The House of Daniel (34 page)

“I guess you did!” the cop said. “I heard you whipped the coons in Denver before things there went up the spout. Give the greasers here a dose of the same medicine, all right?”

Like me and the guy with the silver shot, Harv didn't say anything. He didn't care much about who was colored and who was Mexican. He cared a lot less than I did; I know that. All he cared about was who could play baseball, and how well. I would've liked to see the cop's face if Harv told him the guy on the hill when we won the championship was Carpetbag Booker. But Harv could see keeping his mouth shut was the best scheme, so he did.

Me, I hadn't even known the Greeley Grays were a Mexican team. They turned out not to be all-Mexican—just mostly. We saw in Brush they grew lots of sugar beets in those parts, and they brought in Mexicans from southern Colorado and Texas and New Mexico to work the fields. From Old Mexico, too. The ones who hadn't known about baseball before picked it up in a hurry.

A game against a town team on a shabby field in the middle of a city park … Quite a comedown from facing the Pittsburgh Crawdads in front of a crowd that wouldn't have shamed two big-league clubs. Harv had to know he'd barely make expenses here at best. But he'd signed up to play, so we'd play.

They had a decent crowd for a semipro game, but that's all they had. The Grays played like a town team. That afternoon, playing like a town team was plenty to beat us. They did, easy. We played like a bunch of zombies, and I don't mean angry ones. We weren't dead, but we were dead tired. We were slow. We were stupid. We gave it our best shot, and our best shot wasn't good enough.

The crowd cheered in Spanish and English. “Next year, you guys go to the tournament!” somebody called to the Grays. I hoped there was a tournament in 1935. I hoped Merchants Park was still standing, not up in smoke. I hoped the same for the
Denver Post
building.

And I hoped Harv knew what he was doing and where he was going next. Wherever it was, I was going there, too.

 

(XV)

Harv talked things over with the Colorado Highway Patrol in Greeley after the game. They weren't letting any traffic go through Denver, not till they either ended all the zombies there or got 'em back under control somehow. “Well, on the map it looks like there's another way to get to Grand Junction,” Harv said. “If we go through the Rocky Mountain National Park—”

“Maybe Milner Pass is open, but maybe it isn't,” the Highway Patrolman broke in. “It's almost eleven thousand feet. You can get blizzards any time of year there. I don't recommend it. And that road isn't easy for cars. If you're gonna try and take your big, clumsy bus through there, you've got to be out of your mind.”

“But what am I supposed to tell the folks in Grand Junction?” Harv asked. “We've got us a game tomorrow.”

“Tell 'em it's an act of God. It damn well is,” the Patrolman answered. “It is if you think God and zombies have anything to do with each other, I mean.”

“God has to do with everything that is and everything that happens,” Harv said seriously. “And if that pass is open, I'm gonna go through it. We're gonna go through it. The bus is gonna go through it. We have a game in Grand Junction tomorrow.”

The Patrolman looked as though he thought Harv was nine different kinds of idiot. I'm sure he did. He sighed and said, “I've got a friend on duty in the park. Let me call him and see how things are there. If he says it's no go, I'll shoot the tires out of your bus before I let you drive west out of here.” He sounded as stubborn as Harv. They don't make many like that.

“Come on, boys. Let's get ready to leave in the middle of the night,” Harv said as soon as the Highway Patrolman stumped away. “He won't shoot out our tires if we ain't here so he can do it.”

“Harv…” Fidgety Frank said.

“Let's wait and see what he says,” Wes added. “If we get stuck way up high in the mountains, we'll miss more games than just one.”

They'd both played a long time for the House of Daniel. They were the pitchers, too. Both those things meant Harv had to pay more attention to them than he would have if, say, I'd sung out. He looked disgusted, but he nodded. “All right,” he said. “All right, doggone it.” No, Harv didn't need to cuss to let you know how he was feeling.

After half an hour or so, the Colorado Highway Patrolman came back. “Vern says they got six inches of snow today, and it isn't letting up. You go that high, summer's nothing but a faraway rumor.”

“Shucks!” Harv said. Big Stu could've sworn for twenty minutes without sounding half so mad. Then Harv went on, “Let me use that telephone of yours, will you, please? ‘Act of God' is what it's gotta be. Have to see what other kind of games I can drum up.”

We ended up playing the Greeley Grays twice more. Crowds weren't great, because nobody knew about the games till too late to make plans to come. We won one and lost one, so the Grays could say they beat us in a best-of-three series. The Pittsburgh Crawdads couldn't make that boast.

When we weren't playing ball, we read the papers from Greeley and Fort Collins and we listened to the radio. The reporters going into Denver, they were like war correspondents. One poor fella for United Press, he got torn apart and chewed up and killed. Zombies didn't have any quit in them.

The soldiers and police clearing them out opened up every vampire's coffin they could find, too. Maybe the vampires had something to do with the riots and maybe they didn't. Nobody seemed to care whether they did or not. If they got caught, they got a finishing dose of sunshine. After that, you didn't need to worry about them any more.

On the third day, we played in Fort Collins, in the park on the west side of town. The guys we played against were a scratch team. Some of 'em, I think, never made a dime playing ball before that afternoon. By the way they played, some of 'em would never make another dime that way. We trounced 'em.

After the game, we ate fast and made darn sure we were back at our lodging before sundown. That was the night of the full moon. I felt sorry for the cops and soldiers in Denver, taking on not just vampires and zombies but werewolves, too. That stupid farmer's shotgun shells with silver pellets would've come in handy then, I bet. We heard some howling, but nothing tried to get us.

I guess the cops made it through the night, too, because roads through Denver opened up again the next morning. Harv phoned Grand Junction and had us out of Fort Collins faster than you could spit. Can't say I was sorry. Fort Collins and Greeley weren't bad towns, but I'd seen as much of them as I ever wanted to.

By what the radio said, traffic through Denver was allowed. Going off the through routes wasn't. Some zombies were still loose, and some werewolves didn't turn back into people the second the moon went down. The folks giving the orders didn't want anyone sticking his foot in the lions' den.

“Daniel put his whole body in the lions' den, and they didn't harm him,” Harv said after we got going. “We all have things we want back at that boarding house. Let's see if we can get 'em.”

“You think God wants us to have our stuff back as much as He wanted Daniel not to get eaten, Harv?” Wes asked.

“I don't think He needs to watch over us as much as He watched over Daniel,” Harv answered, not bothered a bit. “Just a little will take care of it.”

“You hope,” Wes said.

“That's right. I do. Shall I let you off?” Harv said. Wes shook his head, so Harv went on driving.

*   *   *

Denver looked like I don't know what. No, I do: Denver looked like a city that had just been through a zombie riot. Parts were burned. Parts were smashed. Parts were burned
and
smashed. There weren't many bodies on the streets. The soldiers and police—and the zombies—must have got rid of most of them. Here and there, red-brown stains and splashes on sidewalks and walls told their own story. The air stank from sour smoke and the smell of rotting meat.

What I thought was a zombie trotted down a street. Then I realized he was a man. He had a hard sausage almost the size of a bat in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other. A zombie wouldn't have needed either one.

I did see one for-sure zombie down an alley we passed. I only got a glimpse, so I don't
know
what it was eating. That's bound to be just as well. Harv didn't spot it, or he would've put another dent in the bus's front end.

Our boarding house was still standing. We piled out of the bus, Louisville Sluggers (and one Adirondack) at the ready. Harv knocked on the front door. When nobody answered, he tried it. It wouldn't open. He used the key. That got us in. No horrible smells inside. Whoever'd been in there wasn't any more, alive or dead.

Nobody'd plundered our rooms, either. The people who'd stayed at the place ran away, and no one else broke in. Things were the way they had been before we went off to play the third game against the Crawdads. We gathered up what was ours and got out of there in a hurry.

“See? All hunky-dory,” Harv said when we got on the bus again. “Now to Merchants Park. We've got stuff in the clubhouse there, too, if no one's stolen it and if somebody will let us in to get it.”

But Merchants Park had burned. It was sad to see, the grandstand all black and crumbled, the entrance fallen in on itself. That's what happens to wooden ballparks. It's a shame, but it does. Which is why, ever since the time I was born, they've built big-league parks from cement and steel. You can imagine one of those lasting fifty years, maybe even a hundred.

Not long after we got back on Broadway, we drove by another squad that included a couple of men with flamethrowers. Maybe the burning in Denver wasn't over yet.

I wondered how many people still hunkered down in their houses and flats, eating whatever hadn't spoiled in their cupboards and keeping their doors locked and maybe barricaded, too. And I wondered how many zombies still prowled the streets, looking for anybody they could kill. They'd go after soldiers, even soldiers with flamethrowers. Why not? What was the worst thing a flamethrower could do to a zombie? End it. You ask me, the guy with the flamethrower would be doing it a favor.

Not that anybody asked me.

We had to clear another checkpoint coming out of Denver. That one actually made sense. Denver was the heart of the riot. Anything bad would spread out from there. And cops and soldiers ran it, so they weren't shoot-on-sight jumpy the way rubes with varmint guns would've been.

They searched the bus. They searched our stuff. No zombies, no vampires. Not even any werewolves. “Did you see any … things when you came through town?” asked a soldier with two stripes on his sleeve.

“No, Corporal,” Harv answered. I had, but I kept quiet. The zombie likely wouldn't be where I saw it any more. And we weren't supposed to have been there ourselves. Chances were the searchers would find it anyhow. Zombies weren't long on brains—unless they ate someone else's.

The ride we did take to Grand Junction was wild enough. US 24 went over and through the most amazing mountains I'd ever imagined, much less seen. We never did have snow on the highway, but there was snow on the Rockies not far above us. This in the summertime, too! In the winter, they must close long stretches of road for long stretches of time. If we'd tried to go the other way, the one Harv wanted, we might be trying yet.

We had to stop for a couple of roadblocks along the way: nervous mountain folks, not police. One fellow was as shaggy as anybody who played for the House of Daniel. He thought that was funny. Me, I would've laughed harder if he hadn't been holding a rifle.

We got there. We got there on time—just barely, but we did. Grand Junction brags that it's the biggest town in Colorado on that side of the Rockies. I guess maybe it is, but that's not saying one whole heck of a lot. Still and all, Lincoln Park wasn't a bad place to play a game. It was short down the left-field line, then stretched way out in left-center and center. Right wasn't one way or the other, which meant it would play short in the thin air.

It was a city field—there'd never been a pro team in town. But it did have dressing rooms. That was good, because we went straight there. We didn't stop at our rooms to change.

They had a microphone at the place. When we came out, the announcer said, “Here they are, folks! The House of Daniel!
Denver Post
Tournament champs and survivors of the Great Zombie Riots! Show 'em how glad you are that they could come out to Grand Junction and give the Falcons a game!”

Lincoln Park couldn't have held even a quarter as many people as Merchants Park did—I mean, had. But they all stood up and cheered for us. I didn't know what to do. You don't have that happen when you're the road team, and the House of Daniel was almost always the road team.

The other guys didn't know how to take it, either. It caught 'em by surprise. Finally, Harv took off his cap and waved it. The Grand Junction folks clapped harder than ever, so we all did that. After a bit, they quieted down, and we went ahead and played the game.

Fidgety Frank was pitching for us. He drove the Grand Junction Falcons buggy. He might've been a southpaw Carpetbag Booker out there, the way he had them eating out of his hand. They were young guys, only a couple older than me, and they'd never seen anybody like Frank before. They kept swinging off his motion, so they were way out in front.

We fell behind, 1-0, in the third, but we didn't worry. Their pitcher had a fastball and a change and a wrinkle of a curve. He pitched into trouble and got out of it a couple of times. Then he walked two guys and aimed a fastball to steal a strike instead of cutting loose with it. Wes hit it like he knew it was coming. He split the gap between their center fielder and the fella in left. That was the big part of the ballpark. Both runners scored, and Wes had himself a triple. A minute later, Harv knocked one through their drawn-in infield and put us two runs up.