Chapter 7.0: The Tire Shop

  Dave was jogging when he heard the tapping.

  Metal on metal. Rhythmic. A pattern. Three short, three long, three short. Pause. Again. Three short, three long, three short.

  SOS.

  He slowed. The sound was coming from somewhere off Route 9, behind the strip of small businesses to his left. A dry cleaner with its windows blown out, a tax preparer's office that had somehow survived intact, and Kowalski's Tire & Auto, a cinder block building with two bay doors, one open, one closed, and a sign that Dave had driven past a hundred times without reading.

  He'd read it now. Kowalski's. The name landed somewhere vague. A face, maybe. The guy who'd done his snow tires last December. Big hands, quiet, a mechanic who told you what was wrong with your car without trying to sell you anything extra. Dave had appreciated that. Sarah had appreciated it more. She'd said "finally, an honest one" the way she said things that were compliments disguised as complaints about everyone else.

  The tapping continued.

  On his back, Emma turned her head toward the sound. "Bah?" she said. She'd been doing that with new noises. The questioning babble, the tilt, the intense focus of a baby trying to sort the world into categories that made sense to her.

  Dave looked at the overpass. It was close now. He could see the concrete span, cars stopped at odd angles on the road surface above, and underneath, shapes of people.

  He looked at the tire shop.

  Dave turned off Route 9 and walked toward the sound.

  The dumpster was behind the second bay, in a concrete alcove that smelled like old rubber and motor oil. The smell was so aggressively normal, so completely pre-apocalypse, that Dave's brain stuttered on it for a second. Oil and rubber. Honest smells. The smells of a place where people fixed things.

  Ron Kowalski was sitting on the ground behind the dumpster, his back against the cinder block wall, a tire iron in his right hand. He'd been hitting the dumpster with it. The side of the dumpster had a dented spot, paint scraped to bare metal, where the tire iron had struck the same place over and over.

  Dave recognized him immediately. It was the guy who helped with the tires. He'd been wearing a Carhartt jacket then, brown, with oil stains on the cuffs that looked permanent. He was wearing it now, unzipped, and his left hand was pressed against his side, against a wad of shop rags that were soaked dark.

  He looked up when Dave came around the dumpster. The tire iron came up too. Quick and defensive.

  Then his eyes found Emma in the carrier. The tire iron lowered.

  Emma found him right back. She leaned forward in the carrier, one hand reaching out, fingers opening and closing in the grabby motion that meant new person, must investigate. She babbled at him, a stream of syllables that contained no words but carried the unmistakable tone of someone making introductions.

  Something in Ron's face loosened. The pain was still there, the wary readiness. But a baby reaching for you was a hard thing to stay guarded against.

  "You're the guy from Maple," he said. His voice was tight.

  "Yeah," Dave said. "You did my snow tires."

  "December. Honda Civic. You needed all four but you asked for two because you were watching the budget. I did all four and charged you for two." He shifted against the wall and his jaw clenched. "Your wife sent cookies."

  "Sarah's cookies. Yeah." Dave was already moving. The go-bag was off his shoulder, the first aid kit out and open on the ground. "Let me see."

  Ron moved his hand. The shop rags came away wet. Underneath was a gash four inches across, deep enough that Dave could see the dark red of muscle underneath. The edges were ragged. Not a clean cut. Teeth marks.

  Emma went quiet. She did that sometimes, shifted from babble to watchfulness when the mood in the room changed. Her eyes tracked Dave's hands as he opened the first aid kit. She knew this kit. She'd watched Sarah pack it, sitting on the bed, grabbing for the roll of tape while Sarah gently redirected her toward Raf.

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  "Dog," Ron said. "Except it wasn't a dog anymore. It was… I don't know what it was. It used to be Mrs. Patterson's golden retriever, maybe. She brings it in sometimes when she gets her oil changed. Friendly thing. Sat in the waiting room and let kids pet it."

  "When?"

  "Hour ago. I was checking the shop. I'd come back to grab tools, stuff I could use, and it came out of the pit. It had been down there in the dark." He swallowed. "I hit it with the iron and it ran off. But it got me first."

  The system had told him, back in the swamp, that Boo-Boo Fixer worked on other people now. Kiss their boo-boos. He looked at the four-inch gash on Ron Kowalski's side and decided that some abilities could wait for field testing.

  Dave tore open an alcohol wipe. "This is going to hurt."

  "Yeah, I figured that part out already."

  Dave cleaned the wound. Ron made a sound through his teeth. A controlled hiss. Dave packed gauze against the gash. Applied pressure. Taped it down with the medical tape from the kit, working carefully because the angle was bad and Ron's breathing hitched every time Dave's fingers got too close to the edges.

  Emma watched the whole thing. When Dave tore the tape, she flinched. When Ron hissed, she made a small worried sound. She reached for Ron again, straining against the carrier straps, her fingers stretching toward his shoulder.

  Ron glanced at her. "She always this friendly?"

  "She hasn't met a stranger yet. Sarah says she'll grow out of it. I hope she doesn't."

  It was Dave-level work, adequate. Done with clean materials from a bag his wife had packed, which made it the best medical care available in a half-mile radius. The gauze held. The bleeding slowed. The tape stuck where it needed to stick.

  "You need to keep pressure on that," Dave said.

  "I know." Ron pressed his hand against the bandage. Then, quieter: "Thanks. I've been tapping for… a while. People came through. I could hear them on the road. They didn't stop."

  Dave didn't say anything to that. There wasn't anything to say. People hadn't stopped. The reasons people walked past a man tapping SOS were reasons Dave understood even if he couldn't accept them. Everyone was scared. Everyone was heading somewhere. Everyone had decided, that their somewhere mattered more than a stranger's tapping.

  Dave put the first aid kit back in the go-bag. "Where were you headed?"

  "Home. Birch Lane. I was at the shop when everything happened.

  "Birch Lane is past the overpass."

  "Yeah."

  Dave looked toward Route 9. The overpass was still there, still occupied. Still the only way through without adding a mile of rough ground, and Ron, with that wound, wasn't doing a mile of rough ground.

  "I'm heading that way," Dave said. "My wife's past it."

  Ron looked at the overpass. At the shapes underneath. At Dave. At Emma, who had gotten hold of a loose strap on Dave's go-bag and was chewing on it with focused determination.

  "Through the people under there."

  "Yeah."

  "You see the gun?"

  "I see it."

  Ron was quiet for a moment. Then he put his hand on the dumpster and pushed himself up the wall. It took effort. Dave could see it. The way his jaw set and his eyes went hard, his body objected to every inch of vertical He got his feet under him. Leaned on the tire iron like a cane. Took a breath.

  "I'm not fast," he said.

  "I noticed."

  "And I'm not going to be useful if things go bad."

  "You've got a tire iron and the posture of a man who knows how to use it. That's useful enough."

  Ron looked at him.

  "All right," he said. "Let's go."

  They walked back to Route 9. Slowly, because Ron's version of walking involved a lean to the right and a pace that made the word "walk" feel generous. The tire iron clicked on the asphalt with every other step, a metronome, and Dave matched his pace to it without thinking about it because that's what you did when someone beside you was hurt. You slowed down. You walked with them.

  Emma kept watch from the carrier. She babbled at the broken buildings, at the orange sky, at the back of Ron's head. She grabbed for Dave's hair when he turned to check Ron's bandage. She kicked her feet against his back, the rhythm she always did when she was getting tired but wasn't ready to admit it. The kicks that started strong and spaced out, like a clock winding down.

  Dave knew the signs. He'd been tracking them. The babbling was slowing. The kicks were farther apart. She was fighting it. She always fought it, but the nap was coming regardless.

  "Stay with me, kid," he murmured. "Little longer."

  Emma said "bah" in a tone that suggested she'd consider it but made no promises.

  Ron glanced over. "She okay?"

  "She's going to fall asleep. And when she does, things get..." Dave didn't know how to explain it to someone who hadn't seen it. "Harder."

  Ron looked at him like he wanted to ask a question. Then he looked at the overpass, now close enough to see the people under it clearly, and apparently decided that "harder" was not what this moment needed.

  They were two hundred yards from the overpass when Emma's breathing changed. The babbling stopped. Her kicks trailed off. Her head did the slow tilt toward the carrier pad, the gradual surrender of a baby who had fought the good fight and lost, the way she always did, mid-thought, one fist still wrapped around Raf's ear.

  The warmth in Dave's chest dimmed. The gold text at the edges of his vision flickered and faded, like a screen powering down. His legs, which had been carrying him and Emma and thirty pounds of supplies without complaint, suddenly registered every mile he'd walked since the nursery.

  Dave kept walking toward the overpass.

  Ron must have felt something change. He looked at Dave. Looked at the sleeping baby. Looked at the overpass.

  "Harder," he said.

  "Yeah," Dave said. "Harder."