Basically a two-story affair built on a downslope, the sturdy structure dominated most of the block kitty corner from the left turn lane. The south elevation was all glass and metal fronted by a vast expanse of blacktop that looped counter-clockwise around the entire above-ground part of the facility. Duncan strained to see inside the green-tinted glass, but picked up no movement.
“Eerie,” Charlie said. “Maybe they’re all downtown putting out fires.”
“Fires?”
“Bad choice of words,” Charlie conceded.
Duncan shook his head. “This is strange.” He glanced up and saw he had missed his light. It was changing from green to yellow. Cars in the through lane slowed and stopped beside his truck, one peeling off and forming up on his bumper. He said, “Even between shift changes or the middle of the night, you’d think that being this close to the action there would be a number of cruisers nosed up to the main building on the Burnside level.”
“Not today,” Charlie replied. “Place is a ghost town.”
Again forgetting to keep tabs on the cycling lights, Duncan walked his gaze left. The underground garage portion of Traffic Division faced west on 47th. It was painted a sickly yellow and tinged gray with exhaust soot at sidewalk level; compared to the gleaming upper floor, the cement and cinderblock garage level was unremarkable in every way. The west-facing rollup door was closed. Atop the door was a rectangular sign warning incoming vehicles of a twenty-two-foot height limit. Strangely there were no vehicles of any height in sight. There were no SERT command wagons—basically RVs with high-tech communications suites. There were no patrol cars rolling up to the door to enter and gas up. There were no SUVs—Ford Explorers, mainly—which were favored by watch supervisors. Nothing wheeled was coming or going from a place well-known for its round-the-clock police presence.
When his light changed green again and the eastbound traffic started scooting by, Duncan kept his foot parked on the brake and his eyes on the quiet structure. Lolling lazily in the hot afternoon breeze, the American flag was the only thing moving on the premises. It seemed as if the place had been evacuated.
There was a long drawn-out horn blast from the small pick-up crowding his bumper.
Duncan snapped out of it, but instead of looking up to see the status of his light, his gaze moved from the flapping flag to the glove box.
The horn blast faded and the driver of the truck on their bumper leaned out his open window and bellowed, “Hang up and drive, asshole!”
The sudden craving continued niggling at Duncan as he made the turn on the yellow. With the other driver still cursing and waving a middle finger at him, he pulled hard to the curb, letting the pick-up blow by on the left.
Looking concerned, Charlie asked, “What’s going on?”
Duncan said, “Just open the glove box.”
Charlie nodded and thumbed the button. He let the door hinge down on its own and grimaced when it hit the stops with a solid clunk.
Duncan turned on the radio and hiked up the volume. Instantly Johnny Cash was coming out the speakers and singing something about a man coming around. A lesser known song that he couldn’t sing along with if he wanted to. But singing was the last thing on his mind.
“This what you want?” Charlie asked.
Duncan said nothing. He nodded, reached his hand out, and received the bottle just as the cyclist came to and threw her upper body into the passenger seatback, spraying Charlie, the dash, and the windshield with spittle and beaded sweat.
Chapter 22
Charlie was grateful he hadn’t clicked in after leaving Tilly’s. Unrestrained by a shoulder or lap belt, he twisted his upper body violently counterclockwise as his fight or flight response kicked into high gear. The latter won out first and he leaned back, pressing his right shoulder hard against the dash. Not one to be left out of the party, fight kicked in a millisecond later and instinctively Charlie thrust his left arm toward the passenger, catching her by the throat and stalling out her mad over-the-seat lunge.
Tossing the pint of Jack Daniels on the seat, Duncan ripped his pistol from its paddle holster right-handed. Taking advantage of the target Charlie was presenting him, he slammed the pistol’s butt just in front of the cyclist’s left ear. Not too hard, though. He didn’t want to kill her. Just tap her temple with enough behind it to, at best, take the drug-induced fight out of her and put her back into her seat dazed and confused. Or, at worst, which at this point was just about even on Duncan’s give-a-shit radar with the former, to knock the ungrateful twenty-something out cold. In fact, as he felt the impact transit the wood grips and start the rapid ripple-shiver up his fully extended arm, he thought the latter would make getting her out of the truck that much easier, so he rotated his upper body by a degree, which changed the follow through while imparting a little more oomph to the blow.
Seeing the impact from his front row seat started Charlie’s already queasy stomach to churning. And as the shock from it transferred through the cyclist’s thin neck and coursed through his clenched fingers, he shouted, “You might have just killed her!”
Judging by the bullwhip crack that echoed off the windshield, Duncan feared Charlie was right. He expected to see her eyes roll back and all fight leave her rigid, straining muscles.
But the opposite happened. Seemingly invigorated, she kept fighting. She strained harder against the nylon belt, challenging the tensed muscle and sinew of Charlie’s locked arm. In the span of just a few short frantic seconds her lids had opened wide, revealing eyes that were at once glassy and roving, which at face value was suggestive of life, yet slightly clouded, which reminded Duncan of the look parked on Tilly’s slack face.
“Keep holding her there,” Duncan blurted, as he put the pistol down and yanked his shirt over his head.
“Doing my best,” Charlie gasped through clenched teeth. “She’s real strong. Like she’s on PCP or something.”
Duncan threw his shirt over the cyclist’s head, wound the threadbare number around twice, and knotted the stretched-out sleeves in front of her still snapping teeth. “That ought to hold until we get there. I’m sorry I pulled over in the first place.” He stuck the pistol in its place on his hip and snorted at the absurd image of his unloved love-handle draping pasty and white over the walnut grips. Next, without pause he snatched up the bottle of Jack Daniels.
“Time and a place,” said Charlie, still holding the hooded druggie at bay.
Duncan said nothing. He unscrewed the cap, stuck the bottle out the window, and twisted his wrist to let the amber liquid drain out onto the street.
Five seconds later the emptied bottle was lying on the road in the center of the spreading puddle.
Duncan said, “I’m done with it.” He looked over his bare left shoulder to check the lane and then started them rolling downhill toward the place he hoped to take care of the two most pressing problems of a very long day filled with them.
***
Charlie’s arm was growing tired by the time they’d covered half a dozen blocks north on 47th, blowing the red light at Glisan in the process. With the brick and glass exterior of their destination rising up over the intersection where 47th crossed Halsey, the fingers on Charlie’s left hand started going numb.
“Stay green,” Charlie chanted as 47th started a steady shallow climb towards Halsey where the light burned just that. Fifty feet from the intersection, however, the light flicked to yellow, which in Duncan’s mind, given the present circumstances, meant speed up, not prepare to stop.
So he did. Palming the horn and leaning heavily on the gas pedal produced two different but highly desired results. The latter made the truck’s engine cough up a few more horsepower that kept gravity from bleeding off too much of their forward momentum. The former started the heads of four separate drivers panning towards the speeding pick-up, which in turn stole their attention from the soon to turn traffic light, which bought Duncan a couple of precious seconds.
“Blow the light,” Charlie c
ried. “Or shirt be damned, this dumb bitch is going to succeed in biting my face off.”
Three of the cars remained static at the light, but, as bad luck would have it, a full-sized SUV with a young lead-footed male at the wheel shot forward just as the light on Halsey westbound cycled to green.
Charlie’s eyes widened and his grip on the cyclist’s neck loosened as simultaneously the solid red passed overhead and the rapidly accelerating SUV edged into his side vision from the right. Realizing that upwards of six tons of speeding metal, rubber, glass, and plastic were about to try and occupy the same airspace as the unyielding Dodge, he gritted his teeth and braced for impact.
As time seemed to slow, he saw the SUV driver’s mouth form a silent O followed by what could only be lip read as “Shit!” Though Charlie didn’t actually hear the word, it seemed to be perfectly enunciated and was punctuated by the kid jerking the wheel hard left. With the ragged chirp of rubber breaking free of blacktop and the cyclist’s guttural growling assaulting Charlie’s ears, he shouted, “Hard left,” at the top of his voice.
Fortunately for all parties involved, the pendulum of luck swung in the proper direction. First for the three drivers who had stayed on the brakes and were but bystanders to the vehicular ballet about to happen.
Secondly for the young SUV driver as a combination of fast-twitch muscles and his quick reaction time saw his foot get to the brake pedal in conjunction with the course correction.
And lastly, for the second time today Lady Luck was favoring Duncan, who listened to Charlie and hauled the wheel hard left, starting a perfect serpentine slide that took the Dodge out of harm’s way and sent it airborne on the north side of Halsey where the two-lane began following a slight down-grade.
Realizing he was about to have a visitor in the front seat with him if he didn’t take action, Charlie stiffened his grip on the cyclist’s neck, partially silencing the growling, and locked his elbow.
Letting loose with a slightly less enthusiastic whoop than the Duke boys were known to belt, Duncan did two things: he braced for the consequences of taking the truck airborne, and then flashed his eyes to the rearview, a half-beat after which his stomach twisted into a sheepshank when he realized Tilly was getting twice as much air as the old Dodge.
“Stop here!” Charlie hollered. He had loosened his death-grip on the grab bar affixed to the A-pillar and instinctively put his palm toward the soldiers and their rifle barrels that even from three truck-lengths away seemed the size of manhole covers. And his first impression wasn’t far off as Duncan stomped on the brakes and bellowed, “Hang on, Tilly,” because just two truck-lengths from the soldiers, as forward momentum was bled in half, he saw that their rifles were sporting cylindrical can-looking things on their business ends. Though he wasn’t certain, he thought they were called silencers. In the next beat he was wondering what in God’s name would soldiers guarding a hospital in the center of the city need those for.
As the Dodge finally came to a stop with a violent lurch, there was a discordant bang as Tilly slammed hard against the vertical ribbed sheet metal between the cab and load box.
Sitting amid a cloud of blue-gray tire smoke an arm’s length from the soldiers and an incredibly large military troop carrier, Duncan found himself staring down a traffic control feature made from Jersey barriers. Two rows of the waist-high concrete slabs were set end-to-end and stretched for a couple of blocks away from the checkpoint, nearly to the overpass where 47th crossed the Banfield Freeway.
Duncan took his eyes off of the roadblock and glaring soldiers just long enough to glance over his right shoulder. We’re fucked, he thought. Tilly had come to rest arms and legs akimbo with the sheet covering only her face. Her walking shorts bore dark brown splotches, the impact having forced fluids and who knows what from the orifices south of her navel.
As Duncan dragged his eyes forward all he could muster was, “The hell is the National Guard doing here?” Though he’d been thinking aloud more so than actually expecting a coherent answer from Charlie, who still had his hands full with the cyclist, he received an answer. “Who gives a shit,” Charlie blurted. “Get me some help.”
With the rubber smoke wafting off toward the hospital, the soldiers who had no doubt read Charlie’s lips, or body language, or perhaps had spotted the writhing human form with a shirt wrapped about its face, rushed forward, their incredibly intimidating—in Charlie’s mind—assault rifles pointed at all three of them.
Punctuating his question with a thrust of his rifle, the first soldier, young of face and lean and dressed in camouflage fatigues, asked forcefully, “Is the civilian infected?”
Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but, mesmerized by the wavering barrel, could summon nothing.
Quick on the uptake, and with nothing to lose but the head case in his back seat, Duncan nodded and said, “She’s gotten into something.”
Expecting the soldiers to rush the door and haul the woman from the back while calling for a doctor or nurse, instead the opposite happened. To a man they all took a quick step back.
Voice rising an octave, the baby-faced soldier ordered Charlie out of the truck.
“I can’t,” he croaked. “She’s Olympic-athlete-caliber strong. If I unlock my arm, my face is toast.”
Without a word, one of the soldiers wearing sergeant’s chevrons stepped forward, hauled open the back door, and grabbed a handful of the cyclist’s sheer nylon top, ripping it down the back in the process.
Through the combination of the sergeant yanking on the shredded jersey and Charlie pushing off of his seat with all two hundred plus pounds riding behind a vicious two-handed shove, the cyclist was forcibly ejected onto the grass parking strip.
Voice low and calm, Duncan said, “We’ve gotta go before they ask us to fill out paperwork or something.”
Charlie shot a look across the cab that said, What reality are you living in.
“What?” said Duncan, shrugging. “Bureaucracy never sleeps.”
Charlie reached through his open window to push the rear door closed. He turned back and watched the soldiers struggling to get the woman zip-tied and suddenly he didn’t feel so emasculated. Three on one and she was holding her own, until Baby Face yanked Duncan’s shirt off her face and everyone got a look at her eyes, which no longer had the out-of-it drug-stupor gloss. They were the color of the film at the bottom of a cereal bowl—translucent and milky white with no spark of life in there whatsoever.
Baby Face had already pulled a device from a pocket. It was black plastic and had a trigger like a gun. But instead of a single barrel there were two probes atop the boxy thing that arced out like a horseshoe laid flat. And he never got a chance to deploy whatever it was, because upon seeing the woman’s eyes when she turned her head his way, he tossed the device on the brown lawn and bellowed, “She’s gone.”
A tick later the sergeant sprang into action. “Clear,” he said, his jaw going tense. Without wasting another word, he motioned the other soldiers back with his free hand and put a boot on the prostrate form. From out of nowhere a black pistol was in his hand, the tubular device attached to the muzzle pressed to her head. A millisecond after the suppressor on the soldier’s Beretta rendered the weapon’s report but a hollow pop. The woman’s head suddenly took on an altogether different shape. Like an egg, Duncan thought. But instead of yolk, thick pink and gray brain matter oozed wetly from one ear.
Seeing this in the side view suddenly cured him of any desire to ask the soldiers for his shirt back, let alone inquire as to where the morgue was located. Mortified by what at first blush appeared to be a murder in cold blood, Duncan stared straight down the cement chute, focusing on the blurry forms at its terminus he guessed were soldiers manning a similar checkpoint. Providence was now under constant scrutiny coming and going. Don’t pass Go. Do not collect $200.
Taking yet another cue from his gut, Duncan whispered, “We need to get far away from here.”
Before Charlie could answer to
that, the sergeant was filling up the open passenger side window. “Doc says there’s no room in the morgue for the cadaver you have in back of your truck.” There was a pregnant pause, after which Duncan expected the inquisition to begin. Instead, muttering under his breath, the sergeant said, “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
Duncan elbowed Charlie. “What’d he say?”
A knowing look falling on his face, Charlie replied, “I’m not repeating that.”
Motioning with his rifle, the sergeant said rather ominously, “I’d haul you both out and check you for bites … but I don’t have the energy.” He pointed down the Jersey barrier chute. “Move along, now.”
Duncan didn’t need to be told twice. No more room in hell was running through his mind as he let the truck coast forward and enter into the single one-way lane demarked by the lined-up barriers.
“Where are we going now?” Charlie asked. He was looking in his wing mirror and saw a person in surgical scrubs scurry to the cyclist’s form and toss a black blanket-looking thing on the grass next to it.
Duncan pulled away from the curb with his attention divided between the narrowing Jersey barrier funnel ahead and flurry of activity taking place in the side mirror. “Infected,” he said. “And they wasted no time in bringing out a body bag.”
Charlie said, “Probably standard practice—”
“What necessitated the tag-and-bag in the first place was far from standard practice.”
“She was resisting,” Charlie said, rubbing his left shoulder.
Eyeing an ambulance-width break in the Jersey barriers on the right, Duncan said, “No … it wasn’t that. There was fear in the younger soldier’s eyes. They were all terrified of whatever she had become infected with.”
ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) Page 12