Monster of the Apocalypse (5 page)

Letting Lilly off her chain was the first thought that crossed Hal’s mind. Lilly would satisfy his anger, but it would be chancy. The two kids still had their hunting knives and Hal had no doubt they knew how to use them. He always made sure that Lilly’s prey was unarmed.

Now Hal surveyed the hospital lobby as he mused. Zip, Cotton, and Toshi were well into a good drunk. The old man with the well-nursed soda split his glares between them and Hal. He made Hal uncomfortable and wary in an indefinable way. Sitting in the shadows, dressed in dark leathers, he had an aspect so sinister that Hal knew that he would not make any attempt to seek an advantage. It was not lost on Hal when the shotgun was drawn and in which direction the muzzle pointed. Hal knew Hey You was on the balcony and probably saw the whole thing, although from her angle, she probably missed the shotgun.

He turned on the overhead lights as the sunlight waned. It was a dim, pleasant glow powered by solar charged batteries.

The pistol still lay on the table.

Opening a container of vacuum packed cashews, Hal plotted his approach. Moving cautiously and trying to maintain an air of nonchalance, he made his way to Toshi’s side and smiling, offered her the nuts.

“Sure, just leave um,” slurred Toshi as she turned her attention back to her tablemates.

Hal placed the nuts in the center of the group, and as his hand returned he retrieved the pistol. The gun wasn’t missed by the three drinkers. They were too bleary.

The rifle was soon in Hal’s possession as he made his way around the room. He returned to his makeshift bar and slid both weapons into a cubby under the counter, next to the Uzi he kept
there. He would inspect them later.

The shotgun being drawn beneath the table was not missed by Hey You. She was practiced at noting small nuances. Hey
You didn’t realize how unusually perceptive she was, because she had no frame of reference. However, growing up in fear had trained her to be conscious of little things generally missed by others. She knew that the man who preferred sitting in the shadows might have arrived with the others but was not a comrade in arms. She knew the woman, Toshi, was fully aware of playing a dangerous game and was enjoying it. She knew the two men at Toshi’s table were more dangerous than Toshi and Hal realized and that the shadow man knew it, too.

Growing up in the company of a sociopath had stunted Hey
You’s social skills. She had learned a tremendous amount from her days locked in the nursery. By setting the video system on random, she was exposed to more than child-oriented programs. She saw everything on file. She learned to read and found the hospital library. As a result she acquired a vast knowledge of human anatomy and pathology, as well as a full knowledge of general education. Learning the way normal people acted and reacted from watching the videos and reading psychology tomes led her to diagnose Hal as a sociopath by the time she was eight.

Hal’s behavior confirmed the diagnosis when he captured two older children within a year, and after allowing Hey You to play with them, he slaughtered them like rabbits. She also knew he did things to them. The children told her.

When Hal looked at her one day in a way that made her uncomfortable, she had already recognized the danger she was in. That was the day her plan solidified. She knew from her studies that scent was a great motivator in sexuality and that it could act as a deterrent. The over-large, fuzzy coat doused in various unpleasant odors became a part of her wardrobe. She became so used to wearing it when she knew Hal would be around, that she even wore it when he wasn’t. As she grew into it, she used rags fastened with safety pins to add bulk to hide her developing body. Hal never managed to see past the coat, or the odors.

The evening was winding down. Cotton stumbled to his feet, clearly unsteady. He slowly focused on Hal.

“Hey, barkeep, you got any place to sleep around here?”

Hal had furnished several rooms just down the hall with large bedroom sets from the luxury hotel across the freeway.

“Sure, sure, follow me,” he said.

There was no reason to put them in a room that had no escape. Hal showed them an attractive room close to the hall entry, once an office space, with two king-size beds and a full complement of hotel furnishings. It was a little dusty from lack of use, but otherwise presentable.

Zip said, “This’ll do,” in a quiet, foggy voice.

Toshi gave Cotton, and then Zip, a predatory look as she stepped between them into the room. She undulated to the first bed and pulled the covers back, sneezing as the dust clouded around her.

As the door closed, the last thing Hal heard was Toshi.

“So, Zip, is that your name because you don’t last very long?”

The lobby of the hospital was empty. The older man in dark leather was gone. He was contemplating his options when Hal led the others down the hall to the right of the bar. The bundle of rags on the balcony rose and, coming close to the rail, beckoned him to the winding stairs that hugged the curved wall. He didn’t hesitate.

He did not trust Hal. It seemed odd that only one man and a bundle of rags occupied this large facility after so many years on a main highway. Somehow the bundle of rags seemed like the better option. As he approached, the smell became strong, but the rags didn’t allow him to get close. Opening a door in the upstairs hall and retreating to a distance, the figure invited him to inspect a small, comfortable room with an outside window to the south and a deadbolt that locked from the inside. From the doorway he could see a cot with a blanket. A sealed package of jerky and a can of almonds joined a shrink-wrapped case of bottled water on the counter top in the small adjoining bathroom. It would serve. He turned to thank his benefactor, but there was no one there.

Hal went to his own room. The old man being gone from the lobby bothered him, but not a great deal. His room was a fortress within a fortress and cocooned him in security.

He thought about turning on the monitor in the occupied guest room, but decided to focus on his fantasies with the girl, Lecti. He hoped she hadn’t gone far. If all these other people would just leave, he could go hunting.

Sleep had little interest for Hey You. She enjoyed dissecting her experiences. In all of her alone time, she often mulled over the possibilities and nuances. Tonight she had a full plate. No, it was more like a Thanksgiving table sagging under its load. Hours later she finally closed her eyes. Her last thoughts were with the young man, Deo, and his sister, Lecti. They would return. Hey You knew it. Deo wasn’t going to abandon Toshi, and Hey You admired him for that.

L
ecti woke with a start. She had slept well and felt rested in her body and in her mind. Her soul however was in turmoil.

Deo still slept beside her in the gathering morning light.
A blessing. After last evening’s adrenalin load and the emotional burden, he was exhausted. Generally a heavy sleeper prone to late awakening, Deo would likely cruise right through the morning in slumber. Lecti would take the time to think, and while doing so, to search the house for breakfast.

Kitchens were always the most logical place to explore. The priority was always food. Dried foods were the best bet. Refrigerators, even when working, rarely held anything of use and this house was no exception. The cupboards held nothing of value, either. They had already been ransacked, and nothing remained, not even a bloated can. After foodstuffs commonly became irradiated, before the plagues, they lasted much longer. But twenty years eventually even spoiled the canned goods.

Hesitating before a closed door, Lecti braced herself. She didn’t enjoy finding remains of former occupants. They often told stories, always depressing. Hunger pangs won out, and she pushed the door open.

Skeletal remains sat in a chair, an adult male from the clothing. A large bed held the remains of a child cocooned by another adult. A small animal carcass, perhaps a dog, lay by the door. She had pushed the bones out of the way as she opened it.

She closed the door without entering. Hopefully the other rooms would hold something useful.

The next door was a bathroom. Not expecting to find much, Lecti wasn’t disappointed. She moved on.

An office and craft space occupied the next bedroom. A small bowl held the remains of peanut shells, also scattered on the desktop by a rodent. A snack food bag on the floor had been chewed open and lay empty.

The last door in the hallway opened on a child’s room. Frilly pink drapes filtered the morning light softly on a pink bedspread. A mound of stuffed animals lay at the head of the bed, covering a pink pillowcase. A shelf held a score or more of animal statuettes, mostly horses. Beside the bed, in a drawer holding a pink diary and a stack of children’s drawings and notes from
friends, was an unopened bag of red licorice.

Lecti enjoyed red licorice. She sometimes found it as she scavenged. She didn’t realize that it should have been
flexible, never having found a bag that wasn’t stale. She broke off a bite size piece and popped it into her mouth, sucking on it as she slipped the bag into her shorts pocket.

Steps descending into darkness led to the basement. A rechargeable flashlight found on the
kitchen counter didn’t work, so Lecti felt her way down slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom.

A ping-pong table stacked with dusty laundry sat centered in a large, open room. A smaller room to one side held the laundry machines. Next, a room of similar size held shelves.
A storage room. The family camping gear stuffed one shelf. Two adult sleeping bags, good ones, were appropriated. A covered plastic tub of freeze-dried meals in sealed bags gave Lecti some joy. They were not as tasty as anything fresh, but they were an adequate and welcome alternative to anything else they could carry while on the road. Very satisfactory.

Deo was still asleep as Lecti lay the sleeping bags and tub full of food on the floor beside him.

She gazed lightly on him as she mulled over her thoughts. Lecti had plenty to think about besides her search, and she still had no solutions that didn’t leave her apprehensive. She decided to go outside.

It was cool and damp, foggy and grey.

The carport housed the hulk of a gas hog. Lecti’s father had always called them that. Sport utility vehicle was a term that he didn’t use. SUV was a term she was familiar with, but it was not used often enough to become a word that she immediately associated with large, personal vehicles. Besides, gas hog pretty much covered all vehicles built ten years before the plagues. This particular gas hog lay crippled by four weather-rotten, flat tires.

At the back of the carport a storage closet held a portable barbecue and various garden and yard care tools. Nothing Lecti needed.

The fenced back yard had a small doghouse, a picnic table, and a playhouse with an attached swing. Lecti tested the swing and sat in it, gently rocking back and forth. It was a good place to think.

The carpeted floor made a comfortable sleeping surface. Gradually becoming aware and tossing occasionally, Deo woke. He lay with his eyes closed, willing sleep to return. It didn’t work.

Deo noted the sleeping bags and food. He knew Lecti would have already searched the house, and he trusted her to find the only things of use. His sleeping bag was starting to smell, so the new bags were timely.

The air in the house was cool, and after climbing out of his old bag and tossing it aside, Deo put on some fresh socks and the previous day’s pants. He had slept in his shirt and now lifted his arm to sniff. He wrinkled his nose and decided he could use a bath.

The kitchen window in the back of the house looked out on Lecti twisting slowly back and forth on a child’s swing. She saw him looking out at her, smiled big, and motioned him outside.

The dust clouded about his feet as he padded over to his shoes. More dust rose as he sat in a well-worn recliner to put them on. He sneezed.

The late morning was staying cool, and the moist overcast was creating a subdued light.

Lecti rose and, rising on her tiptoes, hugged her little brother. He hugged back but broke off before Lecti.

“I’m going back you know,” said Deo, softly, looking at the ground.

“Yeah,” Lecti tried to search his face. “I know.”

They discussed the situation, sharing thoughts as they had not for a long time. Different scenarios, the weapons situation, expectations of what Toshi would do, they spoke to each other as brother and sister and as partners. Surprisingly Deo never got upset. His calm told Lecti volumes.

Naked without weapons, they decided to find some armament before going back.

L
ecti had not searched the bedroom with the bodies. She and Deo already knew this was a house unlikely to produce weapons that would suit. Stuffing the camcorder in a pack and collecting their belongings, they went outside. Leaving the packs and the sleeping bags on the hood of the truck on the carport, they moved east, searching for the right kind of house.

Moving at a brisk walk they wasted little time. They were looking for signs of hunting and camping equipment or expensive vehicles that older people could afford. It was a skill picked up from their father, learning what to look for in order to find what they wanted.

They kept to the hillsides and the view lots by taking a side street. A big house set back off the road had vehicles that looked like the right kind. Pulling her wrecking bar from her belt, Lecti approached the front door. It was open, forced, as evidenced by the broken jamb. Leaves and windblown sand drifted into the entry. The interior was bright with sunlight illuminating debris from a huge hole in the roof.

The main floor bedrooms held nothing. They had been ransacked. The basement door was swollen or tweaked and difficult to open. The odor of mildew wafted up to fill their noses. There was shallow water at the bottom of the stairs. By peeking around the stairwell wall they could see a large gun safe. It showed no evidence of tampering. Not surprising, since it was easier to continue on than to tackle a mass of metal meant to keep people out. They would have looked for a nearby key except it had a combination lock. It saved them from getting their feet wet anyway.

They left the house, and Deo shared the licorice that Lecti had found, breaking off bits as they walked up the street. They spoke without saying anything, pointing, nodding, shrugging. Lecti moved easily, feeling nice to be quiet with each other again, without Toshi.

A higher street had a residence that looked good. The front door was in a steel frame and fastened too tight to succumb to the bar. Windows had been covered in ornamental iron security grates, so Lecti suggested that they move on. Thinking that the back might be better for access, Deo persisted. Sure enough, after climbing the back fence, they found the rear of the house to be mostly glass looking out on a beautifully overgrown, xeriscaped, garden courtyard. Deo threw a piece of lawn furniture at a floor length window. On the third try the glass shattered, and they entered.

The master bedside tables each held a pistol. A double-action .357 revolver in a holster on one side was loaded with an empty chamber under the hammer. It was an older gun with some wear but still retained a coat of light oil covered in lint. Lecti was confident that the pistol was serviceable, and after wiping it down and giving it a visual check, she traded holsters. This weapon felt better than the pistol she had lost. She liked wheel guns better than automatics.

Deo picked up the pistol from the other table, also a
.357 revolver. It looked new with no noticeable wear. The grip was laminated wood in a beautiful red and turquoise colored grain. Like the other, it was loaded with an empty chamber. In checking out the weapon, Deo found the rounds swelled in the cylinders to the point that he had to force them out. If the pistol hadn’t been oiled properly when stored, it would have been more difficult. Boxed shells fit easily.

Lecti tossed him her old holster, and Deo tested it for fit. It would do just fine. Deo followed Lecti’s lead and wiped his pistol down, testing its mechanisms and putting the holster on his belt. The boxes of fragmenting shells in the drawers found a place in their deep pockets.

There were no bodies. No stories to tell other than the pictures on the bedroom dressers and in the living spaces. Before the dust settled thick on everything, the house was clean, well organized, and attractively appointed.

A closet used for storage in a bedroom office yielded two rifles and a bag of weapon related accessories. One rifle was scoped and looked fairly new. Deo chose the other, older, lighter, and without a scope. Two twenty-two caliber pistols were set aside, not deadly enough.

The cleaning tools in the bag were used to freshen the .357’s and the rifle. It was a good replacement for the twenty-two rifle that Deo had lost, a light, bolt action weapon with a nice, old style, carved, wooden stock and a sling. The shells in the bag that fit the rifle said .250 Savage. They looked deadly. Deo didn’t know that this was the weapon that first broke the three thousand feet per second barrier. It took him some time to figure out the safety and then how to cock it, but his father had trained him well, so he understood the variety of options a rifle could have. He loaded it with four shells in the internal magazine and chambered one round.

Shotgun shells and no weapon in the closet meant that the shotgun would be concealed and available for quick use, most likely by the front door. The hall closet produced a pistol grip pump with a short barrel. It was not for hunting.
Definitely a home protection weapon. They serviced it with the cleaning kit, finding it loaded with large caliber shot.

Lecti felt much better. She never felt good being without a firearm, even before leaving Roseburg. Early in their travels, they both left a weapon behind by accident, young kids being forgetful or disorganized. Both had quickly matured and made their armament a priority. Considering the situation Lecti assumed they might be putting themselves in soon, she really liked the shotgun.

It was getting late. Although Deo started out in a hurry, he was enjoying the search. As the overcast finally burned off and the day warmed, they slowed down, and now the low sun and their empty stomachs attested to the hour.

Deo wanted to go back to the old hospital now that they were armed.

Lecti objected. “Deo, look, if we go back now, it’s very likely they’ll be drinking. If they are, it will be more dangerous than if they aren’t. Tomorrow morning they’ll be sleeping off a hangover. Their reactions will be slow. If we get lucky, they might not even be awake or maybe even not armed that early in the morning.”

Deo pursed his lips and his brow furrowed. He really wanted to go in, go in now and take what he wanted. He hesitated. His maturity level was stretching and expanding. It was painful. As a child he always wanted what he wanted, now. This time he was listening to Lecti and appreciating the wisdom in her logic.

“How early, and how will we wake up?”

“Before daylight, and don’t worry, brother, I’ll wake you up if I need to.”

Lecti expected that Deo would not be asleep when the time came.

The decision made, they started to forage for food on the way back to their packs. A tiny
stream of water afforded an opportunity to bathe. The water was cold, and it didn’t take long. Rinsing their clothing and wringing them out as well as they could, they wore them damp. They were chilled because the day wasn’t very warm, but it felt good to be fresh.

Full water bottles didn’t assuage their empty stomachs. They found nothing of any food value as they walked back to the previous night’s camp.

Deo brought out the barbecue grill in the carport closet when they got back. Dehydrated camping food and fresh water from their bottles filled pans from the kitchen. The fuel cell powered grill was filthy with twenty-year-old grease, but the food being in clean pans meant they could ignore the grime. After inspecting the hose from the fuel cell for cracks, the self-igniter was engaged and they were in business.

As they walked into the back yard to sit at the picnic table, they noted fresh tracks in the soil, still damp from the previous evening’s rain. A big cat had visited. Deo went back to where they left the packs on the big truck’s hood and now noticed light disturbances in the accumulated dust. The cat had investigated them.

Eating their meal in the fading light, the discussion was about the visitor rather than the impending morning. They were excited whenever they saw an elusive animal, and knowing that they had missed seeing the cat was disappointing.

They would sleep inside tonight with the door closed. They felt even better with their newly acquired arms.

A roof to the east of Lecti and Deo was warm and easily accessed by way of a fallen tree. The mountain lion, a male, was mildly curious about the strange two-legged animals. He was leery of these unusual creatures. His belly was sufficiently full of mule deer, so with no intent to pose a threat himself, he did not get close enough to let them threaten him. He stayed below the roofline and soaked up the last heat of the sun as he watched them. They looked and smelled much like the two animals that denned in the glass and stone cave toward the mountains. If game was not so plentiful, and there was better cover close to that cave, the cat would have dined on dog.

Lecti was tired. The early hour and the busy day wore, but the mental anxiety really drained her. For once, Deo would agree to an early evening, too. The new sleeping bags were barely used and smelled musty, but after a brisk shake in the outside air they proved to be comfortable and warm. Lecti was asleep before Deo for once. He tossed and turned and eventually got up to relieve himself. Sitting in an easy chair next to Lecti, he gradually drifted into sleep.

The night passed. The cat returned and sniffed the cooling barbecue that was left standing out. He tongued the inside of a dirty pan lightly, and although it was interesting, he preferred bloody meat and crunching bone. By morning he was settling in to a spot he knew would be sunny and warm.