“Stop the car! Pull over!”
Fiona stomped on the brake pedal, forcing Jubal to throw up a hand to brace against the dashboard. “What?”
Before the car was completely stopped, Jubal was out the door and throwing up on the blacktop. He fell to his knees; it felt like his body tried to eject everything he had eaten since he was twelve. When he was?nally?nished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and climbed to his feet, wincing at the new soreness in his stomach.
Fiona was standing next to the car, her arms folded across her chest. She studied him with a look of exhausted concern.
She hugged him close and helped him into the car again.
When they were about a mile farther down the road, she said, “Would it help to talk?”
“No,” he said. But in less than a minute, he blurted out, “My ma…they shot her. She was turning into one of those things.” Jubal felt the hot tears?ll his eyes. He turned away from her and stared out the car window, blinking until he felt like he wasn’t going to cry.
Fiona placed a hand on his arm.
“I loved her, too,” she said.
He put his own hand over hers. In the midst of this madness at least something good remained in his life. “I know,” he said.
She released his arm.
“Fee?” he said. “When we were kids, why did you punch me in the nose?”
He turned to her in time to see the faint smile play across her face. “You called me Stork Girl.”
He remembered. Jubal had been a smart ass when he was a kid. He had deserved that punch in the nose.
“You always were a tough broad,” he said.
“You bet your ass.”
Jubal sighed. “I have to do something pretty tough now and I could really use your help.”
She took his hand. “We’ll be there in just a few minutes.”
Damon Ortega had been the second most important man in Jubal’s life. He’d tried to be a good role model for the boy, had taken him?shing, made sure he kept up his studies. Damon had even been the one-at the request of Jubal’s mother-to give the boy “the talk.” Jubal and Damon still laughed about that one, about how the older man’s face quickly reddened and stayed that way when he learned the depth of the boy’s knowledge.
“You can really do that?” Damon had asked.
Repeating that line never failed to make the sheriff blush all over again.
There were so many good memories, and some that weren’t so pleasant. Like when Damon crawled into the tequila bottle for a few months after his wife left him. That dark episode culminated in an ugly night at Conchita’s when a drunken Sheriff Ortega pulled out his service revolver and shouted incoherent threats at a-thankfully-small group of townspeople. Pops and Red had talked him down, taken the gun away from him and then poured a gallon of coffee into him before driving him home. The next morning Damon emptied every bottle in his house into the kitchen sink.
There was no investigation, no charges?led. Everyone knew Damon and the pain he was in. For his part, Damon recognized his second chance and took it. The people of Serenity took care of their own like they usually did. It was one of the reasons Jubal never wished to live anywhere else.
Now he had to make another unpleasant memory.
When they rolled up Damon’s driveway, Fiona said, “You need a minute?”
“No.” And it was true. Jubal had somehow managed to lock away his emotions so he could focus on what had to be done. Later he might turn into a quivering mess, but for now he had managed to achieve a bit of distance from today’s events.
As long you don’t count sweaty palms, a dry mouth and a stomach so messed up that it might explode out the back of your pants any second.
He climbed out of the cruiser and walked back to the trunk. Locked into a brace on the inside wall was a Mossberg. 12 gauge shotgun. Jubal removed it and checked the load. He pumped a round into the chamber and shut the trunk.
Fiona was waiting for him by the front of the car.
“I know it won’t do any good to ask you to stay out here,” he said.
She stared at him.
“So I won’t. But this could take a while, Fee. If he hasn’t…you know…”
“You think I’m going to let you go through something like this by yourself?”
He forced a smile. “Come on, Stork Girl.”
They walked to the porch and through the front door. Jubal didn’t hesitate. With the shotgun raised, he walked quickly to the living room.
Damon wasn’t in the room. The couch was a mess. The cushions and the pillow were speckled with blood. Jubal remembered the coughing?t that Renee Spencer suffered through before she passed.
“We have to search the place,” he said. “Stay behind me.”
They went through Damon’s house room by room. It didn’t take long. Jubal led the way, checking behind each door and around any corner that didn’t offer a clear view. Fiona was close by, with her body at a 90-degree angle from him, so she could keep an eye on Jubal and anything that might try to sneak up behind them.
When they reached the small kitchen, Jubal saw a small pool of blood in the sink.
“He was in here.”
“Not anymore,” Fiona said. She pointed at the small window over the sink.
Damon had built the gazebo back in his married days with the help of Jubal’s dad. Susan was already making noise about the limitations of being married to a small town cop, so Damon was trying to?x the place up a bit to appease her. These days he sat out there on occasion, sipping a can of beer, but nothing stronger. Sometimes Jubal would join him.
Now a dark form was slumped across the gazebo’s bench.
Jubal stepped through the back door. It was suddenly hard to breathe, as though a band of steel had tightened across his chest.
He took a couple steps toward the gazebo. He could hear the crunch of Fiona’s shoes on the dry soil behind him. She was keeping a bit of distance between them.
Good girl. If there were trouble, maybe it wouldn’t take both of them.
Jubal took two more steps. He was?fteen feet from the gazebo. He could clearly see the back of the prone man’s head. It was de?nitely Damon.
Damon sat up and swiveled his head around, farther than Jubal thought possible.
“Damon?”
Fiona gasped.
Damon was through the gazebo’s screen door and running at Jubal.
Jubal froze, his shotgun held loosely in his hands. He could not accept that Damon had turned into a monster. This was a man he had looked up to his whole life. And loved-something he’d never told the older man.
Now the dead sheriff glared at him with orange eyes. Folds and?aps, where the blisters had burst, covered his gray skin. Off-white saliva stretched between his upper and lower teeth. His hands were curled into killing claws. Sheriff Damon Ortega snarled, sounding more animal than human.
“Damon, stop,” Jubal said, as the zombie sheriff barreled into him, knocking him to the ground. Jubal rolled onto his back and pulled the trigger of the shotgun.
The blast hit Damon squarely in the chest,?inging him backwards to the ground.
Jubal got to his feet. “What have I done?”
“You had to do it, Jube. He was going to kill us,” Fiona said.
“Man, this is crazy. I don’t know if I can take much more…”
Damon sat up, grinning, with a gaping hole in his chest. His mouth dropped open and he made a sound that reminded Jubal of Jurassic Park pterodactyls.
“F-fuck,” Jubal said.
Damon got to his feet, swaying a little. Then he took a step forward. His bright orange eyes were stretched wide open, and the orbs looked as if they had no lids. His mouth gaped and emitted a croak.
Jubal could do nothing as Damon took slow, staggering steps toward him. It was as if it were a dream that he’d soon wake up from.