circled the neighborhood, the more they began to long for a small chunk of that award-winning lifestyle, just a taste, for just long enough to replenish themselves and recharge.
They thought that they could maybe spend the night here, get a fresh start in the morning.
They chose the big Colonial at the bottom of Green Briar Lane because it seemed far enough away from the golf course to avoid the attentions of the swarm. It had a big yard with good sight lines, and a high, sturdy privacy fence. It also seemed empty. But when they carefully backed the Suburban across the lawn and up to a side door— leaving the vehicle unlocked, the keys in the ignition—and they sneaked in a window, one by one, the house almost immediately started working on them. The first creaking noises came from the second floor, and that’s when Philip had sent Nick back to the Suburban for the assortment of axes stored in the back well.
“I’m telling you, we got ’em all,” Philip is saying now, trying to calm his brother down, who sits across the kitchen in the breakfast nook.
Brian doesn’t say anything, just stares at his bowl of soggy cereal. A bottle of cough medicine sits nearby, a quarter of which Brian has already chugged down.
Penny sits next to him, also with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch in front her. A little stuffed penguin the size of a pear sits next to her bowl, and every now and then Penny moves her spoon to the toy’s mouth, pretending to share her cereal with the thing.
“We checked every inch of this place,” Philip goes on as he throws open cabinet after cabinet. The kitchen is a cornucopia, brimming with upper-class provisions and luxuries: gourmet coffees, immersion blenders, crystal goblets, wine racks, handmade pastas, fancy jams and jellies, condiments of every variety, expensive liqueurs, and cooking gadgets of every description. The giant Viking range is spotless, and the massive Sub-Zero refrigerator is packed with expensive meats and fruits and spreads and dairy products and little white Chinese carryout boxes full of still-fresh leftovers. “He might have been visiting a relative or something,” Philip adds, making note of a nice single-malt Scotch sitting on a shelf. “Might’ve been with his grandparents, staying over at a friend’s house, whatever.”
“Holy freaking Jesus, look at this!” Bobby Marsh exclaims across the room. He stands in front of the pantry, and he’s lustily inspecting the goodies inside it. “Looks like Willy-damn-Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in here … cookies, lady fingers, and the bread’s still fresh.”
“The place is safe, Brian,” Philip says, pulling the bottle of Scotch down.
“Safe?” Brian Blake stares at the tabletop. He lets out a cough and cringes.
“That’s what I said. Matter of fact, I’m thinking—”
“Just lost another one!” a voice pipes in from the other side of the kitchen.
It’s Nick. For the past ten minutes, he’s been nervously surfing through the TV channels on a little plasma screen mounted under a cabinet to the left of the sink, checking the local stations for updates, and now, at a quarter to twelve Central Standard Time, Fox 5 News out of Atlanta has just crumbled into snow. All that leaves on the cable box—other than national networks showing reruns of nature programs and old movies—is Atlanta’s stalwart, CNN, and all
… AND THE KINGDOM WILL BE IN DARKNESS …
… IT’S THE BIRDS FALLING FROM THE SKY, THAT’S WHAT STARTED IT …
… BURN IT ALL DOWN BURN IT ALL …
… BLASPHEMIES AGAINST GOD …
… U SUCK U DIE …
… THE HOUSE OF THE LORD HAS BECOME A DWELLING PLACE OF DEMONS …
… DON’T BLAME ME FOR THIS I’M A LIBERTARIAN …
… EAT ME …
“Turn it off, Nick,” Philip says gloomily, plopping down on a chair in the breakfast nook with his bottle. He frowns and reaches around to the back of his belt, where his pistol is digging into the small of his back. He lays the Ruger on the table and thumbs the cap off the Scotch, then takes a healthy swig.
Brian and Penny both stare at the gun.
Philip puts the cap back on the bottle, then tosses the Scotch across the kitchen to Nick, who catches it with the aplomb of an all-state second basemen (which he once was). “Tune in to the all-booze channel for a while … you need to get some sleep, stop watching screens.”
Nick takes a taste. He takes another one, then caps the bottle and tosses it to Bobby.
Bobby nearly drops it. Still standing at the pantry, he is busily wolfing down an entire package of Oreos, the black crust already forming in the corners of his mouth. He washes the cookies down with a big pull of single-malt, and lets out a grateful belch.
Drinking is something Philip and his two friends are accustomed to doing together, and they need to do it tonight more than ever. It started in their freshman year at Burke County, with creme de menthe and watermelon wine in pup tents in each others’ backyards. Later, they graduated to boilermakers after football games. Nobody can hold his liquor like Philip Blake, but the other two men are close rivals in the juicer sweepstakes.
Early in his married life, Philip would go out carousing with his two high school buddies on a regular basis, mostly to remind himself what it was like to be young and single and irresponsible. But after Sarah’s death, the three men drifted apart. The stress of being a single parent, and working days at the muffler shop, and nights driving the freightliner with Penny in the sleeper compartment, had consumed him. The boys’ nights out became less and less frequent. Once in a while, though—in fact, as recently as last month—Philip still finds time to meet Bobby and Nick down at the Tally Ho or the Wagon Wheel Inn or some other Waynesboro dive for an evening of good-natured debauchery (while Mama Rose watches Penny).
In recent years, Philip had started wondering if he was just going through the motions with Bobby and Nick to remind himself that he was alive. Maybe that was why, this past Sunday—when the feces hit the fan in Waynesboro, and he decided to take Penny and shuffle off to a safer place—he rounded up Nick and Bobby for the journey. They felt like a piece of his past, and that helped somehow.
He had never intended to take Brian along, though. Bumping into Brian had been an accident. That first day on the road, about forty miles west of Waynesboro, Philip had taken a quick detour into Deering, to check on his mom and dad. The elderly couple lived in a retirement community near the Fort Gordon military base. When Philip arrived at his folks’ little town house, he found that the entire population of Deering had been moved to the base for safekeeping.
That was the good news. The bad news was that Brian was there. He was holed up in the deserted town house, huddling in the basement crawl space, petrified by the growing number of walking dead in the backcountry. Philip had almost forgotten about his brother’s current status: Brian had moved back home after his marriage to that crazy Jamaican girl from Gainesville had gone south—
“Hey, Philly,” Bobby says from across the room, polishing off the last of the cookies, “you think those refugee centers in the city are still up and running?”
“Who the hell knows?” Philip looks at his daughter. “How you doing, punkin?”
The little girl shrugs. “Okay.” Her voice is barely audible, like a broken wind chime in the breeze. She stares at the stuffed penguin. “I guess.”
“What do you think of this house? You like it?”
Penny shrugs again. “I don’t know.”
“What would you say if we stayed here a while?”
This gets everyone’s attention. Brian looks up at his brother. All eyes are on Philip now. Nick finally speaks up: “Whattya mean ‘a while’?”
“Gimme that hooch,” Philip says, motioning at Bobby for the bottle. The bottle comes over and Philip takes a long pull, letting it burn nicely. “Look at this place,” he says after wiping his mouth.
