Tug hadn’t played cue-skulls since before he got trapped in the house. He was tired and lonely. He was happy his shitty cousins were dead, but he was used to having people around. Maybe he would make some friends. Maybe it was Mike and Jim that had kept him from making friends all along. He rolled smoothly around San Jose aimlessly until it got dark. Eventually, he parked his truck and fell asleep.
The next morning, a violent pounding on his window startled him awake. He was groggy and disoriented and not too swift to begin with, so he just stared at the panicked face for a few moments. He rolled the window down an inch.
“Help! Let me in!” The guy was already running around the truck to the passenger side.
Tug looked around with dull eyes, not planning to do much until the face was at the side window screaming again.
“Buddy, unlock the door! Let me in!”
Tug reached over and unlocked the passenger door and the guy jumped in.
“Thanks, man!”
The guy was young, a hippie maybe. He had long hair and a beard and wore a weird-colored shirt.
“Thanks,” he panted. “I was trapped for days in that building.” He pointed, but Tug didn’t care. He was looking at this shitbag, thinking how much he wanted company, but this guy? No way.
“My name’s Dale.” He put his hand out.
Tug just stared at him with blank eyes for a few long moments, and then he grunted, “Tug.” He ignored the guy’s hand.
“Tug? Is that short for something?”
Tug was still waking up and trying to think. This guy was pissing him off already. The dead he had been running from were all getting closer to the truck. Soon a few were slapping at the windows and truck panels.
“Where are you headed?”
Tug looked away. “Don’t know. Nowhere to go.” He started the truck rolling forward.
“Me too.” Dale slouched in his seat.
§
An hour later and still Tug hadn’t said a word. He didn’t feel awkward, didn’t feel anything. He just didn’t know how to act in normal company, so it didn’t dawn on him that being completely silent for an hour would be viewed as odd. He was driving around, looking for the dude that hit him, but he was drifting away from that bit by bit. He couldn’t even remember what the guy looked like, really. He was looking for booze, food, a place to hang out, maybe even a date. He was worried this Dale guy might mess things up for him if he saw a hot babe walking down the street.
Dale thought this guy was weird, to say the least. He didn’t want to judge someone who might not have had the best upbringing, but my God the smell! The cab of the truck was filled with old beer cans, food wrappers, and cigarette butts, and crumbs and stains were everywhere. And his breath was the worst. It took Dale’s breath away whenever he smelled it, which was almost all the time, as the guy breathed through his mouth. He noticed what looked like several pairs of panties wadded into a ball in the seat next to him. That was a red flag. This guy seemed really odd, maybe dazed from being woken up so abruptly, but as time wore on things didn’t get any better. Dale became more and more uncomfortable with him in every way. Certainly this was the type who hated cops, so Dale would keep his badge hidden and his profession a secret. Not that he was a cop for real anymore, anyway.
He had his small backup pistol in a pancake holster strapped to the side of his rib cage. The holster was named for its shape and was designed to be hard to detect under a jacket. He was thin enough and the shirt baggy enough that he could use it effectively. Plus, the tie-dyed pattern was perfect for camouflaging any bumps or shadows that the holster might create. He was posing as an illegal pot farmer. He’d infiltrated a group that distributed marijuana, specifically to high schools all over California.
Dale had sized this guy up pretty quickly, even before he spoke. He was probably a criminal and the worse kind of criminal, mean and stupid. Dale wanted to watch him until he was sure he wasn’t a threat to anyone else. He was still a cop at heart, a protector. He had to get this guy to like him.
With occasional glances, he took in details that spoke of low intellect, no hygiene, and a violent past. Tug had cigarette burns and scars, probably from struggling to get out of metal restraints and rope bindings. That was only on his hands and forearms.
Fuck.” Dale pulled at his collar. “You have a shirt I can borrow? I hate this hippie shit. It’s what I grabbed on the run.”
“Nah,” Tug said.
This one wasn’t a talker, but Dale couldn’t just launch into a tirade for no good reason, or it would appear forced. There was also a danger that if you misread a person, you would succeed in making the target mistrust or even hate you.
Dale saw a hardware store.
“Hey, pull over. This place has those flannel shirts I like. You know the ones?”
Nothing.
“Well, I like them.” And it was true. Dale loved the cheap, soft shirts you could get at the hardware store. He also loved short hair and a clean shave. He planned to see to that as soon as possible, the minute he made a decision about Tug.
The truck pulled over, and Dale hopped out. The fresh air was delightful. A big part of him wanted Tug to just drive off. He kicked in the window of the store after a couple of tries and went through the hole. He heard the truck shut off and the door open and close. Although the front of the store was locked up tight, the store had been looted. The rear door was most likely busted open.
In the darkened store, he found the shirts he liked and quickly changed so Tug wouldn’t spot the holster. He started looking for other useful items, but the looters had not only grabbed most of them, they had trashed the place in the process. It was hard to find anything valuable under all the discarded items that weren’t essential to survival. Water filters were gone, but he could get a buttload of spandex pants or ski goggles. He gathered up some random items that might prove useful, but he was considering ditching them.
He almost collided with Tug at the end of the aisle. For a large, smelly fat man he was very quiet, and it was creepy. He looked at Dale, kind of down and sideways, as they stood face to face.
“You ready to go?” he mumbled.
“Yep.” Dale followed Tug through the store, not wanting to turn his back to him.
Dale had been planning to travel on foot to a friend’s cabin far in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and had almost got cornered by the dead on many occasions. He had been running from a large group when he spotted the truck with the body slumped in the front seat.
He followed Tug past all the storefronts in the mall and slowed when they walked past the large plate-glass windows to look himself over. The flannel shirt with the jeans made his long hair and beard look more like they belonged to a redneck than a hippie. He was glad he wasn’t wearing his hippie sandals but instead was wearing some nondescript hiking boots. That was all good, but what he was really looking at was his posture, his bearing, and how his persona was affecting him physically. So much of undercover work was attitude and bearing. He relaxed. He had gone undercover in a variety of situations and felt comfortable playing redneck.
Tug was walking toward a liquor store. He passed a stationary store with menorahs taped to the window as well as other religious symbols. He sneered as he walked past but didn’t spit on them or even kick the glass, which indicated to Dale that he might have been taught to hate Jews, but that wasn’t what really fired him up.
The liquor store was busted open and looted, but Tug walked in and all the way to the back of the store. He was grabbing handfuls of porn magazines, flipping through them and dropping them as he walked. He passed a counter toward the back where an open curtain showed a room full of magazines. That was clearly where they kept the hardcore stuff. Dale watched Tug pick up and sneer at almost everything. It was comical in its perfect repetition. Tug sneered at the Asians, the blacks, the Latinas, the fatties, and seemed angered by the gay stuff. He looked over the lesbian porn and took a few magazines. Then he came to the BDSM stuff. He smiled, creepily, and took all he could carry. This was something Dale could use as a common basis for bonding.
BDSM wasn’t Dale’s thing, but then 99 percent of what he had to pretend to be wasn’t his thing. He’d played the part of white supremacist, pedophile, meth head, whatever despicable human he was required to be at the moment. Now he had to play a BDSM freak, a guy who got his rocks off on that shit. Easy!
“You going to share?”
“Get your own.”
“You took all the best ones! Don’t worry, the mags are yours. I just want to borrow them, and don’t worry, I won’t stick the pages together.” Dale laughed.
Tug smirked and handed half of them over to Dale.
“Thanks, man!” Dale turned and walked out, stopping in the light outside and dropping the stack of magazines on top of a covered trash can. He held one of the magazines open and looked at a woman tied up so tight her skin was purple where it stuck out from between the ropes. What he was thinking was,
Oh my God, is all this nipple and safety-pin shit real?
And,
This is some sick shit
. And,
It takes a real sick bastard to get turned on by this crap.
But what he was saying was, “Oh man! Jackpot! Look at all these bitches.” He was smiling like he’d just won the lottery, but he wanted to punch this guy in the face.
Dale would give him another two days and leave him be if he was harmless. If not, he wasn’t sure what to do—most likely he was going to have to kill him.
They drove all day. Hour after tedious hour they just drove around. Dale tried to figure out what Tug was up to, what he was looking for, but got nothing. They passed slowly by the airport. Crowds of the dead moved like water across the wide lanes of the arrival and departing gates. They made their way around the office parks nearby and finally onto the highway past the parking garage. Dale spotted the people in the structure walking around, only a few, and turned to look at Tug.
Tug hadn’t seen them, but when he did his face changed, his eyes narrowed, the truck slowed, he watched for a while until the slow-rolling truck passed the structure completely. He turned to look back at it. Clearly, he was interested in the people there.
While Dale was trying to figure Tug out, Tug had his left hand on the snub-nosed revolver under the driver’s seat, waiting for the opportunity to kill Dale so he could go back to the parking garage.
Dale was looking forward to the cabin and the solitude and safety of the mountains. If his friend had made it there, all the better. Two days with Tug the pervert? He had done a lot worse.
33.
God he was tired. He was having trouble waking up and was worried there might be a gas leak somewhere. He was so tired. Maybe he had a bug. His stomach was feeling incredibly queasy, and he felt awfully filthy, sticky and oily like he had sweat out a fever in his sleep. He probably did have a bug.
Henry Dawson was in the dark, lying on a cold hard floor. He woke up thinking of his grandfather and the summers he’d spent at his orchard. He and his father would make the three-hour drive together; he loved those drives. His father was a wealthy man, as was his grandfather, and he worked long and hard but always made time for his son. But it was those drives, that time at the orchard, when Henry really bonded with his father, when he felt the greatest share of what he had to learn from his father and grandfather was imparted to him.
His sick stomach distracted him from his reminiscences. It flipped, and he felt the back of his tongue go numb. He didn’t like to vomit, so he held it down. Hopefully he would feel better, because he really wanted to drink a hot cup of coffee right now, maybe eat some plain oatmeal to settle his stomach.
Henry Dawson had started life as a cute, intelligent child, a rosy-cheeked cherub. That was what everyone told him, and his baby pictures backed that up. There was so much good in his life, so much good and love. Never any doubt he was loved. He was popular, successful, and smart. But his father and grandfather had taught him to be sincerely humble—never rub your good fortune in others’ faces, and don’t think you’re better than anyone because of any assets you may posses. Fight to win, but be a good sport. Excel at your studies, but help your struggling classmates. Don’t gloat. And always remember,
There but for the grace of God, go I.
Henry was smart and had earned a full scholarship to college. He was taught from day one that his family’s money wasn’t his, at least not automatically. He had to earn his own money, build his career, and only then would he deserve the right to the family fortune when the time came to pass it on. If he wasn’t deemed fit, then it all went to charity. He was more than fine with that. He loved college and loved the feelings of independence, empowerment, and just good old self-worth that he was building day by day. He was premed and worked hard, very hard, so he loved his breaks. His grandfather would drive to his father’s house, and they would be waiting for him when he came home.
When he came home?
He came home, yes. He came home. He was stuck there. He repeated that phrase many times but remained stuck. He came home to what?
The sickness hit him too fast to resist it. His only options were to turn his head or not. He turned his head and spewed forth an incredibly large amount of vomit. It was startling. How did so much come out of him? And why did it look so bizarre? Was this because of the bug? He puked twice more in amounts almost as copious. The exertions tired him. He laid his head back down, feeling better for the purge, and dozed off.
§
The smell. He came home to that smell.
The smell woke Henry with a horrifying jolt. Tears were already running down his face when he opened his eyes. He woke with a full memory of that horrible day. The day he came home from college, opened the front door, and instantly knew something was wrong. He knew the smell of fresh blood, that coppery smell. It was filling his nostrils right now as it had then. He tried to sit up but couldn’t; something was holding him down. He turned his head and saw the source of the coppery smell. There was a large puddle of blood next to him. A man with his face caved in was lying next to him. It was gruesome.