“You grazed me,” Dew said. “That’s all it took. Look, I’m not going to lie to you—my patience is at its end. You hurt any more of my men, I’m going to shoot you. If you come at me again, I’m going to shoot you. In the leg if I have time, in the face if I don’t. We need you real bad, but I’m not about to take one for the team, if you catch my drift.”
“I’ll… I’ll behave,” Perry said. “You whipped me fair and square.”
Dew marveled at the phrase. It sounded like something Dew would have said in his childhood after a fight. But that had been over fifty years ago. Kids today weren’t like that: they didn’t trade punches, then shake hands and call it good. Nowadays they talked shit and found a gun. Dew felt a surprise spike of admiration for Perry.
“I’d hardly call beating you with a table leg fair,” Dew said.
Perry shrugged. “I outweigh you by like sixty pounds. If I’d got my hands on you, I think I would have killed you. Besides, it doesn’t matter how you win, as long as you win.”
Silence filled the room for a few moments.
“So,” Dew said, “you’re not looking for a rematch?”
Perry stared at the wall for a few seconds, then spoke slowly, thoughtfully.
“Not very many people can take me out. There’s you, and… there was one other person that’s ever done that. I don’t want a rematch. I’ll play ball.”
Dew nodded. He let himself hope that maybe he’d finally gotten through. “Okay, kid. Let’s start from the top. You told me that something had changed. What changed?”
“The voice.”
“The voice. You said they hadn’t said any words yet. Can you hear any now?”
Perry shook his head. “No. If I’m close enough to an infected, I can hear words, but when I’m far away, it’s more like a sensation. Images, emotions, stuff like that. Sometimes I can get a grip on it, sometimes it’s like a half-whisper in a crowded room. The more infected there are in one place, the stronger the sensation. You can only pick out little bits and pieces, maybe enough to get the gist of a conversation, you know what I mean?”
Dew nodded.
“Now there’s the same bits and pieces, but there’s a different… intensity. I don’t know how to describe it. Sort of feels like… like you were down by twenty-one at the end of the half but you adjusted your blitzing strategy, you shut them down, and your offense scored twice to cut it to seven, and there’s three minutes left, and you’re so excited, because if you get just one more stop, your offense can tie it up or even win it. And that’s hard to do, right? But you feel like it’s destiny, it’s going to happen for sure. You’ve got the momentum. You think you’ve got them figured out, and the win is… is…”
“Inevitable?” Dew asked.
Perry snapped his fingers, pointed at Dew and smiled. The smile looked ghastly on his stitched, swollen lips.
“That’s it,” Perry said. “It’s inevitable. That’s what it feels like.”
“So this voice of God says, or feels like, it’s… uh, mounting a fourth-quarter comeback?”
Perry nodded. “Yeah, that’s pretty close.”
“So what happens next?”
“I don’t know,” Perry said. “Maybe it actually is the voice of God, and if we get to heaven, he’s going to kick us in the Jimmy and send us packing.”
“There ain’t no heaven,” Dew said. “And there ain’t no God. ’Cause if there is some all-powerful deity, he sure is one mean fucker. He likes to let good people die and bad people live. And, apparently, he likes to infect former football stars with things that eat them up from the inside.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Perry said, and took a long swig of Wild Turkey.
“We’re in a bit of a pickle here, boy,” Dew said. “Maybe you should stop drinking.”
“Maybe you should start,” Perry said. “I killed my best friend, cut off my own junk, and I’m some kind of psychic call-in line for these things. And you? Dude, you’re dropping bombs on America. You’re in charge of fighting honest-to-God aliens. Ask me, that’s a pretty good reason for a snort or three.”
Perry held out the bottle. Dew looked at the nasty scar on Perry’s left forearm. War scars, that’s what Perry had.
Dew accepted the bottle. The kid was right. Dew took a long swig. The bourbon tang was a welcome sensation, a friendly memory of distant times when he could just have a drink and relax. He knocked back another long pull, then handed the bottle to Perry.
Perry drank. “You got something you got to do?”
“I’m doing it,” Dew said. “Margaret asked that we stay here a little longer, give you a chance to rest. So until we leave, getting you to be more cooperative is kind of my main job.”
Perry looked at the chair. Dew wasn’t sure, but he thought the kid turned a little red. Like he was embarrassed or something.
“You, uh…,” Perry said. “You want to… sit down and… shoot the shit?”
Perry offered the bottle again. Dew took it, sat down and had another long swig.
UNKIE DONNY HAS HAD BETTER DAYS
Donald Jewell, or “Unkie Donny,” as Chelsea liked to call him, did not feel good. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that he felt like a tainted can of boiled elephant ass.
The fever had picked up steam. It came nicely packaged with an overall ache, as well as annoying shooting pains in his left arm. Far worse was that Betty seemed just as sick. She was slumped in the passenger seat, head against the window, eyes closed. And she was sweating.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Someone was following him.
He couldn’t be sure who it was; there were so many cars on the highway. But he’d seen cars behind him, the same cars, several times. Who was it? What did they want?
He’d been on the road for over two hours. He had at least six to go, more like eight or nine if the weather didn’t let up. Freezing rain made driving a royal bitch. All the traffic on I-75 moved along at forty-five miles an hour. At least up north, people knew how to drive in winter: it was a safe bet that the cars in the ditch belonged to downstaters or people from Ohio.
He was hot, he was sleepy, the conditions were crap—not a good combination when his whole life sat in the passenger seat next to him.
Who was following him? Who?
Donald pulled off the highway into a rest stop near Bay City. He exited slowly, seeing which cars behind him did the same. None did. They must have known he was onto them.
Or maybe he was acting crazy…. No one was following him. That was just nuts.
He pulled up to the rest stop building and parked gently, so as not to wake his daughter. Cars packed the lot. Some were still running, tailpipes trailing exhaust, windshield wipers fighting the constant battle against icy clumps. Other drivers had thrown in the towel, shutting off the engines and letting the freezing rain cover their cars in a thin, bumpy sheet of ice.
Since he was here, maybe he could just get some sleep. He shouldn’t be driving when he felt like this. What if he fell asleep at the wheel?
He quietly opened the door and headed to the trunk, shoulders hunched against the frigid, driving rain. He stopped halfway, face scrunching in pain and head twitching to the left until his ear touched his shoulder. Another shooting pain, this one a real doozy. It faded slowly. By the time it was gone, Donald’s jacket was nearly soaked. He cursed his brother for making him sick, then opened the trunk and pulled out a sleeping bag.
Darting back into the car, he removed his wet coat before spreading half of the sleeping bag on his daughter. He spread the other half on himself, coughed, blew his nose, cursed his brother one more time, then laid his head against the headrest.