With that thought, he passed out again.
He woke up halfway through the day, or at least he thought it was halfway, and listened to the sound of nothing. Outside, the world burned, framed in his windows, but he felt far removed from it. That thought made him smile feebly. It was warm in the house, and he sensed that spring was rushing in. The snow would be melting––very fast down in Annapolis.
In the evening, he rose and got a bottle of rum. The binge from the night before was over, and it was a new night to celebrate. Bottle in hand, he wandered out of the house, noting how the snow had retreated during the day. Patches of yellow grass lay bare in the fading daylight. He walked back to the deck and stood there for a while, watching the fires.
Gus shook his head, wondering if he’d done the right thing.
He sat down and drank. When he felt his body couldn’t take anymore, he gathered the captain from the nearby chair and brought him back inside.
*
Something tugged him back to consciousness. He opened his eyes and stared at the bare, rustic timbers of the roof overhead, gloomy in the dimming light of the living room. The victory party had lasted for what felt like days. At some point, Scotch got left behind, and he’d switched to the more palatable Jack Daniels. Gus remembered wandering through the house on a drunken expedition, staggering to the deck to gaze at the still-burning city, and then going back inside the house. He recalled managing to get down half a pot of macaroni and cheese, the only solid food he’d consumed in a while. How long exactly had the binge lasted? He had no idea.
Drink
.
Lord above, he believed he’d drunk a lake in the last little while. He groaned, feeling how his guts felt both empty and tortured. His head rolled on his shoulders, and he stared at the dark material covering the sofa where he lay. He labored to get into a sitting position. The captain rested in the corner of the couch where his feet had been. Across the room, the curtains were open, revealing a dark stew of smoke. Still burning. Annapolis was apparently set for a slow cook. The best roasts were done at such a temperature. That thought made his face split with a hoarse chuckle.
Shaking his head, he looked to his right and met the black gaze of a rat perched atop the back of a chair. Right next to the still-standing Christmas tree.
Perhaps it was because he’d been so blasted in the last couple of days. Perhaps it was because his only companion had been a duct-taped bottle, but the appearance of the rat didn’t surprise him. Not for those first few seconds, anyway. The vermin sized him up in turn, its whiskers twitching in the scant light, nose in the air, hairless tail just barely glimpsed behind it.
Gus took a breath. He was looking at a
rat
in his
house
. Realization hit him like a cold spray of water. In his peripheral vision, something moved. He looked and caught the bobbing form of another rat scurrying from a corner to slip around the end of the sofa.
“Where the fuck did you come from?” He looked around for his boots. They lay against the far window, next to the boarded-up sliding door.
Eyeing the rat on the chair, Gus crossed the living room and pulled on a steel-toed boot. Picking up the second boot, Gus noticed something strange about the rodent’s side. Yanking on the boot and stamping his foot on the hardwood floor, Gus noticed something else that chilled him.
The rat didn’t run at the noise. It didn’t even so much as a flinch.
Gus moved toward the rodent, but stopped after three cautious steps, peering at it in mounting horror. The thing on the rat’s side was a wound, an open wound large enough that he could see its viscous innards. The dead thing tensed, no doubt sensing, or
smelling,
fresh meat nearby.
“Oh, Jesus,” Gus whispered, drawing back in horror.
The rat leaped off the chair and charged.
Gus stepped back, his shoulder crashing against the glass pane. He kicked the dead thing with all the strength he could muster. The steel-toed boot connected and sent the vermin flying. The zombie-rat smacked into the far wall and crumpled in a shadowy heap near the staircase.
A moment later, Gus spotted movement to his right. Another rat scooted across the floor, heading in the direction of the bedrooms. The second visitor appeared around the sofa’s upholstered corner, whiskers twitching. Yet another one ran out of the kitchen, its bulk as long as his foot, moving in a zigzagging pattern. The things made no noise. Not even a squeak.
Steeling himself, Gus walked to the sofa and stomped on the rat peeking around the corner. The body flattened underneath his heavy sole and left very little blood. The rat from the kitchen came close, and Gus stomped on that one as well, twisting his heel to ensure the thing was dead. He scanned the living room and spotted three more of the greasy intruders keeping close to the walls. He moved toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms, but several more wandered into the living room from the kitchen.
Gus danced on his attackers, flattening their small bodies under his boots and leaving pulpy stains on the wood. In threes and fours, more rats joined the fray, swollen things with their mouths open, coming from the hallway and the kitchen. They attacked his boots, actually trying to bite through the thick rubber. He kicked and crushed them as they came within reach, no longer afraid of the things, even though some of the rats’ bodies were the length of his hand.
He let out a battle scream as he did his plodding jig on the rats. They didn’t scamper off. If anything, they came faster, running at him in their odd, scurrying fashion, only to have their bodies squashed before even getting in a bite.
Gus paused and took a deep breath. More rats were coming into the living room, sweeping in like a black jet of foul water. A sick feeling of horror and revulsion made his stomach clench dangerously. The things moved so low to the floor, they crawled over the smears of the dead and dragged little oily rivulets behind them. They poured in from all sides, as if he stood in a shallow basin. He roared, keeping his elbows high as he kicked. He ground in his heels. The floor became covered in a black paste.
Killing by foot expended a lot of energy. He got tired faster than he thought he would. He walked toward the kitchen. The rats flowed toward him, speckling the floor at an alarming rate. Gus kept moving and, once he got to the island, hoisted his butt up to sit on it. Below his dangling boots, rats pooled against the base in a thin, writhing mass. Some placed their forepaws against the wood and craned their necks up at him. He shook his head in disbelief.
They were coming in from every direction, every opening. Running a hand over his head, Gus turned to look outside, but had forgotten that the windows in the kitchen were boarded up. A sound reached his ears, jerking his attention toward the bedroom hallway.
With a huff, he jumped down, squashing the unlife from several rats as he landed. He crossed the floor quickly, ignoring the rats unless they got directly in his path. By the door, he flicked on the kitchen light. The lights came on, but instead of fleeing, the rats seemed to thicken, unafraid.
Gus turned a corner, lighting up the house as he came across the power switches, and stopped in his tracks at the front entry.
The hole the rats spurted through in the base of the door was as large as the toes of his boot. Rats squeezed through and milled around the floor like a cesspool about to overflow. The sounds of claws and teeth scratching and gnawing came from beyond. The wooden door quivered at its base from a terrible grinding pressure being applied from outside.
Something crawling up his leg made Gus glance down. With a macabre energy, the rats at his ankles piled up and over each other to breach the upper lip of his boot. He jumped, shaking the creatures off and sending them tumbling. He mashed them into the floor, stomping on heads and bodies. With dawning horror, he saw that the rats whose lower bodies he crushed lived on and persisted in trying to reach him. As with their biped cousins, the head was the money shot.
The notion that he had to plug the hole came into his head. He needed to block the opening and then brace the lower portion of the door. Once that was done, he could go about the unsavory task of killing the rest of the rats in the house.
With a roar, he soccer-kicked a swath through the invaders around his ankles, bouncing several off the walls. Nearby was a waist-high shoe cabinet, and Gus pulled it from the wall. Grunting, he flipped it up and over, landing it upside down on the floor. He sat on the upended cabinet, crushing the rats beneath it. Using his legs, he pushed the cabinet against the door, satisfied that the weight of the thing would keep them out.
He whirled on the rats at his ankles and tore through them, heading for the garage. They chased him, charged him, and he kicked against their stream, dashing several against walls and flattening others beneath his soles. The second entrance through the mudroom came into view. He reached out and flicked on the overhead light.
The rats had chewed their way through there as well, except three holes were made at the base of the outside door instead of one. Wood chips and splinters flew as a steady pulse of rats squirmed through the opening. Gus looked around, but saw nothing to block the holes. He plodded over to the door leading to the garage and yanked it open. Sweat dropped from his forehead, and for the first time, he realized he was breathing hard.
Once inside the garage, he slammed the door on his pursuers and switched on the light. The garage door was intact and the place appeared empty, but Gus stopped in his tracks, clamping his airways shut for greater quiet. Something rustled against the lower part of the garage door, heavy enough to gently rattle it. Metal comprised the door itself, so Gus wasn’t worried about the rats chewing their way through.
Moving hastily past his parked van and pickup, he looked through the rectangular windows set in the garage door. Though darkness was descending upon the mountain, he could still see a black stream of rats flowing from the gate toward to the house. The scene reminded him of old nature shows depicting swarming ants, and
that
thought dried up any remaining spit in his mouth. The rats ran in an ever-widening sheet that reminded him of spilled blood. They rushed toward the house, where their numbers went beyond his angle of sight. He knew where they were––right at his goddamn doorstep, gnawing their way into his home.
He leaned heavily against the door. He thought he’d taken the fight to the rats. By exploding the tanks of fuel, he thought he’d fried the whole lot of them underneath the ground. He’d flooded the storm drains and scorched Annapolis above and below. He’d thought he killed every last one of them.
Somehow, however, they had survived. Worst, they came up the side of the mountain, seeking the one who had set their world on fire. Obviously wanting a bite.
The gate. The gate was the key. If he could seal the gate and stem the flow onto the grounds, he could mop up the rest. Thinking of how he could do exactly that, Gus turned and went to his locker. He wasn’t going anywhere without his armor. He wasn’t doing
anything
without his weapons.
The first thing he did, as so many times before, was reach for the bottle of whatever he’d had the foresight to stash up in his locker.
There was no bottle.
Downed it when I got in the other day and didn’t replace it.
Gus winced, but then shook it off and got to work. He had no time to lament over a lack of booze. He’d drink plenty after he kicked the undead asses of the latest army assaulting him. He hauled on the protective ninja mask and got into the pants and coat of the Nomex gear. After slapping the elbow and knee pads into place, he strapped on the neck brace, the one still damaged from the last encountered with the animated vermin. The motorcycle helmet went on last, as if it were the switch that changed him from Gus to Mean Fucker. He regarded the motorcycle leather he’d worn so often before, wanting to wear it, but knowing it wouldn’t last out there.
Then he gathered the tools he would need for war.
Behind him, the door to the house rattled in its frame.
He had two shotguns, but he opted for the Benelli. The bat went into the sheath across his back. The Ruger went down one boot, and the Bowie went down the other. He loaded up the shotgun and bandolier, slinging the belt over his head and shoulder, making an X across his chest. The leather belt went around his waist, tying off any attack if they got up underneath.
Gus stopped and was about to pull on a pair of thick workman’s gloves, thinking that he was forgetting something. Then he remembered the Molotovs.
He looked at his workbench and saw them standing there, almost three dozen remaining firebombs, all ready and willing to make big blazing impressions on any that dared assault the mountain.
“You boys ready to fuck some folks up?” Gus asked them.
Hooah,
they growled.
Gus got out two lighters and stuffed one inside the elastic of his glove. Another thought brought him up short. The captain wasn’t with him. Holy shit. The captain was still out there on the sofa.
That fucking sailor had gone through hell and back with him. There was
no
way Gus was leaving his companion out there.
The door shook harder, and a small section at the base buckled inward. Gus searched the garage until he located an old ruck sack. He stuffed seven firebombs into the bag and slung it over his right shoulder.
The door shivered violently on its hinges. Parts of it buckled and splintered.
“Little bastards want in, boys,” Gus seethed to the remaining Molotovs on the bench. “What say we make ourselves known?”
Hooah!
Feeling as though he had enough spunk to fuck up a dozen undead hordes, Gus went to the door and threw it open.
21
Rats filled the small entryway and hall, turning the floor into a writhing surface that flowed around Gus up past his ankles. He shivered from feeling the press of twisting bodies against the rubber of his boots. He fired the Benelli, obliterating a chunk of the vermin and revealing the floor underneath for a second. Yelling at the invaders, Gus shot repeatedly, destroying huge shredded holes in the attacking carpet of tooth and claw. Red plastic casings flew from the ejector. He emptied the shotgun into the mass, then slammed the door, shoved his back against it, and started to reload. He thought better of what he was doing and went to his locker, where he still had a few boxes of shells remaining.