ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) (14 page)

***

When the hole was finally dug deep enough—three feet, maybe
four—Duncan stuck the shovel into the waist-high dirt pile. He planted his
aching hands on his hips and stared at the sky. Dusk had come and gone.
Overhead a dozen different shades of purple were working their way to black. As
if in on the cosmic joke currently befalling him, a few early stars were out
and winking at him from up there.
How surreal
, he thought.
I’m
standing in the dark next to a freshly dug grave in a city home to hundreds of
thousands of people.
A tick after the inane thought came to him, the automatic
light by the garage came alive and he saw that he wasn’t alone.

The massive Rottweiler was sitting on its haunches next to
the chain-link, liquid brown eyes fixed on Duncan as if aware of the burden the
man was currently shouldering.

“How long you been there, boy?”

The pooch yawned and lay down fully, legs outstretched,
forepaws clawing at the dirt. Its stub tail was going a mile-a-minute.

“The entire time you’ve been digging,” came a rasping male
voice from afar. “I think he’s grown jealous.”

Duncan swung his head in the general direction the answer
had originated from. Squinted to see into the darkness of the windowless back
porch attached to the house beyond the fence. “Who’s there?”

Nothing.

“Wherever you are … this sure as hell isn’t what it looks
like.”

A match flared, orange and yellow, the light illuminating a
man’s face, whose features were gaunt and drawn thin with age.

“Come on out so we can talk.”

There was a creaking sound, like someone walking across old
planks. A two-count later a hunched-over form was filling the narrow porch
entry.

“I know it’s not what it looks like,” the man said. He took
a drag off the cigarette he had just lit. Stepped off the porch, one gnarled
hand on a rickety wood rail, the other clutching something catching and
reflecting the waning light of day. “Because my friend, the end is nigh. I can
feel it in my gut and bones. Satan … he knows it, too.”

Humoring the old fella, Duncan asked, “What do you recommend
we do about Satan?”

The man grabbed a cane propped next to the porch. He covered
the distance to the fence with a dozen jilted unsteady steps, steering clear of
holes where the dog had been digging.

The Rottweiler remained still and watched the elderly man’s
approach.

Once the man was at the fence he said, “Satan will be fine.”
He scratched the dog behind his cropped ears. “Just fine. Won’t you, boy?”

Duncan stifled a chuckle.

The man reached out a hand. “You can call me Will. Mother
named me after the famous playwright.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Will.” He reached a
newly blistered hand across the fence top and said, “Name’s Duncan Winters. You
can call me Duncan or Winters. Whatever floats your boat.”

The man snorted. Then, reeking of booze and neglect of
bodily hygiene, he produced a pint bottle of Irish whiskey and passed it over
the fence.

Waving off the bottle, Duncan said, “Thanks, but no. I’m
putting that behind me. Still, I’d like to hear your theory about what’s been
happening.”

The man made a clucking sound with his tongue. “More for
me,” he mumbled. He fed the dog a treat taken from his pocket, cleared his
throat and asked Duncan if he was a believer.

Duncan nodded.

A light came on in the man’s eyes. He said, “When he opened
the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!—”

Duncan added, “—And I looked, and behold, a pale horse.”

The man said, “And its rider’s name was Death—”

“—and Hades followed him,” finished Duncan, throwing a
visible shudder.

“You
are
a believer,” Will said, beaming. “And there’s
your answer. Hell
has
opened. Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride.
And Duncan, my boy. You better finish your business there … whatever it may be,
and get far away from the city.”

Duncan stole a closer look at the man’s upturned face and
saw that his eyes were clouded with cataracts. Feeling a little sheepish, he
said, “Take care of yourself, Mr. Shakespeare.”

To that, the man cackled, about-faced, and made his way back
to the porch, the dog following obediently on his heels.

Shaking his head, but unable to shake the building desire to
flee, Duncan hollered toward the little house to get Charlie’s attention.

***

Five minutes after the over-the-fence chat, Duncan and
Charlie had dragged Tilly’s body over to the grave and placed it at the bottom
along with the comforter and once cheery yellow sheet.

***

Thirty minutes after the impromptu Revelations refresher,
and two shifts each spent shoveling dirt, Tilly’s remains were buried.

Thirty-five minutes after making up his mind to leave Oregon
at first light, and just in case his and Will’s assumptions were not correct,
Duncan was tamping down the much darker tell-tale oval of freshly dug earth.

Five minutes after saying a few unrehearsed words for the
woman who wasn’t really blood, but had always treated him and Charlie like they
were
, the two men were parked on the sagging couch and watching the
world crumble before their very eyes.

Dawn was breaking outside the east-facing window. A halo of
orange was showing around the dark curtains and a thin sliver of golden light
was lancing through the inch-wide vertical part. It bisected Duncan’s bare
dirt-and-sweat-smudged chest, then the coffee table, and all the way across the
living room floor to the glossy panel of the Japanese wide-screen which was
showing a static image he hadn’t seen since the late eighties.

After willing his lids to part beyond the puffy slits six
hours of sleep had reduced them to, Duncan sat up with an audible groan. He
swung his legs over the side of the sofa and wiggled his toes. He yawned and
stretched and for a split second everything seemed normal until he realized
that the gray screen emblazoned with the words PLEASE STAND BY across the
head-shot of an American Indian frozen in profile meant the usual round the
clock cable news station had inexplicably gone off the air.

Shaking off the gauzy in the head feeling, he swept his gaze
to the door and saw his dirt-caked boots and, piled next to them, the jeans
he’d been wearing the day before. It was at that moment when everything came
rushing back to him with full clarity. He remembered burying Tilly. Then he was
reliving pistol-whipping the cyclist mere seconds before the soldier put a
bullet into her brain. Oh how he wished he was waking from a nightmare. And
just to make sure, he craned around and parted the curtains.

Sure enough, though in the light of day the soil was not
quite as dark as he recalled, the mis-colored rectangle was there. As was the
shovel. It was leaning against the fence where he had shared a brief, though thought-provoking
conversation with the old man.

All put together it was more than enough evidence to verify
that everything he hoped had been conjured up in a few minutes of REM sleep was
the real deal.

He let the curtains fall together and regarded the coffee
table. Strangely it was clear of the usual platoon of “dead soldiers” as
Charlie was wont to call the empty bottles left behind from the previous
night’s festivities. There were no fast food wrappers to be found. Nor were
there any of Charlie’s girlie mags—usually left open for all to see his
favorite
of the month. Charlie had even policed up the remnants of the chili dog he was
eating when Duncan fell asleep sober for the first time in months.

In the immortal words of Dylan
, he thought,
the
times, they are a-changin’
.

“Charlie,” he bellowed, as he slipped on his jeans and
cinched the belt, “I’m hitting the road. Five minutes ago—”

Some random curse words filtered out from the back bedroom.
A door opened with a plaintive creak. Then the water was running in the
bathroom. Lastly, the toilet flushed and Charlie emerged from the narrow hall,
fully dressed save for shoes and with a toothbrush handle protruding from his
mouth.

“Nice shirt,” Duncan said. “Your mom know you’re wearing
stuff like that?”

Grabbing the tee shirt with thumb and finger near each
nipple, Charlie stretched it flat and peered at it upside down. “What’s wrong
with her?”

Duncan double-knotted the lace on one boot. He looked up and
said, “Those big titty girls are kind of offensive on truckers’ mud flaps. On
your shirt … they’re downright embarrassing.”

“I ain’t all about that woman’s lib crap. You know that.
Besides … girly mags and mud flaps never hurt a woman.”

Duncan said nothing. He laced and tied his other boot. Then
stood and stared at Charlie for a long silent ten-count.

“What?” asked Charlie, sticking his arms out at his sides.
“You were the one who clocked that girl.”

“Like I said then,” Duncan hissed, “I’m not proud of it.
Thought she was on some kind of mind-altering drugs. Like that dude in Florida
was.”

“At least you didn’t use the business end of that hand
cannon of yours.” Charlie cinched his belt and bloused his shirt, which did
little to hide his ample gut. “However, after staying up well after you crashed
and watching FOX and CNN, I’ve come to believe that it was a justified shoot.”

Duncan threw Charlie a look that said: elaborate. Then he
stood and went to the closet. He came out with the shotgun he’d stowed in there
for the night and propped it by the door. Then he went back in and came out
with a long-sleeved denim shirt with cream-colored cloth inserts near each
shoulder. The inserts were embroidered with a western motif featuring blocky
linked symbols in black and red. The salesman at the outfitter store had sworn
it was a Navajo-inspired design. The snaps on the pockets, sleeves, and running
up the shirt front were faux mother of pearl that caught the light and
shimmered, seemingly harnessing it for later use.

He donned his favorite shirt. Buttoned it two from the top
and rolled the sleeves to just below his elbows.

“When you’re done getting ready for the St. Paul Rodeo,”
Charlie quipped, “sit down and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”

Casting a wan glance at the image still frozen on the
television, Duncan said, “How are you going to do that? Looks like the
broadcasting day is over …
forever
.”

“It’s called a DVR, Caveman. I set it to record blocks of
news on FOX and KATU so we wouldn’t miss the overnight national and local
happenings while we got some shut eye.”

Duncan grabbed his .45 off the coffee table. Still snugged
in its paddle holster, he slipped it on his right hip and bloused the shirt
away from it to allow for easy access to the weapon.

“How’s six hours of that”—he pointed at the Native American
in full headdress on the screen—“going to tell us more than we already know?
Which is basically shelter in place and kiss your asses goodbye, as per what
our honorable governor, mayor, and President all seem to be advocating.”

Charlie replied, “Just watch, ye of little faith. They only
replayed it real early in the morning this one time as far as I can tell.” He
sat down hard on the couch, snatched up the remote, and pointed it at the black
box below the television while thumbing the rewind button.

Flashing a skeptic’s grin, Duncan obliged his friend and sat
down on the sofa.

Suggestive of some kind of motion, there was a little bit of
judder to the still static off-air image gracing the screen. Though the status
bar at the bottom of the screen showed two hours of past footage available for
viewing, it took fifteen seconds of constant rewinding to get past a full hour
dominated by the Indian Chief. Once the gray hieroglyphic-filled screen faded
away, a jumbled stream of footage, on-screen captions, and bottom crawl—all blazing
by in reverse—took its place.

Finally the DVR’s hard-drive reached the location where the
recording had started the night before. Charlie hit a button on the remote and
together they watched the footage fast forward until he hit pause and a mousy
female reporter, mouth agape and frozen in rigid repose, was filling up the
screen. In her left hand was a microphone. Emblazoned on a placard were orange
block letters spelling out KATU—the local station’s call letters. She was
wearing a sensible pantsuit rumpled from a long slog of a day and patent
leather high heels that looked none too comfortable for standing, let alone
walking, that was for sure. Moreover, she was broadcasting from what looked
like a hospital waiting room amidst a flurry of activity all frozen in time.
For some reason the nurses and doctors clad in soiled scrubs were going about
their business in a lobby crammed with dozens of patients on folding chairs and
gurneys, on the latter, several shrouded bodies of the recently deceased.

“Start the thing rolling already,” Duncan said, impatience
evident in his voice.

“We’ve already seen most of it already,” Charlie said.
“Yesterday before we headed off to Tilly’s.” He thumbed Play and sat back in
the couch.

At once the KATU reporter was talking about methods of
infection and stating numbers of dead as a direct result of the uprising at
Pioneer Square. As she delivered the grim news, like a scene from an old Benny
Hill episode the doctors and nurses behind her zipped back and forth,
stethoscopes banging on chests, the squeak of their comfortable shoes her
oration.

Charlie said, “I know her from work. She drives a real nice
Mercedes coupe. Likes to drink in the bar on the thirtieth floor. Saw her
yesterday and she had scratches and blood on her neck. Must have gotten roughed
up in the ruckus at the rally. She’s a real bitch. Still, wouldn’t wish this on
anyone.”

Before the reporter was finished listing Federal and State
offices off-limits to city residents and updating the number of people who were
either jailed or taken to various area hospitals as a result of the
unprecedented violence in the Square, most of which Duncan had already heard on
the radio, he was done with her and focusing his attention on the crawl moving
slowly across the bottom of the screen, where he caught the tail end of a story
detailing the staggering number of flights countrywide that had been either
grounded, diverted to another airport, or turned away from their original
destinations when the no-fly decree had been issued.

“Pay attention,” Charlie said matter-of-factly. “All that
stuff on the crawl happened yesterday because this was originally broadcast
live
.”

“Huh?” Duncan said, dragging his eyes from the crawl and
back to the female reporter who, despite the hustle and bustle of medical
personnel trying to work around her, was not giving an inch. She stood rooted
in place and relaying information no doubt being fed to her through the small
flesh-colored earpiece stuck in one ear. Even the introduction of a gurney
containing a body under a bloody sheet barely stopped her from talking when the
orderly in white parked the massive wheeled chrome contraption inches from her
backside. Immediately after the orderly was out of frame, Charlie said, “She
has no idea what’s about to happen.”

Eyes glued to the screen, Duncan asked, “What’s about to
happen?”

“Just watch.”

The reporter cast an accusatory glance at the orderly then
dropped her gaze to the object now crowding her from behind. She shuffled
forward a half-step, made a face, presumably due to the inconvenience, then, in
true reporter form, the look of disgust was replaced by feigned empathy as she
panned back toward the camera and adjusted her earpiece with her free hand. As
her arm dropped back to her side, a ripple went through the body on the gurney
behind her. Though the initial tremor and recurring spasms was easily picked up
by the cameraman, who began to warn the reporter both verbally and with a
waving motion of the camera lens, she was too slow on the uptake, allowing the final
act to come to fruition via a series of hard to fathom events.

First the blood-spattered white sheet slipped off the
prostrate form and settled on the floor in a neat little pile at the oblivious
reporter’s feet. Then the fingers on the twenty-something man’s hand nearest
the camera twitched and curled into a fist. Lastly, in a stop-motion-like
series of rapid, yet stilted movements, the previously unmoving corpse hinged
up, swung its legs over the gurney’s side, and planted both bare feet on the
floor. Which was when the reporter’s face went blurry, the pixels there
purposefully skewed out of shape.

Duncan opened his mouth to warn her, but stopped short when
he remembered this was all old news. In the next beat the reporter cocked her
head like a confused pooch and the person holding the camera began imparting
what was to be a nonstop
Blair Witch Project
kind of tremor to the
footage he or she was shooting.

The last thing that registered in Duncan’s brain the
split-second before the camera zoomed in on the reporter’s chest, neck, and
blurred-out face, was the half-nude cadaver draping itself over the smaller
woman’s back and rending a fist-sized chunk of flesh from the lily-white field
of exposed skin between her clavicle and lower jawline.

Didn’t quite blur that enough
, he thought as a
surprise- and pain-filled scream lanced from the speakers. Nor did the powers
that be at the network censor the explosive spritz of blood and strong
follow-on pulses spraying a crimson spiderweb-like pattern on the wall behind
her.

“I watched this twice last night,” Charlie said. “Thought at
first glance it might be a late night slasher film.”

“On Channel 2? They stopped airing those a long time ago.
Just about the time the political correctness movement was getting its legs.
This is a game changer, Charlie. Why in the hell didn’t you wake me up?!”

“You were snoring … didn’t seem right after all the effort
you put into digging that grave for Tilly.”

The image on the screen was now vibrating wildly as the
person with the camera panicked and backpedaled, inadvertently recording the
next three victims—a pair of orderlies and a lone security guard who entered
the frame and instantly fought to take down the maelstrom of nails and snapping
teeth.

Charlie paused the recorded footage with the camera listing
right at a forty-five-degree angle and the reanimated corpse already piled on
by the newly arrived muscle. On the bottom of the screen the forgotten reporter
was curled into a fetal ball on the blood-slicked floor. And Gloria’s pallid
attacker was caught in the act of rending a mouthful of flesh from the
surprised security guard’s outstretched arm.

Charlie gestured at the television screen. “You a believer
now?”

Duncan nodded. “I’ve seen more than I needed to of the local
stuff. Blows me away they didn’t cut to commercial sooner.”

“You know what they say … if it bleeds, it leads. There’s
more—”

Like a cop directing traffic, Duncan put his hand up towards
the television. Adding a side-to-side wag of the head for emphasis, he said,
“I’ve seen enough of that. Can you fast forward it some?”