The Dark Roads (13 page)

Buddy grinned, taking the clippers and going to work on Elvis' head. Elvis was still humming one of the less recognizable tunes he'd been playing.

"Just take a little off the top and sides," he demanded, out of nowhere, "Leave the back natural. Don't want you to mess up my "do"."

"I'll do my best to keep you looking chic, kid," Buddy replied with a laugh.

Amanda had walked over to the hair cutting area and shed her shirt, revealing a too thin figure and a dirty bra. They'd seen her naked. She'd seen them naked. There wasn't a sexual thing about any of it.

"I'm next," she stated, "My hair has to go. Style is my least concern."

"Will do, young lady," Buddy said as he shaved a handful from Elvis' mane, "Just take a seat and wait in line."

"After that, I'll take a pair of scissors to your beards if you've got any. I didn't see any mirrors down here."

"I've got scissors, shaving cream, razors, and even soap."

"Good," Amanda said, "We may use all of it."

"You're done," Buddy patted Elvis on the shoulder a few ticks later, "Water's already by the shower. Do it up."

Once Amanda was in their self-titled barber's chair, Buddy hesitated. It was sad to see such lovely hair, even if it
was
dirty, be ruined. He thought for a minute before starting and asked Amanda for a favor.

"Anything, as long as you cut this shit off of my head," she told him.

"When we get to Alaska," he said, "If it's cool there, grow it back out."

She smiled and reached back for his hand. Buddy gave it to her as Richie watched. She squeezed it once.

"You too," she said to Richie as her hand reached toward him, "And I'll have to say this to Elvis after he gets out of the bath."

Richie gave her his hand, noticing that all three of them needed to work extra hard at washing the blood away from their skin and from under their nails. She squeezed his hand just as she had Buddy's.

"I know that you had to leave me. I know that you were coming back for me, whether I knew it then or not. I know that if you hadn't been able to," she paused, "If you hadn't been able to get back to me, it wasn't because you didn't want to. You tried to trade yourself for all of us, Richie. Don't think we didn't notice that."

Richie looked at the floor as she spoke. Her hands were strong and held onto both men, tightly. She wasn't letting go of them until she'd had her say.

"Thank you. Those men were going to use me. They were going to... Rape me. They were going to trade me to worse men for the ability to continue doing bad things to other people. You all saved me from that when you could've walked away, just like when you tried to save Alek. You're all good men. Thank you," she finished, her voice growing thick, and kissed each of their hands with dry lips.

There was an awkward moment where no one said a word. It was broken by the voice of Elvis singing some song about the rain on his shoes. They laughed as discreetly as possible given the circumstances.

They all stood there for a moment more, listening to the water splashing over Elvis and wishing that they could detect the smell of soap just one more time.

***

After talking about the situation and taking a vote, the group decided to stay in the panic shelter for a week.

After sunset, they climbed the ladder to the surface and opened the hatch cautiously. As soon as they’d cleared the storage area and the rest of the store, each of them went about the tasks they'd been assigned to by Richie. Mostly it was a gathering of supplies, but there were a few things that needed accomplishing to ensure their safety. Richie took those upon himself.

The first thing was to clear the blood they'd spread throughout the store during Amanda's rescue. Richie cleaned all of the areas with paper towels and water, afraid of using a cleaning agent in case a smell remained. The second task would be to transfer the charred bodies they'd left from the entrance area to the back of the building. If someone found them, they might go looking for what the dead men had fought over.

It wasn't likely that they'd be discovered, but they didn't need surprises upon their exit. Richie did all of the toting by hand, wrapping each man in a blanket and carrying them over one shoulder. By the time he was done, his body was screaming at him to stop all of the exertion. He wouldn't, though. Too many ideas were running through his mind.

He continued his work until the night was close to done. The final job would be to find a way to lock the mechanism that held their hatch in place. Upon examination with a penlight, Richie found this to be the easiest thing he'd approached all night.

There was a clasp on the handle that opened and closed the doorway from below that lined up with a thick slot. He had only to find a good padlock to make the shelf immovable. It was almost laughable.

He walked the store, grabbing a new shirt and shorts as he went, looking for the section where the locks would be on display. He found it in a short time and picked out a few different sizes to try, just in case the clasp was too small or the fit too sloppy for his taste.

He was walking through the camping section of the store with his newfound wares when he spotted a display sporting a picture of an outdoor shower bag. He picked the thing up and looked at it for a moment. It would be a real treat to have an actual shower and the vinyl case looked small enough to take with them when they vacated the place if it worked well enough. Either way, they'd each have a shower on that night.

Richie thought about his preparations as he walked back toward the storage area, going over everything, check marking a mental list to make sure that he hadn't forgotten anything. Something was definitely nagging at his subconscious mind as he walked.

He'd done everything they'd talked about. They had already set all of their possessions down into the shelter and cleared any sign that they might have taken up residence. He'd carried all four bodies along the width and length of the store to-

Wait, he thought, was it four or five.

Richie had come to the door of the storeroom and dropped everything in his arms at the front of it. His eyes were closed as he tried to remember exactly how he'd done the carrying. Why would there have been only four bodies when he knew they'd put five of them outside? Realization was close. He thought harder.

There were only four. Why?

"Feeders," he said out loud, startling himself.

He began to look for the others, scared to death that he wouldn't find them. If the local branch of Canadian Cannibals had paid them a visit, why would they stop with the cooked meat outside.

Bail had told them that the feeders didn't like dead offerings. That meant they might go looking for more food. Richie pulled the pistol he'd been carrying from his waistband, cursed himself for not bringing the coach gun instead, and kept walking the aisles, looking for his friends. Richie tried to remember the duties he'd given them, where they would be, but couldn't. His mind was racing.

Aisle after aisle proved empty. He cleared each one with his weapon aimed low, but was sure he was going too fast for his own good. He kept his finger outside of the trigger guard on the pistol to make sure he didn't accidently shoot one of his group. More aisles. Empty. Nothing.
Jesus
.

He wanted to shout for them, knowing that they would all come running, but didn't dare. If there was someone in the store, if there was more than one of them, alerting them to his position would be akin to suicide. He couldn't let that happen anymore than he could let someone be taken.

Faster. He moved faster, the corridors almost a blur as he moved from one side of the store to the other. He hadn't seen anyone, friend or foe, at the back wall, so he turned to the side when he came to a corner. He was sweating more now, becoming scared and worried. The darkness, though not complete, was stifling.

They're all dead because you didn't pay good enough attention, Richie.

More walls made of portable shelving hid him from everything and everything from him. Richie ducked in and out of the rows, now, searching every inch of the place from end to end. His eyes were drying out. He was afraid to blink, thinking he'd miss something, a person or a sign that someone had been there. He listened, but heard no one. Also, he noticed that it was getting hotter in the store. He checked his watch only to see that he was minutes from sunrise.

What could he do? He only had two choices. He could keep searching the rows until the sunlight flooded the place and burnt him to a crisp, or he could trust that everyone was in the panic shelter, waiting for him.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he was searching the store for ghosts. All of his friends were probably sitting on their cots, waiting for him to show up.

Nobody will be there. They're all dead because of you!

He ran, not caring about the noise he was making, until he was at the storage room door. He shoved through it, noticing in an instant that the pile of stuff he'd left was gone. He dismissed it and ran for the open shelf passage that would take him below.

He nearly dove for it, sliding down the ladder, the curve in his boots slipping along the vertical rails, his hands gripping loosely until his feet hit the floor.

He turned to see the lantern glow in the shelter. Buddy, Elvis, and Amanda were sitting there, looking at him as if he'd worn white after labor day.

"Got your stuff," Elvis said, holding up one of the locks that he'd already cut out of the casing, "Want to lock the door?"

Richie swallowed with an audible click and smiled, sweat still soaking his face, and climbed the ladder to close the door. The stretch his mind had just gone through seemed to shrink back to a normal shape. He'd overreacted, surely, but what if things had been different? What would he have done.

"Closing the door!" he shouted as he pulled a barrier between his group and the day.

***

"So, why didn't you just check here first?" Amanda asked Richie after he'd told them why he'd been so excited.

"I lost it a little," he admitted, "I didn't even think of checking the shelter."

"He's a little slow," Elvis told her, smiling at his joke as he picked at the strings on his guitar.

"Well, whether he's slow or not isn't really in question," Buddy said, adjusting his glasses, "The real question is what do we do about the flesh eating Canadians outside?"

"Nothing for a week," Amanda answered.

"I kind of have to agree," Richie added, "As long as we have supplies to last us, we don't have to leave this room."

"True," Buddy admitted, "But we might want to come up with something before the week ends. If they decide to camp out and wait on us, it might be a little hard to sneak out once we're done here."

"Yeah," Elvis agreed, "I don't want nobody eatin' me."

"At least it's a Canadian group of Cannibals," Buddy pointed out.

Everyone but Richie furrowed their brows at him.

"They're bound to be polite."

"Still don't want nobody eatin' me," Elvis said as they all snickered.

They were in agreement on that point. Cannibals were a frightening concept, but an even more frightening reality. Richie, Buddy, and Elvis had run into a group of them in the States and had been able to get past without incident, but Amanda was hit closer to home by the situation.

Her husband had been shot and eventually killed by one of these feeders. Richie wondered what she would do if she came face to face with one of them.

After seeing what she had done to rectify the Bail situation, Richie doubted that their girl would just curl up and surrender. He had a deep respect for the woman's toughness.

All of them were tired from the night of activity so they laid down to sleep, secured by the well locked secret entrance to their room.

Each person lay on their backs at first, staring at the ceiling and listening to one another's breathing, but soon Elvis was snoring and Buddy had turned on his side and fallen to sleep. Amanda was the next to go, her breath slowing until it was relaxed and deep.

Richie lay awake for a long time, scolding himself for the mistake of falling into a routine of working, of losing the focus he'd always prided himself on. He should have noticed that they were one dead man short from the moment he'd gone to move them. It was a slip that could easily have gotten one or all of them killed and he swore that he wouldn't repeat it.

The day wore on, but he slept little, no matter what comfort he'd been blessed with. At some point in the night, he woke to see Amanda propped on one elbow staring at him. She looked concerned.

"You were having a nightmare," she told him, "Are you okay? Need to talk about it?"

Richie shook his head and laid back again. He couldn't remember dreaming at all and talking about nothing would be a waste of time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her head fall back to the pillow.

Soon, he dozed off again, but he continued to move in and out of waking. Rebuking himself would accomplish nothing, but he continued out of a masochistic need for self-punishment.