Safari - 02 (6 page)

Just to be safe.

On the final trip inside the store, he found the extension cord he wanted, and something he hadn’t thought of, even though it was that time of year.

Christmas lights.

His gums were aching by the time he returned to the truck. More snow was beginning to fall in lazy, fluffy chunks. Tossing his newfound items into the cab, Gus started the machine and drove home.

*

For the rest of the afternoon, Gus made repairs to the house. In the garage, he cut the number of planks needed per his measurements, carried them to the smashed sliding door, and nailed them into place, boarding up the hole to the best of his ability. He placed caulking around the edges and hoped that would keep some of the cold out. Once the door was sealed, he draped a section of tent canvas over the bare wood and nailed that into place as well. He had no insulation for the new wall, and he had no idea of where to look for it. He then went to work on the windows in Scott’s old room, wondering where the dude had gotten himself over the last little while and hoping he was okay.

While he worked, Gus sipped on Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. The alcohol helped the pain. He even brought out a bottle of Captain Morgan, the same bottle that had survived the gunfight. The foppish sailor on the label grinned from where Gus placed him in the snow, and he looked back at the captain every now and again. He swore the bottle was watching him as he worked.

“What do you think?” he finally asked once he hammered in the last nail.

Looks good
, the captain replied.

Gus nodded. He knew the voice was inside his head, but damn if it wasn’t as clear as a bell. “Not much of a carpenter,” he added, eyeing the bottle.

You did good. Better than I would have.

That was probably true.

“How come you weren’t saying anything before?” Gus asked.

Because, lad, you weren’t listening right.

“Oh.” Somehow, that made sense to him.

He stopped when it became too dark, with the intention of finishing everything the next day. He had one more task to do before retiring and becoming comfortably shitfaced. Gathering up the captain, he took the bottle upstairs and pulled down the trapdoor in the ceiling; the folding steps were the same style as the ones he and Scott had used in another house not so long ago. He unfolded the steps, smelling dampness, and climbed up into the attic. A single skylight illuminated one section of the attic in silver, and Gus easily found what he wanted.

Within an hour, he had the tree covered in lights and decorated with Christmas bulbs of red, blue, green, and gold. He placed the tree directly in front of the sliding door to conceal the bare wood, and the addition brightened the room considerably.

“Whattaya think, eh?” Gus asked the captain.

The bottle lay on the sofa, facing the tree. The officer grinned.

“It’s nice, ain’t it? Now, wait for it…”

Gus stooped and picked up a cord from the floor. He flipped the switch, and the tree blazed warmly. He stepped back toward the sofa, getting out of Captain Morgan’s view, and simply stood and gawked at it in merry, shitfaced fashion.

“Nice,” Gus said with a satisfied smile.

The captain agreed.

Nodding, Gus took another sip of Jack Daniels. He had a case of Irish Cream in the basement and thought that he would go about drinking some of that for the rest of the evening. He’d probably be sick enough to wish he was a deadhead in the morning, but that was the morning––a long time away. The dead outside had been consumed enough by flames to allow him to close the gate for the night, and the glow from the festive lights lifted his spirits. He could probably spare some electricity and turn on the upstairs stereo as well and maybe play a CD of Christmas music if he could find one.

After changing into warmer, fresher clothes, he dug into a can of beef soup, chasing the meal with whiskey.

The captain had mysteriously appeared on the kitchen island to watch him eat.

Gus regarded the bottle and couldn’t remember moving it. Oddly enough, the captain’s appearance didn’t bother him, nor did the staring.

You okay?
the captain finally asked.

Gus nodded. “I’m fine. I’m home. My goddamn gums hurt. My goddamn ribs hurt. And allow me to point out, just in case you haven’t noticed, that my goddamn
face
hurts, too. I’m gonna check the goddamn bucket tomorrow just to see if I shit out that goddamn lucky horseshoe of mine. If I do, I’m staying inside for the rest of the goddamn winter. If I don’t, well… I don’t know what I’ll do. But it’ll probably have something to do with the—” He suppressed a burp. “—the windows in the rooms here. Gotta board that up. Just consider us lucky that them bastards never shot the place up that bad. Could’ve been a lot worse, buddy. A
lot
worse,” he ended with another spoon-jab at the sailor.

You need to fix them doors
.

“That’s right,” Gus agreed. “Good point. I’ll get on that tomorrow too. Definitely… maybe.”

He went on eating, studying the grinning features of the officer until the captain spoke again.

You need to finish the house, too. Pronto.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Gus warned. “I got other bottles with pictures on ‘em down below. Just my luck you had to be a dude. Why couldn’t you be like a chick in a bikini or somethin’? Topless even.”

You mean like Roxanne?

“Bein’ an asshole.” Gus shook his head. “Don’t mention her ever again. Okay?”

That time, the captain kept his thoughts to himself.

“Better,” Gus grumped. “After this, I’m gonna get me some of that Irish Cream from the basement. Yeah, that’s the shit. Get me some of that and get all comfortable on the sofa. Howzat sound? Good, eh? I know.”

He took half of a deep breath before his ribs warned him not to go all the way. “Christ, I’m a mess.” Leaving the empty bowl on the island, Gus took the captain by the neck and carried him into the living room, the multi-colored lights warming it better than solar power and doing much for his overall state-of-smashed mind.

“Nice,” Gus muttered. He put the captain down on a nearby sofa chair, facing the tree. He saw no need to deprive the old sailor of such a sight, despite the guy’s being a nagging prick at the supper table. The Irish Cream resurfaced in his mind, so he went downstairs, brought up two large bottles of the liqueur, and placed them on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Gus then sat down, exhaling wearily, and cracked open one of the bottles. He drank straight from the bottle, luxuriating in the creamy coffee taste of the drink, his eyes slipping shut in drunken appreciation.

“Nicer,” he said, noting that his hurts weren’t hurting so bad at all anymore. It had to be the booze. And the Christmas tree.

“And the company,” he said to the bottle in the sofa chair, and the captain grinned back. Gus’s attention rolled back to the tree and its hypnotizing glow.

Christmas
, he thought in drunken wonder.

How the hell had he forgotten
that
?

He drank a toast to the memory of the season. Somewhere between the first and second bottle of Irish Cream, the Ghosts of Christmas Past appeared. The smell of a roasting turkey wafting in from the kitchen made him smile. More memories unlocked themselves from Gus’s mind, of parents and friends no longer with him, yet his smile did not fade, and as time went on, the more intoxicated he got. He toasted them all and drank to the New Year, hoping for all the best. A sense of wellness flowed through him, relaxing him more with each sip, and did not diminish.

When he finally passed out, he escaped to a dream where the captain played his fiddle. Clapping hands accompanied the old sailor’s tune while ethereal toes tapped on bare wood floors, accompanying Gus into the dark.

*

Gus woke up to a predawn, ash-coloured morning and wished for death. His head ached so badly that he thought a mini-zombie might have wormed into his ear during the night. He opened his mouth, which felt as if someone had filled it with wood glue. Tasting his own morning breath, he almost grossed himself out to the point of puking. He hoped his gums weren’t infected and that the smell was nothing more than an after-effect of not brushing… for how long? How long had it been since he had flossed? The answer to that grossed him out even more. He remembered Tammy once giving him a hard time about not flossing; she’d vowed never to kiss him again unless he started doing so on a regular basis. That threat had been enough to get him started on it, but after a while he stopped again. Then, he had to pay a visit to Doctor Hool. The young dentist delighted in displaying what he had hooked from between his gums, magnified to stomach-turning clarity under the light of a microscope. That sight had been enough to make Gus start flossing and using mouthwash every day.

Grimacing, he staggered upstairs to the bathroom and plopped down on the bucket. There was no way he was going to freeze his ass getting to the outhouse. Finishing his business, he made his way back downstairs and eventually slunk into the kitchen. The captain was on the island, smiling in sympathy.

“Fuck off,” Gus growled, but then stopped in his tracks. How the hell did the bottle get into the kitchen? He studied the bright sailor for a moment before looking back toward the living room, as if it might jar his memory of bringing and leaving the bottle on the island. He couldn’t recall doing any such thing, but scoffed at anything else.

“Anyone in here?” he yelled. “Hey! Anyone?”

He waited. If anyone was in the house, they would surely pounce soon, while his head felt like a cavity and his stomach rolled like a bad sea at night.

On the table, the captain beamed merrily at him.

“Whatever,” Gus said to the bottle and shuffled to the fridge to get a jug of water. He guzzled it down and felt it light up the stitches in his mouth. He took the jug with him as he moved into the downstairs bathroom. Once there, he grabbed a bottle of anti-septic mouthwash, and for the next minute, he soaked and gargled. Flossing came next, in and around his molars, and he took great care not to disturb his stitches.

Feeling like a lazy tide had a hold of him, Gus drifted back into the living room. The curtains were closed, but he could still feel a draft coming from the boarded-up section. He had to get a few little things done around the house, but first, he flopped down on his sofa. In a flash of memory, he saw the men who had attacked him lying dead on his floor, the smell of discharged weapons in the air.

One blink swiped the vision away, like a hand squeaking over a dirty windshield. Breakfast. He needed something in him before he got to work, but breakfast was out in the kitchen.

“Honey,” he called out to the captain. “Make me up some scrambled eggs, will ya?”

No answer.

His strength sapped, Gus rolled over and lay on his side. He smacked his lips and, as easy as that, slipped into sleep.

*

He woke up with a jolt, feeling hands around his ankles. He kicked his bare feet out and used the weight to swing himself into an upright position. The movement made his ribs sparkle, and he hissed, placing a hand to the afflicted area.

“Shit.” He took shallow breaths and looked around the living room. Melancholy light seeped around the curtains, and Gus took a moment to simply sit and have a morning moment in the afternoon. He reached for the water jug and drank a third of what remained.

Eventually, he decided to get something to eat. Things needed to be done, and they weren’t going to do themselves, unless whatever the hell had transported the captain into the kitchen decided to help him out a little further.

About twenty minutes later, a can of chicken soup was ready, along with a drink of rum and coke, mixed three parts booze and one part cola. He ate his soup from the pot, staring off against the captain. The naval officer didn’t seem too impressed with him this day for falling asleep when he should have been repairing and further fortifying his position, but Gus wouldn’t let himself feel any guilt over the wasted morning.

“I’ll get on it.”

The captain smirked.
I’ve heard that before. Some deadheads could be out there right now, about to bang on the front door. You’d sure as hell move then. Wouldn’t you?

“Let ‘em come. I ain’t scared of ‘em anymore.”

The bright officer had nothing to say to that.

For the rest of the day, under a cloudy sky, Gus finished the repairs on the house. He couldn’t do anything with the door knobs the raiders had chopped off when they penetrated the interior, so he braced the doors with two-by-fours. He boarded up the holes in the doors with planks and filled the creases with caulking, hoping to keep out any drafts. Fixing the house, he thought of the countless Science Fiction stories he’d read as a kid and felt a twinge of nostalgia. He was repairing his ship after successfully repulsing an alien attack. There were losses and he hadn’t come away unharmed, but he was alive. That was a hell of a lot more than could be said for the ones lying at the base of…

He paused, standing in front of the main door and thinking about the mound of dead at the base of his mountain. His parents had taught him that he could do without religion as long as he stayed true to the ten basic rules the Lord had set down. The big one, the one he thought there was no going back from, was the “No killing” commandment. Killing the dead was easy. They were dead. It was a mercy to put them down, to release them from whatever hell they were experiencing.

Killing the living wasn’t so easy.

Yet, he’d done it.

And he’d done it
well
. He held up a hand and examined it, noting the slight quiver. The shaking wasn’t as bad, which was a small comfort, but on other days, his hands could be mistaken for divining rods, except they only became still when he drank.

Or killed, as he’d recently discovered.

Hell bound
, his mind told him.
You’re Hell bound, buster. Big time. What’s worse than killing those folks was the fact that you didn’t even repent. No guilt whatsoever.