And in the fiery afterburn of the blaze, Gus smiled.
He reached for the bottle on the seat and drained it, hardly even reacting to the burn. Once empty, the bottle went back into the cab, next to the three firebombs. He’d fill that one up later. He wanted another drink. With the sky darkening, he knew he should head home, but the rush of the explosion combined with the booze already in his system made him feel powerful, invincible.
And the liquor shop wasn’t that far away.
Ten minutes later, he pulled the truck into the liquor store parking lot. He switched on the high beams as he stopped in front of the doors. Time passed, and impatience tapped on his nerves and brain. When he could wait no longer, Gus got out and picked up his flashlight. It would only be a quick stop. Just the wink of an eye.
He wandered in, the light from headlights illuminating everything. He wandered past the empty shelves until he got to an open case of white Bacardi rum. He pawed at the cardboard, making the bottles inside rustle and tinkle against each other. He pulled a forty ouncer out of the box. There was nothing quite like a full bottle of booze. Gus compared it to holding a tank shell. He unscrewed the cap and took a pull out of the bottle, snarling just a little when he lowered it. He wasn’t much into white rum, but he supposed he couldn’t be particular under the circumstances. Sniffing indifferently, he took out two more bottles, tucking one underneath his arm while holding the others by their necks.
With thoughts on a late supper and a bottle of Bacardi, and even more thoughts on the pyrotechnics of lighting up the remaining gas stations, he went back to the truck.
Waiting for him on the threshold stood a man.
Gus halted in his tracks.
He initially thought the figure was a zombie. Then he noticed that the newcomer held a bat in his right hand.
“Howdy,” Gus said, frowning and placing his bottles on the nearest checkout counter.
“Howdy.” The gravelly response froze him in his tracks.
Gus blinked, holding a hand up to his eyes.
“Where’d you get the truck?” the voice asked.
“Found it,” Gus answered after a moment.
“Where?”
He took his time answering, mulling over if he should say anything at all. “Won’t lie to you. That truck was parked on my property. Belonged to a man who tried to kill me.”
Silence. The shadow didn’t move. “That man have a name?”
“Didn’t get it.”
“I got it.”
“Yeah?”
The shadow paused, then with dramatic flair, lifted the bat to his shoulder as if he were about to walk away. “Jonathan.”
“Oh.” Gus shrugged. “Don’t know him.”
“If you saw him, you’d recognize him. Big man. Shaved head. Last time I saw him, he wore a hockey helmet.”
Gus shrugged again. “Lotta guys walkin’ around here like that.”
The newcomer’s head tilted to one side, as if the statement either amused the hell out of him or pissed him off. Gus couldn’t be sure which.
“Last I saw of him, he and about seventeen others got in their cars and trucks and went off to rescue a woman.
His
woman, to be precise.”
Roxanne.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
“Uh-huh.” Gus squinted, sizing up the figure and estimating him to be a little taller than himself, but shorter than Scott. Bulkier, too. “Good women are hard to find these days.”
“I don’t give a shit what happened to them.”
“I killed them.”
Shocked silence. “You did?” The man’s tone was doubtful.
“Yeah, I did. The whole works of them.” Gus shook his head. “They were trespassin’.”
“
You
… killed them all?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t talk things out?”
“Hard to talk things out when folks are shootin’ at you.”
“You killed them.”
“Yeah.” Gus nodded, looking to one side then the other, in case he had to dodge the bat.
“That’d make you a dangerous man.”
“Baddest I know.”
The shadow didn’t respond to that. After a moment, the shadow hissed, “Jonathan’s dead?.
“Uh-huh. Dumped off a cliff, too.”
“Shit,” the man said. “You did me a favor. Would’ve done it eventually. Jonathan was a prick right through. I was only bidding my time when I could take him on. Much appreciated.”
It was Gus’s turn to be surprised. “You’re happy he’s dead?”
“He
is
dead, right?”
Gus nodded. “Yeah. He is. Shot him through the head.”
“Shit. Good riddance then. Owe you one for that. ’Cept there ain’t no gang left over on account you killed most of them. When did this happen?”
“Couple of months ago. Around Christmas.”
“Yeah, that’s when they all went missing. Went up the side of a mountain and never came back.”
Gus shrugged. “How was it you weren’t with them?”
“Fuck ‘im. I didn’t care for the man. Didn’t care that he turned our people into what they were. My boys and me were left waiting for him to get back. To mind the camp.”
“Your boys?”
“Yeah. My boys.”
“Where are they now?”
“Figure dead, too.”
“Oh.”
“Went out searching houses one day and never came back.”
Gus suddenly didn’t like where the conversation was heading. “Three men?”
Guarded hesitation. “Yeah.”
“One was a teenager? Big blocky kid?”
“Yeah.”
Gus tensed. “Was.”
“How’d you know?”
“Saw him get eaten,” Gus said.
“You saw him?”
“Did.”
“And you didn’t do anything to save him?”
“Hard to do when the boy was tryin’ to take my head off with a rope.”
The shadow straightened. “
You’re
the asshole on the ski-doo.”
That made Gus pause. “Was the asshole… got the truck now.”
More silence. “That boy… was my son.”
Well… shit. “Wilbur.” Gus sighed.
The shadow charged, screaming, bat raised.
Gus stepped back into the shadows, past the counter, and heard the hiss of the bat somewhere just behind him. Something shattered. The father roared in both fury and grief. Gus darted to the right, down a dark aisle. The father smashed the bat into something behind him, making one length of shelves shudder. Another roar, and the stomp of pursuit.
Gus whirled and bent to get out his pistol. A monstrous shade rose up before him, and as he pulled the pistol from the ankle holster, the bat cracked it from his hand, sending it spinning into the dark. The father jabbed with the bat, hitting Gus square in the chest. He fell backward and bounced off a metal shelf. Something swished by his head, and Gus lunged forward. He punched and connected with the guy’s mid-section, feeling the thick cloth of winter gear. He punched several times more, getting a solid four punch combination into the bigger man’s body and making him grunt. An elbow smashed into Gus’s helmet, spinning him around and disorienting him. He instinctively dove for the floor. He heard the swish of the bat where his head once was, rolled away, and got to his feet. The bat came down and cracked into the floor with a heavy sounding
clunk
.
Metallic
.
Man’s got an aluminum bat.
Gus ran deeper into the shop, cloaking himself in shadow.
“He was only fourteen,” the father growled. “Hear me, fucker? You killed a
boy
!”
A big boy who squealed like something wild when the dead ate him
, Gus thought, hating his mind for thinking it. He wanted to shout out that he didn’t really kill him, that he only knocked out his kneecaps. Then he realized those words would drive the old man into an even greater rage.
Gus cut through the store, moving as quietly as possible, straining to control lungs that wanted to gulp air. He circled around the back of the shelves, listening for the wheezing of the father’s breath. Gus shook his head. He’d had to kill Wilbur to make a diversion for the deadheads, so he’d have time to get away. If he hadn’t, he’d be just as dead and gone. Just as eaten.
Just like Wilbur
.
The lights. The headlights of the truck. Gus headed back toward the entrance and made it to the truck. He yanked open the driver’s door, then stopped.
No
.
He wasn’t going to leave the father behind, not after leaving his son. He didn’t think there was enough booze in the whole of Annapolis for him to forget that. He reached in and pulled out the Benelli. The shotgun was more than an equalizer.
He saw Wilbur Senior in the glare of the headlights. White-faced with eyes slitted. Older man, perhaps late forties, with a week’s unshaven stubble on his face.
“Got a gun, I see.” The man’s shoulders heaved, his bat held across his pelvis. He wore a blue and red padded jacket and a lumberjack cap. Blue jeans and bare hands.
“Always had it.”
“Then you better use it, y’fucker.”
Gus kept the Benelli pointed at the ground. “No.” He tossed the gun into the cab. Stepping away from the truck, he dragged his own bat from its sheath. He held it like a sword. “You know about the rats?”
“Yeah.”
“The rats got your boy, I figure. Got the others, too.”
“You fucking
cocksucker
.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll make it up to you.” Gus moved to his left.
Wilbur Senior mirrored the movement. “Yeah? How?”
“I’m still here, ain’t I?”
Wilbur Senior charged, swinging his bat at Gus’s head.
Gus jumped out of the arc of the swing and whipped his own bat at his foe’s head. Wilbur Senior ducked and swung again, connecting with Gus’s stomach and knocking him a step back. The man screamed, brought the bat up over his head, and brought it down onto Gus’s helmet, knocking it askew. The chin strap held it on.
Gus lashed out with his own bat, trying to drive the other man back, but Wilbur’s father charged in again, gouging the head of his bat into Gus’s mid-section. Gus bent over with a huff. A second later, the bat crashed across his back, collapsing him to the pavement.
Wilbur Senior stomped on Gus’s lower back, and Gus watched the man line up the bat with Gus’s head like a mallet about to nail a lawn ball. Gus tried to move, but the booted foot held him down. A split second later, he heard a murderous crack as the bat smashed into the side of his helmet, knocking his head to one side. Gus fought for breath. He saw stars and felt his consciousness leaving.
Another blow shattered Gus’s visor. A boot crushed his side, practically squashing his kidney. Another boot went into his ribs and flipped him over.
Over the lip of his helmet, Gus saw Wilbur Senior standing over him, expression hateful, bat poised at its apex to stab downward.
Gus realized he still had a grip on his own bat, and he plunged the head of it into the man’s balls.
Wilbur Senior staggered back with a throaty gasp, bat dropping as if suddenly too heavy for him. Gus achingly got to his feet. He watched the other man hunch over at the hips, spitting and holding his crotch.
Gus winced simply thinking of that pulsating, nauseating pain. It would be easy, easy to step over and break open the man’s head like an old ceramic piggy bank.
But he didn’t.
Gus righted his helmet and pulled away the broken pieces of his visor.
Wilbur Senior panted and bared his teeth. He glanced over at Gus, then dropped to one knee, cupping his balls.
Gus figured he’d nailed the guy in the nuts pretty damned good. He should just get in the truck. Or finish the man. One or the other, but he shouldn’t simply
wait
.
But he did just that.
A solid ten minutes later, Wilbur Senior asked, “Why?”
What could Gus say? “For your son. That’s why.”
“I’ll… kill you.”
Gus shrugged. “When you’re ready, get up, and we’ll find out.”
Wilbur Senior slowly got to his feet. He bent over and picked up his bat. Then, he faced Gus and pointed the bat at him as if it were a sword.
Gus did the same. “You ready, then?”
No sooner had the final syllable left his mouth when the big man sprang at him, whipping his bat back over his shoulder and swinging for the fences.
Gus stepped back and swung his own bat with murderous intent.
The faster bat connected.
Gus smashed the other man’s head with a meaty thud, snapping it over at an altogether wrong angle. Wilbur Senior’s bat left his fingers at the last possible second. It grazed Gus’s helmet with enough force to back his head up on his shoulders, cracking his spinal column like a fat whip.
Both dropped to the pavement.
Gus rolled over a moment later, groaned, and sat up. He turned his head to the left and right, testing his neck. Nothing seemed to be broken and his head was still on his shoulders, but the headache and stabbing pain in his neck didn’t feel right. Gus knew he probably should’ve just shot the bastard and been finished with it, but oh no, he had to make an
even
fight of it, in guilty memory of Wilbur. He gazed over at the other man, who lay on his back, face up and eyes open. A squashed ear oozed blood. Gus heard a long hissing breath erupt from the man’s chest. He couldn’t be alive. Could he? Not after
that.
The man’s eyes remained open, unblinking.
Cringing, Gus got to his feet. He felt he won the fight fairly, if he didn’t count the shot to the balls.
That was a move of desperation
, the captain informed him from the truck’s interior.
Perfectly acceptable. And you allowed your foe to recover, which was more than fair.
Gus didn’t feel that way. He staggered over to where the man lay and tried closing his eyes. Contrary to what he had seen in movies, the eyes didn’t close easily. He snapped his fingers over the man’s face. Gus reached down and brought up his Bowie knife. He put the tip of the blade under the man’s stubbly chin. One cut, and the episode with the family was over. One cut.
Gus adjusted the blade and stabbed the man up under the chin and into his brain. He twisted hard. Blood welled around the metal, bursting forth when he pulled it out. It drenched the front of the dead man’s coat in a blackness that gleamed in the headlights. Gus drew back, falling on his ass. He watched the man bleed for a few long seconds, still somewhat dazed by the crack to the head, despite the helmet.