Well Fed - 05 (27 page)

Shovel let that sink in.

“Once that threat’s been removed, we’ll move on in and see what treasures the vault holds.”

“I’m hoping it’s a good haul,” Giovanni said.

“I
know
it’ll be a good haul, especially seeing how good those JTF-2 guys were outfitted. If they were any indication, then I figure there’s a veritable gold mine of weapons down there. And the ammo to go with it. The only challenge then is figuring out how the shit works. And if the place still has the generators going, well, we could be looking at our new home. Wouldn’t that be nice? Power. Plumbing. Showers. Running hot water. Heat controlled by a touch pad or dial.”

“Does sound good.”

“And out here,” Shovel reminded him, “no one will have an easy time finding us, and if they do, with existing defenses, they won’t live to tell.”

“You’re in a good mood,” Giovanni observed.

“I should be. Today, we just got ourselves a fucking ER doc—not a foot doctor but an honest-to-God frontline medical professional. Old Maggie is a godsend. I’m even thinking she can train midwives once we get to that point. You said Pick brought in some chickens? I say we have ourselves a barbeque tonight.”

Giovanni’s expression lightened considerably.

A barbeque sounded like a plan.

The storage RV contained some of Gus’s old gear. He found his gloves with the hard plates fixed about the knuckles, his leather jacket, and his cowboy and steel-toed fireman’s boots—even a boot knife, but it wasn’t his. There wasn’t anything else, and he figured the rest had stayed with the SUV. Collie convinced him to join her for something to eat, easy to do as he was feeling peckish, and they took a few of the IMPs and a little of the bottled deer meat taken from the farm.

They dined in the kitchen area of a motor home.

Wallace did not join them.

The presence of the deer told Gus that whoever had kidnapped Maggie and the kids had come this way, but he hadn’t a clue as to which direction to go. He took his time with his meal, finding the IMP––Individual Meal Packet––to be good and not at all nearing the end of its five-year shelf life. It was a real surprise to find that Comeau and his boys had secured several boxes of the Canadian version of MREs. He discovered, much to his delight, each meal packet contained not only the main course but also side portions of food or juice mixes, packed in individual wrapping: chocolate chip cookies, cheese spread, peanut butter, bread, rice and soup mixes, and even… butterscotch pudding.

All of these tasted fine when prepared in a functioning kitchenette.

“The older versions were only good for three years, but
these
are new and improved,” Collie said. “Sometimes, the forces would buy shitloads of MREs from the Americans, and there’d be jawing about which tasted better.”

“Which one did?” Gus asked.

“Big surprise. A good many of them were produced in the States, anyway. Don’t ask how many or for how long because I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve tried both, and there’s not that big a difference, other than the IMPs seem to have a few more goodies when it comes to the dessert menu. And they all contain about thirty-five hundred calories—enough to keep a soldier going in the field.”

Gus ate soup with a few pieces of bottled deer. Collie shovelled in beef curry, and while that smelled tempting, he kept to the simpler fare. A meal of curry in his current shaky condition would turn his asshole into the Pacific Ring of Fire, as much as he hated to think about it.

He tried not to look too hard at Collie’s dark complexion. She’d shocked him when she’d pulled off the ski mask, and her sympathetic smile at his reaction said it all. He didn’t know when, where, or how, but she’d obviously been in a fight—probably a few fights, maybe one or two she’d even lost.

The tip of her nose was missing, as if someone had actually bitten it off. Skin grafts had made the remaining nub slightly presentable, but tearing one’s eyes off that battle scar—and the two gaping holes leading to her nasal cavity—was difficult. The crow’s lines at the corners of her eyes, only partially visible because of her mask, were actually black tattoos of thorny vines. The tat on her right side was inked over a sizeable section of burnt flesh there, which didn’t reach her cheek but did slink down her neck. Her left ear was missing, and a spider’s web of scar tissue covered that side of her head. Her ferocious eyes floated on a gathered tar of fleshy lines. Her top lip was thin but the bottom one full. Her hair––what little grew––was brown and buzzed short, sprouting out on the scalp and devastated sides.

“Insurgent grabbed my ponytail once, so it was snip-snip,” Collie had revealed, the only history she’d disclosed at the time. Recalling the episode, Gus figured any more explanation would have taken an hour, and she’d already stated she was hungry.

Though her attitude suggested otherwise, Collie was a walking horror of battle wounds.

And, Lord above as his witness, Gus struggled with her appearance—as much as he hated to admit it—despite his own collection of scars.

“I’ll clean up,” Collie announced in her gruff voice after they’d finished eating, and threw the packaging into a nearby waste flap underneath the sink. “Get that rug on your chest shaved. When you’re ready, just holler.”

She left him sitting at the table. The door slowly swung shut as she went outside.

Gus stared after her, wondering but unable to ask how she’d gotten so fucked up
—afraid
to ask.

The food made him weary, so he polished off the last of his butterscotch pudding and went to the bedroom, where he collapsed on a wonderfully soft ocean-blue duvet.

Sleep took him almost immediately.

He woke up at the end of a loud snore and for a split second thought his arms had been chopped off. Then he felt his beard and almost freaked out, thinking a dead squirrel had been superglued to his chin. He collapsed back on the bed when he realized both thoughts were way off the mark.

“Sweet Christ,” Gus muttered and sat up. His arms had returned to normal. A quick inspection showed the red marks around his wrists had almost faded, and his chest and belly had been cleanly shaved, the knife cut padded with gauze bandages and stuck in place with strips and X’s of duct tape.

The fuck?
He ran a finger over his bald man-breasts, feeling how weirdly smooth the whole shorn area was.

“How the hell did this happen?” he asked the empty room, getting to his feet––his legs even feeling stronger––and gazing at his white skin.

A shot of horror stopped him in his tracks, and he tentatively checked his junk, pulling away the waistband of his jeans and peeking almost fearfully. Nope—all was well south of the leather, which was heartening. At least she hadn’t shaven him down there. At least, he
hoped
she’d done it and not Wallace. The thought of his grinning mug doing the job wasn’t calming in the least.

Gus noted his shirt and sweater lying on a chair near the foot of the bed. He got dressed and stumbled to the toilet. After finishing his business there, he hauled on his ill-fitting sneakers and stepped outside.

The day was overcast.

“Afternoon, sunshine,” Collie called from the other side of a white F150 pickup, parked within the wagon circle of motor homes. “Sleep good?”

Gus regarded her smiling wreck of a face. “Guess I did since I didn’t feel a thing while bein’ fuckin’ shaved. And what time is it?”

“Ornery, ain’tcha? It’s nearing two in the afternoon. You’ve been out all morning.”

“All morning?”

“Yeah.”

“How the hell did I sleep all yesterday and last night and get my tits shaved without waking up?”

Collie leaned over the lip of the pickup’s box and gazed at him pleasantly. “I’d guess it was the stress that did it, from your ordeal. That and not being properly rested. Your body just went into repair mode. But that’s just a guess. I’d put more faith in the diphenhydramine I slipped into your soup.”

Gus stopped cold and fixed her with a look of disbelief. “You what?”

“I drugged you.”

“Oh.”

“You angry with me?”

Wallace shuffled through the doorway of an RV, his helmet visor leveled in Gus’s direction.

Angry with her?
“No, no, nothing like that,” Gus confessed. “Just feel weird, is all.”

“That’s probably a side effect of the antihistamine.”

“The what?”

“Diphenhydramine is an antihistamine.”

“It does that? Make a person feel weird?”

“Not really. I just said it to make you feel better. Just so you could get over your feelings of being violated. Nice tits, by the way.”

A mortified Gus kept his mouth shut.

“Don’t worry,” Collie soothed. “It was the best way to clean up those cuts.”

For the first time since getting up, Gus felt the patch under his right eye, where Cam Boll had almost threatened to hook it out.

“As for your chest,” Collie nodded, “well… couldn’t very well shave around it. And once I started, I couldn’t exactly stop. That’d look fucked up. And I only did the chest and the belly. Nothing else. Left the beard. Didn’t touch your back. Or your balls.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. But if you do need your thingy mowed—”

“I don’t need my thingy mowed.”

“But if you do…”

“Give you a shout?”

Collie drew back. “Not me. Ask Clay over there. He’ll do you up.”

Framed in the doorway, Wallace shook his head in derisive doubt at the suggestion.

“Yeah, well,” Gus said slowly, regaining composure, “I think I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

“Anytime. Feel better now?”

“Yeah. What’re you guys up to?”

Collie gestured to the box on the pickup. “This? Just loading up shit that won’t perish in the weather or anything. Scavenging, some would say.”

“Ah.” Gus had no problem with that. “You come across an SUV?”

“Wallace did in fact find an SUV drawn up on the shoulder of the road over there, on the south side and down a ways. Front’s all crunched up, though. And it had a couple bullet holes decorating the windshield. Deployed air bag. That your ride?”

“Well, yeah, it was.”

“There were some things scattered around the rig.” Wallace joined in the conversation, his head tilted to one side.

“Well,” Gus said, “anyway, I think I’ll head on down there. Get the rest of my shit. Sorta attached to it all.”

He made to turn away.

“Hey, Gus,” Collie called.

“Yeah?”

“You still gonna look for your doctor and those kids?”

Gus didn’t even think of that as a question. “Yeah. Matter of fact. After I check out the SUV, if it’s okay with you, I might take one of these motor homes.”

“They got shitty mileage.”

“Only until I can find another ride.”

“Huh. Well, listen, Wallace and I have been talking. We’ll help you find the doctor. If you want.”

Gus regarded her battle-scarred features and took his time answering. “Why?”

“Because she’s a doctor.”

“That all?”

“No, that’s not all,” Collie said. “Wallace and I, we’re reconning the area—the whole province, in fact—knocking off any remaining infected and gathering up anyone still alive. Life carries on, y’know? There’s a small community, not many people, but it’s there. Protected. They stay where they are and live their lives while we get to do the dangerous stuff on their behalf. Our mission is threefold: kill the leftover undead, gather up the living, and harvest any worthwhile supplies, anything that’s still good.”

“Like guns?”

Collie smirked. “More like ammunition. We have plenty of guns. Cannons are all over the place. Finding something to load into them—that’s a problem. But the real hope is finding people with specific skill sets. Lawyers and politicians we can do without, but doctors, dentists, carpenters, mechanics, and so on—people with functional trades essential to rebuilding what was. There’s not a lot of them out there. The virus didn’t care who got infected. And if we do find someone, half the time, they’ve reverted into a dark, dangerous kinda crazy, if you follow me.”

“I follow,” Gus said quietly. Did he ever.

“I know the little group we serve and protect doesn’t have a doctor,” Collie revealed. “They’d shit themselves if we had one to bring back.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. A doctor? A qualified, experienced medical
professional
and not just Joe Anybody trying to figure things out from a textbook? Well, let’s just say in this world… she’s worth the weight of a whole town in gold.”

Whole town in gold
, Gus reflected and fidgeted with that knowledge, studying Collie’s harsh mug. He even glanced over at Wallace.

“I… I can’t speak for her,” Gus finally said. “All I know is that whoever has her took her and the kids after they murdered everyone else on the farm. You already helped me out, without asking for anything in return so… you help me find them, and we can put the question to her then.”

Collie spread her hands. “Sounds fair.” Then she regarded Wallace. “You good?”

The frightening soldier nodded once, the rictus of a grin tight around his lips.

“Okay,” Collis announced. “We’re agreed. Do whatever you have to do then, and let’s roll.”

Gus wandered away from the pair and went outside of the circle of motor homes. His path took him across the slope of the overpass, and he stopped and studied the not-so-far-off bastion Comeau and his freaks constructed up there. The gradual incline was littered by a few wrecked and not-so-wrecked cars, ending in what appeared to be a collection of vehicles parked at the top. A tarp of some sort fluttered just over a red roof, with a white streak rising and falling as a breeze gave it life.

The thought occurred to Gus that he hadn’t seen the bodies, but he suspected they might be up there, just beyond that white flag of rustling tarp. At that particular moment, his vision tunneled, and he centered on that subtle motion. It wasn’t that breezy there, at the foot of the overpass, so what could be moving that piece of whatever the hell it was? The more Gus thought about it, the more puzzled he became.

He decided it best to walk up there and check things out.