“Can I at least step out and take a leak?”
“I wouldn’t advise it.”
Roy clambered back up to his feet and started tearing tape away from the door. “Then I’ll stick my dick out and let it flow.” Seconds later he was urinating out onto the ground through a six-inch crack of open door. “Christ, that feels good.”
Louie listened to the muddy splattering sound for another half minute. “Can’t you go any faster? We have to shut that door and keep quiet.”
“Going as fast as I can.” Roy could see a bit of grey field to the south side of the house through the door crack. He thought he saw something moving out there in the pre-dawn light. He pushed out the last bit of urine and leaned forward for a better look. “You aren’t going to believe this… I think our food shortage problem is about to become a thing of the past.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Cows, Louie. I can see three or four cows grazing out in the field.”
“Shut the door,” Louie said. “Quietly.” There was nothing left for the cattle to graze on out in the fields, he realized. Whatever it was that Roy had seen out there was no longer chewing grass.
“Why are you freaking? Let’s get out there and kill one of the fuckers. We could be eating rib eyes for the next month!”
“You’re an idiot.”
A full ten seconds passed as the two men glared at each other in the early morning light.
“What did you say to me?”
Louie had spent the majority of his life being pushed around by assholes. It was the number one reason he’d trapped his co-workers deep underground and unleashed TICK-LDV3 into the world. And now here he was, confined inside a small space with the biggest asshole of them all. Roy may have kept him safe up to this point, but Louie was getting awfully sick of his mouth.
“Read my lips. You… are… a… fucking… idiot.”
There was no time for Louie to react, and nowhere to move. Roy’s shoulder squished into his face, and he felt the back of his skull grind into the metal wall. He heard the bigger man’s grunts and smelled the sour stink of his breath as he worked Louie’s neck beneath one thick arm.
“Gonna fucking kill you for that, man. Gonna squeeze that greasy fuckin’ head right off your skinny fuckin’ shoulders.”
Louie bit down into his wrist hard enough to draw blood. Roy squealed and released him. He slammed back into the far wall and stared down at the bite marks on his skin. “You… You bit me. Fuck… You got the sickness. You’re one of them. Goddamn… I’m gonna turn now, too!”
Louie was wiping the man’s sweat away from his neck. “That’s why you’re an idiot—thinking you’re infected because I bit you.”
“So why’d you do it? Who bites someone in a fight?”
“You said you were going to kill me. What was I supposed to do? You outweigh me by at least a hundred and eighty pounds.”
“You saying I’m fat?”
“No, I’m saying I’m a hundred and thirty pounds. Little shits like me have to gouge eyeballs, kick nut-sacks, and bite.”
There was a look in the man’s eyes that worried Louie. It was a quiet, predatory stare. He had seen it seconds before Roy had murdered the woman running the Sandman hotel. It was the same look he’d seen before he punched Tracy Klausburg, breaking her nose and shattering her teeth. “You think I’m over three-hundred? Is that what you’re saying to me? You think Roy Rodger is a three-hundred-plus fatty? You slimy little cocksucker.”
“Your last name is Rogers?” Louie started to giggle. He couldn’t help himself. “Roy Rogers—like the singing cowboy?”
“It’s Rodger. With a ‘d’ in the middle and no fucking ‘s’ on the end.”
Louie laughed out loud. “Still… that’s hilarious. Roy Rogers. Seriously, your parents were real dicks naming you Roy.”
Roy was on him again in a flash. He smashed into the smaller man with enough force to crumple the wall outwards and tip the entire shed up off the ground. Louie bit into his arm again, but Roy Rodger was oblivious to the pain. He picked Louie up and threw him into the opposite wall. The shed rocked the other way. He charged again and the shed crashed down onto its side.
The infected cattle feeding on the remains of the farm’s owner and his daughter two-hundred feet away lifted their bloated heads. One of them snorted black fluid out of its nostrils and kicked at the dirt with its back hooves. It started towards the noise, and the others followed.
Chapter 38
Morning had cast its dull grey light across the plains, but the pit was still drenched in shadows as Hayden pulled the battered Buick off the highway and onto the gravel road. He saw a wisp of white smoke rising above a pile of loose rocks and realized they were still there before Caitlan’s Audi came into view a few seconds later.
“I thought you said they wouldn’t be here,” Fred Gill said seated next to him.
“I told them not to wait past midnight. Obviously they didn’t listen.” Hayden’s tone was hard, but a big grin had broken out across his face.
Angela was sitting in front of the remains of a small fire. A heavy green comforter—one of two that Caitlan had snuck into the trunk of her car while staying at the Sandman hotel—was drawn loosely around her shoulders. Under the same blanket, something started to move by her feet. Nicholas’s head poked out as Hayden pulled up and parked across from them. The boy scurried out and rushed into his arms before he could remove himself from the driver’s seat.
Hayden kissed the mess of hair on top of his head. “Hey, squirt. Miss me?”
“I thought maybe you got lost,” the boy said in a rush. “Then I thought maybe them big bombs got you. Then I thought them dumb soldiers beat you up. Then—
“Easy, Nicholas, go slow!” Hayden nodded at Angela. “Why are you still here?”
“Where were we supposed to go?”
“North. I told you to take the kids and head north.”
The woman shrugged and found a piece of wood to throw into the almost dead fire. She stirred it into the coals with another stick until it burst into flames. “Caitlan and I decided to give you another twenty-four hours after the bombs went off. We figured something that big and unexpected might’ve altered your plans.”
Hayden didn’t know Angela all that well, but it was easy enough to hear the sarcasm in her words—the anger behind them. “I know it was dumb staying behind like that, but I couldn’t let it go… you never saw what they did to my horse.”
“Was your horse all you could think about when you sent us off?” She was looking directly at the boy in Hayden’s arms.
“It wasn’t the smartest decision I’ve ever made.” He hugged Nicholas a little harder. “I won’t do something like that again.”
Angela shrugged again, as if she wasn’t sure she could believe that, or perhaps that she no longer cared. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Fred Gill, a doctor from Brayburne.”
Angela shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Fred. I’m Angela. So why did you leave Brayburne?”
“There’s no Brayburne left,” he answered softly.
“The bombs were that close? We thought they went off towards Winnipeg.”
“Not bombs.” He exchanged a dark glance with Hayden. “I don’t think we should discuss it around the boy.”
The back door of the Audi opened up and Amanda spilled out onto the ground from within the folds of the second Sandman comforter. Her brother followed seconds after. “You came back,” the girl said.