ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) (12 page)

Charlie was grateful he hadn’t clicked in after leaving
Tilly’s. Unrestrained by a shoulder or lap belt, he twisted his upper body
violently counterclockwise as his fight or flight response kicked into high
gear. The latter won out first and he leaned back, pressing his right shoulder
hard against the dash. Not one to be left out of the party, fight kicked in a
millisecond later and instinctively Charlie thrust his left arm toward the
passenger, catching her by the throat and stalling out her mad over-the-seat
lunge.

Tossing the pint of Jack Daniels on the seat, Duncan ripped
his pistol from its paddle holster right-handed. Taking advantage of the target
Charlie was presenting him, he slammed the pistol’s butt just in front of the
cyclist’s left ear. Not too hard, though. He didn’t want to kill her. Just tap
her temple with enough behind it to, at best, take the drug-induced fight out
of her and put her back into her seat dazed and confused. Or, at worst, which
at this point was just about even on Duncan’s give-a-shit radar with the
former, to knock the ungrateful twenty-something out cold. In fact, as he felt
the impact transit the wood grips and start the rapid ripple-shiver up his
fully extended arm, he thought the latter would make getting her out of the
truck that much easier, so he rotated his upper body by a degree, which changed
the follow through while imparting a little more oomph to the blow.

Seeing the impact from his front row seat started Charlie’s
already queasy stomach to churning. And as the shock from it transferred
through the cyclist’s thin neck and coursed through his clenched fingers, he
shouted, “You might have just killed her!”

Judging by the bullwhip crack that echoed off the
windshield, Duncan feared Charlie was right. He expected to see her eyes roll
back and all fight leave her rigid, straining muscles.

But the opposite happened. Seemingly invigorated, she kept
fighting. She strained harder against the nylon belt, challenging the tensed
muscle and sinew of Charlie’s locked arm. In the span of just a few short
frantic seconds her lids had opened wide, revealing eyes that were at once
glassy and roving, which at face value was suggestive of life, yet slightly
clouded, which reminded Duncan of the look parked on Tilly’s slack face.

“Keep holding her there,” Duncan blurted, as he put the
pistol down and yanked his shirt over his head.

“Doing my best,” Charlie gasped through clenched teeth.
“She’s real strong. Like she’s on PCP or something.”

Duncan threw his shirt over the cyclist’s head, wound the
threadbare number around twice, and knotted the stretched-out sleeves in front
of her still snapping teeth. “That ought to hold until we get there. I’m sorry
I pulled over in the first place.” He stuck the pistol in its place on his hip
and snorted at the absurd image of his unloved love-handle draping pasty and
white over the walnut grips. Next, without pause he snatched up the bottle of
Jack Daniels.

“Time and a place,” said Charlie, still holding the hooded
druggie at bay.

Duncan said nothing. He unscrewed the cap, stuck the bottle
out the window, and twisted his wrist to let the amber liquid drain out onto
the street.

Five seconds later the emptied bottle was lying on the road
in the center of the spreading puddle.

Duncan said, “I’m done with it.” He looked over his bare
left shoulder to check the lane and then started them rolling downhill toward
the place he hoped to take care of the two most pressing problems of a very
long day filled with them.

***

Charlie’s arm was growing tired by the time they’d covered
half a dozen blocks north on 47th, blowing the red light at Glisan in the
process. With the brick and glass exterior of their destination rising up over
the intersection where 47th crossed Halsey, the fingers on Charlie’s left hand
started going numb.

“Stay green,” Charlie chanted as 47th started a steady
shallow climb towards Halsey where the light burned just that. Fifty feet from
the intersection, however, the light flicked to yellow, which in Duncan’s mind,
given the present circumstances, meant speed up, not prepare to stop.

So he did. Palming the horn and leaning heavily on the gas
pedal produced two different but highly desired results. The latter made the
truck’s engine cough up a few more horsepower that kept gravity from bleeding
off too much of their forward momentum. The former started the heads of four
separate drivers panning towards the speeding pick-up, which in turn stole
their attention from the soon to turn traffic light, which bought Duncan a
couple of precious seconds.

“Blow the light,” Charlie cried. “Or shirt be damned, this
dumb bitch is going to succeed in biting my face off.”

Three of the cars remained static at the light, but, as bad
luck would have it, a full-sized SUV with a young lead-footed male at the wheel
shot forward just as the light on Halsey westbound cycled to green.

Charlie’s eyes widened and his grip on the cyclist’s neck
loosened as simultaneously the solid red passed overhead and the rapidly
accelerating SUV edged into his side vision from the right. Realizing that
upwards of six tons of speeding metal, rubber, glass, and plastic were about to
try and occupy the same airspace as the unyielding Dodge, he gritted his teeth
and braced for impact.

As time seemed to slow, he saw the SUV driver’s mouth form a
silent O followed by what could only be lip read as “Shit!” Though Charlie
didn’t actually hear the word, it seemed to be perfectly enunciated and was
punctuated by the kid jerking the wheel hard left. With the ragged chirp of
rubber breaking free of blacktop and the cyclist’s guttural growling assaulting
Charlie’s ears, he shouted, “Hard left,” at the top of his voice.

Fortunately for all parties involved, the pendulum of luck
swung in the proper direction. First for the three drivers who had stayed on
the brakes and were but bystanders to the vehicular ballet about to happen.

Secondly for the young SUV driver as a combination of
fast-twitch muscles and his quick reaction time saw his foot get to the brake
pedal in conjunction with the course correction.

And lastly, for the second time today Lady Luck was favoring
Duncan, who listened to Charlie and hauled the wheel hard left, starting a
perfect serpentine slide that took the Dodge out of harm’s way and sent it
airborne on the north side of Halsey where the two-lane began following a
slight down-grade.

Realizing he was about to have a visitor in the front seat
with him if he didn’t take action, Charlie stiffened his grip on the cyclist’s
neck, partially silencing the growling, and locked his elbow.

Letting loose with a slightly less enthusiastic whoop than
the Duke boys were known to belt, Duncan did two things: he braced for the
consequences of taking the truck airborne, and then flashed his eyes to the
rearview, a half-beat after which his stomach twisted into a sheepshank when he
realized Tilly was getting twice as much air as the old Dodge.

“Stop here!” Charlie hollered. He had loosened his
death-grip on the grab bar affixed to the A-pillar and instinctively put his
palm toward the soldiers and their rifle barrels that even from three
truck-lengths away seemed the size of manhole covers. And his first impression
wasn’t far off as Duncan stomped on the brakes and bellowed, “Hang on, Tilly,”
because just two truck-lengths from the soldiers, as forward momentum was bled
in half, he saw that their rifles were sporting cylindrical can-looking things
on their business ends. Though he wasn’t certain, he thought they were called
silencers
.
In the next beat he was wondering what in God’s name would soldiers guarding a
hospital in the center of the city need those for.

As the Dodge finally came to a stop with a violent lurch,
there was a discordant bang as Tilly slammed hard against the vertical ribbed
sheet metal between the cab and load box.

Sitting amid a cloud of blue-gray tire smoke an arm’s length
from the soldiers and an incredibly large military troop carrier, Duncan found
himself staring down a traffic control feature made from Jersey barriers. Two
rows of the waist-high concrete slabs were set end-to-end and stretched for a
couple of blocks away from the checkpoint, nearly to the overpass where 47th
crossed the Banfield Freeway.

Duncan took his eyes off of the roadblock and glaring
soldiers just long enough to glance over his right shoulder.
We’re fucked
,
he thought. Tilly had come to rest arms and legs akimbo with the sheet covering
only her face. Her walking shorts bore dark brown splotches, the impact having
forced fluids and who knows what from the orifices south of her navel.

As Duncan dragged his eyes forward all he could muster was,
“The hell is the National Guard doing here?” Though he’d been thinking aloud
more so than actually expecting a coherent answer from Charlie, who still had
his hands full with the cyclist, he received an answer. “Who gives a shit,”
Charlie blurted. “Get me some help.”

With the rubber smoke wafting off toward the hospital, the
soldiers who had no doubt read Charlie’s lips, or body language, or perhaps had
spotted the writhing human form with a shirt wrapped about its face, rushed
forward, their incredibly intimidating—in Charlie’s mind—assault rifles pointed
at all three of them.

Punctuating his question with a thrust of his rifle, the
first soldier, young of face and lean and dressed in camouflage fatigues, asked
forcefully, “Is the civilian infected?”

Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but, mesmerized by the wavering
barrel, could summon nothing.

Quick on the uptake, and with nothing to lose but the head
case in his back seat, Duncan nodded and said, “She’s gotten into
something
.”

Expecting the soldiers to rush the door and haul the woman
from the back while calling for a doctor or nurse, instead the opposite
happened. To a man they all took a quick step back.

Voice rising an octave, the baby-faced soldier ordered
Charlie out of the truck.

“I can’t,” he croaked. “She’s Olympic-athlete-caliber
strong. If I unlock my arm, my face is toast.”

Without a word, one of the soldiers wearing sergeant’s
chevrons stepped forward, hauled open the back door, and grabbed a handful of
the cyclist’s sheer nylon top, ripping it down the back in the process.

Through the combination of the sergeant yanking on the
shredded jersey and Charlie pushing off of his seat with all two hundred plus
pounds riding behind a vicious two-handed shove, the cyclist was forcibly
ejected onto the grass parking strip.

Voice low and calm, Duncan said, “We’ve gotta go before they
ask us to fill out paperwork or something.”

Charlie shot a look across the cab that said,
What
reality are you living in
.

“What?” said Duncan, shrugging. “Bureaucracy never sleeps.”

Charlie reached through his open window to push the rear
door closed. He turned back and watched the soldiers struggling to get the
woman zip-tied and suddenly he didn’t feel so emasculated. Three on one and she
was holding her own, until Baby Face yanked Duncan’s shirt off her face and
everyone got a look at her eyes, which no longer had the out-of-it drug-stupor
gloss. They were the color of the film at the bottom of a cereal
bowl—translucent and milky white with no spark of life in there whatsoever.

Baby Face had already pulled a device from a pocket. It was
black plastic and had a trigger like a gun. But instead of a single barrel
there were two probes atop the boxy thing that arced out like a horseshoe laid
flat. And he never got a chance to deploy whatever it was, because upon seeing
the woman’s eyes when she turned her head his way, he tossed the device on the
brown lawn and bellowed, “She’s gone.”

A tick later the sergeant sprang into action. “Clear,” he
said, his jaw going tense. Without wasting another word, he motioned the other
soldiers back with his free hand and put a boot on the prostrate form. From out
of nowhere a black pistol was in his hand, the tubular device attached to the
muzzle pressed to her head. A millisecond after the suppressor on the soldier’s
Beretta rendered the weapon’s report but a hollow pop. The woman’s head
suddenly took on an altogether different shape.
Like an egg
, Duncan
thought. But instead of yolk, thick pink and gray brain matter oozed wetly from
one ear.

Seeing this in the side view suddenly cured him of any
desire to ask the soldiers for his shirt back, let alone inquire as to where
the morgue was located. Mortified by what at first blush appeared to be a
murder in cold blood, Duncan stared straight down the cement chute, focusing on
the blurry forms at its terminus he guessed were soldiers manning a similar
checkpoint. Providence was now under constant scrutiny coming and going.
Don’t
pass Go. Do not collect $200
.

Taking yet another cue from his gut, Duncan whispered, “We
need to get far away from here.”

Before Charlie could answer to that, the sergeant was
filling up the open passenger side window. “Doc says there’s no room in the
morgue for the cadaver you have in back of your truck.” There was a pregnant
pause, after which Duncan expected the inquisition to begin. Instead, muttering
under his breath, the sergeant said, “When there’s no more room in hell, the
dead will walk the earth.”

Duncan elbowed Charlie. “What’d he say?”

A knowing look falling on his face, Charlie replied, “I’m
not repeating that.”

Motioning with his rifle, the sergeant said rather
ominously, “I’d haul you both out and check you for bites … but I don’t have
the energy.” He pointed down the Jersey barrier chute. “Move along, now.”

Duncan didn’t need to be told twice.
No more room in hell
was running through his mind as he let the truck coast forward and enter into
the single one-way lane demarked by the lined-up barriers.