And the prize at this point was supplies. Food, yes, but also blankets and clothing, items to burn and to make fire. The plan—at least as I had devised it in my mind—was to gather as much as we could and then head back to the cabin, to at least make a pass of the property and determine whether the White Ones remained or had moved on. I suspected they would be gone by then, their food supply having sped away in a haze of dust, but if they did remain, or if the cabin itself had been overrun by the likes of Lee and others, we would need to be prepare ourselves for alternate living quarters.
But first things first.
The outskirts of Sprague was a dump by any measure of modern towns. The houses and trailers were dilapidated, the roads crumbling, and whatever commercial businesses had once operated there were long gone. And the breach at Maripo had nothing to do with it; this had been the plight of the city for years.
But the downtown area, though small and dated, still contained a spark of quaintness, enough charm to warrant making the hundred-mile trip from our cabin in the sticks to Sprague at least once during our annual vacation. A Chinese restaurant. A pharmacy. A peculiar bookstore that Charlotte and I racked our brains every year trying to understand how they stayed afloat. And, of course, at the far side of town, a Wal mart.
I arrived at N. Jefferson Ave—the ‘Main St.’ of Sprague—and turned left into the commercial district, the area anchored by an enormous courthouse that towered over the one-story shops that seemed to cower on the opposite side of the street. To this point, we had yet to see a living soul—including the white demons which had driven us here to begin with.
“This is bad, right, Dad?” Emerson asked, leaning through the passageway from the backseat to the front.
“I don’t know, Em. It could be worse, I guess. I mean, if you think about it, there could be bodies scattered everywhere on the—”
“David!” Charlotte interrupted.
“I’m just saying. The message on the radio told everyone to stay in their homes, so that’s where they probably are.”
“Should we go see?” Emerson asked. “Go and check in on one of those houses back there?”
“I thought about doing that. But...I don’t know. People are gonna be spooked. And rightly so. If I were them, I wouldn’t let us in. Even with cute kids like you at my side. I think we should just keep our heads down, get what we came for, and leave.”
I drove slowly down the deserted downtown, my head on a swivel, searching for any sign of life: movement in a storefront window, a door opening, the rumble of a car engine. But there was only stillness, and, finally, noting the sea of empty parking spots along the street and in the one public garage we passed, my belief that people had fled the town—as opposed to being slaughtered in it—was re-affirmed.
I reached the heart of the business section, about a mile down N. Jefferson, and at The Holly Street Pharmacy, a tiny building squeezed between a bakery and an oddly placed tuxedo store, I pulled the Explorer parallel against the curb and parked.
I rolled down Charlotte’s window and stared through the opening to the storefront, the Old English script on the door presenting the pharmacy as inviting and odd, whimsical in a turn-of-the-century England kind of way.
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said.
“I think I should go,” Charlotte offered.
I dismissed the suggestion. “Maybe next time.” I began to reach beneath the seat for the magnum.
“Have you ever actually been in this pharmacy before? All the way to the back, I mean? Or have you only lingered in the front of the store?”
I left the gun in place and sat up, thinking. I couldn’t remember, but based on Charlotte’s question, I assumed I hadn’t dealt with the druggist previously, or even stood at the counter. “I don’t know.”
“You haven’t. The two times we had to fill Nelson’s prescription here, it was me who did it.”
“Okay, so what’s the point?”
“The point is: I know where the inhalers are. I remember where the pharmacist pulled them from. Which shelf and whatnot.”
Charlotte’s reasoning was a stretch, and the lack of eye contact from her as she explained it to me was telling. The store itself wasn’t much bigger than Drew’s, and the pharmacy counter at the back was no more than eight paces from the front register. On the other hand, if I was to be fair, the pharmacy was a bit of a mystery to me, and, at least from what I could remember, it was one that had seemed rather modern in contrast to the rest of the store, the fluorescence shining from the back like a spaceship, so intense in contrast with the drabness of the store proper. Charlotte obviously didn’t want to wait in the car again, to suffer with the children while I dodged death on the outside; that was why she wanted to go. On the other hand, I had to concede that she had a point.
“Then I guess we’re all going,” I answered. “It’s probably for the best anyway. The more eyes the better.”
Charlotte sighed and slumped her shoulders, preparing to argue, but, after a moment of consideration, I could see she preferred the idea of all of us staying together. “Fine, but listen,” she turned toward the back, looking past Emerson to the boys. “We stay together, and we listen. No asking for things or straying. Got it?”
The boys nodded, and in seconds, we were out of the Explorer and at the door of The Holly Street Pharmacy, which, as expected, was locked.
Charlotte looked at me and I shrugged, a suggestion that she was in charge now and it was up to her to figure out a solution. “There has to be a back door, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I assume.”
“I know there’s an alley in the back; we’ve passed it a dozen times.”
Like ducklings, the kids and I followed Charlotte to the corner of N. Jefferson and Holly (which I assumed was the source of the ‘Holly’ in Holly Street Pharmacy, though the establishment clearly sat on N. Jefferson), and turned right, and within a few steps we were staring down the alley that connected Holly Street on the east and Bedard on the west.
It was closing in on dusk, and though the sun still gave plenty of light to the front of the store and the sidewalk running along the front, the alley itself was a tunnel of gloom, appearing rife with intrigue and danger. Suddenly the immediate need to get inside the pharmacy waned. There clearly hadn’t been a run on the place—no looting or hoarding from the citizenry—and I was buoyed by the fact that getting medicine for Nelson could have waited another day.
“It’s the second one there,” Charlotte said, pointing to a wooden door that sat at the top of a short flight of metal steps. “That doesn’t look like much. A tough enough guy could probably kick that thing in easy.” She glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “Guess they don’t have much trouble with crime around here.”
“Not until tonight anyway.”
Charlotte snickered.
“Hang on though, it’s dark as hell down there, which means it’s gonna be a cave inside. I have a flashlight in the glove box. Just hang here and I’ll be right back.” I turned back toward N. Jefferson, to head back to the car, and as I did, Emerson, Ryan and Nelson followed. I stopped and looked at them, and then up to Charlotte, who remained by the entranceway to the alley. She gave a weary smile.
“Together, remember?” Emerson reminded me.
I nodded. “Okay, then,” I answered, not ready to test anyone’s trust this early in our ordeal. I turned back to the street, and as I took my first stride toward N. Jefferson, a car entered my line of sight and then was gone a half-second later. I gasped, frozen in place, not even certain if what I’d just seen had indeed happened at all, so quickly had the car appeared and then vanished. It was surreal, as if a movie screen had suddenly materialized in front of us and projected the front end of some theatrical car chase. I waited motionless, not even looking back to the kids, and a second later the squeal of tires pierced the air like a dying farm animal, bringing the car to a stop twenty yards or so past the intersection, based on the distance of the sound.
> “Shit!” I seethed.
A beat later, the opening of a car door sounded, followed by words that rang out from just beyond the cover of the building to our right. I saw one. Saw that bitch right back there.”
“They must have seen us,” I whispered. “Let’s go!” I turned and directed the kids back to the alley, joining Charlotte again in the place from where we’d just retreated. I stared again down the alley, and this time the light at the opposite end was welcoming. We could make the journey between the dusky low buildings as long as we kept our eyes straight and just kept walking.
And then, as if my confidence had tempted the Fates themselves, a silhouette caught my attention, appearing on the horizon, just at the far edge of alley entrance. I couldn’t have said what the figure was exactly, or if it had been there previously. I didn’t think so, but it was hard to know. In any case, the thing remained motionless, appearing to be erect—standing even—though bent over in the posture of a deadman’s float.
“Is that one of them,” Ryan asked.
“Is what...” Charlotte spotted it now, her nervous swallow that followed stark in the quiet of the alley. “Oh, god, we can’t go down there. What are we going to do?”
“We don’t even know what that is, Charlotte. It might be nothing at all. We’re going to have to risk it.”
“What? Risk it? Are you crazy?”
“I’m telling you bro, it was right here,” the voice from the street called again. “I saw it.” A pause. “There it is! I told you, man!”
Another car door opened and closed. “A’ight then. Let’s check it out.”
“Where’s the gun?” Charlotte asked.
I panicked and began to look on the ground in the immediate area, as if I’d recently dropped it somewhere close by; but I knew already I’d left it in the car beneath the seat, along with the flashlight in the glove box that I was on my way to retrieve. “I forgot it.”
“The tomahawk?”
I shook my head, not even remembering where I’d tossed that.
Charlotte didn’t move, but I could see a flash of disdain in her eyes at my carelessness, even though it was her distraction, I rationalized, that had caused me to forgo the gun. “I’m not going down there,” she whispered, now on the verge of tears. “Maybe we can talk to...whoever that is.”
I gritted my teeth and shook my head slowly. “Charlotte, I’m—"
“In there.”
It was Nelson who spoke, and I gave a dismissive glance toward my son who was pointing toward the buildings. I followed his finger toward the back of the pharmacy and the wooden door which Charlotte had noted earlier. I looked closer now, and as my eyes adjusted through the shadows, I could see the door was ajar, just barely, enough to see that the edge wasn’t flush against the jamb. I took a deep breath and rubbed Nelson’s head. “Come on.”
THE BACK DOOR LED NOT just into the store, but directly into the pharmacy, which was as dark as I had feared and had a smell that brought me back to early childhood—the smell of sterility and alcohol, combined with something musty, expired cotton, perhaps, and moth balls. I locked the door behind me, of course, assuming the men would be looking for us in the alley and would be intent on trying every door. I didn’t know for certain they were coming for us, but, as quickly as they had stopped the car after passing the alley, I could only assume.
The five of us stood huddled by the door, unmoving, like refugees in a holding station. At my hip was a small desk that had been squeezed between the wall and one of the five or six shelves that lined the pharmacy, leaving barely a gap for even the skinniest of persons to pass through to the front. The roll gate at the front counter was closed, locked, presumably, which, false though it may have been, gave off a certain sense of security. “We’ll give this a few minutes,” I said. “Wait for them to leave. And then we’ll get what we can find. Albuterol, of course, and whatever else.”
“Okay,” Charlotte said, a whisper of relief in her tone.
A crashing noise burst the silence, the sound of a brick through a storefront window. The echo crescendoed throughout the pharmacy, sounding as if it had been detonated in front of the store’s PA microphone.
Instinctively, I put my hand across Nelson’s mouth, gently, the tips of my fingers barely touching his lips, not wanting to trigger another attack of asthma. I then compelled Ryan’s eyes toward me and shook my head, imploring him not to make a sound. Emerson squeezed in close, shivering.
Soon, the sound of the remaining window remnants being cleared could be heard, shards of glass stripped from the pane. In moments, the men from the car were inside, heading toward the pharmacy. “Check it. Gate’s locked.”
“Figured that. We’ll get in though.”
They had come for the drugs, not us. That’s why they had stopped so suddenly: one of the passengers had seen the sign to the pharmacy from the street. On the one hand, it was a blessing—they hadn’t seen us and didn’t know we were there—on the other, they were coming toward us, knowingly or not, and we were now trapped in the back of the store.
Charlotte nodded toward the back door, eyes wide, a tacit questioning of whether we should attempt to leave. I shook my head; it was too late. The door was locked now, and as silent as the night had become, unlocking and opening a door and then trying to hustle three scared children outside in silence seemed an impossibility.
“Yo, gimme that bar,” one of the voices instructed, and a beat later, I could see the man who had spoken, just the front of his face and hands, the latter of which held a crowbar that he wedged between the security gate and the sidewall as he attempted to pry his way in. I didn’t have a perfect view from the shadows of the corner, but I could make out some detail of the man: African American, and very young, still in his teens, perhaps.
I didn’t know for certain if we were hidden from his view, but I got the feeling that if the guy looked to his right, he would sense us, spot us even, the whites of our eyes, maybe, or the reflection of some button on our clothing or bead of sweat on our cheeks. And if he had a gun—and bad intentions—we would be in a very compromised position. Add to that scenario that he wasn’t alone, which meant that if we did decide to take the risk and flee out the back, his partner could be out the front door and around to cut us off in seconds.
I took a silent breath and grabbed Charlotte’s hand, squeezing it softly, a reassurance that what I was about to do was a risk worth taking. At my touch, she turned her chin slightly, glancing in my direction, and as she did, I stepped from the darkness of the corner, exposing myself in the dusky light of the pharmacy.
“Oh, shit!” The man stumbled away from the security gate—which, to that point, he’d had little success in dislodging—and held the crowbar up like a club, defensively, though what he might do with the tool-turned-weapon from his current position I didn’t know.
“Yo, who is that?” a voice called from the back. I couldn’t see the second man—as the sun was only minutes away from setting and was casting only the slimmest of daylight into the store—but from the direction of his voice, he seemed to be somewhere in the far-left corner of the store, near the register.
I held my hands out in front of me, palms open at eye level, as if signaling the situation was all one big misunderstanding. “My name is David Willis,” I said sternly, projecting my voice enough so the second man would hear me clearly, wherever he was in the store. “I’ll get for you whatever you want. Just tell me what you’re looking for, the name or brand or whatever, and if it’s here, it’s yours. No need to go through all this.”
The would-be burglar took several winded breaths, and I could see the beads of sweat begin to glisten on his forehead. “You the pharmacist?” he asked. He continued to hold the bar up beside his ear, ready to swing it down like a hammer. From this new angle, I could see my assessment of his age was correct; he couldn’t have been older than sixteen.
“No,” I answered.
“Whatchu doing back there then?”
“It’s a long story.”
The boy chortled. “Yeah, man, everybody’s story is long these days.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I guess that’s true.” I paused, weighing how much to divulge in that moment, knowing that if I remained completely inflexible, I was likely risking the dissolution of our up-until-now pleasant dialogue. “I came here looking for medicine. My son is asthmatic. Figured I would stock up on inhalers while there were still some to be had. Anyway, I was on the side street when your car drove by. I heard you get out and thought you saw me. I ran to the alley and, luckily, the back door was open.” I looked back to the door, and in the shrouded darkness of the corner, I couldn’t see any evidence of my family, which I assumed meant the boy couldn’t see them either. “It’s locked now,” I added, just in case ideas had begun to brew in his friend’s mind about sneaking to the back. I was also careful to imply that I was alone, never saying ‘we.’ “So, I don’t really care about this store or what you guys are in to; just let me know what drugs you want, and I’ll do my best to find them.”
“What we’re in to? That’s what you think? We’re here for like Oxy or some shit?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think that, I just said I don’t care.” The truth was I did think that, but that was my secret until the grave if it needed to be.
“Yeah, right. What, you think you’re the only one’s got family? And problems? Shit, man, where you been? You even know what’s going on out in this motherfucker?”
I swallowed and suddenly felt my mouth go dry, and then I locked eyes with the boy. “The broad strokes. I saw the breach on TV like everyone else. And I know...they escaped.”
The Ghosts of Winter Page 7