“Assuming we can get past it, then what next?” Rikki asked.
“We break through the door and get the hell out of this hotel,” Marcus said.
“Doors are snowed in,” the kid said.
Marcus shifted his weight on the axe handle. “Then we use some of them little fancy torches they use for those crème brûlées and we burn our way through it, son.”
Rikki took out a smoke. “It’s a blizzard outside, are you sure we can even burn through all the snow blocking the doors?”
“We could always get up to the second floor then try jumping out the window. If there’s that much snow it should be able to cushion our fall, right?” I asked.
“‘Jumping out the window,’ fucking mad this one,” Rikki said. “You wanna go first, have your legs snap, maybe if I land on top of you I’ll only break an ankle.”
“We’ll use something, bedsheets, firehoses, something to rappel down,” Marcus added.
“But what about the fucking monster out in the lobby? What about the other one, the tall man I saw in the elevator with Frankie? Did you forget about him? I sure as hell haven’t.”
The kid was staring down at Frankie’s body. “…Why hasn’t it tried to get in yet?”
“The thing in the lobby?” Marcus said.
“Yeah, I thought it was chasing us but it hasn’t even tried the door yet.”
“Maybe it’s forgotten about us and gone outside now,” Rikki said.
“Yeah, or maybe it doesn’t have to get in here to get us.” I stood up straight, took a step back from them.
“What do you mean?” the kid asked.
“Maybe it’s waiting just outside the door for us to get stupid and confident then remove the barricade and peek our heads out so it can lop them off.” I started walking away from them. “Or maybe… one of us isn’t what they say they are.”
Each one of them watched me, following me with their eyes as I moved even further away from them and Frankie. Towards the barricade and the door.
“You think one of us is like Frankie? Infected like him?” Rikki asked.
“Infected, I like that. I don’t know, maybe you are.” Unconsciously they all moved away from one another a bit.
“Whoa, now, we don’t know that,” Marcus said.
“We don’t not know it, man,” the kid said. This kid.
“Okay,” Marcus said. “But if one of us was… like Frankie.” Rikki put her hand to her mouth again and made like her fingers were snakes. “What’s to stop them right now from… turning?”
My headache started coming back. “I don’t know, maybe they saw what happened to Frankie and they decided not to make a move ’til they had reinforcements.”
Marcus tilted his head slightly. “How do you mean?”
“Like maybe only one of us is infected, that’d be three against one, last time it was four against one. That’s not much better then, is it?” I said.
“There you go, we were all fighting against that thing,” Rikki said. “If one of us was another one of them why wouldn’t it try and kill us then? Why would it kill the other one that was like it?”
“All I know,” Marcus said, “is those things in the lobby are still probably out there. I don’t know why they haven’t tried to get in here yet but eventually they will and they’ll probably make it in too. With or without our help.”
“How long ’til somebody comes and finds us?” Rikki asked.
“Don’t expect anybody to come,” the kid told her.
“Why not?”
“Kid’s right. The whole city’s probably shut down, it might be days, even a week,” Marcus answered for him.
“A week?” One of the jug lanterns started to dim ever so slightly. We all saw it. The light was dying.
Summoner of Sorrows
Sully Sullivan had never quit drinking. Hell, he had never really quit anything. Not even our band, even when he threatened to do it—which he did often enough—it was all idle. Sully never quit Frivolous Black because we quit him. Mainly because he wouldn’t quit, the drinking, the coke and the chobbling up whatever pills people threw at him. None of it. Sure, he said he would, he cut it out for a few days or while we were recording but he never really quit. And right now, with the state I was in having quit myself, I could see why. It was coming back around on me it, it was, and I was having trouble hiding it. “Codger,” Marcus said. “You don’t look right.” I’m sure I didn’t. I felt unsteady on my feet all of a sudden.
“He does look a bit shit, doesn’t he?” Doctor Spectre concurred.
I was leaned against one of the tables trying to wipe the hair from my sweat-soaked forehead and I noticed my hand had a slight shake. “I’m all right,” I said in the strongest voice I could muster. “I mean, how am I supposed to look? Like a bleeding pop idol?” I felt cold everywhere except for my head; my head felt like a burn barrel being stirred with the devil’s prick. The kid took a step back from me, running a hand over the tabletop and working his way to a wood square stuffed with knives. When I saw the way he looked at me I felt like a leper looking for a handshake. “What do you want? For me to look like I did on your album sleeve, like I did ten years ago? Fucking kids…” Who was saying this? And why did the asshole have my voice? I was rambling, the room seemed to be swaying a bit as if we were at sea. Shit, I thought I had left the worst of withdrawals behind me back in my hotel room. But here I was, like any well-meaning yampy bastard, trying to plead my case and making it so much worse by the effort. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. “I’m all right. I am.”
“How did you say Frankie Gideon’s skin looked when you first saw him?” the kid asked Rikki. “You said it looked green, right? Did it look like that?”
And then I realized what they were really afraid of. “Look, I’m not going to… change like Gideon did.” All three of them stared at me with varying degrees of apprehension. I tried to laugh. “Of all the half-soaked…” I stood up straight, raised my hands in gesture and then thought better and let them drop to my sides. “Okay, I get it. But I’m not turning into that.” I pointed towards the glam barbeque off to the corner. “I’m just trying to give up the bottle. I’ve been sick as a dog for three days off and on, that’s all.”
“…he does look a bit green,” Rikki said.
“Oh, you’re going to trust her?” I shouted. “Where was she before she ran into us? She was the last person to see Frankie.” I saw Marcus turn an eye to her. “And then afterward Frankie was different… infected.”
“What the fuck are you on about?” She took a step toward me and the kid put his hand on a knife’s handle.
“I’m saying of course you, the most likely of us to not be what she says she is, accuses me.”
“I didn’t accuse you, I said you looked like a fucking shamrock is all.”
I watched the kid’s hand on the knife. “You see how she’s trying to get you to turn on me? You see that?” The anger was actually centering me a bit. Giving me focus, clearing my head. “I’m not some bleeding monster.”
Rikki took another step forward, one hand pointed towards me and the other wrapped around the axe at her side. Behind her I heard the kid quickly pull out a knife from the block and then with a mind of its own my hand went for my blade.
“Stop. Everyone relax.” Marcus got between me and the other two. “Put the knife back, son. Rikki, step back… please.” They did what he said. “Codger, I believe you when you say you’re trying to kick.”
“…well, good ’cause that’s all this is.”
“I’ve seen it enough times to know what I’m looking at.”
“All right.” I let out a sigh and ran a hand through my hair then rubbed the back of my long-suffering skull. “Now can we focus on what’s important. Dealing with th—”
“Not so fast.” Marcus’ eyes zeroed in on mine. “Look, I respect that you’re trying to better your situation, I do, but unfortunately today is not going to be the day that your situation gets
any better.”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked back at the kid. “There’s booze in this kitchen, right?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“Find it.”
“What is this? What are you doing?”
“Sorry, today’s not the day that you kick, Codger.”
I could feel my temper rising some more. “What the hell are you trying to do? Kid, don’t do it. I don’t want the drink.”
“Do it,” Marcus told him. The kid didn’t move. “Look, you’re in no shape to deal with what we have to contend with right now,” Marcus said. “We don’t need you shaky or weak, I’m sorry but we don’t have time for that shit right now. We don’t have any room for a liability.”
“Liability?” I said. “Who helped you fend off that thing before? Me. Who cut at its tentacle thingie when it tripped up Rikki? Me.”
“Yeah, but you also spent a lot of the time just staring at it in some sort of daze,” Rikki said. “And I’m not trying to row with you—you are helping—half the time but the other half… you do seem a bit out of it and like you’re going to get us killed.”
I didn’t like her being sensible. No, not one bit. “I’m dealing with extraordinary circumstances here,” I said. “I’m allowed to be a bit zonked by it all, am I not?”
“Get something, beer, wine, liquor, just find something, son,” Marcus told the kid. The kid for his part gave me a little remorseful look but then he turned and went off to the fridge. He had his orders, after all. Straight from his superior officer. “Codger, we’re all dealing with extraordinary circumstances which means we need you at your best.”
“Fucking tit-assed on hooch then? How is that me at my best?” The thought of a drink, of having to do this, all this, all over again was too much. My hands were still shaking only now it was plain rage. The kid came back into the room with two bottles, one looked to be gin, the other tequila. The kid brought four shot glasses. This fucking kid.
Marcus took the bottle of gin and two shot glasses. “We’re not going to get you fucked up. We’re just going to give you enough to get you back to functionality.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I…” I hated having them there looking at me right then, especially Rikki. But I said it anyways. “I have a drinking problem, you daft son of a bitch. The problem part being that I can’t just stop. Not ’till I’m pissed.”
Marcus opened the bottle. It was Beefeaters, my favorite gin. I could smell Christmas trees. “Codger, you know me, you know why they hire me: because I can out drink anyone. Morrison, Richards and Frankie too. I could out drink each of them and I could still get them to the stage when it was time for the gig. Which means I know how to pour and more importantly how to measure.” He poured two shots, took one in his hand and slid the other one over to me on the table. “And right now it’s show time, crowd’s waiting.”
“Oh, piss off with these extended rock and roll metaphors. I’m not drinking that shit anymore.”
He threw back his own shot and tapped the glass on the table. He did so with control, it wasn’t an angry, forceful slam but a measured almost dainty show of restraint. He looked at me, smiled and motioned with his head for me to knock back mine. I just stared at him. “Come on, it’s not like you’re drinking alone.”
“Here, here.” Rikki held the tequila bottle to her lips then raised the bottom up over her head.
“No,” I told him.
He just smiled then poured himself another. “Okay, second round.”
“I fucking quit, man. I don’t need it, I’m fine now.”
“Sorry, today is not the day you quit. Trust me, if we get through this I’ll help you dry out. Hand of god, Codger, I’ll be the first one waiting up with you at night if you go cold turkey or I’ll be the first one to pick you outside rehab if you want to do this in style; but today is not the day. Now drink up.” Again, I didn’t pick up the drink. I folded my arms and stood back. Marcus gave a chuckle and then he knocked back his second drink. He punctuated this once more with a controlled but strong tap on the table. I could smell the liquor on the air. The smell of gin always reminded me of my mother on weekends when I was little. Her breath when she kissed me before I went to bed. Something about it that I liked even though I knew it was a bad smell. Even when I had got a little bit older and she started to smell like it on the weekdays too while she was making us supper after she worked all day at the Lucas Auto Factory. Poor woman. Marcus poured himself another and I looked over at Rikki incredulous.
Her eyebrows were raised in seeming agreement. “Okay, maybe this isn’t the best idea.” She took another sip off her tequila. “One more for me… for courage and then I’m done. You want some, junior?” The kid took the bottle from her happily. She walked up right behind Marcus. “Right, so let’s quit this now please.”
“There’s nothing to worry about it,” Marcus told her. “I’m not going to mama bird his shot into his mouth for him or anything. But I think Codger wants a shot, just to settle himself. I think he’d feel better and I know we’d feel better if he did so.”
“Actually I don’t care anymore about that,” Rikki said. “Now I think it’s a bit fucked to make him take a drink when he’s in the process of quitting. Know what I mean?”
“Thank you,” I said. “Even the punker gets it.”
“Weren’t you getting close to certain that he was one of those things?” Marcus asked her.
“Well, no. No, I wasn’t. He was accusing me and I was just observing that he was in fact a bit jade in his complexion. Besides he does look better now. And it’s not like these things are allergic to alcohol, is it?”
“No.” Marcus raised his glass. “But if Mr. Burton here would indulge me as well as his vices then if he started to appear healthy, maybe returned to his natural, pasty British complexion, then that might lead us to the conclusion that he was right all along and he wasn’t infected as some of us feared. It’d tell us that he was just trying to better himself.”
The look on Rikki’s face didn’t fill me with confidence. The kid took another swig and then made a face like a dog trying to get the peanut butter of the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know, it does sort of make sense, Codger.” Rikki shrugged.
“Unless Marcus is the one who’s infected and he’s trying to get us all pissed so he can get the jump on us,” I said. Rikki and the kid weren’t convinced.
“Besides, at the very least it’ll solve my problem with him,” Marcus said. “He has a drink or two and I won’t have to worry about him being a vegetable when the enemy comes for us.”
“Honestly, Codger,” Rikki said. “He has a point, right?”
“Goddamn it, woman, pick a side!”
Marcus clinked my glass with his own and I swear the smell from the small bit which splashed and dribbled out from the glasses went straight up my nostrils and my heart grew three sizes. Marcus had that fuckface grin on his fizzog and I couldn’t stand it. Fucking Yank, fucking army man Yank, puffing out his chest trying to push me about. Won’t have to worry about him being a vegetable when the enemy comes for us. The enemy, he was still playing solider. Bossing about Rikki, the kid and now me. Then I had an idea. He was just about to speak again when I beat him to it. “You want someone to drink with so bad at least make it interesting for me. Go on, tell us about the war.”
Marcus’ glass lowered a bit. “Now I already told you not to bring up any of that.”
“And I told you I didn’t want anything to drink. So you want me to drink, I’ll do it.” I picked up my glass. “But I only drink when I’m depressed, so why don’t you tell me one of your sad little stories about your friends getting their legs and arms blown off in that fucking jungle; tell me all about your friend Charlie running around in the bush cutting off their peckers and shoving them in their mouths. Tell me all about your men, the ones who didn’t make it back, which, judging by your track record as a bodyguard, is probably all them. Please, do tell me all ab
out it, I’m quite thirsty and could use the sniffle.” I’d never seen such contained, razorblade hatred in a human being. Marcus’ face was still as a churchyard but his eyes looked as if they could leave his skull at any moment in some mad plot to kamikaze into my own.
But instead he dropped one of his stage laughs. “You got some balls, Englishman. I’ll give you that. But you keep on talking like that and you’re bound to lose ’em.” He took his shot. A grin cut across his face as he savored it. Then he let his glass hit the table hard. “So what do you want to know?”
I wasn’t prepared for this. “Come again?”
“Get your glass ready. Ask me something specific and I’ll give you your answer.”
As he poured himself another round I mulled my options and supposed there was nothing left to do but call his bluff. “Did some of your men die in ’Nam?”
“Yes—I thought that clear by now—drink.” His eyes locked onto mine. I took up my glass to my lips, hesitated then took the shot. Burning gold ran down my throat. God it tasted good. I put my glass down to find Marcus doing the same with his. He snatched my glass from my hands and then poured us both another round. “Come on, that was an easy one, what do you really want to know?”
He pushed my glass over to me, the bastard. So I asked, “How many? How many of your men died?”
Marcus had a smile on his face. “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.” He lifted his shot glass, his eyes stared back at me from over the brim. “We had nine men in my squad, just the two of us made it back.” He nodded his head as if in agreement with something no one else could see. “Okay, drink.” And we did. And we both slammed our shot glasses down.
“All right, I think he’s good, Marcus. I think you’re both good,” Rikki said.
“No. One more. And don’t worry about me, this would be a Tuesday afternoon as far as me and Frankie were concerned. One more question, one more drink. I want him right. We need him right.”
“Codger, you’re better now, yes?” Rikki asked.
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