by Ben Stevens
Then George set a large plate before him. A juicy steak, couple of eggs, fried tomato, chunky-cut fries and a huge dollop of ketchup on one side.
Man-food thought Parker distantly, and then struggled to restrain an insane burst of laughter.
Shit, but it had been one hell of a day.
‘Looks great, George, really,’ said Parker sincerely.
The tallish, thin man with the gray hair and the colossal mole on one side of his nose looked curiously at his guest. He seated himself at the opposite end of the table before saying –
‘You know, it’s funny. I haven’t asked you your name yet, nor have you told me it...’
Parker gave a slight shrug, and a rueful grin.
‘Well... It’s Parker; John Parker.’
‘Well, John...’ began George seriously, before his face suddenly broadened into a huge smile – ‘Whattaya wanna drink? Beer, wine? I prefer a good red with my steak, but I got beer too... Brew it myself.’
Parker hesitated. He’d not touched alcohol since he’d finally got his act together and stopped getting drunk and crying over the way he’d abandoned Carrie.
You have to go back.
You have to know...
‘Sure,’ said Parker then, determinedly. ‘Wine would be great.’
‘You’re my man,’ declared George happily. He got up from the table and walked over to the wine rack. Uncorked a bottle and brought it and two glasses back to the table.
‘Should have let it ‘breathe’, really,’ declared George, sloshing the red into the two glasses. ‘But I hardly knew I’d be having company tonight...’
‘Look – thanks,’ began Parker slowly. ‘I mean it... This meal; the invitation to actually come in here... Really appreciate it...’
‘No problem,’ said George, as he and Parker clinked glasses. ‘Like I said, I’ve seen a few people walk right on past and never called to them. Didn’t like how they looked, maybe. But you...’
George paused, then shrugged.
‘Anyway, let’s eat!’ he said then.
It was best steak Parker had ever eaten. Better than the one he’d had with Carrie for their fifth wedding anniversary meal, even – and that had been fantastic.
Parker said as much.
‘I got a whole bunch in deep freeze,’ returned George, skinny throat convulsing as he swallowed. ‘Luckily I broke a few out just yesterday, ‘cause it’s my favourite food and so maybe I eat them a bit too frequently. But, anyway – I’ve learnt to cook them real good by now. Get ‘em so tender a fork’d cut them.’
‘Fries are good, too,’ noted Parker. He felt strength returning to his exhausted mind and body with every forkful of food, every mouthful of wine. He’d tried to find an ‘angle’ on why George had invited him inside and now he felt almost ashamed.
The gray-haired man was obviously just one of those rare breeds – a genuinely nice person. Perhaps just a little ‘touched’; but then Parker doubted that he was any different after living around two years almost completely on his own.
George had, however, said that he’d let a number of other survivors of this plague walk right on by, past this factory...
How, exactly, did George look out for people? wondered Parker suddenly. Did he have a telescope or something, positioned at the very top of this cavernous building?
...but he’d called out to Parker; risked attracting the attention of those things who’d been clawing at the chainmail fence –
What was it George had said, about those things? Something odd...
That was it – ‘...I didn’t see any I especially liked the look of...’
What, exactly, did that mean?
But there was no immediate answer to this and perhaps it didn’t matter anyway.
Perhaps – although that strange declaration continued to gnaw away at some distant part of Parker’s strained mind...
‘...I didn’t see any I especially liked the look of...’
‘...grow them myself, up on my roof,’ George was saying. ‘Got a whole vegetable garden set up...’
Parker wrenched his mind back to the present; realized that this statement of George’s related to the observation Parker had made about the chunky fries. George was talking about the potatoes, obviously. Seemed he grew these and other things in some mini-allotment right up there on his roof.
‘And these eggs?’ asked Parker perfunctorily.
‘Keep hens up there, too,’ said George, nodding his head with that expression of pride which came so easily to his face. The face that was dominated by that mole on the side of his nose that Parker was having a real hard time trying not to look at.
‘So you were employed here, before... Before the virus struck,’ clarified Parker. ‘A night-watchman?’
‘Got it in one,’ nodded George, shovelling more food into his mouth. For a skinny fella, thought Parker, he sure had a good appetite.
‘Got me out of the house and away from her,’ continued George, his convivial expression abruptly changing at this mention of his wife. Now his mouth twisted, and his eyes became uncomfortably beady and hard...
...Kind of like a rat’s considered Parker, his mind again flashing back to the hell he’d endured in that basement just a few short hours before...
‘Anyway,’ George said then, giving a slight shrug. ‘That sure doesn’t matter now – that lying, cheating bitch isn’t here, and I am! That’s all that matters.’
Parker nodded carefully. There was a side to George showing now that he didn’t much care for. But then – he’d yet to become aware of what George’s wife had actually done. Maybe George had good reason to be so bitter, so obviously filled with anger...
Maybe...
‘So,’ resumed George once again, more wine disappearing down his gullet, ‘soon as I knew this plague was going to wipe out most of mankind, I got busy. Don’t ask me how I knew I’d be spared, by the way – but somehow I just knew.
‘So, I slept during the day, and then started to move things in here real sneakily during my night shift. Management could never know, of course – nor in fact anyone else – so I had to be absolutely shit-sure that no one spotted me.
‘I found this place’ (George motioned around the kitchen, and at the living room, with one hand) ‘deep inside the factory, and realized that it was perfect. Started putting generators down in the basement – got the solar panels rigged up on the roof later, of course – and also took care of some other, err, details...’
Again, thought Parker, a strangely cryptic comment. This was the second or was it the third time that George appeared to be hinting at something.
Something which Parker was supposed to realize...?
‘Anyway,’ said George, ‘I keep wearing my uniform even now – you were probably wondering about that. I find it gives me a feeling of... purpose, maybe. Reminds me that I’ve still got a job, of sorts – looking after this place, as it were.
‘But you look as though you’ve seen trouble recently,’ continued the security guard; a comment obviously intended at Parker’s torn and bloodstained clothing. It was the second time he’d remarked upon it. Parker thought it only fair if he revealed a little information.
‘Yeah,’ he began, ‘you could say I been in trouble. First a thing bit me – that made me real sick, and...’
He paused as George obviously started, and almost made to stand up from the table.
‘You got bit?’ demanded the night-watchman.
‘Yeah,’ replied Parker, staring levelly at the gray-haired man. ‘I got bit. Then, like I say, I got real sick – then I got better. If I was gonna turn into a thing, would’ve happened already.’
Breathing out slowly, George again sat down.
‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said then. ‘But even for us who are immune to the virus – in the air, as it were – getting actually bitten was still said to be –’
‘I know, I know,’ repeated Parker. ‘And I think it was touch and go for a few hours. But then i
t just passed, like a bad fever. But after that I got attacked by rats...’
‘Jesus...’ murmured George.
‘...and then had a run in with some hogs.’
George nodded, and seemed to regard Parker with increased respect.
‘You must be able to handle yourself pretty good, to come out alive and in one piece after messing with those bastards. They’re part of the reason I keep myself mostly hidden away in here. Even if they managed to break in, they still wouldn’t find their way to my living quarters here. And I got weapons, too...’
‘I had help,’ said Parker. ‘A real lucky break, you might say – a corpse in one apartment holding a machinegun, some grenades right there on the table beside him.’
Parker thought that he sensed what George was thinking: So what weapon or weapons you carrying now, in your jacket or that rucksack you’re still wearing? – but this question went unspoken.
Instead, George said, ‘Well, John, you’re obviously one tough son of a bitch. You have my full respect. And if anyone deserves a bit of R&R, it’s you.’
He looked curiously at Parker for a few moments, his expression hard to read.
Then he said, ‘Come on – we’ve both finished eating. Let’s take the bottle and those two glasses, and go have us some fun.’
‘What’d you mean?’ returned Parker, as lightly as he was able. He had the sudden urge to pat his inner jacket pocket; to check he was still carrying his pistol. Knowing that George would certainly see this action, however, he resisted the temptation.
He’d had two large glasses of wine; he felt a little befuddled but certainly not drunk... Besides, George had drunk three or was it even four glasses, offering to top Parker up at the same time but usually receiving a waved hand in declination. So Parker was certainly the more sober of the pair...
Parker breathed in deeply, and made a determined effort to check his racing thoughts. He was not in danger – he was not in danger. At least not right now.
It was the couple of strange, cryptic comments which George had made already, coupled with this invitation now to participate in some unspecified ‘R&R’, that had somehow put Parker on the ‘alert’. But the facts were that this night-watchman had so far made Parker a delicious meal, kept his wine-glass full, and offered some semi-sensible conversation for the first time in...
Well, years. And if the guy had had a few issues with his wife that still got him aerated, as you might say...
Well – what, exactly, was the big deal with that? He was entitled to let off steam one way or the other, surely...
‘...You okay, John?’ asked George, risen from the table and staring with a slightly bemused smile at his still-seated guest.
‘Yeah, yeah – sorry,’ returned Parker, as he too began to rise. ‘Just been a long day, that’s all.’
‘Hey – no need to apologize,’ declared George, giving a wink. ‘I’m about to show you something that’ll make your day – and perhaps your night, too...’
Another cryptic comment...
Parker tried to figure exactly what the hell George meant, as he followed the gray-haired man through the living room to the metal door. (At one end of the kitchen, Parker had seen, there was a door that he guessed led to a shower and restroom. As such, George’s small apartment located deep inside the disused factory was entirely self-sufficient.)
Leaving the apartment, Parker then followed the blue-suited night-watchman along several corridors, dimly-lit by the widely-spaced wall lights. The two men passed a number of metal doors, some of which were open. Parker stared into cavernous, dark rooms that he guessed had once contained a mass of machinery of some description.
Then, George entered into one such room. He flicked a switch Parker couldn’t see on the wall, and a solitary light shone down on a metal trapdoor located almost directly in the centre of the large room with the concrete floor.
‘You wait till you see this,’ said George, walking over to the door. ‘You’re gonna think all your Christmases have come at once. I’ve never shown this to anyone before, but you...
‘We’re the same, you and me. I knew that first moment I saw you. That’s why I called out to you, when I’ve let others just walk right on by.
‘I’m pleased to call you my buddy – and now I’m gonna give you something I bet you haven’t had in a real long while.’
Again, the urge to pat his inner jacket pocket. George was leaning over, unfastening the padlock that was on one side of the metal trapdoor with the handle...
Fucking thing had a padlock? Just what the hell was down there?
Parker could have pulled his gun right out and placed it against the back of George’s neck. Demand that the night-watchman stop fucking around with all this cryptic bullshit and tell Parker straight just what was going on...
But apart from the vague uneasy feeling that kept coming and going, Parker had absolutely no reason to pull his gun on the man who’d fed him and provided him with real human company after such a long time...
Taking yet another deep breath, Parker again instructed his worn, weary mind to keep calm. Worst came to the worst, he had his gun – and he’d no doubt that he could take the ageing watchman ‘physically’, as it were...
But who was saying it was ever going to come to that...?
George lifted the trapdoor, exposing metal rungs that led down maybe ten feet to another, lighted corridor.
‘Follow me down,’ instructed George, as he lowered one foot down to the top rung, ‘and prepare yourself for a real treat!’
Parker watched the top of the gray head descend lower and lower. It occurred to him that he could just shut the trapdoor and close the padlock. Then, feeling almost ashamed for having such a thought, he began to follow the night-watchman down.
The corridor was reasonably well-lit –
‘We’re close to where I keep the generators’, explained George, as Parker followed him along. Another metal door at the end of the corridor, which George opened with one of the keys on his bunch but this time did not lock behind him.
Parker followed him into a large room separated by a wall consisting of metal bars with a narrow door set in it, also barred. It was brightly-lit, and for a moment Parker stared as though dazzled at what was behind the metal bars.
‘Shit...’ he breathed, noticing first the large double bed with the manacles tied to each of the four posts.
‘’Told you,’ said George happily. ‘Told you I’d be giving you something you ain’t had in years. Now – which one do you fancy? Hell – you like, you can have ‘em all!’
Three things were shuffling around close by the bed. Female, maybe late twenties to early forties. A brunette, a blonde and a redhead. They’d all been carefully made-up, lipstick, eye-liner and all. Their faces caked in some sort of white make-up to hide the boils and such. Their hair well-styled. Must have been washed recently, somehow, for there had not been the usual smell to alert Parker to their presence.
They were all dressed in nothing more than a white lacy bra and panties. And they were each handcuffed by one wrist to a long metal pole which ran along the wall, a few feet away from the double bed.
‘Fuck...’ blurted Parker, taking a step back. It seemed to him that the three things also cowered slightly – from the thin, gray-haired man who was still happily chattering away, apparently unmindful of Parker’s shocked reaction.
‘Sorry I ain’t got one exactly matching your own – well, description, if you get my meaning. No offence meant, by the way – I never was no racist. Fact is, I know myself what it was like to be discriminated against and judged in the world outside – that is, before it ended,’ babbled George.
There was a table placed against the whitewashed brick wall. From it George picked up some sort of weapon, which to Parker’s eye slightly resembled a handgun of sorts.
‘This is kind of like a Taser, ‘cept when fired at the head it actually knocks out one of the things long enough for me to uncuff her and then get her
set up on the bed. Manacled by the wrists and ankles – you can see those attached to the bed-posts. ‘Course, I have to gag her as well, ‘case she bites – which can be a real shame, if you get my meaning! – but then we’re good to go! The two things I don’t choose still get to watch the show; and maybe if I got the energy I still service one of them next, too.
‘Anyway,’ George went on, ‘you don’t have to worry about a thing, John. If you’re worried about anything I got condoms down here, too; plenty of ‘em.’
He turned to face Parker, whose face and thoughts felt strangely frozen.
‘I change ‘em now and again – when I get bored with the same old tits and faces, I mean. But of course, it’s hard to find ones I really like. Half of them – the women, I mean – are walking around out there with noses and hands and Christ knows what else chewed off.
‘And then – even if you do see one that’s kind of intact, as it were, you gotta be able to see past the imperfections – recognize if you can make her look real nice. Kinda like she was in life, with a good makeover and such. That takes a good eye.
‘I mean,’ George rattled on happily, ‘I’ve got real good at doing their hair and such. Can do their make-up probably better than they could back when they were living and...’
George gave a shrug, and an almost embarrassed grin.
‘Anyway,’ he said then, ‘enough of me yacking on. Which one you like?’
‘You gotta be fucking kidding me, right?’
Parker uttered the words almost without conscious thought. He was back in the basement full of rats; back in that squalid kitchen where Lisa-Ann kept her family of things tied to a chair; he was once again back in the murky world of fucking nightmares and lunacy.
George’s beaming expression faltered slightly, and then began to grow dark.
‘What do you mean?’ he said slowly, the weapon he was holding now pointing in Parker’s direction.
‘What the fuck do you think I mean – you think I’m some sort of fucking rapist? That I’m no better than that bunch of hogs I blew away just a few hours ago?’
