Bad Day For A Road Trip

  BAD DAY FOR A ROAD TRIP

  Book Two of the Bad Day series

  Jason Offutt

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2018 by Jason Offutt

  Part One: The Good Lands

  July 28: Muskogee, Oklahoma

  Chapter 1

  Leaf blades raked Matty’s face as he ran, his white polo stained by red dirt and sweat in the July heat. Tiny cuts from the sharp dry corn leaves covered his exposed skin, but he didn’t have time to notice. The monsters were back there, somewhere.

  Matt Senior’s RV, a sleek gray toy with a fully-stocked bar, was far behind, its gas tank as dry as the dehydrated brown stalks in this field. Who the fuck plants corn in Oklahoma? ran through Matty’s head as he pounded over the dry dirt between the rows, his once ash gray Chuck Taylors the color of rust. He hadn’t wanted to go into the corn. Hell, he didn’t want to get off the highway, but Matty had pointed the dead RV toward a tall sawtooth oak tree and crawled it underneath the shade before the vehicle’s momentum died like its engine. According to the vehicle’s GPS, he was still three miles from Muskogee. Three miles from a gas station that probably didn’t work anymore. Three miles from the possibility of people.

  “What the hell, man?” he’d said, his words loud in an afternoon devoid of sound.

  When the engine coughed at the sudden lack of fuel, Matty resigned himself to the reality that he was only temporarily screwed. Three miles wasn’t far to walk for gas. The walk back to Senior’s RV might be a little less fun, but doable. Before he set off, Matty just wanted to climb on the roof of his dad’s RV and have a couple of beers in the shade while he watched for something cool to happen, but something cool didn’t happen. Something uncool happened. Totally fucking uncool. He was only half-way into his second can of Elk Valley Pale Ale when the cornfield on the south side of the rural highway began to move.

  What the hell?

  The day was hot and dead; not a hint of breeze to cool him or his sweaty beer and sure as hell not enough wind to whip through a cornfield like that. He lowered the yellow and black can into his lap and squinted through the bright Oklahoma day into the corn to the south of the road. As far as he could see, the field swayed, not like it was caught by a wind that didn’t have the decency to cool Matty, but like waves at the beach in Galveston. Not that he’d seen the beach with his parents. Oh, no. Senior “worked too damn hard” and was too fucking cheap for a family vacation. Matty went for spring break, blowing his scholarship money. He’d been drunk, but he remembered the waves; the waves moved just like the cornfield.

  Then he saw the birds.

  A line of black grew over the far reaches of the field, shifting within itself, flowing like it was alive. The beer slipped out of his hand and landed on the roof with a thunk. The can tipped onto its side, spilling craft beer over his legs. Matty didn’t notice the wet creeping into his khakis because he now knew what was coming toward him through the field.

  Monsters had found him.

  “Shit,” he whispered and climbed down the ladder on the back door of Senior’s RV. He ran across the road and disappeared into the cornfield on the opposite side of the road, hoping it wasn’t filled with monsters, too.

  ***

  It wasn’t. At least not yet. Matty pulled up after about twenty yards, a stitch stabbing his side, breath coming in painful gasps. It had been four years since he’d last run cross country for the Gore, Oklahoma, High School Pirates, three of those years spent at Cameron University in Lawton, throwing back beers at the Railhead Saloon with his buddies. The last year he spent at home on academic suspension, frequently unemployed, a disappointment.

  Matty pulled an arm across his face, trying and failing to wipe sweat out of his eyes. The damn sun didn’t help; the yellow ball poured heat over Matty, making the beer he’d just sucked down seem to boil in his stomach. He stood slowly, feeling out the pain; after too long, his breath came more easily. Okay, Matty. You’re okay. Just keep moving. Keep moving.

  He stood silently for a moment, just a moment. The crunch of more feet than he could count beat out a cadence in the afternoon. It was soft now, like the alien creaking of far-off cicadas, but he knew if he stood there any longer it would get louder – much louder. Matty turned and looked the way he’d come, the top of the RV still visible above the corn.

  What? “That’s all? That’s as far as–” His voice caught in his throat – the birds had come back into view, a dark cloud covering the southern sky. “No,” Matty moaned, turned and broke into a jog.

  ***

  The end of the world happened slowly. So slowly Matty didn’t know anything was wrong at first. His no-bullshit Middle Eastern boss Ahmud had just fired him from the Kum & Go convenience store, his on-again-off-again stopped returning his texts – again – and his father was an asshole. Perfectly normal. So, when Matt Sr. pulled an enormous RV into the driveway of their Gore home, he wasn’t surprised. Everything was as it always was.

  “This here is finer than the Starship Enterprise,” Matt Sr. said when he and Mary climbed out of the thirty-seven-foot, eleven-inch-long recreational vehicle when they drove it home from the dealership; the dealer sticker still in the front passenger window. Matty waited for them on the front steps drinking a Dr Pepper mixed with Southern Comfort. Sure, that was Mom’s drink, but Senior’s single malt Laphroaig Scotch gave Matt a stomachache. Senior gave Matt a stomachache, too.

  “Want to take it out for a spin, son?” Senior asked, the smile on his face wide as the ass end of that RV. “Well tough shit.” He leaned toward Mary and squeezed her left butt cheek. “You can come in and take a look some time, but don’t open that door if there’s a necktie on the knob. It’ll be occ-u-poddo.”

  Mary slapped her husband’s hand away, the frown on her face nearly audible. “Don’t be an asshole in front of Junior,” she said, the words flat, emotionless. Her eyes moved to meet her son’s, her face sad. “This stupid thing cost more than our first house,” she told Matty, pulling a soft pack of Pall Mall’s from her purse and tapping one out. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to put up with your father being stupid for a while.”

  She stepped away from Senior and walked passed Matty to the front door, lighting the cigarette as she pulled open the screen. Matty stood and took a drink, the sweetness almost overwhelming. “Don’t worry, Dad,” he said through a piece of mostly-melted ice. “I won’t mess with the Fritomobile. I’m too busy with my career.”

  Senior had been a manager at the Frito Lay plant as long as Matty could remember, overseeing the production of crunchy fried corn snack sodium bombs. The Berning house was never short on Chili Cheese Fritos, no-siree. Frito-Lay had given the Berning’s a nice house, nice cars and Matty an exciting education in accounting for three years before he flunked his way home to face the fact he’d never be good enough for his father.

  Matty downed what little was left in his cup and followed his mother inside where he knew she’d have already poured herself a drink and turned on the living room TV to watch whatever she’d TiVo’d. “The Great British Baking Show,” or some shit that goes well with a plastic convenience store cup full of booze and a bowl of chocolate chips.

  “I earned this, goddamnit,” Senior shouted as Matty disappeared into the house.

  Trouble is, Matty knew his father was right. It wasn’t until everybody around them started to die that he realized it wasn’t his problem.

  ***

  A dog lay in a bald patch in the cornfield, the tall stalks giving way to stunted ones with shriveled leaves, like the plants had just given up. Matty jogged into the dusty spot and froze, the monsters behind him momentarily forgotten. He’d never owned a dog; Senior wouldn’t allow it. ‘They bri
ng fleas in the house and piss on the furniture,’ he’d told a fourteen-year-old Matty, who stood in the yard holding a stray black Labrador puppy he’d found in a vacant lot by the Smith house. ‘Some things just are. And our just are is no fucking pets.’ Senior walked his son back to the lot and they left the dog there. Matty hadn’t thought about it in years. The dog was probably dead, like everything else.

  Matty stepped closer to the dog in the corn, but it didn’t move. It was a mongrel, maybe with some shepherd in it, but Matty couldn’t really tell. He stared at the mutt, the poor creature’s stomach bloated like it was pregnant, or like those starving children in a late-night TV commercial.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said, tensing to push his muscles back into action when the dog’s chest quivered, then fell still again. Matty didn’t move; his breath caught in his throat.

  Alive?

  “Hey,” he said a little more loudly. “Are you still with me, buddy?” Matty hadn’t seen anything decent alive since his parents died; no deer, no armadillos, no people. Only those fucking black birds that seemed to be everywhere now. Scavengers in a dying world.

  The dog didn’t move again. Matty squatted and stared at the beast, its black and white fur matted and dotted with fat, white ticks and cockleburs. The monsters in the corn behind him were momentarily forgotten; he hadn’t realized how much he needed something to talk to. Come on, little guy, he thought, his brain, his emotions dredging the puppy from the vacant lot across his mind. He blinked, trying to hold back tears.

  “Are you—” he started, but the words froze. The dog’s stomach shook, violently this time. Matty rose to his feet and took a wobbly step backward.

  The dog’s abdomen swelled further and a squeak split the air, like air escaping from an overfilled balloon. What the hell? The dog’s chest grew visibly round, then exploded sending jagged, shattered ribs through the skin. A stem, thick as the neck of a beer bottle, pushed itself into the air from the cavity, a bulb attached to the end. The stalk stood tall and straight, streaked with the dog’s blood, then the bulb began to turn like it knew Matty was there.

  “Oh my god,” spilled from his lips. It was just like the thing in his mother.

  Matthew Berning Jr. bolted from the bald patch and vanished back into the corn.

  ***

  It all happened the day Senior came home from the American Legion Hall with a runny nose, the RV two weeks old; Senior and Mary’s first trip to San Antonio a month away. “Just a cold, Junior,” he said, pouring a scotch – like he hadn’t already had enough at the Legion Hall. “Takes more than a cold to knock Matthew Berning off his feet.”

  It did. Senior didn’t have a cold. Blood began to leak from his nose during dinner, dripping onto his plate of pot roast, potatoes and carrots. By 8 p.m., he was in bed. Mary Berning walked from the bedroom, a Southern Comfort and Dr Pepper in her hand, a pill bottle in the other. “He’ll be okay, Matty,” she said, her voice weak, strained. “I gave him some aspirin.”

  Aspirin. Matty watched the news; he knew about the Piper, the deadly illness conspiracy theorists claimed was caused by the new anti-depressant Ophiocordon. The pharmaceutical gurus said that was bullshit, but whatever it was, aspirin sure as fuck wouldn’t help.

  The next morning, his parents didn’t wake up.

  Matty sat his empty bowl in the kitchen sink, a few stray milky corn flakes stuck to the side and walked to their bedroom.

  “Mom?” Matty said through the flimsy press-board door. No answer. No sound of movement. No coughing. Nothing. “Dad?”

  Matty pressed his ear against the smooth surface and closed his eyes, concentrating on any sound. Any sound at all. Then he heard it. A soft whine, like when he tried to let a fart out slowly.

  “Dad?” he said again. The noise had stopped.

  Come on, Matty. Something’s wrong. Man up and look in there. What’s the worst you could see? Mom and Dad doing it? He looked, there wasn’t a tie hanging from the doorknob.

  He swallowed and twisted the knob. The mechanism clicked and the bolt slid free of the door fame. Matty took a deep breath and let it out slowly before pushing the door open into his parents’ room.

  Matty didn’t understand what his eyes saw, not at first. Senior stood on Mary’s side of the bed, his white wife-beater shirt stained red with blood. That nosebleed is terrible, ran through Matty’s head before he saw the thing – the thing that stood from Mary’s chest like the stalk of an enormous mushroom. He’d seen it before, on television – the fungus. The Ophiocordon fungus. Oh, my god. This is it. The Piper. My parents have the fucking Piper.

  The wonder drug turned hell on earth.

  “Shit,” Matty shouted and Senior’s eyes turned on him, the baby blues wild and bloodshot. A strip of flesh hung from Senior’s dripping red lips. It took Matty a few seconds to realize that skin had once been part of his mother’s face.

  Senior growled like an animal and lunged across the bed toward him. Matty slammed the door and ran toward the kitchen.

  ***

  The corn opened suddenly and a gravel road cut across Matty’s path in an L-shape. The dusty lane to his left probably went to the highway; the one ahead had to go to Muskogee. It just had to. He turned and looked behind him for a second, only a second. The sky had grown darker with what he was certain were those wretched crows, but they weren’t close enough for him to make sure, at least not yet. The monsters were still there, although he couldn’t tell how far they were behind him, or how close. He was sure he could outdistance them; he was alive, after all. It was just, well, the fucking birds that bothered him. Crows were scavengers. Why are there so many crows?

  Matty turned from the corn and something red caught his eye – the back end of a pickup that sat off the road at the corner of the L where two fields met. It was a red Ford F-250 pickup about thirty yards away facing west, its back windshield clouded by red dust. Matty hated to leave Senior’s RV behind – it’s a bus, it’s a house, it’s a bar, it’s a bathroom, it’s everything at once – but here was another means of transportation away from the crows and away from the hungry, once-human creatures that followed them. He briefly considered getting in the truck and driving back to get the RV, but the thought of driving the truck toward the creatures in the corn, creatures like Senior had become, sounded crazy.

  Matty walked toward the truck. It could have been abandoned there a month, or a week, or two days. He couldn’t tell. The truck hadn’t stopped because of a flat tire; all four looked like they’d just come off a dusty rack. A rusty red gas can sat in a corner of the bed. Matty wrapped his fist around the handle and lifted it, but it didn’t budge easily. The gas can was full. That didn’t leave many options: the driver abandoned his truck, the driver was pulled out of his truck, or the driver was still inside, dead or—

  “No,” he whispered, then squinted into the back window of the cab. “No, man. Give me a fucking break.”

  Matty hadn’t been able to see through the caked-on dust when he first broke onto the dirt road, but he was closer now; someone sat in the truck. A man in a ball cap was in the driver’s seat; he didn’t move. He’s dead, Matty thought, breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth. Dead. I can do this. I can handle dead-dead. I’ll just open the door, pull the body out and drive off. I’ll even push in his 8-track of George Jones or some shit and listen to “He Stopped Loving Her Today” all the way to Muskogee. He took another deep breath and let it out. Everything’s cool.

  A black shape dropped out of the sky, landed on the truck cab and cawed. Matty jumped. A crow. A black, greasy crow perched on the roof over the door, its dead, glassy eyes glared at him.

  “Fuck off,” Matty said, his voice wavering more than he’d like. He glanced to the south; the flock – no, the murder – of crows was closer. Much closer.

  I can do this. He stepped toward the driver-side door and grabbed the handle. The crow followed his every movement, its soulless eyes never leaving him. Oh, boy.

  Matty b
roke his eyes from the crow’s gaze and looked through the dusty window into the cab of the truck. Farmer Joe turned his head toward him and threw himself at the window. The poor man’s face slammed against the glass, the window streaked with bloody saliva. A scream burst from Matty and he lurched back, almost tumbling over his own feet. Farmer Joe began to beat the glass with his dead, blue-veined hands. The crow cawed just above Matty’s head, the sudden shock dropped him backward into the dusty gravel. The winged bastard landed to the road and hopped closer, its black, lifeless eyes looked like death.

  “This isn’t fucking fair,” Matty screamed before he pushed himself to his feet and ran down the road.

  ***

  The fire had just started to show as Matty sat on the roof of Senior’s Moe-Bile Ree-Tirement home. He’d always liked high places; they made him feel safe, away from everything that could harm him, like Senior’s disappointment. Matty took another bite of a Ding Dong and watched tongues of flame lick the windows of his parents’ house. He popped the last bite into his mouth and chewed, sort of. Ding Dongs didn’t require much chewing. The clear cellophane wrappers that once kept the chocolate spongey hockey pucks fresh for twenty-five days on a store shelf sat in a pile between his legs sprinkled with crumbs. He held up the box and shook; two more cakes fell out. Oh, well. There were lots more out there, all for the taking. One of the benefits of almost everyone else dying. Matty wondered if Ahmud was still at the Kum & Go. He’d stop by that dump later; the shelves were stocked with Hostess cakes.

  The living room window glass shattered onto the lawn that had begun to get shaggy. Mowing the lawn was Matty’s job, the only one he’d been able to keep for more than a couple of months. Nine years of steady lawn-mowing employment a half-hour at a time wasn’t bad, he figured, even though Senior paid in phrases like, “Stop complainin’,” and “You eat, doncha?” Lawn looks like shit; sorry to disappoint you again, Pops.

  Smoke rolled from the house into the Oklahoma sky. The box of Ding Dongs and a couple cans of Armour chili were the only food Senior had moved into his new RV, although he’d stocked the bar, apparently on the way home from the sales lot. Three days. Matty had lived in the RV for three days and had nothing but Ding Dongs and chili straight from the can. Mom made meatloaf full of onions and covered in ketchup before she died because it was Matty’s favorite, but the leftovers and the other real food were in the kitchen and Matt knew he sure as hell wasn’t going back into the house. The change had hit Senior and Matty knew he was safer outside.