But what really struck Nate of the whole surreal atmosphere in the bar—and it didn’t really register until he walked his gaze over the drinkers on stools at the bar and then on to the ragged semicircle of people Charlie was standing alongside—was that all eyes in the place were glued to the bank of televisions suspended over the mirrored backbar. The people—young, old and everything in between—all wore the same expectant look. Conversely, everyone seemed defeated. The body language, universal. Slumped shoulders. Chins cradled in palms. Arms crossed on the bar top in fatigued resignation.
The last time Nate could remember seeing a crowd of people all reacting this way to something playing out on television was when the planes took down the towers and hit the Pentagon on 9/11. He supposed, too, that scenes like this had played out all across America in 1963 when JFK was assassinated.
Muted visions of men in business suits swan diving off the South Tower were still playing in Nate’s head when his fare looked away from the television and established eye contact.
In the next instant—perhaps sensing Charlie’s head pan in her side vision—the good-looking fair-haired waitress took her eyes off the largest television whose screen was now divided into four quadrants, a different city with a different kind of mayhem playing out in each.
Recognition flared behind those blue eyes and she hollered “Taxi!” and craned around wildly, arching her back and letting her gaze fall on each party seated at the nearby tables and then the booths ringing the room’s open dining area. Seeing no acknowledging looks or gestures, she swung back around Nate’s way, arched a dark eyebrow and shrugged—universal semaphore for I tried.
Shaking his head and with a touch of embarrassment, Nate covered the company logo embroidered in red on his shirt. Hand over his heart as if he was about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, he mouthed, “I’m off duty.” Hell, he thought to himself as he jabbed a finger at the back of Charlie’s head, looks like all of us are now.
Lips pursed into a thin white line, the blonde nodded and, elbowing Charlie to get his attention, hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the new arrival.
Wincing from the razor-sharp bone catching him perfectly between the fourth and fifth ribs, Charlie turned toward the waitress for a brief second. Seeing her dainty thumb slicing the air back and forth on a horizontal plane, he swiveled his head back around and saw the cab driver. He motioned the big man over, saying, “What are you having, Nate?”
Nate nodded then zippered his way through the throng standing two deep in front of the bar and leaned in toward Charlie. “Do you still require my services?” he asked.
“Seeing as how my friend has come and gone … yes. But not until after I buy you a drink.”
What the hell, Nate thought, the cool air acting as seductress. Seeing no reason to mention what the dispatcher had just told him over the radio in the car, he made a show of muting his phone. “I’m officially off duty, then,” he said with a wan smile. And with only eight hours left on a lucrative ten-hour shift.
Charlie smiled big. “What are you having, then?”
“Single malt, neat.”
Charlie recoiled visibly at that. He said, “You got it,” and ordered a Johnny Walker for his new friend, and a shot of Old Crow with a bottle of Budweiser for himself. As he waited for Chad to pour the drinks, his eyes wandered back to the action unfolding on Fox News. “Can you believe this shit?” he said. “They’re grounding all flights in five cities.”
“What … the Chinese flu they’ve been talking about?” Nate asked.
“They’re not saying. It could just as well be they’re picking up extra terrorist chatter. But they haven’t announced a change in the threat level. As if anyone can understand that color-coded BS as it is.” He laughed and corralled the drinks from the bar, handing Nate his first.
“Running a tab?” asked the bartender.
Charlie nodded.
The muscled rock and roller leaned in. He cupped his hands, put them near his mouth and whispered, “Hell, if that’s the case … I’ll have another.”
“Can’t afford your own beer?” Charlie said.
“I can,” said the stranger. “Thought I’d try to piggyback on your tab anyway … seeing as how I just spent a wad across the street buying ammo and supplies. I figure my best bet on getting through this thing unscathed is riding it out at home.” He smiled unashamedly and slapped a twenty on the bar. “One more for the road, Chad.”
For a moment Nate thought about letting the parking attendant and the other guy in on what the dispatcher had told him moments ago. Tell them that he was probably staring down a couple of forced days off while the secret travel quarantine was in place. After briefly contemplating the prospect that sharing the inside information might change his fare’s mood and curtail the flow of libations, he decided to keep it to himself.
“Cheers,” said Charlie, hoisting his shot glass.
“Cheers,” answered Nate, moving his drink to meet the toast.
There was a tink of glasses meeting just as the overhead lights flickered and the bank of lottery machines left of the bar went dark.
A man standing before the ATM awaiting money let loose with a string of expletives. He looked toward the bartender, tapped the glass, then said, “Damn thing still has my card”—the people at the bar swiveled their heads in unison at that—“and the effin screen is black.”
Chad regarded the man for a second before his attention was drawn back toward the televisions, all of which were now emblazoned with the Presidential Seal floating on a powder blue background. At the bottom of each screen were the words: President Odero set to address the nation.
Chapter 11
Don William Bowen died from rapid and massive blood loss with a combined three-hundred-plus-pounds of snarling, stinking flesh trying to worm its way into the already cramped booth with him. To a person walking by, the sight of two pairs of legs protruding from the booth and scissoring the air like divers out of water could have easily been confused with a harmless college prank. Perhaps something as innocent as trying to fit as many co-eds as possible into a phone booth or two-door Volkswagen Beetle.
But there was nothing innocent about the recent attack. And the passersby cutting the light spill at the top of the ramp were thinking of themselves, mostly. Or where their loved ones were at the moment. Or how they were going to get across the river now that the bridges with moving spans were all raised and the handful of static crossings were blocked by Portland police, soldiers, or a combination thereof. Fight or flight instincts had kicked in for most of those unlucky enough to have their lunch break or downtown shopping junket cut short by the violence and ongoing random attacks that had all but completely shut down the entire business core. Therefore, initially, the people transiting the sidewalk had been no help whatsoever—blinders on and alone in their own little mental worlds.
For Don the whole ordeal from the initial surprise attack to him drawing his final breath had lasted all of three minutes and sixteen seconds. Which was an eternity considering his long legs had become twisted underneath the spilled office chair, an unforeseen event leaving him off balance and helpless to fight off the two scruffy men.
In the first frenzied seconds as he hollered at the attackers and fell off his chair, pain flared in his right forearm and his hand went numb. The bites suffered there, now an angry shade of bluish purple, were overshadowed by the fact that three digits of his right hand were now in the stomach of one of his attackers. And as all of this had been taking place, the other attacker had gone to work on his neck, biting the fist-sized chasm responsible for the blood coating the floor and, ultimately, Don’s rapid death.
However, Don did not die easy. Immediately following the virus-tainted blood’s entry into his brain, he felt every nerve ending in his body suddenly come alive. Thankfully this phase of the turn was quickly overcome by the onset of chills that racked his body with tremors even as hunks of flesh were being rent from his arms, neck, and face.
The pulses of mind-numbing cold lasted only until the blood gushing from his destroyed carotid bulb slowed to a trickle and his heart fluttered weakly one final time and went still in his chest.
***
Now, a minute and thirty seconds later, with his left cheek pressed firmly against the wall below the left-side sliding glass, and his neck bent at a near impossible right-angle, Don was starting to reanimate. All five fingers on his left hand began vibrating subtly. Next they curled up reflexively into a fist. Then his eyes snapped open only to see up close the random linear patterns and grapefruit-sized spot worn into the unfinished wood where his left knee usually rested. And though it didn’t register as anything but a few white blurry blobs, there were multiple pieces of chewing gum pressed under the window sill. As the thing that used to be called Don pushed off the floor with both mutilated hands splayed out in the pooled blood, all it felt was the pang in its gut telling it to feed. Because through feeding, the deadly virus reproducing inside of him and already present and concentrated in his saliva would be transferred to the next host. And so on, and so forth.
Much like Don in his present form, the virus possessed no emotion or feelings one way or the other where life or death was concerned. It just needed to do what it did best—keep the chain reaction going. It was engineered by scientists to be ruthless in its attack on the body’s immune system. And thanks to conditioning, the normalcy bias inherent in twenty-first-century man made efficient its worldwide delivery.
Seeing movement out of the corner of his right eye, undead Don got his legs under him, gripped the counter near his forehead with his fully functioning left hand, and wormed what was left of the right between the writhing creatures pressing down on him.
Flexing his legs and tensing corded back muscles—all still somewhat toned, though nothing compared to when he was in playing shape and posting up the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar—allowed him to get into a low squat and find purchase with his bloody nubs on the sliding door. After that, standing was easy. Eyes already searching out fresh meat, undead Don rose fully, in the process racking his head on the low ceiling and inadvertently dumping the undead street kids onto the cement floor.
The living corpse that had been Don felt nothing. Not the fresh bloodless four-inch gash on the crown of his pallid forehead. Not the exposed nerve endings where his fingers had been. Moreover, he had no feelings one way or the other after sending his attackers sprawling onto the cement outside the booth.
He only wanted to eat. So with an inner voice urging him on with a chant more instinct-driven than verbal, following his new brethren, he let his upper body hinge forward through the rectangular window. While a tight fit for two bodies at once, undead Don’s head and torso fell through the opening with ease, his hips and legs eventually following suit.
Hearing the hollow thunks of the bloody spectacles spilling onto the garage floor, a trio of passerby at street level stopped and stared down the ramp. Mouths forming capital O’s, to a person they remained rooted in place for a quick beat before springing into action, one of them stopping a passing ambulance while the rest moved other pedestrians aside as it began backing up to the entry.
Attention drawn to the top of the ramp by the beeping of the ambulance’s back-up warning and the presence of silhouetted human forms, the three living corpses snarled and rose up off the ground. And if the silent subliminal chant jumping synapses in the primordial part of undead Don’s brain was to come out in words instead of the raspy growl rattling his diaphragm, want, need, eat would be echoing loudly off the parking garage ceiling as he locked onto the meat milling in the colorful splash of the strobing ambulance lights.
Chapter 12
Charlie’s first clue that something wasn’t right was finding Duncan’s Dodge in front of the garage and the front door standing partway open.
He turned toward the taxi and put a finger in the air to tell his new best friend, Nate, that he’d be right out with more cash—or so he hoped.
He paused on the single cement stair, pinned his hair away from his ear, and listened hard. Riding just over the tick and wheeze of the tired V8 in the nearby Crown Vic was a low, sonorous rumble. And competing with both noises was the steady hum of a box fan pushing air around just inside the cracked door.
“Duncan?”
Nothing.
Louder this time. “Duncan! You in there?”
After watching the bad news trickle in on the televisions in the crowded bar, and imbibing quite a few drinks to numb the gnawing suspicion that this time the crap really was hitting the oscillating thingy, Charlie couldn’t help but be apprehensive about pushing the door the rest of the way inward and facing whatever was inside. Sure, the newscasters were saying the instances of cannibalism on display in the half-dozen video clips they had been showing ad nauseam all afternoon were caused by illegal drugs or mental illness. But as he nudged the door open with his toe he couldn’t shake the feeling that what was happening today had a direct correlation with similar unrest now being widely reported in China, Russia, Great Britain, and all over the Middle East.
“Duncan?” he whispered.
There was a snort, wet and muffled, like a pig rooting for truffles. Then, plain as day, the low rumble he’d detected from the stoop resumed. So Charlie took one sliding step to the right and caught a glimpse of its source. Stretched out on the sofa underneath a thin sheet, feet sticking out one end, the other pulled up and tucked behind a human-head-shaped lump, was his roomie Duncan.
Charlie went silent for a tick as the fabric sucked into Duncan’s gaping mouth. Then silence for a couple of seconds before the snoring was back louder than before. Sleep apnea? Charlie wondered as he crept across the three-by-three square of almond-colored vinyl just inside the door, worked his way around the sofa, and cast his gaze over the rectangular coffee table. A madly vibrating box fan sat on the far end. It was trained on his friend’s legs and making the sheet from his knees down ruffle and flap softly, as if alive. Atop the walnut-brown table were seven empty beer bottles, their white and red paper labels picked at and curling away from the gum backing. Also on the table top, pinned underneath a black Model 1911 Colt .45, was a short stack of cash with Andrew Jackson peering one-eyed through the pistol’s trigger guard. Chad wasn’t kidding, he thought. Duncan certainly hit his numbers. Assuming the crisp bills were all of the same denomination, Charlie guessed there to be almost four hundred dollars there.
Letting his old pal continue sawing logs, he leaned lengthwise across the table and slipped the top twenty from the stack, jostling the semiautomatic a bit in the process.
He palmed the first bill in his off-hand and went back for seconds. Hand hovering over the gun, Charlie stole a furtive glance out the yawning doorway at the Yellow Cab. Which was a big mistake. Because suddenly the snoring ceased, there was a crushing pain in his wrist, and Duncan said wanly, “Chuck … I was fixing to pay you rent out of that. Why ya trying to ninja it from under there?”
“Didn’t want to wake you. The forty bucks is for the waiting cabbie.”
Duncan slowly pulled the sheet down to his neck. He yawned and said, “Forty bucks … from downtown? What, did you blow all your tip money on Old Crow?”
“I’m a parking attendant in a bank tower, Duncan. Not a valet at a five-star-hotel.”
“That fancy place up there doesn’t have a valet service?” Eyes narrowing, Duncan kicked off the sheet. Then, with a semblance of a grin inching up his silver mustache, he hauled himself to a sitting position.
Charlie shook his head. He had seen the look before. Duncan was hatching a plan. “Forget it,” he told him. “They’ll never let a guy with your spotty driving record drive those expensive vehicles.”
“I will someday,” replied Duncan, his shoulders slumping. “One way or another.”
“Be right back,” Charlie said. He hustled out the door and was back in a handful of seconds.
When Charlie had shut the door, he said, “I could have used that ride
home.”
Duncan said, “Sorry I didn’t answer when you called.”
“I called twice.”
“I know,” he conceded. “What can I say? I become a self-centered individual when I start drinking. If it’ll make you feel better, Charlie … you can add the fare to my rent.”
“I will,” Charlie said. “And another twenty to cover the half-case of my beer you just finished.” He counted a hundred and eighty dollars. Folded it in his palm and crossed the small front room on his way to the kitchen.
Unfazed, Duncan said, “You hear about the stuff happening in the swamp?”
“You mean D.C.?” Charlie called from the kitchen. “President Odero is telling everyone in the District to stay put. Then he raised the threat level at the same time he’s telling everyone this is going to pass real quick. Not twenty minutes passes and BBC News is showing Air Force One taking off from Andrews.”
“Stock video footage, ya think?”
Charlie shook his head no. He said, “I’m sure it was being broadcast live.”
“What’s good for the gander, eh?”
“He must have gotten cold feet, or new information …” Charlie took an envelope from behind a row of canned vegetables high up in the cupboard. He looked over his shoulder and stuffed the cash in with the previous rent installment he’d collected from his dear, though oft-troubled, friend. “… because there were other reports coming in that his plane circled D.C. a few times before landing back at Andrews. Strange behavior unless they decided for some reason he needed to be in that flying command bird of his.”
“What’s that all about, ya think?” Duncan drawled, still sounding sleepy.
“I have no idea,” Charlie replied, stretching to full length in order to slip the envelope back where he had taken it from. “Where’d you get the cash? Tilly finally pay you for all the odd jobs?”
ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) Page 6