A Little More Dead (14 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Two

ONE DAY BEFORE OUTBREAK

The bar music was blaring and Paul
couldn’t stop thinking about the night before. He could still feel Rebecca’s
lips on his, her warm hand in his lap. Sophia would be home tomorrow from the
Twin Cities and he was certain he would never be able to look her in the eyes
again. There was only one way to do that and that was through the truth. He
would tell her everything. But first he would test the waters on Dan. He tipped
his beer back, spacing out on a basketball game on TV. If Dan thought it was a
bad idea, which he would, Paul didn’t think he could hide last night for long.
Didn’t think he could live with himself, let alone with Sophia. She didn’t
deserve that.

“Hey, are you
Paul
Hessler
?”

Paul turned to a
short man with a ball cap pulled down over his thick glasses. “You got me,
man.”

A sheepish smile
slipped through the man’s chubby cheeks. He cheered Paul with a near empty pint
glass. “I just wanted to say that I love your show. I’m a long time listener.”

Paul shook the
man’s sweaty hand. “I appreciate that. What’s your name?”

“Jon.” He released
Paul’s hand and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his shiny nose. “So is that
really your mom you call on the air?”

Paul smiled. He
got that question a lot. “It really is. You can’t fake crazy.”

Jon chuckled and
looked away. “That one time when you called her at work was priceless.”

“Thanks, Jon. I
appreciate you listening, man.”

“Can I buy you a
drink?”

Paul leaned
against the bar and thumbed behind him. “Got some coming but let me get you
one.”

The tattooed bartender
set two bottles of beer next to Paul.
“On the house, my
brother!”

“Thanks
Rockit
,” Paul said, slapping a twenty on the bar just the
same. Under normal conditions, he would’ve loved being in the spotlight but
tonight all he could think about was the mistake he made with Rebecca. He would
never be able to face Sophia again and she would be home by this time tomorrow.
Paul set a hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Can I get another one for my boy, Jon,
here?”

Rockit
tapped his ring
against the bar two times. “You got it,
Paulie
,” he
said, turning to a long row of taps behind him.

“So is Deli Man
real too?”

Paul nodded.
“Works at Palmer’s Deli,” he said, finishing the beer already in his hand.

Jon smiled and
finished his glass as well. “That one time you guys tried to join a Curves was
hilarious.” His brow wrinkled beneath the brim of his ball cap. “Did you have
hidden microphones or something?”

“We have those
glasses with cameras in them. You can watch the full video online.”

“Isn’t that
illegal?”

Paul pressed his
lips together and thought about it.
“Probably.”

Jon laughed.
“That’s awesome,” he said, taking a drink from his empty glass. Another
sheepish smile shaped his lips as he set the glass on the bar. “They’re going
down good tonight.”

Dan walked up,
adjusting his jeans. “Damn, my teeth were floating,” he said, grabbing one of
the new bottles of beer. “God, I love it when my drink is waiting for me when I
come back from the bathroom.” He took a slow sip, scanning the bar. “Dude, this
place is ass soup tonight!” Then he noticed Jon staring and elbowed Paul in the
side. “Who’s this?”

“This is Jon.”

Dan extended his
hand. “Dan
Kippler
, nice
ta
meet
ya
.”

“Here
ya
go,
Paulie
.”

“Thanks
Rockit
.” Paul handed Jon the beer.

Jon pushed his
glasses up and pulled his cell phone out. “Can I get a quick picture?”

“Sure,” Paul
said, snatching the phone and snapping a
selfie
of
him and Jon against the colorful bar.

“Thanks a lot,
man.” Jon slipped the phone back into his baggy jeans. “So…how do you guess a
woman’s bra size by having her rub her boobs on the phone anyway?”

Dan slapped Paul
on the back. “The man has a gift, Jonny! That’s how.”

“That shit is so
funny.”

“You should see
how funny my wife thinks it is.”

They smiled and
stared at each other for a few seconds as the DJ in the corner switched out
songs. Dan looked at Paul, then back to Jon, teetering back and forth on the
balls of his feet.

Jon cheered Paul
with his new glass of beer. “Well hey man, thanks for the beer and the picture.
I’ll be listening Monday morning.”

“Thanks, Jon.
Enjoy the night, brother.”

Jon nodded at
Dan and waded into the growing crowd, sliding into a booth with three other
guys in ball caps and showing them his phone.

“Jesus fucking
Christ, I thought he’d never leave,” Dan muttered.

“He’s a good
guy.”

“You attract the
biggest
weirdos
, man.” Dan sipped his beer. “If you
switched to a country station or even pop, your fans would be
way
hotter.”

Paul frowned at
him. “You don’t think Jon was hot?”

“You know what I
mean, and it would make it way easier for me to get laid if there was a better
selection of hot chicks than a bunch of rock sluts at
Rockfest
.”
He lifted his brow. “Although I will admit, some are super hot but we need way more
to increase my odds.”

Paul stewed for
a moment, shifting in his Pumas. “Listen, there’s something I have to tell
you.”

Dan turned to
him with downturned lips. “Oh my God, Sophia’s pregnant. I can tell by the tone
in your voice. Congratulations, man!”

He went in for a
hug and Paul pushed him back. “What? No, she’s not pregnant.”

“Oh.”

Paul exhaled a
long breath, avoiding Dan’s eyes. “I’m not even sure how to tell you this, but
last night…” The words died on his lips when a tall blond stopped in front of
him and stuck her hand out.

“Hi, I’m Casey,”
she said, biting back a cherry red grin that matched her four inch heels.

Paul’s gaze slid
from her electric blue eyes to her giant tits. “Hi Casey,” he said, shaking her
hand.

“I saw you at
Metallica last night.”

“Wasn’t that a
great show?”

“Don’t rub it
in,” Dan said, drawing zero response.

Casey stared at
Paul, still clinging to his hand. “I was in the front row.”

Paul sharpened
his gaze. “Oh yeah, I remember you,” he said, trying to take his hand back.

Casey squeezed
harder. “You were great onstage.”

Dan leaned in
between them and stuck his hand out, breathing a sigh of relief into Paul. “Dan
Kippler
, nice
ta
meet
ya
.”

Her eyes
reluctantly went with her hand to Dan, who blatantly stared at the breasts
trying to escape a satiny top missing a button or two at the summit. Casey
swung her attention back to Paul and stepped closer, her flowery perfume making
his stomach roll. “I listen to you every morning.”

“Thank you, Casey.
Sorry about all the screw ups and stuff. There are way too many buttons on that
board.”

She ran a tongue
over her shiny red lips. “What’re you guys doing for after-hours?”

“Tonight?”

“No plans,” Dan
blurted, drawing a slanted glance from Paul.

“My roommates
and I are having a small get together. You guys should totally stop by.”

“Uh, tonight’s
not so good, but thanks for the offer, Casey.”

“Tonight is
super good,” Dan countered, tapping at his phone. “What’s your address?”

Paul shot him a
heated look while Casey grabbed the phone and punched in her info. Dan stuffed
his hands into his designer jeans and gave Paul a loose shrug.

She handed the
phone back, fuck-me eyes firmly fixed on Paul. “See you there,” she said,
walking away. He watched her tight little jeans-covered ass swish back and
forth in slow motion. She cast a quick look over her shoulder and Paul turned
away.

“Why do you always
do that?” he hissed, cheeks flushing. “I’m married.”

“Yeah but I’m
not! Throw me a crumb here, Paul.”

Paul took a long
drink and swallowed with an exasperated sigh. “Look, something happened last
night. I fucked up big time.”

Dan stopped the
beer bottle in front of his lips.
“With that girl?”

“No,” Paul
replied, gathering his thoughts. “We have this record rep named Rebecca who stops
by the station every few weeks, and last night after the concert…”

“Hey
Paulie
, check this out!”

Paul and Dan
turned to
Rockit
, who gestured to the TV with the
remote control in his hand. Their eyes focused on the video playing on Fox
News. Tilting his head to the side, as if that would give him a clearer view,
Paul couldn’t believe his own eyes.

“What the hell?”
he mumbled as others around them started tuning in.

“Hey!”
Rockit
yelled to a short black guy spinning tunes on an
elevated stage tucked in the corner. “Turn it down for a minute,
yo
!”

When the music
dropped and the volume on the TV started coming through the speakers like it
does on game days, Paul watched a heavyset elderly woman, covered in bloody
gashes and purple bruises, come running from the right side of the screen in a
blur and tackle Anderson Cooper in high definition.

“Holy shit,” Dan
exclaimed, setting his beer on the granite bar so hard it foamed over. “What
the fuck was that!”

The camera shook
and panned down to the ground where the woman wildly ripped Anderson Cooper’s
Adam’s apple from his throat with her teeth. She raised her head and shook the
stringy flesh down her gullet. A hush fell over the bar as the woman grew still
in the
camera’s
light. Paul’s heart hammered in his
chest. It wasn’t possible. Then slowly, the blood-soaked woman turned to face the
camera man and got to her bare feet. She screamed something and charged, her thighs
jiggling with each ground shaking step. The camera backed up, trembled again
and fell to the side with Anderson Cooper twitching in the background.

“Jesus,” Paul whispered,
his jaw completely unhinged.

Dan turned to
him with dinner plates for eyes. “Oh.
Holy.
Shit. What
was
that!
”

Gasps spread
throughout the bar as Paul squinted at the red scrawl running along the bottom
of the screen. “Where is that?” he yelled over the commotion.

Rockit
turned to him,
nervously stroking his long black beard.
“Chicago, bro.
Some kind of virus or something.”

The floor
dropped and Paul fell with it, hands out and nothing to grab onto. He took
Sophia to at least one Cubs game a year and knew for a fact that Chicago was
exactly three hundred and thirty-two miles from Des Moines, or four hours and
fifty-five minutes. There’d been reports of similar happenings in Cape Town,
South Africa the day before but nothing caught on video and that was another
continent away. This was too close to home. His eyes rose back to the TV just
in time to see a man in a torn
hoodie
sniff
Anderson’s body before limping off down the street. With the rise in
conversation level it was impossible to hear what the
pretty
blond
anchor was relaying to viewers from the safety of the studio, but
the larger scrawl on top of the smaller one told Paul everything he needed to
know.

Unknown
contagion turns citizens into killers.

Dan stared at
the TV. “Is this shit for real?”

A dark feeling
took root in the pit of Paul’s stomach while bar-goers migrated to the three
TVs in the bar. He pulled his cell phone from his jeans and called Sophia.
Minneapolis was two hundred and forty miles away and she needed to be on the
road headed home this very minute.

The phone rang.

Paul pulled a
hand through his hair while Dan watched him with the blood leaving his cheeks.

“Shit!” Paul
said, hanging up and trying again.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

DAY ELEVEN

Twenty-four hours later, darkness once
again claimed the house, inside and out. A far-off ringing in Paul’s ears
refused to go away but he’d grown to like it. Every now and then, it diverted
his twisted thoughts from the grim situation at hand.

“Get away from me,” he said without
meeting Dan’s solemn eyes.

“You don’t have to do this,” Dan
whispered, resting his hands on his knees next to Paul,
who’d
been sitting in the same orange armchair for hours watching his wife sleep. In
the candle’s jumpy light, her eyes looked like pools of tar, the purple veins
running through her face like skinny worms.

Paul didn’t respond. He couldn’t believe
it had even come to this conversation. He couldn’t believe Dan was even close
to being fucking serious. But the verdict was in.

“Paul,” Dan started.

“If you don’t get the fuck away from me,
I’ll kill you too.”

Dan dropped his head and let it hang, a
defeated sigh rushing from his lips. “Okay.” He stood back up and walked out to
find Wendy, who was busy hiding in the kitchen and trying to be quiet.

Paul stared at his beautiful wife
shriveling away in front of him. It was his mom all over again and his gun felt
heavy in its holster.

“Paul?” Sophia opened her eyes a slit.

Heart racing, he rushed across the room.
“I’m right here, gorgeous.”

Smiling weakly when he took her hand, she
struggled to keep her eyes open. “I just wanted to make sure you’re still here.”

“You feel like trying some soup again?”

“Baby?”

“Yeah?”
A lone tear
escaped down his cheek and he wiped it away, hating himself for letting that happen.

“I love you,” she said, peering into his
eyes with as big a smile as her little heart could muster.

“I know you do, Sophia. And I love you
more than anything in the world.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s right,” he repeated, taking in
as much of her as he could.

“This isn’t your fault.”

He nodded without conviction because it
most certainly was his fault and she could see it in his eyes. “I know,” he
said, voice cracking like her skin.

Her eyes cleared as a flash of the old
Sophia rose to the surface. “This isn’t your fault,” she said in a louder voice.
“Don’t let that cloud your mind; you have to stay focused!” A bloody cough
punctuated the statement, curdling Paul’s blood.

He nodded harder, spilling tears onto
her chest, the bones in her fingers pressing into his hand.

She glanced into the kitchen and inhaled
weakly. “Help them get to the ocean and don’t let anything get in your way.”
Her eyes brightened, pushing the darkness back with everything she had. “You’re
the only hope,” she whispered.

He bit his lip to keep from bursting
into tears because this was a deathbed conversation and they both knew it. They
also knew that getting to the ocean was a temporary diversion from the bullshit
surrounding them on a daily basis, a mere distraction, something to look forward
to. But now it just seemed…pointless.

“Promise me you’ll help them and anyone
else you come across.”

It
took
everything not to look away because this was a deathbed promise he could never
keep, nor did he want to. “I promise.”

She nodded, letting the darkness reclaim
her hollowed out eyes as she sank back into the pillow.

“You get some rest,” he said softly,
kissing her cheek. “Everything is going to be fine.” Paul stared out the French
doors, watching his reflection waver in the candlelight. The only person he
wanted to help he couldn’t and it killed him inside. He tried to stop thinking
about all of the things he should’ve done differently because none of that
mattered now. His only power was the small comfort he could give his wife at
this very moment. Other than that, he was useless. Like when he tried becoming
a father.

“Paul?” Sophia opened her eyes as if he
might’ve already left.

“I’m right here, sweetie.”

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

He painted a brave smile across his
unshaven cheeks. “I’ll never leave you. You know that.”

She shuddered. “I’m so cold.”

He pulled the blanket up higher and
hugged her tight.

“I miss our bed.”

“So do
I
.”

Her eyes fell shut again and he wrapped
her in his arms, reality cutting to the bone.

There was
nothing he could do.

Time was almost up.

She was so damn cold.