by Urban, Tony
Ramey,
Please join me.
It’s safe here.
I promise.
Dad
He included a map and a phone number. Ramey never called the number or responded to the letter. Now, the phones were all out of service and it was too late. Not that it mattered. Whatever was happening here in northern New York was probably happening wherever he was, too.
She heard the trailer door bang open.
“Ramey!” Loretta called out in a gravely rumble.
Ramey absent-mindedly shoved the letter into her pocket as she left her bedroom. By the time she got to the living room (and in a forty-foot-long trailer, that was a short trip) Loretta had already crashed on the couch.
Loretta’s eyes were sleepy and so bloodshot they looked like she'd been crying blood. She turned her head when she heard Ramey’s footsteps.
“Isss terrible ou’ there.”
Ramey sat down at the computer desk and stared at her mother. “I know. And you disappear for half a day. Thanks, Mom.”
“Had to get something.”
Loretta squeezed a plastic baggie she held in her hand. Ramey noticed. She wanted to scream, to tell her mother she was a waste of a life. To tell her she was an awful mother. To tell her she should have left with her dad. But she didn’t. She’d yelled and cried and tried to reason with Loretta thousands of times, but the way the drugs made her feel was more important than anything Ramey had to say, so she said nothing.
“This is for us.” Loretta held out the bag, which included crystal meth and a chunk of black tar heroin.
Ramey stared in disbelief. “Have you lost your mind?”
Loretta tried to sit up, but only managed to half slump against the armrest. “You don’t understand. Isss the end of the world.”
Loretta coughed up a mouthful of blood. She looked at the red spittle in her palm, then to her daughter. “I’m dying, Ramey. Everyone out there’s dying, but they don’t stay dead.”
Ramey wondered what hallucinogens her mother had ingested prior to returning home with this buffet of dope. Loretta was at the stage in her addiction where she would take anything if it was cheap or free.
“What are you talking about?”
“You remember Henry Geary?”
Ramey did. Mr. Geary owned Hank’s, a local pizza joint which everyone in town knew was a front for his real business of selling drugs. It was the same restaurant where Bobby Mack bought the marijuana they smoked before their two minutes of passion.
“He died last night. Everyone knows it. But this morning, I seen him walking around inside the restaurant so I went up to that big glass window and looked inside and, Ramey, he was eating his wife. Eating her!”
Loretta went through another painful coughing fit and Ramey thought she might pass out. She moved to get up, but Loretta recovered and waved at her to stay seated.
“He snot the only one, either. I saw it happening in the alley behind the drug store, too. I tried to tell people, but no one believed me. Isss like it says in the bible. ‘When Hell’s full, the dead will walk the Earth'.”
“That’s not from the bible, Mom.”
Loretta ignored her and opened her bag o’ drugs. “I got this so we can just go to sleep. We can go to sleep and not have to hurt no more. There’s been too mush hurtin' a'ready.”
Ramey saw the sincerity in Loretta’s eyes. This might have been the first honest thing her mother had said to her in years. The irony that Loretta’s best mothering came in suggesting they commit double suicide wasn’t lost on her. She moved to her mother and laid her hand over Loretta’s drug filled fist.
“You don’t have to do this. I’ll throw this out. Then, I’ll go to the hospital and get you actual medicine and you’ll be okay.”
Loretta’s eyes blazed fierce and she jerked her hand free of Ramey’s. She clutched the drugs against her deflated bosom like they were the golden ring and she was Gollum.
“You ain’t taking 'em from me! Don’t you dare!”
Ramey’s temporary compassion vanished. This cold, shrewish woman huddled on the couch wasn’t a mother. She was barely a human being.
“Okay. Do what you want, but leave me alone.”
Ramey retreated to her room and locked the door behind her. She didn’t know if Loretta would actually overdose and, much to her own relief, she no longer cared.
Chapter 18
The chopper soared through the air for over an hour, and the whole time Miller hadn’t spoken another word. Mitch stared out the window as they flew. They passed over cities and suburbs, but for the most recent leg of the voyage, he’d seen nothing but trees and mountains. He’d never had much of a sense of direction and could get disoriented in shopping malls, so he didn’t know if they were heading north, south, east, or west. He wondered if they might have flown to Canada. Wasn’t Canada just a bunch of trees and nothingness?
As the helicopter dropped in elevation, Mitch noticed a small town coming in to view below them. Town wasn’t even the right word for it. Maybe village would do. It looked to consist of a single street and some buildings.
“Where are we?" he dared ask.
Miller looked back at him for the first time since they departed the Marsten Academy. He removed his sunglasses and yellow-green pus seeped from the corners of the soldier's eyes. It reminded Mitch of the time he had pinkeye in third grade, but about a thousand times worse.
“The Greenbriar,” Miller said.
“What’s that?”
Miller coughed into his elbow and smiled. It was the most horrible smile Mitch had ever seen in his life. He imagined that’s how the Grim Reaper would look when he came time to collect your soul and snuff out your candle.
“That’s your safe zone, kid. Where all the little rich pricks like you get to hide out until hell blows over.”
Mitch couldn’t look at him anymore and returned his attention to the ground below. A sprawling white building came into view. A bizarre marriage of limousines and Humvees filled the parking lot. He noticed more helicopters, both coming in for landings and taking off.
The chopper touched down on the roof. Mitch unbuckled and waited for Miller to give him the go ahead. When the copter settled, the soldier cocked his thumb toward the exit.
Mitch moved to the door. The step down was a big one and Miller emoted something that sounded like a wet, thick laugh. “Need a hand?”
He extended his palm, but Mitch shook his head and jumped out.
The whirling propeller turned his long, brown hair into a bird’s nest. He took a step away, but a hot hand caught the back of his jacket.
Miller hissed into his ear. “I hope every one of you rot.”
Mitch pulled himself free and the chopper flew up and away. He thought he could still feel Miller’s sticky breath on his neck and was desperate for a shower. As he tried to shake off the willies, a fit man in a black suit and sunglasses jogged toward him. Secret Service; Mitch could tell with barely a glance.
“Chapman?” His voice was tight and controlled. Mitch nodded. “Come with me. And welcome to the Greenbrier.”
They took an elevator ride down from the roof and Mitch thought the plunge would last forever. The agent never tendered his name and made no attempt at small talk. When the elevator stopped, the doors opened to reveal a long corridor, which looked straight out of the seventies with bright, orange and red seizure-inducing wallpaper.
“This way.” The Agent led him down the hall, the walk so long and brisk that Mitch struggled to catch his breath. He wished he hadn’t taken the Valium. Or that he had more coke. Or, better yet, both.
At the end of the corridor, it seemed they’d reached a dead end, but the agent grabbed onto the wall and the next thing Mitch knew, it unfolded like an accordion and behind it stood a massive stainless steel door. The man then tapped a series of numbers into a keypad. Unseen gears whirled and rotated and the silver door popped open.
The agent swung it outward and Mitch saw the reverse side had a rou
nd handle that you could turn to open and close it from the inside, the kind of mechanisms they had on submarines or bank vaults. Inside was a second, identical door. The agent repeated his keypad trick and opened it. This one was even thicker, two feet deep and even the fit agent seemed to struggle against the weight of it.
Once opened, it revealed a room decorated with red checked wallpaper and black and white floor tiles. Dozens of people in suits and dresses filled the space. To Mitch, it looked like something out of the party scene in The Shining, but he had no time to take in the surroundings before his mother burst from the crowd and wrapped him up in a stifling embrace. Mitch couldn’t remember for sure the last time she’d hugged him like that, but was certain he could still count out his age on one hand when it happened.
“Mitchell, thank God. Thank God you made it.” A statuesque, lithe woman, Margaret Chapmen was taller than Mitch and her breasts pressed awkwardly into his face as she held him. He didn’t pull away. He found comfort in her grip and felt much younger than his sixteen years.
“You’re smothering the boy, Margaret.” It was his father’s curt voice, and at the sound of it his mother let loose. Mitchell looked over to see his father, clad in his trademark navy blue suit, examining him. The man was pushing sixty now, but his hair was still black with only hints of gray speckled throughout. His emotionless face was mostly void of wrinkles — certainly no laugh lines — with only a deep cut between his brows to make him look more like a man than a mannequin.
“You look well, Mitchell.”
They hadn’t seen each other in several months and Mitch knew his haircut would have garnered a lecture under normal circumstances, but this was not normal. “So do you.”
His father put his hand on his shoulder. “We need to take you to admissions.”
“What’s that?”
His father didn’t answer.
The first stop was an examination by a team of doctors. They took his temperature (98.1 degrees) and blood pressure (115 over 74). They shined lights into his eyes, ears, and up his nose. And at the end, a beefy male nurse with a rose tattoo on his forearm stuck a fat, gloved index finger up Mitch’s narrow asshole without bothering to lube up first. Even Rochelle had never gone there. Afterward, someone took his photo and a few moments later he had a new ID badge.
Soldiers led Mitch to a room that was mercifully void of wallpaper. Double-decker bunk beds filled the cavernous space.
A soldier posted at the door pointed at one of the bunks. “That’s yours.”
“What about my parents?”
“You’ll receive nightly briefings.”
The soldier turned away from him and Mitch surveyed the room. A few men occupied bunks, but it was more empty than full. Mitch sat on the edge of his bed and a guy in his twenties with spiked blonde hair nodded at him. He looked somewhat familiar.
“I’m Thad Winebruner. You’re Chapman’s kid, right?”
Mitch vaguely remembered that Winebruner had been in trouble a few months earlier. Drinking and driving, or maybe it was public intoxication. Mitch’s father had informed him of the situation and had added, “His father probably won’t win his next election because of him,” and gave Mitch a look that said, ‘Don’t you dare ruin my career, boy.’
“Mitch,” he said and extended his hand and Winebruner shook it. The blond’s palm was moist and his grip weak. “Is your dad here?” Mitch asked.
“Yeah. They have a huge room where they can hold a joint session of Congress. The show must go on and all that shit.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
Winebruner shook his head. “Not really. I’ve heard rumors. Mostly about some crazy bad flu that’s killing everybody who gets it. But some other shit, too.”
“Like what?”
Winebruner motioned Mitch toward him. Mitch stepped to his bunk and Winebruner glanced around the room to make sure they weren’t being watched. He leaned in close to Mitch and spoke in a hissing whisper.
“Zombie shit!”
Mitch flinched backward. “You’re screwing with me.”
Winebruner shrugged his shoulders. “Believe me or don’t. No skin off my nose.”
The young man flopped back on his mattress and thumbed through a seventies edition of Hustler, leaving Mitch alone with his thoughts.
He’d always hated being a senator’s son, but apparently it had benefits after all. It didn't seem fair they got to hole up in some mega complex, safe from whatever bug was killing people, but there was an old saying about gift horses and Mitch wasn’t about to turn down a safe haven.
He heard someone a few bunks down sneeze. Has to be a coincidence, that’s all. Nevertheless, when he looked down at his arms he saw the fine, dark hairs all standing at attention.
Chapter 19
Blood leaked from the ear canal, trickled over the tragus, and down the earlobe where it formed fat, wet drops that plunged onto the white floor. The way the puddle grew reminded Solomon of that old monster movie, The Blob, and he half thought it might rise off the floor and attack him. Wendy’s vengeance, come to life.
He knew as long as his wife kept bleeding; she was alive, but it had been almost four hours since he welcomed her home by slamming the crescent wrench into the back of her head. He dragged her limp body from the foyer to the kitchen, then sat her upright in a chair and waited for her to come to. Doubts about whether that was going to happen filled his mind with worry. Not because he was afraid she would die. She had that coming. But first Wendy needed to know what she’d done to him.
He’d loved the bitch since he was seventeen-years-old and she was fourteen. She was the daughter of a local barrister and he a street thug more likely to end up in prison than attend university. It took him a good four months to convince her to go out with him, but when she did, he refused to let go.
Despite what many would have thought from looking at him, Solomon could be a charmer when he wanted. Sometimes it was that charm that kept Wendy at his side. Other times, she stayed out of fear. He didn’t care why she stayed as long as she did.
He knew she’d whored around on him in the past. Once, he caught her drawers down in their Birmingham loft, riding a university lad like he was a polo pony. After he beat the boy into a coma in front of her, he packed her a bag and they were on a jet to the U.S. She promised to never do it again. He believed her. And if there was one thing Solomon Baldwin hated more than a lying slag, it was being wrong.
Remembering her lies and whoring brought the anger flooding through him like water through a broken dam. He grabbed a fistful of her bloody hair and jerked her head up. Her eyes remained closed and her mouth fell ajar, allowing pink-tinged drool to dribble out in a slimy rope. He recalled that she’d had a cold the last few days, blowing her nose nonstop and sounding like a goose with the plague.
“Wakey wakey, love. Time to come around and take your medicine.”
She didn’t react. He released her head and let it drop down. Her chin hit her chest and her mouth snapped shut so hard the sound of it made Solomon’s teeth hurt. The sound also gave him an idea.
He leaned in close to her ear, his lips drawn back in a skeletal grin. “If you’re faking, love, best to stop right quick.”
Solomon waited a moment and got no reaction. Then, he pressed his face against the side of her head and took her earlobe between his teeth. He bit down fast and hard. Her blood gushed into his mouth. Hot, wet pennies.
He swallowed a mouthful of it, then clenched his jaws tight as a vise and felt her skin give away as the bottom part of her ear separated from her body. The nickle-sized lump of flesh fell into his mouth and laid on his tongue like a wad of used up chewing gum. He spit it free and it bounced twice when it hit the tile.
Through it all, Wendy didn’t move.
Christ, I must have really scrambled her eggs.
He took his thumb and forefinger and opened her right eyelid. The white sclera had gone red. Not the roadmap of red veins like he’d seen in his d
runk of a father’s eyes growing up, either — completely crimson, like her entire eyeball was filled with blood instead of whatever goo was supposed to be inside. Solomon screwed up his mouth in shock and disgust, then checked her other eye and found the same.
Solomon crossed to the cabinet under the sink, opened it and removed a bottle of ammonia. He wished he had smelling salts, but if there was any chance coming back around, this would do just as well. He popped off the plastic cap and stepped back to his wife.
Solomon held the bottle a few inches away from her face and waited. Nothing. He raised it up, so it touched her nose. She groaned.
This was what he’d been waiting for. “There we go, love. Come back now to the land of the living.”
Wendy groaned again. It didn’t sound like pain. The sound came from deeper inside, from somewhere far down in her diaphragm. It sounded almost inhuman. Solomon didn’t realize it, but he took a step back.
Wendy raised her head up and as she did more of the pink ooze dripped from her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered. Solomon could see her eyeballs darting back and forth beneath the thin layer of tissue. Another groan reverberated from her mouth and when it faded to an end, her eyes opened.
Solomon studied her as she looked around the room. Confused? No, vacant. He took a step toward her, back in arm’s reach and when he did so, her eyes locked on him. You see me now, don’t you?
Almost as if she’d read his thoughts, Wendy unleashed a pained cough that sent red spittle flying from her mouth. It splashed against his face, and for a moment, he stood there, too surprised to react. And in that half-second pause, Wendy was on her feet.
Solomon snapped out of his momentary daze when he saw her diving at him, her crazed face closing in on his own. He realized he still clutched the ammonia bottle, and he smashed the jug across her face. She stumbled backward and he squeezed the plastic, sending a geyser of ammonia into her face.
The momentarily blinded Wendy clawed at her sightless eyes. Her perfectly manicured nails ripped streaks of flesh from her cheeks. Solomon thought they looked like unrolled streamers dangling from her face. Solomon knew she was no longer his wife, she was a monster.