NO CIGARETTES

BY
GEOFFREY C PORTER

I woke up around noon; typical for my daily routine. I lit up my last cigarette and went to the computer. It was dead as nails. The light switch produced nothing. I sighed. Mom was supposed to setup an automatic bill pay right to her Visa. She had promised. I hopped in the shower and put on fresh clothes. Grabbing my keys and my wallet, I went out to my car and climbed in. The key turned, but the car didn’t stir to life. I sighed again, stupid brand new DieHard battery. I walked to the sidewalk and noticed a fellow walking with a weird gate towards me. He extended his right hand towards me and opened and closed his mouth. I shrugged it off and turned to the right. It was a short trip to the store for cigarettes, and at this point, I needed a cigarette. When I turned the corner on to Burkhart Street, I noticed the strangest thing. All the cars were stopped in the middle of the intersection as if they’d all crashed together. There were a few injured people milling about, but I thought nothing of it. I walked up to the store and grabbed at the handle. It was dark inside. A customer turned to look at me, and he held up his hands towards me like he was going to grab me and started walking towards me. His mouth opened and closed. I said to myself, hmmm. I closed the door to the store and ran back towards my house. That same fellow I saw walking down the sidewalk was coming towards me. I moved to the right side of the walk and expected him to take to his right side, but instead he just started coming towards me with his hands reaching for me. I thought, fine, I’ll walk in the grass. I stepped into the grass, and so did he. I dodged into the street. He came after me. I shouted, “I don’t want any trouble!” He just groaned at me and reached for me with his hands with his mouth opening and closing. I said, “I’m warning you!” He kept coming. When he got within arm’s reach of me, I punched him in the nose as hard as I could. He went down. But he started to get to his feet right afterwards. I started to run to my house. He started coming after me walking slowly with a weird slightly slanted gait. I stopped running after a bit, because, quite frankly, I’m not a runner. I made it into the house and locked the door behind me. I tried to think, what the fuck is going on. I looked out the window, and the fellow I punched was at my door clawing at it with his hands. I went into the basement to my room and grabbed an aluminum baseball bat. My knife called out to me, and I pocketed it too, thinking, backup weapon. I went out the back door of the house and shouted at the fellow at my front door, “Hey!” He turned and looked at me and started walking towards me again. I shouted, “I’ll fuck you up, mister!” He just kept coming. I grabbed the bat with both hands and took a swing at the side of his head with all my might. He made no move to dodge or ward off the blow. He went down. I swung down on his skull again and again until I saw brains. I sighed. I had never imagined killing a man, but what was I supposed to do? I walked back towards the gas station, for I still needed cigarettes in the worst way. I was a chronic smoker, and I needed them. I walked back towards the store. This time the people milling around noticed me and started coming towards me. I looked at my bat, and I counted the dozen or so people coming at me. I decided I needed to run and think. So I ran for a bit. Once my lungs burned nicely, I stopped and panted. I thought to myself, what I need is a frigging gun: preferably one that holds lots of bullets. There are two guns stores that I knew about, one in Beavercreek and one in Dayton. The one in Dayton was closer, but I was already moving towards the one in Beavercreek, and Beavercreek tended to be more deserted. I started walking. No cars drove down the streets, and I pondered the idea that I was simply dreaming. Then I thought to myself, no, if this were a dream, I’d have cigarettes. I turned right on Spinning Road, and a dog saw me and growled. A really big dog. I said, “Nice pooch.” He started coming towards me. I kept walking, hoping not to get bit. The closer he got to me the louder his growls became. I clubbed him on the top of his head, and he went down. I ran the rest of the way to Linden and turned left. I looked at the convenience store on the corner and thought, cigarettes. But the man behind the counter had a dumb stare, and I didn’t feel like killing or dieing for a cigarette. At least not until I had some firepower. I kept walking, and the sun beat down on me. Everything was a strange quiet with no cars running anywhere. I saw the gun store and it hit me, Electro-magnetic-pulse. EMP. Like the kind nukes generate. That’s the only thing that would take out the power grid and kill all the cars. But, since when did nukes turn people into walking zombies? I reached the door to the gun store and paused. I pushed at the door with my bat, and three shots rang out in quick succession punching three holes in a tidy little triangle in the door. I shouted, “I’m human!” A pretty sounding female voice yelled back, “Prove it!” I thought for a moment, and then I shouted, “Let’s have sex!” The woman laughed and said, “Come in.” I stepped through the doorway and looked around. A camping lantern filled the room with a dark light, and a girl about my age stared back at me with a gleam in her eyes, although it could have been the lantern. I looked her up and down. Neatly tied brown hair, brown eyes, pretty face, nice breasts, and nice hips. Long legs that stretched all the way to the floor. She growled, “Don’t look at me like that.” “I just want a gun. I’m out of cigarettes.” “What are you going to do? Blow your brains out?” “No. I’m going to get a pack of cigarettes after I get a gun.” She looked me over and asked “What happened?” I said, “Some kind of Electro-magnetic-pulse. I’m guessing maybe somebody built a new kind of a-bomb and dropped one on the city. I was asleep in my basement.” She nodded, “I was in my basement when the power shut off.” I started cataloging the weapons in the shop. I was interested in picking something that they had plenty of extra magazines for, and I found a Colt AR-15 with magazines and a Colt .45 with magazines. I rifled through the ammo and started loading magazines feverishly. I hadn’t smoked in ages, and it was starting to get to me. The girl said, “My name is Lisa.” I said, “I’m David.” The girl said, “You could quit smoking.” I said, “Fuck that.” I strapped on a shoulder holster and slid the loaded .45 into it. Then I grabbed a field jacket off the rack and filled all the pockets full of loaded magazines. I looked at Lisa and said, “Nice grouping.” She frowned, “What!” “When you shot the door, you made a nice grouping of shots.” “Oh. Yeah. I know how to shoot.” I started looking around the room for anything else I might need. Lisa said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “Get some cigarettes. Then, I think I’ll go downtown. There’s an underground garage downtown, and maybe the cars will start. Then I’m driving out of this town.” Lisa said, “You can’t just leave me.” I said, “Come with me.” Lisa said, “We’ve got ammo here. There’s rations and bottled water in the back; we can make a stand. Rescuers will come.” I said, “I’m not staying in one place, and I need cigarettes.” “You need to quit smoking. Hasn’t anybody ever told you it’s bad for your health?” “My grandparents all four of them smoked into their seventies.” “You’d have ten times better chances of getting in my pants if you quit smoking.” “Ten times zero is still zero.” “Who says you’re starting out at zero?” I looked her over once again. She was hot. I said, “Prove it: kiss me.” She walked right up to me and planted a peck right on my lips. My loins burned like only in my dreams. I said, “I could quit smoking, I guess.” “That’s the spirit. Now, forget this plan of going downtown. It’s going to be swarmed.” I shook my head. “The power shut off at around nine. Everybody will be in the offices downtown. The streets will be practically empty.” Lisa sighed. “We can’t just stay in one place. We have to find a car.” She said, “I’ll go with you, but you’re not smoking.” I winked at her, “I wouldn’t dream of it.” She grabbed me by the front of my jacket and pressed her lips against mine with a ferocity that would have injured a weaker man. I kissed her back, and we started walking. To conserve ammo, we avoided shooting any of the walking zombies unless they were directly in our path. They were easy to outrun, so we mostly ran. The zombies started to get thicker downtown, and with well aimed shots for the head, we made our way into downtown proper. We had to kill maybe a half dozen zombies in the garage. I found the keys to the cars in the basement and grabbed a handful. One was marked, Porsche, and I pushed the alarm button on the key chain. A sleek red car chirped happily and flashed its lights. I turned to Lisa and said, “I said this would work!” Lisa smiled, “I only doubted you a little. Where are we going to go?” I paused, “Let’s head south first. I wonder if Cincinnati got bombed.” Lisa shrugged. We climbed in the Porsche and headed out of the garage. I dodged the car around zombies wandering the streets and pushed the gas down all the way when I made it to the I-75 on ramp. The car was nice. It sounded like a jet engine at high RPM. I had it cranked up to over 100 mph. The roads were clear, and we passed the Dayton mall. I saw a roadblock in the distance, and I slowed the well oiled machine to a crawl. A man with an assault rifle waved to us. I pulled the car to a stop. The man glared at us. Lisa asked, “What happened?” The soldier shrugged, “Some new experimental reactor at the air base went awry. It only affected Dayton.” Lisa nodded. The soldier tilted his head to the side and asked, “You guys didn’t kill any of the affected people did you?” I laughed. The soldier’s eyes went wide, “They’ll return to normal after a few days!” My eyes closed, and I wished for a cigarette. He has been on this great quest to be a writer for eight years. In May, one of his short stories is being published by an ezine. His first published story. He recently self published five novels and intend to pursue English and Literature classes at Wright State University starting in the summer of 09.

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