“You could’ve rung the buzzer,” a woman said. “Or at least knocked.”
She was standing behind a desk at the reception counter. Louie groaned inwardly when he saw the rifle in her hands. She was tiny, smaller than the crazy woman that had ordered them to strip down in the underground parkade of the Sandman hotel. Marie Hodgkin would’ve shot them down like dogs if Roy hadn’t wrestled a gun from one of her security goons first and ended her life before she could give the order. “Sorry about that,” he said in a soothing tone. He offered up his empty hands. “Everything’s locked up these days, and we haven’t come across a single soul willing to help out. My friend and I are starving… we haven’t eaten in days.”
She lowered the rifle, but kept it aimed in Roy’s general direction.
The big ex-mall-security-guard studied the weapon while his companion continued speaking to the woman. It was a single-shot .22 calibre rifle. Thing looks older than the building we’re in. Roy had seen hundreds of them growing up, usually sitting in barns, or stored in the front porch closets of farm houses for easy access. They were good for killing gophers and scaring off skunks, but not much else. If the thing’s even loaded, she’ll only have time to take one of us down.
Louie was still talking. “Yeah, the city’s a mess. We’ve been slowly moving out for over a week, helping out those we can along the way.” He introduced himself and Roy.
She set the rifle down on the desk and shook her head. “Forgive me. My name’s Tracy Klausburg… I’ve been under so much stress since it happened. All the administrators and other nurses just up and left. Most of the residents—at least those capable enough—wandered off later. There’s only a few left.”
They stepped forward. Louie went to shake the small hand, and Roy punched her in the face. She fell back into the chair behind the desk, her nose shattered and spilling blood. Louie hooked onto his thick wrist and tried pulling him back. “Why did you do that? She put the gun down!”
Roy pushed him away. “You’re an idiot sometimes, Finkbiner… too damn trusting.” He went behind the counter and inspected the rifle. “Fucking empty. It figures. This bitch wouldn’t have had the nerve to shoot us even if it was loaded.”
Tracy Klausburg groaned in her chair. Blood was leaking out between the small fingers covering her face. A tooth was sitting on her lap.
“Did you have to hit her so hard?”
“No.” Roy placed the rifle back down on the desk. “I’m going to check this place out… see what we can take. You stay with her.” There were two winding stairways behind the reception counter. Roy started up one of them.
Louie called after him. “I thought you said stealing was wrong. You told me the only thing that would keep civilization going was if we obeyed the laws.”
“I said shop-lifting was wrong. And that shit about civilization and laws doesn’t apply anymore. I lost my fucking job.” He vanished up onto the second floor, leaving Louie alone with the last staff member on duty at Green Forest Haven.
Chapter 28
The first few rooms he entered were empty. Roy continued down the narrow hallway. The third door to the left was open. He found the first of the six remaining residents lying in a bed, staring up at the ceiling with a comatose expression on his sunken face. Roy went and stood over the frail-looking man. He could see white patches at the corners of his mouth where saliva had dried. More of it had soaked into the pillow beneath his head.
Roy nudged the man’s boney shoulder. “What’s your fucking problem? You just going to lay there and let that bitch downstairs take care of you?”
The man didn’t answer. Roy slapped the side of his face. “The world’s ended, pal. There was a big war and everybody lost. Get up and start taking care of yourself. No one’s going to wipe your ass anymore.”
He remained unresponsive. Roy slapped him again, harder. He didn’t even blink. Roy felt a tingling sensation in the bottom of his gut; it was the same sensation he’d felt after being forced to strip down in front of Marie Hodgkin. He wrapped his fingers around the man’s throat and shook him. Roy squeezed harder and the tingle at the bottom of his stomach travelled down into his genitals. His scrotum tightened, his cock hardened. I’m not gay, he told himself. This had nothing to do with touching another man—that was sick. This was something entirely different. He had felt it the very first time when he was eleven years old, and had a cat pinned to the ground with his knee. He had wrapped his hand around its neck and squeezed and twisted until it was dead. Young Roy had then bludgeoned three of its new-born kittens with the side of his fist into the floor, and thrown the other three against a wall with all of his might. His cock and balls responded when he did it again a year later to a stray mother dog and its single pup. He had a raging hard-on when he’d murdered over a hundred people at the shopping mall, and he had another erection now.
It wasn’t a gay thing. Roy wasn’t even convinced it was a sexual thing. It was what it was, and it felt wonderful. Both hands were around the man’s neck now, throttling, shaking. Feeble fucker. Helpless, defenceless, stupid retard. The man remained completely silent as his life was choked away. Roy made lots of sounds. He moaned as he breathed in and whistled as he exhaled.
Finally, when there was nothing of the man left to kill, Roy released him. His fingers were stiff and sore, as if rigor had set in. He staggered back and saw the wet spot on the crotch of his pants. Goddamn, that’s never happened before. It’s not supposed to do that. How am I going to explain this to Louie? Fuck. I’m not gay.
He continued stepping back until he bumped into the window ledge. Moments later, the room grew dark. Roy turned and looked at the narrow pane of glass set behind the bars. Light had been shining through there seconds earlier, he was sure. Roy had seen the forest beyond the front parking lot, and the clouds in the sky. Now the glass was covered over in grey. It looked as if someone had thrown a can of paint over it, coloring the window a dismal shade of light black. It grew darker.
“What the fuck?”
He looked back at the man he’d murdered. The erection in his pants had started to subside. Roy remembered the woman downstairs saying there were a few of them left. Two, three, five, twenty—it didn’t matter how many. Just imagining them laying in their beds, useless and defenceless, brought his boner back.
I’ll choke them all. I’ll do more than that. I’ll make them suffer.
He left the room, hunched over slightly and limping to accommodate the throbbing bulge in his underwear. The grey mist, turning darker with every passing second, was forgotten. It pressed against the glass, and worked its way under the frame’s bottom edge.
“He’s not such a bad guy,” Louie explained as he dabbed the nurse’s face with a wet face cloth. “If it wasn’t for Roy, I’m not sure I’d still be alive. He’s helped me out of a few scrapes since I resurfaced.”
“Hees a reah angull.” Tracy Klausburg was still sitting in the chair behind the reception counter. Her head was resting back against the black leather upholstery to stop the bleeding.
“What’s that?”
She sat forward, winced, and repeated herself more clearly through her shattered mouth. “He’s… a real… angel.”
“I know what he is, but he’s kept me safe. Most of my life guys like him have been teasing and hurting me. It feels good to have one of them on your side for a change.”