death on the land and no man can evade



Cold dusk. A crawling sea of cars on the northbound interstate. As people ran out of gas they just got out and started walking.



I sat on an extrusion of granite up on the ridge. I could smell the cook fire. They were cooking something, some kind of meat up on top of the ridge, camped up beneath the water tower. I could hear their voices, laughter. That water tower hadn't held water for years, even during the last good years before the tragedies.



Curious, those walkers. I watched them awhile longer. How they simply got out of their cars and continued right up the road, walking in the breakdown lanes, carrying things, kids, blankets, or else carrying nothing. I wondered where they thought they were going.



All I could think about was getting a gun and getting a horse.



I climbed to the top of the ridge. I was surprised to find my boy Hollis out of Warren, chubby in his red and black flannel, his back to me, pissing into a stand of sumac. I called out to him. He looked slowly over his shoulder, leaning to spit a trail of brown spittle in the dirt. His blond hair was matted and there was a huge shiner under his left eye.



"Holy fuck," I said. "What happened to you? You got dip?"



"Whole sleeve of it."



"What'd you, plunder the 7-11?"



"Uh-huh" He shook his cock briefly and stuffed it back in his cords. "The one up on Rt. 9. Them Indians."



"What'd you, fight them for it?" They had a fire pit going and a huge piece of meat on a spit made from a chain link fence post and a bunch of torn open 30 packs of Bud, Coors, Pabst. There were a bunch of other people up there, wandering around drinking and smoking, a couple dudes I recognized from the bar, a couple girls I didn't.



"Nah," he said. He worked his lower lip and spat again as he walked over to me. "You want a damn beer, or what?"



He was drunk. I wasn't yet and didn't know if I ever would be again.



I'd could hear you whispering in my head and that would've scared me, if not for all those people walking on the highway. If not for the knowledge of these late days and what had made them come.