1. Quik-Stop

Some people say that it started in a lab. Others say it moved from monkeys to man somehow. Like AIDS. Others say it’s God’s judgment. People said that about AIDS too. The thing is, when you’re running for your life, it doesn’t fucking matter. It just is.

I’m standing in a convenience store. I knew this place back before, and it was shitty then, a couple dudes from India who didn’t give a shit about the people in this ghetto neighborhood, never washed anything, the stainless steel rollers in the hotdog heater had turned brown. I mean it’s stainless steel. I still ate them. They were a dollar. I shouldn’t think about those hot dogs though. That shit makes me hungry real fast. Hot food doesn’t happen anymore. The gas doesn’t run. Smoke brings them. So I pick among the cans. 

There are still so many cans, and that makes me feel two ways. One, where are the people? I mean, if no cans are being taken, then there aren’t any people. That means my chance of survival is pretty low. No big fucking surprise there, but still. It’d be nice to think there was someone else out here. The other thing I think is, if no cans are being taken, there aren’t any people, so at least there are lots of cans. So it’s a complicated feeling.

I look for carbohydrates. I mean, I’ll eat canned spinach, but you can’t run real long on that. Some Chef Boy Ardee works good- a little mealy two years past it’s due date, but edible and it’ll keep my energy up. I fill up my bag on that stuff, and turn my attention to the street outside.

Quiet as Hiroshima that day in 1945? 44? I wasn’t that good in history. I specialized in escaping class, something that is a little more useful now. I mentioned that this used to the ghetto. The same thing that made it bad then, the many close buildings, the walls, the concrete, makes it prime living territory. So many places to hide, so many fortresses to create. 

The store has a two sets of doors, so I go through the first one, hiding behind a smashed bubble gum machine, and a poster for a frozen fruit drink. The street still looks quiet, and I pop through the last door and stride, keeping low, toward an overgrown backyard. It’s only a few yards of open space and I give myself an eighty percent chance of making it unseen.

I hear feet. Sprinting feet. They are coming down the main street, they haven’t seen me. I could go on, but if they see me they’ll know my little duckee. Blood on the trail. It’s not worth it. So I turn.

There are two of them. Now they see me. One lets out a screech. From the sound of it, she’s a female, but there isn’t much else to tell that. She’s ripped out most of her hair. The other one is taller, and I figure he is male.

They are dirty everywhere but around their mouths, where their tongues clean a circle. Only mess around their mouths is blood, which is mostly between their teeth but flecks about on their faces sometimes. Even at a sprint, a tongue comes out periodically, licking their upper lip. Their clothes are ripped rags, turned into a uniform gray from the dirt and the sun. Their bodies are gashed. Their zeal in pursuit produces these cuts, as they hurdle barbed wire fences, and crash through doors with no thought to their health. Still they are whole, moving at a full out sprint. They will be on me in a moment. I almost think that they are smiling at the thought of this, but I’ve never seen one smile I don’t run from them much anymore. I haven’t won many of those races, and then I was out of breath for what happened next.

I wish I had the sword she had in Kill Bill. Turns out most of the katana blades in North Philly bedrooms, usually full of video games (which don’t work, there is no electricity), and comic books, are worthless when it comes to actually chopping through flesh.

What I ended up deciding on, in the absence of a samurai sword that could fell seven with a single blow, is the top bar of a bike frame, with about a foot long wooden handle shoved up one end, and bolted in. The other end still has the twin bars that hold the rear wheel, but I bent them out, so that they face opposite directions. I left the bike seat bar on, and about six inches of the vertical bar of the frame. This I hammered into a spike. It’s basically a spikey club, something that the first cave man would have been pretty proud of, but which I, having grown up playing Halo and shooting plasma shrapnel through the universe,  knew to be corny.  That was why I named it Ackee.

She lunged first, her teeth gnashing twice the in air, ready for the meal already. He was a little too my right so I stepped to the left, and swung Ackee up. It’d have been a finished blowing if not for it burying a point into one of her flailing arms. She screamed again. BITCH. DO NOT SCREAM. She’s stuck to the Ackee now and he’s coming at me. I rotate so that she’s still between us, and Ackee is keeping me separated from her gnashing mouth. He roars in frustration. This is making too much noise.

I kick her in the chest, and she unplugs from the end of Ackee. He’s at me in a second. There was a time when I made mistakes in scenes like this. When I got nervous. I didn’t get better, really. A bit. The main thing that happened was, I’d been this close enough times, and I realized, “I’m going to die.” After that, I was a lot calmer. I don’t worry about surviving. I swing Ackee up and down into his head. Easy as you open a door. Two of the tines embed in his skull, but with a quick pull up, the point twist out as he sinks down, and I send it whistling into his girlfriend’s head. THUNK. The devotion dies in her eyes.

Ackee is quiet and effective. Of course, I can’t forget the screams. The pitter patter of more sprinters sounds in my ear. I decide to see if I can make the duckee. It sound like five or six this time, and I’ve never faced more than three at a time. Hopefully I make it unseen.