Schuler holstered her weapon and bent down to check her partner’s pulse.
“Thank you,” Culann said.
“Don’t say anything,” Schuler replied. She looked like she was fighting to keep from crying. She straightened up, rubbed her eyes and turned her back on Culann.
“Just let me die.”
5
Culann awoke amidst a pile of slumbering dogs in Frank’s bed. He was sweating, and his handcuffed wrists ached. He crawled over Alphonse to get off the bed and then went to the bathroom. When he finished, he realized that the plumbing in Frank’s shack was run by electric pumps, which were no longer functioning. If he lived much longer, he was going to have to get used to life without running water.
Since the sink didn’t work, Culann had to rely on the contents of Frank’s refrigerator to slake his thirst. All he could find were cans of beer that were barely below room temperature. He choked one down and then set off to see if Schuler had made it through the night. He walked out of Frank’s cabin, not bothering to shut the door behind him. The last time he’d seen her, she’d gone into Alistair’s tavern, so that’s where Culann looked first. The dogs shook themselves awake and lolled after him. The sun hung in its usual position in the middle of the sky, giving Culann no idea what time it was.
When he arrived at Alistair’s, Culann found Schuler hunched over the bar with her arms wrapped around a whiskey bottle. He couldn’t tell if she was dead drunk or dead. The dogs began to whimper, which Culann knew wasn’t a good sign. He placed his hand on her neck. It was cold.
Schuler had saved him, and Culann was grateful for it. He vowed to remember her for the rest of his life, however short it might be. But he’d seen enough dead bodies recently that he didn’t dwell too hard on her passing. He had his own survival to worry about.
First, he went behind the bar and found a few bottles of club soda. He guzzled one and half of another. After a long belch, he started looking for the key to Schuler’s handcuffs. He searched her utility belt, which was a bit difficult because she was slumped forward, but he eventually found a small key in a velcro pouch. He pulled the key out and then realized that unlocking the handcuffs was going to be more challenging than he’d imagined. The cuffs held his wrists tightly together, and the keyhole was on the underside of the cuffs. It took a considerable amount of painful contortion just to get the key into position. Once he had it in the hole, his fingers were stretched so far he couldn’t twist the key in the lock. Twice he dropped the key and had to start all over. By the time he finally coaxed the latch to spring open, the cuffs had scraped away patches of skin on both wrists.
He sat down at the bar next to Schuler’s corpse to rest for a few minutes. He finished the second bottle of club soda and then took a swig from Schuler’s whiskey bottle. He had to get back to the entirely unpleasant task of loading corpses onto the police boat before the bodies decayed or got eaten by the dogs. Culann started with Schuler. Figuring they might come in handy, he first stripped off her binoculars and utility belt and laid them atop the bar. Since she was slumped over in her seat, it was relatively easy for him to position his shoulders underneath her body and pick her up in a fireman’s carry. His legs wobbled as he lurched toward the door, but he managed to slide through and deposit her into the wheelbarrow. He pushed her down the pier and then came upon Williams’ blood-soaked body. Culann cursed and then grabbed Williams by the legs and dragged him to the police boat. The slats of the pier didn’t make for a very smooth surface, and Williams was a large man. When Culann finally reached the end of the pier, he dropped down amongst the corpses and yanked Williams’ legs until his body slid over the rail and into the boat. Culann stripped off Williams’ gun and belt and tossed them onto the dock. Them he pulled himself up onto the pier and resumed pushing the wheelbarrow towards the edge, where he dumped Schuler on top of Williams.
Culann was already exhausted from the effort of disposing of two dead bodies all by himself. Plus, Schuler was a lot smaller than most of the men he’d need to grab. The prospect of repeating this task twenty-two more times discouraged him. He took another swig of whiskey and then grabbed little Marty off the far end of the bar. He figured the relative ease of hauling a child’s body might help him regain his confidence. It did, briefly, but then he struggled with Margaret, Carla and Genevieve, who’d all died close to the pier. Culann’s thighs burned, his arms felt numb, and he still had an island worth of dead fishermen to haul away.
The dogs didn’t help. They followed Culann wherever he went and encircled him as he walked. More than once he stumbled over the mutts while hefting a corpse. They also crawled over the dead bodies just when Culann started to pick one up. He’d shove one dog away, and then another would take its place. At one point he got so frustrated that he shouted, “Get the fuck out of the way,” which the dogs amazingly seemed to understand. The canine sea suddenly parted, opening a clear path back to the pier.
“Stay here,” he said, and just as miraculously, all forty-eight dogs remained where they were. They didn’t seem too happy about it, though. They stared at him, a sea of puppy-dog eyes, and they whined and shuffled their paws, but not one of the normally-unruly dogs followed him.
“Okay, you can come,” he said, and they bounded after him.
6
He hauled away two more fishermen and finished Schuler’s whiskey bottle before collapsing against the wall of Alistair’s tavern. He’d worked for what felt like two or three hours on an empty stomach, and now his body refused to move. After a few minutes, Culann crawled into Alistair’s kitchen and devoured half a loaf of white bread and several slices of American cheese. He washed it down with a couple of warm beers, which were hard to keep down. He realized he needed a way to keep his beer cold or he’d have a hard time making it by himself.
Taking a break from corpse-hauling to focus on his own needs, Culann devised a system of refrigeration that he was quite proud of. He tied one end of a short length of rope to the pier and the other end to a tapped keg. The keg had some air in it, so it floated up near the surface of the water. Culann had only to pull the keg over to him to draw a beer cooled to the fifty-degree temperature of the ocean. He sat on the edge of the pier and dangled his bare feet in the water while the keg cooled. He glanced to the side and realized he was just a few feet from where he’d chucked the orb. He imagined it resting on the silty bottom, beaming out those evil rays that didn’t harm him for reasons he still couldn’t fathom. The dogs, who were similarly mysteriously-impervious, piled around him on the dock or splashed around in the water just above the orb’s resting place.
Though he was worn out and a little sick from the warm beer and whiskey, Culann had seventeen more bodies to deal with. He stood up and noticed Williams’ equipment in the pier where Culann had left it. He figured it might come in handy, so he strapped the belt around his waist. He took stock of the inventory: pistol, flashlight (non-working), walkie-talkie (ditto), handcuffs, plastic gloves, a big Swiss army knife, pepper spray, and a billy club. He didn’t know how useful any of this stuff might prove, but the belt gave him a feeling of authority, even though there was no one here to exercise authority over. He decided to wear the belt as much as possible.
Suitably equipped, he pushed the wheelbarrow down the road to Worner’s cabin.
The dogs of course tagged along. While Culann labored to lug his friend’s corpse through the door, Alphonse snatched up Worner’s dead cat and ran outside with it. Two other dogs lurched forward and clamped their jaws on the cat. All three growled and shook their heads, tearing the cat to pieces within a few seconds. A few more dogs jumped in, and soon the cat was completely devoured. Culann realized the dogs hadn’t been fed in a couple of days. He’d need to do something about that if he didn’t want them going feral and attacking him.
He wrestled Worner into the wheelbarrow and then sat on the ground to catch his breath. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw four neat little rows of tall, green plants growing next to Worner’s shack. As he looked closer, he realized they were marijuana plants. He smiled at the idea of Worner toking away in his little cabin just beyond the reach of civilization. Although he hadn’t gotten high since college, Culann thought maybe he’d reward himself with some of Worner’s crop once he finished collecting the dead.
He loaded Worner onto the boat with the others and then headed over to
