After The Virus (18 page)

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While the elevator ascended, she had a few moments to think.
 

First, she wondered — marveled — at them wasting power on an entire hotel.

Second, she thought briefly that it was going to be difficult to escape from the top of a luxury hotel with, probably, only one viable way down.
 

Third, she was happy the hotel was only fourteen floors including the Penthouse, and hoped that this would be unlucky for someone other than her.

Fourth, just before the doors opened, she saw herself in the glass and realized, despite the clothing and makeup, that she was a different person.

That was something to smile about.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

WILL

There wasn’t much to talk about. It was all just do and do and do. They didn’t stop to camp or sleep. They ate what they had in pocket.

One Ear went without.

B.B. got extras.

The tank had been damaged but it still moved and — Boomer thought — would still be able to fire its rounds, which was the most important thing.

He had been lucky, but no one told him so.
 

As the night darkened around them, they rounded the corner from which he’d been forced to watch the Red Jackets take Rhiannon and Snickers.

He didn’t stop to contemplate. The city was on the horizon.
 

He turned to Big, who, for the moment, was off the radio and driving the truck.

“How long from here?” he asked, realizing he might not have spoken in hours.

”You didn’t come this way, Tex?”

“No, I came along the Cascades; never crossed west.”

“Most went west. What do you call it, what birds do?”

“Migrate?”

“Something, migration, like birds, all of us heading west after that shit ate everyone else alive. Hoping maybe that the west was virus free, as the rumors had it in the beginning.”

“Could be,” he answered, but didn’t he really have an opinion. He hadn’t felt compelled west. “How long now, Big?” he asked again.

Big thought about it, though Will was pretty sure he knew the answer off the top of his head.

“You’ll be there by dawn, Tex,” Big said.

He laughed, and then waited until the silence washed the harshness away.

“Dawn is not a good time to be killing people,” he mumbled.

Big kept his eyes steady on the road. Will could only see the twenty or so feet the headlights illuminated.

“Nope,” Big finally answered.

“Are there a lot of people in the city?” Now that he’d started asking questions, he couldn’t seem to stop. Big sighed.

“Good amount, but it might not have to be that way, Tex. Killing at dawn, I mean,” Big said, knowing in what direction Will’s thoughts lay.

“I hope not, Big. I really do.”
 

“But it ain’t right, what they’re doing to women and children, and them who stayed when they could have gone are involved.”
 

“Complicit.”

“Right.”

“So even if their blood is on our hands, it’ll be for the right reasons,” Will said.

Big seemed very firm in this belief.

The city lights, so far and yet achingly near, hovered at the horizon beyond the swath of darkness that covered river and forest between.

They wound around another corner in their twisty descent through the valley, and Will lost sight of the beckoning lights.

“We’re going to need a bullhorn,” he said, a little surprised to hear he spoke the half formed thought out loud.

“All right, then,” Big answered unquestioningly, constantly supportive.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

RHIANNON

She wasn’t too sure what she’d been expecting, but as the doors of the elevator slid open to reveal the penthouse, it sure wasn’t this.

This — this room — seemed oddly familiar even though the modern furniture was completely at odds with the heritage feel of the hotel. And it was cold. Even though hotels didn’t generally project a lived-in feel, they were rarely cold, as if just for display… like a film set.

Buddy stepped out of the elevator, brushed her shoulder as he passed, and surveyed the empty room. The elevator doors started to close.

Stupid angled his body around hers and shoved out an arm to stop the doors from fully closing.

Then he waited.

Buddy turned to look at her.

She sensed that even they weren’t totally sure what they were leading her into, like this was foreign ground. Buddy kept looking around.

The elevator opened directly into a grand room, a living and dining combo. Double doors, closed, to the left might lead to the master suite. Steel and glass, square and minimalist furniture dominated the decor. Even the expected traditional crown moldings were nowhere to be seen.

Buddy finally spoke. “I guess this is your playground.”
 

She stepped from the elevator, looked around, but didn’t get what he was implying.

“What? You don’t recognize it? He’s been working on it since you were first sighted, since before your group was brought in.”

“So ‘brought in’ is the new lingo for murdered, is it?” Rhiannon sneered as she rotated 360 degrees to case the room. It was empty and familiar.

Buddy just shrugged and stepped to look out the window at the water view. The last stains of red sunset slowly bled from the night sky.

Stupid had settled with his back against the wall behind her, beside the elevator. She noted only one elevator door, not three like in the lobby.

She couldn’t figure if Stupid was guarding her or Buddy, but it didn’t really matter. It was this hanging around that bothered her now.

“So… are we waiting for a flood, a burning bush, or are we going to do each other’s nails and trade hair tips?” she queried, venomless. She was all dressed up and only half-way to the ball. Her instinctual brain screamed to find Snickers, while her rational side cautioned.

“We’re here. Now we wait.” Buddy didn’t look at her when he answered.

Rhiannon remembered the last time she waited in this city; the dark room. She wondered if any of those women were still alive — sterile or pregnant — and, if not pregnant, whether they died willingly or not. She wondered at her own cowardice in running and not trying to take them as well. Not one mention of escape plans had passed her lips. In fact, she never spoke during those few days unless really provoked to do so. Those women hadn’t seemed real to her. Now she knew better. Now she’d returned to a city she needed help to escape in the first place. She could pretend it was a rescue mission, but Snickers wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for her, and her habit of running away.

Caviar and champagne were set out on a side table. Something niggled at her brain about the brands, as she wondered if she should eat.
 

“I wouldn’t,” Buddy cautioned as he followed her gaze, then he turned to Stupid. “Actually, don’t think we should be here when he arrives; might spoil it for him.”

Stupid didn’t uncross his arms. “We can’t leave her.”
 

Buddy spat, “I ain’t playing your game no more. It’ll get me killed.”

“Then the only choice you really got is by who and how that death happens.“ Stupid didn’t move from the wall.

Buddy, furious now, paced.

“The girl —” Rhiannon tried to interrupt.

Buddy turned on her, bellowing, “Fuck the girl!” And, as he took a step her way, Stupid went for his gun.

Then the elevator started moving.

Buddy whirled toward the noise. He looked shocked and terrified, which was odd because he was expecting company. Then he saw Stupid his gun in hand.

“Holster, you idiot.” Buddy mumbled as he watched the elevator. “You’ll get all three of us dead.”

Stupid holstered his gun and waited. Behind him, a door that was practically hidden in the wall slowly opened.

The driver, followed by two other goon guys, stepped through and slowly crossed up the short hall to the side of Stupid and the elevator. The driver pressed his finger over his lips and Rhiannon frowned, not even caring what the hell was going on beyond moving forward with this drama.

Stupid saw her reaction and turned in time to get a gun pressed to his head. He sighed, not scared, but like a man unhappy with the task before him.

“What the hell took so long?” Buddy bellowed. “I’ve been dropping hints all day!”

The two goons relieved Stupid of his gun and grabbed his arms.

The driver cocked his gun; it was one of those ones you had to do that, and Rhiannon thought him a little dense for not doing so ahead of time.

“Not here, fuckwad. The last thing we need to do is mess this up even more.” Buddy gestured for them to go back the way they came.

Stupid grinned at her all friendly, and then his eyes turned on Buddy and the grin became evil, snakelike. “I’ll be seeing you, Buddy.”

“That’s right, you will. Take him to the garage and leave the fucker alive until I’m there. Is that the Boss in the elevator?” Buddy asked.

“Nope, sent it up as a distraction. Good thinking, huh?” The driver was pleased.

Buddy wasn’t. “Sure, until the Boss wonders why it isn’t waiting.”

The driver’s smile froze, and he, with Stupid and the goons following, practically ran from the room.

Stupid didn’t fight them in the least.

The door closed.

Buddy once again turned his back to the elevators. And she knew just by his look that he’d decided the risk of hurting her was worth it.

“Somehow, I don’t think Clarence will be the last to die for you,” Buddy sneered.

“Care to add yourself to the list?” she quietly warned.

“You tried to help Clarence. You tried to get away. I didn’t even touch you.” Buddy’s eyes glazed a bit with his determined storytelling. “You went through that…” — he indicated the glass coffee table — “…all by yourself, while you were attempting to flee.”

She didn’t move.

He did.

The elevator doors slid open behind Buddy. She glanced over to see a tall, tuxedo-wearing man carrying a dozen red roses standing inside.

Buddy’s grin grew at her glance. “There’s no way you are getting past me, bitch.” He didn’t seem to have noticed that the elevator was occupied. “You’re gonna pay for everything your kind ever done to anyone.” White-flecked spit had pooled at the edges of his mouth.

Rhiannon couldn’t help but notice that as he stalked her, he had an erection. Plus, his command of the English language was seriously deteriorating.

The elevator man frowned and stepped out. He unbuttoned the second button of his tuxedo and freed his gun from his holster.

“We don’t have time,” Buddy continued to stalk her.

She stopped back stepping away from him and held her ground. He stepped around the coffee table.

“I feel you worming my head.” Buddy was oddly broken. “You got to go before you ruin him —”

Buddy, smashed across the back of the head by Tuxedo’s gun, went down like glass shattered on tile. His limbs splayed every which way as he settled into a heap at her feet.

Tuxedo slipped the gun back into its holster and redid the button. He took only a moment to ascertain that Buddy wasn’t getting back up anytime soon, if ever, and then stepped over him.

As Tuxedo’s deadened blue eyes rose to lock with hers, Rhiannon’s shocked brain suddenly clicked him into past context. She realized she knew him.

Fuck, she’d even fucked him once or twice, before she’d realized that fucking your psychotic agent wasn’t actually a solid career move. She didn’t blame herself; she’d been young at the time, too young for him, actually. Fuck, she’d thought he must have been dead of coke inhalation by now.

He held the roses out with a smile she didn’t remember being that white.

“Well, even if it couldn’t have been Paris, at least I remembered your favorite flowers.” He was as charming as any well-paid leading man. It was bad line cribbed from a mediocre romantic comedy that had broken box office records and skyrocketed her Hollywood’s way.
 

Oh, fuck me
, Rhiannon thought as everything else, the furniture, the caviar, his tuxedo, clicked into place.

It was all from the movie.

He was the Boss.

He had a script he wanted her to play.
 

She wasn’t going to sweet-talk herself out of this — with Snickers — from someone who’d spent a year in jail for attempted rape. Rape of her.

What were the fucking goddamn chances of it being him, of him being immune, of him being some despot ruler, and her crossing his path?

And fuck her, she just couldn’t fucking remember her next line.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

WILL

It started to rain. Pour, actually. The rhythmic wipers threatened to put Will to sleep; he was half dreaming of Rhiannon and the shower.

He had spent the day doing Snickers' bidding in the garden, hauling dirt and turning compost. He managed to drive every nail straight. He liked feeling that tired. It was the exhaustion of being well used, of being productive, like it was actually possible to do something useful.

He hadn’t heard her come in, but he had heard the toilet lid open and had said, a little sharp, “Don’t flush, Snickers!”

Rhiannon laughed. That deep throaty laugh; the laugh he’d actually begun trying to figure out ways to get from her.

He was very aware that only a thin plastic curtain separated them. He wondered whether if he asked her, she would join him; if she would let him suck the water from where it might pool between her neck and collarbone.

The cool breeze called his attention to the fact that Rhiannon, still sitting on the toilet, had pulled the shower curtain back with her foot.

He wiped the water that poured across his face as he straightened his head from underneath the nozzle.

He looked at her looking at him.

There wasn’t anything else he could do in that moment; wasn’t anything else he wanted to do.

He never thought to move or cover or speak.

Though the action was playful, her face was so serious, so guarded, as she ran her eyes up the profile of his legs, ass, and chest to his face. But once they had eye contact, she slowly smiled: a wicked, full-of-promise smile. She laughed again, then laughed more when he shivered from it.