“Wahoo. Something to look forward to. Seeya in a week and a bit.”
“A week and a bit.” Scott nodded and stepped back from the idling machine. Gus passed around the front of the vehicle and climbed aboard. Once settled in, Collie turned to Scott.
“Get on home, now, y’hear?” she said. “A’fore I tan your ass. Make it all rosy and shit.”
Scott gave her a weak smile, then raised his hand in farewell.
Collie put the truck in gear. Cory and Bruno followed the lead rig in their own truck, and the pair of vehicles rumbled out onto the highway.
When they were gone from sight, Scott turned for his own truck.
With thoughts of returning home to Amy and his son.
3
They cruised along the 102.
By noon, the rooftops of distant Truro crept into view. They drove by the town exits, heading for what would eventually become the 104 of the TransCanada. A concrete wall divided the highway along that stretch, and plenty of vehicles had, for whatever reason, bashed themselves against it on both sides, creating a briar patch of wrecked metal and rubber.
Gus grew noticeably quiet as they threaded their way through the corroding mess.
“Remembering things, are you?” Collie asked.
He nodded.
Ahead was the overpass.
“I can drive around,” she offered.
“I’m okay.”
But Collie drove around anyway, taking an off-ramp that snaked around the dreaded overpass. Sunlight glinted off the guardrails reinforced by wood and sheets of metal. Gun ports dotted their length, but no one took a shot at them. Comeau and his little pack of bandits were long dead, killed by Collie herself.
Gus leaned back when he realized where she was going.
“Sorry, babe,” she said and meant it. “My mistake. I can avoid the overpass… but there’s no other way to the 104.”
“S’okay,” Gus said, but his stomach clenched all the same.
Yellow grassland grew tall and stiff. Stamped across this wild field was a crossroads of pavement. A single set of traffic lights dangled above that treasure map ‘X’. The tow truck was still there, dead and rusting and looking somewhat ashamed for being a part of recent history. A piece of cut rope hung from its boom, and the tire rim that once secured Gus’s feet lay directly underneath.
Don’t you worry, Gus projected at the truck. Wasn’t your fault.
And it wasn’t. Comeau’s killers had strung him up there like a scrawny piñata and left him hanging. The bandit’s overpass was some three or four hundred meters out. The sight of the fortified archway brought back a flood of memories, and none of them good. He’d been shot off the road and held captive, been questioned and smashed repeatedly. Then he’d been left outside in the cold, overnight, with just his soiled drawers on. That had been the longest, the coldest, and perhaps the most wretched time of his entire life.
Gus only spared it a glance before looking back to the tow truck.
There, standing at the corner of the vehicle, was a dark figure. It propped an arm on the hood, as if casually having a smoke. A dusty visor concealed most of the figure’s face, but there was no mistaking that grimace of green-black teeth.
Before Gus could get a better look, Collie sped up and left that infernal place far behind.
Gus leaned forward, checking his side mirror, but the ghost was gone.
“See something?” she asked.
He settled back into the seat and stared ahead. “No.”
Later that afternoon, the little motorcade rolled into a small town called Bassville. Dried brush and yellowed leaves scuttled across the pavement, driven by a crisp breeze. No one walked the sidewalks. A few cars clogged the street or were stopped on the shoulders, but nothing hindered the approaching trucks. The pickups rumbled through the deserted town, taking their time to get through the meager sights. Lawns had grown to savannah heights. Leaves gathered in ditches in thick, fiery curls. A large service station came into view, with its three bay doors closed. A chain fence surrounded one official-looking building that had its windows smashed out and the door left hanging from the frame. One house rose up behind a hay field of a front lawn, a car parked just to the right of a crumbling walkway. A small wall of mailboxes drifted by, several of their doors opened as if releasing birds.
Then came the bones.
Sprawled in open doorways as if they’d been cut down while escaping a pursuing horror.
“Well shit,” Gus muttered, spotting a full skeleton.
“What?” Collie asked and applied the brakes.
“Over there.”
“Those bones, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Just bones. Gonna see them. Sooner or later. Little places like this shouldn’t be too bad, but the bigger cities? Puh. Streets’ll be clogged.”
“Yeah,” Gus agreed, turning his gaze to his lap.
“What? You gonna puke or something?”
“‘Course not.”
“Bones I can handle. Puking in the truck, not so much.”
“Not gonna puke. I’m good.”
“Well, all right then. Just let me know if you see any bullet holes.”
He filed that request away.
The pickups moved onward, steering around the few abandoned vehicles. Twigs and branches crackled and crunched as the tires rolled over them. Potholes dotted the road, and several times Collie had no choice but to drive over them, prompting Gus to brace for impact. Ahead, an intersection appeared to have sustained substantial rocket fire, leaving shallow trenches. Chunks of pavement littered the area, all drizzled with dirt and dust. A manhole was uncovered, its iron lid tossed some ten feet aside and resting upon the sidewalk. A signpost had its top blown off, the message nowhere in sight.
“Jesus,” Collie muttered, slowing to a stop.
“The fuck happened here?” Gus asked.
“I’d say something that got out of hand real quick.”
Gus spied the ragged end of what appeared to be a subterranean pipe. “Maybe a gas line. Got ruptured.”
“Maybe.”
“Go that way,” he directed, pointing to the right, where a post office stood on one corner and a hardware store just across the way.
“The things you see when you get off the main road and travel through the smaller communities,” Collie said. “Hillbilly urban warfare.”
“This pavement is shit.”
“It is indeed,” she said while checking her side mirror. The truck bounced through a significant crater, thumped over a sidewalk, and plowed through the tall grass before passing by the post office. They linked up with the street with a thump and a lurch as the truck dropped onto pavement again.
“Jesus,” Gus gasped as he straightened. “Almost bit my tongue off there.”
“And I was going slow,” Collie said. “Cheap-ass pavement, man.”
Bright lettering displaying the word ‘MOLLY’ came into view, the last ‘Y’ hanging at a precarious angle. Below that, the opaque glass of the storefront looked to be completely intact. Grass and weeds split the parking lot in places, but the asphalt wasn’t nearly as pitted as the main roads. Shopping carts lay dumped on their sides all over the place—everywhere except the two empty corrals at either end of the parking lot. A few carts were sprawled over the wild lawns as if lifted and chucked.
Gus sighed. “People.”
“What about them?”
“Two perfectly good places to park your carts, and they still can’t be bothered. Fuckin’ toss them wherever.”
“Oh yeah,” Collie said, getting up to speed. “Some people’s children.”
Gus squinted at the lot, hard enough to expose his missing teeth. “Town looks dead to me.”
“Real dead.”
“Might be some specials on at Mollymart there.”
“Mollymart?”
“Mollymart East. Supermarket chain.”
“Any good?” Collie asked.
Gus did
n’t answer.
“You wanna take a look?” she asked.
He shook his head.
Collie drove a little further before hitting the brakes. She killed the engine and gripped the steering wheel. Leaves skittered across their path, and overgrown lawns rustled.
“Bassville,” Gus said in a tired voice.
“Been here before?”
“No. Never.”
The truck behind them pulled alongside, and the passenger window lowered. Bruno, his pirate’s cap still in place, leaned forward. “What’s the plan?” he asked, wrinkling his nose with the question.
She pointed ahead. “I’m thinking we camp out over in that motel.”
Just up the road past a jewelry store, a pizza place called Larry’s, and a few decrepit houses, was the sprawling bulk of a motel. The building was almost camouflaged in a storm’s aftermath of orange and yellow leaves. A sign at the mouth of the parking lot said, ‘MERCER’S MOTEL’, with the faded cartoon faces of a sleepy but grateful couple.
“You want to camp out there?” Gus asked.
“Thinkin’ about it,” she said. “Gonna be dark in an hour or so. I advise against traveling at night. Unless you know a better place.”
“Nope.”
“You good, Bruno?”
“All good here.”
From the driver’s side, Cory gave a thumbs up.
“All right then,” she said. “It’s decided. Goddamn, I love democracy.”
She started up the truck and proceeded towards the motel. Gus eyed the tall grass along the sides of the road, feeling his paranoia increase as the machine crept along. Too many monsters had come out lurching and flailing at him from hiding places like that. He checked his side mirror and saw Bruno and Cory following.
“We used to do this all the time,” Collie said while scanning the road. “All the time. Me and Wallace. When we landed in Pine Cove.”
“Pine Cove?”
“Yeah, Pine Cove. You know. Phase two: Find new and exciting people and maybe bring them back to the settlement. It was like gathering a tribe, y’know? And every person we brought in, well, you just never knew what you were getting. Sorta like Forrest Gump and that line about the chocolates.”
Gus nodded, keeping his eyes on the motel entrance.
“You know how we did it?” Collie asked.
“Find folks? How?”
“Well, you were different, obviously—you screaming your nuts off and all. Usually we had a map. Tried to be systematic. Methodical. Crossed off the towns we went through. Took our time, y’know? Stayed quiet, until we decided it was time to make some noise.”
She turned onto the motel’s parking lot, which resembled a patchwork of cracks threatening to collapse into a pretty big sinkhole. The surface held, however, much to Gus’s relief. Two other cars were on the lot, their paint peeling in places but otherwise fine.
Collie parked the vehicle so that it faced the main road.
“You let people know you were there?” Gus asked.
“Yep.”
“Seems to go against… everything I was doing.”
“You weren’t looking for people, honey. We were. And y’know the best way to find them? Bring them to you. With this.”
She indicated the truck’s horn.
That mortified Gus. “You’re jokin’.”
“I am not.”
“You’d bring everyone if you did that.”
“Only if they were around.”
“I mean the good and the bad.”
“Yup.”
“The killers and the insane.”
“Well,” Collie allowed, “that’s where it got tricky. But we managed. We only did it during daylight, usually in the morning, and we were gone an hour before nightfall. If people heard the horn, they’d investigate. And a lot of people answered the horn. Surprisingly. At least, I was surprised. They would wander over to the truck and we’d meet in a truce, and then we’d get talking. That was the first part of the interview.”
“You ever get into trouble?”
Collie nodded. “Oh fuck yeah. The horn brought out the dead as well. Sometimes just one or two, sometimes more. They were easy to deal with, though, in comparison to the living dipshits. Bumblefucks gone total scavenger. And if something did go down, whichever one of us was watching would make themselves known. Make no mistake. We’d play nice until we weren’t nice. Then we’d start shooting ass and tagging toes. Anyway. Those were the old days. These are the new.”
She looked over at him and smiled gently. “Feel like a walk?”
“Where? In there?” Gus pointed.
“Gotta sweep the area. Make sure it’s all okay.”
He stared at the motel.
“C’mon,” Collie said and patted her thigh, indicating the Sig Saur holstered there. “You got that Glock, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Nervous?”
“Well…” Gus nodded. “It’s been a while. And…” he held up his right hand, showing off the stumps of his missing fingers.
“Yeah, but you’ve been practicing. Two hands. Like I showed you.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go then. Jump into the ring, buddy. Tag team. Time to work that ninja.”
“Never was a ninja. My ass was too fat. And then there was that thing about being loaded drunk twenty-four seven.”
“Fat ninja.” Collie thought about it. “That could be a book. Well, anyway, you ain’t fat now. You’re lean. Sure as hell no FNG. And certainly no dogfucker. Not in my book.”
That got Gus’s attention. “FNG?”
“Fuckin’ New Guy.”
“Oh. And dogfucker?”
“That’s a person who lets their buddies do all the work.”
“I see.” Gus’s eyes widened as he absorbed that one. He studied the motel. Wasn’t like it was a house or anything, although there were a few houses around, far back from the road and partially obscured by trees.
“All right. Sure. Let’s go.”
Collie smiled. “Atta boy. Proud of you. You’re all cock.”
An uncertain Gus pinched the bridge of his nose.
She lowered her voice. “Look, Gus, chances are there’s nothing in the motel. No Moes. No meatbags.”
“Let’s go,” he repeated and opened his door. “You gonna take the rifle?”
She patted her pistol. “I’ll use this. My left arm’s been fucked up ever since I took that bullet. It’ll never be the same. So fuck it.”
“Fuck it,” Gus repeated.
“I like how you think.”
They got out of the truck. Collie held her sidearm with both hands. Gus patted his own pistol grip, ready to draw if needed.
Bruno and Cory pulled up alongside and killed their engine.
“Hold tight here,” Gus told them. “We’re going to check things out.”
Collie was already at the main office door. The motel was a thick, formidable structure, built of logs and shaped like an ‘L’. There were perhaps twenty units total. Twenty surprise boxes just waiting to be popped open. The windows were mostly intact, with dark curtains drawn. Each unit had individual parking spaces, though the painted lines badly needed a fresh coat. Four vending machines stood outside the main office door, their colorful glass fronts smashed, gutted innards spilling out.
Collie eased up to the office window and studied the interior. Gus marveled at how carefully she opened the door and slipped inside, how graceful she moved when she was in stealth mode. She popped in and out of view as she searched the room. Gus checked on the other units, keeping a wary eye on the windows. He glanced across the street, hearing nothing. The houses were back there as well, with cars parked in their driveways.
“Hey,” Collie said.
Gus turned as she held out a set of keys.
“Start unlocking,” she said. “I’ll go to the other end here.”
She strode across the parking lot, minding the windows as she zeroed in on the farthest unit. Gus
checked the keys in his hand. Unit number one was only a dozen steps away. As he headed to the door, he glanced back at the other truck and saw Bruno and Cory in the front seat, watching him.
“Yeah,” Gus whispered with a note of resignation. He hesitated in front of the unit door, well aware that he was dragging his ass in front of the two men in the truck. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief and pulled the Glock free with his disfigured hand, nearly dropping the weapon. That little slip cost him the keys, which tinkled to the ground. He bent over and snatched them up, heat flushing his cheeks. Swearing at himself to get his ass in gear, he reached for the knob and unintentionally pushed the door open.
That caused him to duck and jerk back from the doorway.
Nothing jumped free of the opening.
“Fuck me,” Gus muttered, seeing how far he’d retreated. “It’s only been five fucking months. Six at best. I mean, goddammit.”
He checked on Collie and saw her at the far end of the parking lot. He didn’t dare look back at the guys. Gathering his nerves, Gus crept up on the open doorway. He entered the room, walking face-first into air reeking of mold and dust. The smell stopped him cold.
“Gross,” Gus whispered, smacking his lips at the foul taste. He took aim at the darker parts of the motel unit. White walls, a box radiator underneath the main window. He pulled back the curtains and saw the sill frizzled with dust. Gus turned his attention on the unlit cave of the bathroom. The light switch didn’t work, and he flicked it a dozen times before leaving it. He peeked into the bathroom, scanned the dark, oily shine of porcelain. Wash basin. Bare soap dish. Clean towels on hooks. An empty roll of two-ply on a dispenser near the toilet. A white shower curtain, half-torn off the rod, black, its base mottled with mold. In the sparse light, it looked like someone had wiped their ass on it.
Gus studied the main room again. He considered the television, the pair of chairs tucked under a table, and the little Bible on top of that. A set of glasses rested beside the book, along with a hunting magazine and an empty bottle of vodka. The bottle didn’t interest him in the least. Back in the day, when he was shitfaced and stumbling around Annapolis, vodka wasn’t his preferred sip of nerves and armor. Oh, he’d drink it, guaranteed. He’d guzzle that nastiness a third of the way down before stopping for air, but it was the last on his list, way below the other, better stuff.
Mountain Man (Book 5): Make Me King Page 3
