Crusade (Eden Book 2) (15 page)

He opened the door to the Dutchmen and stepped up inside. Chris was spread out on the flip-over sofa bed, watching a wrestling DVD. One of their neighbors, a guy they called married-man Bob, was seated at the dinette plus area, drinking one of their beers, talking. It looked like he was rambling away to himself as Chris was engrossed in a wrestling match between the Ultimate Warrior and Randy “Macho Man” Savage.

“Steve likes to act like he threw that girl a mercy-fuck,” Chris said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “But truth is she’s the one who mercy-fucked his obnoxious ass. Watch this!” The Warrior lifted Savage off his feet by the neck and choke slammed him back to the mat. “Whoa!”

“Yeah, well at least I get laid,” said Steve, “and don’t spend all my time watching old wrestling videos.”

He went to their freezer/fridge and took out a beer and a couple of hot pockets. Popping the beer, he drank and put the hot pockets in the microwave.

“Anyway,” married-man Bob continued, “like I was saying to Chris here before you came in, I live vicariously through you younger guys now. It’s a trade off is all it is.”

“How’s that?” asked Steve, listening to the microwave hum as it turned.“Strange pussy.” Married-man Bob took a slug of his beer and burped. “It’s a trade off, and the grass is always greener on the other side and that’s all well and good, right? But when I weigh, on the one hand, my wife and kids, and the smiles on the faces of my kids when I come home after a day driving or something, versus—” married-man Bob killed his beer, “the uncharted territory of some sweet young ass, well, shit, it all evens out in the wash.”

Steve had heard this
strange-pussy trade-off
spiel on that couch several times before and was just glad he’d walked in on the end of it. He wondered how many of their beers Bob had finished.

Chris yelled out “Hell yeah!” as the Macho King jumped off the top rope. The Warrior caught him in mid-air, placing him on his feet then slapping the man across the face.

“You know,” Bob said. “That Ultimate Warrior motherfucker was
the
motherfucker.”

“Well, trust me. You know how, first, fat white chicks were all the rage with black guys? Then Asians, right? Well, I’m predicting a trend and—”

“Oh shit, did you see that?” Chris said. Randy Savage leaped off the top rope and landed on a prone Warrior. Steve knew he would do this five times in succession.

“You ain’t anywhere near sixty yet, Bob.” Steve picked up the brown paper bag of DVDs Mason had given him and walked over to the liquor cabinet.

“Don’t underestimate the Ultimate Warrior,” an announcer on the DVD said as Steve headed back to the double bed he shared with Brent. Chris had dibs on the fold-out sofa bed.

He took his boots off and lay down. He and Brent took shifts with the bed. Because he had been out scouting all day he’d be able to catch a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep or wanking to Eva’s tits or whatever he wanted. Then he would get out of bed and trade places with Brent when the convoy pulled out in the morning.

He opened his bottle of whiskey and took a slug.

Chris was all excited up front but hadn’t left the couch. Steve knew what was happening on the video. The Warrior was talking to his hands and getting ready to guerilla press Savage.

There was a framed poster of Farrah Fawcett in a red one-piece swimsuit on the wall above the bed. The poster was Steve’s. His brother had had one in his room in the 70s. After Steve had been born and grew up in the 80s the poster had still been in the room. An old Navajo blanket formed the backdrop behind the beauty.

He took another swallow of the booze. It was better than Nyquil.

When Eva returned to the RV Winnebago she shared with her sister and her nephews and niece, the bunch of them were seated around the dinette playing a board game. Edward brought his dogs, and Lauren and Maurice were there too.

“Aunt Eva!”

“Nicole!” She kissed her niece’s forehead, high-fived Nelson, who gave her a knowing look, and squeezed baby Victor’s cheek. The eleven-month old squealed in glee.

“Eva,” Edward said. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, nodding his mutton chopped head to his music on the stereo, petting one of his two long-haired dachshunds, Ennis and Ellis. Eva could never figure out which was which.

“Edward.”

She didn’t see what her sister saw in the old guy, with his 70s music, those two flea bags he clung to, and that out of date facial hair. But he was Sonya’s flavor of the month and he treated her sister correct, so Eva was cool with him. She placed her assault rifle/shotgun combo on the rack over Lauren’s MP-40.

“Evangeline,” Sonya said, “what’s this I hear you let Nelson shoot at Zed today?”

Nelson gave his aunt a sheepish look and mouthed, “I didn’t say anything, Aunt Eva.”

She looked at Maurice, sitting next to Lauren, petting one of Edward’s dachshunds. Maurice looked down. Lauren had her Browning Hi Power on the table, the slide locked open, the magazine well empty, the clip lying next to it.

“Hi Sonya,” she said. “Nice to see you too.”

“I’ll buy three houses,” Nicole said and handed over the Monopoly money.

I sez Pig-Pen, this here’s Rubber Duck an’ I’m about to put the hammer down
, sang C.W. McCall.

“That makes you laugh, little man?” Maurice asked and the kid looked at him with anticipation so he faked a second sneeze, jerking his head and making the noise, and the baby cackled.

“You’re a tough little man, little man.” Eva hid her face behind her hands, said “peek-a-boo,” opened her hands and said, “I see you!”

“Thanks, Edward. You’re a gentleman and a man of honor.” She looked at Maurice as she said this. When he looked up at her she gave him a dirty look and he looked away. Lauren nudged him with her elbow.

“No, Mommy,” Nicole said. “Those are five-hundreds. These are your hundreds.”

C.W. sang about
eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus
.

She sat and watched the Monopoly game. She watched Maurice pet the dog with Lauren next to him, thought about how she’d eat and help Sonya put the kids down for the night, clean her guns and talk to her sister, try to avoid an argument but probably fail. She’d go to sleep, get up, and do it all over again the next day.

Buddy hadn’t said much all day. He’d trudged along behind them, always back there, always bringing up the rear, the bayonet mounted on his AK. When he’d gotten close enough at times they’d been able to hear him talking to himself, a low, guarded tone, few of the words coherent, and they’d all seen his eyes darting around in his head, side to side, suspicious, scared.

Buddy scared? Gwen couldn’t buy it. She’d been there, in Eden, when he and Harris had come in together. Buddy was the only man who could stand up to Graham and his brute thug Markowski, and he had. Her husband, Bobby, had told her once that Buddy was like a bad dream, but someone else’s, not their own.

Bear led them up the road, past the occasional car, through the snow. He walked ahead of their little group, and, she thought, was like Buddy, equally a part of it but apart from it.

It never ceased to surprise her how they could go for hours without ever seeing a zombie then there’d be pockets of them, dozens of them, all gathered in one place. She was used to the walls of Eden, thronged by thousands of the undead, their cries breaking the silence of the night when she’d tried to sleep in bed next to Bobby, her man, her protector.

She laughed to herself. Her protector. A quaint concept. Life in zombie-land had taught her she could care for herself. If she hadn’t been able to, she wouldn’t have made it as far as she had. Bobby had been kind of old fashioned in a sense, and really saw it as his duty to be her provider and protector, and he did that as best he could in the relatively short time they’d had together as husband and wife.

Who had been there to protect Bobby?
Gwen thought. No one. Her Bobby had died down in Markowski’s basement. Harris’ basement, she corrected herself. Harris and Julie had moved into the Pole’s house after, well,
after
Buddy killed Markowski down in the dark of the sewers. What had really happened there, she wondered. She’d heard stories, from Camille when Sal had come back from underground, stories about how Buddy had marched Markowski handcuffed into the blackness. How he’d come back with Markowski’s head. She’d seen Buddy execute Graham.

Her Bobby never got out of that basement. She figured it out later. Her man had been concerned about Harris and had gone to check on him. And she didn’t think Harris had meant to kill Bobby. He probably just didn’t want Bobby to interfere with his plans. But he had killed Bobby,
her
Bobby, and her Bobby was gone from her now.

She thought of this as she walked with Mickey and Julie and contemplated the baby in Julie’s womb, Harris’ baby. It would be all too easy to bear a grudge against Julie. Julie’s man had been responsible for her man’s demise. All too easy, and all too human. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew Julie had had nothing to do with Bobby’s death, and that baby in her belly—that baby was innocent of all this.