Riding The Apocalypse (10 page)
“Oh, sorry, Senator Riley, the guy who originally wanted to send the medical—”
“I know who he is,” I interrupted. What I didn’t know was why Riley was in her office, using her phone. And why the hell did she call him Michael? Was that the new guy? It all made sense now. Emily was seeing the senator, and she was going to her office to meet him on Sunday thinking he would protect her and her mom. No wonder she hadn’t mentioned Riley by name earlier. He was married.
“So I guess
his
phone works then, huh?” Buell asked sarcastically.
“Buell.” She sighed. “After he yelled at Evans about the virus getting out of control, his phone cut out, then Mich—uh, Senator Riley threw the phone at my mirror. I left after I saw the mirror break, and haven’t seen him since.”
“So the senator was in on it?” Max asked.
“Yes, the senator was yelling at Dr. Evans about overdoing the dosage or something. I think they were in it together but there were others involved too…”
“Man, the senator is gonna be public enemy number one now that your mom is exposing them,” Buell said.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, I thought. I wondered what Emily was thinking about as she heard herself talk about her boyfriend, or lover, or whatever the fuck she called him. The thing was, I could not believe it, but I was feeling sorry for her. It was dark outside now, and Emily looked so worn out that I tried to change the subject. We had all had a long day.
“Emily, I appreciate you came here for me, and I love you for it,” I blurted out.
Did I just say
love
?
“But you are here now and I can’t drive you back at the moment,” I said, looking around me. “Still you are safe with us and very welcome,” I added as I kneeled in front of her and put my hands on her knees.
“Thank you, Rem, I didn’t expect you to bring me back, I am just glad you are safe,” she said, putting her head down in her hands, and placing them against mine. Her hair slowly flowed over our twined hands.
I felt guilty, guilty she had come, guilty for pressing her so hard for information. She had obviously been through a lot and I was glad to see her, but damn it, Senator Riley? That smug fucker?
I swallowed my pride, slowly lifted her head, and put my hand on her cheek to assure her I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.
“Okay, Em, that is enough for tonight. I say we get something to eat and watch a movie and relax. We can’t do much tonight anyway,” I said in a solemn voice. I stood up and looked out the dark window at the slowly moving shadows beyond the gate. “I could use a drink.”
“Yeah, if you guys don’t mind, I think I am gonna just crash in one of these cars for tonight, and leave in the morning.” Ed spoke as he looked out the window.
I had five customer cars in the shop, two of them SUV’s, so there was plenty of room for everyone to bunk. I also had the couch in the waiting room, and a love seat in my office.
“You think those bastards will be here by tomorrow?” Max asked, looking in Ed’s direction.
“All I know is they are fanning out from downtown and other places, but the odds they’ll come down this street by tomorrow morning seem remote,” Ed said. “Hell, nobody finds this street the first time,” he added chuckling to himself.
“Damn, two good ones in one night, impressive, Ed,” Buell added.
“How about
Shawshank,
guys?” Buell said as he headed into the customer waiting room where I had a handful of DVD’s on the shelf above a thirty-two inch flat screen TV. I kept it for customers who were waiting for their cars, and a DVD player was hooked up to it. “We can draw the blinds and watch it in here.”
“I’m sick of that movie,” Max jabbed.
“How can you be so obtuse?” Buell answered with a grin.
I think we all got that one, even Emily.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “No reason to sit in fear all night. If we are quiet, we should be fine. Max, can you help me put a car cover over the office glass to keep the light from bleeding outside?”
“You got it, Rem,” Max said as he trotted into the dimly lit garage.
“We need a guard. I’ll watch the gate ’till after Andy gets violated, I don’t like that part anyway. But then I do wanna see that guy get the shit beat out of him by Hadley, so don’t let me miss it,” Ed said as he took a folding chair and headed up the metal stairs to the roof access hatch. “Gonna go have a smoke and watch from the top. Buell, you spell me before that part.”
“I’ll make sure he does, and thanks for taking the first shift. You need anything while you are up there?” I asked.
“Nope, I got my smokes. There’s enough moonlight to see the fence, and I got a flashlight if I hear anything funny. If I see anything, I will come get ya.”
I headed to my office to get another chair, and the bottle of Buffalo Trace I had in my desk. Max came back with the tape and car covers, and Buell and I went to work. Max headed to the vending machines, while Emily sat in the waiting room trying to fix herself in the reflection of the TV.
“Max, grab some extra sodas, will ya?”
“No problem, Buell, I’ll get the popcorn too.”
On the television, I watched Red approach Andy, who was sanding the deck of an old boat on the beach in Zihuatanejo. I held the tumbler with two fingers of Buffalo Trace in one hand, and Emily’s hand in the other. Her hand felt warm on my skin, and her head, nestled on my chest, felt even warmer. I embraced this moment of pure contentment. I started to drift to sleep.
“I need to go, Rem,” a voice said softly in my ear.
I thought I was dreaming for a moment until I heard Emily say it again.
“What? Why?” I asked snapping upright.
Emily and I sat together on the couch, and I noticed we were the only ones still awake in the room. Buell was asleep on chair cushions laid along the counter, and Max was on the roof keeping watch. Ed had left to go sleep in a customer’s Escalade shortly after Boggs got the shit beat out of him in the movie.
Her eyes started to tear, she pulled her sleeve up to the elbow then sat straight up. “I am so sorry,” Emily whimpered, “it happened when I picked up my mom to bring her to the office. It was Mr. Hanson, her mailman. I tried to get away, but he bit me as I pushed off.”
I was mortified. A chill ran down my spine, and I felt my neck tighten. My mind began to race as I considered the consequences of what I was seeing. The bite was faint, but you could see the imprint clearly. The wound had a slight curve and the teeth marks were not deep, but definitive. The skin had indeed been broken, and dried blood congealed around the wound just below the elbow.
I stroked her hair while I peered down at her arm. The wound looked red and swollen as I studied it closer. No wonder her hand was so warm, she was feverish.
“But you don’t know for sure,” I said, not actually believing my own words.
“I can feel it, Remy. I have a fever. I feel it coursing through me. I know I have to go now, Remy. I just wanted to tell you about the vaccine, and tell you I loved you one more time, and say I am sorry,” she said softly.
I was at a loss for words. All I could do was feel anger at Dr. Evans and that fucking senator. How could they do this?
Why
would they do this?
“Damn it, Emily, why did you leave me on Sunday?” I shouted before I could stop myself.
Buell immediately woke, twisted, then fell off the counter. He ricocheted off the cushion-less chairs below him, then hit the coffee table, and rolled off onto the floor, taking a few issues of
Popular Mechanics
along for the ride.
“What the!” Buell cried.
“I wanted to get my mom, Rem, and I…I…just needed to talk to Michael. I knew there was something going on with him, Remy. I suspected something, and I wanted to know if I was right.”
I shook my head and lowered it into my hands, covering my face.
Letting go of Emily seemed to change her sorrow to rage as she sat up straight and screamed at me. “And anyway, you didn’t even ask me to stay! You just told me something from a fucking app about traffic!” Emily got up and left the customer lounge, running into my private office.
I felt like such an asshole: she was right.
What is it about us guys that we feel the need to keep our space? She had wanted me to be vulnerable, to need her, to want her to stay, and I pushed her out the door. She had been standing buck naked in my bedroom, and I told her to leave, alone. Damn it, she was right.
“Dude, you are going to go get—”
“I’m going, Buell,” I said as I headed to my office.
The door was still slightly ajar so I pushed it open gently and closed it behind me. I saw Emily curled up on the chair behind my desk, softly sobbing and holding the sleeve of my leather jacket, which was draped over the chair.
I just stood there for a moment, not knowing exactly what to say. I replayed those last few moments before she left in my mind as I looked at her coiled up in the chair.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I should have offered to come with you or asked you to come with me. I was confused. I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Remy,” Emily said as she sat up straight and tried to compose herself. “Can you see that now? I am not blaming you for anything, Rem, but it is too late to talk this out. What is done is done. I am leaving, and I need to do it soon before I hurt you all.” She wiped her tears with my jacket and turned her eyes directly to mine.
“No, fuck it, it does matter. All right, Rem, I am blaming you!” she yelled as she grabbed the leather jacket from the back of my chair and slapped it on the desk in front of me. Papers and a few pens flew into the air as the jacket cracked loudly on the desk.
I tried to move slowly toward her, but she put her hands up and kicked the desk, propelling the office chair and herself to the back corner of the office.
“Why couldn’t you ever just come with me? Ever?” she said softly.
All of a sudden, Emily stopped crying.
I will never forget the image of Emily in the corner of the office. Sitting in the chair, knees against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, teeth biting the denim of her jeans, with the elbow wound in full view. The wound looked bright red in the light, and was turning black around the edges.
The wound defined her, it almost seemed to glow. She wasn’t Emily anymore.
I resisted the urge to go to her and stood there stoically, not moving a muscle. I must have looked like I was waiting at a bus stop. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to handle this. All I could think about as I looked at her injury was that Son of a Bitch Riley. How could he let this happen to her? My beautiful Emily.
Almost as if Emily read my mind, she spoke. “I know where he is going,” she said, her look void of emotion. “I mean, if he got away, I know where he is going.”
“How do you—”
“He told me, Rem. He told me where he was going. He asked me to go with him. I called him when I went to pick up Mom, and he asked me to go. Do you hear me, Rem?” she said with a slightly raised voice. “Michael asked me to go with him,” she said with the emphasis on the word “Michael.”
Those words cut me deeply. I sank down on the sofa table behind me. I heard the candy dish break as I sat, but I paid it no attention. I just stared at the floor, arms folded across my chest. I could not look at her. I felt so sorry for not being the man she wanted me to be. I felt sorry about a lot of things.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Figure it out, Remy, for once show some initiative,” she said, coughing as she spoke. “He was headed to his late father’s office supply store in Monterey. When he asked me to go with him, he said we would be safe at the store. Michael said there was a loft above the store, it had an independent well, and food—”
“What’s the name?” I interrupted, starting to understand why she was telling me this.
“It is called Riley’s Office Supplies and Distribution,” Emily said as she smiled and winced simultaneously. “Babe, I don’t feel good,” she added as she twisted her arm to see the wound’s progress.
I slowly walked toward Emily and her eyes tracked me. I kneeled down beside her, put my hand on her right knee, and smiled. I tried not to look at her festering arm while again covering the wound with her sleeve, then kissed her forehead.
“It’s okay, Em, it’s going to be okay.”
She knew what I meant. I was going, she knew it and wanted it.
“I didn’t go with him, you know that now, Rem, right? I could have gone with him, instead I came for you,” Emily said, starting to cry again. “I chose you, Remy,” she said with a tremulous smile.
“Baby, I know, I know.”
“I am just so tired now, Rem. I love you, Remy, I don’t want to fight anymore, can we stop?” she pleaded softly.
“I love you too, Em,” I said, stroking her hair.
I could feel tears running down my face after she said she chose me, not Senator Asshole.
Her blue eyes looked darker, almost purple, and her once beautiful skin was graying to a pasty white. I ran my hand over her head, stroked her hair, and watched her die.
