ii
Corky watched everything that went on around him, and he was happy. Stan and Luis sat in a pair of upholstered Victorian armchairs, playing chess. Flames licked inside the largest fireplace he’d ever seen, illuminating them with soft yellow light. Larry rose from his seat at the bar and tossed another log on the fire. He paused for a moment and stared at the flames before progressing back from where he came. Dennis reclined in the far corner, wearing a blue satin smoking jacket that made him look like the host of Masterpiece Theater: Redneck edition. His guitar lay across his lap, his fingers strummed the strings. He played a song Corky knew well.
Corky opened his mouth and belted out an off-key version of Skynard’s Three Steps.
Larry, Hector, and Doug, who watched this impromptu concert from the bar, clapped. Corky turned to them and bowed. “Thank you, thank you very much,” he said in his best Elvis. “Ah’ll be here all week.”
“Excuse me, guys, but can we quiet down a bit?” asked Stan, his eyes fixed on the chessboard. “I’m trying to figure out whether I should castle or not.”
Dennis placed his guitar on the floor beside him. “Who you guys think you are, Kasparov and Big Blue or something?” he said.
“Who’re they?” asked Corky. Everyone broke out laughing. “No, I’m serious,” he said, which made them laugh even harder.
Doug, his hardened face in a state of slack that Corky hadn’t seen before, giggled out of control. He tumbled off his stool and dropped with a thud. That didn’t stop his hooting. He rolled around, snorting and clapping. His voice slurred. Corky wondered how many drinks the kid had tossed back.
“Poor boy,” said Dennis. The silver fox went over and helped Doug to his feet. “Looks like what we have here is soldier who can’t hold his liquor.”
“Fuck you,” said Doug. He hiccupped. “I’m…fine.”
“All right, I think this fiesta’s over for you,” said Hector. He rubbed his round belly, snatched Doug’s unfinished drink off the bar, and tossed its contents in the sink.
“I think you’re right,” another voice stated. Corky peered over his shoulder. Horace stood in the doorway. The old man’s face was drawn out and exhausted. His shoulders hunched as if they were too heavy to hold up.
“Where you been, Doc?” asked Corky.
“Outside,” he replied.
“You coming to join the party?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m tired.”
Luis stood up. “So what we owe the honor of the visit?”
Horace pointed at the sloshed young marine. “I came to see the boy,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you hadn’t tainted him yet.” Doug tried to give a thumbs-up and lost his balance. He would have fallen if not for Dennis’ bear hug. To this sight Horace replied, “I see you already have.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout me, Doc,” mumbled Doug. “I gots it under cun-cun-control.”
“Sure you do.”
“I almost said cunnilingus,” the kid said.
Corky laughed. “It’s okay, Dougie. Let Ho-bag here take you to bed.” He shielded his mouth with his hand and aimed his next words in Horace’s direction. “He’s gonna pass out something fierce.”
Horace nodded in affirmation. The old man then stepped forward, wrapped Doug’s free arm around his neck, and pried him away from Dennis.
“See you guys tomorrow!” Doug slurred as Horace guided him out of the room. “We’ll pick up…where we left off.”
When they were gone Corky turned to his cohorts. He gazed at them all with adoration. It had been a long time since he’d felt this much connection to anyone. He hoped – strike that, he knew – that they’d be friends forever.
As long as they don’t find out about you, chided his conscience.
He shook his head, smiled, and hushed up that part of his brain. They would never find out, not as long as he had a say in it.
“Let’s live it up, guys,” he said. His grin widened. “This place is ours now!”
* * *
Horace shut the door to Doug’s room. He felt confident the boy would sleep it off and wake with only a minor headache in the morning. This assumption wasn’t a relief to him. The walk he’d taken to clear his mind had done nothing but add more questions to an already chock-full mental questionnaire. Because of this, the prospect of caring for young, naïve Doug was an escape mechanism. In doing so he could hold back his frustration at the lack of answers by performing a monotonous task. Now, with Doug sleeping, that was all gone. He thought that perhaps he should go join the party and drink until he forgot his troubles, but decided against it. Drinking never made him forget. It just made the remembering worse.
He paused at the door, heard Doug snore, and shook his head. The reason he found the situation so comforting became clear to him – for the first time since they met, Doug hadn’t treated him like an inconvenience. He leaned back and thought about all the times the kid would utter little insults under his breath whenever Horace tried to explain his motives, such as why he wanted to visit Bridgewater, or pilfer medical and research supplies from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO, or why he wouldn’t talk about whatever discoveries he’d made while searching for the answers that seemed to avoid him so deftly. It was as if Doug intentionally needled him.
And yet he and the boy were the only two staying in the lavish upper level of the hotel. The others had decided to take up residence in the staff quarters on the first floor. Perhaps that was because they didn’t want to have to scale forty some-odd steps after downing a gallon of whiskey between them. But why did Doug stay? The blind part of his psyche, the division that feared human interaction, didn’t want to understand. Yet the branch that existed in concrete reality understood perfectly: while the ragtag crew from the diner had taken him in and treated him like a brother, kinship was not what the young soldier wanted.
He wanted to be cared for. He wanted to be guided. He wanted a father.
But Doug seemed to fight this every step of the way, as if he was constructed from opposing ideals that constantly butted heads. In some ways Horace was grateful for that. He’d already acted as a patriarchal figure for someone he’d grown to love and in the end he’d lost her. In the world they now found themselves occupying, he didn’t want to risk getting that close with anyone ever again. It had been hard enough dealing with what happened to Kelly. He still wasn’t over it.
He shrugged, waddled down the hall, and entered his room. He eased the door shut behind him. Candles sputtered, casting the objects on his desk in ghostly light. Magnifying glass, slides, test tubes, beakers, Bunsen burner with portable butane canister, battery-powered centrifuge, piles of notebooks and pens. Ghostly was the right word to describe them, all right, for without a subject they were useless, shadows from a nonexistent reality. Just like him.
He thought of his daily treks up and down the mountain, journeys that his old, failing body was in no shape to persevere. He’d found nothing in the few weeks they’d been here. It was as if, after he and Carl’s final confrontation, the mutated masses had gone elsewhere. Wrathchild seemed to have been wiped from existence. He hoped that were true, had a moment of doubt, and then glanced at his worthless collection of tools once more.
If the disease went away, what use would he be to anyone? Why was he still alive at all? He tossed those questions aside and told himself he should rest. His dying lungs caused him discomfort. He knew his end would come soon. That idea should have come as a relief.
It wasn’t.
He blew out the candles.
iii
Doug circled the perimeter of the massive concrete wall, rifle pressed firmly against his shoulder. He never took his eyes off the trees. His head throbbed from the previous evening, which was the first time he’d ever consumed more than two alcoholic beverages in one sitting. He paid for it dearly. Never again, he thought.
The chill in the air and the sound of his boots as they crunched the snow helped ease his discomfort. These were sounds he knew,
experiences he understood, solid things he could hold onto. They were welcomed forays into normalcy, a concept that had taken a vacation long ago.
A dark figure darted out from behind a tree. It took him by surprise and he dropped to his belly. He looked through the rifle’s scope but could see nothing. Thinking his eyes might be playing tricks on him he panned from the left to right, but still couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Probably just snow falling off the branches, his reason said, but that didn’t seem right. He felt like he was being watched.
He scooted forward on his elbows and cupped his palm over the scope to fend off the late-afternoon sun. “Where are you?” he whispered. “I know you’re here. Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
The invader revealed itself. A deer – a doe, to be exact – emerged from behind a giant oak tree. Tan hair covered a sleek body held up by long legs. Huge, compassionate black eyes stared at him from either side of its oblong head. It blinked, and there was no fear in its expression. It appeared to sigh, an act that seemed to say, thank God it’s only a human. It poked its shiny nose into the snow again and continued the search for food.
It was the first animal Doug had seen since the world fell apart, a beacon of hope from out of nowhere. He gradually stood up and slid down the hill, moving as quietly as possible. The doe paid him no mind as he crept up from behind; it just kept on wandering, nose fixed on the ground. This was the perfect opportunity to take a shot. It had been a couple years since he’d tasted venison. His mouth watered. He thought of his dad, who’d taken him on a hunting trip for his seventeenth birthday, and his body started to tremble. He bit his lip, grunted, placed the animal in his crosshairs, and tapped the trigger.
“Don’t shoot.”
From his vantage point, it appeared the deer had spoken those words. He lifted his head and squinted. Then the voice came again – “Don’t shoot, leave it be,” – and he spun around. It was the old man. He stood holding a notebook, his glasses slipping down his nose. He wore a winter jacket at least four sizes too large. Specks of ice clung to his gray beard. Doug thought the old timer looked like he should be studying crashed spacecraft in the Arctic. That would be better than right here, right now, telling him what to do.
“Why not?” he snapped.
“Because,” the old man replied, “we don’t know why it’s here.”
“Why it’s here? We’re in the fucking woods, man! Where else would it be?”
Horace lowered his gaze and pushed up his glasses. “When was the last time you saw a deer, son? When was the last time you saw anything alive, other than ourselves?”
Doug chewed on his lip. “Two months?” he said. “Maybe more?”
“Exactly. This is a groundbreaking moment we have here. We can’t just kill the poor thing. We have to follow it. We have to find out how it survived.”
He nodded. Shame tickled his neck red. “I know,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder. The deer was gone. “Shit.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It ran off.”
“Come now, son,” said Horace. “You’re a Marine, aren’t you? Don’t you know how to track?”
“Yes, sir…but I haven’t done so in a while.”
“Well, let us see how sharp those skills are, then.”
Doug led Horace through the wilderness. He felt a bit silly, seeing as the deer had left an obvious trail of meandering hoof prints in the snow. He found it interesting, however, that never once did those tracks seem to stop, not even where the underbrush had been exposed due to the recent thaw. Strange that the animal hadn’t paused to eat, especially considering that it looked to be starving. Perhaps they’d startled it.
Horace barely kept up with him as he trekked up the mountain. He huffed and puffed the whole time. Doug swore he could hear the old man’s throat whistle with every breath he took. It sounded like air being blown through a pinhole. He started to appreciate the old timer’s drive. The guy was obviously hurting, the incline probably murder on his old joints, but he kept pushing on. Never once did he ask to stop for a rest.
An hour into the journey the tracks took a sharp right turn and disappeared into a cluster of densely packed evergreens. Doug stopped at a spot where broken branches and vines created a prickly tunnel and listened. He heard rustling.
“It’s in there,” he said, pointing.
Horace coughed, sucked snot into his nose, and said, “Then that’s where we go.”
Doug stepped into the burrow first, using his knife to clear an easier path for the old man. The passageway itself proved to be much longer than he initially thought. It wasn’t until they’d squeezed through at least two hundred feet of icy vegetation that it ended.
When they emerged on the other side, Doug’s mouth literally dropped open.
They found themselves at the top of a rise that lowered into a clearing at least two football fields long, a hidden world enclosed on all sides by massive evergreens. Animals of every distinction milled about, from deer to raccoons to squirrels, as well as predators such as bears, wolves, and even a mountain lion. Each distinction huddled in their separate areas. They acted as if none of the others were present. The lot of them looked thin to the point of starvation.
Doug spotted their doe, calmly nibbling at an exposed patch of brown grass. Horace whistled from behind him. None of the animals looked up.
“No kidding,” he whispered. “It’s amazing.”
Horace stepped ahead of him and maneuvered his way down the slope. He pulled the notebook from his pocket. Doug watched the old man’s wrinkled fingers move and couldn’t help but be amazed. The retractable pencil in his right hand flew across the page in arcing swirls. He wrote at such great speed that he had to constantly flick the end with his thumb for more graphite.
A famished wolf passed in front of the old man. It glanced once in his direction and then kept on walking. Doug shivered. Horace was a bit too close for comfort. He was sure one would make a go at him if he wasn’t careful.
“Doc!” he whisper-screamed. “Doc, come back here!”
Horace shook his head. “Don’t worry, son,” he said, not trying to conceal his voice. “I’ll be okay.”
Doug lifted his rifle just in case. He kept a close eye on Horace as he wandered the perimeter of the clearing. None of the animals ran away as he approached them and none attacked, either. After a cursory acknowledgement of his presence they went back about their business, cleaning each other, laying their heads to doze, poking their noses into the ground. They didn’t seem to find him a threat, or a tasty treat.
It was strange.
Horace, still tracing the outskirts, stepped into an area none of the animals occupied. He whirled suddenly, pulled his jacket up over his nose, and waved for him to come. Doug complied, weapon up and ready. He treaded past the wild beasts with trepidation. The air seemed to grow toxic the closer he got until he too felt the urge to cover his face before his gag reflex took over. This was a scent he’d encountered before, back in Roanoke, when he and his platoon stumbled upon a barn filled with disease-riddled corpses. It was the smell of rot, the smell of death.
Horace faced the barricade of trees, grabbed hold of an obstructing branch, and pushed it aside. He urged Doug to peek in. He did, and behind the trees he saw another, much smaller clearing. The temperature in this adjacent clearing was much warmer than elsewhere, and there was no snow on the ground. Just like the barn in Roanoke it was filled with bodies, only these were the remains of sick animals, not humans. It appeared as if they’d been carefully positioned. Some were ripped limb from limb, some in late stages of putrefaction, while others were mostly intact. Yet even those possessed haunting characteristics he knew all too well; patches of hair falling from their hides, exposed flesh stained black, red, and yellow, faces contorted as if the bones underneath had grown too large for the skin containing them.
These, he realized, were the infected unfortunates, the Wraiths’ bestial fo
ils.
Horace stuffed his notebook in one pocket, removed a plastic bag and scalpel from another, slipped a pair of surgical gloves over his hands, and bent over the nearest carcass. “What’re you doing?” asked Doug. Horace waved him off. He sunk the scalpel’s cutting edge into the creature’s hide, sawed off a square of flesh, zipped it into the bag, and pocketed it. When he turned to face Doug again his expression, with eyes wide and teeth biting his lower lip, was equal parts awed and fearful.
“We should leave now,” he said.
“Okay. Why?”
“Look behind you.”
Doug complied.
The more aggressive animals had gathered at the mouth of the opening. They crouched on their haunches, hair standing on end, teeth exposed. The wolves howled, the bears stood on their hind legs and bellowed, and the mountain lion let loose with its primal roar. The less hostile creatures huddled behind them like scared aboriginal children seeking the protection of their tribal warriors.
Doug wrapped his arm around the small of Horace’s back and slowly helped him out of the clearing. He never once took his sights off the threatening animals. Thirty pairs of eyes followed their every movement until they were at least a hundred feet away from the necropolis. Only then did they turn away.
“Holy…” muttered Horace under his breath. His frail body shook.
“Easy now,” Doug ordered. “No sudden movements.”
Horace stroked his beard and frowned. The animals that were watching them had split into their separate groups again. Horace thrust his chin in the direction of the way they entered. Doug nodded in agreement.
A few minutes later and they were outside the strange, isolated community. They followed their own footprints back to the hotel. The sun began to drop beneath the horizon. Horace didn’t speak for quite some time. He appeared to be lost in his thoughts.
Finally, with the resort in sight, Doug broke the silence by asking, “What was that?”
Horace scrunched his face and stared at the ground.
Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II) Page 12