Little Birds

By Tony Monchinski

Michael is living in North Carolina in a trailer with his buddy, Jimmy Boy. He works at a sneaker store while working on his graduate degree while Jimmy drinks beer, struggles with his PTSD, and watches his relationship with his girlfriend Jessica run hot and cold.

A wave of spontaneous self combustion sweeps the globe. People start to explode, and if you're unlucky enough to be standing near them you're as good as dead as the human hand grenades detonate. Obviously this has an impact of people and their relationships, driving them apart out of fear.

Michael and Jimmy watch their world fall apart around them until they get tired of just watching. They decide a road trip is in order. They'll head to Michael's parents' home in Philadelphia. They're accompanied by Jessica, her friend Mandy who may or may not have a thing for Michael, and some graduate student friends of Michael.

Their trek north is fraught with peril as they encounter militias, maniacs, and people generally scared out of their wits. As those around them succumb to horrible fates, Michael and Jimmy fight to maintain their friendship because each man knows, in the end, all we have is each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Permuted
• Release date: Jul 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781618683212

Tony Monchinski

Tony Monchinski is a freelance writer living in New York City.

Book preview

A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-320-5

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-321-2

Little Birds copyright © 2014

by Tony Monchinski

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Matt Mosley

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

About the Author

For Jerry Ahern

I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Prologue

Michael lay in bed in his t-shirt and boxers, having just gotten off the phone with his parents. The world was going to shit around him, around them, but he'd put on a good show for Mom and Dad. He wouldn't turn on the television out of fear he'd come across a news channel, and he already knew what the news was: it wasn't good, none of it. He lay there on top of his sheet and mattress, thinking, though the thing was – he was really trying not to think. He'd almost accomplished this task when the first twelve notes of Dixie rent the air outside the house, high pitched and manic, Wayne pulling into the cul-de-sac.

Come on for a ride!

A minute later Michael was out the front door in the heat and humidity of the late Carolina morning, raising a hand at Wayne in his El Camino. Wayne sounded the General Lee horn a second time, the horn obnoxiously loud but no one around to hear it. Michael's roommate, Jimmy-Boy, was at work. Their state trooper neighbor Paul's car wasn't in the driveway and neither was Paul's wife's. Teagan was probably out with the kid. Their neighbors on the other side, an older couple, were away. And Beutell hadn't been seen much outside since everything had gone sour. Since people started dying.

Come on for a ride, Hoss! Wayne was gesturing with a can of beer behind the wheel.

Michael thought it over. He didn't need to be at work until tomorrow. He didn't have class today, either. The professor had emailed his students this time, let them know he wasn't going to be in. Better than last time, when Michael had driven forty minutes out to State to find a note posted on the classroom door from the English department secretary: class cancelled.

Come on, Hoss!

You been drinking, Michael called back to him.

Hell yes!

Michael reached around and scratched the back of his neck. Why should I get in the car with you?

I got beer. Like that wasn't enough, Wayne took his other hand off the wheel and raised a fifth of Jack Daniels. Harder stuff, too. He raised and lowered the beer and the booze, like he was weighing one against the other. Say, Hoss, where's that roommate of yours?

He's working.

Come on, then.

Michael grabbed his wallet and his keys from the house. He went back out and got in the car with his friend.

They peeled out of the cul-de-sac, churning gravel.

Where's Beutell at?

Haven't seen him in a week. Michael shrugged. Not since everything started.

Wayne had the bottle of whiskey between his legs and a cooler on the front seat between them, what was left of a six-pack hanging together by the webbing on top of the cooler. The floorboards were littered with empties. Michael ripped one of the cans from the webbing and popped it, chugging his first drink of the day.

The Camino sped down the road from their house, passing the other cul-de-sac. Michael saw clothes hanging in the backward of a home there, clothes hanging for who knew how long. Barely slowing, Wayne swung them onto 301, accelerating as soon as the tires gripped asphalt, their car the only one in sight.

The horn blasted and Michael looked at him. You had to go and do that, didn't you?

Play catch up, Hoss.

What am I catching up to?

Me! Wayne grinned maniacally and took a long pull from his beer. Drink, Hoss.

The drinking and driving thing didn't bother Michael. He would never do it himself, but he knew Wayne was a better driver with a little lubrication.

You're not working today? Michael seemed to remember the schedule at work, and thought he recalled Michelle putting Wayne's name on it.

I am but I'm not.

Oh, 'Chelle is going to like that.

Yeah, she will. What's she gonna do? Fire me?

She just might.

Wayne slowed the Camino as they rode into town, passing few cars in the mid-morning. There were people here and there, some standing around outside the library, a smaller than usual line at Millie's Hot Dogs, folks strolling into and out of the Smithfield Post Office. A Hispanic man in cowboy boots rode a bicycle. The Camino drove down Market Street and crossed the Neuse River before Wayne kicked it up another notch, the sixteen-inch tires gaining traction on Highway 70.

They weren't on 70 long before they veered off and started darting around back roads, driving deep into the countryside, a cloud of dust trailing in their wake. Michael sat back with another beer, content to let Wayne drive, the sun shining through the windshield on them.

They'd been tooling around for fifteen or twenty minutes among the tobacco farms and winding roads of Johnston County when Michael figured out where Wayne was going. Old man Edsel's farm. Now why Wayne would go and do that? The old man wasn't particularly friendly, and Michael couldn't imagine he'd gotten any friendlier, given recent world events.

Wayne turned the car onto the dirt road that traversed Edsel's land, slowing as he did, the mighty Camino rumbling to a stop.

What we doing here? Michael had to reach inside the cooler for another six pack.

Wayne killed the engine and laid the keys atop the dash.

We're parking the car, Hoss.

"Why we parking the car here? Edsel's not going to like this."

Ah, Edsel ain't goin' to stop us. Wayne took a slug from the bottle between his legs, gripping it by the neck. No one gon' stop us, Hoss. You watch. He hit the horn again.

"Jesus! You have to keep going and doing that!"

Wayne was laughing.

Does that thing get louder every time? Christ.

Hey, don't blaspheme. Here. Wayne proffered the sour mash and Michael took it, drinking. They watched the farmhouse and waited. Michael had parked his car on this property on a date one time—Wayne's advice. He and the girl had been getting it on, her shirt up, his pants undone, when Edsel discharged the first of two barrels into the air. The old man wasn't one to suffer fools, fornicators, or trespassers. And he didn't believe in calling the authorities to solve his problems. Michael had gotten them out of there faster than a bolt of lightning, Edsel roaring at them like some deranged Old Testament prophet. Nothing stirred up at the house. Either the old man wasn't home or…

Wayne reached for it but Michael made no move to relinquish the bottle. Remind me why we're out here again?

"Because today, Hoss, today is the day I'm going to die. I can feel it."

Wayne got out of the car and left Michael sitting there with that news, with a nice buzz going to consider the words. He left the keys on the dashboard. Michael hadn't been considering Wayne's statement very long before he cocked an eyebrow in amazement at his friend outside the car and asked him, What the hell are you doing?

What does it look like I'm doing? I'm taking all my clothes off. Which he was, folding them neatly the way they'd taught them at the store where they worked, placing them on top of the car.

Why are you doing that?

If I'm a go and meet my maker, I want to go and meet him the same way I came into this world. Nekked.

"Why are you doing that? No, not the underwear, okay, please—shit, Wayne! Michael looked away, out the passenger-side window. Not the underwear."

Wayne reached into the car and snatched the remaining four cans of beer in their webbing from atop the cooler before running off into Old Man Edsel's field. Michael watched him go, Wayne running off as fast as he could in his bare feet before transitioning into a gangly skip, and then he was jumping in circles and waving his arms, flapping his hands, the sun shining down on him. When his friend didn't vaporize in mid-stride as so many others had, Michael looked down into the bottle of Jack Daniels.

Crazy son of a bitch. Michael took another swig. He was feeling good now, a little more than buzzed, somewhere south of shit-faced, but getting there just as surely as the Camino had gotten the both of them here to Edsel’s place.

A warm breeze stirred Michael awake.

He opened one eye and squinted, turning his face away from the sun, the orb low in the sky and peering in at him through the driver's side of the cab.

Oh, man. Michael reached up and touched his head, then down between his legs, fingers splayed, feeling for the bottle. When he couldn't find it, he felt on the sides of either leg. Still no luck. He let go of his head and shifted, sitting up, opening both eyes, scanning the floorboards, but then he saw the whiskey out on the hood of the truck beside Wayne. Crazy Wayne, passed out on his back, head propped against the windshield, his legs hanging down over the bumper.

Jesus, Wayne. Looked like he was still naked.

Michael reached up, lowering the mirrored visor, checking himself out. His otherwise green eyes red and rheumy from drink. A few spots on his cheeks the only reminder of the freckles he'd had as a kid. His hair worn short, close cropped. When he let it grow out it was curly. He opened his mouth and looked down into the back of his throat, disgusted with the dryness and a stink he could taste.

As much as Smithfield had grown on Michael, it wasn't his home. That was up north. Philly. Every time he opened his mouth down here he gave himself away. The way he said caw-fee instead of coffee; when he asked did you eat yet really fast and it came out sounding like jeet yet; how he sometimes still referred to a sub as a hoagie. Guys like Wayne or Jimmy-Boy wouldn't let him forget it. The girls seemed to get a kick out of it, which was good. Jimmy's girl, Jessica, she always got a little laugh whenever Michael asked for jimmies on his ice cream, everyone else asking for sprinkles. He wasn't sure if it was the accent in that case or the word itself, like her boyfriend's name.

Michael yawned, the taste in his mouth sickening. Hey, Wayne. He rapped on the glass with his knuckles. Wayne didn't stir. Wayne, wake up. The sound of his own voice echoed in his head, hurting him. Damn... The hell had he been doing drinking in the middle of the day, anyway? Glancing back over towards the sun, he realized that day was near ending now, that time had passed and they'd been out in this field for who knew how long. Shadows were lengthening in the field.

Hey, Wayne. Wake up.

Against his better judgment, Michael reached over and pressed the horn, grimacing as he did. Dixie sounded, loud enough to stir the dead.

"Got-dammit, Hoss!" Wayne sat up straight on the hood.

Wake up! Michael yelled out at him. Wayne, I gotta piss. He opened the door and stepped down, his legs unsteady.

As he urinated into the field, Michael craned his neck for a look, Wayne's lower body mercifully hidden by the hood of the Camino. You look like a lobster, he said of his friend's reddening body. "Can you put your clothes back on? Please."

I am going to regret falling asleep in that sun. Tomorrow.

As Michael got back into the cab he looked up to Old Man Edsel's place. Nothing had changed. The house looked the same. Again, Michael wondered about the fate of the old man, a no-show this entire day.

Yeah, Michael thought, Edsel must be dead, too.

Couldn't shake it, Hoss. Wayne drove back the way they'd come. Thought for sure today was going to be my day.

Would you be quiet about that, Michael snapped at him. They rode the rest of the way in silence, stopping once at the Smithfield's Chicken 'N Bar-B-Q drive-thru.

Michael was finishing his sixty-four-ounce sweet tea when Wayne dropped him off in the cul-de-sac, glad for the tea after all the drinking he'd done and the way he felt. That was one of the things that had grown on him in the South, the sweet tea. Sure it was sickeningly sugared and a sure-fire ticket to diabetes and metabolic syndrome, but damn if it wasn't good.

Jimmy-Boy's Ford F-150 was in front of the house and Michael's roommate was home from work, mowing the lawn in an olive drab t-shirt sweat-darkened at the chest and under the arms, a balaclava masking his face from the fumes and clippings. Teagan's car was over in front of her and Paul's driveway and Michael assumed she was home with Bree now.

Jimmy-Boy took one hand off the control bar and raised it to Wayne, Wayne waving back from behind the wheel.

Hey, Wayne. Michael closed the passenger door behind him. See you at work tomorrow.

Uh? Yeah, yeah sure, Hoss.

Michael waited for it but, mercifully, Wayne didn't sound the horn as he pulled away, nor did he speed off. The El Camino turned the corner sedately, disappearing around the bend.

The mower engine died. Hey, Mike. Jimmy always called Michael Mike. You seen the mailman today? Jimmy-Boy pulled the balaclava up over his head, revealing his face, his brown eyes staring at Michael expectantly.

No, but I've been out most of the afternoon. Why?

He didn't come again.

Well, that's not good.

Gonna have to take a ride over to the post office in the next day or so, Jimmy was saying, post some— and then the crash sounded not too far in the distance, drawing their attention, and just like that, Michael knew.

He knew and he started walking towards it, shaking his head, muttering to himself, his strides lengthening until he started running, reaching the mouth of the cul-de-sac—

Mike! Jimmy was calling behind him.

—and turning onto the road there, the wrecked El Camino down at the other end.

When Jimmy caught up to him, Michael had come up short and stood behind the Chevrolet, the hood accordioned between a telephone pole and the cab, steam rising from it. Jimmy had seen wrecks. He'd seen men die in Afghanistan. And he knew from a distance what they would find.

He slowed to a walk as he approached and called it in to the Smithfield P.D. on his cell phone. He finished the call standing next to Michael, the two of them looking at the crumpled truck, the windshield spider-webbed and bloodied from the impact of Wayne's head.

It's too late, isn't it? Michael asked him quietly.

Jimmy walked around to the driver's side and found the body. Wayne had managed to stagger out of the cab after the impact before sinking to the grass and dirt. Jimmy checked for a pulse just to be sure, and when he didn't find one he wasn't surprised. He stood and considered the Camino, its chrome bumper all bent out of shape, looking cold in the early evening dun. The same truck he'd worked on with Wayne a couple weekends in the past year or so, changing the brakes, wiring a stereo.

The passenger side door opened without protest.

Here, Michael, give me a hand with this. Jimmy righted the cooler and passed it out to his roommate, then started collecting the empty beer cans that littered the floorboards. We don't want them to find him like that. Jimmy tossed him the first can, which Michael fumbled, so Jimmy handed each successive can over.

Michael placed the empties in the cooler.

Jimmy knew that if the county did a toxicology report as part of their autopsy, the medical examiner would find the alcohol in Wayne' blood, but he doubted there'd be a toxicology report or even an autopsy. The county boys had their hands full these days, and Jimmy imagined there'd be a backlog down at the morgue. No, the police would arrive and find this, the Camino wrapped around a pole, the driver's body intact and whole, and they'd write it up as a traffic accident, plain and simple.

Was there a bottle? Jimmy asked.

Yeah.

Well, where's that at?

I think we left it... Michael remembered the bottle on the hood beside Wayne. He couldn't recall Wayne bringing the fifth back into the cab with him.

Take the cooler back to the house, Jimmy told Michael. I'll stay here. He didn't wait to see if Michael would comply with his request. He had his cell phone out and was hitting speed dial. Let me give Jess a call.

Michael gave the Camino one last look before turning and walking away.

Three days later there weren't as many people at Wayne's wake as there should have been. People were getting scared to come out of their homes, or they were dead already. Michael wore his black John Varvatos suit, the nicest thing in his closet. His parents had taken him shopping for it when he'd graduated college. When he went home that night he hung it back on the hanger and put it away in his closet.

1.

They were sitting around the living room drinking beer the night of the funeral, Michael, Jimmy-Boy and Jimmy's girlfriend. Jimmy-Boy had his head in Jessica's lap on the couch with Michael across from them in Jimmy's reclining chair. They'd asked Michael if he'd wanted to play cards, but he wasn't in the mood. He sat where he was, content enough to follow the channels as Jimmy thumbed the remote, surfing through them, never lingering for more than a few moments on any one station.

Hi, Michael, Jessica had said to him when she'd come over. He could tell she'd wanted to say things to him, to talk to him about Wayne and how he was feeling, but she wasn't certain how to go about it or even if she should. Like Michael and Jimmy, Jessica was in her early twenties. The entirety of her adult relationship-life had been spent with Jimmy, a young man who wasn't very open to talking about his feelings, even when the nightmares drove him from his bed.

Hello, Jessica, he'd replied.

She was pretty as hell, but she was Jimmy's girl, so that had always tempered the way Michael viewed her, the way he allowed himself to look at her. He called her Jessica and she always called him Michael. Jimmy-Boy was the only one who ever shortened their names.

The various news channels were populated with talking heads and their competing theories of the unfolding catastrophe. Most of the shows were broadcast on a delay to avoid any unsettling incidents. There'd been enough of those earlier on.

The thing to remember, Richard, is that the internet is amazingly stable. It's not a physical thing in a room somewhere with an on/off switch you can just flip.

In other words, you can't just hit it with a hammer and destroy the thing.

Exactly. Which is why what we're looking at here is such an unprecedented—

Michael had the chair in its upright position, a can of Yuengling nested in the built-in arm rest. He hadn't touched much of the beer.

A Malthusian catastrophe—

But come on, we're not talking about population outstripping resources here. This is completely beyond the scope of—

Looting and rioting continue to spread through America's cities—

We just want to eat. I just want to feed my family—

With banking and finance especially hard hit these last few days, leading the White House to extend the bank holiday another day—

While Australia's telecommunications networks remain black, with experts chalking up the massive failure to maintenance issues—

Shug, said Jessica.

Jimmy-Boy and Jessica had been in an on-again, off-again thing the year Michael had been living with Jimmy, and although Michael didn't know all the details, the rocky nature of their relationship seemed to extend further back than that. Jessica had been spending more time at the apartment lately, which Michael thought understandable given the state of the world. And it was always nice to have a pretty girl around, even if she was with someone else.

Shug, she said to Jimmy again.

What, Jess?

Jessica motioned to the television.

What?

Michael knew what she was doing even if Jimmy-Boy didn't, and he thought it was sweet of her. But the truth was, nothing on television disturbed him much anymore. And though he wasn't particularly in the mood for talking, he didn't want to be alone either. Tomorrow was work. At least that would give him something to do. Get him out of the house.

Let me see the remote control for a minute. As Jessica put her hand out for the remote Jimmy extended his arm, playfully putting it out of her reach.

Come on, doll, I'm watching this.

The television talked about cascade effects and millions of refugees on the roads, of obstructed highways and price gouging, of fuel shortages and other distribution system failures. Attendance was way up in churches and temples.

"James." Jessica shifted her position, snatching the remote from Jimmy-Boy's hand, clicking off the television.

Now what'd you go and do that for? Jimmy-Boy didn't sound annoyed. Nor did he move from the couch, his head still resting where it was on Jessica's lap.

Hey, Jimmy, Michael said a few moments later, the living room quiet between them, you wanna go to church?

Jimmy burped, crushing his beer can. Nope.

Yeah. Me neither.

Michael woke that night, sitting up in bed in the dark, thinking he'd heard a horn out in the dark, dopplering Dixie. No way. He swung his feet out of bed and parted the blinds with his index and middle fingers, peering out into the night. Nothing stirred in the cul-de-sac. The single streetlight across from his window cast its illumination amid a swirl of moths and insects. Michael adjusted the tilt wand, opening the blinds, the ambient light from outside casting a faint glow in his room, just enough to see by.

He sat on the bed in his boxers, listening to the dark, to the sounds of their house in the night. A creak somewhere. A hum as the central air kicked in.

Michael could imagine what was going on in Jimmy Boy's room. Jessica probably wanted Jimmy to talk to him. But that wasn't the nature of their relationship, Jimmy-Boy's and Michael's. And talking about feelings, well that wasn't Jimmy at all.

He shook his head, deriding himself for thinking they'd be talking about him. For all he knew, they were in Jimmy's bath with candles and baby oil, giving one another Nuru Massages.

He reached down and felt around under his bed. Felt his gun case with the nine millimeter. Touched around some more until his hand closed on the Cohiba cigar box. He extracted it from beneath the bed and placed it on the mattress beside him.

Michael lifted the lid. Inside the cigar box were things that reminded him of home. A Philadelphia monthly TransPass card. The top of a box of Tasty Kakes Cream-Filled Koffee Kake Cupcakes. Photographs.

The TransPass card in his hand, Michael closed his eyes and thought about the city where he'd grown up, trying to picture it. He had a postcard image of City Hall in his mind, but when he tried to recall details directly, they eluded him. Instead he thought back to a class trip they'd taken in sixth grade. City Hall, the Liberty Bell, the usual historical sites. He remembered their meanderings on Chestnut Street, him and his friends, and without dwelling on it, City Hall took on greater detail in his mind: the statue of William Penn atop the tower, the tower clocks and the observation deck his class had stood out on, looking down on the city. If he didn't think about it too hard, Michael could see it.

It was that way with Wayne, too. If he tried to think about his friend, tried to picture and hold his face in mind, Michael