ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) (6 page)

Nate glanced at the cursive writing on the tinted windows.
Mickey
Finn’s
sounded Irish and, judging by the snippets of action he’d seen each
time the side door his fare had gone through opened, it sure looked busy inside.
The long wood top bar was full and the people perched on tall high-backed stools
and hoisting mugs and bottles craned toward the intrusion of summer light each
time someone came or went through the door.

The parking lot to the north directly across Woodstock was
still a scene to behold. Like sharks circling prey, cars, trucks and SUVs
patrolled the four aisles in search of an empty spot. On a waiting car, flashers
winked yellow, putting a rush on a lady loading her trunk with paper sacks
brimming with supplies. Last time Nate remembered Portlanders storming the
stores en masse was three years prior when a rare winter storm rolled in and
the weather guessers predicted over a foot of the white stuff—a rare occurrence
in the City of Roses that led to one hell of a busy three days for him. And as
he thought back on it, he could almost feel the nonstop
thunka, thunka,
thunka
of tire chains pounding the road and the resulting vibrations and
impacts with buried potholes shredding his lower back yet again. Almost
seventy-two hours of shuttling drunks to and from bars and driving scores of
little old ladies to the grocery stores only to hear stories of them finding
bare shelves inside.

He looked at his watch as the imagined drone of unhappy
geriatrics edged out the equally imagined thrum of nonexistent tire chains.
Seventy-two
long hours.

“Five minutes, dude,” he muttered aloud over the air rushing
through the dusty vent slats. “Time’s up.” He tooted the horn. Watched the second
hand on his watch sweep another thirty seconds into the past.

Start the meter, or park and go inside and hold the fucker
to his word?
he thought to himself.

Deciding that the wait in the old cop car with its laboring
A/C was not worth the wasted gas, reluctantly, Nate came to a decision. Seeing
the door yawn open and disgorge an older couple, which allowed him another peek
inside the dark and no doubt air-conditioned interior, had helped him make it.

Choosing the latter, he called in to Dispatch to tell them
he was going off duty, and was taken aback to learn it wasn’t his decision any
longer. Apparently President Odero’s National Security Advisor had decided to
shut down everything. Rail, air, public transit and public livery services. A
little pissed at the dispatcher’s inability to tell him the real reasoning
behind the decision, he racked the transmission into Park and killed the engine.
Then, just in case the guy whose name he couldn’t remember suddenly turned
asshole and decided not to make good on the promised drink, he started the
meter running one last time, set the flashers strobing, and left the taxi parked
in the loading zone.

Starting to calm down a little, he locked the cab and walked
to the side door where he paused to take a final look at his illegally parked car.
Screw it
, he thought, hauling the side door open,
dude can pay the
ticket.

The door at Nate’s back hit the bell above it producing a
tinny jangle as it closed. Strangely, it was very quiet inside the air-conditioned
bar.

Funeral parlor quiet.

And cold as a morgue.

He could hear the whoosh of air moving through huge ducts
overhead as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. When he could
finally make out more than just human-shaped blue blobs, he spotted his fare
standing shoulder-to-shoulder with an unusual assortment of people.
Charlie!
he thought, the name popping into his head the moment he spotted the older man.
To Charlie’s left was a middle-aged man with one arm draped around a red-haired
woman who looked to be a decade younger. To Charlie’s right was a thirty-something
guy with spiked rock-and-roll hair. Sporting a mosaic of tats on both crossed
arms, he reminded Nate of the brash Mötley Crüe frontman. And partially hidden
behind the leather-clad rocker was a petite young blonde woman who couldn’t
have been a day over twenty-two.

But what really struck Nate of the whole surreal atmosphere
in the bar—and it didn’t really register until he walked his gaze over the drinkers
on stools at the bar and then on to the ragged semicircle of people Charlie was
standing alongside—was that all eyes in the place were glued to the bank of
televisions suspended over the mirrored backbar. The people—young, old and
everything in between—all wore the same expectant look. Conversely, everyone
seemed defeated. The body language, universal. Slumped shoulders. Chins cradled
in palms. Arms crossed on the bar top in fatigued resignation.

The last time Nate could remember seeing a crowd of people
all reacting this way to something playing out on television was when the
planes took down the towers and hit the Pentagon on 9/11. He supposed, too, that
scenes like this had played out all across America in 1963 when JFK was assassinated.

Muted visions of men in business suits swan diving off the
South Tower were still playing in Nate’s head when his fare looked away from
the television and established eye contact.

In the next instant—perhaps sensing Charlie’s head pan in
her side vision—the good-looking fair-haired waitress took her eyes off the
largest television whose screen was now divided into four quadrants, a
different city with a different kind of mayhem playing out in each.

Recognition flared behind those blue eyes and she hollered
“Taxi!” and craned around wildly, arching her back and letting her gaze fall on
each party seated at the nearby tables and then the booths ringing the room’s
open dining area. Seeing no acknowledging looks or gestures, she swung back
around Nate’s way, arched a dark eyebrow and shrugged—universal semaphore for
I
tried
.

Shaking his head and with a touch of embarrassment, Nate
covered the company logo embroidered in red on his shirt. Hand over his heart
as if he was about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, he mouthed, “I’m off
duty.”
Hell
, he thought to himself as he jabbed a finger at the back of
Charlie’s head,
looks like all of us are now
.

Lips pursed into a thin white line, the blonde nodded and,
elbowing Charlie to get his attention, hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the
new arrival.

Wincing from the razor-sharp bone catching him perfectly
between the fourth and fifth ribs, Charlie turned toward the waitress for a
brief second. Seeing her dainty thumb slicing the air back and forth on a
horizontal plane, he swiveled his head back around and saw the cab driver. He
motioned the big man over, saying, “What are you having, Nate?”

Nate nodded then zippered his way through the throng
standing two deep in front of the bar and leaned in toward Charlie. “Do you
still require my services?” he asked.

“Seeing as how my friend has come and gone … yes. But not
until after I buy you a drink.”

What the hell
, Nate thought, the cool air acting as
seductress. Seeing no reason to mention what the dispatcher had just told him
over the radio in the car, he made a show of muting his phone. “I’m officially
off duty, then,” he said with a wan smile.
And with only eight hours left on
a lucrative ten-hour shift
.

Charlie smiled big. “What are you having, then?”

“Single malt, neat.”

Charlie recoiled visibly at that. He said, “You got it,” and
ordered a Johnny Walker for his new friend, and a shot of Old Crow with a bottle
of Budweiser for himself. As he waited for Chad to pour the drinks, his eyes
wandered back to the action unfolding on Fox News. “Can you believe this shit?”
he said. “They’re grounding all flights in five cities.”

“What … the Chinese flu they’ve been talking about?” Nate
asked.

“They’re not saying. It could just as well be they’re
picking up extra terrorist chatter. But they haven’t announced a change in the
threat level. As if anyone can understand that color-coded BS as it is.” He
laughed and corralled the drinks from the bar, handing Nate his first.

“Running a tab?” asked the bartender.

Charlie nodded.

The muscled rock and roller leaned in. He cupped his hands,
put them near his mouth and whispered, “Hell, if that’s the case … I’ll have
another.”

“Can’t afford your own beer?” Charlie said.

“I can,” said the stranger. “Thought I’d try to piggyback on
your tab anyway … seeing as how I just spent a wad across the street buying
ammo and supplies. I figure my best bet on getting through this thing unscathed
is riding it out at home.” He smiled unashamedly and slapped a twenty on the bar.
“One more for the road, Chad.”

For a moment Nate thought about letting the parking attendant
and the other guy in on what the dispatcher had told him moments ago. Tell them
that he was probably staring down a couple of forced days off while the secret travel
quarantine was in place. After briefly contemplating the prospect that sharing the
inside information might change his fare’s mood and curtail the flow of
libations, he decided to keep it to himself.

“Cheers,” said Charlie, hoisting his shot glass.

“Cheers,” answered Nate, moving his drink to meet the toast.

There was a tink of glasses meeting just as the overhead
lights flickered and the bank of lottery machines left of the bar went dark.

A man standing before the ATM awaiting money let loose with
a string of expletives. He looked toward the bartender, tapped the glass, then
said, “Damn thing still has my card”—the people at the bar swiveled their heads
in unison at that—“and the effin screen is black.”

Chad regarded the man for a second before his attention was
drawn back toward the televisions, all of which were now emblazoned with the Presidential
Seal floating on a powder blue background. At the bottom of each screen were
the words:
President Odero set to address the nation.

Don William Bowen died from rapid and massive blood loss with
a combined three-hundred-plus-pounds of snarling, stinking flesh trying to worm
its way into the already cramped booth with him. To a person walking by, the
sight of two pairs of legs protruding from the booth and scissoring the air
like divers out of water could have easily been confused with a harmless college
prank. Perhaps something as innocent as trying to fit as many co-eds as
possible into a phone booth or two-door Volkswagen Beetle.

But there was nothing innocent about the recent attack. And
the passersby cutting the light spill at the top of the ramp were thinking of
themselves, mostly. Or where their loved ones were at the moment. Or how they
were going to get across the river now that the bridges with moving spans were
all raised and the handful of static crossings were blocked by Portland police,
soldiers, or a combination thereof. Fight or flight instincts had kicked in for
most of those unlucky enough to have their lunch break or downtown shopping junket
cut short by the violence and ongoing random attacks that had all but completely
shut down the entire business core. Therefore, initially, the people transiting
the sidewalk had been no help whatsoever—blinders on and alone in their own
little mental worlds.

For Don the whole ordeal from the initial surprise attack to
him drawing his final breath had lasted all of three minutes and sixteen
seconds. Which was an eternity considering his long legs had become twisted
underneath the spilled office chair, an unforeseen event leaving him off
balance and helpless to fight off the two scruffy men.

In the first frenzied seconds as he hollered at the
attackers and fell off his chair, pain flared in his right forearm and his hand
went numb. The bites suffered there, now an angry shade of bluish purple, were
overshadowed by the fact that three digits of his right hand were now in the stomach
of one of his attackers. And as all of this had been taking place, the other
attacker had gone to work on his neck, biting the fist-sized chasm responsible for
the blood coating the floor and, ultimately, Don’s rapid death.

However, Don did not die easy. Immediately following the virus-tainted
blood’s entry into his brain, he felt every nerve ending in his body suddenly
come alive. Thankfully this phase of the turn was quickly overcome by the onset
of chills that racked his body with tremors even as hunks of flesh were being
rent from his arms, neck, and face. The pulses of mind-numbing cold lasted only
until the blood gushing from his destroyed carotid bulb slowed to a trickle and
his heart fluttered weakly one final time and went still in his chest.

***

Now, a minute and thirty seconds later, with his left cheek
pressed firmly against the wall below the left-side sliding glass, and his neck
bent at a near impossible right-angle, Don was starting to reanimate. All five
fingers on his left hand began vibrating subtly. Next they curled up
reflexively into a fist. Then his eyes snapped open only to see up close the
random linear patterns and grapefruit-sized spot worn into the unfinished wood
where his left knee usually rested. And though it didn’t register as anything
but a few white blurry blobs, there were multiple pieces of chewing gum pressed
under the window sill. As the thing that used to be called Don pushed off the
floor with both mutilated hands splayed out in the pooled blood, all it felt
was the pang in its gut telling it to feed. Because through feeding, the deadly
virus reproducing inside of him and already present and concentrated in his
saliva would be transferred to the next host. And so on, and so forth.

Much like Don in his present form, the virus possessed no
emotion or feelings one way or the other where life or death was concerned. It
just needed to do what it did best—keep the chain reaction going. It was engineered
by scientists to be ruthless in its attack on the body’s immune system. And
thanks to conditioning, the normalcy bias inherent in twenty-first-century man
made efficient its worldwide delivery.

Seeing movement out of the corner of his right eye, undead
Don got his legs under him, gripped the counter near his forehead with his
fully functioning left hand, and wormed what was left of the right between the
writhing creatures pressing down on him.

Flexing his legs and tensing corded back muscles—all still
somewhat toned, though nothing compared to when he was in playing shape and posting
up the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar—allowed him to get into a low squat and
find purchase with his bloody nubs on the sliding door. After that, standing
was easy. Eyes already searching out fresh meat, undead Don rose fully, in the
process racking his head on the low ceiling and inadvertently dumping the
undead street kids onto the cement floor.

The living corpse that had been Don felt nothing. Not the
fresh bloodless four-inch gash on the crown of his pallid forehead. Not the
exposed nerve endings where his fingers had been. Moreover, he had no feelings
one way or the other after sending his attackers sprawling onto the cement
outside the booth.

He only wanted to eat. So with an inner voice urging him on
with a chant more instinct-driven than verbal, following his new brethren, he
let his upper body hinge forward through the rectangular window. While a tight
fit for two bodies at once, undead Don’s head and torso fell through the
opening with ease, his hips and legs eventually following suit.

Hearing the hollow
thunks
of the bloody spectacles
spilling onto the garage floor, a trio of passerby at street level stopped and
stared down the ramp. Mouths forming capital O’s, to a person they remained
rooted in place for a quick beat before springing into action, one of them
stopping a passing ambulance while the rest moved other pedestrians aside as it
began backing up to the entry.

Attention drawn to the top of the ramp by the beeping of the
ambulance’s back-up warning and the presence of silhouetted human forms, the three
living corpses snarled and rose up off the ground. And if the silent subliminal
chant jumping synapses in the primordial part of undead Don’s brain was to come
out in words instead of the raspy growl rattling his diaphragm,
want, need,
eat
would be echoing loudly off the parking garage ceiling as he locked
onto the meat milling in the colorful splash of the strobing ambulance lights.