“Hey, Walt,” she said, smiling a little in her painfully drowsy face.
“Hey, Jan,” Walter said, reaching into his pocket for his wallet.
She already had his coffee made up. He slid her the money, and she rang it out. He told her to keep the change, knowing that they weren’t allowed to take tips. But Walter figured that if she was ever going to buy his house that she’d best take any extra income that was offered to her. He thanked her and headed out.
Some people had built a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street, but Walter never paid them any mind. He was a Stewart’s customer, through and through. As far as he was concerned, any other store that was like a Stewarts was inferior by design, by which he meant that they weren’t a Stewarts. Cumberland Farms was a close second, but going in there always left a greasy feeling on Walter’s clothes.
Also, he wasn’t a Dunkin’ Donuts kind of guy. Back in the day, when Beth had the summers off, she would work at a Dunkin’ Donuts, a couple of miles to the south, hoping that she wouldn’t run into any of her students. Considering the type of students she taught, there was never any real fear that that might happen. The downside to working at a Dunkin’ Donuts was that Beth would sometimes bring home leftovers. That had been back when his cholesterol had been good enough to have a doughnut once in a while. He grew sick of them, along with their coffee.
Besides, nowadays, he trusted Dunkin’ Donuts to make a good batch of coffee with the same amount of trust he put in them to spell “doughnut” right.
He got into his truck, knees aching a little, and headed down to the thruway stop.
****
Atkins, New York was a small town if one were to even call it that. Sure there was a post office, a library, a high school, and a couple of businesses along the main road. But it was a meager town at best. Everyone who used to live here had been farmers, but with all the corporations buying up the farmland, they couldn’t compete. So they sold their land, and got jobs elsewhere, moving down south, with all likelihood.
Walter had thought that he would become a farmer. He grew up on a dairy farm (and as much as the youngsters tried to tell him almond and soy milk was milk, it wasn’t). Hell, everyone in his family had been a farmer at some point or another. It was decent enough work, where you got paid what was due to you.
Nowadays, these kids, this whole generation, knew nothing of hard work, at least not in Walter’s view. They had their parents buy them cars, buy them smartphones so they could like and view pictures of their friends who they didn’t even like, all so that those same friends would like things that they posted, and on and on it would go like some horrid loop.
After Beth died, Walter had tried to go on Facebook. He looked up his old buddies from high school, only to find that the majority of them were dead. Oh, there were a few that weren’t. A couple of them had kids, a sweet life in the suburbs with the pool, and all that. One man had apparently moved out to California and ran a charity for avocado trees. Others were horrid messes and the like.
He tried to find some of his old friends from Croone, New York, but none of them seemed to have a Facebook. When he tried to search for the town, nothing came up online either. It was like the town had completely vanished.
In a way, Walter preferred that, rather remembering his friends for what they were when they were younger, rather than the old decrepit versions of their parents they had all become, much like himself.
No one stays young forever, Walter thought, before getting off the computer at the library. He hadn’t been on Facebook since, and he doubted that he would ever be back.
He drove out of Akins; the streets were as empty and barren as they often were this early in the morning. He drove past the bar, which still had a sizable number of cars in it. The owner there was a member of AA and often said that when it got cold out, he’d leave the people in the bar to sleep out their drunkenness. They couldn’t walk home, since they’d freeze to death, and they obviously couldn’t drive. There were a few cars out to be sure, most likely heading to the toll roads like he was.
I-88 wasn’t a toll road, but I-90 was, and Walter knew a lot of the toll collectors. New York state might be one of the wealthiest states in the union, and they might provide excellent benefits. But it would behoove them, apparently, to provide their workers with Easy Passes and the like.
Walter had been working for New York state for close to ten years now, and it was a fine enough job to do. It wasn’t as exciting as working on the power grid, but a person his age shouldn’t be working upon the power lines. He would break something, and if not himself, then something of high value. He had his pension, and that was that. He wasn’t one of those youngbloods who were out there clearing the snow or making sure the power lines stayed up in weather like this. Not anymore.
No, Walter just made sure the rest stops were fine, and fine they usually were. The rest stops were nice and quiet enough places. He never had to talk to anyone. Mostly in weather like this, all he had to do was clear the snow from the paths, make sure none of the toilets were clogged, and make sure to run the heat. That last part was the important one, especially in the winter. The last thing anyone needed was for the pipes to freeze and burst open, causing a magnitude of problems that Walter wouldn’t be able to deal with, and would have to call someone else to come to fix.
The plows had already been through, but they would need to be back through again. Already the snow was covering the salt and sand that they had put down, and it wasn’t like the sand was going to do much that morning either, with it being as cloudy as it was. But they would do a good job, Walter was sure of it.
The stops were probably already plowed, with one giant pile of snow being at the end of the parking lots. If any of them were still around, Walter would make sure to thank them for their work. Snow plow drivers were the unsung heroes of upstate New York, and he had known quite a few of them over the years.
One of his buddies in AA had used to be a plow driver. Bob had been a good enough guy, or about as good of a guy that an alcoholic who beats his wife could be (which in Walter’s estimate wasn’t all that great). This was, of course, before he swallowed a bunch of pills and only managed to kill half of himself. Walter used to go see him. Taking the pills had only done half the job, meaning that they either hadn’t been strong enough to kill him completely, or he didn’t take enough. Considering how bad he had been at all his other life choices, Walter figured that the answer to that question was a little bit of both.
Regardless, Bob spent the remainder of his days in a nursing home. Sure there was nothing wrong with him mentally, except for half his brain not working, that was. He could only move the left side of his body, with the right side sort of dropping down and undefined.
The last time Walter had seen him, he had been doing about as well as a man in his situation could do. Sometimes Walter would send a card, but no more visits.
He wondered if anyone would visit him if he ever got like that.
Walter drove onto I-88 in silence.
****
When he arrived at the first stop, everything looked fine.
Stop 15 was, of the three that Walter looked after, the one with the least amount of problems. There were enough parking spaces, and the toilets were never clogged. All he had to do was change the trash, which wasn’t that hard, considering that Walter didn’t think anyone had been there the night before. The rest stops were left open at night, or at least most of the time they were. If there was too much snow, the stop would be closed, the doors locked, and a sign covering the entrance would inform people that they wouldn’t be able to find any solitude at the stop. They couldn’t let people park there since the plows would have to get through.
The night before the stop hadn’t been locked, but if the snow kept up, Walter wasn’t going to throw away the possibility that he might say to hell with it and lock it. Less stuff for him to clean up.
There weren’t any homeless people at the stop, which was always lovely.
Walter didn’t like having to deal with them, not in the mornings. Every once and awhile, one of them would come out of the woods or walk down the thruway/highway and make their way to the stop, hoping for shelter. Walter would sigh when it happened. When he was younger, he’d probably have taken the shotgun out of the back of his truck, or his sidearm from his belt, shoved it in their face, and told them to get the hell off New York state property, and that they could take their troubles and lousy life decisions elsewhere.
But that wouldn’t fly, and so he’d call the cops. The troopers who covered this stretch of land were pretty nice guys and one pretty nice girl. They sometimes stopped at one of his stops, saw his truck, and would come into the office and talk. It was a friendly enough company for Walter. Usually, they’d bring lunch with them and want to sit somewhere that wasn’t in their car. The offices of the rest stop workers had a few chairs and plenty of places to eat. Plus, they had the heat.
Of course, Walter didn’t think he’d see any of them that day, though. They were probably on high alert, waiting for the inevitable car crash. Some of the troopers had confessed to Walter over the years, whenever they heard of an accident over the radio, that they prayed slightly that it had involved only one person, and that that person was dead as a result of it.
Now, that was something that they could only share in private since if anyone heard that, they might get the wrong idea and think that the cops wanted people to die.
But the way Walter heard it, it made a lot of sense to him.
If there was more than one person, that was a logistics nightmare. Especially in the snow, when it was cold out, and you have two people yelling at you, one saying the other was on their phone, the other one saying they didn’t put their turn lights on, and on and on it would go. Meanwhile, while you’re trying to get a story straight out of them, and you’re freezing your ass off. Then more cops would come, and then they would have to call a tow truck, sometimes two, and on and on . . ..
When it was one person, say a woman or man, they would drive off the road and either into the metal bars that were supposed to keep them on the road or break through them. Then, all you had to do was arrive on the scene, make sure that they were dead and then call the pickup crew. Of course, you had to investigate and see what happened. But at least no one was yelling at you as you did so. Dead people can’t scream.
Walter got out of his truck and walked over toward the office.
There was about half a foot or so of snow covering the walkway. He made his way through it, passing the sign declaring this a national watershed or some shit. Every time Walter looked at the sign, he had to suppress a laugh.
On that sign was all a bunch of statistics about the area, along with local history. Clear and dead center on the poster, however, was the picture of a Native American man. The only problem being that the man in the photo wasn’t Native American.
Walter had met the man a few years back. He had stumbled into one of Walter’s AA meetings, the ones on Sunday (which meant that there were usually brownies there ready for people to take and thankfully not the Dunkin’ Donuts doughnuts that seemed to always find their way into the Wednesday meetings), and asked for help. After a few weeks with AA (people come and go, and they do that majority of their coming and going in the first couple of weeks), he stuck around. He seemed to get his life in order. One day, before the meeting started, Walter asked him if indeed he was the man in the photo.
Frank said yes, that was him. When he was younger, he had wanted to be a movie star and had played lots of parts over the years. The man looked close to Native American, his father Moroccan, his mother Greek. Somehow, the people who took his photos said that he was a Native, and when the sign was being made up, his picture became the poster boy for the Iroquois tribe of upstate New York.
Walter and Frank had a good laugh about that.
When Walter saw Frank at the meeting next week, he would be sure to bust his balls about the sign again, saying that his splendid portrait was going to get covered in snow. The thought kept him warm as he approached the door to the office and opened it.
Stop 15 was nothing special. The smallest of all the stops, it only comprised of the bathroom, the great sign about the watershed with Frank in the middle of it, and a few picnic tables. When the weather was like this, however, no one would be using those tables. Walter took a sip of his coffee and got to work.
Walter used the mobile plow to clear off the paths. It was a great little invention. When he was younger, Walter probably could have removed the entire lot with a shovel meant for building sandcastles. Now, though, age had taken his strength, along with plenty of other things.
The mobile plow was a standard snow shovel mixed with a shopping cart with no basket. He could walk up and down the paths without having to bend down or anything. He would clear the way and then put down the salt and the sand. The snow was falling hard and wet, and he made sure to put down a few more buckets full of sand and salt on the paths, just to be safe. After an hour or so, he was done and retreated to the office, enjoying the heat. He took out his James Patterson book and started to read, something he liked to do after he exerted himself.
He drank a few more sips of his coffee, which had gone from hot to lukewarm in the last couple of hours. He read a few chapters, then inspected the bathrooms. All of the pipes worked, there weren’t any tampon blockages in the girl’s bathroom, the urinals were clean, and both rooms looked manageable. Walter then looked out on the paths.
The salt and sand were doing their job, but he had a feeling he would have to be back again in a few hours.
He walked to his truck and headed for Stop 17.
****
Stop 17 looked fine from the outside.
Like the other two, there were no cars in the parking lots, no RVs trying to hold out the storm. Everything was quiet.
Stop 17 was the largest of all the stops. Rather than be a typical run-of-the-mill stop, this one had the distinct honor of harboring a few businesses there as well. There was a McDonalds (there used to be a Burger King, but then it turned out that the owner there was using the business as a front for his child’s illegal porn ring), a Dunkin’ Donuts, a gift shop, and a place called My Thai, which surprisingly didn’t serve Thai food.
He brought his truck up to the nearest parking space (which was a handicap spot, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to stop him anyway) and walked up to the stop.
Walter wouldn’t have to worry about the snow around here, though, as his boots sunk into the ground. This stop, much like the rest of it, used its own businesses to take care of things. They didn’t trust the New York state government and cleanup crews to take care of it. So they had their own company come and do it. The businesses there were still okay with Walter regulating the heat and cleaning the toilets, though.
He approached the door, thinking about how quickly he could run in, check the bathrooms, make sure the heat was on (in such a large stop, the heat was a priority both for keeping the place warm enough so that nothing froze, but not too hot to break the state’s budget considering how large the building was), and head back to his truck.
Walter stopped.
In front of him were footprints leading to the front door. Walter looked around. The footprints seemed to have come out of the woods by the stop and walked right up to the door.
He reached for his sidearm. Even if he were able to get a trooper there to help, it would take too long. Besides, whoever was inside probably already saw Walter’s truck appear, or at least could hear it. Snowstorms were very quiet, after all, especially when there was no wind to be heard.
One of the homeless wanderers of the forests of upstate New York had seen the stop in the distance and had probably decided that they didn’t want to die that night out in the cold. Walter had a few pangs of sympathy in his heart for these people, but his sympathy was short-lived. People who mess up don’t want your pity.
He had learned that when Annabelle and Jack had gone
down the other side of the hill when he wasn’t looking.
He cocked his gun and took the safety off. Thank God no one ever tried to ban guns. Walter was an old guy, and the person, or perhaps persons inside, could probably overpower him if need be. Probably some drug addict without any teeth and black-stained veins.
The door itself looked intact, though Walter couldn’t see anything inside. Evidently whoever was in there had been able to find a way inside, but they hadn’t found any way to turn on the lights. If he waited and went back to his truck, there would be the possibility that whoever was inside wouldn’t be here when the cops arrived, whenever that might be, and besides, the person inside could very well have already left or died.
Walter reached for the door handle.
The metal bolt that locked the door at night seemed to have been sawed off, or rather burnt off, since the end of the bolt was melted slightly.
Walter didn’t know any homeless person who walked around with a blow torch and cutter in their packs or shopping carts, but he supposed it wouldn’t be out of the question. Everyone has their own skills, even if that sometimes meant they ended up on the street.
He pushed the door forward and the darkness inside enveloped him.
The snow outside continued to fall in silence, uninterrupted.
Chapter Two
On the night of the Infestation, I wasn’t thinking clearly. Nigel will complain that I never think clearly. I wish that Matt and his friends had never come home from the fair that night. I wish a lot of things lately.
-Robbie’s Journal
Lights shined around Jolie at the Washington County Fair in the summer, four months before Walter entered Rest Stop 17.
The fair was in full bloom, all occupying the old fairgrounds right outside of Greendale in Washington County, New York. There were pig races, whacky rooms, freak shows, magic tricks, and all different kinds of food trucks with all kinds of greasy food. There was the fireman’s section, where all the youngsters could walk around Greendale’s ten fire trucks. You could even get a picture with one if you were so inclined. The smells of cow manure and rotting grass mixed with spilled spoiled grease floated through the air, along with the scent of fried dough and kettle corn. It was night now, so all of the bugs had largely gone away.
The Keeper Page 2