“Okay.” She started picking at her nail polish and glanced up at the ceiling of my car. “Now what?”
I was about to say something, but just then Jason helped Kyle up, and started walking with him to the front door. He gestured for us to follow.
“Now we leave the car.”
“Huh?” She stopped picking at her nails and stared through the glass. “Oh.”
She sank back against the backseat and in the rearview mirror I saw her scoot toward the door.
I had yet to make an effort to move. “Hey, Miss—”
“Yeah?”
“Do me a favor…” I chose my next words carefully, as to not offend her. My eyes followed the guys through the glass as they walked. “When we get inside, try to refrain from excessive sarcasm. It’s not really the right time for it.”
I watched Jason place the axe against the side of the house as Kyle walked up the steps.
“Ohmigod really? I can’t believe you,” she retorted “I do know how to act like a normal human being.”
“I know…” I sighed, pulling my gaze away from the guys though I am not sure she really understood how inappropriate she could be sometimes. “Sorry, that was out of line.”
“Yeah…it was.” She opened the door, stomping out.
Blowing out a breath, I took my key out of the ignition and stepped out too, pocketing the key into my back pocket.
The sun was lower in the horizon, somewhere behind the wall of trees that surrounded us. It was still light out, and still way too humid. Sunset was a few hours away, but I don’t think that was going to change the temperature too much. It was just muggy, and gross.
And buggy. Very buggy.
Jason had told me once that this neck of the woods was really bad in the summer months. He wasn’t kidding. It wasn’t even night yet.
Even though I knew that they treated this area for the mosquitos, and disposed of the dead coyotes that apparently carried the virus, seeing all these bugs still made me anxious.
“Okay,” Missy said, grumbling next to me. “Maybe not completely out of line….” I guess she was finally realizing I was right.
Instead of pointing that out, I just nudged her in the shoulder, playfully. “Enough, let’s just go inside. Jason’s holding the door for us.”
“Fine. But they better not make me cry.”
I couldn’t promise her that.
She was the first to step into the trailer. Behind her , I paused in front of Jason who was still the doorman.
I searched his face. The blood had been washed off by the paramedic and it no longer coated his eyelashes. But now, tears had taken its place and made them appear darker, and thicker. His green-brown eyes were currently dry, but the effects of crying still lingered.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Come on,” he coaxed, pushing me forward lightly. “Go take a seat. We will be here awhile.”
“Okay,” I sighed, wishing I could just hug him.
The door shut behind us seconds later.
9
“You didn’t call anyone yet?” Jason said, completely aghast. “You mean Buck is still in the bedroom?”
Kyle nodded as he scooted out of his seat, going for the sink again. It’s where they kept their alcohol.
“Please tell me you are kidding…”
He fished his fourth beer out of the ice, popped it open and took a hard swig. “I didn’t know who to call, man. I don’t have any other family. I’ve never done this shit before.”
“So just call the cops. Let them handle it.”
“I can’t,” he groaned.
“Well, he can’t just stay in there,” Missy blurted, completely incredulous. She was sitting next to me on the couch. “He’s gonna start to rot soon.”
As soon as she said that, I cringed. This was exactly what I was referring to in the car.
“I know that, I just…” Kyle peered absently down at the top of the beer can.
“You just what?”
“I just...” His eyes drifted toward her. “Uh fuck, I don’t have a clue.” He brought the can to his lips again, taking another long chug, this time crushing the aluminum in his hand as he did so. He finished by whipping the remains across the trailer at us.
“Dude, what the hell,” Missy barked, as we jumped, blocking our heads with our arms. The can hit the creepy deer head directly above us on the wall. “Watch it.”
He grumbled an apology and immediately grabbed for another beer.
Jason looked like he was ready to tackle him. “I think you’ve had enough for tonight.” There was a sharp warning in his voice, making it perfectly clear if Kyle pulled that crap again there was going to be a problem with them. “You need to get your shit together, bro. Sit back down, sober up, and take care of this Buck situation.”
“But it’s more complicated than that, don’t you get it.” He stumbled slightly, dropped the beer can and it exploded against the floor.
Foam sprayed everywhere as it continued to roll.
Jason jumped up, out of the way.
The floor was covered.
“Damn, another wasted beer,” Kyle said, as he went to sit back down, making no effort to clean the mess. But in the process misjudged the position of the chair and slipped off the edge of the seat, landing on his left side. His elbow banged loudly on the table leg, his feet tangling up in the now overturned chair.
No one laughed though, because it wasn’t funny. It was just sad. As soon as Kyle hit the floor, he started crying again. “Why, Buck?” he shouted, kicking the chair away from him to free his legs. “Why my cousin? Why?” His hand was in a fist and he hammered it against the floor, splashing it in some of the beer. “Goddamnit. He’s all I had left!”
That tightness in my throat was back as I watched him have another melt down. Somehow this one was even worse. Maybe because I was right there and I could actually hear what he was saying this time, or maybe because it just was.
Jason sighed after the worst of it, and slowly stepped over to his friend. First he turned the chair back up, and then he leaned over, reaching his hand out to Kyle. “Come on, bro. Get up.”
Kyle swiped his hand across his face roughly, sniffling the whole time. “What’s the point?”
“Well for starters, we need to clean this floor of yours and you’re in the way.” Jason grasped his arm, lugging him up. “And second,” he grunted under Kyle’s weight. “I might not be family, but you still have me. So you aren’t alone. I’m going to help you through this.”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get through this.”
“Maybe not,” Jason huffed, straightening Kyle out, into an upright standing position. “But it does get easier. I promise.”
Kyle shook his head. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him.”
“Well he’s still here…” Jason reached for the towel on the countertop.
“Yeah. Dead.”
Shrugging, he turned away from Kyle and knelt down to the floor. “It might make you feel better to say a few words before the cops come and take his body.”
“He’s dead, he can’t hear me. And I told you we can’t call the cops…”
“Look,” Jason exhaled, his hand pausing in the act of cleaning up. “I know how hard it is to watch them cart someone you care about away in a body bag, but like Mouth said, he can’t stay here. This is the procedure.” He started to clean again, only to hesitate once more. “And before you ask, no, I won’t help you bury him somewhere or stick him in a meat locker so you can avoid the law. Buck deserves a proper burial.”
“I know that.” Kyle looked appalled.
“Then what,” Jason snapped. “What is the problem? Because keeping him locked in his bedroom, dead, isn’t right either.”
He didn’t answer.
“Damn it, Kyle. Just answer me. What is the—”
“I killed him, okay!” Kyle suddenly shouted, his voice cracking. “I can’t call the cops, because I shot Buck!”
/>
10
Missy grabbed my arm, slowly nudging me toward the front door, as Jason jumped up, in Kyle’s face, tossing the wet rag on the table top.
“What do you mean you killed Buck?”
I held my own though, blocking Missy from actually getting anywhere. I knew she wanted to bail in that instant—with good reason—but I wanted to know what the heck Kyle was talking about too. How could he kill his own cousin?
“Exactly how it sounds, alright.” Kyle groaned. “I shot him.” Tears were sprouting in his eyes again.
“No, no it’s not alright. How the hell—why the hell—” Jason fumbled for words, but he didn’t back off. “Were you wasted and cleaning your guns, you drunk son of a—”
“No,” Kale cringed. “It wasn’t an accident. I—”
Jason suddenly shoved him up against the kitchen counters. He was shorter than Kyle, and smaller, but at that moment you wouldn’t know the difference. “Then what is all this…” He waved his hand in front of Kyle’s face to emphasize the tears. “Guilt. Did you call me so I’d come kick your ass? Like that would make it all go away?”
“Come on, man, that’s messed up.”
“No. What you did is messed up,” he spat back. “He was your cousin, Kyle. Your goddamn cousin. My friend. What the hell is wrong with you? What would ever possess you—” Jason suddenly paused, mid outburst, his entire expression changing. “The virus,” he answered, taking a step back before Kyle said anything. “It was the virus, wasn’t it?” His tone turned sympathetic and understandably concerned. “The medicine didn’t work. Buck made you shoot him. You know, before things got worse.”
“Wrong,” Kyle replied, pushing off the counter, slipping past Jason. “I shot him because I had no freaking choice. I walked out of the bathroom this morning and Buck attacked me. I mean it, I opened the door, and suddenly Buck was after me. You know, like one of them.”
I think I stopped breathing right then. “You mean, he just turned? Without warning?” I thought of Spencer. Freak out mode kicking in. Was that going to happen to him? Was he just going to turn out of nowhere too? Would there be no warning for everyone in the hospital? How many would he kill or infect before they killed him?
And they would kill him. Just like Kyle killed Buck.
My stomach felt sick all over again.
I was right all along. Spencer was going to die.
“I don’t know…” Kyle dropped down into the seat, successfully this time. “He seemed fine last night. It’s not like he was getting sicker. And this morning, he wasn’t acting odd either. He was making himself a second breakfast when I went into the bathroom.” He dropped his face to his palms. “Ah. Crap. That was a sign. Wasn’t it?”
“Because he wanted more breakfast?’ Missy retorted, skeptical.
“Remember they start off hungry?” I reminded her, trying hard not to think of Spencer right then, but rather focus on the Buck situation. “It’s like one of the first real big clues. Always hungry, never satisfied.” It wasn’t so easy.
“Oh, right.” She glanced at the closed bedroom door, a crease forming between her over-plucked eyebrows. “So how exactly did he end up in the bedroom then if he was in the kitchen?”
“Miss—”I warned, making it known we shouldn’t be prying like this. Kyle didn’t need to retell the scenario. It couldn’t be easy for him. And honestly, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know the details anymore.
Spencer is going to die.
“Well, at first I tried to reason with him, you know when I was fighting him off,” Kyle responded, sort of surprising me. I guess he wanted to tell the scenario, maybe to make himself feel better about it. Or to release some pent up guilt. “But I recognized the black eyes and knew I couldn’t. So I ran to his bedroom because I knew he had a gun in there.”
We can’t save Spence.
Missy’s eyes shifted toward the wall of guns to her right. There was literally a display of guns hanging on the trailer wall. Everything from shot guns, to hand guns, even bow and arrows for the bullet-free kind of shooting. They were extremists. “One of those wouldn’t do?” My friend’s tone was ill-mannered.
Someone WILL shoot him too.
“Couldn’t get to them, Buck was in the way,” Kyle explained. “So I ran to his room because it was the closest, dove across the bed, grabbed the gun out of the nightstand, and just shot. Once.”
“He died with one shot?” Jason sounded surprised.
Damn it Dee, STOP thinking about Spencer.
“No I was hoping to immobilize him. To reason with him….” He peered up at Jason, heartbroken. “When he still jumped at me, I lost all sense of thought and just started firing.” He paused, his eyes starting to glisten more. “I emptied the entire round into him. He dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.”
STOP THINKING ABOUT SPENCER…
“Geez, bro. I’m so sorry.”
“I ran back out of the room, slamming the door. That’s when I called you.”
Shit. Don’t cry.
“I messed up, Jay. I totally messed up. There had to be another way. How can I live with myself after this? I killed him.” Kyle’s voice carried throughout the trailer.
“No. No the virus did,” Jason said, immediately trying to reassure him. “You weren’t left with a choice.”
Do. Not. Cry.
“There’s always a choice.” Guilt coated Kyle’s words.
Stop it! Think positively.
“Not exactly this time,” Jason urged. “It was either him or you. It was just self-defense.”
Kyle groaned miserably.
Spencer is NOT going to die….Spencer is NOT going to die…
“Maybe I should have just let him kill me…”
Missy snorted beside me.
Spence won’t die.
“And then what?” she snapped. “Let him go kill a hundred more people? Buck didn’t want that life, remember?”
We saved Spence.
“He wanted to go out with a ‘blaze of glory’. He wanted to kill the infected,” she continued. “He wanted to end the virus outbreak. Don’t you remember that?”
Kyle had come running to Meg and Germaine’s house the first time Buck got sick, telling us that Buck wanted to blow up the whole town or go on a shooting rampage to end his life, and all the others infected.
We had rushed to his rescue.
Or so, we thought.
All we risked to get him to the hospital didn’t really matter in the end, did it?
We saved Buck.
Buck died anyway.
My eyes started to burn. Crap, I was going to cry.
“Mouth’s right, you know.” Jason’s voice brought me out of my thoughts momentarily.
As did his movements. He stepped over to the table, grabbing the rag. “And we can’t sit here much longer doing nothing about him.” He knelt back down, wiping up the rest of the beer. “But you’re right too,” he continued, contemplatively. “We shouldn’t call the cops.”
“See, I told—”
“But we are going to anyway.”
Kyle shut right up.
“I’m sorry, Kyle. I know you don’t want us to, but we don’t really have a choice. We can’t ignore this.” Jason stood back up once more. This time the empty beer can was in one hand, the rag in the other. He placed both on the counter. “Calling them is going to create a mass hysteria that I would love nothing more to avoid, but by not calling, we are risking another outbreak. The CDC or whoever needs to know that the treatment administered to Buck didn’t work before others start relapsing. They need to come up with another antidote. Or something.”
He paused, looking apologetically at Kyle. “And we both agreed anyway, Buck deserves a proper burial.”
My stomach fluttered with nerves, but the tears stalled. That’s it. They’ll just come up with another cure. One that works this time. Spencer could still live.
“They are just going to use his body for a science project.�
�� Kyle looked disgusted.
“They’d just try to figure out what went wrong, that’s all. They aren’t going to chop him into a thousand pieces. They aren’t butchers. They are doctors and scientists.”
Kyle made another face. “Please man. Stop. I can’t even think that. Not about Buck. I don’t want them to do any experiments on him.”
No. No they have to. To save Spence.
Jason walked over to him, cupping his hand over his shoulder. “It’s all going to be okay. Trust me.”
Kyle didn’t say anything.
“I mean it, alright?” Twenty seconds passed without a response. “O—kay?”
We all stared at Kyle. Finally after a few more seconds, he nodded. I suddenly felt like I could breathe again.
“Okay, good,” Jason mumbled, giving his friend a pat on his shoulder before pulling his hand away. “Now I’m going to go see what we are dealing with in the bedroom then I’m going to call the police. Try sobering up a little man. You’ll feel better. Promise.”
Kyle started to scoot out of the chair again. “Maybe I will just go chop some more wood.”
Jason pushed him back in his seat. “There’s enough wood out there to last you all year already. You can’t chop the memories away. No matter how hard you try. Trust me.” Well, at least that explained the axe he was holding when we first arrived.
Kyle made an inaudible sound and dropped his head onto his arms again. “I don’t know how you are handling this so well.”
I didn’t know how either. Because I sure the heck wasn’t.
“Practice,” Jason mumbled as he started down the hall, and my heart instantly ached for him remembering all he’s lost.
“Hey, Hallmark,” Missy blurted unexpectedly, snagging Jason’s attention as he reached the door. “Maybe you should call Trooper Wesson first before you make any of those other calls.”
“Trooper Wesson?” I muttered, skeptically and not really thinking. I was surprised Missy even mentioned him. “What can he do? He’s still in the hospital.”
She shrugged absently. “I dunno. He helped us once though…just thought maybe it’s worth giving him a ring first.”
Dead Friends Series (Book 2): Dead Friends Running Page 5