ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) (7 page)

Charlie’s first clue that something wasn’t right was finding
Duncan’s Dodge in front of the garage and the front door standing partway open.

He turned toward the taxi and put a finger in the air to
tell his new best friend, Nate, that he’d be right out with more cash—or so he
hoped.

He paused on the single cement stair, pinned his hair away
from his ear, and listened hard. Riding just over the tick and wheeze of the
tired V8 in the nearby Crown Vic was a low, sonorous rumble. And competing with
both noises was the steady hum of a box fan pushing air around just inside the
cracked door.

“Duncan?”

Nothing.

Louder this time. “Duncan! You in there?”

After watching the bad news trickle in on the televisions in
the crowded bar, and imbibing quite a few drinks to numb the gnawing suspicion
that this time the crap really was hitting the oscillating thingy, Charlie
couldn’t help but be apprehensive about pushing the door the rest of the way inward
and facing whatever was inside. Sure, the newscasters were saying the instances
of cannibalism on display in the half-dozen video clips they had been showing
ad nauseam all afternoon were caused by illegal drugs or mental illness. But as
he nudged the door open with his toe he couldn’t shake the feeling that what
was happening today had a direct correlation with similar unrest now being
widely reported in China, Russia, Great Britain, and all over the Middle East.

“Duncan?” he whispered.

There was a snort, wet and muffled, like a pig rooting for truffles.
Then, plain as day, the low rumble he’d detected from the stoop resumed. So Charlie
took one sliding step to the right and caught a glimpse of its source.
Stretched out on the sofa underneath a thin sheet, feet sticking out one end, the
other pulled up and tucked behind a human-head-shaped lump, was his roomie Duncan.

Charlie went silent for a tick as the fabric sucked into Duncan’s
gaping mouth. Then silence for a couple of seconds before the snoring was back
louder than before.
Sleep apnea?
Charlie wondered as he crept across the
three-by-three square of almond-colored vinyl just inside the door, worked his
way around the sofa, and cast his gaze over the rectangular coffee table. A
madly vibrating box fan sat on the far end. It was trained on his friend’s legs
and making the sheet from his knees down ruffle and flap softly, as if alive. Atop
the walnut-brown table were seven empty beer bottles, their white and red paper
labels picked at and curling away from the gum backing. Also on the table top,
pinned underneath a black Model 1911 Colt .45, was a short stack of cash with Andrew
Jackson peering one-eyed through the pistol’s trigger guard.
Chad wasn’t
kidding
, he thought.
Duncan certainly hit his numbers.
Assuming the
crisp bills were all of the same denomination, Charlie guessed there to be
almost four hundred dollars there.

Letting his old pal continue sawing logs, he leaned
lengthwise across the table and slipped the top twenty from the stack, jostling
the semiautomatic a bit in the process.

He palmed the first bill in his off-hand and went back for
seconds. Hand hovering over the gun, Charlie stole a furtive glance out the yawning
doorway at the Yellow Cab. Which was a big mistake. Because suddenly the
snoring ceased, there was a crushing pain in his wrist, and Duncan said wanly,
“Chuck … I was fixing to pay you rent out of that. Why ya trying to ninja it
from under there?”

“Didn’t want to wake you. The forty bucks is for the waiting
cabbie.”

Duncan slowly pulled the sheet down to his neck. He yawned
and said, “Forty bucks … from downtown? What, did you blow all your tip money
on Old Crow?”

“I’m a parking attendant in a bank tower, Duncan. Not a valet
at a five-star-hotel.”

“That fancy place up there doesn’t have a valet service?”
Eyes narrowing, Duncan kicked off the sheet. Then, with a semblance of a grin
inching up his silver mustache, he hauled himself to a sitting position.

Charlie shook his head. He had seen the look before. Duncan
was hatching a plan. “Forget it,” he told him. “They’ll never let a guy with
your spotty driving record drive those expensive vehicles.”

“I will someday,” replied Duncan, his shoulders slumping.
“One way or another.”

“Be right back,” Charlie said. He hustled out the door and
was back in a handful of seconds.

When Charlie had shut the door, he said, “I could have used
that ride home.”

Duncan said, “Sorry I didn’t answer when you called.”

“I called twice.”

“I know,” he conceded. “What can I say? I become a self-centered
individual when I start drinking. If it’ll make you feel better, Charlie … you
can add the fare to my
rent
.”

“I will,” Charlie said. “And another twenty to cover the
half-case of my beer you just finished.” He counted a hundred and eighty
dollars. Folded it in his palm and crossed the small front room on his way to
the kitchen.

Unfazed, Duncan said, “You hear about the stuff happening in
the
swamp
?”

“You mean D.C.?” Charlie called from the kitchen. “President
Odero is telling everyone in the District to stay put. Then he raised the
threat level at the same time he’s telling everyone this is going to pass real
quick. Not twenty minutes passes and BBC News is showing Air Force One taking
off from Andrews.”

“Stock video footage, ya think?”

Charlie shook his head no. He said, “I’m sure it was being
broadcast live.”

“What’s good for the gander, eh?”

“He must have gotten cold feet, or new information …” Charlie
took an envelope from behind a row of canned vegetables high up in the
cupboard. He looked over his shoulder and stuffed the cash in with the previous
rent installment he’d collected from his dear, though oft-troubled, friend. “… because
there were other reports coming in that his plane circled D.C. a few times
before landing back at Andrews. Strange behavior unless they decided for some
reason he needed to be in that flying command bird of his.”

“What’s that all about, ya think?” Duncan drawled, still
sounding sleepy.

“I have no idea,” Charlie replied, stretching to full length
in order to slip the envelope back where he had taken it from. “Where’d you get
the cash? Tilly finally pay you for all the odd jobs?”

“Wouldn’t take it if she did,” Duncan answered, his frame
now filling up the entry to the tiny kitchen. “My numbers hit.”

Charlie shook his head. “Thought you were done with that.
And I thought you were supposed to be out looking for a paying gig.”

“I’m borderline geezer, now, Chuck. So are you. Hell, every time
I go up to the VA hospital they want to stick
something
up my tailpipe. Going
up that hill makes me more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of
rocking chairs.”

Charlie had his hands planted on his hips. The vein snaking
down his temple was beginning to throb because the money he’d just squirreled
away was eventually going to be returned to his friend once he found work. To
help pay for first and last on a place of his own. A new start, so to speak. Now,
however, he wasn’t so sure if that was sound strategy.

“You’re not
that
old,” he said. “You just can’t put
down the bottle. And that leads to you taking shortcuts to try and get ahead.”

“Tell that to the AARP,” replied Duncan, ignoring the latter
part of the previous statement. “Those bloodsuckers have been trying to get
their hooks into me since I turned the old double nickel.”

“Sixty is the new forty.”

“I’m not sixty, a-hole,” Duncan said playfully.

Charlie laughed. “You’re closer to sixty than fifty, though.”
And your liver is pushing seventy
.

Duncan pushed past the shorter man, muttering something about
the pot calling the kettle black. He opened the fridge and took out the next to
last Budweiser. Working on a decision, he paused for a second with the cool
draft hitting his face. Shrugging, he reached back in and snagged the last
bottle by its slender neck.

When the door sucked shut, Charlie was reaching out to
receive one of the beers. But there was no handoff as Duncan spun the other way,
raised both bottles out of reach, and crabbed past Charlie on his way back to the
sagging sofa.

“You’re never going to change, are you, Old Man?”

“Hope not,” Duncan replied. “Because they broke the mold
when they made me.” He sat down hard on the couch, getting jabbed in the butt by
a faulty spring for it. Grimacing, he scooted sideways a foot, snatched up the
remote and turned on the television. “Come get yer beer, ya crybaby. Let’s see
what the
snakes
in D.C. are up to now.” And as he took a swig of his Bud,
he couldn’t help but think about Matilda, an old family friend he called ‘Aunt’
whose tiny Ladd’s Edition bungalow happened to be due east of the Hawthorne
bridge, barely a mile removed from the madness happening downtown.

The guttural growls emanating from the bowels of the
subterranean parking garage froze a number of pedestrians in their tracks.
Rooted on the sidewalk and framed in the golden rectangle of afternoon light,
heads swiveled and bodies squared up slowly to face the unnatural sounds
banging off the walls and ceiling of the cavernous echo chamber.

The half-dozen passersby who had been hustling along the
sidewalk away from the Square stopped only long enough to peer at the source of
the sound, then continued on with an added degree of pep in their step.

The opposite was true for a pair of businessmen wearing
suits and ties and a young woman clutching her preschool-aged boy by the hand.
All three, walking in the direction of the Square and likely unaware of what
the others already knew, stood gawking at the ambling ashen forms, one of them
so tall its head banged continuously on the angled soffits and low-hanging
water and electrical conduits.

Arms outstretched and with a chorus of moans escaping their
wide open maws, the nearest two forms passed under the fluorescent overheads,
the stark white cone of light exposing them for the bloody spectacles they
were.

A few paces behind the others, the seven-footer sporting a
shirt drenched in crimson head-butted the hanging low clearance warning sign,
stumbled forward clumsily at the base of the ramp, and crashed face first onto
the oil-dappled concrete.

All at once came the sickening wet crunch of cartilage
meeting concrete and a sharp crack-tinkle as teeth shattered and bounced up the
ramp in a wide spreading arc.

“Are you OK?” called the woman, instinctively drawing her
child to her hip.

The man said nothing. All that was coming out of him was a
dewy gurgle as he struggled to rise.

Low in timbre, the menacing growls of the other two
intensified as their combat-booted feet hit the incline. Ignoring the fallen
man, the pair locked eyes on the woman and boy and reached out for them.

Seeing all of this unfolding, one of the businessmen backed
away from the entrance and pulled a thin phone from a leather holster perched
horizontally on his hip. In the next beat he was tapping furiously on the
device’s glass face.

Meanwhile, gaping at what he thought to be victims of a
vicious mugging, businessman number two shielded his eyes against the flashing lights
atop the inert ambulance and began to slowly back away.

Eyes suddenly gone wide, the young woman backpedaled away
from what at first blush she thought to be a couple of harmless vagrants, but
now knew full well were something that she could not easily explain. Motherly instincts
kicking in, she put her child behind her and tried talking the bloodied, cadaverous-looking
street kids out of whatever they had planned for her.

At street level, businessman number one had the phone jammed
to his ear and his lips pressed into a thin line. Brow furrowed, this action—basically
an inaction in the eyes of the EMTs—drew a pair of disgusted glares as the
uniformed man and woman hauled open the ambulance’s rear doors and began to
pull plastic boxes from inside.

Grabbing the equipment by recessed handles, the two EMTs
brushed past the inert businessmen, the male EMT telling the suit with the
phone to “make yourself useful and vacate the sidewalk to make room for the
backup that’s on the way,” and the female first responder taking the time to thank
the good Samaritan suit who had waved them down before whispering “Move aside
pussy” to the other as she slid her medical kit on the brick sidewalk and took
a knee by the woman and kid.

The male EMT cupped his hands and, ignoring his proximity to
the leather-clad moaners, called down to the man struggling to rise to his
feet. “Are you bit?” he asked, his voice sonorous and booming in the enclosed
area.

The seemingly dazed man made no reply. Instead, getting his
feet underneath him, he stood fully and cast a blank stare up the ramp. In the
next beat the EMT’s question was answered when the giant of a man took a step
forward, opened his mouth revealing a picket of jagged and broken teeth, and
added an otherworldly hiss of his own to the street kids’ eerie moans.

Craning over his shoulder, in a voice wavering slightly, the
male EMT asked his partner if she could see their security team yet.

She stood and looked up and down the street. “Negative.” She
began backing the woman and kid away from the entrance while saying, “They
probably had to wheel around the block and are dealing with traffic and one-way
streets.”

The male EMT took out a radio and called Dispatch, stated
his location, then added, “I have three more ambulatory deceased. How copy?”

At once the radio crackled. “Good copy. Three
more
walkers broke the cordon?” Though fed over a few miles of air and coming out of
a tiny speaker with a lot of hours on it, there was no mistaking the tone of
incredulity in the responding voice.

The first of the moaning street kids was now only a couple
of yards from the sidewalk and, almost as if they’d materialized out of thin
air, a couple of dozen bystanders had gathered. They had formed a ragged
semicircle fully encompassing the entrance, the ambulance just outside of the
perimeter.

Walking backward up the ramp, eyes never leaving the three
things he had just referred to as
ambulatory dead,
the male EMT came up
against two-hundred-pounds of construction worker.

“What the eff did they take?” asked the man, his breath reeking
of cigarettes. “Whatever it is … I want on that train.”

Finding himself between a rock and a hard place—the EMT put
his hands up in a defensive posture just as the snarling street kid curled his
dirty fingers into the fabric of his uniform blouse.

Ten feet to the right, the female EMT had her back turned to
the unfolding drama and was trying to disperse the crowd.

The street kid’s gaping maw was closing around the three
outside fingers of the male EMT’s left hand when a fist the size of Thor’s hammer
flashed in and shattered half of the teeth from it.

Recoiling from the semi-warm spritz of aerated blood coming
from both the street kid’s pulped upper lip and the laborer’s lacerated
knuckles, the EMT cried out for everyone to run.

“I don’t run from anything or anybody,” said the heavily
muscled man as he pushed the EMT aside. He put his bloody fist to his mouth and
sucked at the blood there. He wiped his palms on his day-glo yellow vest,
curled his hands into fists, and as half of the assembled gawkers fled in
terror, laid into the second street kid, raining jackhammer-like blows unmercifully
on his face.

Still moaning through a mouthful of shattered teeth, the
first street kid found purchase on a bystander’s bare leg and hauled itself to
one knee. In the next beat the woman in tourist attire—khaki walking shorts, Old
Navy tank, and canvas deck shoes—found herself dragged to the sidewalk, her
gaze still inexplicably locked on the circus-sideshow-sized man at the bottom
of the ramp. As she ripped her attention from the flailing oddity, her first
death warrant was signed as the street kid’s razor-sharp shards of teeth sank
into the soft flesh on the side of her calf. A lightning bolt of pain hit her brain
first. Then she screamed and peered down at the damage being created as the weight
of the thing latched onto her leg sped her to a painful rendezvous with the
ground.

With the first symptoms of shock setting in, the woman kicked
her assailant off and crawled into the dissipating crowd, the quartet of deep
furrows gouged from knee to ankle leaving a sticky crimson trail in her wake.