ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) (11 page)

“That was awkward,” Charlie said.

Both men watched the Charger’s brake lights flare red and
heard a distant tire squeal as the car hooked a hard left down a side street
and was lost from sight.

“In hindsight,” Duncan added, “I’m almost glad he didn’t
stop. How to explain a dead body in your truck?” he asked himself,
rhetorically.

“Not to mention a shotgun on the floorboard. So what are we
going to do with the girl?” Charlie asked, a tinge of worry creeping into his
voice. “We can’t just leave her here.”

There was a groan of metal as Duncan hauled open the
driver’s side crew door.

Charlie watched Duncan lean inside the crew compartment and
come out with a red bundle the size of a shaving bag. In the next moment he was
instinctively raising his arms to keep from getting beaned by said bundle
Duncan had thrown at him with no warning.

Duncan said, “Patch her up and we’ll put her in back.”

Charlie shot Duncan a questioning look. He said, “Then what?
You going to drive around with a cadaver in the bed and an unconscious female cyclist
belted in the back seat until we come upon an ambulance just cruising the
streets? What’s in that truck is already damn near a rolling capital offense,
if you ask me.” He moved the bike aside and knelt next to the young woman. Then
he unzipped the small first aid kit and started ripping open sterile bandages.

“I figure Tilly ought to go to somewhere that has a morgue.
They’ll want to do an autopsy … standard operating procedure,” Duncan said. “I
figure while we’re there”—he nodded at the unconscious woman—“we kill two birds
and drop her off in their ER.”

Half-expecting the young woman to flinch or maybe even
scream out in pain, Charlie dabbed an alcohol swab on the puckered neck wound.
The girl groaned, but her eyes remained shut. After patching up the wound to the
best of his ability, he called Duncan over and asked, “What are we going to do
with the bike?”

Duncan scanned the windows in the nearby houses. Then he looked
the prostrate form over. The bandage, though already dappled crimson, looked
like it would hold. The cyclist’s aerodynamic garb left little to the
imagination. It hugged her gymnast’s body everywhere. It also left no place to
secrete a wallet or pocketbook, let alone one thin piece of identification.
Finally, he said, “She’s got no driver’s license, and in her condition she
can’t give us an address to take the bike. Why don’t you just wheel it up next
to the house. That way if we get pulled over it won’t look like we’re covering
up a homicide
and
a hit-and-run.”

As if he was envisioning himself already strapped to the
gurney and awaiting the lethal injection, Charlie’s eyes lit up.

“Good call,” he said.

“Help me then.” Duncan took hold of the girl by her ankles.

Charlie wrapped his arms under hers and let her head rest
against his sternum.

Duncan started to stand, then paused, still crouched. “Notice
that?” he asked, nodding toward Hawthorne and the scene of the accident.

Charlie nodded.

Thankfully the shouting and screaming had abated. However,
the raucous wail of sirens coming from what seemed like every point in the
compass was now taking their place.

***

Fifteen minutes had elapsed since Duncan had taken the key
from under the cacti and entered Tilly’s bungalow. Now the house was sealed up
and the key back in its place. The cyclist’s high-dollar bike was stashed next
to the house behind a rhododendron and she was belted in the backseat directly
behind Charlie.

Duncan fired the motor over and pulled away from the curb.
As the truck picked up speed, he moved his gaze from the street ahead to the
girl in the back seat and then through the back-sliding glass to the jiggling
lump under the yellow sheet. “Hard to believe that lady used to change our
diapers.”

“If it wasn’t for Tilly, our mothers would have never met,”
Charlie replied, taking a look over his shoulder before going silent.

After travelling two blocks down a street laid out when horse-drawn
carriages and two-seat open-topped automobiles were the norm, Duncan hung a
left on a cross-street maybe half a car’s width narrower than the previous, the
vehicles lining the street crowding his truck’s wide rear fenders.

“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Duncan whispered as he eased off
the pedal and edged the pick-up right as far as possible.

Two-thirds of the way down the block, parked at a shallow angle
to the left-hand curb, its tail end crowding the road, was the Dodge police
cruiser. Its break-down flashers were going, but the roof light bar was dark,
suggesting to Duncan this was a personal stop.

Three car length’s from the cruiser, they saw that the trunk
lid was hinged up and someone—Officer Unfriendly himself, presumably—had
already been loading supplies into the cavernous trunk. There were bottled
waters still in the shrink-wrap put on at the plant. Items made of colorful
nylon, sleeping bags perhaps, were rolled up and stuffed under the rear package
tray. And as the pick-up drew even with the Charger, the same officer, who was
now in street clothes—jeans and a tee shirt, despite the unbearable afternoon
heat—crossed the sidewalk eyeing the open trunk, a bulging brown grocery bag
gripped in each hand.

“Sight of all that food is making me hungry,” Charlie
quipped.

In the back seat the cyclist groaned agreeably.

After fielding a prolonged stare from the officer-cum-civilian
now sporting a black pistol riding high on his hip, Duncan shifted his
attention to what was
inside
the cruiser. Rising vertical between the
seats up front, in place of the ubiquitous pump shotgun, was an AR-style
carbine. Its adjustable stock was collapsed and he could see that it was fitted
with a boxy optic up top and cylindrical suppressor on the business end of the barrel.
The aftermarket stock, optic and front grip on the rifle was what the
manufacturers called FDE (Flat Dark Earth), a light tan that stood out in stark
contrast to the cruiser’s gloomy interior.
Personal weapon
, thought
Duncan at first sight of it.
And high-dollar at that.

“Food, water, weapons,” Charlie added. “Looks to me like
someone is getting out of Dodge.”

“I concur,” Duncan answered. “And I think he’s expecting to
go to war.”

“Or expecting a war to come to him,” Charlie retorted, casting
a nervous glance at their moaning passenger. “Either way I don’t like what I’m
seeing.”

Duncan peered into the back seat of the poorly parked cruiser
and spied a pig-tailed girl no older than ten staring up at him. Her face was a
mask of fear and her pencil-thin fingers had the brushed-metal window bars
wrapped in a knuckle-white stranglehold.

“Maybe he’s punched the clock and is borrowing the cruiser
for the rest of the weekend.”

“Negative, Charlie. I have never known a municipality to let
a public servant take a city-owned vehicle on a road trip to Wally World,”
Duncan said. “Maybe the Water Bureau’d loan a car or pick-up. No chance the PPD
would spare a police cruiser … especially with everyone on edge over the
Pioneer Square thing.” With the intro to
Holiday Road
jangling in his
head, Duncan wheeled further right and spotted a woman roughly the cop’s age
coming out of the two-story Tudor adjacent to the cruiser. Forget the girl,
this one’s eyes were wide and her face stretched tight as if she’d just emerged
from the gates of Hell. In her arms were not only summer clothes, but also long-sleeved
items, parkas, and a couple of fleece blankets. Gripped in her curled fingers, dangling
by one threadbare floppy ear, and not much worse for wear than the one from the
books of the same name, was the little girl’s Velveteen Rabbit.

Charlie said, “That officer knows something we don’t.”

Duncan added, “Little girl can sense it, too. That one,
though … she’s wound tighter than a cheap watch. Leads me to believe he put the
girl in the car and briefed the mom on the fly.”

“And now they’re in a race against time to get away from
whatever it is.”

“I concur, Sherlock,” Duncan said, wondering what was really
behind the hasty retreat.

“What do you make of the bridge lifts and roadblocks on the
static spans?”

Traffic was moving left-to-right dead ahead on Hawthorne.
Houses and shrubs and parked cars flashed by on both sides. Finally Duncan replied,
“The bridges are up because they’re containing something that happened
downtown. Something more sinister than a riot resulting from a rally. Did you
hear an explosion … like a dirty bomb might make or maybe one of those EMP
things everyone is so fearful of?”

Shaking his head, Charlie said, “I heard some gunfire. There
was a news chopper hovering near the action. The marchers’ chanting was still
filtering down from Broadway when the cabbie stopped to pick me up.”

Face screwed up in thought, Duncan proffered, “Phones are
acting up … but the power is still on.” He stroked his mustache and steered
one-handed. “That rules out the EMP part, mostly.” He slowed at a stop sign
where the road they were on intersected Hawthorne at a right-hand forty-five. After
looking both ways, he accelerated briskly and went on, “So I’m inclined to
think this is some kind of chemical or biological thing. Sarin, maybe? Ebola? H1N1?
Just whispering about any of those things makes people crazy … does it not?”

“I’ve watched a couple episodes of Doomsday Preppers … but
I’m no expert on the subject.” Charlie went silent and craned around to look at
the girl in the backseat. She was deathly silent, now. Her head lolled left
then back again when Duncan sped up and merged in with the faster-moving
traffic.

By the time Duncan had wheeled the pick-up left off of Hawthorne
and onto 39th Avenue, a dozen minutes had gone by and the oppressive afternoon
heat was taking its toll on him.

“I’m hot as a billy goat in a pepper patch,” he said,
dragging a forearm across his brow.

“What’s wrong with the A/C in this thing?”

“Just kicked the bucket this morning. A precursor of things
to come, I guess.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “And did they ever.”

In the back seat, their shanghaied passenger was beginning
to moan and lean forward, her dead weight straining the shoulder belt to its
limits.

Charlie twisted around and saw her eyes jinking rapidly
behind lids criss-crossed by bruised and broken capillaries. As he looked on,
the jittery movement ceased and the lids opened to thin slits that showed very
little pupil.

“I think she has a concussion,” Charlie said. “She hasn’t
said a word since we dogpiled on top of her.”

“It’s not your fault,” replied Duncan, flicking his eyes to
the rearview. “She was a walking head wound before your inadvertent hockey
check. Hell, maybe the old coot hit her with his Taurus, too.” He zippered
through traffic, relying on the truck’s intimidating size and beefy bumper and
grill guard to convince the slower-moving vehicles into the right lane. The closer
they got to the onramp feeding onto Interstate 84 eastbound, the slower the
traffic was moving. And just as they were nearing Burnside a pair of desert tan
Humvees that had been coming at them in the opposite lane slowed abruptly and turned
right off of 39th. However, instead of bulling their way through the slow-moving
westbound traffic toward downtown as Duncan guessed they would, brake lights
flared and the pair of Humvees came to a dead stop, one broadside to the line
of eastbound cars waiting for the light to turn and the other blocking access
to both westbound lanes. Then horns were sounding. Long reports full of
frustration. In the next beat, eight thick slab-like doors inset with pale
green glass opened wide, and soldiers clad in the Army’s newfangled tan and
green camouflage uniforms and brandishing M4 rifles clambered out. Moving with
precision, the Humvee drivers filled in the gaps between the vehicles they’d just
egressed while the dismounts split up and hustled north and south and took up
station three to a sidewalk on either side of Northeast Burnside.

“Looks like the perimeter’s being extended,” Duncan said, as
vehicles in both lanes, many of them loaded with families and camping gear, came
to a complete halt agonizingly close to the intersection.

Cursing the Prius driver ahead of him for not proceeding
through the yellow light, Duncan stopped his truck a hair’s breadth from the
econobox’s sticker-plastered bumper and slapped his palms on the steering wheel.

The noise of idling engines mixed with excited voices
filtering out of open car windows all around.

They sat there unmoving for two stoplight cycles. Finally
Duncan craned his head right and sized up the driver behind the wheel of a
dirty white Econoline Van in the next lane. The driver was grizzled and gray
with sunken cheeks. A navy blue steamer captain’s hat was perched on his head.
The writing on the side of his van read
Johnson and Sons Fine Joinery
and, judging by the man’s gnarled fingers tapping impatiently on the driver’s
side A-pillar, he was likely the senior
Johnson
. With nothing to lose,
Duncan sat up straight and said to Charlie, “Ask Mr. Johnson next door if we
can cut in when his lane starts moving.”

“The hell,
I
have to ask?”

“Cause you’re close enough to give him a titty twister,” Duncan
answered curtly. “Make like Nike and
just do it
.”

So Charlie did. He leaned out his open window and, actually
addressing the man as “Mister Johnson,” appealed to him to let them over. In
return he received a glare. Then the man who answered to Johnson cast his gaze
to the Dodge’s box bed and let it linger there for a second.

The left lane started inching forward, so Duncan stayed on
the brakes until the cobalt-blue Prius followed suit. Once there was enough
room to get some forward momentum, he cut the wheels a hair to the right and
eased off the pedal, setting the pick-up rolling slowly forward.

Johnson swung his eyes back to Charlie and said, “What’s
under the sheet?”

Keeping his eyes glued to Johnson’s, Charlie locked his jaw
and whispered to Duncan through pursed lips, “What do I tell him?”

“Tell him the truth. Or just make some shit up. Whatever it
takes to get him to let us in.”

Charlie swallowed hard. Licked his dry lips and lied to the
man. “Oh … that? That’s a borrowed CPR doll we’re taking back to the hospital.”

“Creative,” Duncan whispered.

The car directly behind them tooted its horn.

Johnson flicked his eyes to the impatient driver, then back
to the young woman buckled in behind Charlie. “And her?” he asked, twirling his
silver mustache between thumb and forefinger.

“That’s my niece,” Charlie said. “She had one too many Bloody
Marys at brunch.” Another pair of untruths apparently delivered convincingly
enough because the man stuck his arm out and waved them forward with a chopping
motion like they do in Atlanta during the Braves games.

With no hat to tip, Duncan flashed a thumbs up at the man and
squeezed between the Prius and Econoline without trading paint.

Under the watchful eyes of the newly arrived soldiers,
Duncan nosed the oversized pick-up into a right turn and proceeded east on
Burnside. A couple of blocks removed from the jam up he released the breath he’d
been holding and looked sideways at Charlie. “You’re a good liar.” Lips curling
into a smile, he asked, “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“You said make something up. That’s what I did.”

“Yes you did,” replied Duncan as he cast his gaze left and
right, taking in the neighborhood he hadn’t passed through in quite some time.

The four-lane wending through tony Laurelhurst was lined by
mature oaks, alders, and maples, their branches meeting above the centerline and
completely blotting the sun for blocks-long stretches. The homes here were
mostly turn-of-the-century Craftsmen or boxy Old-Portland-style homes with
large manicured yards, exquisite brickwork, and fine architectural details:
dentil molding, rosettes, columns, and ornate stained glass.

The unexpected detour gave Duncan a sobering look at the
kind of life he could have been enjoying had he not drank and gambled away a
generous six-figure inheritance.

The light was just going red on 47th as they emerged from
the residential stretch of Burnside and Duncan slipped the Dodge into the left
turn lane. As a pair of ambulances sped across the intersection, jouncing on
their springs and getting wobbly on their way north on 47th, he dragged his
gaze from their hypnotically flashing lights to the nearby Portland Police Traffic
Division building.

Basically a two-story affair built on a downslope, the
sturdy structure dominated most of the block kitty corner from the left turn
lane. The south elevation was all glass and metal fronted by a vast expanse of blacktop
that looped counter-clockwise around the entire above-ground part of the
facility. Duncan strained to see inside the green-tinted glass, but picked up
no movement.

“Eerie,” Charlie said. “Maybe they’re all downtown putting
out fires.”

“Fires?”

“Bad choice of words,” Charlie conceded.

Duncan shook his head. “This is strange.” He glanced up and
saw he had missed his light. It was changing from green to yellow. Cars in the
through lane slowed and stopped beside his truck, one peeling off and forming
up on his bumper. He said, “Even between shift changes or the middle of the
night, you’d think that being this close to the action there would be a number
of cruisers nosed up to the main building on the Burnside level.”

“Not today,” Charlie replied. “Place is a ghost town.”

Again forgetting to keep tabs on the cycling lights, Duncan
walked his gaze left. The underground garage portion of Traffic Division faced
west on 47th. It was painted a sickly yellow and tinged gray with exhaust soot
at sidewalk level; compared to the gleaming upper floor, the cement and
cinderblock garage level was unremarkable in every way. The west-facing rollup
door was closed. Atop the door was a rectangular sign warning incoming vehicles
of a twenty-two-foot height limit. Strangely there were no vehicles of any
height in sight. There were no SERT command wagons—basically RVs with high-tech
communications suites. There were no patrol cars rolling up to the door to enter
and gas up. There were no SUVs—Ford Explorers, mainly—which were favored by watch
supervisors. Nothing wheeled was coming or going from a place well-known for
its round-the-clock police presence.

When his light changed green again and the eastbound traffic
started scooting by, Duncan kept his foot parked on the brake and his eyes on
the quiet structure. Lolling lazily in the hot afternoon breeze, the American flag
was the only thing moving on the premises. It seemed as if the place had been
evacuated.

There was a long drawn-out horn blast from the small pick-up
crowding his bumper.

Duncan snapped out of it, but instead of looking up to see
the status of his light, his gaze moved from the flapping flag to the glove
box.

The horn blast faded and the driver of the truck on their
bumper leaned out his open window and bellowed, “Hang up and drive, asshole!”

The sudden craving continued niggling at Duncan as he made the
turn on the yellow. With the other driver still cursing and waving a middle
finger at him, he pulled hard to the curb, letting the pick-up blow by on the
left.

Looking concerned, Charlie asked, “What’s going on?”

Duncan said, “Just open the glove box.”

Charlie nodded and thumbed the button. He let the door hinge
down on its own and grimaced when it hit the stops with a solid clunk.

Duncan turned on the radio and hiked up the volume.
Instantly Johnny Cash was coming out the speakers and singing something about a
man coming around. A lesser known song that he couldn’t sing along with if he
wanted to. But singing was the last thing on his mind.

“This what you want?” Charlie asked.

Duncan said nothing. He nodded, reached his hand out, and
received the bottle just as the cyclist came to and threw her upper body into
the passenger seatback, spraying Charlie, the dash, and the windshield with
spittle and beaded sweat.