Slowly We Rot (28 page)

          Noah shot a pointed
glance out the window.  “And you’re a slave master now, too.”

          “There are no more
slaves.”

          “You freed them all?”

          She nodded.  “Something
like that.”

          Noah chuckled after
gulping more whiskey.  “Oh, yeah?  What do you call Miranda then?”

          “A gift.  Something
nice to soothe your troubled soul.”

          “She’s a human being.”

          “She doesn’t matter. 
Let it go.”

          Noah grabbed the
whiskey bottle and took a long drink straight from the neck, wiping his lips
when he was done.  “What happened after you told me about Nick the first time? 
I must have been very angry.”

          She nodded.  “You
were.  Things got scary.”

          “What happened?”

          Aubrey shook her head,
her features softening.  There was a hint of deep sympathy in the set of her
eyes.  “You don’t really want to know.”

          To his surprise, Noah
realized she was right.  He’d heard all he cared to hear about that night.  Nor
did he wish to contemplate how he’d managed to stomach Nick’s company after all
that.  He’d obviously lost the memory to blackout, but there was more to it
than that.  Whatever that was, he didn’t need to know.  It was all over and
done with now anyway.

          He grunted.  “I can’t judge
you, Aubrey.  This is a hard world to live in these days.  You did what you
felt like you had to do.  And you’re entitled to whatever emotions you
experienced.  I love you no matter what.  I always will.”

          “And I love you, baby
brother.”

          A deep well of sadness
rose up in Noah and he spent the next several minutes sobbing.  Aubrey sat
through it all in silence.  Once he finally had himself under control again, he
drank more of the whiskey.  Before long the bottle was empty and Aubrey called
for another, which soon arrived.  Two drinks into the second bottle, Noah announced
he had to piss.  Aubrey called for Miranda again, who escorted him to a
bathroom.

          While taking a very
long piss, Noah’s brain roiled with all the things Aubrey had told him.  He
felt dizzy and had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from falling over. 
Waves of nausea assailed him.  It was a wonder he didn’t vomit all over the
toilet.

          Aubrey was still seated
at the little table when Miranda returned Noah to the library.  He dropped into
the same chair as before and stared fuzzily at his sister a long moment before
saying, “I don’t think I can stay here.”

          Aubrey’s face crumpled
a little at this pronouncement, but she nodded.  “That may be for the best.   I’ll
miss you, Noah.  I really will.”

          “And I’ll miss you,” he
said softly, emotion swelling within him again.  “Jesus, maybe I
shouldn’t
go.”

          Aubrey shrugged.  “You
can stay here and rot in luxury with me or you can resume your quixotic quest. 
The choice is entirely up to you.  Even if you go, you’ll be back someday, I’m
sure.  And then we’ll never part again.”

          Noah struggled to hold
back more tears as he stared at his sister’s face.  She had never looked so
beautiful.  It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her looking like this—clean
and clad in nice clothes—since before the end of the world.  And back then she
had been a girl on the verge of becoming a woman.  In a way, he was really
seeing her for the first time.

          A single tear began to
track down his cheek.

          And then he frowned.

          Aubrey frowned, too. 
“Something wrong?”

          Noah said nothing.  Something
odd was happening with Aubrey’s hair.  At first he dismissed it as a product of
his imagination, but then it happened again.  Something was
moving
in
her hair.  In a moment, a big brown beetle emerged, crawled partway down her
cheek, and then dropped to the table.  Aubrey appeared not to have noticed it,
nor to have felt the very large bug crawling around in her lush brown locks.

          But she did notice the
sick look on her brother’s face.  “What’s wrong, Noah?”

          He shook his head,
couldn’t say anything.  The bug moved in a tight, aimless little semicircle for
a moment before turning and moving across the table in Noah’s direction. 
Another wave of nausea assailed him.

          This time he couldn’t
hold the sickness back.

Noah grimaced as his eyes opened,
a throbbing ache making his head feel two times its normal size.  Any attempt
to turn his head even the tiniest increment resulted in a sharp lance of pain. 
The inside of his mouth was painfully dry and his tongue felt like a wedge of
dead, shriveled flesh.  Upon realizing something solid was gripped in his right
hand, he flicked his eyes in that direction.  The open bottle of whiskey was
almost empty, with maybe a finger’s width of amber liquid at the bottom.

          The booze was to blame
for his sorry condition.  There could be no denying that.  Well, the booze and
his bottomless desire for it.  On the other hand, a taste would help alleviate
the awful dryness in his mouth.  Also, there wasn’t much additional damage he
could do with so little alcohol.

          Bringing the bottle to
his mouth necessitated a focus of will that made him feel extra pathetic.  The required
physical effort initially seemed impossible.  The bottle felt like it weighed a
ton.  His hand shook uncontrollably and he had to fight to hold onto what felt
like Thor’s fucking hammer, only managing to do so when he at last was able to
grasp the bottle with his other hand as well.  Seemingly every movement,
regardless of how tiny, brought with it a fresh array of pains in new areas. 
His joints were as stiff and achy as those of an arthritic old man.

          At last, however, he
was able to get the bottle to his lips.  He upended it, tipping the whiskey
into his parched mouth.  A whimper of relief escaped his throat as the moisture
touched his tongue.  Unsurprisingly, a taste wasn’t nearly enough to quench the
terrible thirst consuming him.  He kept the bottle upended until it was empty. 
When he’d sucked the last drop of liquid from it, he relaxed his grip and the
bottle slipped free of his trembling hands.  He swept it to the floor when it
landed in his lap.

          This Herculean task
accomplished, he allowed his eyes to flutter shut again.  Things went fuzzy for
a few moments as he fell into a doze, but he did not return to a state of full
unconsciousness.  The throbbing in his head and the various other aches
throughout his body rendered the sanctuary of sleep unreachable.  Of the many
infringements on his comfort, his stiff neck might have been the worst of
them.  Of course, it hadn’t helped that he’d slept sitting up.

          Noah’s brow creased as
he thought about that.  He edged closer to full consciousness again.  Something
was amiss.  He’d been so intent on getting the bottle to his mouth that nothing
about his surroundings had registered.  His sleep-fuzzed vision hadn’t helped
in that regard, either.  He wasn’t sure why, but getting a fix on where he was
and his general situation suddenly seemed imperative.

          With a grimace of
effort, he forced his eyes open.  The first thing he saw was a shelf stuffed
full of old paperback pulp novels.  There were more shelves below and above
it.  For a moment, he was sure he was back at the mansion in Henryetta.  But he
wasn’t there anymore and hadn’t been for a while.  Some time had passed since
his departure.  How much he wasn’t sure, but it’d been weeks at least.  Time’s
passage was becoming more difficult to gauge than ever.  He existed in a
perpetual haze, stumbling ever closer to his ultimate destination as the days
and nights bled into each other in an endless blur.

          With another grimace of
effort, he craned his head about and took in his surroundings.  As he did this,
fragments of memory from the previous day came back to him.  He was in a small
used bookstore, sitting in a cramped, narrow aisle between shelves of books. 
His neck was resting against the edge of a shelf behind him.  It was little
wonder he felt so stiff and achy.

          The bookstore was in
yet another of the countless small towns he’d explored along the way.  Like
nearly all the other towns, it was an empty, haunted place.  He’d heard the
whispers of ghosts while strolling through its detritus-strewn streets.  That
these were the hushed voices of spirits rather than those of lurking survivors
was something he didn’t question.  He felt the truth of it in his bones.  In
this town, he had only the dead for company and he was fine with that.  After
his experiences in Henryetta and Jackson, he would be happy if he didn’t see
another living person until he reached Ventura.

          Apparently he’d crashed
into the bookcase behind him prior to sliding to the floor and passing out.  In
the process, dozens of books had tumbled off the shelves and he now sat in a
drift of old paperbacks.  The shelves had been crammed full of books—double stacks
and double rows—so there were a lot of them on the floor now.  He picked one up
at random and squinted at it.

          After staring at its
familiar cover in disbelief for many long moments, he laughed and flipped it
open and finally read the last chapter of
Shadow Rider
.  It didn’t take
long, maybe ten minutes, and it ended in a satisfying way, with the lone
avenger killing off the final bad guy before fading away into the night, never
to be seen again by anyone in the town.  The book was among his favorites of
the many westerns he’d read and he decided he’d like to keep a copy and maybe
read it again someday.

          He looked around for
his pack but didn’t see it anywhere in the aisle.  Heaving a sigh, he decided
it was high time he got his ass up and moving anyway.  Making that happen was a
grueling ordeal that ended with his entire body shaking and covered in sweat. 
He felt sick and might have thrown up if there’d been any food in his belly. 
But the important thing was he was back on his feet.  The copy of
Shadow
Rider
in hand, he went off in search of his pack and found it resting atop
a little checkout desk at the front of the store, along with his rifle and
utility belt.  Before tucking the book away in the pack, he set it on the desk
and grabbed his canteen.  Its weight told him it was about a third full.  He
screwed the cap off and took a long drink, nearly draining it.

          Groaning in relief, he
sagged against the desk and braced a palm on its surface to keep from falling
over.  He still felt shaky, but the water helped.  After taking a final gulp,
he screwed the cap back on the canteen and opened his pack.  He tucked the book
away and left the pack open.  He’d stumbled upon a mecca of old pulp material. 
He owed it to himself to spend some relatively sober time here picking some
books to take with him before he hit the road again.

          But he was still a
walking collection of aches and tremors.  He needed something extra to steady
him before looking at books.  Reaching into the pack again, he took out his
much-diminished bag of weed.  He’d started out with a pound, but he estimated
he had maybe a third that much now.  He hadn’t started smoking it in earnest
again until after leaving Henryetta.  The rate of depletion suggested that’d
been longer ago than he’d realized, beyond even the outside range of his
estimates.  It made him wonder what month it was now.  Standing there thinking
about it, he belatedly noted the slight chill in the air.  Summer was either
over or nearly over.  Of course, there would be significant temperature
variations depending on his geographical location.

          That was another
thing.  He didn’t know where he was.  It wasn’t just that he couldn’t remember
the name of the town.  He couldn’t remember what
state
it was in.  This
likely had a lot to do with his mind’s increasingly shaky ability to properly
interpret sensory input.  The weed almost certainly wasn’t helping where that
was concerned, nor was the booze.  These things might have bothered Noah if he
still gave a shit about anything other than reaching the end of his journey. 
But he did not, in fact, give even one little shit.  Being alone again, he had
no one to answer to, nor any good reason to moderate his behavior.

          He took out his pipe
and tamped some weed into the bowl.  After lighting up with a match, he filled
his lungs with smoke, holding it in for several moments before coughing it back
out.  He immediately filled his lungs again, tilted his head back, and closed
his eyes, holding the smoke even longer this time.  It’d be a few minutes at
least before he got the full effect.  The weed had been harvested a while ago
and had lost a bit of its potency, but it still did the job effectively if he
smoked enough of it.  He took one more hit before putting the pipe down.

          A glance through the
store’s plate glass front window stopped Noah in his tracks as he was turning
back to the rows of bookcases.  There was something moving out there, an indistinct
shape bobbing around behind a car parked against the curb opposite the
bookstore.  His first thought was that someone was out there spying on him. 
Maybe there were survivors lurking in this town after all.

          His heart pounding,
Noah reached for his holstered pistol, which sat with his utility belt on the
desk.  He felt ill-prepared for confrontation in his sickly state, but he was
okay with that.  A violent, unexpected demise might be the most merciful fate
he could hope for at this point.  Despite the increasingly morbid tone of his
thoughts, though, he wasn’t about to go down without a fight.  The times he’d
allowed that to happen hadn’t worked out too well for him.  He took the pistol
from the holster and edged around the desk toward the door.  But then the shape
emerged from behind the car and staggered into the middle of the street.

          Noah let out a breath.

          It was a dead thing. 
He’d encountered a few zombies since departing Henryetta, but this was the
first he’d seen in a while.  It looked as if it’d been dead only a few months. 
Despite its staggering gait, its body’s structural integrity was still sound. 
There were no missing limbs or glaring, debilitating wounds.

          It took another
lurching step toward the bookstore.

          Noah opened the door
and stepped outside.