Dead South Rising (Book 2): Death Row (11 page)

Lenny placed his hand on top of the Janitor’s. “I know, boss. I know things ain’t going good ‘round here right now.” He thought for a moment, then said, “You think we should leave? Maybe find us a new place?”

“Cutting our losses, moving on… makes the most sense. I’m hanging on to this place like some sinking ship’s captain, damned determined to go down with it. Hell, maybe I never was the captain. Maybe it’s been Luz all along.”

“Where you go, me and Taneesha go. Don’t have to ask us. We know the truth. Don’t gotta be no genius to see it.”

“I appreciate that, Leonard. I really do.”

“What about David? And them demons of his?”

Gabe shook his head, raked his fingers through his silver hair. “He’s on our team.” He hesitated, then added, “I think. And he’s still fighting ‘em.”

“So he…” Lenny nodded toward Roy’s room.

“Oh, yeah. Shot ‘em both. Didn’t deny it one bit.”
 

“Was Roy… you know… a rattler?”

Another nod. “Looked like it to me. Nasty bite on his arm, that’s for damn sure. But still hard to tell. If he did turn, Dave shot him as soon as it happened. I get why he did it. Hell, truth be told, I’d’ve probably done it myself. Just wished he’d a let Roy be, at least for a little while. Given Luz a first-hand look-see for herself. Might have helped sway the Infirmaries.” He shook his head. “Now, they just see Dave as a killer and me in denial.”

“You think it’s gonna get dangerous? For us?”

“Could. Probably will. I don’t wanna worry you, Lumberjack, but…”

“So what do we do?”

The Janitor sighed a heavy sigh. “Let Luz have the ship, find ourselves another one. That’d be the smart thing to do. Choose our battles, one that’s worth fighting.”

“You don’t think this one is?”

With a squinty gray eye, he searched Lenny’s face. “Do you?”

Before Leonard could answer, Dr. Gonzalez rounded the corner, zeroed in on the two men.

Gabe patted Lenny on the arm, then spoke loud enough for the approaching doctor to hear. “Go ahead, give ‘em a shotgun, three knives. You already give ‘em food, some supplies?”

Lenny nodded.

“Good. Our conscience is clear, then. What them igits do with what we give ‘em is all on them, now.”

“You gots it.”

“Gabe?” asked Dr. Gonzalez, her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. “Can I talk to you?” She flicked her eyes at Lenny. “In private?”

The Janitor seemed as though he might brush her off, then said, “What is it, Luz?”

She gave a little toss of her head, toward another room. “In private, please?”

“Meeting’ll be reconvening in just a bit. Can’t it wait ’til then?”

She eyed Lenny again, her look begging she and the Janitor be left alone.

Lenny said, “I’ll talk with ya in a few, Janitor.”

“Alright, Lenny.”

The big man started back toward the warehouse.

Gabriel said, “Oh, and Lenny?”

“Yes, boss?”

“Thank you.”

The big man dipped his chin with a slant of a smile. Slowly, he headed for the warehouse again, glancing behind him every few steps. Straining, he could still make out the conversation.

Gabriel turned to face the doctor, giving her his full attention.

Luz said, “It’s something we need to discuss privately, before the meeting.”

“If it has to do with Dave, I’ve already talked to him, and he’s going to leave for a while. Them other three are leaving, too. Was TJ who shot the one by the barbed wire fence. So there ain’t no need in—”

“Gabriel, just come with me. Please.” There was something hiding behind her eyes, something he couldn’t quite make out.
 

He furrowed his brows, concern lighting his own eyes. “What’s it about?”

“Just come with me.”

Jessica spotted it on the floor, beneath the box that had contained Natalee’s dismembered hand. The initial shock of that gruesome discovery had distracted her, and she hadn’t noticed the slip of paper until now.
 

One teasing corner poked out from under the cardboard.
 

Look at me. Come get me. Pick me up. You know you want to. You can’t resist. You need to know.

She swallowed hard, anxious about what she’d find scrawled on it. The last time she stumbled across a blood-stained note, she learned a sad secret. She just wasn’t sure she could handle another so soon.

But curiosity’s an irresistible temptress, and Jessica succumbed to the siren’s song. There was no point in fighting the urge, because she could easily justify reading it. The note could be a clue to Doc’s whereabouts. It could explain the sick rationale behind his mentally disturbed actions. Or perhaps provide some other insight she had yet to think of. Whatever that sheet contained, she would know about it first.

Before picking it up, she glanced into the hall, noticed a few people milling about, like anxious family members awaiting a difficult diagnosis of a loved one. They were undoubtedly waiting on a verdict from the Janitor, who had slipped into Roy’s room to speak with David privately. A closed door meant serious discussion. She prayed the conversation was going well, that Gabriel was the reasonable and insightful man she felt certain he was.
 

David, her cousin and only blood relative left, meant everything to her. She believed him, in him, despite his less-than-honest dealings with her as of late. She blamed the current state of the world and what he experienced before society’s collapse, but she knew better. He’d battled with trust and anger issues for most of his life, well before Karla’s death and Natalee’s heartless abandonment afterward.
 

He wasn’t a bad guy, just a flawed one. Surely the old man would see that. A flawed man could still function, contribute, be a part of something bigger and better, while bending and shaping himself into something less flawed. A bad man—a truly
evil
man—often bent himself until he snapped, broke, because he tried to move himself in a wrong, unnatural direction. Even if the damage could be repaired, a nasty, ugly scar remained to remind. And tempt. Always a sign of what was and could possibly be again.

After pulling the door to, Jessica crossed the room, stooped over the box. Like a child hovering over an anthill with a magnifying glass, she crouched there, unmoving, staring at it. She considered leaving the note be, tried to talk herself into doing just that. Wait for David. It was his business to bear, not hers.
 

It’s just a left-over invoice that was already in the box.

Doc used it as packaging material.

It was never in the box. The paper just happened to be on the floor when the box landed there.

She didn’t lie well, especially to herself. Not like her cousin. Maybe he could teach her sometime.

Before she realized it, she pinched the paper, snatching it from under the cardboard. She pressed to her feet, then walked to the window. The note was folded in half, decorated with blood—Natalee’s, most likely—and she could still smell death on it. Holding it to the window, she tried to get a sneak-peek.

Definitely a handwritten note.

Jess brought the note down to her hip.

What the hell am I doing? This is
his
business, not mine. Just wait until he gets through with the Janitor, then we’ll see what this is all about.

But it couldn’t wait. How the hell could it? A deranged individual, who thinks he’s a deceased gunslinger from the old west, lops off a woman’s hand, and stuffs it into a cardboard box? Then, he somehow finds the wife’s husband and delivers the dismembered hand via a sweet, innocent little boy, despite hungry shufflers roaming about?
 

No, this could not and would not wait. Jessica easily justified her actions. Nosey or not, she had no choice but to get involved. This cruel and heartless act affected David, Bryan, her… the entire Alamo community. No more delaying. Still standing at the window, she read the note.

* * *

Swiping a tear from her cheek, Jessica said, “Please don’t do this. You need time to think this through, time to… to heal.” She motioned to his gauze-wrapped head and eye, and her voice started to tremble. “Doc’s dangerous. He’ll… he’ll kill you. Is that what you want?”

David stopped stuffing the gym bag and gazed at his cousin. He caught her drift, her implications. He knew that she meant more than just his cracked head. And, as usual, she was right. Dead on. He did need time to heal—his body, his mind, his emotions… his heart.

She wiped away another tear, then broke his stare by looking out the window. She crossed her arms hard over her chest and clutched a wadded note so tightly that fingernails pierced skin, bringing blood. More blood to mix and mingle with another’s on an already blood-stained note.

Damn her. He had his own ebbing emotions to contend with and wasn’t adept at trying to soothe another’s hurt. The whole process was like Spanish to him. He knew enough to understand words here and there, sometimes even an entire sentence. Sure, he got the gist, but he wasn’t fluent enough to fully converse, only enough to get by. He could ask where the library was, but couldn’t ask about the books inside. Nowhere near enough to reciprocate the deeper meanings and nuances. A shame, since a full life wasn’t about just getting by.
 

Jessica wasn’t his wife, of course, but a loved one nonetheless, with feelings, just like his wife. Like himself. Same principles applied. Still, this didn’t make it any easier. But he had to try. Couldn’t leave it like this.

“Jess,” he said, crossing the room. He stopped behind her, hesitantly placing his hands on her arms. “I’ve got to do this.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

Jessica turned to face him. “No, David, you don’t. Look at you. Look what happened the last time you
thought
you had to do something. You almost died, David.
Died
.” She brought her hands over her puffy eyes, and David pulled her into a hug.

“Jess, sweetheart. This is different. Those other guys—Sam and his buddy, Gills—I provoked them. That mess… that was on me. All on me. I smacked the hornet’s nest, and I got stung.” He rubbed her back. “But this Doc guy. With this guy, it’s personal with him. He’s threatening me. You. Bryan. This place.”

“Then let’s leave, go far away from here. Find another place.”

“And leave the Janitor and his crew to fend for themselves? Doc will just keep hounding him, thinking he’s getting to me. And this ‘Infirmaries’ bunch is just as messed up as…”

…as I am…

She pulled away from him, leaving him alone by the window. “They got along just fine without us before. I’m sure they’d be just fine if we left.”

“What about Randy? And Bryan? They both love it here. I thought you loved it here, too. And Randy and Lenny are like two peas in a pod. They’re inseparable.”

“I just get the feeling things are going to get bad here. That Dr. Gonzalez, Luz, or whatever her name is? I don’t like her. I don’t trust her.”

“I think she’s just confused.”

“Confused?”

David crossed the room, started packing more supplies into the bag. “Yes, confused.”

“I think you just have a thing for her.”

He stopped, straightened, arms akimbo. His gaze a near glare, he said, “Are you serious?”

Jess twisted her lip, wiped her cheek. She’d found a button and punched it.

“You’re really reaching with that one, Jess. Christ, I get my wife’s hand delivered to me in a cardboard box, and that’s the shit you come up with? That I have a ‘thing’ for her?” Anger didn’t knock, it kicked in the door. “What a shitty fucking thing to say, Jess. Really fucking classy of you.”

He guessed she’d run out of straws to draw and was grasping at something, anything, to derail him from his intentions to leave. Maybe she was purposefully trying to piss him off, upset him, so that’d he stay and fight with her instead of running off on a suicide mission. But this realization didn’t stop him from launching his verbal lashing. Nor would it stop him from leaving.

“David, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Goddamn right you shouldn’t have.” He brushed his hand across his forehead, his rage a fever from within. “For fuck’s sake, Jessica—”

Jessica’s voice trembled again, her own temper tainting her words. “She left you, okay? Natalee? She
left
you. She didn’t love you anymore. She didn’t care about you anymore—”

“Enough,” he said. “Enough, already. You weren’t there, you don’t know, okay? Get over yourself, and leave it alone.”

“No,” she volleyed back, her tone growing strong. “I won’t leave it alone. You risked your life to be with a dead woman who didn’t love you.”

He felt as though Sammy and Guillermo had kicked the wind out of him all over again. “And just what the hell do you mean by that?”

“Lying to us about searching for Natalee? Going to your house? Everyday? So you could get shit-faced and spend time with your zombie wife? Was that the only way you could get her to be with you?”

And there it was. Whether intentional or not, Jessica had found it. Stepped right in it. She was standing in the world’s largest pile of shit, kicking it into the world’s largest fan. And that fan blew straight at David. David hated—
loathed
—the ‘Z’ word. Would not use it, corrected others who did. And referring to Natalee as one? His wife? In the same sentence, the same breath? Then, to insinuate, the only way Natalee would be with him…
 

How fucking dare you. Call me a drunk. Call me a liar. Tell me I’ve got problems, issues. Demons, even. But don’t you dare, don’t you
ever
fucking say
—

“Get out,” David said, his tone dull and flat. “Now.” He pointed to the door.

“David, I didn’t mean—”

“Out. Now.”

“Please, I take it—”

“
Now!
”

She curled her lips over her teeth, bowed her head.

David wouldn’t look at her.
 

Jess stopped on the threshold, started to look back. David stood there, unmoving, head bowed, forefinger showing her the way.

* * *