“Put that thing away.”
“That’s what all the girls say to you isn’t it?”
“Don’t make me beat the shit out of you.”
Carl waved a hand and laughed, but he folded the blade of the knife back into the handle and put it into his pocket. “Has anyone told you you’ve got an overactive imagination?”
Taylor walked to the front of the store, staying close to the racks in case he had the sudden need to hide. When he reached the plate glass windows at the front of the store, he scanned the street outside. “Sun’s starting to go under.”
Stores lined the opposite side of the street. One of them was a barber shop with an old-fashioned red, white and blue pole next to the door. A tanning salon stood next to it. Farther down the street, Taylor saw a store with Dave’s Hardware written on the marquee. Why couldn’t we have ended up in that one?
“I’m hungry.”
“I think I saw a bag of rice cakes in the backroom.”
“Fuck that. I want real food.”
“Well, we’ll just saunter across the street and find us the local steakhouse then. Sound good?”
“Be like that if you want,” Carl said, “but sooner or later we’re going to have to figure that out. What if this doesn’t blow over? What if we’re stuck here? We’re going to need to eat sometime.”
“There’ll be food once we get back home. There’s enough game meat in the basement freezer to last us over a month.”
“Assuming we make it home.”
“What are you talking about? Once it’s dark enough out there, we’re out of here. We’ll find a car and then we head home. We can hit your place first. Aren’t you worried about Angie?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course I’m worried about her.”
“She’s a smart girl. Just not smart enough to dump your ass. How long have you two been going out now? Six years?”
“Seven.”
“And you haven’t put a ring on her finger. Jesus.”
“Like you’ve got room to talk. You get engaged to every hooker you meet on the street. What’s it been?” Carl pretended to count the number of times on his fingers. “At least four that I know of. They’re not all marriage material you know. Oh, that’s right, you must already know that because they all left you.”
“Keep talking,” Taylor said.
Carl held his hands up in front of him. “Hey, you started it. You had to start doggin’ on Angie.”
“I wasn’t dogging on Angie. I was dogging on you. I’d take her in a heartbeat. You’re lucky to have a girl like that. Seven years, man. She’s done her time. Take it from me, there aren’t many around like her.”
“Let’s drop it. Okay?”
“Suit yourself.”
Carl looked up and down the street. All was quiet. “Maybe they left.”
“I doubt it. Chances are they’re still around here somewhere. Probably waiting for us to do something stupid.”
“You think those things are that smart?”
“They used to be normal people. So, yeah, they could be. Either way, I’m not going to chance it.”
“What kind of moron screwed up so bad for something like this to happen?”
“I wish we had a TV. Or even a radio. That might help us figure out what’s going on.”
Carl was still staring down the street when he said, “What are you talking about?”
“Just thinking out loud I guess.”
“What about Mom and Dad? You think they’re okay?”
“I don’t know, and I’m going to try not to think about that until we’re out of this mess. We need to keep our heads clear. It’s going to be hard to do, but that’s what has to happen so we don’t fuck up and get ourselves killed.”
“There was that bottle of water behind the counter,” Carl said. “I’ll fill that up with water from the sink before we leave.”
Taylor nodded and moved away from the window. “Good thinking.”
I want to get inside that hardware store before we leave, he thought. Pick up a few things. A Just-In-Case measure if nothing else. I’d donate a kidney for a gun and ammo store right about now.
“You think they’ve got a sporting goods store in town? Some place that sells guns? That’s what we could really use.”
That Carl had spoken aloud what Taylor had been thinking only a moment before didn’t come as a surprise. Coincidences like that were commonplace between them. What surprised Taylor was that they still shared moments like that despite the fact that they had always been on such divergent paths. Carl had always been the stand-up kid; the one destined to follow in their father’s footsteps. As a kid, he had been their father’s second shadow.
And what were you? The black sheep? Not even. Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself. Like you were abused or something.
Taylor sat down behind the checkout counter, watching the daylight slowly fade away. He could hear the sound of water running through the pipes and realized it was Carl filling the bottle with water.
When Carl returned from filling the bottle, he held it up and said, “Hard to believe that this is as good as a loaded .45.”
“I’m not sure that it is.”
“What aren’t you sure about? It hurts them doesn’t it?”
Taylor answered without taking his eyes from the window. “I’m not sure that it hurts them. I think it’s more like they’re afraid of it. The radio said whatever’s going on might be related to rabies. How they know that this soon beats me, but if it’s related to rabies, then it fits that those things would hate water. People with rabies develop an aversion to water. But it’s worse than that. Like just the thought of water drives them apeshit. If I remember right, it’s called hydrophobia.”
Carl tilted his head in bemusement. “And you know this because?”
“I read a book about it. Well, the entire book wasn’t about rabies, but there was a chapter on it. I don’t remember who wrote it. Some doctor, I think. Anyway, it was about all these different kinds of bites and stings. Poisonous animals and stuff. Rabies was covered in it. I only remember it because it was interesting. Until I read that, I didn’t know rabies was such a crazy disease.” Taylor pointed to the water bottle in Carl’s hand. “Can you imagine a disease that causes you to be deathly afraid of something as harmless as that?”
“I saw it in action an hour ago,” Carl said. “And let me tell you, I was scared shitless. Had I known that this wouldn’t actually hurt them, it would have been a lot worse.”
“Don’t take what I’m saying as gospel truth. I’m only making an educated guess based on what the guy on the radio said. I could be totally wrong. Or the guy on the radio could be wrong. If somebody offered me a choice between that bottle of water and a loaded .45 and said I had to go back out there, I’d pick the loaded .45 every time.”
Carl glanced at the bottle of Arrowhead in disappointment. “It’s better than nothing.”
“Yeah, it’s better than nothing.” He looked at his watch and then nodded toward the window. “Another hour-and-a-half and it should be dark enough. We’ll go out the same way we came in. I think we should head across the street and see if we can find a way into that hardware store too.”
“Why not just find a car and leave? I don’t think a shopping spree is such a good idea.”
“We’re going to do it just in case.”
“What? And we’re going to fill a shopping cart and then push it down the street until we find a car to unload it in?”