“Mike? Where’d you go?” Joe’s finger massaged his shotgun trigger as he peered behind the counter.
Suddenly, there was a loud laugh from the back of the store, matching a new fit of laughter from the TV. He’d know that laugh blindfolded.
Mike was behind a broom, one of those school custodian brooms with a wide brush, sweeping up and back, and Joe heard large shards of glass clinking as he swept. Mike was laughing so hard, his face and crown had turned pink.
Joe saw what he was sweeping: The glass had been broken out of one of the refrigerated cases in back, which were now dark and empty. The others were still intact, plastered with Budweiser and Red Bull stickers, but the last door had broken clean off except for a few jagged pieces still standing upright, like a mountain range, close to the floor.
“Ya’ll had some trouble?” Joe asked.
“Nope,” Mike said, still laughing. He sounded congested, but otherwise all right. Mike kept a cold six months out of the year.
“Who broke your glass?”
“Tom broke it. The boys are fine.” Suddenly, Mike laughed loudly again. “That Archie Bunker!” he said, and shook his head.
Kendrick, too, was staring at the television set, mesmerized. From the look on his face, he could be witnessing the parting of the Red Sea. The kid must miss TV, all right.
“Got any Cokes, Mike?” Joe said.
Mike could hardly swallow back his laughter long enough to answer. He squatted down, sweeping the glass onto an orange dustpan. “We’ve got hot dogs! They’re-” Suddenly, Mike’s face changed. He dropped his broom, and it clattered to the floor as he cradled one of his hands close to his chest. “Ow! SHIT ON A STICK!”
“Careful there, old-timer,” Joe said. “Cut yourself?”
“Goddamn shit on a stick, shit on a stick, goddamn shit on a stick.”
Sounded like it might be bad, Joe realized. He hoped this fool hadn’t messed around and cut himself somewhere he shouldn’t have. Mike sank from a squat to a sitting position, still cradling his hand. Joe couldn’t see any blood yet, but he hurried toward him. “Well, don’t sit there whining over it.”
“Shit on a stick, goddamn shit on a stick.”
When Mike’s wife, Kimmy, died a decade ago, Mike had gone down hard and come up a Christian. Joe hadn’t heard a blasphemy pass his old friend’s lips in years.
As Joe began to kneel down, Mike’s shoulder heaved upward into Joe’s midsection, stanching his breath and lifting him to his toes. For a moment Joe was too startled to react-the what-the-hell reaction, stronger than reflex, which had nearly cost him his life more than once. He was frozen by the sheer surprise of it, the impossibility that he’d been talking to Mike one second and-
Joe snatched clumsily at the Glock in his belt and fired at Mike’s throat. Missed. Shit.
The second shot hit Mike in the shoulder, but not before Joe had lost what was left of his balance and gone crashing backward into the broken refrigerator door. Three things happened at once: His arm snapped against the case doorway as he fell backward, knocking the gun out of his hand before he could feel it fall. A knife of broken glass carved him from below as he fell, slicing into the back of his thigh with such a sudden wave of pain that he screamed. And Mike had hiked up Joe’s pant leg and taken hold of his calf in his teeth, gnawing at him like a dog with a beef rib.
“Fucking son of a bitch.”
Joe kicked away at Mike’s head with the only leg that was still responding to his body’s commands. Still Mike hung on. Somehow, even inside the fog of pain from his lower-body injury, Joe felt a chunk of his calf tearing, more hot pain.
He was bitten, that was certain. He was bitten. Every alarm in his head and heart rang.
Oh, God, holy horseshit, he was bitten. He’d walked right up to him. They could make sounds-everybody said that-but this one had been talking, putting words together, acting like…acting like…
With a cry of agony, Joe pulled himself forward to leverage more of his weight, and kicked at Mike’s head again. This time, he felt Mike’s teeth withdraw. Another kick, and Joe’s hiking boot sank squarely into Mike’s face. Mike fell backward into the shelf of flashlights behind him.
“Kendrick!” Joe screamed.
The shelves blocked his sight of the spot where his grandson had been standing.
Pain from the torn calf muscle rippled through Joe, clouding thought. The pain from his calf shot up to his neck, liquid fire. Did the bastards have venom? Was that it?
Mike didn’t lurch like the one on the road. Mike scrambled up again, untroubled by the blood spattering from his broken nose and teeth. “I have hot dogs,” Mike said, whining it almost.
Joe reached back for the Glock, his injured thigh flaming, while Mike’s face came at him, mouth gaping, teeth glittering crimson. Joe’s fingers brushed the automatic, but it skittered away from him, and now Mike would bite, and bite, and then go after the Little Soldier-
Mike’s nose and mouth exploded in a mist of pink tissue. The sound registered a moment later, deafening in the confined space, an explosion that sent Mike’s useless body toppling to the floor. Then Joe saw Kendrick just behind him, his little birding gun smoking, face pinched, hands shaking.
Holy Jesus, Kendrick had done it. The kid had hit his mark.
Sucking wind, Grandpa Joe took the opportunity to dig among the old soapboxes for his Glock, and when he had a firm grip on it, he tried to pull himself up. Dizziness rocked him, and he tumbled back down.
“Grandpa Joe!” Kendrick said, and rushed to him. The boy’s grip was surprisingly strong, and Joe hugged him for support, straining to peer down at his leg. He could be wrong about the bite. He could be wrong.
“Let me look at this,” Joe said, trying to keep his voice calm. He peeled back his pant leg, grimacing at the blood hugging the fabric to flesh.
There it was, facing him in a semicircle of oozing slits: a bite, and a deep one. He was bleeding badly. Maybe Mike had hit an artery, and whatever shit they had was shooting all through him. Damn, damn, damn.
Night seemed to come early, because for an instant Joe Davis’s fear blotted the room’s light. He was bitten. And where were Mike’s three boys? Wouldn’t they all come running now, like the swarm over the hill he’d seen in the field?
“We’ve gotta get out of here, Little Soldier,” Joe said, and levered himself up to standing. Pain coiled and writhed inside him. “I mean now. Let’s go.”
His leg was leaking. The pain was terrible, a throb with every heartbeat. He found himself wishing he’d faint, and his terror at the thought snapped him to more alertness than he’d felt before.
He had to get Little Soldier to the truck. He had to keep Little Soldier safe.
Joe cried out with each step on his left leg, where the back of his thigh felt ravaged. He was leaning so hard on Little Soldier, the kid could hardly manage the door. Joe heard the tinkling above him, and then, impossibly, they were back outside. Joe saw the truck waiting just beyond the gate.
His eyes swept the perimeter. No movement. No one. Where were those boys?
“Let’s go,” Joe panted. He patted his pocket, and the keys were there. “Faster.”
Joe nearly fell three times, but each time he found the kid’s weight beneath him, keeping him on his feet. Joe’s heartbeat was in his ears, an ocean’s roar.
“Jump in. Hurry,” Joe said after the driver’s door was open, and Little Soldier scooted into the car like a monkey. The hard leather made Joe whimper as his thigh slid across the seat, but suddenly, it all felt easy. Slam and lock the door. Get his hand to stop shaking enough to get the key in the ignition. Fire her up.
Joe lurched the truck in reverse for thirty yards before he finally turned around. His right leg was numb up to his knee-from that bite, oh, sweet Jesus-but he was still flooring the pedal somehow, keeping the truck on the road instead of in a ditch.
Joe looked in his rearview mirror. At first he couldn’t see for the dust, but there they were: Mike’s boys had come running in a ragged line, all of them straining as if they were in a race. Fast. They were too far back to catch up, but their fervor sent a bottomless fear through Joe’s stomach.
Mike’s boys looked like starving animals hunting for a meal.