Well Fed - 05 (42 page)

Gus rolled his head on his shoulders in a disbelieving
fuck me
kind of way, not liking the spot he was in or the promise Wallace demanded. Even just speaking of Collie in his presence made him feel uncomfortable.

“All right,” Gus finally said in a somber tone. “Don’t worry about it.”

“And one more thing…” Wallace began.

“Jesus, how many things do I owe you?” Gus blurted.

“Just one more.”

Gus stared at Wallace across the table. “What is it?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. But no more after this one. That’s it. So… out with it.”

“If you can… bury me.”

“Bury you?” he asked dubiously.

“Yeah.”

“That’s probably the easiest one yet.”

“I’m serious.”

Gus drained his drink, shivered, and reached for the bottle. “Okay. Done. I’ll do all that and bury your ass too. Anything else?”

Wallace thought about it. “No. Nothing. Just being buried by people is something. All the missions I ever went on, there was always a risk of not coming back home—dying out there, in secret—of my family never knowing how I went down, you understand. Maybe they’d even bury an empty box with a flag on it. Nowadays, a proper burial is… precious. I don’t want to be left rotting in the sun. Do it right and return me to the earth. Okay?”

A proper burial is precious.
The sentiment echoed in Gus’s mind, reminding him of Adam and the others back on the farm.

Wallace noticed his silence. “Believe me, if I could do it myself, I would.”

Gus had no response to that.

“You
owe
me,” Wallace reminded him with ominous sincerity. “And besides…” His expression sagged.

“Besides what?” Gus asked.

“I got no one else to ask.”

That frank admission locked Gus into agreement. “All right. Done. If I can, I will.”

“Then we’re good.” Wallace held out his drink.

“One thing,” Gus said before tapping mugs. “To make your… requests official and all.”

“What’s that?”

Gus took a breath and stared the dying man in the eye. “Stop callin’ me fuckin’
civvie
.”

In the morning, the people of the roadside town came forth from their devastated homes. They bore suitcases and long, solemn faces. Gus watched them as he endured a lava flow of guilt of having broken his dry spell. A wicked hangover accompanied his self-reproach, the first in a very long time and an artillery shell right between his ears. He studied the people with a pained grimace. He could tell the ones who’d cried during the night and who’d held it together. He hoped that, wherever Pine Cove was, it was as good as Collie made it sound.

Phil spoke for his people, and the old gentleman from this northern town politely requested that, if it was all the same to them, they’d like to go along to this new place Collie had spoken of.

The rest of the morning passed quickly as they loaded people and possessions into the massive rigs. Jim directed them to a shed behind the service station, containing a treasure trove of red gasoline containers. Collie stood beside Gus and Wallace as they topped off the tanks of the RVs and pickup before loading the remainder into the box.

“There’s fourteen of these people,” she reported as she placed the last gas container inside the box. “Five men, six women, and three teenagers.”

Gus studied the people loading bags into the motor homes. “They’re riding with Wallace?”

“No, unfortunately, there’d be too many questions and just a little bit of nervousness. Jim says he can drive the RV.”

“You gettin’ kicked out of your rig, Ollie?” Gus feigned shock.

“You don’t get to call me Ollie,” Wallace told him. “And, yeah, I’m getting kicked out of my rig—much as I hate it. No other way to transport all these people.”

“He’ll drive the pickup,” Collie said.

“So we’re heading back to Pine Cove?” Gus asked.

“That’s right,” Collie said, sticking her mask into a deep pants pocket. “Only an overnight detour. We’ll drop these civvies off and get back to looking for your people in the morning. Sorry again, Gus.”

“’Sokay,” he answered and stepped back from the truck. Maggie, Becky, and Chad were still alive out there. One sidetrack wouldn’t make a difference in his search, but it would make a difference to Phil and his people.

“We’ll take the pickup,” Wallace said, nodding at Gus to include him.

“We?”

“We. There a problem?”

“No. No, just surprised, is all.” Concern was evident on Gus’s face.

“You’re become best buddies.” Collie smirked. “The therapeutic magic of booze.”

“Yeah,” Gus said, off kilter.

“What’s wrong?” Collie asked.

“Don’t worry,” Wallace shook his head at the man. “We’ll drive with the windows down.”

“Nothin’s wrong,” Gus answered brightly.

The little convoy hit the road just after ten thirty.

Gus nodded in and out of sleep as the moving vehicle rattled through the drabness of the countryside’s colors. The residual hangover of the first buzz he’d experienced in a long time still scratched at his skull. The cavernous interior of the truck was comfortable––not quite as roomy as the old beast, but it wasn’t a rolling coffin, and for that, Gus thanked the Lord above. Cold air flowed through a cracked open window, keeping Wallace’s increasingly bad body odor from becoming too overpowering.

They took the lead in the motorcade, the RVs swelling at times in the side mirrors, shrinking at others. Highways became lineless, bursting asphalt strips where the world gnawed on the edges, leaving white kernels and crumbs. Trees grew up and linked overhead, speckling the ground in early winter light. Decapitated signs made Gus wonder dreamily where the hell they were heading. Ghost towns appeared in the blazing periphery, allowing themselves to be glimpsed only for a few seconds before disappearing. Gus saw all this in timeless, dreamy intervals when he cracked open an eye. He glanced over at Wallace once, but the nightmarish soldier was simply driving on with grim determination, visor lowered, grin in place, both hands gripping the wheel. A name came to Gus’s sleepy, pain-wracked mind, but he didn’t dare say it, for fear of bad dreams… or bad luck.

Sleep pulled him down, and Gus knew no more.

Numbness rushed over the JTF-2 operator’s hands and legs as Gus’s snoring flipped a switch in Wallace’s mind. He glanced over at his passenger, sleeping, mouth slightly opened. Wallace didn’t see a tattered beard or balding crown. He didn’t see the scarring. All he saw, he realized with dawning horror, was a sleeping man—a defenseless man.

Wallace’s attention flicked between the road and his passenger. His stomach clenched, the first time ever, and a pang of hunger so alarming seized him, leaving him dizzy. His jaws ached, and he opened them, stretching them to their fullest like dogs testing their leashes. The road mesmerized Wallace. Colors streaked by at light speed. His heart thumped, softly at first, but then revving up in an irregular tempo like a blown tire. That puzzled him. How could his heart be beating, be
racing,
at a time like that?

A slug of a tongue grazed his lips, and he realized he was salivating.

The road
.

Stay on course
.

Gus snored, wrenching Wallace’s attention back to the sleeping man, whose face turned toward him and rattled along with the truck. A smell came from Gus, subtle yet familiar, tantalizing. The truck coasted to the right, and Wallace corrected the drift with a broken spring-snap of teeth. He had a problem. The cadence of his heart suddenly braked and slowed, which sent alarm signals to his brain. The lingering smell grew stronger. Each muffled drumbeat captivated him. He hadn’t realized before, but there was something haunting about that organic rhythm. It unnerved him, and he cringed every time he heard it, hoping each spaced-out beat would be the last.

Wallace corrected his driving again and scowled as the RVs came closer in his side mirrors, urging him onward. It occurred to him he could pull over and let them drive on by.

Long enough for…

Wallace set his jaw.
Long enough for what
?

Then fear seeped into his mind. He knew what was happening, as sure as his heart throbbed with mournful purpose. He knew with ravenous clarity.

He was going over.

The trees flashed by, light flickering through the overhead branches, dulled by his visor.

He recognized the smell haunting him.

Flesh.

Living
flesh, beside him. His heart kept on pounding, an evil, nauseating sensation in his chest, an unpleasant, tempting drumroll. It boomed in his ears, urging him to
do
something, promising him if he just surrendered to that mounting craving, if he just quit denying himself, the transition wouldn’t be that bad—not really.

Wallace stepped on the brake, decreased speed, and pulled over, allowing the others to drive on. He lowered his eyes as if studying the dashboard, in case Collie glanced his way with a question on her face. He waved a hand, and the motor homes rolled on by.

Gus kept on sleeping.

Boom
.

His heart had become a primitive, solitary drum, and Wallace regarded his passenger’s comfortable face—unconcerned, at peace, unaware.

Boom
.

Wallace stretched his jaws to their maximum, yearning to bite, eyeing the sustenance just an arm’s length away. Then he drifted, like a boat caught in a riptide, leaning toward the sleeping man on the passenger side until his seatbelt stopped him. Wallace pawed at the release button. A loud click resulted, and the seatbelt slithered away.

Boom.

His heart. His heart wasn’t his at all. The organ called him,
insisting
he strike.

Boom
.

Wallace winced, his jaws aching. A rumble started at the back of his throat, his
parched
throat. His hand rose, hooked into a claw, and poised to plunge into the sleeping face and rake the eyeballs from its head. The heart continued its gallows gonging in Wallace’s ears. Every fiber of his being pushed,
commanded
him to pounce, to feast.

Wallace’s hand trembled, his fingers curling in on themselves, creating a vengeful fist that hung in the air like an iron meteorite seized in a magnetic field.

The JTF-2 man closed his mouth, resisting the tractor pull of an easy meal. Wallace leaned back defiantly as every instinct howled at him to chew into that candy shell of a skull, to crack it open and pluck that headcheese free in fluffy clumps and devour it. He straightened, shaking with the massive battle between will and hunger. Gus’s heart––Wallace once more recognized the man sitting next to him––still beat its tune, determined to summon the monster lurking within the special operator. Wallace drew back from that calling, tapping into a reserve of self-discipline he still possessed. He pressed back into his seat, defying the malefic craving infecting his person. Wallace reached out and placed one hand on the steering wheel, gripping its knurled curve in a stranglehold and holding on.

But Gus’s heart kept calling.

A ferocious, final urge to bite rose within Wallace, surging through the shield of his resolve, demanding he chomp down and let the juices flow. He whined at the strength of the assault. The planetary force that assailed him was the strongest he’d ever experienced, and anyone else would have been instantly swept away.

Wallace was not, however—at least, not right away.

He shivered, trying to think about Collie. He tried thinking about past missions. Each memory stomped a foot down and pulled back, defying that monstrous impulse. He knuckled down and held on to the steering wheel, but the desire stayed, doubling in intensity. Wallace realized he was locked into a losing tug-of-war, where each passing microsecond was a foot sliding in wet sand, dragging him back toward a red line of no return.

Unless…

Wallace saw his own arms.

He lifted his left forearm to his mouth and ripped the cloth back from his wrist, exposing graying flesh.

Meat
.

His resistance snapped like a steel cable stretched past its limit.

Wallace bit down hard.

Gus woke to the sound of chewing.

He opened his eyes and saw Wallace eating his own arm.

In a moment of sleep-drunken wakefulness, Gus believed he was in the middle of a nightmare until Wallace’s visor turned ever so slightly in his direction, caught in the middle of one last round of mastication. Black juice covered his lower jaw, and when Wallace lowered his gnawed arm, shreds of skin and muscle tissue were revealed.

“Jesus Christ,” Gus said in horror.

Then his brain crackled and flashed and came totally online, and he jerked away in his seat. The seatbelt restrained him, and for an insane flicker of time, he was divided between clawing at the release button and pulling out a pistol.

“Jesus Christ!”

Wallace spat out whatever occupied his mouth. The gob hit the stick shift with a wet, derisive smack.

“Jesus
Christ
!
Oh, Jesus Christ
!”

Gus heaved against the seatbelt and nearly exploded against the windshield and roof when a finger found the release button. He groped for the truck door. It opened, and Gus tumbled from the interior as if someone had yanked the door from the outside. Crushed stone and chunks of pavement sanded his palms, but he rolled over and crawled away from the truck at best speed, keeping his eyes on the swinging door, looking for that undead cockgobbler to come leaping out after him.

But Wallace didn’t.

Gus didn’t see a ditch behind him, but his left hand found the empty space. He steamed into it, fell over, tried to roll, and slammed his chin into hard-packed earth, cross-checked by gravity. The impact dazed him. He struggled through the sensation and stood, fumbling at one holster and unintentionally whipping the weapon far away to his right. Squealing, Gus got his hands on his second pistol and successfully pulled it free.

He pointed it at the truck’s cab as the swinging door creaked closed.

“Wallace! You there?”