Early Thaw

  Early Thaw

  By Curt McDermott

  ©2010 Curt McDermott

  All rights reserved.

  Slick eyeballs of mud exploded around Leslie Ewoldt as he lay sinking in liquefied Yellowstone clay. The tendinous fingers of his right hand encircled a small walkie-talkie; the fingers of his left were 2.3 miles north and moving steadily away. Something about the sickly February sun made his body seem more withered, more birdlike, as if the skeletal frame that filled his snow pants and ski jacket was composed mostly of air. Though his face remained somewhat intact, a trickle of blood oozed from the tangle of fiber and tissue that might euphemistically be called his neck, the vivid red bleeding to the brown of the mud.

  Like most people, Leslie was dead. And like most, that fact didn’t keep him from moving, as his feet now began to do.

  ***

  Val warmed her feet in the basin, the sulphuric heat of the water rising in indolent coils of steam. Though the thermal pools usually bubbled around 240 degrees, this particular batch had cooled just enough to be tolerable. Sprawled out on the chair in a T-shirt, curling and straightening her toes in the enveloping heat, she laughed at how luxurious her life had become—little parts of it, anyway.

  On the stove, the pot of creamed corn began gurgling. Most animals had gotten smarter in the months since The Shit Hit the Fan—the term she and Leslie used to refer to the curious moment when dead folks started shuffling around and snacking on people— so red meat and poultry had grown a little scarce. Fish were still stupid as hell, though, which meant that meals had begun to = canned vegetable of the day + some kind of trout. Smelly ghosts of fishes past still clung to the cabin’s wooden panels with oily fortitude.

  Sliding her feet reluctantly from the water, Val tried to remember exactly what had been going through her mind as she dragged cases of creamed corn into her cart at the visitor’s center. Sure, the (former) store manager had just attempted to sample the meat of her left arm, but fucking creamed corn? No level of panic could justify such a lapse in judgment. Sniffing now at the sicky-sweet smell of sugared vegetable product, she tried to imagine the first idiot who thought it a good idea to squash corn into wet paste. She wanted to punch him.

  And though she didn’t really mean to, she thought of Leslie’s face that day.

  Crumpled on the floor, his stringy body calcified in fear, he’d looked like the tiny corpses of spiders she swept from the cabin’s windowpanes. He’d gaped, a bundle of spindly, desiccated terror, as she plunged a hot-pink marshmallow-roasting fork through the manager’s eye. When it was over, when the corpse slumped to the linoleum and shook out the last bits of whatever had animated it, Leslie’d let a small sound escape his throat that— it made her sad and a little sick to remember it— was not unlike the mewling of a puppy.

  It was the first time she truly reflected on her place in the new order. She could no longer be a 24-year-old Bozeman grad who really, you know, found herself in nature— those girls had all died pretty quickly when TSHtF. Instead, she knew that her survival would be her responsibility alone. Little Leslie was less man than child.

  Her transformation into modern-day Amazon began when the first turd splattered, way back in September. She remembered how fraudulent she’d felt wearing the ranger hat, how the family from Nebraska actually thought the idiot bread loaf on her head meant she’d have an explanation for why grandma was gnashing away in their backseat. All patient smiles and polite nods, she’d endured the fat dad’s barrage of saliva-soaked questions like a minimum-wage saint. But when a little girl in an I ♥ Moose shirt ripped a chunk of calf muscle from her mom’s leg in front of the ICE CREAM GEYSER, something very important for normal mental operation sputtered and smoked in Val’s mind, and she found herself repeating i don’t fucking know with increasing volume and rapidity until the man’s sunburned face boiled to an even deeper shade of red. Exasperated, she’d run to the locker room then, stripped off the outfit of authority she’d been only too happy to don several months before, and began looking for something sharp.

  The metallic stink of burning fructose brought her back to the present. She took the bubbling pot off the wood stove, set it down on the pine countertop. The surface was so knotted and gouged, she knew the resulting scorch mark would only add to its “rusticity”— her favorite euphemism for the general Spartan shittiness of the cabin’s interior.

  “Wanna let it burn, wanna wanna let it burn,” she sang to herself, and involuntarily wondered if anyone else on the entire planet might be humming the same song.

  “Not fucking likely,” she answered, slapping a lid on the pot of mush.

  She lifted her head to the kitchen window. By any account, the view that met her was one of bitter beauty. The cabin had been built at the confluence of two backcountry trails, on the leeward side of a foothill. Where she stood, Val could see six or seven miles to the southeast, the land neatly crushed and parted by mountains of ice long since melted. Below, the smooth curve of the hill flattened to a valley slashed through with streams and pockmarked with pools the color of dandelions, of summer skies. Even as the ground was covered now in a few feet of snow, that water burned its way to the surface. Smoky mist hung in the air, a bizarre reproduction of the gloomy landscapes she’d grown tired of reading about in her Brit. Lit. class— here was an American moor.

  In fact, the water was the only thing that made their life in the cabin possible. The hot springs that flowed past powered an electric turbine and—thanks to a cheapo geothermal system installed years ago by Uncle Sam— kept the cabin’s only room at a balmy 62 degrees. The stream supplied them with potable water for drinking, though the mess of steaming liquid corn reminded Val of the “adjustment period” she and Leslie had endured after their first sips…the water carried off some of their waste, too. A deep trench they’d dug near the foundation even diverted and cooled enough water for bathing; they could control water levels in the culvert by means of a gate system they’d created from sheared-off car doors. The resulting runoff flowed into a pool a little over three feet deep.

  Because safety demanded close proximity to the cabin, though, baths had always been a little weird. Their first month bunking together, she’d caught Leslie watching her undress for one, the yellow circle of his eye barely visible in the window corner. She’d never really thought of herself as an object of desire—she was athletic, sure, but her legs always seemed a little too thick to be called attractive, her shoulders too “butchy”— so her initial freak out quickly mellowed to ambivalence, even something that felt like pride. Besides, impotent old creeper that he might be, Les was also lonely. Most girls nowadays carried a particularly nasty STD, after all.

  Not that she let him off easy. A skinny stick of a man in his forties—she had enough creepers to worry about outside the cabin. She instituted the curtain rule the next day, after ripping him several new ones at regular intervals throughout the night. It was the first time she felt much of anything toward Leslie except pity, and strangely, her rage made him seem a tad more masculine. He listened to every word and apologized for his sins with the fervor of a religious convert, even promising to build a separate cabin for himself in the spring.

  She told him it wasn’t necessary. Besides, she doubted if he knew how to hold a hammer.

  The grisly reality of their new lives, though, overshadowed any initial awkwardness they felt around each other. In those first few weeks, each hike from the cabin felt like a funhouse funeral march. Garish, fanny-packed corpses gnashed as the two ran past; seat-belted families groaned and slapped car windows with rotting hands. Dreadlocked hikers dragging bloody backpacks. Gore-spattered windbreakers, comfortable shoes adorning severed feet. A parade of death all the more grotesque because its members were so relaxed, so carefree, before they joined it.

  One time, a half-eaten bison calf scraped toward them on two gnawed limbs, victim, most likely, of a poorly-timed birth. Somehow, its flayed ribs and lolling jaw had been harder to witness than any human corpse—walking or still.

  That had been a few days after they’d met, though, when they were still sensitive to such things. Now, sliding a couple commemorative Yellowstone collectors’ plates from the cupboard above the sink—What the hell was a snow-plane mobile?— Val thought about the first time she saw Leslie, how he’d almost crashed his 80-something Caprice swerving around the out-of-control tour bus full of septuagenarians. She was running down the steps of the trading store with a pack full of looted peanut butter cups and Gatorade when he’d skidded to a stop in front of her.

  His window was down, but the cool breeze hadn’t helped much with his dripping forehead. Must’ve done some Sunday driving, Val thought, remembering how quickly Grant Village had become a smoldering heap of bodies and metal.

  He nodded, she nodded, and a thousand questions— Are you fucked up? Can you believe this? Is it as bad as it feels?— were asked and answered in their silent stares. Neither seemed to be able to offer comfort beyond the simple fact of physical presence. Val sighed loudly, backpack sagging in her hands.

  The sound of Little Florida’s tires leaving pavement snapped their attention back to the road. 50 yards away, the geriatric tourists had gotten a close-up view of Yellowstone’s famous lodgepole pines as their bus caught a corner on one. The massive vehicle teetered for a few long seconds, then crashed onto one side, smashing most of the windows on the opposite.

  In those early days, Val’s sense of propriety was still checking in occasionally, peanut butter cups excluded. “Oh my God,” she gasped, eye
s riveted to the scene. “Those poor people.”

  That’s when the first wave of blood-splattered grandparents clawed themselves from the wreckage. Moaning, bits of “safety” glass gouging their faces and hands, they began to hobble toward Val and Leslie on broken limbs. In her head, Val bid a final, hasty adieu to normal.

  “Fuck those people!” she screamed. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  She ran around the rear of the car and tugged on the passenger handle.

  “Wait,” yelled Leslie, his harried voice muffled by the window. “I have to unlock it!”

  His nervous little fingers flashed over the console and Val wrenched the handle upward. Nothing happened.

  “Hold on— you can’t pull on it ‘til I click the button!”

  Val chanced a peek over her shoulder. The more spritely-looking grayhairs had already covered a third of the distance. Rheumatoid arthritis stopped bugging you after death, apparently.

  Leslie was fumbling with the buttons again. Something big and metally hit something else big and metally; she figured this was the sound of car security in the ‘80’s and gave the handle another try.

  “No, it’s locked now— relocked. Don’t pull too soon…it’ll stick!”

  “Whenever you’re ready, guy!” She could already hear Hush Puppies and Keds sliding across the pavement behind her.

  “Leslie! Les! My name’s Les.”

  “Wha? I don’t… just get the fucking door open! Leslie!”

  Metal struck metal again, and this time she made herself count slowly to three before jerking the handle. A hot gush of coffee and artificial pine scent shot up her nostrils as the oversized door swung open. She threw her butt into the upholstery just in time to miss the lead granny’s left hook—and, with most of her hand missing like that, it really was kind of a hook. A quick kick to the old lady’s midriff bulge—something came loose in there, she was sure— bought Val enough time to slam the door shut.

  In her panic to get inside, she’d been blocking Leslie’s view of Mrs. Senior Shitizen. When the permed and bifocaled little angel began gumming her bloody teeth against the window, he screeched like his ass had ignited; his little broomstick body appeared to work on its own as it pulled the shifter into D and stood on the gas. Pearls twirling, Grandma spun and smashed into the rear panel, finding new use, short seconds later, as a squishy floormat for her many travel pals. Leslie, pumped full of adrenaline and screaming in mind-fried little gasps, watched the whole wet and nasty unfold in the rearview mirror.

  Val thought it prudent to remind him that he was, in fact, still piloting thousands of pounds of car. And veering toward a big metal dead-people hive, no less.

  “Hey! HEY! Pay attention!” she snapped, slugging him in the arm. “That can’t be the first one of those you’ve seen.”

  Leslie’s hands were shaking on the wheel; in his epinephrine-fueled freak-out, he was having a little trouble controlling timbre. “NeverthatCLOSE! Shewas REALLY…they…were…all…REALLYCLOSE!”

  “Uh, yeah. Maybe next time you can be a little quicker on the draw, Ace?”

  The car arced left through the parking lot, skimming past the horde and toward the exit. Val watched each pair of lifeless eyes follow the Caprice as it lumbered through a maze of crashed cars and debris.

  Beyond the lot, the road was relatively clear. Within a few minutes, the low, uninterrupted droning of the engine calmed her, and she let herself sneak a few glances at her new acquaintance. Sad sack. Probably mid-40’s. His clothes pegged him as a dweeb: high-water khakis; huge, round glasses; Garfield tie. His short-sleeve button-down was monogrammed on the arm: Denver Janitorial Supply. Salesman.

  “So, hi,” he stammered, his eyes now all but bolted to the road. She shot him a fakey smile she wasn’t even sure he noticed.

  She was struck by how utterly uncomfortable he looked. Granted, God had smashed the crazy-shit piñata, but something told her this was as calm as Leslie got. His left foot drummed arrythmically against the floor mat. Allergies or force of habit kept him sniffing every few seconds, dry little inhalations that collapsed his dagger of a nose. Hands welded to the wheel at ten and two, he made long, exaggerated blinks to keep beads of sweat from his eyes.

  A few days before, she would have avoided this guy like a used bathing suit. Now, though, even in his glorious weirdness, he reminded her of how the world was supposed to work.

  “Thanks for not taking off back there. You don’t even know me.”

  “No problem. Us healthy people have to stick together, right?” Leslie forced a smile onto his face, though it promptly melted to a grimace as the old Chevy rounded a tight curve. “Whoopsie— looks like it’s gonna get a little bumpy.” A fresh ripple of nervousness tightened his fingers around the wheel.

  ‘Whoopsie’?, she thought.

  Her body slumped against the polyester fur of the door panel as her strange new pal aimed the Caprice at a narrow space between two SUVs and quietly reminded her to “hold on.” One of the vehicles had assholed a sedan so badly it was difficult to tell the two cars apart; the owner of the other— a Subaru wagon or something— had apparently tried to offroad before getting his front tires stuck in the ditch. She could tell from hundreds of feet away that the resulting gap wasn’t quite Caprice-sized— a thought she confirmed as they scraped against the Sedan Utility Vehicle, smashing the Chevy’s passenger-side headlights and ripping her mirror from the frame. A minute passed before she could unpucker several important orifices.

  “Wow. I’m sorry, but I really hate this fucking giant car.”

  “That’s okay,” peeped Leslie, still shaking. He pointed a thumb at the backseat. “I don’t plan on using it much longer.”

  Val craned her head. Behind her in piles that eclipsed the rear window were tins of cashews, cheap aluminum pans, bags and bags of jerky, and a couple water jugs.

  “Stocking up, huh? Me too. Not a bad idea, considering.” She unwrapped a peanut butter cup and stared out the window. Though pines boxed them in on either side, curling plumes of smoke were visible beyond the treetops. Val counted nine before she realized the game wasn’t exactly comforting.

  Leslie spoke in a whisper. “I already tried the north entrance— couldn’t even make it past Upper Falls. Road’s completely blocked with cars. Some of ‘em were on fire, and every person I saw had the…was, you know… mumbling.”

  Ambushed by the understatement, Val snorted incredulously into her chocolate. “By ‘mumbling,’ do you mean trying to kill and eat anything that wasn’t already dead?”

  Leslie nodded.