Like a monster waking, it rumbled to life.
With cold fingers, he threw the shed doors the rest of the way open and got the planks in place to drive the machine up into the bed of the pickup. He mounted the snowmobile, squeezed the throttle, and eased it up the makeshift ramp. A near-perfect fit.
He got down from the back of the truck and stowed the planks beside the snowmobile. He took another glance inside the shed and spotted a gas container. He grabbed it and gave it a shake. Not much, but some gas sloshed, so he tossed it into the back of the truck with the snowmobile.
Gus took one last look around, didn’t see anything else he needed, and walked back into the street. Daylight seemed to have dimmed, and the snow was noticeably thicker. He regarded his old apartment one final time, saving the image in his mind, before getting aboard the pickup.
7
For the next few days, Gus stayed home, comfortably medicated. The Tramacet did the trick, staving off the greater portion of the pain while the booze kept him comfortably high. He was sure there was something wrong in taking the painkillers with the booze, so he spaced it out as much as he could, and only took the pills with water. The booze he drank straight, not even bothering with a mix anymore. What was the point? He drank because he enjoyed it, because it took the edge off, and a shitload of other reasons he couldn’t articulate. At some point in time, when his senses were swimming and his limbs felt like slabs of rubber, he realized he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone, so he drank even more.
Several mornings, he threw up in the bathroom bucket, heaving his guts out, waiting for the time when he would see blood in his vomit. Somehow, he finished the repairs on the house, kept an eye on the solar panels and batteries, and patrolled the grounds with the Benelli tucked in under one arm, as vigilant as he could be while half-drunk. The solar panels remained a mystery and a wonder, and he dreaded the day they ever stopped working. The snow continued to fall in great lazy clumps, and the days when it stopped, the clouds appeared as if they were merely gathering up wind for the next onslaught. Thus far, no more zombies had made it up the mountain and approached the wall, and the remaining dead scattered outside were buried in snow.
As time marched on, his face slowly healed. When he could stomach looking in a mirror, the progression was easy to see. The cuts healed into scars that lashed his features, as if he’d fallen sideways, face-down onto a hot grill. The once-brilliant purple explosions underneath his flesh had slowly receded and disappeared. His cheek still ached, but only as long as it took for him to down a couple of Tramacet tablets. His gums evaded infection, although there were a few mornings when he spat pus into the sink. The mouthwash helped clean it up, leaving him with the sense of having dodged one serious bullet. He wondered if the holes where the teeth had been would ever completely heal. Not that it mattered. His diet consisted of canned vegetables, stews, pasta, and dry noodles, and he cut any larger bits into smaller pieces. The stores in his basement were fine, and at the pace he was going, he figured he had enough food for a year, as long as it didn’t spoil in the cans. After that, the old problem came back. There wasn’t any fresh food anymore, and he still hadn’t figured out a way to grow his own. It was a problem he had to get on in the spring. There were old apple orchards and farms in other parts of the valley, and those places would be a good place to start looking for wild growing produce.
Other than drinking and watching old movies, reading continued to be his sole entertainment. He read steampunk and fantasy paperbacks from authors like Jason G. Anderson, Eric Zawadzki, Jason E. Thummel, and Katrina Anne Jack, even some zombie fiction from Brian J. Jarrett. He read until he passed out, and when he awoke, usually to the sound of winds battering the house, he’d shiver, have a mouthful of rye, and forage for something to eat. The movies he watched were from all genres, but he grew increasingly fonder of the old George Romero flicks. There was a style about them that he enjoyed. The newer zombie action movies were fine, and he continued making a study of them, vowing not to do the idiotic actions some of the characters did when faced with undead hordes.
One evening, with the day darkening like the door being slowly shut on a frozen wasteland, Gus walked out to the wall and climbed the one ladder he’d left out there. He gazed over the top, a lone sentry on the battlements, and wondered when the next attack would happen, and if he would be awake when it did. The mob that had breached the compound wall made him think about what to do if it happened again. They’d been a stern test of his defenses, and he wasn’t entirely happy with the results. The nail-studded boards were hidden underneath the snow, causing Gus to avoid walking anywhere off the beaten road. He couldn’t complete his trench like he wanted to, delaying that particular project until the spring when the ground thawed. Giving Scott enough ammunition to protect himself had halved his store of shotgun shells, and after the assault on his walls, his ammunition supply had become even lower. He couldn’t afford to blast away another couple of hundred deadheads. Explosives came into his head, although he didn’t know where to get them or how to handle them if he did. There was a national armory in Halifax, but in his daily semi-plastered state, he didn’t want to risk the drive. Chances were that anyone who did know how to handle explosives had probably already raided the storage facility. He thought of Scott again and wondered how the young man was faring. He’d been gone for three weeks, and Gus missed their banter. He then switched back to the state of his defenses and how to improve them.
Then, it came to him. Molotov cocktails. He’d already made a few, but the idea of making more appealed to him. The fire bombs would be just the thing, and they also gave him reason to drink more. He had plenty of empties around the house. The only thing he had to do was get the gas, plug the bottles with cloth, and stockpile them. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of watching the dead walk until they were ashes.
The next day, he started producing firebombs. In the garage, he set up a funnel and gas container, made a line of empty whisky and rum bottles, and filled them in assembly line fashion, pausing only to take away full bottles and replace them with empty ones. After three dozen of them, he plopped down at a work bench and formed a secondary line. He sliced T-shirts into shreds with his Bowie knife and stuffed the strips into the bottle necks. The work made him feel quite pleasant, and occasionally, he would take a short break and reflect on his progress with a few straight shots from a bottle of vodka. Vodka was his choice of a morning drink, thinking it was time to put a dent in the stores of booze brands he hadn’t even touched yet, stashed away like an alcoholic squirrel.
At one point he got up to stretch and listen to the garage and the house, hearing nothing but the slow dissolve of time. He turned to the captain, the same empty rum bottle he’d kept with him about the house, and stared at the foppish sailor. Next to him were about a dozen other rum bottles, each with their own sailors on the front, all standing at attention, brimming with gasoline, and ready for action.
“You’re in charge of those assholes. Got it?”
The captain smiled.
“I mean it. If I ever have to throw them over the wall, you gotta be on them and make sure they burn. And I mean
burn
in fuckin’ spectacular fashion. Light up some undead asses.”
I’ll take care of it. You can depend on my boys. My
marines.
“Good.” Gus nodded. “I knew I could. Sorry to be a hard ass all the time.”
Then for no reason, Gus got to giggling. How the hell could the captain keep such a grin on his face for so long? That had to hurt.
What about Roxanne and her gang?
The question killed his giggles and Gus had to think for a moment before answering. “Come springtime, when the snow goes away, I’ll see what’s what. If the bodies are still there, I’ll burn them again. If not, maybe I can wheel some dirt to the edge and dump it over. Cover them up. They not goin’ anywhere at the base of the cliff.”
How are you doing with, you know, Roxanne?
“Don’t go there, okay?” Gus slurred, feeling the vodka do its three-punch magic. “Bitch almost killed me. Her buddies fucked up my doors. And you saw what they did to Uncle Jack. You were next to him. Exploded his ass. Right there in the kitchen. I mean, Christ almighty, you try to be friendly and look what it brings you.”
The captain agreed. That made Gus feel better. Whatever he might have felt for Roxanne had rotted in him, turned bad, and was presently marinating in hate. Thinking on how she had deceived him, he wished he had shot her a third time. The memory left a bad taste in his mouth, and he reached for the vodka to wash it away.
“Nasty shit,” he hissed and regarded the bottle at arms’ length. He placed it back down and looked at the captain. The old sailor was the only friend he had in the world, and the memory of Uncle Jack being shot jarred something in him.
“Y’know,” Gus said, picking up the bottle and wiping off the label with his fingers. “I think it’s time to get you into some body armor. How ‘bout that? Hm? You’re as vulnerable as a baby’s bare ass.”
Suppose it wouldn’t hurt.
Gus was glad that the sailor approved. He got out a roll of duct tape and covered every inch of the bottle, with the exception of the decal of the smiling captain. He applied two thick layers and molded them to the contours of the glass. Once finished, he inspected his work, gave it a slap, and nodded at the officer.
The captain nodded back, pleased with the new protection.
*
Needing to replenish his gas supplies, Gus decided to head down to the highway to pop some tanks one morning in mid-January. He remembered the Western Oil storage facility on the other end of the city, but there wasn’t any way to channel the contents of the tanks. In the end, it was simply easier to get what he needed from the cars. He suited up, opting to leave his helmet behind again, and went about gathering the items he’d need. A minute later, he was at the gate. His ribs still bothered him, and although the regular doses of Tramacet––boosted by regular shots of rum, whiskey, and vodka––cut away a lot of the discomfort, he suspected he had to be careful when doing anything heavy. He got the first timber down with a grunt, placed a hand against his ribs, and took short shallow breaths. The pain sparkled dully, and even just turning made him ache.
“Fuck,” he grumbled and sized up the remaining four thick pieces of wood bracing the gate. “Fuck.”
Put your back into it
! He heard the captain call out from the cab of the pickup.
Gus rolled his eyes. All he needed was a gay illustration on the front of an empty booze bottle telling him what to do. He backed up, then looked down briefly and realized the snow was up to his ankles. Grimacing, held his side and stepped back from the gate. His breath floated before him, and he imagined with his scars and missing teeth, he probably looked like a fright. Taking a breath and preparing himself for the pull, he got his hands around the next beam. He intended on doing a one-two count, but even the practice pull sucked the strength from him.
“Fuck again.” He decided then that he wouldn’t be going anywhere in his condition, not until his ribs healed.
“You got me,” he whispered and shook his head. Still holding his side, he turned around and looked at the house in all of its frosty glory. The sun seemed to have taken off, leaving clouds hanging miserably in the sky. Gus squinted at them. They were dark. Medieval dark.
The wind picked up, as cutting as jagged glass against his bare skin. He dismissed the gate with a wave of his hand and got back aboard the pickup. Even as he closed the door to the vehicle, flakes splatted against the windshield with a fury that made him pause. The captain, in the passenger seat beside a half-empty bottle of vodka, smirked.
Something’s coming
.
“Yeah,” Gus agreed, sizing up the snow. “I think you’re right. Somethin’s comin’ down the pipe..
He turned the truck around and parked it in the garage, next to the van. He’d already parked the snowmobile in front of the beast, making the garage seem fuller than usual. There would be no harvesting of gas that day and, by the looks of it, perhaps not for a while. Gus lowered the garage door. The wind snarled savagely against the windows, making the entire frame rattle.
“Jesus,” Gus muttered, peering out at the snow. He hoped the solar panel for heating the house would function. It had last winter, during the fiercest of storms. There was the fireplace in the living room, but he didn’t have any wood chopped for it. At worst, he’d have to throw extra blankets on the bed, get shitfaced, and crawl in under it all for the night to ride it out.
Get shitfaced. Get medicated
. He had to admit the idea had a nice ring to it. Losing interest in the gathering tempest outside, Gus made his way deeper into the house.
Isolation, he knew, could fuck a person up. He just didn’t believe it could happen to him. But since the shoot-out—more precisely, after Scott and Roxanne were gone—he had felt as if his sanity was slowly coming apart, like a jigsaw puzzle, one crusty piece at a time. He wasn’t sure if it was the constant boozing, the drugs, the solitude, or even the lack of sunshine that had started to warp his reality. Maybe it was the conversations with the empty, duct-taped bottle of rum. That sure as hell couldn’t be helping his frame of mind.
But when the captain had started talking
back
, and Gus wasn’t sure it was himself doing the talking––a displaced part of his own subconscious fabricating and giving the bottle a personae—he knew,
really
knew, he might have a problem. He’d have to watch himself.
And the bottle.
*
January rolled out like a huge creaking snowball, the kind you would do to construct a fort of historical proportions. Snow fell on and off, the sky throwing down more than Gus ever thought possible. The winter before had been mild in comparison to the frozen hell being wrought outside the house. Twice, he went outside and cleared off the panels, and once even dared fate by climbing a ladder to the roof, thirty feet above ground, and cleared off the panels up there with wide, shaky swishes of an arm. Monstrous drifts filled the yard, as if ancient ice serpents had lain down inside the walls and wrapped themselves around the house. Gus realized he was using the word
monstrous
to describe a lot of things. Worse, the captain seemed to take a liking to the word as well. With a woolly toque on his head, he patrolled the estate with weapons ready, stopping and vigilantly watching the lay of the land beyond the wall. He monitored the rise of any
monstrous
snowdrifts that might take away the defensive advantage the outer barrier once had.