A Little More Dead (17 page)

Chapter
Thirty-One

DAY THIRTEEN

Tires hummed against asphalt, making
Dan’s words seem like they were coming from the other end of a long tunnel.
“He’ll be fine. He just needs some rest.”

“We should stop somewhere for a few days
and take a break,” Wendy whispered, steering the cop car down a two-lane
highway as curvy as she was. “He could’ve shot us.”

Dan looked up from a map in his lap. “Why
did you yell back there anyway?”

“Umm, because a
three hundred pound dead lady was sprinting full speed at us.”

“No, before
that.
You yelled
damn
.”

“Oh,” she said, turning back to the road
and getting quiet. “My watch stopped.”

Dan screwed his face up. “Your
watch
stopped?”

“My dad gave it to me for my birthday
just before he died,” she said, glancing at the smoked metal timepiece around
her wrist. “It was the last thing he ever gave me.”

Dan gasped. “You scared the shit out of
us over a dead watch?”

“Well, it’s not like your screaming
sirens
didn’t already alert every Z out
there to our presence.”

His lips flattened. “A dead watch?
Really?”

“I’m sorry, okay!”

The humming tires took back over, a
constant drone wavering a bit with each tiny bump in the sun-baked road. Paul
lifted his head from the side window in the back, a cramp in his neck. “Where
are we?” he muttered, noticing it was near dark.

“Somewhere near Giddings, Texas,” Dan
told him, studying the map in the glove box light.

Paul massaged his neck, realizing his
wife was dead all over again. He wondered how far they were from her now. “What
happened?”

“You passed out,” Wendy said
matter-of-factly.

“Drink some of that water.” Dan nodded
to a bottle lying next to Paul.

Wendy took a sharp turn onto a rural
route road, the car’s back end sliding out to the right and Paul’s head banging
against the window. She mashed the gas pedal to the floor, spraying the ditches
with gravel. Back roads were at the top of their wish list, closely followed by
a small house with quiet neighbors out in the middle of nowhere. She slowed
down, scanning the sparse houses dotting the pastureland as pieces of rock
popped beneath the tires. A mile further, Wendy stomped on the brakes. They
stared at the single-story red brick house up ahead on the left. The sun dipped
its toes in the western horizon, silhouetting the naked trees and bushes in the
brown front yard.

Dan twisted around to face Paul in the
backseat. “You
gonna
be able to do this?”

“Yep,” he lied, checking his sidearm. He
still couldn’t believe he’d passed out. He’d never passed out before, not even
in college after a game day binger and this was not the time to start. It shook
him.

Dan craned his neck, surveying the
house. “It looks quiet.”

“So did the grocery store,” Wendy said,
wincing as soon as the words slipped from her shiny red lips.

A stabbing pain sliced through Paul’s
heart. He stared out the car windows, taking in their alien surroundings. They
were so far away from her now. How many miles? He was afraid to even ask.

Mercifully, Dan changed the subject.
“Let’s go.”

Wendy backed the cop car into the
house’s double-drive and shut off the engine. Paul stared at a half-barrel turned
onto its side and spilling wilted flowers onto the lawn. A light breeze tickled
an American flag proudly waving from atop a rusty pole by the road while a BMX
bike leaned against a dead bush bordering the front steps. The basketball hoop
over the garage was missing its net and a strand of Christmas lights dangled to
the ground over a front window, menial tasks forever left undone.

“I’m sorry I seemed so happy when I shot
that lady today.”

Dan turned to Wendy, eyebrows dipping.

“I feel bad for getting excited like
that.”

“You saved our lives.” He took her hand.
“Personally, I found it very uplifting.”

Wendy pulled her hand back. “She was
probably a mother and a wife and people loved her and I shouldn’t celebrate
shooting her like that, even if she was one of those
things
. It was disrespectful.”

Paul rolled his eyes and got out. He wiped
sweat from his upper
lip,
light headed and wobbly on
his feet, the cop’s shotgun slippery in his sweaty hands. He hadn’t even gone
ten feet and needed to sit down already. He wondered how much longer they’d
have to do this SWAT team crap.
Months?
Years?
Forever?
His legs felt as
heavy as his heart and he didn’t think he could last much longer.
Didn’t want to last much longer.

Rather than politely rapping the brass
door-knocker, Paul smashed the butt of the shotgun through a skinny window running
vertically alongside the front door. Carefully, he reached through the shards
of glass, expecting something to bite his hand at any moment, sealing his fate forever.
He held his breath, struggling to find the deadbolt release. He grunted and the
lock clicked. Slowly, he pulled his hand back out and exhaled a long breath
that made his head swim.

Dan used the barrel of the Browning to
push the door open. It swung inward with a nasty creak. They flinched backwards
at the stench waiting to greet them.

“Okay, that is really bad,” Wendy
moaned, covering her nose with her shoulder.

Her flashlight lit up a big screen TV,
the thick kind that took up an entire corner of the room. They stepped onto a
rug with a southwestern pattern covering most of the silver living room carpet.
Paul’s eyes watered as he took in the
Kocopelli
trinkets adorning the end tables and window sills. A red, white and blue
Houston Texans blanket lay draped over the back of a couch that had seen better
days while the people in the family pictures watched Paul invade their home. He
could almost see the downturned lines creeping into the faces of the balding
man, his wife and young son.

Paul crossed into the kitchen, where two
dog bowls – one with “Ginger” printed on the side – sat devoid of food and
water. Mangled packages of cereal, chips and cookies lay scattered around the
kitchen floor without a crumb to
be found
. A set of
keys hung from the utter of a decorative cow attached to the wall. Paul nodded
to the white door next to it, beads of sweat tickling his back.

Dan opened the door and Wendy and Paul
entered an attached two car garage that smelled of oil and grass. Paul’s eyes
went from the three mountain bikes leaning against a far wall to a work bench littered
with tools and empty Budweiser bottles. His rambling gaze slipped over some
golf clubs and fishing rods in one corner before snagging on two tall trophies sitting
on a dusty shelf against another wall. Between the trophies was a framed
picture of a man leaning against a black
Chevelle
with
Shelly1
printed on the license plates.
With thin arms proudly folded across a striped shirt, the man smiled at Paul
wherever he went in the garage and was the same balding man from the pictures in
the living room.

“Too bad they took it with them,” Dan
murmured, scanning the empty garage. “It was a four door too.”

They debated parking the cop car in the
garage, but decided against it at the last minute. Better to have it backed in
the driveway and ready-to-go than have to manually open the large metal door
before they split.

“But, if those things suddenly
surrounded the house,” Wendy countered, “we
could
safely get in the car if it was already inside the garage
and crash through the door if we had to.”
Another one of
life’s new little decisions.
In the end, they decided to take Wendy’s
advice and park in the garage after all.

The screened in sun porch held a
seven-foot pool table that was too big for the room. In one corner, sat a cache
of pool sticks jutting from the mouth of
a rusty
milk can
with the word
Welcome
etched into its
side. Three walls of windows overlooked a big backyard with several bushy pines
circling an oversized machine shed thirty yards out.

Paul wondered where the dad in the pictures
had gone. They’d broken into how many houses now and no one was ever home. Did
they all turn into walking stiffs? Did they all wander off on a hunting trip
never to remember how to get back home or to even care?

Guns drawn, they left the sun porch and
went down a carpeted hallway, grimacing with the stench of death choking the
air. They passed an outdated bathroom and then a small bedroom decorated with
NASCAR stuff that tugged at Paul’s heart. At the end of the hall, they found
Ginger lying on the master bed, hair matted and thin, worms wiggling in the
Golden Retriever’s bloated stomach. Wendy pulled her motorcycle jacket over her
nose and gagged, pink gun hanging heavy in her hand. Paul sighed as images of
the past pieced together in his mind. Trapped inside the house for whatever
reason, the poor dog
was left
to figure a way out of this
mess on her own, emptying the cereal and cookie boxes in the kitchen. Finally
out of ideas, Ginger took her rightful place on her master’s bed and went to
sleep, never to wake up again. Paul wished it was that easy. One thing was for
sure: The family who lived here must’ve been in one hell of a hurry to leave
their dog behind.

Chapter
Thirty-Two

After securing the rest of the house,
Wendy opened the bedroom windows while Dan and Paul found a tarp and some
gloves in the garage. With Wendy providing cover, they carried Ginger out back
and gently laid her down behind the machine shed.

“That poor dog.
Why would they
just leave her trapped inside like that?”

They stared at the dead dog for a moment
longer before Paul folded the tarp over her swollen body.

“Let’s check the shed,” Dan suggested,
holding up the keys he found in the kitchen.

Wendy’s jaw dropped. “Shouldn’t we bury
her or something?”

Anger contorted Paul’s face. “Are you
fucking serious?”

She turned from his scowl and grew
quiet. Paul liked it better when she was tip-toeing around him after all. Less
noise came out of her mouth that way.

Dan exchanged a trepid glance with her
as they followed Paul around to the front of the large shed. Sweat ran down his
face and neck and the thought of digging another grave made him sick to his
stomach. The last one came at a price he wasn’t willing to pay again.

The pedestrian door to the shed had a
window with drawn blinds on the inside that made it impossible to see what (or
who) was hiding within so Dan politely knocked. Wendy cocked her head at him
and he shrugged. Guns at the ready, he tried two keys before finding the right
one. The door clicked open. Wendy sent the flashlight inside first, and there
she was...Shelly1. Dan gasped when he saw the jacked up muscle car. They
stepped inside the spacious outbuilding, the smell of motor oil and earth mixing
in the air. A hulking green tractor sat on the other side of the shed, dwarfing
the show car. Paul threw a wrench across the room. It banged off a steel wall
and clattered to the concrete floor. When no one came rushing out to eat them,
they went in deeper. Dust swirled in the beam of light.

“Would you look at that,” Dan murmured,
running a finger along the glossy black paint of a
Chevelle
300 Deluxe that looked like it just rolled off the lot. He held his finger up
to the light. “Not a speck of dust.”

“I dated a guy who had a car like this
one time. Only his was a two-door and
sunburnt
orange
with black racing stripes.” Wendy swung the light inside the car.
“Took better care of it than he did me.”

Dan flipped through the keys on the corn-cob
key-ring in his hand and the first one he tried unlocked the driver’s door.
“Yes!” he said, sliding into the black bucket seat and finding the ignition key.
Dan shot them a wish-me-luck-look and brought the throaty V8 to life, vibrating
the shed walls and filling it with smoke. “Would you listen to
that!
”

The car was sweet but wasn’t helping
Paul’s headache any. He threw back the bay doors and waved Dan outside. Shelly1
rumbled out on shiny tires mounted on black rims, the gas gauge – Dan happily
informed them – half full. After some heated debate, they decided to trade out
the cop car and its cumbersome cage, which made passing food and water a
nightmare, for the
Chevelle
. Dan pulled around front
and, under the cover of dusk, they transferred their gear and food from the cop
car to the
Chevelle
before backing it inside the
garage in a ready-to-go position. Wendy parked the cop car around the side, out
of the way in case they had to drive the
Chevelle
through the garage door in the middle of the night.

Dan shut the driver’s side door and whistled,
circling the car like a vulture inside the closed garage. “Now that’s some
American muscle, ladies and gentlemen!”

Paul blew out a tired breath and went
back inside, not caring if anyone followed or not. On the living room couch, he
curled onto his side and prayed for God to take good care of his wife. Then he
cursed Him for taking her away from him, saying He had no fucking right. Paul
pictured Sophia’s grave under that naked willow, alone in the cold and the dark.
Through heavy-lidded eyes, he inspected the family’s pictures and furniture and
trinkets, a wave of nausea washing over him. Closing his eyes against the alien
possessions, Paul saw his wife’s scared face on the mint-colored couch instead.

No, check that.

Ex-wife now.

A horn beeped twice in the garage
followed by the
Chevelle’s
revving engine. Dan yelled
something to Wendy that made her laugh and Paul pulled a pillow over his head
because the darkness was familiar, unlike everything in this house and the one
before it. His mind shuffled on random. Sophia was gone and they would never share
a quiet Sunday morning over coffee and cinnamon rolls ever again. Never swim in
their new pool. Never ride in their new boat. Never have the child they so
desperately wanted to have because Sophia was dead and no one would put flowers
on her grave.

He yawned, forcing his thoughts to a
happier time. A time when the grass was green and the sunshine warm upon their skin.
Huge rock formations jutted from the earth like elephant backs as joggers and
bikers and people out walking their dogs strolled past without giving them much
notice. Sophia always wanted to go to New York City and last summer he
surprised her with a long weekend on Madison Avenue. Unlike the pink handgun he
bought her so they could share time at the range, this surprise she liked. After
countless hours of shopping on 5th and Broadway, they took a break to catch
their breath in Central Park. Sophia’s smile made her glow. There were no dead
people and frozen apple pies, no strange houses with someone else’s junk and
nobody at home. It was just a beautiful weekend in the Big Apple.

They shared an ice cream cone with a
scoop of mint chocolate chip and one of rocky road. A light breeze tickled her
silky brown hair, green eyes radiant with the city’s radiant energy. She said
coming to Manhattan made her feel electric, like she could fly. Paul leaned in
and kissed her, leaving ice cream on her lips. She laughed and told him she
loved him, laughing some more when a wandering Golden Retriever took a sneaky
lick from their cone. Giggling, she turned away from the furry visitor, her
eyes more full of life than Paul could ever remember. Undeterred, the dog went
to him and licked the ice cream from his face with a tongue that was rough and
wet. He and Sophia laughed in the sunlight, not a care in the world. Paul
wished they could stay there forever because he loved the way it made her feel.
Happy with his treat, the dog sat down and panted in Paul’s face, breath warm
and rancid. Paul wrinkled his nose and wiped the dog slobber from his mouth,
cringing when he saw the slime coating his palm. When he looked up Sophia was
sitting thirty feet away on the park’s lush green grass. The dog got up and
licked Paul’s face again. He pushed him back and Sophia was even further away
now. He opened his mouth to tell her to wait for
him, that
the last thing they wanted to do was get split up in the big city but he couldn’t
find his voice and it sent a bolt of panic shooting through him. She stared at
him with a sad look in her eyes as if he didn’t care, as if he didn’t love her.
He knew that’s what she was thinking and it broke his heart because it couldn’t
be further from the truth. He loved her more than anything in the world, and
didn’t she know that? The dog’s breath smelled like it had eaten its own shit
and Paul shoved the persistent
sonofabitch
away,
staring in horror at the fur sticking to his hand. When he looked up again, his
wife was gone. His heart jumped and then she was there, as clear as the alarm swimming
in her eyes. Her lips moved.

Wake
up.

Paul cracked open a single eyelid to
find the balding man from the trophy picture in the garage bending over him on
the couch, face glowing in the moonlight streaming through the living room windows.
Warm slobber dripped onto Paul’s face.