Calvin nodded his agreement, “My grandmother always said charity doesn’t even count unless it hurts some.”
Dranko just grunted even louder, “Speaking of charity, why don’t you guys help me load this stuff up. We’ll have room now, given that we’re lighter by a pistol.”
Cooper rolled his eyes in mockery at him, “Whenever you’re being sarcastic, I know you aren’t too pissed off.”
“That’s been the key to our success, darling. You just know me so well!”
They all laughed and then set to loading the supplies in earnest.
Minutes later, they resumed their path south down 82nd Avenue. He honked his horn playfully as they passed Ed, pushing his cart. Ed waved enthusiastically as they drove by. For a moment, Cooper’s heart felt light as he recalled friendlier times before. The bleak road they travelled quickly tore that from him.
The road became successively more clogged the further south they went. Abandoned and destroyed vehicles blocked their path. Once more, Cooper ordered Jake onto the floor. If this keeps up, he’ll be living down there. A Ford pickup was riddled with bullets, the driver dead and slumped halfway out of the shattered driver’s side window. A Toyota minivan had been burned down to its metal frame and its occupants were entombed as grotesque charred husks. A Buick sedan had somehow flipped onto its side, a red splash across the pavement and a crimson trail leading away from it telling an unfinished story of injury, death, or survival. Was the person dragged away or did they crawl away? The litany of vehicles and the destruction to them and their passengers was unending.
Debris clogged the road, as well. Bodies. All manner of bodies. Young. Old. White. Black. Impoverished. The well off. Unless you owned a helicopter, I guess an apocalyptic plague proved a great equalizer, Cooper thought. Some were strewn about the streets, sidewalks, and parking lots. Others lay entombed in their cars. Some bodies had been subjected to such horrible violence; he could barely recognize them as a person. Others lacked any kind of visible mark. Cooper speculated these had died from heart attacks or some trauma that he simply could not identify. Some had clearly died from the Brushfire Plague itself, phlegm, blood, and spittle staining their clothes and mouths.
“Poor bastards, sick and stumbling down a roadway, for God knows what purpose,” Cooper involuntarily mumbled.
One vehicle forced itself into Cooper’s attention. A white car had slammed into another car. The ground all around the vehicle glittered in the late afternoon sun and every window in the car had been shattered. Bullet holes ripped the car from stem to stern and all along the side facing Cooper. Those holes told him the car had been hit with a mixture of shotgun shells, pistol bullets, and at least one high- powered rifle. It wasn’t the three bodies inside the vehicle that drew his eye—he’d already seen far too much of that.
It was the moppy brown hair and the small forlorn arm that hung just below the rear passenger door. Cooper shuddered, knowing what he could not see. A thin object was clasped in the hand. Cooper flashed his lights, to tell Dranko he was stopping, and abruptly braked.
“Stay here,” he ordered, his voice heavy with grim sadness. Julianne simply nodded and Jake didn’t move at all.
Cooper’s steps were leaden as he approached the car. He knew what he was going to find. He knew it was going to break his heart. Still, he trudged onward, drawn to the grasped object like a suspecting husband coming home early from work one day. Glass crunched underfoot as he came closer to the car. His stomach tightened as he reached out and slowly pulled the door fully open.
A boy’s body slumped further out of the car, the head bumping itself against the asphalt. Cooper reached out to stop the boy from hitting the ground, but failed. The boy was stiff and he landed with a thud. Cooper cringed, his eyes narrowing and his lips curling. The boy’s face was serene and unmarked. His chest had a single neat hole. Right where the boy’s heart was. A small hole. A circle of red. And, a dead little boy. Cooper’s thoughts ravaged his mind and a vise closed upon his chest. Is that all it takes?
Cooper’s eyes drifted down to the object in the boy’s hand. The hand was smeared in blood. He couldn’t tell if it was his own, or someone else’s. Cooper saw a rectangular cylinder of blue peeking out from between the boy’s fingers. He knelt down to get a closer look. He grabbed a rag from his pocket and pulled it from the boy’s unyielding fingers.
Cooper wiped the object and then opened the rag. Captain America. The head of Captain America was staring him straight in the eye. A Pez dispenser. Cooper remembered them from his childhood, unaware that they were still made. Cooper stumbled backward, sitting down hard and awkwardly onto the cold asphalt. He tightened his grip on the bloodied Pez dispenser. His eyes raced all around him, as if looking for something. His eyes stung and big fat teardrops began falling, dotting his shirt with dark spots. His left hand smashed into the side of his head. His right grasped the Pez dispenser. He wanted to crush it into dust in a vain hope to make it all just go away. He began rocking back and forth. Then, he exploded.
“Why!” He wailed futilely. He stretched that one word for what seemed like an eternity to those who were either standing next to their vehicles or who’d remained inside. By the time he finished, he was sobbing. Cooper felt like a broken man. The dead boy reminded him far too much of Jake. The tragedy of a boy dying while holding onto a cheap plastic toy was a brutal talisman of the death of their old world and the painful, bloody birth of the new. A new world, still unformed, but already scarred by blood and death. Too much death, Cooper lamented.
“You know how I’m different than him?” Jake’s voice right next to him made Cooper’s body jerk in surprise.
He could only stare upward. His boy towered over him, the emotional gulf between them having a dramatic effect. Cooper furiously wiped away the tears from his eyes. His voice fled him and he could not respond.
“Two ways.” Jake’s voice was distant. He sounded like an old man. “One. I ain’t dead,” he paused. His lips curled into a wry smile that made Cooper cringe. Then he added, “Yet.”
Cooper frantically rustled himself onto his knees. Instinctively, he sought to comfort his son. Hearing such cold, calculated words from his eleven-year-old’s mouth left his own agape and unmoving.
Jake continued, as if unaware of his father’s desperate movements. “Two. When I die, I’ll have a gun in my hand, not some stupid ass toy.” His cold words had turned to ice. Jake diffidently shrugged off his father’s seeking hands. He walked slowly back to the truck. His steps plodded, crushing glass and debris that lay in his path. Cooper stared after him impotently.
Jake ignored Julianne who was staring at him in shock and sought to catch his eye. Her arms reached out halfway to offer a comforting hug, but fell back to her side when she saw the stern features that now owned his face. The door shut quietly. He never turned around, so he couldn’t see the look of disbelief and sadness that crested across Cooper’s face. Cooper knew a door had just closed on his son’s life. He’s a child no more. Cooper’s heart ached at the fact. He stifled the emotions welling up from deep inside.
He stumbled to his feet, dazed. His eyes met Julianne’s, looking expectantly from the car. All she could see was hatred. Cooper saw her shudder, as if a cold wind had just blown through the truck. He didn’t care.
He wanted to know when the butcher’s bill for the Brushfire Plague would ever be fully paid. My wife, dead. Rotting in the ground. My boy, becoming hard at age eleven. Me, driven from my home and on the run. What else am I expected to pay? If Cooper could have seen into the future to answer that question, he might never have arisen from the pavement he had settled upon.