For a moment he stood and stared at the bottle. It was one of ten that they’d been given by Zero to use as barter. Fresh from an old-fashioned corn mash still on Zero’s farm, it was a brown bottle with a hand-drawn label which read ‘Old Mack’s Pure Whiskey, Baron Zero’s Farm.’ It was probably very strong, maybe as high as 150 proof, and Justin had never been much of a drinker, even back in college, but in the end there was barely any internal debate involved as he roughly spun off the screw top, tipped the bottle up, and had a good long slug.
At first he was sure he would vomit; the liquor felt like molten metal going down his throat and burned all the way down to his stomach. His mouth filled with saliva and when he exhaled his breath felt like he could have lit it with a match. Doubling over, he set the bottle on the ground and, hands on his knees, breathed deeply for a minute or two. Then his stomach relaxed, numbed into submission by the raw spirits, and a warm glow began to spread through his whole body. Straightening up, he swallowed hard and had a few deep breaths, and then the vision of a flaming pile of corpses flashed into his head and he grabbed the bottle from the ground and had another long pull.
Fuck it, he thought angrily. Just fuck it all. Fuck the Old Man and all of them. He’d done everything he could; he’d done more than his share and gone above and beyond the Hippocratic Oath. And it wasn’t good enough. So just fuck it all and forget about it.
Already feeling wobbly and considerably buzzed, he walked a few yards away from the car and sat down on what was left of a roadside guard rail, and took another long, molten metal swallow. There were still images and memories and emotions pressing on him, but the booze was quick, and after another couple of drinks, they all sort of bled into one another and, blunted and disarranged, no longer posed much of a threat. In fact, suddenly nothing seemed like much of a threat. The booze was like some kind of Novocain for the horror and he found that it felt very good to feel nothing at all. And another drink!
The last thing he recalled was someone—probably Cass—approaching him. She’d looked concerned, and suddenly he’d felt very angry, and then… nothing. The white lightning shorted out the ability in his brain to record events for recall and he descended into the first drunken blackout of his life.
Chapter Thirty
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Red. A red wall. Then nothing.
The need to pee, very urgent, some stumbling and cursing, then sweet relief. Then nothing.
The red wall again. What was that, anyway? Some noises, people talking. Then nothing.
Again with the red wall, and suddenly a splitting headache, like his whole head wanted to crack open and scream, and a sudden, greasy spasm wracked his stomach. His mouth felt like he’d slept with an alcohol-soaked ball of cotton in there, and his eyeballs like there was ground glass under the lids. And what was that red wall?!
Then it came to him; it was the wall of the tent. The tent Baron Zero had given them, where he’d slept last night. Last night! What had happened? Through the pain and nausea, he tried to remember, but there was just plain nothing there to recall. He remembered drinking, of course, and the crushing despair that had led to it, and then Cass talking to him, and then it was as if someone had erased that part of the recording. Blank as a new slate.
Issuing a groan that resonated from his aching head to his aching feet, he rolled onto his back, absently noting that he was alone in the tent, and tried to think, but there really wasn’t anything to think about and he soon gave up. It seemed to be well into the day, judging from the sunlight on the tent. How long had he slept? Looking around, he saw that, aside from himself and his sleeping bag, the tent was empty. Likely the others had already packed up.
With another groan, he sat up, precipitating a fresh wave of nausea and headache, and then painfully got to his feet. The world swayed and wobbled for a moment as he gained his balance, but after a pause for a few deep breaths he felt slightly better. His mouth still tasted of liquor and vomit, his tongue like a wooly caterpillar, and his eyeballs burned like he’d been maced. He managed, however, to unzip the flap and step out into the harsh glare of a midday sun, and then very nearly stepped right back into the tent. They were all there, waiting for him, and the looks on their faces told him that he must have done or said something pretty bad in the course of his drunken binge. But what?
They all looked up as he emerged from the tent. Cornell, doing something under the hood of the car, glanced up and an expression of deep disgust came to his face as he shook his head and went back to whatever he was doing. Bowler, sitting in the shade of an old highway sign, sadly looked down at his feet, and Erin Swails, standing to one side, did the same. Barb Cass, packing up some cooking utensils, gave him a long, hard sort of look and then nodded to him, not all that warmly, and went back to her packing. It was Mr. Lampert, for some reason, whose expression he was most loath to read, but finally he looked at the Old Man and saw that, for whatever reason, Lampert’s face was a study in calm, like his wrinkled, prune-like features had been set in stone.
“Hiya, Doc,” he said, his tone as flat as his face. “You, uh… you OK?”
“I…” Justin tried and then had to pause to cough, violently and deeply, before trying again. “I feel awful,” he said, holding his head with one hand and his belly with the other. “Simply awful.”
“Oh yeah?” said Lampert. “Well, good.”
Wondering what that might mean, coming from Lampert, Justin grimaced and then, spying the ten-gallon potable water bladder on the side of the car, complete with a tin drinking cup, went over and poured a whole cup. Going down, warm and stale as it was, the water felt like Life itself returning to his tortured system and he had another two cups before replacing it. He considered something to eat for a second, but the way his stomach writhed from merely trying to cope with water dissuaded him. He wiped his face with both hands and turned back to the others.
“We should get moving,” he said, as steadily as he could. “I’m sorry for what happened, and that I overslept, but we should go.”
Sulkily, they all sort of shrugged and then went to put the last of their things—including the tent— into the car. Justin sat in the passenger’s seat and waited, trying desperately to recall what he may have said or done to the others, especially to the Old Man, but it was simply no use; there was just nothing there. At last, they loaded up the last of it and themselves and, the car whirring a lot more loudly than he’d remembered, they rolled onto the road and got underway.
For most of the morning, Justin simply sat in his seat, watched the landscape roll past, and wondered how on earth anyone could live with this thing known as a hangover. Even at the CDC, there had been heavy drinkers, people who got drunk at least once a week, and now, experiencing the aftermath of this himself, Justin couldn’t begin to fathom why anyone would think this pain and nausea a fair trade for intoxication. No, it just wasn’t worth it, and he told himself, over and over again, that he would never, ever drink again. Just the thought of the stuff almost made him throw up.