Well Fed - 05 (32 page)

“What’s wrong with him, then?”

“I think you can see.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think I can wait for him to explain things.”

Collie faced him, and Gus once again was struck by the twin holes of her face and those startling eyes. “Let’s move on. Check some more houses.”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

By the time the day darkened with evening, they had checked five more residences along the highway. Some places were hidden behind fences of trees while others presided over front lawns that had probably been the envy of the neighbors at one time but were overgrown and yellowed. Sometimes Gus went into the house, sometimes Wallace. The soldier didn’t apologize for his earlier remark, which irritated Gus even though he knew he shouldn’t have been staring at the guy. Still, in his mind, Wallace could have been a little more civil.

Or maybe
, Gus considered,
maybe the guy had a point
.

Their collective thoughts centered on the growing mystery of the houses. Three of the homes had been forced into, the doors splintered and hanging off the hinges. In two, shotgun cartridges as well as nine-millimeter brass casings lay around desiccated corpses made dead yet again. In the other residences, entry wasn’t forced, which suggested someone had actually lived there until whoever was making the rounds had come along. Perhaps the homeowners had welcomed the visitors with open arms before becoming victims. Gus, Collie, and Wallace didn’t think they were victims, however, as there were no signs of executions to the degree Gus had witnessed on his farm, nor were there any corpses.

All properties had been scoured clean of clothes, food, water, fuel, and anything else useful.

“Someone’s being a pack rat,” Collie declared, relaxing in the driver’s seat of her RV with a glass of rye whiskey. The interior blinds had been pulled and a single light turned on, drawing from the battery, as Wallace had cautioned them about turning on the generator. Heat was a luxury they’d have to do without that evening, so both sat in the dim interior, bundled up in their day’s clothing and outerwear, recapping the day’s discoveries. Wallace roamed outside, having volunteered to keep watch through the night.

Gus sat at the small table and swished a glass of water, still holding out on cruising the booze boat until Maggie and the kids had been found. That would be reason enough to drink, although he had twice caught himself wanting to pour himself a shot and down the whiskey like cold tea. He wasn’t entirely surprised by the urges, but he didn’t give in.

“Yeah,” Gus said slowly. “Or something else.”

“You got a theory?”

He took a breath, took another pull of his drink, and refilled his glass from the bottle on the table.

“I ever tell you about the time I was almost eaten alive by rats?”

Collie’s face furrowed with interest, and Gus gave her a history lesson. The story came out of him easily, minus the details about him attempting suicide by way of alcohol poisoning.

“Holy shit,” she breathed when the story had been told. “
Rats
?”

“Rats.”

“Never saw anything like that in the last four years.”

“Maybe it’s just an East Coast thing.”

“Sure as fuck hope so,” Collie declared. “But there wasn’t any evidence of what you just described to me. The dead in the hallways and such were still there, remember?”

“Yeah,” Gus conceded. “All right. So it’s a living problem, then.”

“Possibly. One thing’s for sure—this kind of operation takes time, going from door to door and loading up everything of use. If nothing’s happened to our raiders, then we’ll be coming upon them sooner or later.”

“What then?” Gus asked.

“Then we’ll see,” Collie said and took a shot from her glass. “Some folks have gone over to the dark side, like our little group of independent highwaymen who’d hung you out for dinner. They need to be dealt with case by case.”

“Yeah.” Gus was not entirely convinced.

“One thing I like about operating solo”—Collie studied her near-empty glass—“without a chain of command. Something both Ollie and I agree upon.”

This interested Gus. “What’s that?”

“It’s the distinct absence of rules.”

“Rules?”

Collie smiled coldly.

“Of engagement.”

Gus stirred, woke up, and stared at the ceiling. He’d turned in early the night before, emotionally and physically drained, leaving Collie to her drinking and removing himself from that particular temptation. He rolled over to the edge of his bunk above the driving area, rubbed his face, and peeked out toward the kitchenette area, seeing slivers of light through closed blinds.

Morning.

The pocket of warmth underneath the blankets made him hesitate to get up, but that wouldn’t do in the least—not while Maggie and the kids were still unaccounted for. The night before, he’d dreamed of them being whisked away by, of all things, a large truck with comically oversized wheels.

The bathroom door opened, distracting him from his memories, and he glanced up to see Collie stepping out, wearing her camo pants and a black sports bra. Her skin glistened, wet and sleek. She nimbly padded away into the bedroom area with barely a sound, where she shut the door.

Suddenly wide-eyed and awake, Gus released his breath.

Collie’s face had been mauled over the years, and she’d probably be the first to admit it, but that unexpected flash of skin was untouched, muscular, and not just a little tight. The curve of her hips suggested that everything covered by the camos was also unspoiled and perfectly serviceable.
Serviceable.

He reminded himself that he was having thoughts about another guy’s wife.

You sick fuck.

Hot guilt flowed throughout his chest and face.

After forty minutes on the road, a house made a break in the blur of yellow-and-red timberland. A long dirt lane linked the highway to a garage. The owners might’ve been farmers of some kind although the high grass blanketing the surrounding fields gave no hint as to what might’ve been grown––other than hay. A green tractor stood guard on the first bend in the lane. A Victorian-style, two-story house waited beyond, painted a fading forest green that clashed with the late-autumn fire surrounding the property.

“What do you think?” Gus asked.

“Best check it out,” Collie said.

“I’ll do it,” Gus volunteered.

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah, why not?”

Collie shrugged. “Go on in. I’ll keep the engine running. Don’t want to take it over that road.”

“All right.”

“And watch that grass. I don’t see anything moving right now, but that could change.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Don’t you be calling me your mother. I’ll slap your ass.”

That made Gus snort as he climbed out of the RV.

The fresh, cold air tasted fine, and he paused to take in a deep lungful. Wallace’s rig had pulled up behind Collie’s and switched off. The soldier was a silhouette behind the wheel. Gus didn’t spare any more time looking in that direction. He got walking, hearing nothing except the scrunch of boots on frozen ground. The Victorian’s heights consisted of dormers and a lot of awkward angles, which would’ve taken a lot of fuss and potential acrobatics at the end of a ladder.

Gus didn’t miss his old job.

A silver Mustang was parked at the corner, a molded torpedo if there ever was one. The muscle car perked his interest for all of a second before he settled on the Victorian’s front door.

It was open.

He stopped a good twenty feet before the threshold. He took his bat in hand, thankful for its reassuring weight, and proceeded.

“Hello?” he asked, slowing as the shade of the front door’s overhang engulfed him. “Anyone in there? Anyone home? Just coming in to check the place out, see if all’s well. Let’s talk, if you’re okay with that.”

His own voice sounded as though it were lying, and Gus wondered if someone a little less friendly had recently said those same words on that porch. Nothing moved inside, and he held his breath, waiting again for that graveyard wheeze he’d come to know so well.

Time crept on, and the house’s main hallway remained empty.

Glancing back at Collie’s RV, he waved, scratched his balls for luck, and disappeared inside.

He found eggshell-white walls with elegant baseboards and dirtied hardwood floors. Dried dirt trailed off into the house, ignoring a hall that led to an archway and what appeared to be a staircase. Gus knelt to inspect the granules, glancing back toward the door and the lane he’d walked along.

The tracks spooked him.

Gus stood, softened his step, and followed them cautiously around a corner into a living room. It looked cozy, the furniture in respectable shape.

The tracks disappeared midway through.

The hairs at the base of his neck rose in a chill. Something was setting him off, but he hadn’t processed exactly what. Gauze-thin sheers hung over the picture window, whitening the overgrown lawn. Unseen strings of tension filled the room, and with every movement Gus made, he felt those strands tighten on him. He felt for the shaft of his bat, reconsidered, and opened his jacket. His palm slid around the holster of his left Sig Sauer, and he eased it out, keeping it flat against his thigh.

Navigating his way around a sizeable coffee table, he widened his view past the far corner and saw an open dining area…

And the remains of what appeared to be a meal—chicken bones.

Gus stood and studied the food, seeing a bit of meat still remaining on a thigh. As soon as he saw the scraps, he realized what was bothering him besides the tracks.

The smell.

The smell had set him off, that cold-chicken odor just starting to stink up the house.

His pulse rate increased, and he fought down the impulse to run through the house just to relieve the swelling ball of suspense in his chest. He stepped softly, carefully, into the dining area and glanced out a window into the backyard. The RVs could barely be seen through those snowy living room sheers. An archway joined the dining area, and Gus kept his gun by his thigh as he leaned around its corner.

Empty kitchen.

Nothing else—at least nothing there.

The sink contained two empty plastic bottles. He took one, saw beads of water on the inside, and carefully placed it on the counter. A second archway completed the circle of the first floor and brought Gus to the white-carpeted stairs leading to the second story as well as a nearby door leading to a basement, presumably.

Straining to hear, Gus moved to the foot of those stairs, his attention divided by the door right there and the upstairs staircase. He wanted to open the door but found himself leaning forward, sticking his head out, and looking upstairs. A hallway and a door to the immediate left were at the top while shadows darkened the upper level, as if someone had closed all the doors and drawn the curtains. Any second, Gus fully expected some ghoulish face to peek out from between the ornate banisters over his head, leering with bug-eyed insanity. He waited, feeling time dragging, licked his lips, and strained to hear anything that might provide a clue, knowing if something
did
appear, he’d probably shit himself.

“Anyone up there?”

He heard no answer but sensed that
someone
had heard. The hardwood stairs might have been steeped in molasses, they were so dark, and he knew just by looking at them the damn things would squeak. Apprehension grew, and Gus knew he was drawing things out, delaying the inevitable, but he’d been caught by surprise before, and he would much rather wait than have his balls grabbed again. Or worse.

“Hey, if you’re up there…” he said quietly, eyes flickering from the upstairs to the door just across from him, a step and an arm’s length away. His nerves thrummed with low-grade anxiety. “Why not come on out, and we’ll talk. Hell, I have some bottled deer that might go well with that chicken you were having.”

His tongue rested in the empty space of his missing front teeth as he listened for movement, a sign that his words were reaching a set of ears. None came, however.

“Come on, now. You’re freaking me out here. Come on down, and we can talk. Maybe even be friends. You… you never know, right?”

A sheet of cold slipped over his head and enveloped him, a frightening sensation some had felt upon wandering haunted places. As sure as God was Gus’s witness, someone waited for him upstairs, for good or for bad. The Sig patted his thigh, thrumming to be used, and he willed himself to stop. He arched his head to further improve his field of vision but saw nothing. Jesus Christ, why couldn’t it have been a gimp? And why couldn’t he have a shot of something to calm his nerves? He hadn’t been that on edge back in Windsor.
Maybe
, his inner voice suggested,
it’s because you know it’s a person this time
. Damn gimps were a hell of a lot easier to evict from a house instead of a person. He should just walk around and—
click.

That soft note froze Gus in place, widened his eyes, and caused him to nearly bolt. His energy level spiked, screaming a flight reflex. He didn’t and remained rooted, scanning the upstairs. He leaned forward and
willed
more to happen, but nothing did. What he heard might have been a hinge moving just a fraction or the weight of a foot making the floor creak.

Get Collie.

Where that thought had come from, he wasn’t sure, but as he peered upstairs, it seemed like a pretty solid plan, rather than standing around like a dork hoping to catch a peek. Whoever or whatever was above him wasn’t going to come down, and he was becoming far too worried to venture up. Stalemate. He’d reached an impasse.

Well, fuck this
. Gus huffed and backed up as quietly as he could toward the front door.

“
Wait
.” A whispery, cancerous voice floated downstairs and yanked his spine like the sensation of mice scurrying over bare feet. Gus stepped back to the landing, pointed his gun at the gloomy upstairs, scanning for a body.

“Wait,” the voice whispered again, just beyond the railing, keeping out of sight.