The King of Clayfield - 01 (8 page)

"They're coming," I said as I ran past her.

"I puked," she said.

I got to the gate and nudged it open with my foot.

"Now, Jen!"

The back door flew open, and one of the men fell out into the snow. A second man stumbled out on top of him.
 
Jen seemed to come to her senses, and bolted away from them. She was having trouble getting traction in the snow in her slippers, and her feet would run in place for a few steps,
 
make progress, and then she'd fall to one knee.
 
The third man leapt out of the house. When his feet hit the ground, they slipped in the snow, and he landed on his butt. The whole scene looked like something from a cartoon.

I backed against the gate, to hold it open. Jen made it to me before the men could recover. I closed the gate, and looked for something to prop it closed. I started to use the shotgun, but Jen stopped me.

"Are you outta your mind?" she said, looking at me like I was an idiot. She jammed the tobacco stick into the ground, and then leaned it over so that it was wedged under the gate's latch. Then she took the shotgun from me.

More people were coming down the street. They didn't seem to be a group--just nine loners, spaced out and staggering toward us, attracted by the noise.

We got in the Blazer and pulled away before they could reach us.

I drove around and past the people in the streets. Some stopped and, with slack jaws, watched us pass; others chased us. I couldn't get over how little some of them were wearing. How could they
 
stand this cold?
 
The thermometer on the dashboard
 
was showing the outside temperature at 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

I headed east on College
 
to 6th Street, then took that to Bragusberg Road.

"Are we going to your house?"
 
Jen asked softly. She'd put the shotgun in the backseat and
 
was resting her head against the window. The big, brown coat covered her like a blanket, pulled up to her chin.

"No," I said. "A friend owns a place out between Gala and Farmtown, I'm going out there."

Her distant stare was back.

"Are you okay?" I said.

"No."

I didn't know what to say. She and I were "friends" on Facebook, but that was the extent of our relationship. We
 
had only been acquaintances
 
in high school; we didn't run in the same circles. I might have seen her three times around town
 
since graduation. I didn't know anything about her.

"You grabbed the wrong coat," she said. "This is Zach's coat...my boyfriend."

"Sorry," I said. "It was the first one on the rack.”

She was silent for a moment. She pushed her hands down in the pockets of the coat. An ever so slight grin crossed her lips.

"Score," she whispered and fished out a pack of cigarettes. She stuck one in her mouth.

"Do you mind?" she asked.

I did mind, but I said, "No, go ahead."

"Want one?”

"No," I said. "I quit back in 2004."

"2004? Hell...good for you. But I think we've earned it."

"If I smoke one, I'll smoke the whole pack," I said. "The last thing I need to is get re-addicted to something they might not be making anymore."

She pulled out a lighter, and flicked it a
 
couple of times until the flame danced.

"Ain't nothing worse than a smoker that's quit," she said, lighting up.

"Why's that?"

"They bitch and moan about
 
smoking more than people that's never done it."

She took a deep drag and exhaled, filling
 
the cab with smoke.

I opened my window, and the cold wind bit at my face.

"I should know, because I quit, too. I gave Zach hell about these things every damn day. I wouldn't let him smoke inside...."

She rolled her window down and she threw the cigarette
 
and the rest of the pack out.

"Tastes like dirt," she said.

We put our windows up and were quiet for a while. I pulled off of Bragusberg Road onto little Britton
 
Lane. The road had been snow-covered the whole way. There were no tire tracks or footprints.

"Have you been exposed?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I've been around people that had it, so probably. I've been wearing this mask."

"If I'm going to turn..." she paused as if she didn't want to finish. “If I turn into one of them, it'll be sometime today. Zach and I were probably exposed to the disease within a few hours of each other. He probably caught it at work, and I probably caught it from him.
 
We should know by this afternoon whether this alcohol thing works."

"Do you think there is something to it?" I asked, turning onto Gala Road. "It sounds crazy."

"Crazy is all we've got right now."

"There's no way to know how much to drink," I said.

"I got wasted," she said. "I made sure I got my brain good and soaked."

She looked out the window.

"I've got a headache," she said. "I don't know if it is from the virus or the liquor. I thought you ought to know."

"Is a headache the first symptom?"

"Yeah," she said. "Zach got a headache. His sister and her kids were staying with us, because their power went out yesterday, and their neighborhood was getting bad. They were all in bed with bad headaches before long. I was drinking, but I don't know if it helped."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Me too," she said. "He was an asshole, but he didn't deserve that. His sister and...and the kids..." Jen sighed heavily and started crying.

I pulled into Blaine's driveway. His truck was gone, but Betsy's minivan was there. Their long, tan, manufactured home was off to the right of the driveway. They had a workshop behind the house with an attached chicken coop. I could see
 
four
 
chickens
 
in the pen.
 
There were other, smaller outbuildings here and there. The snow in the yard was pristine, and I didn't take that to be a good sign. I started to get out, and Jen put
 
her hand on my arm.

"Don't let me become one of them," she said.

"Jen,
 
I..."

"If I start acting funny, if I start getting violent, you kill me."

"Jen, I couldn't do that."

"Before this is over, you'll probably have to kill
 
some of them," she said.

I stared at her.
 
I was afraid I
 
already
 
had killed, but I didn't want to tell her. Her eyes were red from the booze and the
 
tears; they were
 
desperate and pleading.

"I don't want to wind up like Zach," she said.
 

"Blaine didn't know I was coming," I said, changing
 
the subject. "I'm going to see if it's okay if we stay here."

She pulled her hand away and ran her fingers through her hair.

"I'll wait," she said.

Family and friends used the back door at Blaine's.
 
Strangers always came to the front. I knew I should go around back.
 
Blaine had a shotgun, too,
 
and if I tried the front door, he might give me the same
 
welcome that Jen had.

I went up the back porch and knocked.

"Blaine!" I said. "Betsy!"

I couldn't hear any movement inside. I cupped my eyes and looked through the narrow window on the back door. I could see their small laundry room. I knocked again, louder. I left the porch and walked around the house looking in windows.
 
No one was in there.

For as far as I could see snow was perfect and untouched.
 
During the ice storm of 2009, the family had slept in the workshop, because Blaine had a small wood-burning stove in there.
 
I walked over to the shop. I waved at Jen. The windows were starting to fog up on the Blazer, but she saw me and raised her hand in acknowledgement.

I knocked on the workshop door, and then tried the knob. It was unlocked. I stepped inside. It was as cold in there as it was outside. I touched the wood stove to be sure--cold, unused. I tried the light switch, but there was nothing.

I returned to the Blazer.

"They're gone," I said, climbing in.

"So what now?" she said.

"I don't think Blaine would mind us staying here," I said. "The power is out, so we'll sleep over in the workshop. Maybe I can get a fire going."

"Do you think your friend has anything to drink?"

"I don't know," I said. "Haven't you had enough?"

"Not for me," she said. "If I don't get sick, then we know
 
alcohol works. If it works, you need to get
 
good and drunk."
 

CHAPTER 8

We unloaded the truck and took everything into the workshop. The building was a metal pole barn on a concrete slab, tan to match the house; the dimensions were about
 
15 feet by 20 feet. Along the
 
two
 
shorter walls
 
to the left and right
 
of the door were counters lined with tools–grinder,
 
miter saw, vise, drill, etc.
 
The building had three windows--two on the south side facing the road, and one on the east side looking out into the chicken pen. Up high on the walls,
 
hung
 
garden tools, some lawn chairs, and a bicycle.
 
On the back wall opposite the front door
 
was a little square door three or four feet off the ground.

“What’s this for?” Jen asked. “Hobbits?”

That Hobbit thing
 
was nice. I almost didn’t notice it, because I was distracted with my thoughts. It was out-of-the-blue on a very bad day and
 
coming from someone who'd just experienced
 
a
 
terrible
 
loss. It
 
made me smile.

“It's an egg door.”

“Egg door?”

“Open it,” I grinned.

She unlatched the door and opened it. She was wearing the coat now, and it swallowed her up making her look like a little kid. Then she stood on tiptoes to get a better view into the opening, which further accentuated her childlike appearance.

It took her a minute....

“It’s dark…oooh...an egg door. It's the chicken coop.”

She turned to me, “There’s
 
one in there."

She reached in and pulled out a brown chicken egg.

“I think it’s frozen,” she said.

”Chickens don’t lay much in the winter,” I said. “I’m surprised
 
there was one there at all.”

“They don’t like the cold?”

“No, it’s not that,” I said. “They need a certain amount of daylight, and the days are shorter in the winter. Some people put lights in the coop to trick them into laying.”

The building
 
was insulated, so that would help once I got the fire started. Jen was still kind of spacey, and she'd
 
sat on an
 
upside-down five-gallon bucket and
 
was staring down at the egg.

Blaine didn’t have any
 
dry firewood inside, which surprised me. I stepped outside. There was a small pile of wood to the right of the door,
 
but it was covered in snow.

C’mon, Blaine. I thought you were Mr. Prepared…Johnny On The Spot.
 
Where’s all the dry wood, dammit?

I came back inside
 
with four small, wet logs.

Jen didn't look up.

"There's some food in those boxes, if you're hungry."

"I can't eat right now," she said.

I put the logs in the floor and looked around the shop for something I could use as tinder and kindling.
 
There was
 
a short length
 
of a
 
two-by-four
 
next to
 
the miter saw; I grabbed that. Then, I ripped out some of the advertisement pages
 
from my magazines.
 
After digging around in one of the drawers under one of the counters, I
 
found a box cutter, and I used it
 
to shave off curly slivers of the two-by-four.