The King of Clayfield - 01 (14 page)

I'd seen enough.

I pulled down
 
Water Street and planned to circle around the old, and now defunct,
 
Barret Clothing Mill up 5th Street, away from the crowd.

When I looked in my mirror,
 
the red and white pickup shot
 
past, continuing toward the court
 
square.

“Dammit, Jen! What are you doing?"

I slammed on the brakes, and put the
 
minivan in reverse, and backed out into the intersection. Everybody looked at us, even the slow ones. A few had already started toward us.
 
Jen
 
ran the pickup over
 
the curb and skidded to a
 
stop on the sidewalk almost
 
to the corner, opposite the crowd. I turned to follow her.

Her door opened.

"No, Jen," I whispered. "Oh, no no no...."

She stepped out in the street and pulled the shotgun to her shoulder.
 
The end of the weapon bounced up with the recoil, and the side of the rapist's head
 
blew apart. There was a collective gasp and the entire crowd jerked in unison
 
at the sound of the gun, paused,
 
and then charged her
en masse
. Their snarls and whines all together went up like a roar. She slipped back into the truck. The backup lights came on when she put the truck in reverse, and then the beasts
 
engulfed her. There were so many, I couldn't even see the truck anymore.

I got on my horn. A few of them looked up, they didn't leave the pickup. I didn't want her to panic and do something stupid like shoot at them through the glass.

"Son of a bitch!"

I pulled the minivan around so I was broadside to them and grabbed the rifle. I
 
let down the window
 
and
 
aimed at a head in the crowd near where the truck was buried. I couldn't pull the trigger. I took a deep breath and pointed at the knee of
 
one on the perimeter. I squeezed.

The sound was nothing like the shotgun. It was more like a
crack!

A man buckled and fell to the ground, but the crowd still didn't move toward me.

The rifle was a semi-automatic. I didn't have to do anything but pull the trigger.
 
I squeezed it again. A woman arched over grabbing her side near her kidney and stumbled away from the crowd. I fired three times in a row, not aiming. I saw two people drop. It became easier when I didn't think about it.

I
 
looked to my right. I had
 
new group headed my way from the south.

Two more shots, and the mob
 
finally
 
became interested in me. They cleared up for her in front first, and when I saw
 
her truck lurch forward, then pull away across a corner lot and down South Street, I mashed the gas and headed down Water Street. We were running parallel to each other, and we both had a group chasing us. We
 
crossed over 5th simultaneously a
 
block apart and sped down
 
to the next cross street, which was 2nd. By then,
 
the crowd was far enough behind us not to matter. She stopped at the intersection and waited for me to turn north and pull back in front of her.
 
When I got to the intersection of South and 2nd where she sat idling, I stopped in front of her, perpendicular to her vehicle.

I glared at her. Her eyes narrowed. This time, I flipped
her
the bird, and motioned for her to get a move on, then pulled away.

Our original route changed, but our plan did not. I was pissed about what Jen had done--unnecessarily putting us in danger like that--but I hoped that some good would come of it, and
 
the noise of the gunfire and horn
 
would draw people away from the museum.

I took a left onto Broadway, then a right onto 5th.
 
I had to drive up on the sidewalk, because this is where the head-on collision had taken place. This
 
was also
 
where I wrecked my car. The cars were all still there, but not the bodies. The old man I hit with my car might have lived, but there was no way the man in the other wreck survived. They were both gone.
 
There must have been
 
other healthy people out disposing of bodies.

I escorted Jen to the front of the museum. She pulled in close with the passenger side of the pickup near the front door.
 
She got out,
 
pulled out the garbage bag of stuff and
 
the shotgun, and ran inside. I
 
sat in the
 
van and watched to make sure she was in, and then I pulled the van to the side of the building on North Street underneath
 
a window. I got the passenger side
 
in as close to the building as I could; I even scraped off the side mirror in the process.

When I got out, I could see Jen inside at the window breaking out a pane of glass. I fed her the extension cord, and then I ran around and got back into the van.
 
Stepping into the back, I
 
started up the generator. Then, I grabbed
 
the rifle and the Captain Morgan, hopped out, and locked the doors.
 
The sound of the generator was noticeable inside the van, but not as loud as I thought it would be.

I was about to run to the front door, when I noticed that the
 
corpse of the woman I'd hit with my car wasn't in the street anymore. Someone was definitely removing the bodies. It made me wonder if we still had a city government, or if it was a group of regular citizens.

I didn't have time to think about it right then. I went around to the front of the building. Across and up the street, the delivery van was on its side at the newspaper office. In the museum lot, the little red truck was resting on the splintered sign. It was so quiet and still and unnerving. I went inside, relieved we were able to get in so quickly and without any interference. I locked the front door and looked around.

The place was as I'd left it. No one had been in. I walked through the small gift shop and permanent collection toward my office. The extension cord was hanging down the side of the wall below the window in the giftshop.

"Jen?"

No answer.

She was in the office sitting in my chair.

"C'mon, Jen, we need--"

She held up a hand. She was on my office phone. Her
 
red bandana was pulled down around her neck like a kerchief. I pulled my own mask down.

"We need to--"

"Shhh," she said.

I
 
left her to her call,
 
grabbed the end of the orange cord, and tugged it through the broken window and into the office.

"It's just ringing," she said.

"Who are you--"

"Shhh."

The office computer equipment and modem were plugged into a power strip. I unplugged it from the wall and plugged it into the orange cord. The light on the modem came on.

Jen hung up.

"I was checking on my brother," she said. "He lives near Kansas City. Nobody answered."

I went straight to the phone and dialed my mom. I listened to it ring and watched Jen turn on the computer.

"What the hell were you thinking back there?" I said.

"I won't put up with that shit," she said, not looking at me.

"You could have gotten both of us killed.

"You didn't have to stay."

"You know, if what they say is true, and they're just running on base instincts, then we're going to see a lot more of that," I said.

"Then you're going to see a lot more killing," she said.

The phone rang almost twenty times, so I hung up.

"It's working," she said. "I'm online.”

I got out my
 
laptop and plugged into the power strip and
 
one of the other ports on the modem.

"I'm on CNN’s website," she said. "No new
 
stories there since yesterday. The last story was posted yesterday morning
 
at 10 a.m. It is about a state of emergency in Minneapolis."

She looked up, and then to me, "Which side of the Mississippi River is
 
Minneapolis?"

"The wrong side, I think. Any mention of St. Louis? My mom lives there."

She shook her head.

I got online, too, and checked my emails. There was nothing there from my mom.

"Check Facebook," Jen said. "Check all the social sites. That's where we'll find out what is happening."

There were no new posts on any of those sites. The only notification I had was Jen's reply to me two nights before. I checked Blaine and Betsy's profiles, but they were unchanged.
 

Frustrated, I got up. I needed to
 
take a look at the minivan, anyway. I
 
peered out the window. I could hear the generator, but it was muffled. Thus far, we'd not attracted any attention.

"What time is it?" I called out.

"Almost three," Jen said.

"I'd like to get the water bottles filled if we can. If not, we might need to leave early and check in some stores. We need to head back to Blaine's before
 
five o'clock. That should give us plenty of time to get in before dark."

"Uh huh," was her reply.

"Any of your friends posting?" I asked, on my way to the sink.

"Not for a while...wait, yeah! He's your friend, too, I think."

I turned on the faucet, and water came out.

"We got water," I said. "Who's my friend?"

"Brian Davies," she said. "He's still posting...well, he posted last night. It's a link to his blog."

"I don't know him," I said, coming back to get the empty water bottles so I could fill them.

"Sure you do," she said. "Brian Davies. You know."

"No.”

"From high school?”

I tried, but I'd forgotten so many names from high school. I shook my head and picked up the garbage bag of bottles. I removed the Southern Comfort, put it on the desk,
 
and headed back to the sink with the bag.

"He was a couple of years younger than us," she said.
 
"He's a professional blogger, now."

"They have those?"

"Yeah, and he does that Michael Jackson act sometimes. He was in the paper last fall. He did that concert to
 
raise money for those kids."

I topped off one of the bottles and started on another.

Michael Jackson act?

"He's a Michael Jackson impersonator?" I asked.

"I think it's more of a tribute act, but yeah, close enough.

"They have those?"

"He's completely changed his blog," she said. "All he is talking about is what is happening. There is a lot of information here. Links to stuff, so we won't have to search.
 
He says the virus jumped the river yesterday."

"How would he know?"

"He said that alcohol works, but only if you
 
drink enough before the fever sets in.”

"What's enough?"

"He says wearing a mask helps, but isn't always effective."

She wasn't listening to me. I filled the last of the bottles, and then took one with me back to the office. I handed it to her, and she got a drink. I checked on the van. We were still okay.

"I'm going to share the link on my Facebook page," she said. "Get on your laptop and check it out. It has a lot of stuff on there."

CHAPTER 14

Brian Davies' "professional" blog didn't look very professional to me. The top banner was a still image
 
from Michael Jackson's
Thriller
video,
 
and most of the page was loaded with links. I recognized a few of the sites as ones I had visited that first night.

I suppose I shouldn't be too critical; Jen did say he'd completely changed
 
his site since
 
the virus hit. Also, he'd taken the time to write a little description with each link, so visitors could find things easily, not that there were many visitors.