Paul’s hand went to the gun on his leg, the other quietly cracking open the door. His heart sank when he saw Curtis sitting on the toilet with his pants up and his face buried in his hands. A candle on the counter flickered when Paul stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He scanned the bathroom cluttered with junk that didn’t belong in a bathroom before looking back to Curtis who hadn’t moved.
“Curtis?”
He jerked like he’d just taken a shot of high-voltage. Brushing tears from his face, he glared at Paul. “What the hell, doesn’t anyone knock anymore?”
“Sorry, I thought you were the ghost of one of those dead old ladies crying over what happened to her earlier tonight.”
His face soured in the flickering light. “What?”
Paul holstered his gun and crouched down. “What’s wrong?”
Curtis looked away and shook his head, straining to keep his lower lip from quivering. “Nothing.”
“Is it Troy?”
He blinked a tear out. “When I was a kid, my mouth would get me in so much trouble but Troy was always there to protect me and now he’s not.” He snorted his amusement. “I was so pissed about him getting bit I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
Paul nodded for a moment without speaking, lassoing carefully chosen words out of thin air. “All I can tell you is it gets easier.”
“Did you get to say goodbye?”
Sophia wasting away on that couch whisked through his mind. “Sort of.”
Curtis pulled his hands through his sandy blond hair. “This shit’s so fucked up, bro. I don’t even know what to think anymore.” Remorse pulled on his face. “I mean, is it even worth it? Look at tonight, and that’s just one night.”
“I know.”
“I mean, how many more times are we going to almost die and for what? Where is this whole thing going?”
“I don’t know, Curtis.”
“Where will we go after your house?”
Paul shook his head. “There’s no easy button for this and it never ends. At this point, I’m just trying to get through it one day at a time.”
Curtis nearly laughed. “That’s not good enough, man. We need a long-term plan.”
“My long-term plan is to stay alive and kill as many of those cockroaches as possible until we find a foothold.”
Hanging his head, he blew out a long breath. “So basically we’re The Orkin Man with M4s and Glocks.”
“But like you said, we’ll need more help to win.”
“We’ll need an army.”
“And we’ll build one. There are other people out there, good people, and we’ll take every one we can get.” Paul looked up, blurring the candle into a jittery blob. “Stephanie was right about this being a war. I’m just not sure staying in one place is the best idea. For now, we need to keep looking.”
Curtis massaged the stubble on his chin. “Do you believe in God?”
Paul swallowed dryly. “I’m second-guessing everything I was raised to believe.”
“Me too.” He looked at him. “What do you think really caused it? The rapture? Flu shots? I mean, what was it?”
“Without TV or internet, we’ll never know. So who cares? What matters is it happened and we have to deal with it.” He shifted. “And I get that losing Troy is hard for you and your sister, I really do. But it’s not like before. Now we have stragglers and rapists roaming the streets and we barely have time to think, let alone grieve, and maybe that’s for the best because we have to stay on point or we will die.” Paul sharpened his gaze. “This group needs you, Curtis.” He paused to swallow his pride. “I need you, and I’m not asking you to forget what happened because that’s impossible. It’s okay to be sad or mad. I’m just asking you to push most of it to the back of your mind until we find somewhere to breathe.”
Curtis looked at him for a while without blinking.
Paul stood up and slapped him on the shoulder. “Now what do you say we go back out there and sing some Alan Jackson at the top of our lungs?”
“I hate Alan Jackson.”
“Okay in that case, I’m going back to bed. Try to get some sleep because we are outta this shithole at dawn, brother.” Out in the living room, Paul stopped in his tracks. Adrenaline spiking, he watched for a moment before speaking. “You looking for this?”
Jumping, Billy turned from the bags sitting by the front door to see Paul holding up the cell phone he could barely see through the faint moonlight. “I thought you said you didn’t find it,” he whispered, slowly rising to his feet and staring at him from across the darkened room.
“What’s on here, Billy?”
His lips pulled down at the corners and Stephanie stirred on the floor. “Just some pictures. I had a bad dream and wanted to see my family. I miss them.”
Paul studied him through probing eyes, a quiet showdown stretching between them, and slipped the phone back into his jeans. “I’ll hang onto it for ya. It’s dead anyway.”
Billy swallowed thickly in the tension-filled silence bending the walls. Slowly, he nodded back. “Okay.”
Chapter Sixteen
DAY TWENTY-SIX
Snow fell in lazy straight lines, melting into the hot tub after making contact with the sweltering water inside. Paul pulled Sophia closer against him and sipped his beer, sharing a comfortable silence with the woman he loved as steam rose from the water in ghostly vapors. It was nice she didn’t feel the need to fill every break in the conversation with talk about the weather or things they needed for the new house or her latest pair of shoes. Oh those topics came up and that was fine, but Sophia also knew when to seize the moment. After all, how many times do you get to hot tub in the Colorado snow? They had the whole damn place to themselves and plenty to quench their thirst. Later, they’d order room service and spend the rest of the night making love and depleting the room’s mini-fridge of the tiny bottles tucked inside. Just the thing they needed after a long day on the slopes.
“This is so nice,” Sophia said, bringing a wine glass to her lips.
Paul smiled at her through the steam, her full lips and red bikini fanning the want in his gut. “Thank God we have one of these back home now.”
“I can’t wait to use it.”
He raised his bottle. “Here’s to our new house.”
Clinking glasses, they took a healthy drink.
Swallowing with a sigh, he leaned his head back and rubbed her wet arm as snow landed on his face. “This is the life.”
“Just what we needed after all that house hunting.”
“Next week at this time we’ll be knee-deep in boxes and packing tape.”
“Sounds kinky,” she said, massaging his thigh under the water.
“I figured I’d start by taping you to the dryer.”
Her abrupt bubbliness brought laughter to his lips. “I can’t wait,” she said, her eyes glimmering beneath the party lights strung above. “Thank you for buying it for me.”
“The dryer?”
Sophia squeezed his leg. “The house.”
“Oh.” He kissed her softly on the lips. “You’re welcome.” Their mouths gently met again, the whirl of the hot tub filling their ears. “I love you,” he whispered, brushing wet hair from her face and noticing a sore on her cheek.
“I love you, too, but you have to let me go.”
Paul pulled back with a frown. “What?”
“Forget about the photo albums and let me go. I’m already gone.”
He sat up straighter, the water bubbling harder around him. “Photo albums? What’re you talking about?”
Sophia dug her nails into his thigh. “Hang onto the ones you have now or your grief will get all of you killed.” She looked at him through pity-filled eyes. “All this time, you thought you were meant to entertain the masses on the radio but that’s not true at all. You were meant to lead them into this new world.” Stopping to cough some blood into the water getting hotter by the second, she placed a rotting hand over his heart. “
I will always be with you but you have to do what you were put on this planet to do…lead.”
Paul mopped sweat from his brow, heart flipping when he saw Sophia standing outside the hot tub, her face cracked and pale. Cocking her head to one side, limp hair fell over the stained nightgown running to her feet. She floated backwards without moving a muscle. “Don’t go back home, Paul. There is nothing but trouble waiting for you there. Listen to Dan.”
Trouble? A paralyzing mixture of confusion and fright turned his vocal cords to ice. He sprang from the scalding water when he could no longer see her through the veil of steam rising between them. “Sophia!”
“You will get better,” her hollow voice rang out from the swirling vapor. “Keep fighting.”
“Sophia!” Paul startled awake and stared at the moonlit ceiling in the hoarder house. Chasing his breath, it took him a moment to realize someone was scratching on glass. His pulse raced as he turned to the front windows, hand sliding to a gun that was no longer there. Then, in a horror-stricken panic, he realized the scratching wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from the mirror above the fireplace. Paul’s eyes flipped open to find everyone staring at him in the living room, daylight coming through the dirty windows and their faces bent with worry.
Wendy patted his hand, her hair sticking out in all directions. “You’re okay. Just a dream.”
He threw the blanket off and sat up, trying to slow his heart rate and catching a concerned look from Stephanie. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Wendy gave his hand a squeeze. “We’re here.”
Curtis returned to his granola bar in a chair surrounded by boxes and magazines and unopened mail, mercifully resisting the opportunity to throw in a quick jab.
Billy leaned back into the couch and kicked his sneakers up onto a stack of Jackie Collins books, chewing on some Hostess donuts that were probably past the end of their shelf life. The house looked even worse in the daylight and Paul shut his eyes as everything came back to him in a gruesome downpour. Despite how real it all seemed, he wasn’t on vacation with Sophia in Colorado. He was here in this house with blood stains on his clothing and strangers looking at him like he was crazy. She was dead and he was trapped between living and dying.
Rubbing his face, her words came back in fleeting bursts.
Let me go.
Impossible.
Don’t go back home.
Ridiculous.
You were meant to lead them.
He laughed and if they didn’t think he was crazy before they would now. He wasn’t meant to lead anyone. Hell, he couldn’t even lead the ones he loved to the ocean without getting them killed. What would be different now?
You will get better.
Exhaling a defeated breath, he dared to open his eyes. Everyone was still looking at him and Paul couldn’t stop a chuckle. They were so screwed it was funny. His amusement snowballed as the others swapped concerned glances that only fueled his laughter. The frightened look on Billy’s face was priceless, driving Paul into a full blown meltdown. Tears fell into his lap and he couldn’t breathe but that was okay. Everything was okay. If you called being hunted by reanimated corpses okay. Eventually, his merriment tapered off into an awkward silence that smelled of cat urine and death.
Wiping his eyes, he straightened his shirt and cleared his throat. “So…you guys about ready to go or what?”
☠
“Man, I was good at it too.” Billy turned to face Curtis in the backseat. “Beer signs, liquor signs, open and closed signs, sports teams, beer mugs, steaming coffee cups, you name it and I could bend it into the perfect shape without collapsing the glass.”
Paul glanced at Billy in the mirror, navigating the F-150 down a lonely two-lane highway out in the boonies. He looked over at Wendy, who gave him an impish grin from the passenger seat.
Curtis shook his head. “Man, do you ever talk about anything else?”
Billy stared at him. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, anything but neon fucking signs. Jesus. Now I feel bad for those two stiffs back at the cop shop that had to listen to this shit day in and day out.”
Paul laughed.
“Sorry man, not everyone had a prestigious gig like you.”
Curtis grunted. “Yeah and you don’t hear me going on and on about it so how’s about cutting us some slack for two minutes. Nobody cares.”
Arching an insulted eyebrow, Billy flattened his lips. “Did you really race for NASCAR, man, or are you puttin me on?”
“Oh boy,” Stephanie murmured from Billy’s other side. “Here we go.”
“Hell yeah, I raced for NASCAR.”
“I bet that was amazing.”
“It was amazing; I got to see the country, meet beautiful women, and make some decent coin ta boot. Plus my brother was my crew chief so I could tell him to fuck off and never get fired.”
Billy laughed a little. “Guess you got my neon signs beat.” He got quiet and dropped his gaze to his hands. “I’m sorry about your brother. Stephanie told me a little about him back at the house and he sounds like a good guy.”
Curtis turned to his window. “He was.”
Paul slowed the truck down, a cold feeling seeping into his veins like Freon. Lush forest imposed on both sides of the road and sunlight winked off the logjam up ahead. “Damn,” he said under his breath, checking his mirrors before returning his attention to the hog truck flipped on its side a hundred yards up, blocking a dozen or so empty vehicles that couldn’t navigate the steep ditches on either side of the road. Evidently, there wasn’t enough time to back up before the infection spread through the cars like wildfire, turning ordinary citizens into hunter killers.
“Where’d all these people go?” Wendy sat up straighter in the front seat. “Why didn’t they just turn around and go back?”
“I don’t know.” He put it in park. The cars were only on this side of the overturned truck as if everyone had been heading north for some reason.
“Can you go around?”
“Without rolling it?” Paul strained to see down the ditch on the right side and then popped his door open. “Wait here.”
“Paul!” Wendy got out and followed him to her side of the road where a Hyundai Elantra sat on its top at the bottom of the ditch. Just beyond, a thick swath of dead trees stretched into the distance that made Paul nervous.
“That didn’t end well.” she muttered, resting a hand on her gun.
He looked back to the hog truck, gears slipping in his mind. There was no way to move it and only two ways around. Crossing the road, the others spilled from the F-150. The other ditch was even steeper with more trees running to the horizon. “Shit,” he whispered, locking his fingers behind his head and letting the breeze rush over his face.
Curtis hung his thumbs from his jeans. “That don’t look good.”
“The other side isn’t much better.”
Curtis followed him back over, snorting when he saw the Elantra. “Fool. Ain’t no way that foreign piece of shit is making that grade.”
“Think the truck can make it?” Billy asked from behind them.
“We should go back, Paul.” Stephanie zipped her jacket up. “There was another road a few miles back.”
Paul flashed her a tight-lipped smile. “I got this,” he said, climbing back inside the truck and rolling down the passenger side window. “Billy!”
Billy trotted over and Paul handed him the 9mm he took from the chubby cop back at the police station. “Thank you for what you did last night. It means a lot.”
Billy stared at the gun without taking it.
“Next time a Taser might not work.” Paul gestured with the gun and Billy took it.
“Thank you.”
“I know you know how to shoot but keep your finger off that trigger until you are ready to fire.”
Billy ejected the clip and pulled back the slide, eyeballing the chamber. “Gotcha,” he said, releasing the slide and slapping the mag in.
/> “You better be cool.”
He nodded, replacing the Taser in his duty-belt with the sidearm that was a perfect fit. “I am.”
“Now stand back and tell me how I’m looking.”
“Hey, if you die can I have the M4 instead?” Paul pursed his lips and Billy ripped a drawn-out laugh. “Just kidding!” he said. “I want your coat!”
The others made room and stood off to the side, watching Paul slowly maneuver the pickup straight down the ditch. Keeping his foot on the brake, he cut a slight angle to the left, narrowly clipping the Elantra.
“Looking good, man,” Billy hollered.
“Put it in beast-mode,” Curtis yelled through his hands.
Paul glanced in the mirror, half expecting to see a herd of stragglers swarming the others as they waited up top. This had to go quicker. Leaning against the wheel with the seatbelt cutting into his shoulder, he cranked the wheel hard left and released the brake. Gravity took over and a jarring bounce vibrated his bones. The front end dug up some grass, and suddenly the truck was on flat ground at the bottom of the ditch.
Curtis clapped slowly and whistled but Paul still had to get up the other side. Fortunately, the F-150 was up for the challenge and, with some convincing, manhandled the steep bank, spitting grass and dirt out the back end. On the other side of the overturned hog truck, Paul reclaimed the empty road and climbed into the back bed, waving the others over and taking point. Watching them file between the abandoned vehicles with the Beretta wrapped in his hand, his mind conjured up graphic images of dead drivers snatching at their arms as they sifted past like sand. Instead, a distant noise drew his attention off to the east. He snapped his head around to see a freight train slowly emerging from the tree line. “Oh great,” he mumbled, turning back to the others. “Hurry!”
Dead Series (Book 2): A Little More Dead: Gunfire & Sunshine Page 15