The F*cked Series (Book 2): Proper

by Gleason, R. K.

  “Then why did you ask?” Pam asks, causing Joe and Zack to chuckle.

  “In case we don’t have his size,” she explains.

  “Mom,” Pam begins, shooting Zack and Joe a set of laser-eyes that silences them immediately. “Larges will be fine and maybe a T-shirt to go underneath. You two,” she continues, turning her attention back to her two older sons. “Go downstairs and get something to cover Betty with.”

  “What’s left of her,” Zack says, shouldering past Joe to get to the stairs ahead of him. “Dad! We’re coming downstairs so don’t be running around naked!”

  “Thanks, Zack,” Joe says, meeting him at the top of the steps.

  “Some things you just can’t unsee, little brother,” Zack replies.

  “Like naked push-ups,” Ben mutters.

  “Like what?” Lynn asks, stopping halfway up the stairs.

  “Didn’t they ever tell you that story?” Joe asks, craning his neck to look up at his grandmother on the steps above him.

  “No,” she answers, leaning over the rail to look down at them.

  “A few years ago,” Zack begins. “Dad’s on this kick of doing push-ups every morning in the kitchen while he’s making coffee for him and Pam to drink in bed before getting ready for work and shit.”

  “Yep. The first thing he does when the alarm clock goes off in the morning,” Joe interrupts. “Is jump out of bed and starts the coffee.”

  “And there’s the thing,” Zack cuts in with a smirk. “Dad figures he’s up crow-piss early, and he’s just going to go back to bed to drink his coffee in a few minutes anyway.”

  “So, he doesn’t bother putting on any clothes,” Joe says. “You knew he sleeps naked, right?”

  “I’ve heard,” Lynn answers with a roll of her eyes.

  “Right,” Zack says. “So, Dad goes jiggling out to the kitchen one morning, starts coffee and then drops to the floor and starts his push-ups. But…”

  “But Ben decides to come down for a drink of water,” Joe blurts.

  “And there’s Dad,” Zack says as he and Joe begin to laugh uncontrollably. “In all his naked push-up glory as Ben comes wandering into the kitchen!”

  “What did you do?” Lynn asks, looking at Ben as she starts chuckling.

  “What do you think I did? I turned around and left!” Ben answers.

  “What did Dave do?” she replies.

  “He said good morning and kept doing push-ups!” Ben tells her over his brothers’ howling laughter. “It wasn’t funny, you dicks! I still have nightmares!”

  “I was sure they’d told you that story,” Joe gasps.

  “I would’ve remembered that one,” Lynn says giggling.

  Like a dam breaking open, everyone is laughing out loud, the unexpected and momentary relief from the tension of their current predicament helping to fuel their guffaws. Even Jaxon and Braxton are hooting it up and Mike chuckles while shaking his head in disbelief. Everyone’s enjoying the moment, except for Pam, still wanting to know where her youngest son has been.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she shouts, bringing an abrupt end to the mirth. “You two. Quit screwing around and get something for this,” Pam tells Zack and Joe while pointing to the floor.

  “Jeez,” Joe says as he and Zack start heading downstairs. “We were gonna.”

  “Way to bring the room down,” Zack mutters as he disappears into the basement.

  “Just go,” she shouts after them. “Mom. Please get Dave some clothes so he can get dressed when he’s done showering. Then we can figure out what we’re all going to do,” she says, addressing her mother in a calmer voice.

  “Okay, honey,” Lynn replies, continuing her trip up the stairs.

  “Dakota,” she starts, turning her attention to him. “Is there something you need to do for Bongo? Food? Water? Take him outside?” she asks.

  “He just went,” he replies, gesturing to the thickening pool under Betty.

  “Come on, Dakota,” Mike says. “Apollo’s dog food is in the laundry room and Bongo can use his dish. Then we can take him outside. It’ll be safer with the two of us.”

  “Come on boys,” Brigette says to her sons. “Let’s go downstairs and see if there’s anything helpful on TV.”

  “Now,” Pam says, turning to Ben once everyone was out of the room. It wasn’t that she needed privacy to talk to Ben. She was just tired of being interrupted while she did it. “Where were you and what took you so long?”

  “I went to Dad’s before I came here,” he tells her, easing the rifle bag onto the floor. Dave and Pam have been together since Ben was three years old and Joe was five. During that time, they’d never asked either of them to refer to Dave as Dad. It didn’t take any time to understand Ben was referring to her ex-husband, Scott. “I wanted to grab my extra ammo and stuff,” Ben adds, gently resting the canvas scrotum next to the rifles.

  “Okay…” she says, applying the age-old mother and ironically, similar police tactic of allowing silence to make things excessively uncomfortable and awkward for the one being questioned.

  “And I wanted to try to talk them into coming here with me,” Ben finally confesses.

  “Your dad and Margie?” Pam asks.

  “I know you guys don’t get along, but I just thought, you know… With everything going to shit, I had to try.”

  “How’d that go?

  “Dad and I kind of got into a fight,” Ben reluctantly confesses.

  “A fight! What kind of fight?” she asks, her eyes searching him for any sign of injury. Scott had always had trouble keeping his temper in check. She’d made it abundantly clear if he ever harmed either of the boys, there’d be hell to pay. To Dave’s credit, any time the subject came up in private, he always promised to help her hide the body if needed.

  “Not like that,” Ben says, realizing what she was doing. “There was a little shoving at the end, but that was it.”

  “What about?”

  “About me coming here,” he says after a second or two passes.

  “He didn’t want you coming here?” Pam asks, feeling her blood beginning to boil.

  “Not so much,” Ben tells her reluctantly.

  “Motherfucker,” she growls.

  “You see,” Ben says, taking a step back from his mother. “Every time I mention Dad, you get pissed off.”

  “Sorry,” Pam replies.

  “Anyway… I went to Dad’s to get my stuff and hopefully talk them into coming here. But when I got there, he and Margie were already trying to barricade themselves in the basement.”

  “The basement of their house?” Pam asks to clarify.

  Ben nods.

  “On the farm?”

  “Uh-huh,” he nods again.

  “It’s a split-level house! Those windows are really big and sit right at ground level,” she concludes as Ben keeps nodding. “Has he never seen a horror movie or played a fucking survivor video game?” she asks rhetorically.

  “Probably not,” he answers needlessly. “So, I go up to my old room, grab my shotgun, and pack up all the ammo from my gun safe. When I get downstairs to leave, Dad and Margie were standing at the door like they were going to have an intervention or something. I tried to convince them to come with me. That we’d be better off if we kept moving and looked for someplace more secure.”

  “Like a sporting goods store,” she adds, having had a similar hypothetical discussion countless times.

  “Exactly!

  “But…” Pam leaves hanging out there.

  “But it has to have metal shutters for the windows and doors or bars, but preferably both,” he replies.

  “But if all else fails?”

  “If you’re left with no other options, you at least need to be out in the open where you can see what was coming from a distance.”

  “For a clear line of sight. Not the best tactic but if that’s all you’re left with.”

  “Agreed,” Ben replies, slipping into the familiar conversation. “But never
make your stand in an un-defendable location.”

  “Like your dad’s basement,” Pam says, adding air quotes to the end.

  “Anyway,” Ben continues. “They refused to leave and started removing all the inside doors and screwing them into place over the basement windows.”

  “Screwing them into the cinderblock walls?”

  “Nailing them in place didn’t work very well so, they went with concrete screws,” Ben replies.

  “That’s never going to work,” Pam says. “Even if the screws hold, they’ll pull right through the hollow interior doors.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell them,” Ben agrees. “Even if they put huge washers over the heads, which they weren’t, it wasn’t going to hold for very long. But then they said I was being stupid and didn’t understand how safe it was there and forbade me to leave.”

  “Forbade?” Pam asks.

  “Dad said I couldn’t leave and if I tried, I shouldn’t plan on taking my guns with me because I bought them with the money he’d paid me for working on the farm. He said that meant they were his.”

  “What did you do?”

  “First, I told him that was bullshit. Then I tried to convince them one more time to come with me over here, but they weren’t having any of it. Dad went to get another door from upstairs while Margie stood at the basement door leading to the driveway.”

  “And?”

  “I politely moved her aside, grabbed my bags and left,” Ben tells his mother, who left his statement hang there before the silence made him continue. “Alright! I shoved her out of the way, she started yelling and screaming for Dad. I could hear him pounding down the stairs, so I grabbed my shit, bolted out the door, jumped in my car and took off. The last thing I saw was Dad chasing me down the driveway on foot, looking pretty pissed off. He’s tried to call me once and left a bunch of text messages, but I’m not going to answer them. From the look on his face when I drove off, I don’t think he wants to talk about shit and just wants me to get my ass back there. I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t called you yet.”

  “What about Joe?” Pam asks.

  “What about him?”

  “Does your father want you to bring Joe back to the farm with you?”

  “He didn’t mention Joe,” Ben answers.

  “The motherfucker,” Pam mutters.

  “Here you go, sweetie!” Lynn says as she comes down from the bedrooms, unknowingly interrupting their conversation.

  “Mom!” Pam exclaims, seeing the armload of clothing her mother is carrying. “I thought you were just grabbing some sweatpants and a couple shirts?”

  “I wanted to give Dave a selection to choose from,” she replies, reaching the bottom of the stairs.

  Pam randomly grabs a set of sweats in different colors, an extra T-shirt and a balled pair of socks from the small wardrobe Lynn’s holding.

  “Put the rest in a bag or something and we’ll take them with us when we go,” Pam says. Turning to take Dave the clothes she picked out she adds, “Ben. Go keep an eye on your brother and grandfather,” before disappearing down the stairs.

  “The motherfucker,” Dave says after Pam tells him about the conversation she and Ben had a few minutes ago.

  “That’s what I said,” she replies.

  “What the actual fuck, Pam?” he says, his glare bouncing from Pam’s reflection in the mirror to his own. An oversized message sits centered on his chest that reads, I ♥ my, with a picture of the late Apollo’s panting face taking up the entire stomach area below the cliched message.

  “Sorry,” Pam says with a smirk. “I just grabbed one.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Dave mutters.

  He fitfully pulls the offending shirt over his head, turns it inside out and pulls it back on. He’s got the T-shirt on underneath so he won’t have to worry about the plasticized message clinging to his skin. The design remains excessively stiff and it still feels like he’s wearing a chest-plate rather than a garment, but at least he doesn’t have to see it. He takes another look at himself in the mirror, runs his fingers through his hair and nods.

  “Close enough,” he says, sitting on the toilet lid. “What’s everyone doing?”

  Pam gives him the rundown as Dave pulls on his socks. A few drops of blood are speckled across his sneakers and he tries to wipe them off. The sticky bits just smear into thin stripes, so he gives up, pulling the shoes onto his feet and tying them snuggly.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” he says as he stands. Pam starts to turn to lead the way out of the basement when Dave places a hand on her shoulder, and she stops to look at him.

  “What?” she asks.

  “I love you, baby. That’s all,” he replies. He leans in close to her and gives her a tender kiss on the lips, which she reciprocates. “I just don’t tell you enough,” he adds after pulling away.

  “You tell me all the time,” she says, lightly slapping his chest.

  “Not nearly often enough,” he replies, looking into her eyes.

  “Come on, silly,” Pam says, reaching out to touch the applique covering his chest. “Ooh! It’s like you’re wearing Kevlar,” she says with a grin.

  “Come on,” he says, patting her hips. “Let’s get going. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to express my affection for you in a more physical manner, later.”

  “Not with my parents and the kids hanging around, you won’t,” Pam informs him as they leave the basement.

  Dave’s not certain, but he thinks Pam’s putting a little extra wiggle in her walk for his benefit and the gesture doesn’t go unappreciated as he follows behind her.

  “Damn!” he says, leering at her swaying hips.

  “Keep your head in the game,” she tells him, turning to smile at him over her shoulder.

  “Call it whatever you want as long as you say I can keep my head there,” Dave says, reaching for her hips.

  “You’re such a smooth talker,” Pam says with a laugh. Quickening her steps, she leaves Dave staring at his empty hands and wondering what happened. “Maybe later,” she adds, blowing him a kiss.

  “Promise me,” he shouts, playfully chasing her up the short set of stairs and grabbing her ass.

  Pam giggles, slapping behind her at Dave’s hand as they reach the main floor. Dave’s brows furrow and his merriment washes away when he sees the clean-up job their two eldest sons have completed. Laying in roughly the same location as when he went downstairs to shower, is what’s left of Betty. It seems the boys managed to find a tarp in the catacombs of the basement and have wrapped her up in it like a bean-n-brain burrito with extra sauce seeping through the layers. The viscera that had been puddling beneath her has been smeared into an area at least twice its original size. They also made no effort to scrape off any of the pureed brains or bone-flecked blood caked and drying to the lower portion of the doors and walls on either side.

  “What?” Zack asks defensively, immediately picking up on his father’s disapproval.

  “Nothing,” he replies, shaking his head and joining the others circled around the marble-topped island in the center of the kitchen.

  “What did you want us to do?” Joe asks, subconsciously taking a step away from Zack, just in case he needs to deflect some of Dave’s displeasure toward the oldest male child.

  Dave fights the urge to tell his sons exactly what he thinks of their horrible, half-assed looking Betty enchilada, but decides now is not the time. “I said, it’s fine,” he answers firmly, putting an end to the discussion. Turning his attention to Ben, he asks, “Is all your stuff out of your car?”

  “It’s all right there, other than my sleeping bag,” he replies, pointing to his three canvas duffels sitting near the table.

  “Does anyone want some coffee?” Lynn asks.

  “That’d be really cool, Gramma,” Ben replies, at the same time Dave answers with a no.

  “Anyone else?” Lynn asks as she begins filling the pot with water.

  “I’d have a cup, if you’re
making it,” Pam says.

  Dave considers whether she’s doing this to draw some of his building frustration away from Ben or if she just wants some coffee. The latter wouldn’t surprise him much, but if it’s for the former reason, he wonders if the whole family thinks he’s being an asshole. He was the one who delayed everything so he could take a much-needed shower, so it really was an asshole move for him to be pissed off about not being further along on their departure. Time to back-peddle a little, he decides.

  “I changed my mind, Mom. If you’re going to make some anyway, I’d take a cup,” he says. When the rest of the adults agree, Lynn announces she’ll need to make two pots of coffee to fill everyone’s request. The familiar feeling of spiking irritation washes over him, but he struggles to remain cordial. “In that case, Pam and I can share a mug,” he offers.

  “What if I want my own cup?” Pam asks.

  “Fuck you, dear,” slips a little too forcefully from Dave’s lips before he realizes it.

  “Honey-dripper,” she replies sarcastically while patting the back of his hand. “That’s fine, Mom. We’ll share,” she adds to diffuse the tension.

  “Thanks, baby,” he tells her, giving her hand a gentle squeeze in appreciation of her java sacrifice. “I’d honestly prefer three or four cocktails, but we should probably hold off on that for now.”

  “Good idea,” Mike says.

  “Maybe. But let’s not leave without taking the booze with us,” Dave replies.

  “You know your shirt’s on wrong side out?” Mike asks.

  “For the record, it’s your shirt and yes, I know.”

  “I only wear the thing to work in the yard,” Mike whispers so Lynn won’t overhear. “Don’t get me wrong. I loved my dog and all, but I don’t need his face on my chest.”

  “Now that you’re showered, what now?” Zack asks Dave.

  “Well son, I guess we’re going to have a cup of coffee before we do anything else,” Dave begins, trying not to spit the words out with as much frustration as he’s feeling at the moment. “Then I suggest we gather up all the transportable food and water we can get our hands on, load it into three vehicles…”

  “Why three?” Dakota asks.