by Terry Yates
He covered the wound with as much cloth as he could, but he wasn’t sure how much good wet cloth was going to do. He looked down at Potts, whose face was the same color as his hair. His head was lolled to the right as Kyler kept him on his back. He had to get him to shelter. He was losing blood and possibly going into shock.
Kyler stood up and looked at the path of large rocks that he and Potts had come through. Getting behind one would be their safest bet. At least they could keep some of the rain off of them for the next God-Knew how many hours.
Leaving Potts behind, Kyler trotted over to the pathway, and began to look for the best rock he could find to duck behind. He came to a large rock with a tiny dugout cut into it. It wasn’t a big dugout, in fact it was tiny, but it might do. He dropped to his knees and looked inside. Someone had been here before him. There were three names carved onto the little dug out wall. They were ‘Zoe’-aged 11, ‘Sage-aged 6, Sasha-(Mom) aged-Nunya’. With names like that, it couldn’t have been THAT long ago.
Kyler trotted back over to Potts. He dropped down to his side, and took Potts’ good arm and pulled it over his back. The only way he would be able to get him over there was by the fireman’s carriage, which Dr. Phillips had them all learn. He had always told them that you never knew when you were going to be by yourself and need to move someone…well, Hallelujah, here he was!
Once he’d gotten Potts onto his back, he began to make his way to his feet, his legs buckling as he struggled. When he’d made it to his feet, he shifted Potts dead weight to the center of his back. Kyler gripped both of Potts’ arms tightly around his shoulders, and began to drag him toward the rocks.
Kyler was spent when he reached the rock and collapsed next to it, Potts landing hard on his back and then rolling off of him. No matter, he thought. They were next to the dugout. He lifted Potts up into a sitting position and pulled him into the tiny dugout, placing his back against the wall. His feet were sticking out until Kyler shoved them in, bending the colonel’s knees a little. Kyler looked down at his own bare feet, which were sore from walking across small rocks that he either didn’t see or didn’t step over in time. He half-ran half-limped back to the meadow and grabbed the tarp that the cops had given them. When he got back to the dugout, he placed large rocks on the tarp’s bottom to keep it from blowing away. He then set five large rocks inside the dugout and then crawled in. Once inside, he stacked three of the rocks, then placed as much of the top of the tarp as he could between the rocks. He then set the other two rocks on top of the tarp to weigh it down. Other than a few inches at the top, they were completely out of the wind and the rain…but not the cold…a little of the moonlight managed to creep its way into their lean-to.
His teeth chattered as he pulled the still unconscious Potts into a full sitting position and then checked his bandages. Most of the blood had either stopped or bled out, either way, there was not a lot more he could do accept try to keep him alive and make sure he didn’t continue to bleed.
Kyler put his arm around Potts’ shoulders and pulled him to him. The man was burning up, which was a double-edged sword for Kyler, because his hot forehead was actually keeping Kyler’s face warm. He rubbed Potts’ shoulders and chest trying to keep him warm. If he hadn’t been so beat, he would’ve laughed at the thought of Potts’ reaction if he were to suddenly come to.
Kyler pushed Potts back against the wall, while he checked on his own wound. He’d put some of his shirt rags on top of it to stop the bleeding. The claw marks went from shoulder to shoulder across his chest. He hadn’t been cut deep, but deep enough to bleed. In his own doctorly opinion, he would be all right until morning. He wasn’t so sure about Potts, though. He pulled the colonel back over to him as he had before, put him under his arm and tried to keep him warm. Potts’ forehead seemed to be even warmer now than it had before. He was going to have to sit here for the rest of the night and try to keep the man alive. He lasted no more than fifteen minutes before he was asleep, his cheek resting against Potts’ forehead.
CHAPTER 86
Potts was having fever dreams about werewolves. He dreamt that his old man was yelling at him, and when the young Georgie Potts looked away for a second, his father turned into a werewolf and swung his claws at him. He dreamt that he was a young boy of about five and his mother was cleaning a cut on his hand. When he looked up into her face, she had become a werewolf, too. Pictures on the walls of his family home turned to werewolves as he walked past them.
Just as he shook off the dream about his family of werewolves, he found himself back at the hospital in Harmonville. He was bent down next to the olive-skinned soldier, who was lying on his side with his right hand over the left side of his neck, trying to stop the blood flow, but it was doing no good…the blood was pouring out from between his fingers. The kid had very little olive skin left because of the blood loss.
“Whatcha got there, Son?” he had asked the young man. “Claw mark or bite?”
“Bite, Sir.” The soldier answered weakly.
Potts winced hoping that the thing had clawed him and that there might be at least a little hope of saving his life…if not save it, then at least keep him from turning into one of those vicious bastards.
“Do you know what happ…” he started.
“Yessir,” the young man interrupted.
Potts lifted the lad up into a sitting position and leaned him back against the broken fence. He looked for the kid’s name on his shirt, but blood covered the complete front of his fatigue top, so he reached in and took out the soldier’s nametags. ‘Kadhari’, the dog tag read.
“Where ya’ from, Kadhari?” Potts asked, softly hoping that he had pronounced his name right.
“Ames, Iowa, Sir,” he answered.
“I mean…where are you from?”
“If you mean where are my parents from…that would be Pakistan, Sir.”
“Pakistan, huh? Smart people, Pakistanians. Did a few years there in the late seventies.”
“Sir?”
“Yeah?” Potts could see that the boy was fading quickly.
“Are you Col. Potts?”
“What gave it away?”
The young man managed a weak smile, which slowly disappeared when he looked down to see Potts’ hand on the butt of his .44.
“I’d like to go out like a soldier, Sir,” he said, his eyes starting to look glassy as he looked into Potts’ one eye and eye patch.
Potts removed his hand from his gun as he slowly nodded his head. The young man could only mouth “Thank you” back. Potts put his arms around his waist and pulled him up even further into a sitting position, and then scooted him over to the iron fence post and leaned his back against it.
“You good?” he’d asked him.
The young man could only reply with a weak nod of his head. Potts removed the .44 from its holster, then took Kadhari’s right hand and placed the gun inside it. The soldier’s hand dipped from the weight of the gun. Potts wasn’t sure that the kid was strong enough to handle one last chore, so he picked up the hand and held the gun in it, placing his fingers around the butt. He then slowly pulled the hammer back, and gently placed Kadhari’s index finger inside the trigger guard. He forced a smile, patted the lad’s hand, then stood up. He looked at the soldier again, and then turned and walked away. He watched as the last of the werewolves were being killed…shot by the soldiers, some his, some Baine’s. The grass was completely covered in blood. Bodies and body parts were strewn everywhere. He’d just taken a cigar out of his pocket and lit it when he heard the gunshot.
He’d walked back over to where the soldier’s body lay and took his pistol from his death grip. There wasn’t much left of his head…very few things can take a .44 at pointblank range. Potts looked around for something to cover him with. He walked over to one of the overturned hospital beds and removed the sheet from it. When he reached Pvt. Kadhari’s corpse, he spread the sheet over him. He removed his cap and stood silent for a few seconds before donning it again
, and then saluting the corpse, and walking away.
Potts was again dreaming of the little fenced-in quarantine area, but this time, he had just shot the young man who’d turned into a werewolf, and had turned his gun to the black woman who was on her hands and knees, her eyes werewolf brown and her teeth starting to protrude. She was also panting like a dog when she looked over at the man’s corpse.
“Well, I reckon St. Peter’s gonna slam those pearly gates right in my face,” she said, now looking up at Potts, her tongue almost pulsating as it slightly protruded from between her lips.
“Ma’am?”
“St. Peter…he’s gonna slam those gates in my face.”
“Why do you say that, Ma’am?” Potts asked, lowering his gun to his side.
“I’ve become something unnatural, unholy in the sight of God.” The woman paused as she panted for a moment, and then made a slight guttural growl. “Yep…” she chuckled, “ He’s gonna send me straight to Hell where I reckon I’ll spend eternity with Beelzebub himself.”
“You know, Ma’am,” Potts started. He was never comfortable with religious talk. “I don’t believe that to be necessarily true, Ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“You don’t?”
“No Ma’am. You didn’t have any more choice in the matter than he did,” Potts replied, pointing to the dead man. “I don’t think He’ll hold something against you that’s not your fault…plus, I’m sure you did enough good in your life to override something that couldn’t be helped.”
The woman lowered her head for a moment and let out what could only be described as a mini-howl. After she was through, she looked back up at Potts, never moving from her hands and knees. Having her eyes all brown gave her an evil, vampiric, look, but Potts knew better. This was a good woman who was coming to terms with her mortality…or immortality, as it were.
“Well, I did raise five children alone,” she said, a small smile crossing her face, causing her to look even more evil. “All of ‘em graduated from high school and three from college…so I reckon I did somethin’ right, huh?” She shook her head and let out a soft chuckle, followed by several guttural growls.
“Yes Ma’am,” Potts answered, forcing a smile. He looked at her on her hands and knees and guessed that she’d spent many an hour on them from raising five kids alone. She’d probably worked every job she could find.
“So, you think God’ll let me in?” she asked, a small, hopeful smile crossing her face.
“Yes’m, I do. I reckon those gates’ll probably creak from not having been opened so wide in such a long time.”
“You’re such a kind man,” she told him, beginning to pant harder. “Maybe I’ll see you up there, huh?”
“Me ma’am? I don’t this so.”
“And why not?”
“I’ve got WAY too many black marks against me,” he answered her, chuckling. “They’ll slam those gates in my face, lock ‘em, and then chain and padlock ‘em.”
“I don’t believe that to be true,” she came back. “I see what you do. You put souls at peace…and you’ve suffered because of it. No…I reckon we’ll see each other again.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
Potts could see that time was growing short for the woman. Her hospital gown had come undone and was hanging loose around her. It had been a good three or four minutes since the dead young man had started to turn, and she couldn’t be far behind him.
“Well, I do believe that there’s St. Peter himself,” Potts said, looking just past the woman.
The lady looked up at him, a confused look on her face. Potts nodded over her shoulder. When she looked over her shoulder, Potts raised his gun, cocked it, and fired at the side of woman’s head, causing her head and whole body to twist sideways for a moment, then swing back. Her forehead hit what was left of the plywood floor and jerked up into the air before her whole body fell backwards. As the blood was pooling under her head, Potts took two sheets from the hospital beds, placed one over the man, and the other over the lady. As he was about to remove his cap, the lady and the little hospital dissolved…
Now Potts found himself inside the little house outside of Harmonville. Denny had just informed him about Rhonda Weaver. When he’d stepped into the room, Rhonda was still seated at the old make-up table with the three large mirrors, the left and right ones angled, so she could see both sides of her face as well as the front. He tried to close the door as quietly as possible, but she had already seen him through the reflection in the mirror.
“Why hello, Bo,” Rhonda squealed, still looking through the mirror. Potts could see her face through the mirror, too. The kid had been right…she was turning into one of them.
“Hello…” Potts stammered. She’d thrown him with her salutation…he hadn’t been expected it.
“Why are you here so early, Bo?” she asked. “The dance doesn’t start for another two hours.”
“I…uh…my…uh…watched stopped. Better early than late, eh?”
“You silly,” she laughed, giving him the “Oh you!” wave through the glass. “I was just getting pretty for you,” she told him while spraying perfume on her neck.
Potts looked at all the bottles of perfumes and other toiletries that lined the old makeup table. It looked like…actually, smelled like the woman who’d lived there had great taste in colognes and perfumes. When she stood up, he could see that she was in a white dress that was much too small for her…the back nowhere near zipped up. Several rolls of skin stuck out of the sides of the zipper.
Potts wasn’t surprised at what he saw when Rhonda Weaver turned slowly around as if she was the Belle of the Ball. He’d expected the bat face that some of the new ones got before they turned, although he hadn’t been expecting the makeup. There was blue mascara sloppily painted over both eyes, rouge on each cheek, and her small bat like lips were cherry red.
“Ta-da!” she sang, spinning around, her arms out.
Along with the dress, makeup, and perfume, she had a yellow bow on the top of her head.
“Well my…don’t you look handsome, Bo Schumpert?” she crowed, looking Potts up and down. “You sure do clean up nice.”
“Thank you,” Potts replied after a long pause. “You look very nice, yourself.”
“Really? Why that’s so sweet of you.”
Potts watched as she reached behind her and lifted the top of the music box, which played a song that he was familiar with, but couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Care to dance before we go?” Rhonda asked him, swaying to the music.
Potts could look at Rhonda Weaver and tell that even on her best day, she was never a pretty woman. Even as a teenager, she was probably a little dumpy, greasy-haired, and covered with acne. Unless she was the easy girl, she probably didn’t go out a lot. But once…one day, years ago…a young man named Bo had asked her to a dance and she was relieving that cherished memory.
“Uh…sure,” he answered with great trepidation, now not exactly sure how he was going to handle ‘The Situation’.
Rhonda continued to sway as she slowly moved toward him. He didn’t want to shun her, but at the same time, he didn’t know if she was truly sincere or, if in her state-of-mind, she was getting closer to him so that she could bite.
As the music box continued to play, she continued to sway toward him, until she finally stopped, no more than a foot and a half from him. She was two or three inches shorter than his own five-foot-seven. She gazed up at his face, looking into it as if Potts had both eyes and no dirty bandage covering half of it. Her huge, brown eyes searched his, looking for what, he had no idea, but after a couple of seconds, she smiled as sincere a smile as she could considering she had no pupils and like the black woman at the hospital, it gave her an almost evil, vampyric stare.
Rhonda held her arms out for Potts to take. He slowly stepped forward, closing the gap between them to about six inches. Potts pitied her, again knowing that she had never been attractive, but now she was u
gly with a capital ‘UG’, but his pity overrode his repulsion, and he took her hand and slid his hand around her waist.
Rhonda laid her head on his shoulder as the two waltzed. Potts could hear her humming the music box song as they moved to the rhythm. Potts had never been too keen on dancing, but had learned how as a kid, knowing that girls dug a guy that could dance, because very few could.
When the song stopped, Rhonda stepped back from him.
“I best powder my nose before we go,” she said, smiling up at him.
Potts just stood silent as she turned and walked back to the makeup table and sat down. As soon as she put the powder puff up to her face, Potts pulled his new revolver, the .44, out of his pants, took two steps forward, and aimed it at the back of her head. Just as he pulled the trigger, she stopped powdering her face, and made eye contact through the reflection in the middle mirror. Her head twitched just as the bullet smashed into her skull, causing his aim to be a hair off. The projectile entered her head but not in the back where he had aimed, but through the back and the left side. Instead of exiting her forehead, which is where he had planned for it to come out, the bullet exited just below her left eye. The force of the blast caused her to hit the makeup table headfirst, cracking the bottom of the middle mirror and splattering all three with blood. After hitting the table, her body immediately shot straight back up into the chair, where it teetered for a moment, and then fell forward again, but to the side, causing the weight of her body to fall to one side. Her arms limply swept the perfumes, makeup, and music box off of the table and onto the hardwood floor. Everything made of glass, the perfumes and colognes, shattered, sending glass and toilet water all over the floor.