ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) (22 page)

Understanding exactly where Duncan was going with this,
Charlie interrupted. “Go,” he said, “top the tank off while there’s still
electricity going to the pumps.”

Nodding again, Duncan said, “Promise me that if more like
that guy comes through those doors, you let ‘em get close and then follow your
precious
rules
to the letter.”

Charlie agreed, the word “
promise”
sounding more like
a grunt than a two-syllable word.

After delivering a reassuring squeeze to his friend’s
shoulder, Duncan edged past him and went straight to the desk, where he
allotted himself ten seconds to rifle through the drawers in search of keys to
the pumps.

Coming up empty, he left the office through the door they
had come in through and locked it behind him.

He loped to the Dodge, got in and got it started. Staying on
the airport property, he wheeled the rig around the northeast corner of Hangar
1, where he used his access card at another security gate to enter the airport
proper. Once on the tarmac, he steered straight for the bank of red pumps
standing all alone on the airport’s southeast corner underneath a lean-to-style
roof. He parked broadside to the fueling station and hopped out, electronic
keycard in hand.

***

Ten minutes after leaving Charlie all alone in the hangar,
the truck’s tanks were topped and Duncan was wheeling his rig back toward the
trio of hangars to scoop his friend up.

Lady Luck is not only back
, he thought with a grin.
The
old gal is riding shotgun
. The keycard that had first gained him access to
the transient area, then the airport tarmac, and miraculously was still
recognized by the pump, had just gotten him back through both of the rolling
security gates—the latter of which he stopped from closing fully with the front
third of his Dodge.

After having to open the hangar doors manually when the
power failed the first time, the last thing he wanted to have to do should it
fail again was open this one manually. So leaving the truck behind with the
gate wedged against the right front fender, he half-sprinted, half-loped across
the parking lot toward Stump Town Aviation East.

The door to the office was still locked when Duncan came to
a halt in front of it. Breathing hard, he banged on the door and fished in his
pockets for the keys. Feeling the familiar silky fur of the rabbit’s foot, he
hauled them out and found the one stamped DO NOT DUPLICATE. So as not to catch
a slug from his own pistol, he banged again and called his friend’s name to
announce he was coming in. There was no response. In his mind’s eye he saw
Charlie on his back in the office doorway, eyes wide and lifeless and fixed on
the steel rafters. Yellow bile and chunks of last night’s meal—a food-poisoning
death sentence—trickled from the corners of his mouth.

Duncan quickly dismissed that nonsense. Food poisoning
didn’t kill that quickly. Then, like a Mike Tyson gut punch, all of the clues
he had been trying his best to ignore fell into place like so many puzzle
pieces, and there was no denying the root of Charlie’s illness. Still coming to
grips with that sudden epiphany, a second and more terrifying vision usurped
the first. He saw Charlie upright and wavering in place. Only his face didn’t
wear an expectant look. Instead, it was the same expressionless and ashen piece
of work that the cyclist and streetwalker and security guard all had worn. And
in his imagination, Charlie was waiting on the other side of the door to make a
meal out of him.

In his head he heard Charlie saying in his reedy voice:
The
doctor said they do not act like us. They’re not able to reason. Or plan. Or
scheme. They only want to feed. And one bite is fatal.

Duncan was partially on board with that. But still, the
river of denial ran deep. He hadn’t seen his friend get bitten. Furthermore,
Charlie, one of the most honest men Duncan had ever known, had not mentioned
getting bit. So a two plus two equation this was not. Suddenly the thought
dawned on him that if Charlie
was
one of them, he would have already
reacted to the shouts. Dead weight would be hitting the door furiously.
Rattling it in its hinges behind mindless attempts to get at him through the
closed door.

To
eat
him.

But there was nothing to indicate those worst-case scenarios
had come to fruition. Feeling a sense of relief wash over him, he worked the
key in the lock and turned the knob, every muscle in his body tensing.

The door swung inward as quietly as before.

The stench of gun smoke hit him full on. As he dragged a
sleeve across his brow, he saw the blue Mariners cap on the floor. Then the
desk was revealed right to left by degrees. Tiny slices of the whole-picture
pie. First he saw the Far Side desk calendar, a new date now showing on it.
Then came the back of the monitor and the big bold self-advertisement stamped
on its case. Drawn to something out of place on the wall behind the desk, his
eyes flicked from the word DELL to the scale model aircraft and awards lining
the built-in shelving behind the desk.

Some small bits of something gray and shiny clung to the
rotors of the Bell 429. Crimson spatter painted the plaques acknowledging
Darren and Stump Town for their
Ongoing Excellence In Commercial Aviation
and apparently coming in
Tops In Customer Satisfaction 2010.

Why those things stood out in the snapshot in time baffled
Duncan as the door made its steady march to the stop. Halfway through the
one-eighty arc it was cutting across the tile entry, Duncan’s worst fear was
instantly nullified. His friend was
not
one of the undead things.
However, Charlie
was
dead. That much was clear. And he had done it the
right way. Muzzle clamped between the teeth that were no longer fixed in his
misshapen head. The blood and brains that weren’t dripping from the drop-down
ceiling and bric-a-brac jamming the shelves were oozing out onto the blotter,
where his upper body and what was left of his head had come to rest.

Inexplicably the .45 was still clutched in Charlie’s right
hand, which to Duncan’s amazement had ended up on the desk, barrel aimed at the
gaping hole in his head, as if ready to deliver a second round if the first
hadn’t been sufficient.

Gravity and relaxing muscles were to blame. Of that Duncan
had no doubt. Like Tilly, Charlie was one of the lucky ones. But how he had
become infected was the question nagging at Duncan.

“What’d you go and do, Charlie?” he cried out, his breath
coming in gasps.

Stepping over a saucer-sized chunk of cranium, he eased
around to the corpse’s right side. Swiping away an errant tear, he angled in
closer and tilted his head so he was looking at the items on the desk through
the lower halves of his bifocals.

On the near corner of the desk was a sheet torn from the
desktop calendar. Sitting on the sheet, about the size of a Tic-Tac, was a
yellowish-white sliver of something he didn’t recognize at first. He walked his
gaze over the pale hand and gore-slickened .45 and settled it on a message written
in Charlie’s hand.

Standing there breathing in hot air heavy with the metallic
tang of freshly spilt blood and the gut-churning stench from Charlie’s loosened
bowels, he read the message aloud, softly, in a voice full of defeat:
“I’m
sorry I had to do this to you, Duncan. The kid who saved my butt by the
apartments, he also accidentally killed me. A piece of tooth from the guy he
put down got me. Once again, I’m sorry, Old Man. I thought it was just a
scratch and a bruise. I didn’t know the truth until I got a look at the back of
my arm in the bathroom mirror. Go on and find Logan. Please forgive me. You
must
leave me here.
Do
not
bother burying me.”

The last two sentences were bold, written over so many times
the paper was scored through. And to make his desire crystal clear, Charlie had
finished each of those sentences with a flurry of exclamation marks.

After wiping his eyes dry and drawing a deep breath through
his mouth, Duncan moved closer, still being careful to not come into contact
with the blood and gore. He pinched the right sleeve of Charlie’s tee shirt
between thumb and forefinger and hitched it up a few inches. As a result,
Charlie’s limp hand slipped away from the .45, his fingers drawing a bloody
rainbow on the desk blotter.

Sure enough, on the back of his dead friend’s right arm was
an angry red gash welling up dead center in the purple bruise caused,
presumably, from the butt delivered by the infected thing’s crushed head. There
was no way to be sure. All he knew was Charlie was dead and thankfully hadn’t
come back hungry for flesh. With fresh tears welling in his eyes, Duncan
plucked a monogrammed pen from the coffee cup, tore two sheets from the desk
calendar, and scribbled two messages in his hard-to-read chicken scratch.

On the first he wrote:
Darren, I am truly sorry for
leaving your place in disarray. The security guard attacked me first. My
friend, Charlie … that’s pretty evident. Please know that I am not running from
the law. I just feel the need to immediately distance myself from the infection
and the big city. If you make it back here and find this note, it must mean
that the National Guard has gotten things under control. Also know that I’m
done burning bridges. I put twenty gallons on your port account with my old
keycard. I will return from Utah as soon as possible and avail myself to answer
any questions the authorities may have. Sincerely, D.W.

On the second sheet he wrote:
CRIME SCENE. DO NOT ENTER!!
Then he took a length of clear tape from the dispenser on the desk and affixed
it to the top of the sheet.

The first note he left on a clean spot on the blotter along
with the key stamped DO NOT DUPLICATE. He fished the wad of bills from his
pocket. Peeled three twenties from the Keno winnings and left them partially
covering the key and note.

As part of the crime scene, he figured the .45 needed to
stay. The shotgun would have to suffice, for now.

“Bye, friend,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose to
staunch the tears. “You followed the rules, Charlie. You did what you
had
to do. Nobody has to know you died by your own hand. That … I’ll take to the
grave with me. I’ll see you on the other side, brother.”

Duncan grabbed his NRA bag full of clothes off the floor,
retrieved his shotgun from where he’d propped it next to the desk and then
turned to leave. However, when he spun around he noticed the miniature fridge
tucked away in the corner. Wrapped in a woodgrain vinyl skin, it blended in
with the wall paneling and was nearly lost in the shadow below the window.

He worked his way around front of the desk, went to one knee
before the two-foot-tall cube, and gripped the top of the door, which was cool
to the touch and vibrating softly from internal mechanicals at work.

Expecting to find only conditioned air inside, he yanked
open the door and hinged over to peer inside. In addition to cool air—which
felt wonderful as it hit his flushed face—he found the entire fridge loaded
with cans and bottles, all lined up neatly and facing him.

There were sodas, imported and domestic beers, as well as a
couple of different brands of high-end bottled waters.
Evian
, he
thought, lip curling into a half-smile.
Naïve in reverse
. Gotta be crazy
to pay money for any kind of water. French, Swedish, or Martian. It did not
matter to him. Never had, never would. But nothing was stopping him from
liberating them. So he went into the bathroom and removed a brick of toilet
paper from under the sink. He emptied the dozen or so rolls onto the office
floor and transferred the bottled waters from the fridge to the plastic
wrapper. He stopped and eyed the beers for a long ten-count before closing the
door, willpower the winner.

As an afterthought, he scooped up a roll of TP and threw it
in the sack with the drinks. The last thing he needed was to be facing a squat
at the end of the world and finding himself plum out of asswipe.

On the way out of Stump Town Aviation Duncan locked the
office door behind him. Standing on the WELCOME mat in the hot noon sun, he
taped the warning note to the door at eye-level.

After making a silent vow to come back and bury his friend
should the authorities not find the means to right their rapidly sinking ship,
he took a deep breath and said, “I’ll be back,” with as much conviction as he
could muster.

Not sure if the words were truth spoken, or some kind of
wishful thinking, he shoved all of the gruesome images accrued over the last
half-hour deep down with the screaming nineteen-year-olds holding their guts in
against a fighting slipstream. With the mud-spattered body bags loaded with
pieces of teenagers, victim to their own Claymores being turned around on them
by the VC. Safe and sound with the three co-pilots he had lost to ground fire
over the course of one hellish three-month-span spent flying evac missions over
the rice paddies of Vietnam.

After trudging back to the Dodge loaded down with the
waters, shotgun and NRA gym bag, he swiped the keycard in the reader and
learned that the power was out again. Which was only the half of his problems,
because the unfortunate timing also meant that his Dodge was now stuck fast in
the inoperable gate. Muttering a few choice curse words stemming from his
not-so-well-thought-out decision to leave it wedged there in the first place,
he tossed the bags and shotgun through the open window. Not sure what to do
about the pickle he’d gotten himself into, he craned around to see if lights
were burning behind the angled glass of the distant control tower. Nothing
doing. It was darkened, which hadn’t been the case when he and Charlie skirted
past it earlier.

What to do? Wait a couple of minutes and see if the power
came back on? Or put the Dodge in four-wheel-low and force the issue, possibly
damaging his only set of wheels in the process?

“God,” he said, closing his eyes and feeling a little sheepish
for asking for a favor out loud. “Any help in the power grid department would
be greatly appreciated.” He finished the foxhole prayer with an “Amen” and when
he opened his eyes and gazed down the row of hangars at the tower the answer to
his appeal was crystal clear. He was shit out of luck. First off, the glass in
the tower was still as black as obsidian. And adding insult to the injury that
his unanswered prayer represented, a pair of what looked like maintenance
workers in pale blue oil-stained coveralls staggered from the shadows between
the nearest of the three hulking hangars. The sudden realization that the oil
was really blood and just thirty feet of asphalt stood between him and two more
walking cadavers caused his heart to skip a beat. Remembering that his .45 was
in the locked building and the pump gun was on the seat inside the closed-up
Dodge made him wish he was wearing Depends.

No problem
.
I’ve got this
, he thought none too
confidently. Then, reluctantly, he turned away from the moaning creatures,
hauled open the creaky driver’s door, and climbed aboard. Hair standing at
attention and both hands now shaking visibly from the sudden burst of
adrenaline, he labored to stick the key in the ignition.

After twice losing his grip on the purple fob and having to
feel around on the floor to retrieve it, he finally managed to seal the deal
and instantly the low rumble of the V8 drowned out the mournful sounds of the
dead.

Eyeing the snarling corpses in the wing mirror, he dropped
the shifter into Drive. With the abominations barely an arm’s reach away, he
gunned the engine and was greeted with very little forward movement and an
earsplitting keening of metal on metal. The unnerving rending metal sound
continued as the truck inched forward ever so slowly with the card reader
grating along his side, and the rolling gate doing a number on the other. Just
when Duncan thought for sure he was a goner, two things happened: pale hands
broke the plane of his open window, the fingers snaking into his hair and beard.
And while his Stetson was tumbling from his head a violent groan ripped through
the truck’s frame and the leading edge of the box bed finally broke free of the
card reader box. Which resulted in the truck lurching forward and thankfully
the monsters losing purchase on him before any real damage was done. A half
beat later, with the dead performing a slow motion spill to the ground, the
truck’s bulbous rear fender flares hit the reader box and gate producing twin
resonant
gongs.
On the back half of that beat, with the hollow tones
fading, the truck surged free of the gate, the sudden release of the pent-up
horsepower causing the tires to judder and chirp.

Heart trying to beat its way out of his ribcage, Duncan
whipped the big rig through the Jersey barriers on his way to Sundial Drive.
Cursing the stumbling corpses reflected in his wing mirror, he braked briefly
then hooked a hard right and mashed the pedal, leaving twin lines of smoking
rubber as he sped off eastbound on Sundial. Angry at himself for letting his
guard down back there, he swung his gaze from the rearview mirror and focused
on the distant motor hotel.

With Plan B’s viability threatened due to the noisy Harleys
having recently passed by on the Interstate, and made all the more dangerous because
his
strength in numbers
had just been diminished by half, a quick pause
to reset and come up with a sound strategy seemed like a prudent course of
action. So with the beginnings of said plan gelling in his head, he hung a
right at the “T” and set his sights on the red and blue sign rising high above
the three-story Comfort Inn.

When he passed through the sign’s shadow thirty seconds
later, only three cars were in the hotel lot. All were new models. Clean and
shiny. Rentals, he guessed, on account of the fact they weren’t loaded with the
belongings of people fleeing the city.
Then again
, he thought, nosing
the Dodge in next to a four-door Nissan,
my ride isn’t exactly pulling its
weight, either.

Leaving the pump gun under the front seat overhang and his
Stetson on the floorboard where it had come to rest, Duncan scooped up the
binoculars and stepped out onto the parking lot blacktop. “I’ll be dipped in
shit,” he stated upon seeing the lights in the lobby suddenly flare on, flicker
a couple of times, and then remain lit. “You’re five minutes too late, God.”

Ignoring the red neon NO VACANCY sign, he started for the
canopy-covered front entry where he had a couple of choices to make.

Still sore from the blindside tackle, he chose the ramp
instead of the stairs.
Thank you, Americans with Disabilities Act
.

At the flat part of the landing, he saw the man behind the
chest-high desk glaring and shaking his head. Ignoring the visual cues, Duncan
glanced at the sign on the door stating full occupancy and also paying
it
no mind, pushed on into the spacious lobby.
Shoulda locked it, Innkeeper
,
crossed his mind as he returned the glare and approached the desk fronting the
swarthy-complected man.

“I don’t need a room,” he said at once to preempt any kind
of a preamble coming from the desk guy’s pie hole. He placed the remainder of
his previous day’s winnings on the worn counter top. “I just need a good
vantage point. Big window facing east. Top floor would be optimum.”

The guy said nothing. His eyes looked like they were chipped
from flint. He flicked them from Duncan’s face to the money and back again. The
whole round trip lasted half a second. The action of scooping the cash off the
counter burned less than that.

After the slick move, Duncan realized what the man reminded
him of. And damn if he’d never seen a faster mongoose at the zoo.

“Turn around,” said the man, narrowed eyes fixed on Duncan’s
hands.

Complying, Duncan raised his arms and saw the reason for the
man’s concern. The outside of his left shirt sleeve was speckled with a
constellation’s worth of tiny black dots where the blowback from the .45 had
left him spattered with the security guard’s blood.

Finished turning a full revolution, Duncan said, “I had to
protect myself.”

“From one of
them
?”

“He was already dead … if that’s what you’re getting at,”
Duncan drawled. He unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled both sleeves up to mid
bicep. “No bites.”

Now the man was staring at the binoculars.

Duncan said nothing.

The desk man’s lip was going white where he’d been absently
biting down on it.

“I’ll be in and out,” Duncan said, holding his hands up in
mock surrender. “Won’t touch a thing so there’ll be no room turnover.”

Now the man was shifting his weight from foot to foot. He
ran a hand through a horseshoe ring of silver-white hair no doubt brought on by
having to make thousands of similar decisions, most at zero-dark-thirty with
drunken, dreary-eyed, Interstate travelers—not a squared-away former Vietnam
veteran who carried himself as such … most of the time. “Can’t guarantee the
power will stay on … or the phone will work for you,” he said. “Both have been
spotty all morning. And I’m not in the habit of giving refunds, either.”

“All of that doesn’t matter a bit to me.”

The innkeeper suddenly went stock-still, but continued to
size Duncan up.

“I’ll leave a tip for the maid,” Duncan lied. The fact he
was out of cash was known only to him and the four walls containing Charlie’s
corpse.

And that was what it took to break the ice. The maid hadn’t
shown up for her shift. Therefore, the man with no name tag would be the
beneficiary of said gratuity.
Not bad for ten minutes spent doing nothing.

The electronic key card appeared on the counter nearly as
fast as the money had left it.

Duncan scooped the credit-card-sized item off the desk and
craned, looking for the stairs.

Pointing over Duncan’s shoulder, the man said, “Elevator’s
over there.”

Not wanting to get trapped should the power fail again,
Duncan said, “I’ll take the stairs.”

“304,” said the man. “After you exit the stairwell”—he
gestured to a narrow hall off his right shoulder—“it’s the second door on the
right. You have five minutes.”

Duncan made no reply. He palmed the card and was on his way.

***

The stairs were far from ADA-friendly on his knees. He
exited the well on the third floor and found the room, no problem. And when he
tried the card in the door it made the light flare green and the lock open with
a
snik
. Firing on all cylinders … until the hall lights crashed off
again. Silver lining though, he had no further use for the electronic key card.

Room 304 was vanilla. Two twin beds butted against the
left-side wall. Secured to the wall opposite the beds was a Korean-brand
flat-panel television barely half the size of Charlie’s pride and joy. Under
the television was a small desk. Atop the desk in the right corner was a box of
tissues, television remote, and pad of paper with a ballpoint pen sitting atop
it crossways—no advertising present on either.

Vanilla.

But none of that mattered. Because framed by tied-back
blackout curtains was a picture window nearly the size of one of the twin beds.

Duncan crossed the room and plucked a few flimsy squares of
tissue from the box. He made a quick pass over his bifocals to clean them of
any errant blood that might have settled there. Next, he made sure the
binocular lenses were equally sparkling. Finally, he pulled the chair from the
desk’s kneehole and positioned it by the window.

He trained the binoculars east and ran a finger over the
focus wheel to bring the length of Interstate-84 into view, fully expecting to
see Humvees and National Guard soldiers. Maybe even a whole mess of Jersey
barriers recently imported on a flatbed and deposited across the road for added
emphasis and vehicular stopping power. And since he had recently heard the
throaty rumble of Harleys roaring by, seeing a bunch of grizzled bikers and
their old ladies jawing with the soldiers in order to gain passage seemed
perfectly reasonable.

Instead, what he saw chilled him to the bone. There
were
bikers and old ladies and several dozen bikes leaning on kickstands. A tiny
pocket of civilians milled about near the head of the stoppage, their colorful
passenger cars surrounded by a sea of black and chrome and hijacked SUVs—the
yellow H2 standing out starkly among them. And at the easternmost point of the
jam, looking as harried as the Dutch kid with his finger in the dike, stood a
lone state trooper, arms extended, gloved palms facing the gathering horde.

Having seen enough to know he was now in need of a Plan C,
Duncan let the binoculars dangle from their strap and uttered a string of salty
expletives. He stood there for a moment with his back to the window and his
sails emptying of hope.

On one hand he felt compelled to drive under the nearby
overpass, take the on-ramp east and try his luck at getting up to the front and
talking his way past the lawman without having any contact with the bikers.

Good luck with that.

On the other hand, already aware of what the bikers were
capable of, he figured it would behoove him to forgo any kind of rash action
until he deemed there was no Plan C in the cards.

***

Hearing the pneumatic hiss of the stairwell door closing,
the nameless desk guy looked up from the last ever copy of the venerable
Oregonian newspaper and flashed a collaborative grin. “Find what you were
looking for?”

“A whole lot of what I wasn’t,” Duncan answered in a
tired-sounding voice. “I lied about the tip, by the way. Sorry, friend. The
last of my foldin’ cash is in your pocket.”

“Seeing as you’re coming clean with me,” the man said. “I’ll
come clean with you. The maid … she’s not coming in. She no called, no showed.
Figure she’s got the infection everyone’s been freaking out about. Thought you
had it at first, but didn’t see any sweating or tremors. Guess it’s your lucky day.”