Timothy 02: Tim2 (29 page)

“Well that ought to keep them in place,” I said aloud and then went back up the stairs.

I was in for the long game now. One thing I needed was to sate a growing hunger and the other was to get something for some entertainment. First things first. I walked around the neighborhood looking for any signs of life, an errant candle light, a rustling window shade, smoke from a chimney. Something to let me know there were humans around. I’ve got to admit, as saddened as I was that there was not food readily available, I was exhilarated at the karmic justice of the rich having met their ends. These two million dollar megalithic homes stood empty as a testament to their arrogance. I hoped the fuckers died miserable deaths. Still, though, eating one of them would be nicer.

I had gone a good mile or two and the houses were getting considerably smaller. I had just started thinking if I should turn around and get my car when I noticed movement. My pupils dilated – my palms most likely got sweaty, I didn’t bother to check. It wasn’t much and I wasn’t completely sure what I had seen, but since it was the first wisp of a chance I figured,
what the hell
?

I checked the doorknob, it was locked. A locked door during an apocalypse event – shocker! Then I smiled. I busted out a sidelight, reached in and threw the deadbolt. I half expected a shot or, at a minimum, a knife strike to my exposed forearm…nothing. I wasn’t quite sure why I was throwing caution to the wind. It was later I would learn that Hugh was depressing my cerebral cortex for his own devices.

Never understood sidelights. I guess they’re nice enough if you’re into that kind of thing, but why bother having a stout oak door to stop intruders only to have a thin windowpane on the side of the locking mechanism? Do people really think a criminal is going to overlook that fact? The door opened with merely a slight squeak. My eyes watered immediately as they were assailed with the pungent odor of ammonia. But not the cleaning kind. Two cats were looking at me from across the room, their tails swishing back and forth in an aggressive and agitated manner. I closed the door behind me. The piss smell was almost overwhelming, but there was something even worse. There was at least one dead person in this house. 

“I wonder if there’s anything salvageable?” I asked as I headed further in.

I walked casually down the hallway. The door on my right led to a small bathroom that was completely overrun with cat feces and urine. The litter box was completely encrusted with a foot deep layer of cat crap. At the end of the hallway was a bedroom. Something that at one time had been of human origin was lying on the bed. Its clothes, which pinned it as female, or a cross-dresser I suppose, were in tatters on the floor.

The near-skeletal remains were almost picked clean, but that didn’t stop a couple of skinny cats from tugging on some connective tissue on its knee. They hissed and spat and even took a couple of claws-extended swipes at each other for a morsel that would not have kept either of them satisfied. Bones from the hands and feet littered the ground, and I imagine that it would only be a matter of time until the rest of the body was scattered about like so much dirty laundry.

“Fucking cats, feed them, pick up their shit, give them a house, and then they eat you. My kind of animal.”

The two that had been playing tug of war with a dime-sized morsel looked up suspiciously when they heard me talk. I stepped into the room and shut the door. “Not much to you I suppose, but my mama always said I should try out new things. The cats hissed and fled, their earlier dispute completely forgotten as they shot down and under the bed.

“Oh my, I’ll never think to look there,” I said mockingly, placing my hands against my cheeks.

I yelled as I flipped the bed over, dry bones crashed against the wall. The two original cats bolted towards what I figured was the closet. A third who had been napping was caught completely unawares. I roughly grabbed him around his mid-section. He howled in rage as I crushed him in my grip before taking ravenous bites out of his frame.

“Just like chicken wings,” I said a few minutes later as I licked my fingers and discarded the cat carcass. “Furry chicken wings…but chicken wings.”

“Here, little kitty,” I said as I approached the closet.

I was smacking my lips. They weren’t buying it, but their hissing gave me all the information I needed. I reached into the closet and was rewarded with a few bites and some slashing cuts from their razor-sharp claws. I pulled the scrawnier of the two, an orange tabby free from the detritus of the closet. He was hissing and spitting right up until the end when I bit halfway through his head.

“These things are fucking delicious,” I said as I shook his lifeless body around. When I was done, I grabbed his former adversary and did the same to her.

She tried to run, but I had the closet blocked off like a goalie. Her claws sought purchase in my thighs and she was almost past before I snatched her up.

“Oh so close,” I told her. She ripped into my lip as I brought her up to my mouth. “Fucking bitch,” I said as I pulled her away with half of my old lip attached in her mouth.

She was doing her best to spit it out when I slammed her little streamlined head into the corner of the wall. She was much more docile being half unconscious. It was an hour or two before I had done my part to keep the world free from stray pets. I even checked twice.

“Not bad,” I said as I came up from the basement with what I had been looking for.

I strolled back to the Speight shelter or – the more aptly named – meat locker. I whistled as I did so, not a care in the world. I liked this life; it was easy to figure out what needed to be done. I didn’t need to rely on anybody or anything else in this world. Just pack food in the gullet and the rest would take care of itself, it really was that simple. It was with that happy thought I descended back down the set of stairs to the large door.

“Miss me?” I yelled. “I’ve been gone for hours, you guys could have left!”

“Fuck off,” wafted out from a female voice.

“Oh, Yorley, is that the best you have?” Then I slammed my five-pound hammer against the door with all the power I could muster. “Oh fuck,” I said, staggering back, “that was friggin’ loud. Holy shit, how bad was that in there?” I asked laughing. “I bet your fillings came loose!” The entire steel structure was still vibrating as I brought the hammer back down. Screams of confusion and crying children were the next sounds I heard.

It was after a good hour or so of slamming the dinner bell that I spoke. “I bet you guys are trying to cover your ears or shove stuff in them! Won’t work!” I shouted. “You see, what happens is that the noise is conducted through the bones in your head and then into your ear drum, completely circumventing the ear canal…so it doesn’t really matter. You could shove lead down there and you’d still hear this!” I gonged again.

“Fucking stop it!” Yorley screamed.

I gonged again and waited until the vibrations stopped. “Send one person out and I will.”

“Fuck you, Tim,” she said softly.

“Oh…you’re defiant now, but I can do this for days. I wonder what you’ll be like tomorrow morning when I make the same offer. Hell, you’ll probably come out yourself.”

“Fuck you, Tim,” she repeated.

I answered with a gonging.

I gave control of my left arm over to Hugh while I zoned out. He was pretty good, but he had the rhythm of a white guy. His beats were so random I thought he was tackling jazz. Next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming on my face and Hugh was still entertaining our guests.

“Maybe we should speed this process up a little bit,” I told him as I stood, my left arm swung out and smacked into the concrete wall. “You can probably stop now, Hugh. Hey! How’s it going in there?”

“Please stop,” Mr. Speight’s voice begged. “You’re killing us.”

“Well duh,” I told him.

“Please…for the sake of my kids.”

“Why don’t you come out as a ‘piece’ offering?”

He went silent.

“Not very altruistic of you, Mr. Speight. They are your kids, after all. All this noise must be doing some serious damage to their little ears. And that’s not even mentioning what it’s probably doing to your wife with her skull injury and all. Man, it probably feels like I’m banging this thing directly on her head every time it hits. You could stop all of this if you just came out.”

“Why did you ever let me go?” he replied. I think he was sobbing.

“How else was I going to figure out where you hid my little Yorley? Who knew you could take such a beating?”

“All you want is Yorley?” he asked, maybe a flicker of hope lining his question.

“Sure,” I responded, then added much quieter, “for now.”

“Get out!” he shouted. “Your presence has endangered my entire family!” He was screaming now, the ragged words were being torn from his throat.

“I’d go out there, Harold, if I thought it would do any good. What do you think he’s going to do once that door is open?” Yorley yelled back, but I think it had more to do with her loss of hearing.

“What are you saying, Harold? You can’t kick her out.” It was Scarlett and she didn’t sound so good. I can’t imagine the personal hell she was living through each and every time I banged that hammer. I was probably making her shattered skull plate swim around from the vibrations. “She saved me.”

“And look what that’s accomplished!” he was shrieking. “Our whole family is in danger now!”

“Would you rather I had not made it home?” she begged.

Through muffled sobbing and Hugh’s enhanced hearing I heard him mumble out a ‘Yes.’

“Scarlett, if you think it will help, I’ll leave.”

“No!” she said defiantly. “If anyone walks out that door, it’ll be me. At least I now know where I stand in Harold’s pecking order…his royal fucking highness, followed by everyone else!”

That’s right
, kick him while he’s down
, I thought.

I smacked the door just to let them know I was still around, and then I went back up the stairs and over to the shed. “I wonder if this will work?” I asked as I picked up the small gas can.

I popped the filter off the exhaust pipe, a black plume of smoke billowed out. “Here goes nothing,” I said as I dumped the remaining contents of the can into the opening.

The gas did what gas does under these circumstances, it ignited. The pipe began to burn as did my shirt and, by the smell of it, my hair. A fire trail was leading back into the can. I tossed it aside, fluid pouring out and onto the floor and walls of the small shed.

“Well that went bad fast,” I said as I patted my arm and head down, quashing out the flames.

I had to get out of the shed; it was a lost cause. It took a full half hour before the blaze consumed the structure and most of its contents. The generator seemed unaffected; I could still hear the hum of it over the cooling metal implements that had survived. My right sleeve was mostly gone and Hugh was doing a little damage control on my scalp and forearm, but otherwise, we were as right as rain – at least of the toxic variety.

“Really thought that would work,” I said, looking at the pipe. Inspiration came in from left field. “Well let’s see if that was just some more made up Hollywood bullshit,” I said as I tore up tufts of sod. I shoved them into the pipe a la Eddie Murphy and the infamous potato scene from
Beverly Hills Cop
or maybe it was a banana, or a child’s arm, like I give a shit. It was the third or fourth packing of dirt into the pipe that I heard it sputter and quit. I could only imagine their moment of panic when the lights and other implements shut off and then switched over to the emergency lighting. Batteries were only going to last so long.

“Let the games begin!” I shouted, raising my hands over my head in an approximation of a victory celebration. I went back over to the staircase and down. I grabbed my hammer and tapped lightly on the door. “Everyone alright in there?” I asked in as concerned of a tone as I could. “Will you guys be able to breathe once the batteries die?”

I hadn’t thought of that until just then, and it gave me a moment of trepidation. I didn’t want them to die in there unless I was the cause of it. And not indirectly responsible either. I still had my ace up my sleeve, my own private sleeper cell. My concern was, once unleashed, would he do as we asked or would he go rogue.

“Whatcha thinking, Yorley? I know you’re weighing your options. I fucked that generator up. No matter what Harold does down there, he’s not going to get it running. My guess is he’s a tax lawyer or some shit anyway, probably doesn’t even know how to turn a screwdriver. Is that the man you’re going to have your life depend on?”

“Are you the man that I should rely upon, Tim?” she replied.

“That’s my girl. Of course I’m the guy you should rely on. You know exactly where I stand on the matter.”

I could hear some coughing and crying. I think from Scarlett and the children, most likely Harold as well.

“Sorry about the smoke, a little bit of a mistake on my part,” I told them. “Oh, and you’re going to want to talk to your home owner’s insurance about the shed, it’s a total loss. I hope your deductible isn’t too high.”

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Harold screamed.