Duncan eyes him, almost as if appraising him. “That is my final answer, Chief. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to stand down and get some chow. If you are smart, you will drop this subject and join us. What do you say?”
I’m on thin ice. One more wrong word, and I’ll be looking for another crew chief job.
“Maybe I could eat something with you guys.
Natalie
“Want a beer or something?” Natalie asks. Her fingers are sticky with blood. She has to fight the urge to wipe them on her jeans or blouse.
Not my blood. Mom’s or Odin’s.
Both bodies are in the hole, and she and Mark are both breathing heavy. Neither of the older people were small. Trying to drag or carry them out here was a chore.
“Sounds good. Won’t take long now.”
She nods, “Probably for the best. Rain’s coming. I’ll be back.”
“Wait Nat, don’t go back in there.”
Turns back to him with an eyebrow raised.
Can’t watch dirt thrown in my mom’s face. I can do without that.
“I can’t stay out here and watch this part, Mark.”
“That’s not what I mean. Let’s see what Odin has in his apartment. Might be better to stay out of your house.
A tear streaks down her face, as she replies, “It’s the new way of things Mark. I better get used to it.”
She walks to the still open back door, and goes in. Blood is smeared across the floor and on the lower parts of the walls. The sight stops her a moment, but she continues on into the kitchen. The scenery doesn’t improve. Blood is spattered and pooled everywhere. Stops at the sink and turns on the water. Hot. Scrubs at the stains. Her hands are almost glowing pink when she is done, and turns the water off.
Water is leaking from the fridge. Using a dish towel, she grabs the handle and opens it. The light doesn’t come on.
Course not! The power is out. A six pack of Yuengling sit on a shelf next to a wedge of cheddar cheese. She grabs the beer and the cheese, then pauses a moment to open a cabinet. Whole box of Ritz crackers. Her last stop is to grab a knife out of the drawer below. The revolver is on the counter where she apparently left it earlier, also.
She organizes it all into a couple of cloth sacks, except for the gun, and leaves everything, for a moment, on the counter. Noise from out front of the house draws her into the living room.
Jacobs
The massive pillared bulk of Interstate 275 looms before him. First Avenue South goes right under it. He is tempted to pause and hide in its shadowed underbelly, but forces himself to go on.
About three blocks west of the fire, he stops beside a boarded over two story office building. The plywood is old and warped. Not recent. This part of town looks pretty rough.
He laughs. I’m rough and tough myself. And I don’t take shit from nobody.
Even with all my aches and pains.
Women and children fear me.
“No bitch is going to leave me like that again,” he says.
Between the rain and sweat, he closes one eye and concentrates on where to go. Three blocks west of here is the edge of a neighborhood of older houses. Just need to secure one. Should be able to find food and water easy then.
What am I going to do? Good question! What am I going to do without the bitch?
Find another!
The minutes crawl by, and he moves at a steady pace, not quite a jog and a little more than a fast walk. He can see the houses and he can see that the closest one is some sort of bungalow. Should be all he needs.
Debbie
The words: “Watch out!” are barely past her lips after she sees an obese woman with a bad leg appear from the shadows behind the receiving doors below her. She watches Trish get knocked down and fall over the rail in the same terrible instant.
The obese woman, one of the things, has a bad leg. It looks so terribly mauled that it must have given out on her. She isn’t getting back to her feet, just wiggling mindlessly near the open door. Meanwhile, a second one is ascending the ramp to join the obese one.
“What do I do Anton?” she shouts.
From a distance, she can hear him bellowing an answer, but she is too caught up in what is unfolding before her to listen.
The second zombie, a large man with broad shoulders is stumbling his way up the ramp toward the wiggling zombie. The man is wearing a black leather coat, zipped up, what look like brown corduroy pants and brown work boots. He even has gloves on. Blood is spattered all over the gloves and pants. If it is on the coat it must be either dried or dripped off. No stain stands out on the black.
“Stay away from her you monster! You hear me? Stay the fuck away from her?”
The man is only fifteen feet below her at most. She watches him rock back on his heels, while standing over the wiggling body of the female zombie. He looks up at her and the left eye is rolled up revealing the white, and the other is brown and focused on her.
“That’s right ugly! Come get me! Forget her!”
To her horror, the zombie does exactly the opposite. He looks over the railing at Trish.
Then he stomps on the head of the zombie inching toward him.
Debbie runs out of things to say.
Talaski
The rain comes fast and hard from an unforgiving sky. Some of the drops hit hard enough to make him wish for a hat. The world has lost its luster.
Don’t look too deep. Take too close a look at what’s going on, and the few reasons to keep struggling to live might disappear.
He takes a moment to look down at himself. There is a long tear at the right knee of his dark green uniform slacks, and the left one isn’t much better. His knees still ache from diving to the ground yesterday, but when added to all his other aches and pains, they fade into the background.
A hand claps on him on the shoulder. “You okay Nick?”
Keller.
Talaski purses his lips and nods. “You?” he replies.
Amy is there holding Keller’s hand. Keller is better than okay, obviously.
“I’m good,” Keller says, smiling. “Better get moving brother.”
The others are passing their little group on both sides. Talaski falls into step with them. “I don’t like this checkpoint being abandoned.”
“Looks bad to me too,” says Amy. “Think we’re doing the right thing going this way, Nick?”
Talaski steps over the first of the bodies. It is a little girl. She looks trampled. Not many people stepped over her. It is hard to focus on any one face or body. There are too many. Here: a grandmother with long wispy hair. There: a teenage girl with a tramp stamp half visible above her jeans. Both are riddled with bullet holes.
“My plans consisted of getting us to this point. Haven’t had time to consider anything much beyond that.”
“I agree,” Keller says. “And I’ll go a bit further. We are a long way from the bridge. We really going to walk that far?”
Amy is nodding. “Why don’t we just drag these bodies out of the way, push that truck out of the way, and keep our fire truck?”
“Great idea, Amy,” Talaski says. “We try to walk all the way to the bridge and we’re dead.
We’re probably dead anyway.
He can tell by the grim look on Keller’s face that he is thinking the same thing.
As if to mock everything they just discussed, the rain falls harder, with the wind carrying it in sheets.
Amy says something, hard to hear, but it sounded like: “I wish I was a princess in a castle right now.”
Dead Eye
He swings over the rail, and drops beside the small, blonde woman. Picks up her gun, and then carefully gets both arms under her and hefts the dead weight onto his left shoulder. She doesn’t stir as he turns and heads for the potato chip truck.
The driver’s door is already open, so without much trouble he manages to drop her into the seat and buckle her in. He puts the pistol in her lap and pulls the door closed.
> One problem down.
The other woman is still yelling at him. He turns back to face her.
“What are you doing, dummy?” she asks. He’s been tuning her out.
How do I get up there?
One way would be to climb up on top of the tractor trailer and then pull myself up onto the roof. Must be a better way.
He walks around the trailer and toward the back of the store. Sees the ladder right away.
The magpie overhead follows him, still questioning. He tunes her out again and makes for the ladder. He ascends quickly and drops to the roof.
“Why don’t you speak?” the magpie wants to know. Up close, she is anything but birdlike. Probably too heavy for some men’s taste. Just about perfect to him, though, even disheveled. He keeps his eyes, without trouble, on hers.
She doesn’t look afraid, but she backs away a step or two.
He reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a pen and pad of paper. Scrawls a message and hands it to her:
“Talk hurts, little bird. I want to help you.”
She reads it aloud, then asks, “So you are a mute?”
He shakes his head, mouths the word: “No.”
She looks confused for a moment. “You will help us?”
He nods, and puts the pad and pen away.
“We’re trapped up here. We can’t get our friend down on the roof. He’s a paraplegic.”
He nods again and looks around. A man is peering around the corner of an air conditioning unit about thirty feet away. He can see one of the man’s legs and his face.
“That’s him, Mister,” the woman says.
He fishes in his pocket again. This time he pulls a badge out and clips in onto his jacket.
She reads:, “Hi I’m Johnny. How can I help you?”
He grins at her, and she smiles back. “Pleased to meet you Johnny. I’m Debbie, and that guy over there is my friend Anton. We’re real glad you came along.”
He makes a brushing away motion with his hand, and starts walking toward Anton. He can feel the blush on his cheeks.
Foster
“Have a seat, Candy,” Foster says, without looking up. His eyes are on a computer monitor on his desk. At the moment, he is sharing Sergeant Preston’s view from Preston’s helmet cam. He can see buildings about fifty feet below, and a few people milling about outside a gate. Preston is talking to one of his squad leaders, when Foster mutes the sound feed.
The Speaker is a woman of medium height, with carefully coiffed brown, shoulder-length hair, and a pleasant agirl next door? face. She is wearing a trench coat, and what looks like some nice spiked boots. He catches a whiff of her perfume as she sits in the chair across the desk from him.
“I prefer Candace, Mr. President.”
Foster looks up into her eyes briefly and replies, “I know.”
“Then you also know, Burt, how ruthless I can be when I want something?”
He winks at her, “Yes I know that, Candy.”
Her smile is frosty. “Then I don’t have to tell you my opinion of my current accommodations versus your set-up here?”
He lets out a long sigh, “Listen to me closely…Candace. I don’t really give a shit about what your opinion is on anything. You biggest problem right now is not appreciating your true value.”
Her mask slips a bit, and the smile fades away.
“I really don’t think…”
“You’re right Candace–You really don’t think. How loyal do you think the people who rescued you and the others are when their own families are either long dead or in jeopardy?”
He watches her take this in. For the most part, she maintains a stony expression, but once she might have blinked back a tear. A moment or two goes by when he finishes talking.
“So, what is your message, Burt? I get the threat, loud and clear, but what do you want me to do?”
Foster steeples his fingers on the desk blotter. He looks into her eyes, and lets his gaze wander down to her full, ripe lips and linger. Cherry red lipstick. Can’t believe I’m even having this thought. Looks back into her eyes.
Message received. What will her response be?
“Really, Burt?” she asks. The look on her face is hard to read. If she is angry she is hiding it well.
He closes his eyes, pictures his wife and children, weighing it all against taking crude revenge on this woman.
“I’ll get back with you, Candace.”
She is on her feet and coming around the desk. He starts to stand, but she pushes him back down. Her lips find his and her hair is a fragrant tumble. Feels her hands at the zipper of his trousers. Her cool fingers find his shaft and he says, “No,” in a whisper, without conviction.
“Too late Burt,” she says, a little half smile on her face, “No more time for thinking.”
Her fingers stroke him, pulling, caressing, and he gasps. Then she is lowering herself between his thighs, sucking his shaft with a vigor and tenderness that shreds any awareness or restraint. The lips pull away. Her fist strokes up and then down, twisting, sliding. Her eyes are on him as she kisses the head, then sucks him back into her mouth. He arches his back, and gives in, moaning and completely forgetting the drama playing out on the monitor on his desk.
Trish
In the dream, she fell. Her husband, Dennis, screamed, “Run, Patty, run.”
But there was nowhere to run.
The three men surrounded them in broad daylight on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Married for less than a day, and already tragedy was about to overtake her.
The leader of the three men stopped in front of them and demanded forty dollars.
Dennis, big, good-natured and maybe just a little naive realized that these three men weren’t shining their sneakers as some kind of joke. She could see the realization of the trouble they were in dawn in his eyes as he looked at the three and struggled to think of a way out.
The sun, blazing hot and pitiless had all five of them running with sweat. Not a trace of a breeze
“I don’t have forty dollars,” Dennis said.
“Two sets of shoes costs you twenty each,” the leader declared. He was tall, and lean–Ropey with muscle. Eyes of a killer.
Trish, or Patty, didn’t say anything. She sensed one wrong word or move, and things would go wrong. Badly wrong.
Dennis wasn’t afraid for himself. Just her. Just pay them!
Too much damn pride, or something.
He gave her one last, sweet grin, and reached for his wallet with his right hand. Trish felt herself tense up. No Dennis, please no!
She watched him bend his knees with his chin dropped, and knew without a doubt what was coming. His left hand rubbed his neck while the right fished for the wallet. An instant later, he threw a left jab, thrusting his shoulder into it and caught the leader square on the chin. He followed it with a right cross, and then the guy behind him stabbed him in the lower back. Looked like a stiletto knife.
Dennis arched up on his toes and screamed. Sank to his knees. “Run, Patty run!” he said, but she just stood there. She stood there and watched as the man stabbed her husband again, then again. So much blood. Someone, probably the third guy ripped her purse from her shoulder and pushed her down. She didn’t resist.
Trish landed on the bloody asphalt, and found herself face to face, and eye to eye with her husband.
Like looking into two green marbles. Dead glass.
“NOooo…”
She wakes with her face mashed against the driver’s window of a potato chip delivery van.
Someone strapped her in. The gun is in her lap.
Who? And why did they leave me here?
Keys are in the van’s ignition. She turns the ignition on, the engine turns over smoothly with a blare of death metal music. She turns the ignition off, and looks around the inside of the van.
The passenger seat is empty except for a clipboard, a box of Fudge Rounds, and a bottle of Zephyrhills water. There is a doorway directly behind and betw
een the seats up front. A lot of potato chips are back there.
Get Anton down, grab his wheelchair and some supplies, and the three of them were home free. Should be easy.
Just rest a bit longer. She closes her eyes.
Falls back down into the dark.
Booth
Hicks drains his third beer, crushes the can, and tosses it toward the small garbage can in the corner of their two-man cabin. “Ah, Michelob sure hits the spot after a day of death and darkness.”
“I’m only drinking this shit hoping to blind myself,” Booth answers.
“You mean that?”
Booth looks at other man over his can and says, “I don’t even like beer. It is just a means to an end.”
“Well, the Coasties sure were generous with the happy juice, eh?” Hicks gestures toward the cooler full of beer sitting on the table. “We’ll be unconscious or happy soon.”
Someone knocks on the door. Before they can answer, a short Coast Guard officer opens the door and enters the room. His hair is cut to regulation, but completely gray. Deep lines furrow his forehead and at the sides of his mouth, and a big mole perches just above his upper lip. The guy looks awfully old for a junior grade lieutenant, but Booth lets it ride.
“What can we do for you, sir?” he asks with only a hint of rancor.
“The First Lady has personally requested a meeting with you two.”
“Is that right, Lieutenant…” Hicks asks, peering near-sightedly as the man’s nametag.
“Lieutenant Graves, soldier.”
Hicks asks, “She say what she wants us for, sir?”
“Not sure, but bring all your gear. I don’t think you’ll be coming back here.”
“We take the beer with us, L. T. ?” asks Hicks. 205
“Actually, I have two men outside who will transfer all your gear for you, including the beer. If you two will just follow me, we’ll get everything settled and be done with it.”
“Lead on, sir,” says Booth.
Natalie
She can hear rain on the front porch’s roof, and glances out the window. Clouds must be obscuring the sun, because it is visibly darker out there. There is a rumble of thunder, but no visible lightning. People are out on the street and in her lawn. One of them lurches up the sidewalk, straight for the front door.
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