by Urban, Tony
“Ever get a good look at his teeth? They look like rotten kernels of corn.”
Solomon clenched his fists and, in doing so, the wrench slipped and he slammed his knuckles into the undercarriage, ripping the flesh away from the bone. He stayed quiet though. He wouldn't let those cows know they’d got under his skin.
The blood dripped off his hand and splashed against his face in fat, ruby-colored raindrops. The metallic flavor of it lit up his taste buds as it streamed into his mouth and across his teeth, which were not unlike rotten corn at all, truth be told.
Solomon Baldwin wasn’t big on mottos or slogans or sayings, but if he had to choose a few words to live by, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you,” would have been a good start. That was especially true the last few months.
He’d long suspected his wife was cheating on him again. She dyed her hair bleach blonde and lost half a stone or more. But it was more than that. It was her demeanor. The bird glowed, and she hadn’t glowed like that in years.
Proving it was another matter. He’d hired on extra employees at his construction firm, only going out when he needed to bid jobs or meet with clients, all so he could spend more time at home. Only that didn't work. She went out more.
He offered to tag along on her little errands. “It’ll be like we’re dating again,” he assured her, but she wouldn’t hear it. “I’m going tanning,” was the common excuse. The bird should well be the color of a Hershey bar for as much time as she professed to spend in tanning beds. But he’d never let on that he suspected anything. He wanted proof before he acted.
Now, it seemed he’d got his proof from two busybody neighbors, and there’d be hell to pay. Growing up in Birmingham, the other lads called him Sol. At least, that’s what most people assumed. Sol, short for Solomon. Only they weren’t really calling him Sol. His nickname was Saw. And he wasn’t afraid to use his teeth.
He wiped the blood away from his mouth with the back of his uninjured hand and in the process, smeared red across the bottom half of his face. He could feel the hot wetness of it against his skin and slid on his back across the rough pavement and into the light of day. As he rolled onto his belly, then raised up on his knees. The gossipy bitches couldn’t help but look.
Solomon never lost eye contact with them as he rose to his feet. “Wotcha.”
The women looked at each other, eyes narrowed, and Solomon thought they looked like rabbits ready to run from a hungry fox.
“Excuse me?” the uglier of the two asked.
“I’m sorry ladies. It’s the Brummie slipping out of me.” He strolled toward them, every step full of purpose. “Just a way of saying ‘howdy’ back home.”
When he reached them, he had to battle back a grin when each took a step away. Solomon was as wide as the two of them put together, but only an inch or two taller. What he lacked in height, he made up in power.
“Oh. Well, hello to you, too, Mr. Baldwin.”
He gave a broad smile that showed almost all of his remaining teeth. “Fine day out, is it not?”
The less ugly of the two nodded and gave a nervous titter. “It sure is. A good day to do some repairs. And cheaper than going to a mechanic, right,” she said with a motion toward his car.
Solomon looked from the women to the car, then back again. “If I do the work, I know it’s done right. Don’t have nothing to do with money at all. I got plenty o dat. Or have you heard otherwise?”
She lost her fake smile and glanced at her friend (help me!) who remained closed mouthed. “No, I… I didn’t mean that at all. I just meant that garages are so overpriced. You know?”
“I know. Course, I know. Be a fool not to. Do you think I’m a fool?” He could almost feel the fear coming off their bodies like electricity from power lines and it made him happier than he’d been in weeks.
He knew they were ready to flee, but he wanted to draw the fun out a bit longer, so he looked at the cooing brat buckled into the buggy. The boy was about a year old with a fat face and pallid skin. Drool dribbled from his mouth and Solomon saw white bits poking from his pink gums.
“Looks like he’s gettin his tuttie pegs already.”
The women exchanged another confused and fearful glance. “His what?” the mother asked.
He reached down with his blood and grease stained hand and pushed the toddler’s upper lip to show the teeth. “Tuttie pegs. Baby teeth, I guess you birds call them.”
“Oh, yes. He’s teething almost nonstop lately.”
Solomon drew back his hand and left behind a smear of black and red on the boy’s small, pinched face. The mother looked down with dismay and extracted a wet nap from her pocket. When she went to use it, Solomon grabbed her wrist.
“He’ll be aw right. Little blood and grease is just what a boy needs.” He increased the pressure of his grip, but exerted far less than force than he was capable of producing. "Makes a man out of im.”
He released her hand. A white outline remained behind as she drew back, dropping the wet nap to the sidewalk.
“I’ll get that for you. Wouldn’t want to leave trash lyin around in this fine neighborhood.”
As he bent at the waist to pick up the napkin, the two women jumped forward like someone had shot off a starter’s pistol. “Thank you, Mr. Baldwin.”
“Don’t mention it. And call me Saw. All my friends do.”
He watched them scurry down the street like the scared rabbits they were. As they disappeared around the corner, he thought to check his watch. His wife should have been home an hour ago. But that was okay. He’d be waiting for her.
Chapter 7
Almost everyone thought it was the cities that were cesspools overflowing with assholes with no morals or human decency, but wanna be Mayberrys like the pissant town in which Aben currently found himself were much worse.
Growing up, he’d always heard about small-town values, but in real life, when you were an outsider passing through their borders, their arms were never open and their welcome was never warm. That’s why he found himself handcuffed to a lead pipe inside what was possibly the smallest police station in the U.S.
He’d arrived in town the night before. A long-haul trucker on route to Kansas City picked him up in Boston where he’d been panhandling outside a Whole Foods. Aben wasn’t looking for a ride, but he’d been rambling around Massachusetts for seven or ten days and was short on cash. New England was pretty, but so damned expensive.
The trucker, Jay or Ray, Aben couldn’t remember which, was a talker, and during the eight or so hours they spent rolling along the East Coast highways, Aben heard the man’s life story backward and forward. Jay or Ray didn’t listen much, but that suited Aben fine as he didn’t care to be heard.
Crudely cut out pictures from skin magazines filled the cab. Jay or Ray seemed to have a particular fetish for assholes and several perversely close-up clippings decorated the dash. During the long ride, Aben came to view them as an obscene version of connect the dots. One time, he made a spaceship.
Jay or Ray was a gargantuan man who wore a button-down shirt which was at least two sizes too small. Aben kept waiting for the buttons, which were under constant duress, to pop off like tiny round missiles. He was afraid one might put his eye out. The worry kept him awake the entire trip.
Three fourths of the way through Pennsylvania, an accident forced them off the turnpike and onto narrow two-lane roads. Jay or Ray, who had been perfectly pleasant until that point, grew increasingly sullen with each laborious mile.
His mood turned even darker when he almost steamrolled a whitetail deer that bounced in front of the truck as the eighteen wheeler rolled down a steep hill, forcing Jay or Ray to slam on the brakes and come to a squealing stop, which sent the trailer skidding dangerously to the side before the trucker got it back under control.
“Cocksuckersonofabitchfuck!” Jay or Ray blurted out with enough vehemence to send spittle flying into the windshield.
Aben
laughed. That was a poor decision, and as soon as they hit the next town, Jay or Ray said it was best to part ways. His cab was a dictatorship, and it was not up for debate.
As far as Aben could tell, the town where the trucker abandoned him consisted of one gas station, a blinking yellow light, and a pizza shop, which sat between a few shuttered storefronts. He decided he was in the mood for Italian and ventured inside.
A purple-haired teenage girl with so much acne on her face she could have been the before picture in a Proactiv ad, leaned on the counter. She half glanced up from her cell phone, then took a better look when she realized the customer was a stranger.
In fairness, Aben understood he didn’t make the best first impression. His clothes had gone unwashed for several weeks and his body in almost as long. He had a wild, patchy beard that stretched high onto his cheekbones and made him look more like a werewolf with mange than Grizzly Adams.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Aben scanned the menu above her head. “I’ll take two slices of pie and a Dr. Pepper.”
She chewed the inside of her lip, her eyes turned down to the counter to avoid his face. “Umm… We don’t got no pie.”
Aben examined her. Her vacant, bovine expression confirmed she wasn’t cracking wise.
“Pizza will be fine. Two slices, please.”
She punched the cash register. “$5.30.”
Aben reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of ones. He peeled off six and extended them to her. She took them with her fingertips and deposited them into the register. She dropped his change on the counter rather than put it in his open palm.
“Be a couple a minutes.”
Aben turned toward the seating area which was free of other patrons. He slid into a grimy booth and stared out at the empty street while he waited. In the time that passed, not a single car drove by. Happening town, that was for certain.
Aben looked around for a jukebox. It seemed like the type of place that would have one, but it did not. The overhead fluorescent lights did little to brighten the restaurant. If the sticky laminate table was any indication, that was for the best. Numerous chips and deep gouges marred the linoleum tile on the floor and the floor itself was long overdue for mopping. Heck, forget mopping, it needed a hazmat team.
Pizza-face brought his slices and soda, then waited until he looked up at her.
“We’re gettin’ ready to close.”
“It’s not even seven o’clock. What time do you close?”
“Soon.”
“Can I at least eat first?”
She spun on her heels and stomped away. Good old small town hospitality.
The slices of pizza were big and greasy, but bland. Not enough sauce and too much generic mozzarella. Aben had to wash down the thick, under-cooked crust with his Dr. Pepper, which itself was watery and flat.
He’d barely choked down the first piece when the girl called out from the counter. “Can you go, now?”
Aben ignored her and chomped on piece number two. Before he could finish it, flashing blue lights appeared in the plate-glass window. Of all the shitty towns to get dropped in.
The door opened and a stout, mustachioed cop wearing a generic police uniform and a hat two sizes too large for his tiny head strolled in. Pizza-face pointed at Aben and the cop walked over and sat down across from him.
“Mind if I have a seat?”
“You already did, Chief,” Aben said. Once upon a time he’d had better control of his mouth, especially around authority figures, but that skill had long since dissipated.
“Suppose that’s true.”
The cop flashed a toothy grin revealing teeth so white and perfect they could only be dentures. He didn’t look to be out of his forties, and Aben wondered if his tooth loss was due to poor dental health or if someone had knocked the real ones out. Please be the latter, he thought.
“I’m Officer Dolan. And we’ve got a complaint against you for loitering.”
“Not loitering. Eating,” Aben said and took another bite of the crappy pizza to prove his point. “And this is a restaurant. Albeit a sad excuse for one.”
“I’m going to need to see some I.D.”
“Don’t have any.”
“You don’t have I.D.?”
“I do not.”
“No driver’s license?”
“Don’t drive.”
“What about a picture I.D. to do your banking? I mean, how do you cash checks?”
Aben looked at the Podunk piece of shit and thought he might be one of the stupidest men he’d ever met. “Do I look like I get a lot of checks, Chief?”
Dolan’s fake smile vanished. “Stand up.”
“I’m just trying to eat the food I paid for. I’m not breaking any damned laws.”
Dolan shoved the paper plate containing the remnants of the cardboard pizza onto the grimy floor.
“Up. Now, Asshole.”
Aben sighed and stood.
“Put your hands behind your back.”
Again, he obliged. Officer Dolan slapped a pair of metal handcuffs onto him as tight as they would go. How bush league. They don’t even use zip ties.
Dolan steered Aben past the counter where Pizza-face watched smug and satisfied. “Thank you so much! I’ve never been so scared of no one before.”
“Nothing to worry your pretty, little head over, Susie. I’ve got this under control.”
She smiled for the first time all evening and batted her glued on, fake eyelashes at the officer like he was some kind of matinee idol.
Aben knew better, but he couldn’t help himself. He looked her right in the eyes. “Miss, I highly recommend you take that six dollars I gave you and buy yourself some Noxzema.”
Then Aben laughed and laughed. Until Dolan slammed his face into the metal door frame.
When Aben came to, he was sitting on the toilet and the first site he saw was the top of Officer Asshole’s balding head as he sat behind an industrial green metal desk and filled out paperwork. When Aben attempted to stand, his left hand caught on the water pipe going into the bottom of the holding tank and the unexpected snag jerked him back onto the seat.
Dolan looked up with a sneer. “Have yourself a nice nap?”
With his free right hand Aben rubbed the goose-egg on his forehead.
“Got some aspirin if you want some.”
“I’m good,” Aben said as he glanced around the small room and saw it was just the two of them. The cop was shorter than him and much thicker around the middle, but he must be a strong prick if he dragged him around solo.
Dolan tapped his paperwork with his index finger. “You’d be even better if you’d cooperate with me.”
Aben examined Dolan up and down and determined he was most likely a local high school hero twenty years removed and gone to seed. He stayed silent.
“Just tell me your damned name. I’ll run you through the system and so long as you don’t have any warrants we’ll get you out of here with nothing but a fine,” Dolan said.
Aben tilted his head back and stared at the drop tile ceiling. “I have done nothing wrong.”
“That’s what you keep saying, but if that’s so, tell me--” He coughed so hard his torso seemed to spasm. He got out, “Who the fuck,” before hacking away again.
Dolan bent at the waist and coughed a good half a minute, his face turning scarlet. Maybe he’ll stroke out, Aben thought and his lips turned up in a small smile. But it passed and Dolan caught his breath. He pulled out a handkerchief and hocked a thick wad of mucous into the white folds. He examined the goo for a moment, then returned the cloth to his pocket.
“Whew. That one was intense,” Dolan said.
Aben recalled a truck stop diner he’d stopped at with Jay or Ray earlier that day. Seemed like everyone was coughing or sneezing, even the waitress who served him his turkey on rye. She’d hacked all over his sandwich, but at least she didn’t call the cops on him.
Dolan took a few moments to catch
his breath. Then he grabbed his keys and flicked off the lamp on his desk.
“Enough of this shit. If you aren’t going to cooperate, you and your smelly ass can sit here alone til the morning.” He stood and headed to the door. “The relief officer comes on at seven. After that, one of us’ll take you to the county lockup.”
Aben noticed the clock on the wall showed only a few minutes past eight.
“You can’t leave me handcuffed to the damned toilet for eleven hours.”
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want as long as you want to remain the man with no name.”
“What if I need a drink?”
Dolan laughed and coughed at the same time. “Toilet’s right under you. Don’t know how clean it is. I’ve never been much for housekeeping, but it’s wet.”
He flicked off the overhead light when he left. Aben waited for his eyes to adjust to the few remnants of daylight that drifted through the room’s only window. He licked his lips and thought they seemed dry all of a sudden. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 8
It all happened too fast. We never had a chance, Jorge Bolivar thought as he surveyed the pandemonium on the streets.
It had been only three days since his unit had received reports of the outbreak. The army trucked them from North Carolina to Philadelphia, which everyone was referring to as “the hot zone.” Their orders were to quarantine the city to control an outbreak of a new strain of the flu, and maybe that was true in the beginning. When their boots hit the pavement though, it was clear this wasn’t the flu, at least not flu like he, or anyone else, had seen before.
They collected truckloads of dead animals — rats and birds and cats and dogs — and hauled them away to be incinerated. It hit the people soon after. It started with typical cold symptoms, a wet cough and runny nose, then progressed to some type of fever induced delirium.