CHAPTER 3

The road was a graveyard of stalled cars, each one marking the death of its driver, metallic tombstones on an asphalt cemetery. I drove down Route 2, weaving around an occasional stopped car, not daring to go much faster than 40 miles per hour. There were numerous blind corners and I didn’t want to risk crashing. I kept thinking: who would I call for help if I got into an accident? I assumed ambulatory services no longer existed – at least in my neck of the woods – and calling for help proved pointless almost as soon as everyone started dying. I knew I had to be careful, and for the first time in my life, could relate to the basic instincts needed by a wild animal trying to survive in the Maine wilderness.

I slowed the SUV to a crawl, carefully weaving through several cars in a cluster just outside a lumber store. There were many bodies on the side of the road and more in the parking lot. I noticed something had changed about them, at least compared to the corpses I left behind in Pinebush. Now I was growing curious. I wanted to know what was happening.

I stopped the car and got out to take a closer look. At this point I had seen more than my fair share of dead bodies and the shock was starting to wear off. I was becoming emotionally detached; seeing the bodies not as humans, but as roadkill. Something you see and ignore. A brutal part of nature you accept and toward which you feel only a moment of sympathy before carrying on.

I stood over an elderly man lying on his back. I regarded the side of his neck, as his head was turned to one side. His veins were like that of the driver that had crashed through the front of Shorey’s – dark streaks covering his body like a connected road map. The elderly man’s veins seemed to pulse slightly. It was barely noticeable, to the point I dismissed the pulsing at first. I squatted over his body and stared at the bulging blood vessels on the top of his wrinkled hand. The black roadways were in fact moving, like dark earth worms working their way underneath his skin.

I remembered the driver’s eyes back at Shorey’s, those black and horrific eyes. I debated on opening the elderly man’s eyes to see if they were the same. Then curiosity dissipated and made room for a growing fear. I went back to the SUV looking over my shoulder at the handful of bodies surrounding me. Even from a distance, I could tell they all had black streaks under their flesh. With my heart racing and a newfound sense of urgency, I got in the SUV and drove away.

Five miles beyond the lumber store, I was forced to stop yet again. This time it was due to a live person – a man sitting in the middle of the road, clutching something to his chest. I got out of my vehicle and walked toward him, I could see that he was holding a child, grade school age, and the child was swaddled in a fleece blanket. The man rocked back and forth while quietly whispering to the child. As I walked closer, I could see the child’s bare feet poking out from under the blanket and the darkened blood vessels under the child’s skin. I swallowed hard, gathered my nerves, and walked toward the man as non-menacing as I could be.

“Sir, are you okay?” I asked in a hushed voice. He continued to rock back and forth while whispering to the child, breaking his speech with an occasional shh.

I crouched in front of the man and waited, seeing if he’d acknowledge that I was there on his own terms. Eventually he looked up slowly, tears and mucus covering his face.

“I was taking him to the doctor. He was home sick today. We were going to see the doctor,” the man said to me, before looking back down at the child.

“Is there something I can do?” I said.

“No,” his voice meek and barely audible. “He’s gone. Everyone’s gone. There’s nothing anyone can do. We’re all dead now.”

I sat down on the pavement. He continued to cry and rock the child in his arms, while I remained silent. I didn’t know how to comfort the man. I was never good at consoling those that needed a shoulder to cry on. I was at a loss for words. After several minutes, he looked up at me and sighed deeply.

“Will you help me bury my boy?” he begged. “I want him to sleep next to his mother.”

On the way to the cemetery the man spoke little, only that his name was Wayne Sherman and his boy’s name was Ezekiel or Zeke, after his father-in-law. When we arrived at his wife’s grave, Wayne got out of the car with his boy’s body. I told him I’d be right back: I had to find us a shovel.

In the middle of the cemetery was a concrete out building. It was locked so I was forced to kick it open, which took three tries. Inside were various landscaping tools and a ride-along mower. I grabbed two shovels and walked back. Wayne had placed his son on the grass next to his wife’s plot. He stood solemnly, his hands clasped in front of his chest while he prayed.

We struggled a bit to dig into the frozen ground, but after a couple hours we had Wayne’s son buried next to the boy’s mother. I stood while Wayne prayed some more and looked over her gravestone – Julia Sherman, October, 12, 1979 – January 17th, 2020. It was a simple stone, no lazer-etched pictures of Julia or Bible passages, just her name and the dates.

“I’m ready,” Wayne said, looking up at me. “Care to join me at our…my house?”

I nodded and we walked to the SUV.

“Thanks for the help,” Wayne said.

“Not a problem. It’s the least I could do.” I drove toward the heart of Old Town. “Where’s your house?”

“Davis Street. You know the way?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

Wayne was looking out the window as I drove, his face somber and his eyes sagged heavily from exhaustion. He looked like he might fall asleep, but he didn’t.

“I’ll show you. Just head into town for now.” He leaned his elbow on the door and propped his head on his knuckles.

We sat silently. I went over the day’s events in my mind; flashes of certain moments streaked by, replaced by another: Carbie’s death, the truck through Shorey’s; the black, pulsing streaks under everyone’s skin, the crash, Pinebush in flames.

“You have family? Kids? A wife?” Wayne asked me, jolting me out of my daze.

“No. Married once for about ten minutes. No kids though,” I said.

“You should be thankful for that.”

I looked at him briefly while he continued to watch the passing scenery of the Maine woods fly by.

“What do you mean by that?” I sounded more defensive than I intended.

Wayne wiped his face with his hands and exhaled forcefully. “No kids to suffer through your divorce and no kids to suffer whatever the hell this is."

Wayne reared his head back, inhaled, and turned to look at me. “The world’s ending. We’ll all go...every single one of us. Be thankful you won’t have to watch your family die. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Just because I don’t have a family doesn’t mean I don’t feel loss. You don’t know what the fuck I’ve seen today.” I was agitated by his comments. I forced my growing temper away and reminded myself that he was grieving. He wasn’t the only person that had been through hell though. I too had to watch friends die the same as him.

“I’m simply saying you don’t know how it feels to bury your child,” Wayne said and went back to looking out the window.

I didn’t say anything in return. He was pissing me off and I knew his comments shouldn’t, but they did just the same. My nerves were raw, my emotions an extreme cyclone tearing their way through my mind. I gripped the steering wheel hard and white-knuckled my frustrations to keep a level head, which was becoming increasingly difficult as the day’s events wore on.

“Take this left,” Wayne directed.

I pulled into his driveway and we headed toward the front door, when Wayne, who had been walking in front of me, wheeled around and put his hand out to stop me.

“I’m sorry…about before. I didn’t mean to sound like a dick. It’s just been a hard day that’s all. I meant nothing by what I said.”

As he talked his eyes drifted from mine downward. By the time he finished apologizing he was looking at the ground, his shoulders slumped forward, and the hand that stopped me was in his pocket. Wayne looked utterly defeated and any tension I had been feeling toward him drifted away.

“No hard feelings,” I said. “I can’t understand what you’ve gone through.”

Wayne looked up at me with weary eyes. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm. It gets damn cold out when the sun goes down.”

His house was a two-story Ranch and we walked up the half-stairwell to his living room. Wayne took his winter coat off and tossed it on the couch.

“Kitchen’s over here and down the hall is the bathroom. I have some whiskey and vodka in the cabinet over the fridge if you want. Actually...” Wayne walked straight through the living room into the kitchen without finishing his thought then emerged with a bottle in each hand.

“Drink?” Wayne asked holding the bottles up.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t drink.”

“You sure?”

“I am. Never touched the stuff. Alcoholism runs in the family.”

“I see.” He retreated to the kitchen then came back into the living room with a bottle of vodka in his hand.

“I’m gonna take a shower. Feel free to use the bathroom down the hallway. We…” Wayne paused and started to choke up, his words strangled in his throat. “I have my own off the master bedroom.”

I thanked him as he left the room. Soon I heard the shower running, and started to wander around. Typical family photos hung on the walls: a pre-school photo of Zeke, tucked away among twenty or so children of similar age; the Sherman’s at Santa’s Village; a very pregnant Mrs. Sherman, fair-skinned and petite, her hand resting on her perfectly round belly, and glowing like only an expecting mother can; Wayne, Zeke, and an older gentleman in the outfield bleachers of Fenway park. Judging by the older man’s strong jaw and narrow nose, I guessed he was Wayne’s father, as they looked a lot alike.

This was like every family living room I had ever been in: mundane, typical, and littered with the pleasant banality of a lower-middle-class household. There was a curio cabinet in the corner next to the television and I wandered over to investigate, suddenly unaware of the boundaries of Wayne’s belongings and personal space. The wooden cabinet housed numerous pieces of sculpted art, but not the typical things people kept in such display cabinets. There were no angels or mothers holding their children or ceramic animal figurines; in this cabinet were many clay sculptures with the distinct artistic styling of a child. Like some parents displayed crayon drawings on their refrigerator, the Sherman’s displayed colorful clay sculptures in this cabinet.

I opened the cabinet and picked up a blue snake with two misshapen dots of yellow for eyes and a thin roll of pink clay meant to be its tongue, which fell off in my hands as I placed it back on the glass shelf. Having not learned my lesson, I picked up a pink elephant, complete with two tiny white tusks, floppy squared ears, and little black eyes. Zeke had even given the elephant white toenails on each of its blocky feet. Each of the figurines was hardened and had resisted any wear and tear, like colorful pieces of child’s innocence locked behind flimsy wood and glass doors; separated from the outside world and somehow kept secure as the world around them had crumbled.

The shower stopped in the other room and for some reason it startled me, perhaps because I felt guilty about being nosy, but equally due to my raw nerves. I returned the elephant and closed the cabinet, then went into the kitchen, where the bottle of whiskey stared at me with its tempting, caramel-colored eyes.

My father had been a drunk as long as I could remember. His drinking drove my mother off when I was a baby, and if it weren’t for my father’s parents taking care of me, there’s no guessing how my life would have turned out. They raised me through grade school; until they both became feeble in their 80s and could no longer care for me. From there my life was day after day of my father’s drinking. Our relationship became gradually more violent as I got older and tolerated his abuse less. He died the summer after I graduated – the most bittersweet day of my life. As much as I hated my father, he was still my dad. It didn’t matter how many punches he threw or how many times he fell asleep in his ratty recliner clutching a bottle to his chest like a mother holds their child for the first time.

Growing up under such strife, I had a hatred for alcohol that only rivaled that of my feelings toward my father. And like my feelings toward my father, alcohol had a pull on me somewhere deep I could never explain, like booze was an old friend I had never gotten acquainted with but shared a mutual love that could not be explained.

I stared at the bottle of whiskey in Wayne’s kitchen and before I knew it, there were four fingers of whiskey poured into a glass and I was about to take a drink for the first time in my life. Then a gunshot went off.

I dropped the glass and it crashed to the tiled kitchen floor where it scattered in all directions upon impact. The air was filled with the scent of whiskey and I jumped back instinctively. I paused, partly because the gunshot startled me, and because the shattered glass of whiskey cut through my head on multiple levels. Clearly Lady Karma was telling me to stay away from booze as she had so many times before.

I held my breath and listened for Wayne, hoping that the shot had come from the outside of the house. It was possible, but unlikely with so many dead; either way it wasn’t good. I hollered for Wayne as I jogged down the hallway toward his bedroom. As soon as I burst through the door my worst fears were confirmed – Wayne had shot himself.

I had witnessed plenty of death at that point, but seeing the left side of Wayne’s head blown outward was the last straw: I threw up. Once I was done, I circled around the bed to cover him with a sheet or blanket or anything that would block his grotesque appearance. I noticed Wayne had a piece of paper in his hand. As I got close enough to reach for the note, I slipped on the carpet and nearly lost my footing. I lifted my foot off the carpet and noticed that I had stepped in a soupy mix of brain matter and skull. I didn’t want to see more than I had to, so I grabbed the note fast then raced out of the room as much as the slick carpet would allow.

Once I was out of the bedroom, I unfolded the piece of paper and started to read: Clay, I’m sorry if you’re reading this. You’ve been through enough today and me killing myself isn’t making it easier I’m sure, but I just can’t deal with this…whatever it all is. Thank you for your kindness today helping me put my boy to rest. This note is little payment for the debt I owe and I’m going to ask you for one last favor – bury me next to my boy and my love Julia. However, if you decide to leave me here I’ll understand. I’ll be dead and something tells me I’ll have no say in things once the darkness wins. Take anything you might need from the house, including the pistol I’ve just used…you’ll need it Clay. I hope you can find the strength to endure this madness and somehow find a diluted kind of peace in the death that surrounds you. Thank you once again Clay. – Wayne. P.S. - The spare bullets are in the nightstand and there’s a bottle of Valium in the bathroom medicine cabinet. I wanted to offer you a way out…in case the darkness takes you over as it has me. Goodbye Clay.

I stared at the note then read it twice more before I balled it up and threw it on the floor. I stood in the hallway, debating on whether to heed Wayne’s wishes or walk away to leave him be. As emotions twirled around in my head, I wheeled to face Wayne’s body, unaware of how I’d react. Truth be told, I didn’t feel anything at that point. The tornado in my brain stopped at once and I walked over to Wayne, grabbed his pistol and the spare bullets from the nightstand before leaving the room.

I’m not sure why, but I grabbed the pink elephant clay figurine from the cabinet in the living room and eyed it curiously. Somehow it had beckoned to me, as if it were some symbol of innocence and untainted hope in a world of death. Stroking its smooth, finished surface gave me comfort and helped clear my mind. I didn’t want to think…about anything... and this simple sculpture eased my mind.

I left Wayne’s house and got in the SUV, placing the elephant on the dash and driving south, for no other reason than a lack of direction or plan. I wanted to drive away and leave everything behind, all the horrors and death I had witnessed. I knew better though; there would be nothing on the road ahead that would be any different from what I was leaving behind.