Well Fed - 05 (24 page)

“You know the answer to that.”

“Aye that,” she said and looked into the mirror, causing Gus to flinch a bit. “The bad people are all dead and gone now. You getting out or staying in?” Her voice was harsh and gruff, as if she’d been screaming for a very long time.

Gus had to prompt himself to answer. “Still a little stiff here.”

“And more than a little ripe,” Wallace commented.

The ski mask regarded the motor homes. “Stay there, then. I’ll check out the showers. See if we can’t get you cleaned up. These fuckheads had a pretty sweet setup here. I’d be surprised if the showers aboard these beasts don’t work. You could even get one if you like,” she told Wallace.

“I’ll stick to deodorant.”

Whether she smiled or not, Gus couldn’t tell, but Ski Mask nodded before walking off toward the tiger-striped motorhome with the barest of feminine swaggers. She placed her back next to the RV’s side door and gripped her sidearm. Though all the gang members had been killed, she still practiced caution.

In a flash she threw it open, scanned the interior from one angle then the other, and went inside.

Though he didn’t feel up for it, Gus opened the door and slid out of the truck, grimacing at every movement. The mobile home trembled at times, shivering at Ski Mask’s probing.

“Anything else you want to tell us?” Wallace asked.

“Huh?” Gus blurted, taking his attention off the one-woman sweep-and-clear in process.

“Anything else… you want… to tell us?”

“Uh, no. I… I didn’t really see anything else. Too fucked up. Far as I know, there were only six of them.”

“So you said. That’s going to leave a scar.”

Gus glanced at the crusted-over cut gracing his ribs. “Yeah. Guess so.”

“All clear,” Ski Mask informed them as she emerged from the doorway. “Go get that shower, buddy. Unless you prefer to stand around in your undershorts.”

“You best check him out, Collie,” Wallace said, sizing up the encampment. “Mr. Berry has a nasty laceration on his ribs there.”

“Don’t hafta call me Mr. Berry all the time,” Gus muttered. “First name will do.”

But Wallace showed no indication of hearing him.

“That does looks nasty,” Collie said as she walked over to Gus. “Looks clean enough. Just nasty. Unfortunately, I’m out of all the cool, quick-healing stuff, so it’ll be plain old catgut for you.”

She stopped before the bearded man and briefly met his gaze. Though her mask hid her face, her blue eyes stunned him like a jolt of adrenaline. It wasn’t as though Gus had never seen blue eyes before––he never really cared for them––but never had he seen a pair of blinkers so damn bright, so
frightening
in their marble brilliance. He wondered if she hadn’t had them laser polished at some point, before the apocalypse. A sprinkling of crow’s lines, a tattoo perhaps, encircled the skin around her right eye socket and stretched back, disappearing beneath the edge of the mask.

If Collie noticed his inspection, she didn’t show it. She scrutinized his cut. “Bet that stings. Not much I can do now. Gonna leave a mark, though. Good news is they didn’t cut any arteries, else we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Head on in there and get yourself cleaned up. Wash around the cut but don’t disturb the scab, and I’ll do the rest. Find some fresh clothes. Whoever owned that rig also had a washer in there. I swear. If that thing is any indication, they were living in luxury out here. Big TV. Holo-set. King-size bed. Washer dryer. The fucking thing even has a goddamn
bar
. I’m thinking we should seriously consider driving it off into the sunset.”

Wallace kept his thoughts on the matter to himself.

“I’m Collie, by the way,” she said, not offering her hand.

“Gus.”

“Hiya, Gus. Glad to see you’re still alive. Why don’t you head on in for that shower now?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sounds like a good idea.”

Collie’s startling eyes flashed back with the glaring intensity of spotlights but only for a second before she started speaking to Wallace, going on about the motor home’s upscale interior. Their conversation dimmed as Gus staggered on stiff legs toward the open doorway. He almost passed out as he climbed the steps into the rig, and he floundered on a length of sofa fixed to a wall. When his senses stabilized, he rolled onto his side and stared like a druggie coming down off a high. It was nice inside the trailer. A kitchen area with seating for two was right at his head. Lacquered wooden panels lent a cozy ambience to it all. The door to a small bathroom and, Gus assumed, the shower lay straight ahead, and he stared at it longingly.

Still alive.

Almost two years of pretty much nothing had led up to a few days of hellish close calls. He pulled himself to a sitting position and used whatever knobs, tables, or chairs were handy to get himself into the shower. The RV’s door remained open, and Gus cursed it for being so. His shorts dropped to his ankles and nearly tripped him as he entered the bathroom. It was tiny, but since it actually had a clean-looking shower, he didn’t complain. The showerhead dripped, so the plastic floor squeaked just a bit when he stepped in, eyeing the wall slot where a worn bar of soap rested. He had to stoop a bit to fit inside the stall, but that didn’t bother him. A shower would make it all better.

A blast of cold water made him gasp. He fumbled at a knob, and the flow got warmer, flattening whatever scruff ringed his bald head and chin. He didn’t know how long he had before the tanks ran dry, but he wasn’t too worried about that either. The wall came to his shoulder, and he leaned against it, sinking his head to his chest in quiet thanks and feeling the hot water blast his back, working its curative magic on both flesh and mind.

Still breathing. Still kicking.

Since he’d survived this latest episode, Maggie and the kids had to be alive as well. Had to be. His ass hadn’t been pulled from the fire for anything else.

With a weary sigh, Gus reached for the soap…

And dropped it.

He began to weep.

Ten minutes later, he shut off the water just as it turned cold, and he stepped out of the shower, clean and composed. He toweled off with the one handy in the bathroom, taking care with the slash down his chest, and then shuffled into the bedroom, where a king-size bed dominated a very comfortable-looking area. Blankets neatly covered the mattresses, as if whoever slept there made the bed habitually. A sliding door at its foot was ajar, and Gus peeked in to see a washer-and-dryer combo taking up the closet space.

“Christ,” he muttered, taking it all in. He shuffled to a chest of drawers and opened each in turn. As much as he hated the idea of using another man’s clothing, especially anything belonging to a member of the toll-highway gang, he needed something until replacements could be found. Luckily enough, the sizes weren’t off by too much, and everything smelled surprisingly fresh. He pulled on a blue-striped button shirt that was a little too big but not annoyingly so, and the black jeans he settled on could be adjusted with a leather belt. A plain brown sweater went on over his head, and he groaned as he bent to pull on thick socks. Once he finished dressing, he searched the remaining cupboards and drawers and located extra winter clothing and T-shirts for the summer. A separate closet contained an impressive hoard of skin magazines, which perked his interest for all of a second. Paperbacks and a few of his
National Geographics
were stacked on a night table. Gus didn’t feel like any heavy lifting just now, so he left everything.

He hobbled back out into the main area of the motor home, his attention focused on a closet just off the kitchenette. The door opened at a soft tug, and a rack of rifles stared back at Gus’s pleasantly surprised face—hunting rifles mostly, with an ample supply of ammunition stacked away on an overhead shelf. A pair of stainless-steel handguns was stashed away at the base of the closet, and Gus pulled the twins out to marvel at their lines. “Sig Sauer” stamped the barrel, along with “P441.” He felt nostalgic for the old Ruger and Benelli once in his possession. Gus recognized the Sauer brand, but the version of the pistol meant nothing to him. What did interest him were the stacks of loaded magazines held upright in a block of foam padding—eight in all, of unknown capacity, with a Tupperware box containing a veritable bounty in loose shells. He lifted the plastic box and saw three cardboard boxes holding even more shells––an additional fifty shells all neatly tucked away and separated by molded plastic dividers.

“Baby, baby,” Gus whispered, the aches and pain of the last couple of days suddenly overridden by the shiny hand cannons. He pulled them out and held them up to the light, admiring their workmanship and lethal promise.

“I knew your cousins,” Gus said quietly, inspecting the old-fashioned iron sights.

“All cleaned up?”

The voice made Gus jump, and he almost aimed the Sauers. Wallace leaned into the open doorway, his lower face no longer smiling, the visor dull in the shade of the interior.

“I said, ‘All cleaned up?’”

“Ah, yeah.”

The visor didn’t retreat. “Found some pop-guns, did you?”

“Yeah,” Gus said with a toothless smile. “How about that, eh?”

“Seems these guys had a small arsenal lying around.” Wallace didn’t appear the least bit concerned with Gus having the weapons.

“Fuckin’ A, they had a small arsenal. One of them blew me off the goddamn highway. Cheap-ass sniping sonsabitches.”

The soldier didn’t have anything to say to that, so Gus carried on. “You found more guns?”

“Calm down there, blinky,” the soldier said in that even tone of voice, oozing Zen. “I think the general idea in situations like this is ‘finders keepers.’ Unless you absolutely need something. Like shoes, for example.”

“They took my boots. And whatever else I had in my SUV.”

“Well, we’re still poking around. Maybe they’ll turn up. In the meantime, maybe there’s something here for you to wear on your feet. Until we can find better. And something to holster those pistols in. Take a look where you found those puppies. Maybe there’s a tac vest or webbing around.”

Gus glanced from the closet to the floor and spotted a cupboard underneath the sofa.

“You’re going to let me have these?”

“Don’t see why not.”

“Geez, I could be anyone,” Gus started. “You don’t know. I mean, I could—”

The visor seemed to zoom in on him, and the toothy mouth below it hardened, as the temperature seemed to immediately drop ten degrees.

“You could do what…civvie?” Wallace asked in a suddenly lethal tone that suggested Gus best not finish the sentence. Instead, he cleared his throat and studied his feet.

“Nothing.”

Wallace kept staring, making Gus more than a little uncomfortable.

“Well, I didn’t mean anything… y’know, bad or anything, uh…” Gus trailed off, but when he glanced back to the doorway, it was empty.

Wallace was gone.

Feeling the need for a fresh pair of undershorts, Gus limped to the door and watched the soldier amble toward another RV, the one Comeau probably owned. Wallace took his time walking away, not a care in the world, and Gus shook his head in disbelief at the strut.

“Oh, no, I’m not just cool,” he muttered, emphasizing the word and directing it all at Wallace’s back. “Heaven forbid. I’m the ‘I’ in
ice.
”

Gus retreated inside.

The cupboard gave up a new pair of sneakers. They were two sizes too big, but Gus wasn’t picky at that point, and after a few strolls around the living area, he decided he wasn’t about to fall over with them on. A second search of the gun closet revealed brown worn-leather shoulder straps with a pair of holsters and pockets for extra magazines. There weren’t any suppressors like the ones he’d had before, but he was glad to find the accessories. One couldn’t have everything.

Gathering his things, he studied the leather straps and figured out they went across his back somehow. He fiddled with pulling them on and eventually got it right.

“Oh yeah,” he breathed, impressed with himself, sticking his chest out and immediately regretting it as the cut over his ribs asked him none too kindly what the hell he thought he was doing. The two stabs of pain felt like an indignant
Hey, HEY.

“I hear ya,” Gus grimaced and placed a hand over his wound. The sensation of bleeding reached his palm, and he lifted the sweater and shirt for a quick check yet found nothing but the ugliest crusted-over line. Hissing in discomfort, he stiffly walked out of the Winnebago and made his way over to the one across the way, where Wallace and the still-masked Collie stood in a doorway, paused in their conversation.

“Alive and well, I see,” Collie observed, fixing Gus with those intense blue eyes.

“Well, alive anyway.”

“Ollie here says you’re in need of footwear,” Collie said.

Gus stopped about four paces away from the pair and fixed Wallace with a look that asked,
Ollie?
, not bothering to contain his smile.

The visor and the bared teeth underneath seemed to frost over. “She gets to call me Ollie. You call me Wallace.”

Gus nodded complete understanding before facing Collie. “Yeah. A size eleven. If you got it.”

“You’re in luck,” Collie said and stepped out of the doorway. “Go on in. Got some new guns there, I see.”

“Uh, yeah,” Gus carefully lifted one arm to better show off the holster on that side. “Feel like a cop with it.”

“Looks good.”

“There’s more over there.”

“More guns?”

“Rifles, mostly. I––” he shrugged with one shoulder. “I took the good ones.”

To his surprise, Collie chuckled. “We’ll check it out. A little later.”

“Ah, just want to say”—Gus shrugged—“thanks for saving my ass. Really. Appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” Collie said while Wallace’s visor only stared at him.

Having gotten that out of the way, Gus stepped into the Winnebago… and gasped.

Dry foods and other assorted goods crammed the interior: racks of clothing, boxes of canned food, plastic jugs of water, winter outdoor wear, board games—Gus couldn’t help but smile at seeing Monopoly. More boxes were labeled “IMP” and further divided into breakfast, lunch, and supper. There were even Mason jars of preserved jams and meats, which Gus recognized from the farm. Then he spotted the boxes of Arctic Blue Chilled Vodka stowed away in a corner, and a familiar tightening of his throat returned.