Well Fed - 05 (18 page)

Reilly appeared utterly stunned. “You sick, twisted fucker.”

“If you don’t fight, we shoot you both. If you think about rushing us, we’ll blow your knees out first. We’ll arbitrarily do the same to whoever is handy, and then you all get to see the next matchup from where you bleed out on the ground. And I guarantee if that happens, the person shot will curse you and your family like you’ve never heard before.”

“You’re a fucking lunatic,” Reilly said in disbelief, his words vapor in the nearby headlights.

The stocky one, however, was considering it. He actually brought the screwdriver up to his waist in an underhanded grip, ready to stab, weighing his chances. That was his downfall: too
much
thinking.

Reilly noticed that and immediately tossed his hammer into the dirt. “You can go fuck yourself,” he directed at his captor.

The stocky man squaring off against Reilly eyed the discarded tool before looking down in shame, regretting his thoughts. Without a word, he dropped the screwdriver. A triumphant Reilly focused on Shovel, and, for a moment, the tension grew and threatened to erupt any second.

Shovel regarded the leader’s smug expression of superiority, as if he thought he’d really
won
something by not playing along. Shovel frowned, truly despising self-righteous pricks like Reilly.

“Shoot ’em.”

Three soldiers fired, the night flashing and snapping. Bullets chewed into the two men while fragments sputtered and spurted from the front and rear. The impacts launched them into the air about a foot before they crashed to earth in bloody lumps. Some people screamed. One woman bolted. She made it nearly ten feet before a black-garbed killer took aim and damn near cut her in half with an extended burst of gunfire.

Everything died down after a few seconds. Steam issued from the executed. The people still on the ground sobbed and squirmed, replaying in their heads what had just happened.

Shovel inhaled and appraised the situation, feeling the tension return and build once more. Fearful eyes looked up from the ground.

“Who’s next?” he repeated.

The morning was a dark shade of eggshell white.

Gus rubbed at his eyes and stared at the ceiling, slowly coming to his senses after a deep sleep. Blankets from a linen closet covered him from neck to toe, completing a bunk he’d made on the comfy sofa. He felt guilty for resting—guilty for not being out there, searching for Maggie and the kids. However, crawling forth into the night of Lower Sackville and Halifax wasn’t a plan to him. That would’ve been more like asking for trouble.

The Captain stood at attention on the coffee table. Gus had placed him there the night before, but the sailor’s smile got on his nerves after a while, so he turned him around to face the road.

“Give a shout if anyone drives up here,” Gus had told him.

He hadn’t drunk a drop the night before, proving to himself and the Captain that he didn’t depend on his wares anymore, that he could function without them, regardless of how tempting they were.

It was just after nine in the morning, sunny but feeling of winter.

Gus threw off the blankets and sat up, rubbed at his eyes and face once again, and took a deep, sobering stare out at the cul-de-sac.

“Whattaya think?” he asked the officer and allowed the silence to grow. “Yeah. Let me get something to eat, and we’ll get moving.”

Knee-high grass almost hid the firepit in the backyard. Gus borrowed a handsaw from the garage and cut a few pieces of wood off a nearby elm tree, not so concerned about the noise. He put a lighter flame to some leaves, grass, and twigs filling the firepit. Within an hour, he was eating noodles, feasting on two packs of the aged delicacy. He wished he had some of the cured deer meat or beef that Adam and the boys had prepared for the winter, but that was gone with the storage shed if it wasn’t stolen.

“Probably shit a nugget,” Gus muttered after finishing his breakfast. He made his way to a downstairs bathroom and was delighted to find toilet paper still hanging from a wall dispenser. After a meditative moment that lasted close to ten minutes, he hoisted his jeans and went to the living room. He gathered up the Nomex gear and stowed it in the SUV. The leather duds he’d taken from the Leather Shop went on over his regular clothing.

Having done that, he went to the garage door and worked the crank, allowing the day inside.

A man stood not thirty feet away, dressed in a black, knee-length winter duster. A pirate’s stocking cap descended and snaked a couple of times around his neck. A trimmed tumbleweed of a beard graced his chin, and that, along with a wide pair of sunglasses, hid his face damn near perfectly. On any day before the apocalypse, Gus would’ve pegged him as a street busker.

“Mornin’,” the stranger said jovially and gave a ratty smile, his hands deep in his pockets.

“Mornin’,” Gus replied warily, glancing around.

“Sleep good last night?”

Gus fought down his first response to tell the stranger to go fuck himself. “Yeah. I did.”

“It’s a nice house. Nice street.”

“Yep.” Gus realized his bat was in the SUV and his knife was in his fireman’s boots.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Stocking Cap said.

“I am.”

“Saw you drive up yesterday. Didn’t feel like barging in then. Figured to hold off until the morning.”

“Good idea.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“You live around here?”

“Me? Hell no, I’m from Bridgewater.”

“Come up here to look around?”

“You got it. For food mostly. Supplies. Anything useful.”

“Just you?”

Stocking Cap nodded. “Yep. Just me. But don’t worry. I’m not interested in fightin’ or killin’ or anything. Just fair tradin’, if you’re into that sorta thing.”

“What if I’m not?”

Stocking Cap shrugged. “We part ways.”

“Yeah? Nothing else? You won’t try to kill me?”

“Why would I wanna do that?”

Gus stood right in front of the SUV’s grill and couldn’t decide what to do with his arms. He finally decided to hold on to his hips and hoped it didn’t seem too confrontational. The coast still looked clear. “Lotta bad people out here. Folks who aren’t too worried about chopping a person up and leaving them for dead.”

“Yeah?”

Gus nodded that it was fact.

“Yeah, well, I’m not one of them,” Stocking Cap established while glancing at the sky, straightening his back as if it bothered him. “Ain’t that many people left, anyway.”

“No. There’s not.”

“You know, you’re the first person I’ve talked to in about three weeks.”

“Three weeks, eh? ’Sa long time.”

“It is.”

“Well, I gotta get movin’ here,” Gus said. “What was it you wanted?”

“Trade mostly. Won’t take long.”

“Okay. Let’s trade.”

“Got any ammunition?”

“Nope.”

“Whiskey?”

“Nope.”

“Nudie books?”

“Nudie books?” Gus repeated.

“Yeah. Just the regular kind. None of the weird stuff.”

“Who the hell trades nudie books?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Y’mean more than I am now?”

“Well, okay. Toilet paper?”

“None that I want to trade. You running low?”

“Not really,” the stranger admitted, “but I try to keep stocked. You can never have enough of that stuff.”

They agreed on that.

“Just to be clear,” Stocking Cap said, “you don’t have any nudie books.”

Gus winced. “No nudie books.”

“All right then. Anything to eat?”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“A day ago.”

That didn’t sit well with Gus at all. “Well, I… fuck it. I got some noodles and Kraft Dinner. If that’s okay.”

Stocking Cap brightened. “That sounds like a banquet right now. Need any nudie books?”

Gus shook his head… but then actually considered it. “Nah, you keep those. The food’s free. You got anything to drink?”

“No,” the stranger replied with a shake of his head. “Nothing. But water’s easy to come by. Actually came by some powdered Gatorade about three or four months back. Life was good. Anyway, like I said, plenty of water around.”

“More than some things. Well, here,” Gus stopped and regarded the stranger cautiously. “I’m going to get it out of the back.”

“Jesus, thanks, man.”

“Just don’t cook it up here, in this house, is all,” he called out from the rear of the garage.

“Something special about this place?”

Gus returned from the back with a pair of KD boxes in hand and a pack of noodles. “Yeah, something like that. Listen, I don’t want to sound all paranoid and shit, but how about I just toss this to you?”

“Ah,” Stocking Cap said. “How about this. You place it on the lawn there, and I’ll get it later?”

That suited Gus fine. He walked over to the high grass and placed it on the ground.

“How’s that?”

“Great. Appreciate it, man.”

“It’s not quite half of what I got, but,” he shrugged, “should keep you going for a couple of days.”

“It will. Thanks.” The beard smiled.

“Well,” Gus threw out and felt at a loss as to what to say next. “Good luck.”

“Hey, you don’t need anything?” the stranger asked.

“Not really. The only thing would be food, and I think we just covered that. Unless you got some guns stashed around?”

“Sorry, man. No guns.”

Gus rubbed at the back of his head, felt the hair growing there, and realized he wasn’t wearing his helmet. “Well, that’s it then, I guess.”

“You sure you don’t want any nudie books?”

That brought on a chuckle. “No, man. I’m okay.”

“I got information,” Stocking Cap offered.

That was something. “What kind?”

“Where you going?”

“No offense, but I’d just as soon keep that private.”

“Okay, okay. Forgot myself. Haven’t talked to many and all, y’know. Well, anyway, you should know Halifax has become a bit of a nest lately.”

“A nest?”

“Yeah,” Stocking Cap said. “Road savages floating in. They don’t wanna talk unless they have you tied down. Looking for guns and whatnot. Vicious. Almost got my ass shot off one afternoon down on Barrington. They chased me for four blocks before I finally lost them.”

“You been down there?”

“Yeah. City’s a morgue. Bodies… well, let’s just say it’s a mess.”

Gus digested that. “You see anyone with kids?”

“Kids?”

“Yeah, kids. A little girl and boy. This high”—he marked space with a hand—“and a woman in her sixties.”

Stocking Cap thought about it. “No, sorry.”

“Yeah,” Gus nodded, feeling his stomach unclench. He’d put too much hope into that one question.

“I did see a pair of pickups shoot up the 102 yesterday morning, however. Seemed like they were in a hurry.”

That stopped Gus, and he considered the stocking-cap man. “Pickups?”

“Help any?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, let me tell you this. I passed through Truro a few weeks back and actually went into New Brunswick before turning back. It’s Wild West out there. Whoever’s left over is gravitating into groups of survivors. Coming here. Road savages. And they’re not friendly.”

“Yeah.” Gus knew from his own experience. “Thanks.”

“Hey. Thank you.” Stocking Cap nodded at the packaged food. “Where you from, anyway?”

Gus didn’t think there was any harm in giving up that information. “Annapolis.”

“The Valley? The hell you doing down here––oh wait––looking for those youngsters?”

“And the lady.”

“Something happen?”

Gus regarded Stocking Cap.
What the hell
. “Two days ago, the people I’d been livin’ with for a couple of years got executed on the front lawn. All except four. I found one of them yesterday, dumped on the side of the road like so much garbage. I’m gonna find the others.”

Birdsong drifted from beyond the cul-de-sac, filling dead air.

“Listen,” Stocking Cap said. “Sorry to hear about your people. I keep out of sight a lot. Take risks as I see ’em, like here and now. But I’ll tell you this. It doesn’t really surprise me to hear about your troubles. In the last year alone, I’ve heard more gunfights than I can remember. Run into a lot of gangs. Folks who are militant. And they’re more than happy to put a bullet in you. Or worse.”

Gus nodded. “Thanks for that.”

Stocking Cap waved dismissively. “The Valley had a lot of farms up there. Still do?”

“Still do. Most of it grows wild, but it was feeding us for a couple of years. Would’ve kept on, too—until this all happened.”

“Still got apple orchards?”

“It’s all there,” Gus said with a squint. “Apples, melons. Blueberries. Corn. Hard work, but it’s there.”

“Hard work doesn’t bother me,” Stocking Cap said. “These days, it’s back to the basics or nothing.”

“Heard that. I suggest you head on up there. Check things out. Bypass the city and head for the smaller communities past Greenwood. Berwick. Those places. You’ll find the farms. Livestock too. If you can catch ’em.”

This pleased Stocking Cap greatly. His beard moved when he smiled, and that time, he showed teeth—or what remained of them. Gus kept a neutral face. He wore his own scars.

“Good luck to you then,” Stocking Cap said.

“Good luck to you too… stranger.” Gus smiled at having tagged that on. It felt good. He got behind the wheel of the SUV. Stocking Cap offered a lazy salute and backed off, making way.

A part of Gus, the paranoid part, warned him to exercise caution. Perhaps Stocking Cap had a companion with a gun sighted on him. Gus sighed. If he did, Gus couldn’t do a damn thing about it until after the shot. That feeling of having just gotten off the farm made him uneasy. The world had changed, and he’d existed in a bubble during the most important parts.

He eased out of the garage and drove past Stocking Cap, who stood aside good-naturedly and actually waved, causing Gus to let slip his prize-winning grin. A third of the way out of the cul-de-sac, he felt better about the encounter and glanced into his rearview mirror.

Stocking Cap was already picking up the food.

Gus stayed on the road and, after a minute, realized he was still alive.