by Casey Lane
Deb reached for my arm, but thought better of it. She asked anxiously, “Why are you looking at me that way? Where are your shoes? What is that all over you? Good Lord, Acadia, is that blood on your dress, and what’s on your neck? Oh ick, it’s in your hair, too! Are you really okay?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine!” I batted her away, hating to be fussed over. “You owe me a pan of potatoes, though.”
Liz and Jane laughed, and then pointed and made disgusted faces at my hair while they passed the bag of cheesy puffs back and forth.
Debbie almost touched the stiff hair. “So I see!”
I smiled reassuringly at the concern in Salty’s wide eyes, and then said to Deb, “I may owe you a car, though, so don’t sweat it. Is Kate coming with a cleaning team and clothes?”
Deb nodded slowly, unable to stop looking at me. “It’ll cost you, but she’ll be here. Why would you owe me a car? Were you in a wreck?”
Jane gasped, hands flying to her face. Her fingers left orange smudges on her rosy cheeks. “Is that the 4377? You killed somebody in a car accident? Was it your date? Is that where all the blood came from?”
“No, I wasn’t in a wreck and killed my date, but I had to leave Deb’s car and borrow a bus to get everyone here. I’ll tell everybody the 4377 after I shower.” I thanked Deb for her help. “I don’t want to touch anything, so can you grab me a spray bottle of bleach to wipe off my feet? Have the crew do the kitchen wipe down first while we’re showering.” Deb still looked bewildered, but handed me the bottle and a cloth. Revved up, I couldn’t stop the torrent of words that poured out of me while I swabbed my feet. “Will you please help the people I brought get sorted? They’re a mess, too. You might have to dig out some really huge tablecloths they can wrap themselves in after they shower until their clothes arrive.” I glanced up at Debbie’s double take and smiled. “You’ll see what I mean. I’m going to …” My words trailed off this time.
My friends and family had all stopped listening to me. They turned as one towards the back door when the gang from the hotel walked into the kitchen. T-bone’s glare led the way, followed by Ray Dean’s grin, Barbara’s little wave, and lastly Rod, who was holding a hand up across his eyes.
I kept my voice casual, so nobody got the wrong idea. “Hey guys, welcome. Take off your shoes so you don’t track in blood. Everyone, these are some new friends…”
My girlfriend’s mouths had all silently dropped open at the same time, but my cousin Sean and Bobby interrupted me with shouts of, “It’s T. Bookerson Brown and Ray Dean Wilson!” and “Mean Ray Dean and T-bone!”
Pumping the men’s hands enthusiastically, I thought Sean and Bobby’s excited behavior seemed way over the top for grown men in their thirties. “Wait, I never said their names. How do you know these guys? I just met them tonight.”
They ignored me, falling all over each other to ask, “Why aren’t you in Atlanta?” and “Are you both still on suspension?” and “Man, our offensive line sucks dick without you!”
Confused by Bobby and Sean’s chatter, I glanced over at Rod and saw him drop his hand. He did not look happy. Squinting my way, those golden eyes nailed me.
Excited chaos exploded around us.
Quinn started wiggling her hands in excitement and squeaked out, “Oh my God! Oh my God! It’s Rod Ramaldi, the new quarterback of the Minnesota...!”
“You’re right, it’s him! It’s really him!” I couldn’t believe it when the three Canadian brothers started squealing and jumping right along with Quinn and my girlfriends.
Salty raised a thick brow, which coming from him was paramount to doing a cartwheel. Weasel prick Robert took in the football players, but zeroed in on Barbara standing alone off to the side. He leered at her large breasts so openly, she shot him an uncomfortable “get real” frown and protectively crossed her arms.
Everybody started talking at once.
I was dumbfounded. Everything about the guys suddenly fell into place and I felt like a complete horse’s ass. Of course those leviathans were football players--their size, their muscles, their foul mouths, the hair, the jewelry, the women, and the fighting. What else could they be besides football players? Unless it was pro wrestlers, which was another sport I knew nothing about, except that they dyed their hair a lot.
I squinted dubiously over at Rod while I gave a final rub to the soles of my feet and threw away the dirty cloth into a plastic bag. Was Rod’s long hair dyed? Was that why it was such a unique, pure golden color, especially compared to his dark brown brows and lashes?
My practical, well-ordered mind continued to race at an unstoppable gallop with stupid minutiae and never ending lists, and I was suddenly worried that I could be experiencing some sort of melt down.
Rod nodded briefly at the greetings being thrown at him from all directions, but walked towards me.
Ray Dean got everybody started reciting a cheer. He joined in, conducting with waving arms and a demented grin while they all shouted, “Ram, Ram, he’s our new man! If T-bone can’t block, then Ray Dean can!”
Not even the rousing cheer deterred Rod from his path.
“Why, hello there. I’m Liz Turner.” My ex-model friend smiled enticingly up at Rod, perhaps scenting the pheromones of a fifth wealthy husband over the base notes of my hurried squirts of bleach.
“Mary, we need to talk.”
Men tripped over themselves to have Liz smile at them like she was smiling up at Rod. A surprised Liz blinked. “Mary? Who’s Mary?”
Rod nodded curtly and Liz peered past me for a stranger named Mary.
At least I didn’t have to worry that Liz suspected any hanky-panky going on between Rod and I. My ex-model friend was a flirt and was used to men falling at her feet, but she’d never go after a girlfriend’s man. Not that Rod was my man. I smacked my forehead in annoyance at these thoughts.
Exhibiting finesse that would make an elephant look dainty, Ray Dean quickly intervened, “Yo Ram, didn’t you hear me out there on the bus? Your head got rapped a little hard, dude! I told you this blonde’s name is Acadia-- not Mary, or Barbara, or Catalina. Wasn’t Mary that,” he winked, his cupped hands doing va-va-voom motions, “blonde hottie on the plane today?”
T-bone stood with his massive legs apart, arms folded, and ropes of hair sticking out like he’d been electrocuted recently. He’d glared at Ray Dean during the cheering, but now he rumbled that nasty snicker deep in his chest.
Jane had been staring at T-bone in wonder, no doubt convinced she had flashbacked because the huge man did resemble one of her old boyfriends, just one hundred pounds of muscle larger.
Now Jane tore her eyes away and frowned at Ray Dean’s crassness. “Yes, that’s our Acadia, not some Mary.” Apparently still a little baked, she smiled blearily at me. “Now tell me, how was the date tonight, honey? Did you two hit it off before the car accident?”
Deb distracted Jane with a mug of black coffee and practically forced her to drink.
I wanted to scream and run, but I smiled patiently to the room at large while I ground my molars. “I am going to shower and change. I’ll be fast.” Grind. I smiled at the hotel people. “Deb will show you to rooms, so that you can shower, too. You’ll get some different clothes to wear temporarily because we’re burning ours.” Grind. Grind. I smiled at my friends and family all staring at me. “When everyone meets back here, I’ll explain the 4377.”
I walked out of the kitchen, hearing Ray Dean whisper louder than most people yelled, “Hey, what’s Queen Acadia mean by the 4377, T-bone? Is that like some farmer’s way of sayin’ the 411 in Minnesota?”
“How in the hell would I know what farmers say in Minnesota, Ray Dean? Do I look like some girl farmer to you? Do you think all brothers are born knowin’ how to farm?”
To my dismay, Rod, his arguing teammates, and everybody else followed me out into the main hall.
Deb’s voice cried out over the hubbub, “Oh Acadia, your new dress is ruined! It’s ripped all the way up the
back!”
As if the freakin’ front wasn’t caked with blood and guts, but I bit my tongue since I had no more teeth to grind. I held my dress closed over my butt while I went right to the stairs and started up. I didn’t get more than a few stairs before Rod came forward and ordered me to stop. At that sharp command, all eyes were on us with varying expressions from bewilderment to avid curiosity to smirking satisfaction from T-bone.
Not wanting to get into anything personal in front of our audience, I ignored my first reaction to Rod’s peremptory tone, which was to tell him to go take a sky dive without a parachute--only in curse words. Instead, I said softly for only him to hear, “Sorry, but this night has been…” I shrugged, at a loss. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to explain.”
His back to the eavesdroppers, he kept his voice low, too. “Listen, Mary or Acadia, or whatever your name is, you owe me…”
“Owe you?” I interjected, frowning but still whispering. “I owe you nothing.” I motioned subtly towards the curious group. “I won’t talk about it here.” Anxious they would overhear us and discover what I’d been doing tonight, I added irrationally, “I’m still married, for Christ’s sake!”
I started up the stairs again.
Voice hard, Rod continued evenly as if I hadn’t spoken, “You owe me an explanation why you lied to me and my friends, stole a…”
Pushed too far at his arrogance, and embarrassed that I thought he’d referred to our sexual interlude, I hissed quickly to stop him, “And I said that I will deal with you in fifteen minutes, so chill.”
Done talking, I ran up the stairs. At the first landing, I heard Quinn’s scream of delight and glanced back.
Eyes furious and his face bloody, Rod “Ram” Ramaldi, the incredibly handsome and the incredibly pissed off new Minnesota quarterback, was chasing me.
“Oh, I think you’ll deal with me right now!”
Yeah, maybe he wasn’t so much the gilded angel sent from Heaven.
Chapter Seven
“I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven’t seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they’re absolutely stupid.” –Ender Wiggins, Ender’s Game
Were the origins of the rabid, cannibalistic behavior I witnessed tonight at the bar caused by a bacterial or viral infection, an unknown strain of a prion disease, or some type of bioengineered nanotech from a secret government lab? Could it be something coughed up from a deep ocean vent, chemical warfare, or a plague sent directly from God to begin the end of days? Or was it a damn candy gram sent special delivery on a meteorite from an extraterrestrial life force?
I’ve read quite a bit about diseases with the potential to cause deadly pandemics, but didn’t have any answers to what caused that craziness at the bar. I’d leave that for people to worry about who were much smarter than me with lots of letters after their names. What I did have to go on was what I had witnessed with my own two eyes. As tempting as it was, I would be the crazy one to disregard the slaughter at the bar as a onetime event.
I had learned two useful things tonight at the hotel. Because of fate, we may have a very short window of opportunity to dig in and get prepared for hell on earth, and I was not ready to do that swan dive out of the hay loft after all.
I pushed off the solid door that separated me from the pissed off football player and rushed to the master bath. I could still hear pounding on the door and swore in irritation that Rod wasn’t just going to obligingly disappear.
I’d have to placate him, and everyone else in the house, because getting them onboard was critical to my ongoing plans, but first I needed to get clean. I had been wearing infected blood for almost an hour. It may be too little, too late, but it was the best I could do until we knew more about how the infection spread or if I showed symptoms.
Hands only slightly shaky, I cut through the silk belt and fabric of the dress until it fell off me in a sodden heap. It went into a plastic trash bag, along with my panties and strapless bra.
Nude, I braved a glance in the large sink mirror while I methodically pulled out all the pins in the blonde hair on my head. If this wasn’t airborne, I might be alright. The roundness of my breasts were glaringly white against my upper chest smeared black with dried blood, but I hadn’t received a bite or a scratch, swallowed any fluids, nor had anything splashed in my eyes or up my nose.
I was missing my right false eyelash, the Cleopatra eyeliner had gone raccoon, and the red lipstick was smeared off my lips to either side of my face. No wonder everybody had stared downstairs, I could be the Joker’s twin sister.
Swallowing a grim laugh that I had worried Rod was still after my bod; I pulled the platinum blonde wig off and threw it into the trash bag.
I growled in imitation of T-bone, “Blondes do not, NOT, have more fun!”
The wig left a bright red swipe on the inside of the pristine white plastic. Gagging, I dropped in the hairpins and set the trash bag aside. Determinedly, I shut out the sounds of gunshots and the gross images trying to crowd to the surface of my mind.
Pumping a handful of soap and then spray bleach into my palm, I started in on scrubbing my hands and nails first. It stung to beat the band, so I hoped it was killing germs, but I was no doctor. Then I got busy wiping down the contents of my purse.
Seven minutes later, I emerged from the steaming shower scrubbed of blood, slime, and cosmetics. My own jet black hair was still wet, so I swept the long mass off my face with a thin headband. I swiftly dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt with a faded Acadia Blooms logo, warm socks, and my favorite Timberlands.
I rummaged quickly in my large closet and found my photography vest. If you want to carry a gun, but not wear a shoulder or belt holster, I’ve found photography vests work great. The vests are more practical than shooting vests. They come with many more pockets that are waterproof inside and close with zippers, snaps, or Velcro.
I opened my nightstand drawer, slid my hand up into the back, and moved the hidden lever that opened the false bottom. I secured the extra two loaded magazines for the Glock into a vest pocket, along with my phone, credit cards, and keys.
I’d originally balked at keeping a loaded gun by the bed. Living in the country, I’d grown up around guns all my life. We’ve got a gun room of handguns, long guns, ammo, and a few other weapons locked up tight downstairs, and I enjoy target shooting. That wasn’t why I balked.
Most security experts agreed that it is counterproductive to store a loaded gun in a bedside table drawer for self-defense. It is the first place the bad guys look for weapons to steal or use against you. If that isn’t deterrent enough, a bedside drawer is too accessible for wandering, curious children and birdbrained adults who could end up accidentally shooting themselves or somebody else.
Still, Law insisted we have loaded weapons conveniently nearby while we slept, so we compromised. Law built the false drawers in both our nightstands to hide the guns. Then he pissed me off for years by waking me up from a deep sleep at odd hours so that I could practice drawing my gun out of the hidden space in the dark.
I smiled sadly at the memory while I went to the other side of the bed. This was the time of night I’d usually be staring at the ceiling and yearning for my husband in our bed. Snapping Law’s holstered gun, a Kimber Tactical Custom HD II, into the vest’s front right pocket and the three extra loaded mags in another, I had no time to brood.
I gathered up the trash bags in one hand and went to the bedroom door. Silently, I unlocked both locks, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
My gaze immediately fell on Rod. Damn, he was a persistent bugger. He was sitting on the floor across from my bedroom and his head was back against the wall. His eyes were closed, but the tautness around his mouth signified pain. Irritation gave way to concern. The long spill of his blonde hair on his broad chest shimmered and caught my suspicious attention while I decided what to say.
Rod’s eyes opened, and then widen
ed a fraction when he looked up at me. “Well, well, what do we have here?” His gaze traveled back down, but I refused to squirm under his slow perusal. “First you’re Mary Jensen, the sexy blonde who wants to hurry up and fuck, and now you’re what…the black-haired, safari photojournalist, I’m-still-married Acadia King?” He stood up in one fluid motion that I knew now was honed athleticism. Nothing could make Rod remotely unattractive short of throwing acid on his face, but his twisted grin was not pleasant. “Are you ready to deal with me now?”
Writing his pettiness off to a post-traumatic headache, I looked him over critically. His pupils were the same size and his speech wasn’t slurred. Not that I was a physician, but concussion could most likely be ruled out. We’d still have to watch him like a hawk over the next few hours. I’d hate to shoot him in error thinking he was turning into a crazy when he was only suffering from an epileptic fit. He did have blood streaked on his face, but his clothes were only lightly spackled.
“Rod, other than beating on that crazy guy who killed your Asian girlfriend, did you have contact with any other of those freaks at the bar? Get bitten or scratched anywhere? Swallow any blood or any other body fluids…”
My voice stopped at those words, but Rod only smirked while he rubbed his temple with a forefinger. “Betsy wasn’t my girlfriend; we’d just met her tonight. But no, ma’am, I didn’t get any scratches or bites.”
I ignored the sarcastic “ma’am” and glanced quickly up the hallway to make sure we were alone. We were standing in the family wing corridor of bedrooms and Deb had brought the others to the guest wing to shower, but I didn’t want to chance being overheard.
“Look, Rod, you’re right. I owe you an apology. Technically, I’m not married. My husband died two years ago.” I went on, wanting him to understand, “I guess I haven’t been handling his death too well. The women you saw down in the kitchen are a few of my best friends and they convinced me to go out and mingle…”