"It's ours," Buddy said quietly.
"Not for much longer," the man retorted, pulling the shotgun back an inch and striking Richie's temple with the business end.
He collapsed, the world spinning as he fell to the floor, wondering if the man had killed him so easily. Richie heard shouting, but couldn't make much of it out with his ears ringing so loudly. The sounds of a struggle followed, then a gunshot. It was all a blur to him, but Richie tried to move from the floor to help his friends. He might not have been able to do much before being knocked down, but the urge to do something was there and prying at its bonds.
When his eyes finally cleared, the fight seemed to be over. Buddy was standing over the man, breathing heavily and staring down at him with wide and angry eyes. Benny was on the floor, mimicking Richie's posture, having been injured in the struggle.
It's a good thing we're in a drug store, flashed through Richie's mind. He stood, slowly and with great care, looking at Buddy the entire time. Elvis was beside him, his pistol out and pointed toward the strange man who'd tried to take what was theirs.
"Dead?" Richie asked as he approached.
"Just knocked out," Buddy replied with an edge to his tone.
"He tried to steal our stuff," Elvis said, “You okay, Richie?”
"Yeah. Didn't work out for him, did it?"
"You're such a badass, Buddy," Benny stated groggily, "My hero."
"Fuck you, Benny the Dick."
"Guys," Richie broke in, "Can we deal with this guy, first?"
"Want me to shoot him?" Elvis asked before tightening his hand around the pistol's handle.
"Tying him up might be better," Richie suggested, instantly wondering if he was correct.
They used packing tape. Buddy found it in one of the aisles and had Elvis turn the man over as he tore the first piece off. There were three rolls in the pack they'd found and Buddy used every bit of the binding.
No one said anything to the man as they left, mostly because he hadn't regained consciousness just yet, but there was plenty of cursing about him as they walked. Richie held the gun he'd been using in one hand. It was an old coach gun, double-barreled, and he thought it would suit him nicely on their next run-in with trouble.
<><><>
Richie was the quiet man in the group as they continued walking. Benny and Buddy were in agreement for once, and both had plenty to say about the man who'd tried robbing them. Elvis mostly laughed at their banter. He wasn’t really sure how he felt about the whole thing, but was glad that they'd come out on top.
"That fucking guy didn't know who he was messing with," Benny said with a victorious grin, "Should have brought more than a shotgun and his old ass in before coming after us."
"You saw what he got," Buddy said, his balled fists raised in a mock fighting stance.
"If I hadn't gotten in front of him, he'd have blown a hole in your ass!"
"Whatever man," Buddy said, "I took care of him and Elvis was quick with a pistol."
A laugh from Elvis. Richie watched the King closely for a couple of paces. Elvis had been ready to kill the man at anyone's word. That unsettled Richie, made him wonder if he should've felt the same way. His friend was good with intuition. He might not have wanted to commit the act, but Elvis would have, because he knew it to be a prudent thing. Killing would, sooner or later, have to be done.
"If he'd had friends, we'd all be dead," Richie said, stopping the conversation and their physical progress at the same time.
"No, man. We had it handled."
"Buddy, we got lucky. If the guy had wanted me dead, I'd be dead. He was just desperate for supplies."
"That's why we didn't have Elvis kill him," Benny allowed.
"Maybe we should have."
That stopped the jibing completely. Two of the other three men were gaping at Richie, shocked by his statement. He had always been the more peaceful one of the group, choosing to talk through things instead of resorting to fist fighting. Buddy would've seemed more likely to make such an announcement, as he'd been the quickest to anger amongst them. Elvis, ever the realist and the only one of them who concurred with Richie, spoke next.
"Don't wanna kill nobody, but I will," he said, "Don't like bein' hurt."
"Yeah," Richie agreed as he stowed his newly acquired weapon onto a loop in his pack, "Neither do I."
Each man nodded his consent, Benny being the most hesitant, and they started down the road again. It was quieter now, but Benny seemed in need of more talk.
"I don't know if that's going to happen again, but I don't want any part of killing someone who doesn't deserve it. I'm all for a beating, but I'm not killing anyone."
Richie, who was already beyond the limits of stress and patience, whirled on him. In later days, Richie would look back on this moment and wonder if he'd been the one responsible for Benny's death. What he said was out of anger, created by all of the mixed fears he'd harvested from the beginning of their journey and all of their time on the road, but it was still hurtful and mean. If anyone told him, after Benny was gone, that words didn't cause deep damage, Richie would've called that person a liar.
"Do you have any idea of what in the holy fuck is going on?!? I almost died! He could've blown my brains all over that place and no amount of bandages would've brought me back!"
"Richie..."
"Fuck off, Buddy! Benny, man, you have to grow up now! Stop acting like a little pussy and grow up! The fucking world is over! Peace is over! Your life is gone! Like our parents and our friends, Benny! So get over your shit and man the fuck up!"
He turned without another word, his eyes losing the intensity with which he'd been regarding Benny. His throat hurt from the screaming and his eyes were filling with tears. Richie wondered if he'd really been yelling at his friend, or himself.
"Fuck you, Richie!"
"Yeah. Fuck me," he whispered, " Fuck all of us."
Chapter 6
Valdez, AK
September 2, 2021
3:22 AM 77*
Richie wiped a tear from his eye, hating that the act of crying could completely blind him now. It wasn't long after that moment, the one time he'd completely lost his composure in those early days, that Benny left them for good.
He thought about telling Amanda that, but knew that she'd been made aware of the timelines, or at least the geography of the events that brought them to Canada. She'd met them there, had heard all of their easy stories there. She probably knew about when, where and how Benny died.
It wasn't your fault, Elvis said, He just couldn't take it.
I have to admit that the King has a point.
Richie smiled at that. If he was going insane, he'd not gotten there quite yet. If Richie had lost the last of his mental faculties he'd have believed Benny's voice. He knew better, though.
Benny was dead. The words he heard were from some sympathetic ripple in the tissue of his brain. There was a chemical in there somewhere that decided upon mercy rather than goading. There were worse things to have going on, scarier things.
"It wasn't your fault, Richie," Amanda told him, unknowingly repeating words spoken by a ghost, "Things happen that are way out of our control. You know that."
"I do," he replied in a cracked voice, "But that doesn't really change how I feel."
Pussy.
Shut up, Benny the Dick.
The interior monologue drew a trembling laugh from him.
"I guess that having a screwed up brain that's been lit up by radiation can't be all bad. The voices in my head can always make me laugh."
Amanda couldn't hold the giggling that followed. Richie joined her and soon they were laughing in the way that actually makes a person feel better. It wasn't forced or nervous. It was real and authenticity was something that the two of them could live with for the moment.
"So that's how you got the coach? You mugged an old guy for it?" Amanda asked, now braying with laughter.
"It was... Buddy! He mugged him!"
&nbs
p; They nearly missed the building ahead of them, would've if Amanda hadn't called to Richie for a stop so that she could catch her breath. They looked at the place, doubt and hope intermingling in the moment, before walking toward it.
Richie felt more aware, than he had been during the entire night, of their lack of weapons. He held a hand out to Amanda, signaling that she should stay back a few feet. She did as he commanded. Amanda trusted the man as she always did.
Richie took careful steps along the side of the building. It had once been a bar, the sign now faded but slightly legible, and they hadn't ever checked one of these for a basement. He hoped that the people of Alaska were as consistent as the Canadians had been in their construction habits.
He edged to the rear of the place, finding a glass partition that had been long destroyed. With a look back to his friend, Richie crouched down and entered the place. Amanda followed after twenty seconds, as was the habit they'd adopted long ago.
The bar had the same "no-smell" that most other buildings possessed in this time of heat and decimation. The area behind the huge mahogany bar had been destroyed for the most part, as had the rest of the place upon first glance. Richie stayed quiet and slow as he searched for the telltale door that usually led down to an underground room. It took a few minutes of steady movements and quick glances over his shoulder, but Richie soon found what he was looking for.
Two doors faced one another in a short hallway off to the side of the restrooms. One was the manager's office. The other was a storeroom. He thought they would be fine even if the building didn't have a cellar.
It was a bar and such places usually had the same type of freezers that restaurants had in back. The lodgings might not be pleasant, but they would live through the day. He hoped, as did Amanda, that they would find a better accommodation. They walked to the doorways.
Unlocked. That was a lovely surprise considering that Richie didn't have picks with him. The manager's office looked like an ordinary workplace. They would search it for sustenance once they'd found sleeping quarters, but they left it untouched for the moment. The door marked "Storage" opened, just as easily, to a set of stairs leading downward and into darkness. Richie breathed a sigh of relief before descending.
<><><>
Drawers and their contents had become a mysterious and plentiful source of random items and food for Richie and his friends. The desk in this manager's office was no exception, was in fact one of the best finds they'd had in all of their ramblings.
Richie looked at Amanda, the remaining half of his only eyebrow raising in exaltation. She was smiling at him as she beheld the items standing on the desktop.
One unopened box of Ritz crackers. One unopened jar of pickles with last year's expiration date stamped on the lid. One very old, but serviceable .38 with a half-full box of ammunition. The most important item, an imitation rabbit's foot on a bead chain, lay to the side of everything else.
Pickles and crackers. That's what the asshole that ran this place kept around?
I like pickles and crackers, Benny. Don't listen to 'em Richie.
I didn't say I wouldn't eat that shit if I was hungry enough. You're the same way, right Richie?
What'd you eat Richie? Elvis asked, the good cheer draining from his voice and Richie's face at the same time.
How'd you survive that place Richie? Benny asked.
Amanda's hand was like a live wire touching his shoulder. Richie lurched back as if he’d been struck. She was staring into his eye, her hand still hovering near his shoulder. Amanda stepped forward, close enough to touch him again, and he managed to still himself.
She smiled at him, which seemed odd. No one should smile at a man who'd had to do the things he'd done in order to survive their imprisonment. Richie wondered, suddenly, how Amanda had lived. Did they feed her? How? He shrugged the thoughts away.
"Let's get downstairs before it gets too hot," she said to him, turning to their treasure and grabbing it up.
He followed, looking into the darkness below and thinking that his mind was filled with something similar. His throat worked at swallowing the shouts that kept seeming to build there, holding back the traffic of his jumbled and shameful memories. That night's contribution, what he'd been involved in before his escape, laid on top of his chest like a layer of oil over a puddle of water. The separation could only be perceived when one looked very closely at the sheen.
"I was telling you about Elvis' way of just dealing with things. You already knew about that," Richie began, "But I keep forgetting to include Buddy in that, don't I?"
"You haven't said much about him," she answered just as the bottom step was cleared.
The basement was empty. They'd checked it before searching the other rooms in the place and Richie realized that the searching might've made him feel better about their night's lodgings if he'd had the .38 in his hand before clearing the place.
He couldn't have known that they'd find the weapon, but the decision to see the underground room first hadn't been the best he'd made. He knew that his mind wasn't clear and that it would have to get that way soon. They were nowhere near home, by his judgement, and choices would be what got them there sooner or later.
"I always saw him in the way everyone else did, before we left Miami. Buddy was kind of a dork in school, mostly because he liked books so much, but he was crazy good at fixing things. Did we ever tell you that he was a mechanic?"
"He's talked about it a little," Amanda admitted, "But he doesn't really seem like the type, does he?"
"He never did. He was a good one, though. People brought him the worst problems and he found ways around them."
The image of Buddy's legs sticking out from beneath whatever broken mess of a car he was repairing materialized for Richie. He saw Elvis sitting on one of the little rolling stools, handing wrenches or hammers to their friend when he was asked, the greasy fingerprints showing up on his pants after each hand-off.
Buddy's joking the entire time was what Richie enjoyed listening to on his rare trips to the garage. The guy let loose an overthought rant any time he got the chance, sometimes flooding the shop with the different cursed names of any pain that the vehicle might have caused him. One came to mind, suddenly very clear and tangible, to Richie and he had to repeat it aloud.
"You stinking, shit-slinging, knuckle-busting, son-of-a-whore!"
Amanda flinched at the volume of it, but smiled a split second later. Richie realized that she'd probably heard the idiom at some point as it spilled from Buddy's mouth.
"Yeah. He said shit like that all the time and Elvis tried to repeat it, but to no avail. It never sounded right coming from anyone but Buddy."
Richie could actually feel Elvis smiling at the memory. His friend spoke from far beyond the grave.
Tell her about the generator, Richie.
“Yeah,” Richie said with a sad smile, “I will.”
<><><>
Chattanooga, TN
September 8, 2020
3:11 AM 89*
Buddy and Elvis were looking at a small gasoline generator by lantern light. Elvis had been exploring a mineshaft and found an industrial fan. The three of them took turns dragging the thing to their squat for the night, in hopes that they could force a breeze out of it, somehow.
Neither man had much of an idea as to how the generator worked, but Richie was sure that if they tinkered with it long enough, they’d get it started. The idea of a cool wind was motivation enough to do just about anything.
"You stinking, shit-slinging, knuckle-busting, son-of-a-whore," Buddy said in preparation.
It sounded almost like a prayer to Richie, who was busy with their sleeping preparations. He heard Elvis try to repeat the tongue-twisting phrase and fail miserably. Richie couldn't help his snicker. Elvis didn't hear him, so he deemed himself safe from persecution. After a few minutes, Richie was finished with the laying out of their camp.
"Are you guys going to get that thing working, or keep looking at it li
ke a Chinese jigsaw puzzle?" he asked his friends, good-naturedly.
"I'm going to figure it out," Buddy said, "Don't rush me."
"Yeah, Richie. We got it," Elvis told him with a proud thrust of his chest.
Richie believed that they would, but when he heard the machine start up within minutes of his remark, it was still a pleasant surprise. Seconds after that, the three of them were sitting in the path of the fan's blades, feeling a cool breeze for the first time in months.
Heaven, though likely to be a much lovelier place than was this filthy mine, couldn't equal what they were experiencing at that moment. They stayed in place for quite a while, just feeling the sweat on their bodies drying and talking of happy memories.
"I remember air-conditioning," Buddy said thoughtfully, "Do you think anyone has that, anymore?"
"Probably not. I'm pretty sure that electricity that doesn't come from batteries is a pretty uncommon thing, these days."
"You can power some of them off of batteries."
"True," Richie allowed as he opened the cap on a jug of water and passed it around.
"A boat would have something like that, wouldn't it?"
"It might."
"Boats are all outside," Elvis reminded them, "Batteries are gone."
"Maybe not all of them, kid. Have faith," Buddy said, trying out a bit of optimism.
"This is the coolest I've ever felt," Richie told them, letting his mind drift back to his supreme comfort, "Cooler than cubes, man."
"Cooler than that day with Alejandra?" Buddy asked with a grin.
Elvis' laughter erupted. He pointed at Richie as his midsection tensed with the effort.
"Say what you want, man. I was cool that day. She loved me."
"Her boyfriend almost loved you even more. You're lucky that the King and I were watching your back."
Walking Back (The Dark Roads Book 2) Page 6
