The King of Clayfield - 01 (19 page)

"Nothing is right about any of this," I said. "I can accept that a disease made everybody crazy, but I'm not willing to believe that dead people are coming back to life. It is just too much."

She went over to the spot on the floor next to the basement door where she'd shot the man. She started to stick her finger in the thick, sticky
 
blood.

"Jen, no," I said. "C'mon--the virus. I don't want to have to
 
get drunk
 
again because
 
of something careless."

"I don't have to touch it anyway," she said. "I can see the hole in the floor. The bullet went clean through."

"So?" Brian said.

"Well," she said, "I saw on TV once that a .22 bullet
 
has the power to get in the head, but not enough to get out. It just bounces around in the skull, and kills the person by destroying the brain. This bullet wasn't able to do the damage it could have done, because it went all the way through the head and into the floor. It doesn't mean it couldn't have killed him, but...I don't know."

"There you go," Brian said. "Take off your sunglasses, aaaand...CSI: Grace County."

"Asshole," Jen said. "I'm this close to shooting you, anyway--just to be on the safe side."

"Come on to the couch, sweetie," Brian said, limping and
 
leading her by the elbow. "This good man
 
made us some breakfast. He tells me you two will be leaving soon."

"Does he?"

"He does."

Jen
 
looked at me, but I couldn't read her.

"Maybe
 
the two of you
 
could run by Wal-Mart for me while you're out," Brian said. "I'm getting low on milk....and ammunition for my new, big gun."

CHAPTER 18

Brian gave us three bottles of wine and a
 
case of bottled water. His well was still working, and he felt confident that he would not
 
need to go to bottled water for a while. We left him the 12 gauge and the box of shells we'd brought. Jen was quiet as we prepared to go. She had tried to talk
 
him into coming with us while she picked at her breakfast, but he refused.

None of us discussed the man in the swimming pool.

After we'd loaded the truck, Jen
 
made one more push to convince him to come along while I went outside to take care of the window to the basement. I took the rifle with me.

I found a piece of plywood in the garage
 
that would fit over the opening, but I didn't have any tools to affix it to the block foundation wall. Ideally, I would have put a screen over the window, so it could get air--not for their sake, but for Brian's. I could imagine that within a couple of days, the smell would be unbearable. I didn't know how many people were down there, but there wasn't even room for them to move unless they crawled on top of each other. Maybe the smell would force Brian to leave before
 
something happened to keep him from
ever
leaving.
 

First, I got down on my belly.
 
The people tried to get at me, but the
 
window was too high up for them. If I'd have stayed there long enough, they would have crawled on each other and
 
grabbed me, but I wasn't going to be long. I
 
shot out the two
 
light fixtures in the ceiling. Then I
 
propped the plywood against the wall over the window and wedged it a little in the ground. It wouldn't hold forever, but maybe they wouldn't figure out how to move it.

As I came around the front of the house, I could see a group of four coming down the road. They were the faster ones. They'd probably heard the rifle. They were far away, and
 
I had plenty of time, so I went around back to check on our pool guy.

He was trying to get out.
 
He would
 
never make it. He
 
was splashing
 
along the side of the pool as if trying to find an opening. It kind of reminded me
 
of a zoo animal pacing in their cage.
 
He'd walk the pool cover down, and then it would float up again
 
behind him. He tripped and went under. After a lot of splashing and slapping the water, he was able to
 
get up again. His hat had fallen off.

He'd been standing still in that frigid water
 
almost two hours by that time, yet he was able to move around. Perhaps it was
 
true; perhaps he wasn't
 
human anymore. I doubted any human could do that.

I went in through the back door, and made sure it was locked.

"We've got some on their way," I said.

Brian hugged Jen.

"If Henry hasn't called in a week, I'll just leave," he said. "I have directions to your new place."

"I'm going to worry about you out here by yourself," Jen said.

"I'll be fine," he said. "Your new beau schooled me on the ins and outs of firearms. I'm a regular commando now."

She looked over her shoulder at me. I figured it was to see if I had been listening. I pretended that I hadn't been.

"A week is a long time," she said. "We'll come check on you before then."

"I'm fine," he said. "Go check on that blue house first."

We got in the truck and Brian stood in the doorway with his finger on the automatic door opener. Jen rolled down the window.

"When you come, drive the Porsche," she said. "I've always wanted to
 
ride in
 
one of those."

Brian smiled and pushed the button. The door went up, and as soon as we had enough clearance, I drove out.
 
He waved
 
to us as the door went down again.

The four new visitors chased us, and I went slow enough to give them hope of catching us so I could lead them away from his house.

Jen was quiet. She didn't even acknowledge that for a short time there was a woman running right outside her window.

"We should have made him come," she said. "We should have just took him.”

"Are you okay with leaving?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "We couldn't stay there. I had hoped we could, but after they got in, and then there was the
 
smell.... And I got to thinking about what you said about people taking the place. I've been so focused on the infected that I never thought about how dangerous the uninfected might be."

"I wouldn't be too worried about that, but it is something to keep in mind," I said. "I hope Brian is right, and this brings us all together. Who knows, maybe when it all settles down, we'll have Utopia."

She looked in the mirror at a woman jogging just behind the truck.
 

"Poor thing," she said. "She has no control over herself. All she wants to do is get us. I wonder why? Do you think she wants to eat us? Do you think the virus has a mind and sends her after us so it can spread?"

"I don't know," I said.

"I wonder why they don't try to kill each other," she said.

"I've seen them fight," I said.

"Yeah, but they ain't fixated on each other the way they are on us. With each other, it's almost like they're establishing a pecking order."

She rolled down the window and turned around in her seat.
 
Then she grabbed the rifle and picked them off one by one. She was shooting left-handed so it took her several tries. Every time she would shoot, the rifle would eject the spent casing into the cab of the truck. One of the hot
 
shells hit me
 
on the cheek.

She left the woman for last.

"She just keeps on coming," she said. "All of her group has been shot, but she doesn't stop to
 
check on them."

She fired, and the woman fell in the ditch by the road. Jen rolled up her window and faced front.
 

"It gets easier," she said. "They ain't people no more; they're monsters.
 
Anyway, it can't be murder
 
when they don't stay dead."

There was
 
still smoke
 
in town, but not as much as
 
there had been. It was a cloudy morning, but it felt a little warmer outside. We pulled into town on Broadway. As we crossed the railroad tracks and neared the post office, we could see a large group off to our right.

"Looks like
 
they're
 
going to
 
church," Jen said. "This is Sunday, ain't it?"

The group was
 
around the
 
First Christian
 
Church. I took a left at the post office, heading away from them.

"We're going to need more guns," Jen said.
 
"I don't want to go
 
check on that house and that building with just this
 
twenty-two."

I took a right on North Street, headed back toward the museum.

"We could go back out and search some houses," I said. "But we're getting low on gas. We've
 
got less than a quarter of a
 
tank."

"There are
 
vehicles everywhere," she said. "Take your pick."

The minivan was still parked by the museum. The mob
 
had dispersed.
 
The generator must have
 
used up its
 
gas, too.

"Want to stop and get it?"
 
she asked.

"Let's leave it," I said.
 
"We can always bring more gas up here and use the computer another time."

She nodded, and we proceeded to North 7th
 
Street.

"The police station," she said. "I'll bet there'll be guns in there."
 
 

"I've never been in there," I said. "Where do you think they keep them?"

"Beats me," she said. "But it’s not
 
like there's anyone around to stop us from looking."

I went up two blocks and
 
accessed the City Hall and police station parking lot from the 5th Street entrance so the crowd at the court square wouldn't notice us. My wrecked car was right there, too.

"That's me," I said. "That blue car."

"Were you in that wreck?" she asked nodding toward the head on collision.

"No," I said. "I came on it right after."

I parked behind the building and we got out. There were two police cars parked there along with three other cars and a pickup.

"Check it out," Jen said, bending over and picking something up off the asphalt. She grinned and held up a pistol.

"Look," she said. "There's another one over there by the grass."

I went over and picked it up. It was scratched up and
 
had some water in it from the melted snow.

"I wonder if this is a nine millimeter." Jen said. "Cops use nine millimeter, don't they?"

"I don't know."

"I don't know, either," she said. "This one looks like Zach's gun, and his was a nine millimeter. They kind of all look alike to me."

"They were doing a lot of shooting here when it all started," I said. "I guess they were overpowered."

"Or they turned into them," she said, sliding the clip out. "It's empty."

"Do you know how to shoot one of those?" I asked.

"Yep."

"I've never used
 
a semi-automatic handgun," I said. "I could figure it out; I've seen it enough on TV."

"I guess I'll have to school ya," she said. "I gotta make sure the new
beau
knows the ins and outs of firearms. Ain't that right?"

"That was all Brian," I said.

"I know," she said, "I'm just joking....hey, there's another one."

This one was
 
under a shrub next to the building. It
 
was a snub nose revolver. I knew how to use a revolver.
 
I picked it up and
 
opened the cylinder, but
 
there were no live rounds,
 
just
 
used casings. I pulled one out and read the
 
rim. It was a .38.
 
I put it in the pocket of my coat, and stuck
 
the other one
 
in the waistband of my pants.