out of the box. We would’ve hit up multiple convenience stores instead of a grocery store since everyone’s going to go to a grocery store. Or you can drive out to a farm and steal food from there. For water, you head to an REI or something and get one of those purifier straw things, because trying to get bottled water is going to be a bloodbath, and then stick close to a river when you travel because you don’t want still water. And you stay far away from gun stores until later on – that’s another place on everybody’s minds go to, and half the people there will be packing. Sorry, I could go on and on about this.
“What about the lines?” Jonas asked.
“The lines?”
“At the register?”
“Dude, we’re not paying.”
“We’ll get in trouble.”
“From who? We told you, that’s all done.”
“Okay… I… okay.” Confused wouldn’t even begin to describe the look on his face when we told him that. “We should… we should go to the Target on Orchard. We need to stop to get Carly first. She’s just at the house, it’s like a five-minute drive. I can drop you two off then head over, we can pack quickly – well, where are we even going… what do I even pack?”
Now, it’s – oh, yeah, sorry. Carly is Jonas’s fiancé. She and him live together, I think the two of them just put a down payment on the apartment or something. It might’ve been his parents, I’m not sure. He just proposed to her maybe two months ago, I remember because it was the same week I got dumped. It was a weird time. But Carly’s really nice, and from the outsider perspective it seems like she’s as good a match for Jonas as anyone. I really can’t blame Jonas for wanting save her. Still though, he wasn’t thinking about this like Tick or I was.
I don’t seek out zombie movies or anything, but I’ve seen a lot of movies, enough to where some zombie ones have snuck in there. I know you don’t have much time before it gets out of control. You only have minutes, maybe even seconds, to think about your life before, and how it’s over now, and how you only get to take so much with you without dying yourself.
There’s not much I need from my apartment – nothing I can’t pick up or scavenge for later, that is. I thought about people, like how Jonas was thinking about Carly. I don’t have a girlfriend. There’s my ex, but she can rot with the rest of them. My parents, but like…. I have my dad’s jacket, and all two good pictures of my family in my wallet. I think that’s enough for me. You know? I think in the long run I’d rather have those select memories of them than have them around with me. Plus, they’re all the way up in Racine, and going back for them would put the three of us in danger. We’re already losing time going after Carly. If my little brother were alive, I’d go back for him. Same with if my sister was still here – I think you guys would actually know about her, there would’ve been missing signs everywhere and my parents would’ve filed a report when she ran away. I – do we have to talk about all this? Alright, thanks.
I thought about who Tick might want to bring with, but he doesn’t really have anyone around here either. His mom, who would be useful if we all wanted to die, and his dad, who’s dying anyways, just more slowly and painfully than he would if zombies got him. Yeah, Tick’s life is pretty lonely.
But yeah, where was I? Jonas wanted to know where we were going after we left town. I mean… it’s crazy to me how little he knew about this kind of situation. Who doesn’t think about this stuff, even just a little? But Tick and I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted. You don’t really go anywhere, do you? You just get out. Out of town, somewhere isolated, because people always go feral quicker than zombies do. We had a head start, knowing about this before everyone else did, and we weren’t going to blow it trying to plan a road trip through the Midwest.
But Jonas insisted. “Where are we going? We need to know that.”
“My god, Jonas,” Tick hissed at him. “Out! Away! We’re going away. Do you get that? Fuck this town and everybody in it. If we stay, we die! If we go too slow, we die! Get your head out of your ass and listen to us!”
I don’t think Tick has as much hate in him as he lets on to Jonas and me. I think he just gets a kick out being blunt, especially when he’s both blunt and right. And he’s got a lot of anger bouncing around inside of him, anger at his parents, and at people like Dean, and at people he doesn’t even know. Sometimes it’s not even anger that’s directed at any one thing, but there’s just this little heatwave that starts in his chest and spreads out until his fingers get all tingly, where he feels like he has to ball his fists up and squeeze as hard as he can to scratch that itch. Anger’s different than hate, though. So, in spite of all that, I don’t think Tick’s a hateful person. I think he likes to think he is but really, he just gets upset sometimes like the rest of us.
Still, he could’ve been a little more sensitive to Jonas. I decided to change the subject.
“Whose car are we taking?”
“Mine’s got better gas mileage,” Jonas said.
Tick palmed his face. “Why do we need to worry about gas mileage?”
“No, no, he’s right,” I said. “We can get further on less gas.”
“Copeland’s is faster though,” Tick said. “We can get between places faster. Which we’re going to need to do, especially since you’re stopping off for Carly.”
“Well, with speed it just depends on who’s driving. Tick, if you drive Jonas’s car, we can make up for that and we shouldn’t have a problem.”
“Absolutely not,” Jonas said. “I’m not letting Tick drive my car, especially when we’re all panicking like this.”
“The fuck does it matter?”
“Jonas, you’ll be driving it to your place and out of town,” I said. “We just need Tick to get us to the grocery store, right? It’ll be fine, okay? It’ll be fine. Give him your keys.” Jonas grimaced and stuffed his hand into his pocket, and he handed his keys over. We stood up and ran over to the car, and as soon as the rest of the diner saw us again, they started slamming against the wall, clawing and screeching and…. God, it was awful to watch. The steering wheel lock held, but the doors were shaking worse than before. We picked up the pace, and Tick just went full leadfoot and got us out of the lot.
As soon as we got in the car, Jonas called 911. We told him not to, that it’d just make things worse, but I don’t think he could take it anymore. He just told the operator that there was a massive fight going on at Songbird that was still happening. Jonas isn’t stupid; he knew they wouldn’t believe him if he said what it really was.
Here’s an actual question for you guys: what song do you listen to when you’re certain the world is ending, or at the least the world as you know it is. We were driving like maniacs out there, hitting U-turns at thirty miles an hour, and it seemed like there should be a background song. But there’s no genre I can think of for that. And you have to be thinking, this might be the last song I ever hear like this. Do you go with your favorites? Seems fucked up to ruin your favorite songs by setting them as an apocalypse soundtrack. So do you pick one with lyrics that go along with it? “It’s The End of The World As We Know It?” You know the R.E.M. song? Feels a little trite, doesn’t it? “How Far We’ve Come,” just for the irony? “Highway to Hell,” maybe? Maybe. I don’t know.
We went with silence.
Tick was cutting between cars and Jonas was in the back seat, alternating between calling Carly and praying under his breath – I think he’s more religious than he tells us he is. I was looking out the window. There was this really surreal feeling that all the stuff we were passing, the shopping centers, road work signs, churches, the fire station, the public library… it was the last time we would ever pass it. On one corner, I saw this big cluster of picketing signs, this horde of people jostling with one another and cheering whenever one of the other cars honked. I didn’t see what exactly they were protesting; Tick was driving pretty fast, plus I didn’t particularly care. There was a time in my life where I would’ve craned my neck to see what new tragedy or corrupt politician they were taking a stand against. There was a time too where I probably would’ve been out there with them. I even got tear gassed at protests once or twice back in my early twenties, but I don’t remember any of those making a difference about anything. Maybe if things went differently, I would’ve been on the street corner that day instead of zooming past them to loot a grocery store.
I didn’t point out the protest to anybody in the car because Tick and Jonas hate those things – they both just think it’s a total waste of time. I glanced over at Tick to see his reaction to it, and his eyes were sweeping over the road, scanning for openings where the other cars were going to change lanes. Jonas was on his phone talking to Carly. Neither of them even wanted to look at those protestors. A part of me wanted to roll down my window and shout out at them to go home, and get out of the city before it’s too late. I still kind of wish I had. But you can’t do stuff like that. People will think you’re crazy, plus by the time I had thought of all this we were well past them.
After a little while of driving, Tick pulled into the Target parking lot at something like Mach 2, and we all rushed out of the car. The two of us ran into the store, and Jonas slid into the driver’s seat. I remember looking back at him, in case the plexiglass wasn’t as strong as we’d hoped and things went south and I never saw him again. The earflap on the trapper hat hid his face though. He buckled his seatbelt and drove off.
As soon as we were in the grocery store, I looked at Tick, and I could just about read his mind. The stern eyes and the flattened eyebrows – I’m pretty good at reading people, I like to think, and they told me what he was going to say before he needed to say it. Jonas wasn’t going to make it back. I didn’t want to believe it, but Tick was right. Because Jonas still thought the world was going to go back to normal, he was already doomed. If we stayed with him, so were we. There was too much he wasn’t going to be able to leave behind. Best case scenario, he comes back with the car crammed with non-necessities. Worst case scenario, they take too long packing, and the outbreak pulls the city underwater before he and Carly have a chance to get out.
I nodded to Tick. He nodded back. “You good?” he asked.
“Yeah. Let’s get going.” We split up.
That sort of ethereal feeling I mentioned earlier, about driving through the city and seeing all those places for the last time? Dial it up to eleven and that’s what it felt like in the grocery store, racing around with a cart with everyone looking at you as you sweep canned vegetables off the shelves. I know they were thinking that I’m crazy. But I don’t have time to think about what they think of me. All that’s going through my brain is, most of these people won’t be alive tomorrow. The college-aged couple in the chip aisle. The red-vested employee on his phone eyeing me up. The old woman and her grandson, shopping for toys.
It’s hard to explain why, but there are certain people that just look like they’ll probably be okay. That gave me a little bit of comfort, actually, even if there weren’t very many of them. It’s not always who you’d expect, either. The broad-shouldered camo-jacket guy in the soup aisle? I give him three days. The shorter of the couple in the chip aisle – I remember thinking she’d probably be fine, if she can get over her girlfriend not making it. That employee? No way. The old woman and the little boy? It broke my fucking heart, but no. A part of me wanted to tell those two what was going to happen, or even take them with us. But we’d lose the advantage we had. Maybe I was wrong for thinking that way, though. I don’t know that it’s necessarily one of those zero-sum type games. But I did know that I can’t look out for them if I’m dead myself.
Eventually my cart was full, and I ran out the door without paying. I’m sure somebody called the police, but I remember thinking, no way they show, they’re all gonna be responding to Jonas’s call at Songbird. Seems funny now. I found Tick outside by following the noise from the car alarm – he’d smashed the driver side window in and unlocked the trunk from there. When he saw me, he just yelled, “I waited for Jonas, I don’t know where he is! Just start packing!”
While he got to work on figuring out how to start the car – I’m pretty sure he googled how to hotwire it, actually – I was just chucking things into the back. I heard police sirens coming closer, but I figured it was just a lucky few from the ones who’d responded at Songbird, who’d made it out of the chaos and were here for a follow-up round of looting.
And, well – you guys know the rest.
Honestly, I didn’t even realize they were here for Tick and I for way too long. The car pulled up right behind us, and I was still just throwing boxes of Wheat-thins into this random person’s car. It literally wasn’t until I turned around and one of them had his gun at me – and even then, I thought he was trying to take the food from us. I’ve seen movies, I know that the parking lots of grocery stores in the apocalypse are always a shitshow. Seriously. Watch anything end-times-related, and that’ll be where the main characters’ good luck turns.
I froze, of course. I mean, what else was I going to do? Tick came up from the front of the car, and I’m sure he basically had a heart attack, wondering if it was really coming to an end like this. I know he thinks that whole part – the whole “don’t move, get your hands up” part – it was the third scariest moment of the whole thing.
You have to remember, at this point, Tick and I still thought the world was ending. We thought we were basically being mugged by police officers, and that we were gonna be left like sitting ducks when the rest of the diner, and everybody else they’d gotten, come rampaging through the streets. When they started reading us our Miranda rights, we kind of understood that we had to be missing something pretty important.
I suppose we got lucky that the officers that responded at Songbird did so well. Oh, don’t be humble about it – the wheel lock on the door just helped keep them in, you guys did the actual work against them. You’re really going to compare what you all did to me hitting one with a plate? Not even like a frying pan or something – a plate! I guess I do appreciate it that you guys have been so understanding of what we did – way more than I would’ve thought you’d be, if I’m being honest. Then again, I guess you saw the same things I did.
Yeah, I wish they’d known earlier, though, the two that showed up at Target. They got pretty rough with us – more than they probably needed to, but it’s nothing I wasn’t expecting. That’s just how these things go. Is it sad I think that? Never mind. It is what it is. Just a little frustrating when you’re trying to explain why you did what you did. Plus, they got a little sarcastic. A lot sarcastic. I think they thought we were just two dipshits who wanted to steal, what, a hundred bucks worth of canned green beans? In broad daylight? I mean, I probably would’ve gotten snarky too. That’s Darwin Award stupid.
They kept it up even after Jonas pulled in and tried to talk with them. I think they were confused that somebody was backing us up, but they still had no reason to believe we were telling the truth until you all radioed in from the diner. After that they drove us back to the station and everything. They were a lot nicer afterwards, I’ll say that.
What’s that? Oh yeah, I was actually kind of surprised to see Jonas pull up, even if it was with the car packed with things we’d never need, ever, for dealing with zombies. I couldn’t see much since I was inside the patrol car, but I saw some envelopes in the back. Yeah, seriously. Envelopes. Like for sending cards and shit. I was actually going to point it out to Tick while we were back there. He didn’t seem in the mood for it though. He was pretty scared up until we found out that the rest of the diner had been taken care of, and after that… well, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. On the drive to station, I saw him looking back at all those places we’d passed before. I think I saw tears in the corners of his eyes. The shopping centers, the churches, the crowd on the corner still protesting whatever’s still happening… at first, I was thinking, maybe happy tears – they should be, at least. All these people are still alive. We don’t have to worry about zombies chasing us, or about getting out of the city before society breaks down. But I don’t think they were happy. I think I almost understand, but not enough to explain. The best I can do is, he felt like he’d been woken up from a good dream.
Was that thorough enough? Too thorough, probably! Sorry about that, I’m not sure how much you needed there, but I tried to give as much as I could. Even though we’re not under arrest or anything, I still feel like I should explain where our heads were at. But yeah. I’m glad I could help. Is that all? Sounds good.
Hey, do you know what time it is by the way? Eleven? Oh, goddammit. We’re late. Dammit. Do you – any chance you could call the site we work at and see if you can talk to Dean, before the three of us head over there? If you don’t, this is gonna be what he fires me over, I’m sure of it. Yeah, see, I know he’ll see it on the news later, but it won’t matter to him. I can picture it now, that smug look of pride that’s gonna be on his face, that stupid little toothy gnash of a grin he’ll have. I don’t want to see it. I don’t think I can stomach him winning.