Well Fed - 05 (29 page)

“Not me,” Gus smiled. “I’ll stick to taking the leftovers out of gas tanks.”

“How you do that?”

“Drain them with a spike and hammer. I have a pan to catch the gas.”

“That’s nasty.” Collie spared him a quick glance. “Ever have one catch fire on you?”

“Not yet. Usually plastic tanks. Don’t worry—I know what I’m doing.”

“I suppose so.”

“How do you guys get gas out of the tank?” Gus asked.

“Siphon it in the new-fashioned way, with a little rig called a snake. It fools the security locks on the tanks, makes the sensors think the car’s about to be refueled, and before you know it, it’s draining every drop. All done with a self-charging hand crank, as well.”

“That a military thing?” Gus asked, impressed.

“No, that’s a little invention of a professional gas thief back at the community.” She glanced at him again. “You meet all kinds.”

That made Gus chuckle, and he focused on the road for a bit before asking what Collie probably expected.

“What’s up with Wallace?”

Collie slowed the motor home down to thread its mass through an alley of transport trucks. “Short answer, he’s sick.”

“He’s not a gimp?”

“A what?”

“A gimp. That’s what I call ’em. Or deadheads.”

“Huh. That’s different. We call them Moe.”

“Moe.”

“Yeah. Some folks traveling from back East called them that. Name stuck. Shorter than MBs, which we used to use.”

“MBs?”

“Meatbags.”

“Meatbags.” Gus liked that one himself. “Well, how about Wallace, then? Or is that a taboo subject around here?”

“Not taboo,” Collie said. “But maybe
classified
is a better word. We think you’re okay. Not a crazy, I mean. But we have our secrets, understand—which is why it was better for you to ride with me for now, just to explain this very topic.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“Let us warm up to you a bit. Get to know you. And maybe, in the end, Wallace will tell you himself.”

“In the end?”

Collie regarded him with a hint of a secretive smile, her eyes like eerie sapphires.

Gus indicated his newfound pistols. “What about these, then?”

“You can keep those.”

Gus whistled softly. “You guys are some cool customers.”

“Honey, you don’t know half of it.”

“All right, all right—I can wait. I’m just glad someone knows what’s going on with Wallace.”

“Well, I should know.” Collie concentrated on her driving. “I married the guy.”

The low-hanging clouds darkened, pressing down on spirits as well as daylight, and at the 4:27 mark of the winter evening, the lead motor home rolled to a stop below an east-west overpass. The headlights flared ahead, but they weren’t really needed to see what lay on the highway ahead. A serpentine parade of vehicles stretched the length of the road, twisting and gleaming in the fading light. Knots of metal piled up in places, where cars or trucks had seemingly rammed into each other, perhaps wasted attempts to push forward, perhaps frustration or fear finally taking over the drivers. Collie steered the big machine up the ramp, turned left, and slowed to a stop just past the middle of the overpass. Cars blocked the way ahead, preventing any further progress.

“And that’s that,” Collie whispered, placing the RV in park. She sighed and looked around, appraising the roads and thinking.

“Done for the day?” Gus asked.

“Yeah, I think so. We’ll camp out up here. Just like a tree.”

Gus stared at the highways, the gloom of the encroaching evening both depressing and hypnotizing. Any moment, he expected to see figures stand up from between the vehicular segments, like sinister prairie dogs lifting their heads to the wind. Nothing did, however, and he had to remind himself gimps didn’t walk much these days. They crawled, searching for ankles.

“Well, might as well lock ourselves down and get comfortable,” Collie said and got up from her seat, her combat gear rattling. Gus turned around in his seat and stood a few seconds later as the side door clicked open and a gust of cold air came in.

He stepped outside and looked around, spotting Wallace’s ride coming to a rest with a soft squeal of brakes. Collie stood at the guardrail of the overpass, studying the terrain. Gus wandered over, adjusting to a temperature much cooler than the interior of the motor home.

“See anything?”

“In this?” Collie asked. “It’s almost dark out, bro. Can’t see anything right now. But if you listen…”

Bro.

Gus thought of Talbert and his death grip, the moment freezing and rewinding in his head.

Collie looked to the north and shook her head at the cars and trucks obstructing the road. She then gestured west, where the highway sloped down the overpass. A collection of houses large and small could barely be seen at the end of a long but congested stretch of highway running underneath them. A zap of lightning would complete the scene.

Wallace opened his door and stepped out with glacial grace. Just hearing him move sounded painful, and Gus had to look to see if the man was doing okay. The soldier was working his strut, taking it slow and easy.

He had his visor lifted.

“Look at that,” Collie said, distracting Gus. She nodded toward the distant little town, black and somber looking. “Y’know something? When the world was teeming with people, I used to hate it. Fucking despised it. The attitudes, the fakes, the burnouts, the authority, the crazies, and at the time, the sheep mentality of it all. The nine-to-five insanity. The chase. Now… God, I miss it—miss every engine rev, every hello from across the street, every dickhead texting on a smart phone, and every fucking corn flake. I miss it. Talk about not knowing what you got until it’s gone, eh?”

Gus didn’t have to be a psychic to feel her angst, so he stayed quiet, not knowing Collie well enough to comment. However, despite her physical appearance, her disfigured face and scars, he was beginning to like her.

“See anything?” that Zen voice asked from behind.

Wallace, however, Gus was still undecided about.

“Not much,” Collie said and thumbed in the direction of the blocked road to the north. “Not about to go through that. Maybe in the morning, we can back up and get onto another lane. Go around it. One thing’s for sure, if we can’t get through, Gus’s kidnappers didn’t either.”

“Probably,” Wallace said.

Gus turned to see the man’s visor lifted, revealing a tightly drawn mask of unsettling flesh and dark veins. The sight robbed him of his voice.

Wallace fixed him with an unfiltered look of annoyed curiosity. “See anything interesting, civvie?”

That dislodged Gus from his gawking, and he turned away, starting to dislike the nickname. He wondered if Wallace had forgotten his real name.

He decided to remind him. “Name’s Gus.”

Wallace didn’t move. “I know.”

Gus looked back at the gruesome fright of a face, but Wallace ignored him.

“You guys going to eat now?” the soldier directed to Collie.

“Thinking about it. You?”

Wallace didn’t answer right away. “I’m going to head on down there, take a few gas cans and plastic bottles, harvest any fuel for tomorrow because we’ll need it. These pigs get thirsty fast.”

“Okay. Seeya.”

Wallace walked back to his ride. Gus watched him strut that high-noon gunslinger walk of his.

“He can work it, can’t he?” Collie asked.

Gus neutrally cleared his throat, embarrassed at having being caught.

“C’mon,” she said. “You like pizza?”

“Holy shit, you have pizza?”

“Well, there’s a box of pizza IMP in back of the rig. I peeked and saw pepperoni and cheese in there.”

“Jesus,” Gus blurted. “I mean,
Jesus
.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. IMPs have come a long way, but even though it says pizza on the box, who the fuck knows what it really is.”

“Still…”

Collie walked back to the motor home. “Yeah, if you had any beer, we’d be all set. Then again, sooner or later someone will get a still running—or at least some beer carboys. Not too hard to do. All you need is a place with a constant temperature and then some patience.”

“We got the whiskey and all that other stuff,” Gus heard himself say.

Collie regarded him over a shoulder. “Yeah, we do, don’t we?”

“But, pizza doesn’t really go well with rye. Or vodka. Or whatever.”

Collie reached the door. “In this case, it might very well be needed.”

She later extracted the pizza from its silvery packaging and placed it on a cookie pan before popping it into an oven. Gus sat at the table. He split his attention between talking and watching her. When the pizza warmed up and the cheese ran, the interior filled with a glorious aroma Gus had remembered only from dreams.

Then they were eating.

Gus took two wedges, slapped them together like a sandwich, and sliced a section away with a knife and fork. Collie still had her front teeth, so she chomped down into hers. Both chewed for a while, eying the other.

“Well,” Gus said quietly after swallowing. “That was terrible.”

“Yeah,” Collie said, reaching for a glass of water, “that was.”

“Smelled great, though.”

“True… but… can’t live on smell alone.”

She picked up the packaging and mulled over the ingredients. “Y’know, I’ve heard red meat stays in your colon for up to six months, but in this case, I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”

Gus chuckled and cut away another bite.

“You like that shit?”

“The world ended four years ago. Even the shittiest pizza isn’t bad enough to throw away.”

“That’s true too,” Collie said and tried another mouthful. “Shit’s dry, though. Should’ve nuked it instead of baking.”

Gus shrugged. “Y’know, I remember this place that served up wicked pizza. I even know the guy who owned the place, and sometimes, he’d even give me free stuff if the crust was just browned a shade too much.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. I mean, he needed it done to just the right color. Too brown, and people wouldn’t buy it. A few times, I’d be walking past his place, and he’d come out and ask if I wanted any that were too well done for the customers. Just a little bit dark was all it was too, but it tasted like it slipped out of heaven.”

“I like a saucy pizza,” Collie said. “The more the better. This isn’t saucy at all. I always made a point to ask for extra sauce on my pizza. Extra sauce. Easy enough, right? Nope. I’d get into fights with pizza people over it. ‘Where the hell is my extra sauce? There’s no extra sauce on that thing.’ What part of
extra
do they not understand? Maybe their oven is off kilter by about ten degrees or so, and right in the back is where all the extra sauce slides off and pools up, y’know? Like this bubbling vat of goodness.”

“That’s a good theory.”

“It works for me,” Collie said. “You think maybe the other ingredients might be more expensive, but I’m not so sure anymore. At least, you’d never think, the way some assholes guard it. The sauce is where the magic happens. For some people, it’s cheese, for others it’s the crust, but with me––”

“It’s the sauce.”

“It’s the sauce,” Collie finished. “All about the sauce.”

“How you think Wallace is doing?” Gus asked.

“Ollie’s doing just fine out there. Don’t you worry about him.”

“He…” Gus lowered his voice and leaned over the table. “He creeps me out.”

Collie leaned in as well. “He creeps most people out. But he’s solid. Trust me on that.”

Gus went back to eating. They finished in a few minutes, and Collie got up and pulled out a bottle of Santa Maria whiskey from a cupboard. She placed it on the table just off to the side and produced a pair of shot glasses. Gus eyed that amber bedevilment at his elbow and leaned back, stroking his patchy beard.

“You don’t partake?” Collie asked, sitting down.

“Well, yes and no,” Gus told her. “I did a couple of years back. Drank a lot… but then stopped for one reason or other.”

“You sure?” Collie asked, unscrewing the cap.

Gus eyed the bottle. Damn straight, he could use one after the shit he’d seen and been through. Thing was, Maggie, Becky, and Chad were still out there, somewhere. He wasn’t an alcoholic, he told himself, and he could have that one drink if he wanted it. He’d
earned
it.

But it would feel celebratory for some reason, and he wasn’t in a celebratory kinda mood right then—not while his friends were still in danger.

“No,” he decided. “Thanks. I’m good.”

“Gus.” Collie poured herself a shot. “Augustus. You know your name means ‘the exalted one’? The name of the first great Roman emperor.”

That set him blinking. “I did not know that.”

“Well, it does,” she said and smiled, hoisting her glass. It sparkled.

Gus lifted his glass of water and tapped it. She buried her shot with one toss of her head while Gus sipped.

“Goddamn,” Collie declared. “That burns.”

The bottle gleamed as she refilled her glass. Gus watched morosely.

“You know what this is?” Collie asked as she poured. “Courage. Not quite instant, but it’s courage all the same. Or bravery. A remover of fear, even. Not a bad thing in the least. Even needed, I’d argue, relished and savored—but like anything, some people do allow themselves to be carried away with it. That’s dangerous. You know what I’m saying?”

Gus nodded. He most certainly did.

Collie smiled comfortably then, and he focused on her scary eyes instead of her face.

“Don’t you worry, Augustus,” she said firmly, studying his own scarred features, reading him. “One way or another, tomorrow or the next, we’ll find your doctor friend and those kids.”

With that, she shotgunned her second drink and clapped the thick glass down on the table.

“That’s a promise,” she said.

Suddenly miserable, Gus finished his water.

Some time later, Wallace paused outside Collie’s motor home. He didn’t knock on the door, nor did he make any attempt to enter. He merely stood outside the glow of the lit window, between a pair of cars, and stared at the closed white blinds. Collie and Gus were talking in low tones that he caught snatches of, but he didn’t go any closer, as much as he wanted to, as much as the poison of jealousy burned and tortured him.