After The Virus (20 page)

He never had much to do with this handy herd of men around him. He’d grown accustomed to bending his back to get things done, and he missed it. Oh, if he pushed it, they let him operate the tow truck — it was his after all — and they certainly expected that he had a plan of some sort.

If this highway was plugged with vehicles between here and Vancouver, he thought Big was being optimistic about it taking only six hours. He wished he could feel more confident that Rhiannon and Snickers had six more hours. He glanced over at One Ear huddled in the back of the pickup with B.B.

One Ear hadn’t spoken much, if any, against his Boss; and in that silence, Will recognized fear. The closer the city got, the more silent One Ear went. Ultimately, he was more afraid of the Boss than his present circumstances, which was a red flag to heed in more than one way. First, that fear seen in an ally and mixed with such loyalty meant there was a good chance this Boss was insane as well as evil. So what would Rhiannon, who was rash when afraid, do when confronted with crazy and evil?
 

She wouldn’t run or hide without Snickers. Will wasn’t being judgmental; just pragmatic about how quickly it could go from bad to worse. Could be it had gone worse already. The second red flag was One Ear himself.
What levels of betrayal was he capable of? Hell, it wouldn’t even be betrayal, seeing as we’re enemies.
So he had to assume they were driving right into a trap that Buddy and Boss would collude to spring, and that Stupid had probably already paid with his life. None of those possibilities made him want to get to the city any slower.

He left the gassing of the tow truck to Rav and wandered over to Boomer and the tank. Big crossed the lot to follow him. Boomer had scored a baseball hat for some hockey team — maybe the Canucks if they’d recently gotten a new logo — from the gas station’s convenience store.

“There’s a wide median on either side of the highway,” he pointed out to Boomer.

Boomer nodded, spit, but once his throat was clear, said, “Not wide enough for Delilah.”

“And, Tex, there’s no way people didn’t pull over in some spots, maybe to stop and die, maybe to try to get around the gridlock,” Big added.

“But it is wide like that all the way through the valley, until you get to the bridges, that is,” Rav piped up from behind as he joined them.

Will was quiet and they all let him think, like they always did. The diesel glugged into the tank, and he wondered how many gallons it took.

“But if you positioned Delilah just right between the cars, and if we cleared a stretch so you could get up speed, then…” — he tried to not think of all the families in all those cars —
 
“…then you could use her like a battering ram, with the medians to push into.”

“Sure could, Tex,” Boomer eagerly responded.

“Might have to stop and clear spots in places, but we could move faster that way,” Big added.
 

Will moved a couple of steps away to think about it further; only Big followed.

“You’re not worried about being disrespectful of the dead anymore, Tex?” Big asked.
 

He tried to look through the darkness to see how many cars, how many dead bodies, they were about to disturb; but in the end, his own fear won.

“The lives that hang in the balance are more important now than the husks of the dearly departed.” He finally gave voice to his decision.

“I agree. Plus, once we’ve won the city, you can just tell people to come back to clean up.” Big liked to plan their victory and rule ahead.

It made him ill — a feeling he was unfortunately getting accustomed to — thinking of tossing dead bodies, dead families, around like garbage. He, in pure denial, had spent a lot of time carefully erasing the effects of the virus on his life and the environment of the town and surrounding area.

When Snickers — even with her muteness and other not-so-obvious signs of trauma — and then Rhiannon arrived, he thought they could just exist. Exist in the cocoon he’d built, but life wasn’t like that. Life made you get your hands dirty; life was vengeful if you tried an easy route.

“This is just the way it is,” he told Big, who didn’t answer. Then he turned to nod to Boomer, who rewarded this decision with a toothy grin.

He clapped Big on the shoulder, a gesture the man often employed himself. Big seemed to like his use of it.

“Everyone restocked?” he asked.

“You had us covered in town, Tex, but yeah, I think everyone has stretched and shit by now,” Big answered.

The others — God, how many was he leading to death he didn’t even know — had gathered around the tank in conference with Boomer and Rav.

He turned to the tow truck, knowing that Big would convey his so-called orders. They all got it anyway, like a collective consciousness.

Rav stepped up to match his stride, but continued on when Will paused to pet B.B. She wagged her nonexistent tail. One Ear looked to be sleeping.

Behind him, Boomer fired up the tank.
 

He was so close he could taste it; taste blood and ashes with a swirl of strawberry. But he was hoping that was just his imagination.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

RHIANNON

She faltered.

Rhiannon could admit it, even if just to herself. She saw Snickers with her white, blank face and she just stopped to stare.
 

Perhaps it was the flanking monsters, two of the Infected, one of which unfolded from its wall slump to practically seven feet tall when she entered the room.

Perhaps it was the doll clothing —
please, please don’t let it have been he who undressed and redressed her
 — or Snickers' falsely rouged cheeks.

But, no, the truth: it was because she thought she was too late. She saw no life in Snickers. The girl didn’t even respond to her name.

“Snickers? Snickers, babe, you okay?” she whispered. And for the first time, she wished she knew the child’s real name, and then thought she was an awful person to not have tried to learn it before.

Snickers, cross-legged in the bed in her frilly pink dress, continued to stare blankly, even though Rhiannon was sure she was in her eyeline.

She finally managed to trigger her feet and take a stumbling step forward, only to have the Infected rattle their chains in anticipation.

Snickers was completely trapped; maybe only their fingertips could brush her, but no one was getting near the bed with them guarding it.

Voices from the other room reminded her that this reunion scene was about to be interrupted by something she didn’t want Snickers to witness. That had to be his plan: have Snickers watch and then make Rhiannon watch as he killed the child, once he realized that rape alone just didn’t do it for him.

She looked for a weapon. The Infected watched her; Snickers didn’t.
 

Just get her out of here and everything will be back to normal,
she told herself. Of course, this all might have just compounded whatever trauma had caused the child’s muteness.
What if Snickers' brain had shut down for good?

The lamp was bolted to the dresser, recently.

The drawers were empty.

Pulling back the curtains revealed that the windows were barred.
 

Fuck
.

This was a prison — recently renovated — to house her. Silk/cotton sheets on the bed. A favorite soap by the soaker tub. See’s Candies on the table. And not a single, obvious thing she could use for a weapon.

Thank God she was resourceful in a pinch, because it was about to get tight in here.

She could hear the Boss issuing some series of orders in the next room, which she gathered had to do with Buddy’s body and dinner.

Asparagus did indeed seem to be an issue worth killing over.

Rhiannon returned to the middle of the room, so Snickers, if she could register images anymore, could see her. Then she did something she never did. She waited. She wasn’t going to be able to figure herself out of this ahead of time; she was going to have to act in the moment.

The Boss strolled in. He’d removed his bloodstained jacket and loosened his tie, perhaps hoping to look dashing; but rather, he looked…
weak
.

She smiled at this thought. This seemed to off-balance him, and she wondered at her own stupidity in forgetting the weapon she always had.

The doors, propelled by unseen hands, closed. She tried not to think about the fact that more guards equaled more obstacles to their escape; plus, now she’d have a catatonic child in tow.

She widened the smile and his step actually faltered.
 

“Hello,” she murmured, knowing it wouldn’t take more than one word to seal the spell.

The idea was to get him in her grasp; then she’d go all black widow.

Except they, the Infected, chose that moment to rattle their chains and — as they stretched their arms to the Boss — sniff the air. He stopped and stared.
 

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Buddy’s blood must have stained more than the tuxedo jacket.
 

The Boss shook his head and then looked at Snickers.

“How pretty our daughter looks,” he said as he turned to her.
 

Ah, fuck, he had another script for her now; one she really didn’t know.

“This is absolutely insane!” She turned to scratch his eyes out, to get the confrontation over with, but he was faster and stronger than her.

Before she knew it, he had her twisted on the bed with the gun at the base of her skull, and her face inches from Snickers, who didn’t react.

His knee at the small of her back pressed her pelvis to the bed while he dragged her, sharply arched backwards, by the hair. And then Them. They reached, brushing with pudgy, swollen fingertips against her face, across Snickers' face and shoulder. They moaned and slurped.

He just held her there, not speaking. Her ribs screamed with pain if she struggled, and any movement seemed to arouse the Infected more.

She saw nothing in Snickers, no flicker of recognition; the girl had retreated into the depths of her mind, and those brushing fingers were what had driven her.

The taunting words,
your fault your fault
, started up in Rhiannon’s head again.

She stopped struggling.

He didn’t loosen his grip.

She thought about loss and how it had never really meant anything until now, because now there was no anger. Just soul-aching sadness.

She gave up.

She gave in.

He let go of her.

She sank her head into Snickers' lap and cried.
 

She cried for this child who’d almost been hers.
 

She cried for the sound of B.B.’s happy bark the day she chased that raccoon out of the sun-dappled, newly seeded garden.
 

She cried for Will, absolutely everything that was perfect and right about Will, and how losing Snickers was going to kill him.
 

She cried knowing that, just by being her, she’d ruined it all. Except this went beyond self-pity into a craterous cavern of dark despair.

∞

She felt something different brush her cheek.
Tiny fingers this time?
It didn’t repeat, but it dried her tears in record time.

Rhiannon looked up at Snickers, but the child didn’t move again, if she had moved at all; only the pudgy fingertips and moaning persisted.

She straightened out of their reach, and never taking her eyes off Snickers, smoothed her hair and readjusted her dress.

“I thought the pink would bring out the amber of her eyes.” This was a blatant lie; pink did no such thing, but what did he know, really? In the end, crazy or not, he was just a man, and she had never let any man get the best of her, no matter how hard or soft or long they tried. This was his second attempt and she was going to make him pay for it.

He’d been waiting for her, not an emotion on his face.

“Ah, Rhiannon. Self-preservation was always your best look,” he said.

She pulled her eyes from Snickers.

She turned to him.
 

He was seated, next to the window, its curtains drawn again, eating chocolates.
 

Her chocolates.

She adopted that slight slouch: the one that got her that ten million dollar perfume contract and was soon after copied by supermodels worldwide.

She sauntered into the bathroom, leaving the door open so he could see she was just fixing her makeup. Her mascara hadn’t run. Perfect.

He accepted this and moved on. “I’ve been rather unhappy without you two here with me. But now that you are here, all will be well.”

“Of course you have,” she replied, and her voice took on the resonance of the tiled bathroom. “We two were utterly lost without you.”

The Boss laughed; but when Rhiannon exited the bathroom, she didn’t like that he now seemed to be fixated on Snickers.

She leaned against the dresser. As she reached down to remove one of her shoes, the strap of her dress fell enough to expose the top of her breast. That got his attention. It was a difficult game to seduce a man who would prefer to take by force what you had to offer. Utter submission was your last card.
 

She massaged her foot, allowing her dress to hike up and reveal plenty of thigh.

“I’m surprised by your affection for the child,” he said.

She switched feet, removed the other shoe, rubbed and replied as if still in the middle of thinking about it. “Hmm, a passing fancy, maybe? I… everything had gone crazy and there was this child who needed me, and maybe I would never get a chance… ” She let the thought dangle.

She, her shoes hooked in her fingers, took a step toward him as if hesitant, but he stood as if fully expecting her to complete the cross.

She didn’t move.

He grinned, into the game.

She delicately chewed her lower lip, drawing his eyes there, and then turned her head as if shy.

He came to her, closing the gap quicker than she anticipated, so her momentary shock was real and delighted him.
 

“A baby, hey?” he asked. “All Rhiannon Wells wants in this big, free-for-the-taking world is a baby? Well, you’ve come to the right place,” he laughed. “My baby.”