Grants Pass (11 page)

“
Hey, Bo,”
called Sarge from the roadside, “sign says we’re only twelve miles from a
campsite. Might be able to make it before night if we push it.”

Bo just shook his head. “Might as
well come on in, Sarge. We’re not like to make that kind of pace. Map says
we’ll reach Ryegate first, let’s plan on hitting that. Like to be another ghost
town, we can pick up some real beds there.”

“
That’s not
the reason,” I said to him, quiet, looking back at Preacher. “You know he can’t
make it that far, that’s all. Won’t be any beds left in this Ryegate place, any
more than there ever are.” Bo’s look was mild compared to the one he could’ve
given me, but I was getting sore. “Campsite ain’t a whole lot better, but even
a couple miles a day can make a big difference, Bo. You know I’m following you,
but…”

“
Then follow
my lead,” he said, flat as the autumn plains. “We keep spending our time
arguing, there’s going to be some kind of trouble, Davey. Now I don’t want
that, but I’m telling you there’s a good reason to put up with Preacher. So
stop acting like a spoiled kid in the back seat of the car and start walking. I
want to get to Ryegate before nightfall.”

I had a thick skin. I never minded
getting cussed out or hollered down. But being called a kid…well, that did it.
That’s when I figured what had to be done. It was going to be for his own good
— for Sarge’s, and mine too. Preacher was the kid here! Tagging along like some
kind of half-wit brother who’s got no more right to be there than a queer in a
convent. Without him, we’d have been nearly to Idaho. We might’ve been able to
get across the mountains before the snow came, and spend the winter in Grants
Pass, where they’d have stoves set up and canned goods set by. Hell, I dreamed
they might even have coffee and beer, and you couldn’t get those no matter how
hard you tried along the Musselshell River.

It was only Preacher standing in the
way.

If there was anyone still living in
Ryegate, we didn’t see them. A few towns we’d come up to had guards posted
along the roads, men — some women, too — who would turn strangers away. I figure
Ryegate wasn’t big enough to make any kind of colony. Even the church was a
tiny, little place.

“
Guess I was
wrong,” I said to Bo, putting a little grudge in my voice. “Ought to be plenty
of beds around here.”

He nodded. “All right, usual drill.
Spread out and holler when you find one.” It wasn’t difficult in such a small
town. Bigger houses had always already been looted, and folks would slash open
mattresses looking for hidden cash. So you avoided those, even though they
looked better. Smaller houses, that was the trick; finding a place that
wouldn’t attract so much attention. I didn’t figure many folks would be
wandering through Ryegate, but you never knew who else was on the roads.

The third house we tried was a
ranch-style with the door shut but unlocked. There was a pullout sofa and two
beds inside, one a queen-size; the other a single in what must have been a
kid’s room. Some stuff was missing — looked like the pictures had all been
taken off the walls, probably someone looking for safes — but at least they
hadn’t messed up the beds, and that was all we cared about.

“
All right,”
said Bo, “I’ll take the floor, I had a bed last time we were under a roof.
Preacher, you take the kid’s room. Close the door so we don’t have to listen to
your snoring all night.”

Sarge glanced at me. “Rock, paper,
scissors for the big bed?” I took a rock and won the bed, and given what I’d
planned, it took some doing to look happy about it. On top of that, there was
an old-fashioned grill in the garage, and some coals left in a bag. I thought
of all the nights I’ve spent wishing for hot food, and cursed a wish come true.

The sun had been down about an hour
when we finished eating and turned in. The sheets were long since gone, but I
could just feel that nice, big mattress under my shoulders before I even closed
the door.

Now, I knew myself. If I lay down in
a real bed after a hot meal I’d be gone to the world until someone shook me, so
I put myself to walking in place. Once you get used to walking the way we’d
done these past two months, you could pull it off without even thinking. I
figured everyone else would need half an hour, tops, to get themselves off to
deep dreaming. I could put off sleeping that long. I knew I could. I had to.

I did. Preacher’s snoring was the
first thing I heard, that sick rattling that made you think of an engine gone
bad. It stoked the fire in me again, forced me to shake off sleep and march in
place to the sound of that lousy drone. With every minute that passed, all I
could think of was the past three weeks. The way he’d slowed us down, held us
back. The disease I knew he was carrying around in his lungs. The way Bo was
protecting him, shrugging off Sarge and me like so many afterthoughts, even
when we’d walked so far across the country with him.

The porcelain lid to the toilet tank
was good and solid, heavy in my hands. It came off with hardly a sound when I
lifted it. The trick was going to be opening Preacher’s door quietly enough to
avoid waking Bo or Sarge. Then I could bring the damned thing down, and my
problems would be over. I wouldn’t have to share anything with that
mouth-breathing son of a bitch a moment longer. Bo would be pissed, sure. Might
even throw down with our fists for a bit. But he’d know I was right, afterward.
He’d see I knew what was best.

I thought that until the minute I
turned around and saw him in the moonlight, Sarge’s shotgun held steady at his
hips, aimed right at my crotch.

“
Lay it
down, Dave. Quietly,” said Bo, and I did.

“
Put your
hands at chest level and step out here.” He walked me to the back door of the
house. “Open it.”

I never scared easily. I’d never had
a shotgun at my back before, either. I’d trusted Bo, sure, but he’d trusted me
— and see what that nearly got him. I opened the door.

Once we were outside, away from the
roof, the big night sky made me feel almost naked. We’d been away from roofs
for so long that you’d think it would have comforted me, but I just stood there
under a waning moon, waiting to hear a click and a roar from the man I’d
betrayed.

“
You ever
killed a man, Dave?”

“
No. Never
have.”

“
It’s not as
easy as the movies make it look,” he said, still behind me. “It’s not something
a normal man does. Might have been, once. Hasn’t been for a long time.” He got
quiet for a minute. “Turn around.”

I turned. He’d pointed the barrel at
the ground.

“
I want you
to listen, now. I saw it in your eyes back when I passed on the campsite. I’ve
seen it building in you ever since we picked up Preacher. You’re getting worse
every day, so I’m going to tell it to you straight. If you don’t like it, well,
that’s something we’ll have to deal with.

“
You’re
right about Preacher, Davey. He’s sick, and he’s sick bad. But it isn’t killing
him and it isn’t touching us. He’s what they call a carrier.”

My hands came down slow, but Bo
didn’t seem to mind. “Carrier?”

“
He’s got
the flu but he isn’t dying. At least, that’s the way I figure it.”

“
So why
aren’t we sick yet? Why aren’t we dead?”

“
We’re not
sick because we’re not getting sick.” It sounded simple, the way he said it,
with a quiet shrug of his shoulders. “You were around your folks when they
caught it. I was the only one in my family that didn’t die of it, same goes for
Sarge. Figure we got a taste of it, near the beginning, and got lucky, like a
kid that gets the measles and never sees them again.”

It started dawning on me. “You’re
bringing a carrier…into Grants Pass. You want the flu to spread there.”

“
He doesn’t
even have to get in the town. Just get close enough to someone working the
fields or guarding the road to breathe on them a little, and the job’s done.”

“
Hell, Bo,”
I said. My throat was dry. “Why?”

“
You ever
stop to think how I heard about Grants Pass? I never had much use for
computers. Jenny, though…you remember her. Jenny.”

His voice got cold when he said her
name. I swear it felt like the stars got darker and the sweat came easy to my
skin despite the chill in the air. “Sure. I remember.”

Bo took a deep breath. “She said she
needed one, and you know me. I do for the folks who mean something to me. We
got it, and she starts shopping online all the damn time, spending money we
didn’t have. Found some places where people chat online. Made some new
friends.” There was a tightness in Bo’s voice now, like words had been building
up and choked back for longer than they should’ve.

“
Met that
son of a bitch on the goddamned internet while I was out working to help pay
for all those damn stupid dolls she loved so much. And she’s the one — before
the bastard, you know — who told me all about this crazy girl in Oregon and her
little pipe dream for after the fall.

“
Made me
promise we’d go. I told her she was nuts, the world wasn’t going to end, but at
the end of the day she was dead set on it. All right, I told her. The world
goes down the toilet, I’ll bring you safe to this Grants Pass place.”

He took a deep breath, and shifted
his hands on the shotgun. “I’m going to meet her there now, if she survived.
And I’m bringing Hell with me.”

“
Bo,” I
said, real quiet. “Bo, listen. That’s crazy. You’re talking about damning a
town full of people, just in case she’s there?”

“
That’s the
short of it, Davey.”

“
They’re
gonna be immune, too, Bo. You know that’s a fact — if you and Sarge and I
walked away safe, it’s a safe bet the whole town did.”

I let him chew on that a few
seconds, hoping to God he’d lower the gun, agree with me, and leave Preacher in
the dust come morning. I could leave him in turn, then, once we got closer to a
town that might take me in — leave him and his obsession behind.

“
No,” he
said, and he said it flat, with a coyote look in his eyes. “There’ll be those
untouched, and they won’t last long. Worst come to worst and you’re right —
well, all that means is Preacher doesn’t do his job. I’ll still do mine.” He
ran his hand along the barrel of the shotgun. “I’d love to see the whole damn
place fall apart, and let her know her whoring caused it. If it comes to just
me and her and a minute alone, though…well, that’s all I
need
.”

“
That’s
crazy,” I said again.

“
You’ve
never had so much reason to hate.”

I couldn’t think of much else to
say, so I stayed quiet and still, just watching him. He lifted the shotgun,
casual, and said, “So now you know, and Sarge isn’t asking. What’s it going to
be, Davey? You going to help me?”

“
You pick
your guys, and you stick with them,” I said with a shrug. “You want to take
Grants Pass, I’ll be with you. You want to kill the bitch, I’ll be with you.”

Bo shook his head and raised the
gun.

You just couldn’t lie to him.

I ran, and as I ran, something
tickled at the back of my neck. I jerked away from the sensation and heard both
barrels go off, heard the window shatter on the house I’d been running toward a
second before. I got to the street with Bo shouting for Sarge, to get my gun
and come after me. I kept running through the dark, hopping between houses and
buildings, moving to put any space I could between myself and the men I’d
trusted.

I didn’t sleep the next day. I
walked on like a man half dead, making my way north, but the whole way thinking
of how I’d survive on my own. Thinking of what a man could do with that much
hate in him.

Thinking of what I’d have to do in
order to stop him.

I’m writing this down in every town
I come to, everywhere I find paper. I’m warning people at every guard post to
keep watch for a blond beanpole, a sickly preacher, and a pale horseman who
talks with a smile. Some folks say they’ve seen them ahead of me. Some folks
tell me to keep walking on. Sometimes they’ll give me a bit of food to keep me
going. Most times they turn me away.

Tonight I’m alone, in a place they
used to call Deer Lodge, and the snows are getting bad through the mountains. I
picked up a gun and some bullets from a dead man in the woods a few weeks back,
and once I’ve written the end of this I’ll read some out of a bible they gave
me in Missoula. Tomorrow morning I’ll keep looking for them and sounding the
warning.

What haunts me is the fact that
Preacher saved my soul. If it hadn’t been for him — if I hadn’t got so close to
killing him — I never would have known. I’d have walked right into Grants Pass
at Bo’s right hand, and if he ran into Jenny, well…I might have figured he had
some right to do what he planned. I’d picked my guy. I’m afraid I might have
stuck with him.