Selection Event by Wayne Wightman Read Free Book Online Page B

“Stewart, shut up. These people you saw, what were they doing? What activities were they engaged in?”
    “Engaged in?” he mocked. “You sound like a dickhead teacher or something.”
    “You're being rude,” Martin said. “Why give each other a hard time? What were these people doing, Stewart?” Martin asked. Diaz could probably beat the answers out of him much more quickly than they could be got through conversation. “Tell us what they were doing, and we'll all go our separate ways.”
    “They were standing around. How should I know what they were doing? I'm no mind-reader.”
    “He's right about that,” Diaz said.
    “And I'm not stupid, either,” Stewart sneered at Diaz, pointing his finger at him. “You treat me like I'm stupid and I'm not!”
     “We're just treating you like you're not a mind-reader, Stewart,” Martin said. “Why don't you go get yourself another car now.”
    “Fine. I will.” He stomped away from us, up the street, his steps echoing hollowly in the quiet street.
     “Thanks,” Diaz said. I was on the verge of putting him out of my misery.”
    From up the street, Stewart turned around and shouted, “Eat shit, you homos!” and then ran around a corner and disappeared.
    “The exuberance of youth. You wouldn't have shot him, would you?” Martin asked.
    “Probably not. I don't have any more room on my list.”
    As they walked back to Martin's parents' home, Diaz stopped at a few houses and kicked in the doors and went inside for a few minutes. “Just checking,” he explained. Finally he came out of the last house with a pump shotgun. It was shiny with oil and on the dark stock was a detailed carving of the American flag. Diaz had filled his pockets with shells and they bulged in lumps. “In case we run into any mutants when we go looking for your friend. Drive a car, you're high profile.”
    Martin drove, with Diaz in the passenger seat and Isha in the back. She sat up and quietly looked out the side window, as a human would.
    Except for the overgrown yards, everything looked exceptionally normal. Martin even lifted his foot from the accelerator and started to brake when they came to a stop sign.
    “Old habits,” he said.
    “What did your friend, Delana, do?”
    “She was a paramedic. Rode in the back of an ambulance and tweezed body parts up off the pavement.”
    “Ah. A fellow traveller of mine. She'd have drugs at her place then.”
    “Drugs?”
    “Antibiotics,” Diaz said. “Pain killers. You should check. It's going to be a long time before anyone's manufacturing any more tetracycline. Once anybody thinks twice about it, antibiotics'll be more valuable than gold. You should check her place out while you're there.”
    “I will,” Martin said. The thought of looking through Delana's apartment made his throat ache.
    Cars were parked along the streets, in driveways, and once they turned onto a thoroughfare, even the restaurants and fast food chains had cars in their parking lots, as though they were doing business. But through the windows, nothing moved.
    “Where are all the bodies?” Martin asked.
    “They're everywhere. At the beginning, when people got sick, they went to the clinics and hospitals. When they died, they buried them — at the beginning. Then they started the mass graves. I've seen a few. Finally, they just loaded them on trucks and dumped 'em in the river. If they get to the ocean, they're shark bait. It was noxious for a while, but the river cleans itself pretty fast with this kind of rain. Buried in the ground, a body stays nasty for a long time. ”
    Diaz didn't say anything for half a minute. The street rose slightly as it went over one of the larger irrigation canals that crisscrossed the city. The water in it was smooth and flowed steadily.
    “But whatever else you've seen, it don't compare to a mass grave. They used dump trucks to unload 'em and bulldozers to cover 'em up. Moms, dads, teenagers, all just germ bags after MIV messed 'em