Safari - 02 (7 page)

“I have… guilt,” Gus muttered.

Oh no, you don’t. You
say
you do, but who are you talking to here? Hmm? I’m the only thing rattling around in here, and I can sure as shitfingers say there ain’t no guilt––nothing in here but us chickens. Don’t know what’s come over you, but you’ve gone different, Gus, ol’ son. You’ve gone
bad
. Sad thing is you crossed the line without even blinking.

“They tried to kill me first,” he said.

And that makes everything just cushy? Hmm? All square? Oh wait, you didn’t just take a life, did you? You killed a
shitload
of people. I mean, Charlie Bronson would’ve been fucking impressed with the way you handled that shotgun! And it was all self-defense. That, and the booze, right? Lucky you to have all those excuses.

“Yeah.”

You
know
what the good book says about killers
.

“Yeah.”

You’re Hell bound, ol’ son. No denyin’ it.

“Guess not,” Gus said. His cheek throbbed.

Anything to say?

“Yeah, fuck off..

To his relief, the inner voice shut up and left him alone. What was he supposed to do? Nothing? They had come to kill him—that was a certainty—but he killed them first. He supposed he was going to Hell, but he wasn’t a bad person. He had taken in Scott and Roxanne without asking for anything in return. How would that measure up against his slaying of real people? Wouldn’t that balance things?

It was something to think about, and Gus thought better about such things when he was drunk.

5

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, Gus inspected the snowy mountain road and decided to chance driving into town in the pickup. He’d cleaned his mouth out with the anti-septic, then inspected the stitches, the scabs on his face, and his fading yellow-black bruises. The last few days were nothing more than a drunken blur, smeared and spotted with sound bites. Yesterday, he’d tried not to drink, but by early afternoon, his mouth was so dry and the
need
for a shot of
something
became so bad that he drank just to quell it. He chose amber rum and gulped it down like fiery tea, the taste leaving him shivering, but much better. He didn’t even put any cola into it anymore, and that thought was enough to sober him up for all of an hour.

Then he’d
really
started to chug it.

As he suited up in the garage, he looked at the new bottle of Jack Daniels in his locker. He’d only just placed it there, but shaking his head, he pulled it out and opened it. He took two mouthfuls before screwing the cap back on and hefting the bottle. He still hurt in places, and the booze was the only painkiller he had. However, taking the bottle with him was only exacerbating another problem he was slowly becoming aware of.
Don’t be stupid
, his mind warned, but he dismissed it. The only stupid thing he’d done in the last month was taking in Scott and Roxanne. Alone was best. When Scott left, Gus had been disappointed and actually missed the time-obsessed man.

“Yeah, he was all right.” Christ almighty, he was talking to a rum bottle, and he knew that had to be cause for worry. Then, there was Roxanne. The bitch had not only tried to kill him, but also brought her gang to his house.

Just don’t be stupid. Again
.

“Don’t you worry,” Gus said. “Don’t you worry one bit.”

He took the bottle with him.

*

Another overcast sky and Gus believed that it had been a very long time now without any sunlight. It was as if Scott had taken the sun with him. Gus got aboard the pickup and dropped the ninja mask on the passenger seat, along with the bat and Benelli shotgun. His mission was simple in concept, but fucked up in execution. Painkillers. He needed painkillers, something besides the booze, but he didn’t know what the really powerful ones were. Antibiotics would be helpful, too, but again, he simply didn’t possess the knowledge to dose himself.

But he knew where to go to find out—Acadia University.

Located in the Wolfville part of the city, the school had been known for its business college and well-respected Arts program. The university had also opened an extensive school of dentistry on the compact campus. He was sure he could find a textbook listing what he needed. If the internet had been still functional, he could easily go online and find the information, but it wasn’t, so he had to get old fashioned.

Gus peered through the open garage door at the frosty white that covered the land. It wasn’t snowing, but it could start anytime, and there were certainly a few blizzards in store for the area. He questioned heading down into Annapolis at all, when he could just as well hole up for the month and just let time do its healing thing to his body. That would be the sensible thing to do. Guaranteed. There was a reason why he avoided the Acadia area of the city. Zombies were usually tidal, but some seemed to linger in places they felt a connection to––some ungodly attraction to certain places where they once had a daily routine they steadfastly adhered to when they were alive. Gus wasn’t sure what to call it, a muscle memory perhaps? Perhaps a spark of yearning fed by some ghostly residue of life.

Or maybe it was just a good place to hunt.

Whatever it was, the few times he had driven through Wolfville and the main drag going by the university, he had always had to be on extra guard. Deadheads populated the place, and because the university didn’t really possess a lot of material, scavengers like himself weren’t attracted to the place. There wasn’t much to take from there to increase survival of the apocalypse. As a result, the dead, left unchecked, seemed much thicker there. Acadia once had a student population of several thousand, plus the staff.

Gus rubbed a hand across his forehead. He intended to stay away from the residences and the science halls. The university library was just off the main road, and he knew a person could enter it through the Beveridge Arts Center, or the BAC as the student body once referred to it. He even remembered a better way to get in, away from all of the main entrances, just across an open field that blazed green and white in the summertime and exploded with color in the fall. The lower floor was comprised of a wall of windows, and no doubt some or all would be smashed. With luck, he could drive right up to the lower level and crawl in through a window. The cold weather would slow the dead, and if he did come into contact with any gimps, he had five full magazines for the Ruger, in addition to the one currently in the pistol. He mentally thanked the Lord for helping him find the extra weapons. They had served him well thus far. Perhaps when he was healed up and functioning better, he would find another cache of firearms in Annapolis. Perhaps even something better. Anything was possible.

He stared at the wall. Was he really going to go to Acadia? In the condition he was in?

To answer his own question, he put the truck in gear and drove out to the main gate.

The truck bounced and caused him some discomfort as he rattled down over the white road. He turned onto the highway and soon came upon the corpse in the road. The meat pie. He slowed and divided his attention between the highway and the body that reminded him of a frost-glazed, empty dish.

Under a blanket of snow, the carcass lay still. That suited him fine. He stepped on the brake, and he let the truck idle for a moment, while he considered getting out, dusting the guy off, and checking on him up close. But that little voice in Gus’s head told him not to even think about it, to stay in the truck.

Gus heeded the voice and drove away. Thoughts lingered in his head, however, of doing another experiment to see what was happening to the dead. That mystery remained unsolved. He believed wild dogs were dragging them off and perhaps even feeding on them. What would that do to the dogs? Would it affect them somehow? Would they change into something other than dogs? Gus hoped to hell not, and knew that he would have to look into the matter in greater earnest sooner rather than later. He’d have to solve the mystery before it killed him.

The truck rumbled along the highway, past familiar landmarks and into the heart of the valley and Annapolis. The houses became more numerous, and he remembered a time when everything would have been covered in Christmas decorations. Snowmen, wooden reindeer, and waving Santas would have populated many a front lawn. In Gus’s mind, nothing made a cold night warmer than the festive glow of Christmas lights. He envisioned kids rolling huge snowballs for winter forts or snow people, saw neighbours hanging wreaths and greeting each other, asking them to drop by during the holidays for a mug of apple cider or something with a little more punch.

All gone.

Feeling the ache in his cheek, he made the necessary turns to get to Wolfville’s main street. He passed several antiquated bed and breakfasts and one or two larger hotels, the frames glazed in snow and appearing haunted. Roadside parks with frozen duck ponds and abandoned picnic tables and chairs came into view. The empty-looking houses, desolate storefronts with smashed out windows, and unkempt grounds could have been frozen by a nuclear winter. Christmas was over in the valley.

Something grabbed his attention… the lack of footprints in the snow.

That was a gift in itself.

Cold slowed them, Gus knew from previous winters. It slowed down the eaters of flesh to a point where the city merely appeared as a ghost town instead of a hunting ground. Gus made the mental note––once his ribs were healed, he’d go on a hunt. Winter was the time to kill the dead, to decimate their numbers and take back a little of what they had stolen. Even the ones inside houses were affected by the cold. The deadhead back at the hardware store was the first runner that wasn’t chilled by the drop in the temperature, and that was enough to set him wondering why. Perhaps the zombie had been only recently turned.

Regardless, Gus figured the ongoing decay of the bodies factored in as well. It was a crime they didn’t rot away into nothing, which would have made things much easier for the survivors. Instead, the dead seemed to rot to a point where they just shambled about, willing their bones into movement. Some were worse than others, but whatever the virus was that had killed and reanimated them, it would not allow them to crumble into dust.

Not until their brains were bashed in, anyhow.

He drove down the section of Main Street populated with savaged grocery and convenience stores, restaurants, and coffee shops. The once-vibrant avenue was as stark as a scorched rib cage. Glass windows were long since smashed out, and doors were either broken down or hung off hinges, just a touch away from dropping off their wrecked frames. A sign denoting a pharmacy caught his attention. The shattered front window allowed him to glimpse a looted interior, but he would still return and check it out.

An intersection loomed before him, with a dark church on the left and a service station on the right. The Beveridge Arts Center lay just beyond and stood like a four-story bunker. Made of red brick and steel, the center looked like a chunk of meat suffering from freezer burn. Gus drove past and spotted the building he’d come for, next to the BAC.

The library wasn’t as robust looking as the Arts Center, but its brick and mortar construction still looked stout. The building was partially hidden by tall, thick trunks of elms, whose frosted skeletal limbs stabbed at the sky and made everything look all the more eerie. He edged the vehicle ahead until he spotted the utility road that split the university grounds. The tree limbs connected overhead to form a snowy tunnel of sorts, and the road went right up to the concrete foundation of the library.

The sound of crisp snow squeaking under tires reached his ears as he drew up beside the building and slowed to a stop. He turned the truck around so that it was pointed in the direction of the main road if a quick exit was needed. Gus got out of the truck, hefted his shotgun, and studied the broken glass of the lower windows. Inside, dark cubicles where students once parked themselves during library hours appeared scarred by the elements, and darker rows of bookshelves, still intact and full of books, could be made out past those.

That surprised him for a moment, but why would people ramshackle a library during an apocalypse? Fuel for fires maybe? Gus couldn’t think of anything else. He put the bat in the sheath. God help him if he had to swing the thing. Even the shotgun seemed inappropriate, and he thought that the silencer––or sound suppressor, as Scott had once told him––would be better for a straightforward infiltration. Still, he brought the big gun along, drawing comfort from its weight and power.

Feeling the cold, he moved to a concrete loading area located near the corner of the building closest to the BAC. The snow under his boots squeaked with each step, cutting the silence and eventually grating on his nerves. The temperature had dropped further, and Gus noticed it most around his bare face and the way his sinuses seemed to seize up with every breath.

The white loading door leading into the library didn’t have a knob and apparently opened from the inside, which Gus thought was fucking stupid. He climbed onto the platform and placed his back to the wall. Taking a shallow breath, he leaned over to peer through a broken window. Jagged fangs of glass lined the frame. The gloves he wore were his summer ones, and he frowned at his bare fingers. With a huff, he laid down the Benelli and took out the bat. He raked the bat the length of the frame, sending glass fragments flying. Once finished, he tucked the bat away, picked up the shotgun, and carefully climbed through the opening.

It was just as cold inside as out. The library contained six floors, if he recalled correctly. It had been a while since he was contracted as extra help in painting the interior of the building, but he had worked there for close to two months. Gus regarded a wall of green metal drawers. A co-worker had once informed him that they contained very rare and valuable microfiche. Numerous booths with viewers filled the room as well, but he moved past them to go through the open door on the other side of the room. Creeping down the hall, he peered around a corner and saw the door with a single horizontal bar. He figured that exit led outside to the landing. In the other direction, the corridor darkened, with one distant wall made out of glass. Placing the butt of the Benelli against his shoulder, he slinked toward the glass wall. He turned right, following the direction of the hallway, and saw rows of empty computer terminals just beyond the glass partition. A moment later, he came upon a door with a sign designating the room as the student computer lab. Gus didn’t see anything of use inside, so he focused ahead on the deepening dark. The snow wasn’t squeaking underfoot anymore, but the gloom still played with his fears of things unseen and nubs of rotting teeth eager for meat.