Blaze of Glory

'No, it’s good. You’ll see.' She turned to Buckley for the first time, her face struggling to hold an emotion. She whispered. 'Anything special for you, Mr. Adamski?'

'Extra salt, please.'

Gert grinned sadly. 'Coming right up. Especially on the peaches.'

Buckley mimicked MacHenry’s earlier expression. 'Double yum.'

Both men stared at each other as Gert returned to the kitchen. Suddenly Sissy's laughter brightened the world, she said something, and both women laughed. The only other sound in the apartment was Grandma snoring in the corner of the room. MacHenry leaned closer to Buckley. He laid the shotgun across his knees, the barrels pointed down the hall. 'Where were you when it all started?'

Scenes of violence and devastation explode from the floor model console television. Atop the television is a gold alarm clock. Behind the television is a plain, white wall. An old woman lies on the couch. Buckley sits in a chair beside her, holding her hand. He looks up and watches as words flash on the television screen — INVASION OR INFECTION.

'With my mother. She’d been sick for a long time.'

'Did she die easy?'

Buckley’s mother reaches out to kiss him with the mouth that had kissed him every morning for school for eighteen years. She purses lips that had taught him the words of love, as he grew up fatherless and angry on the streets of Wilmington. She leans forward, her eyes wild with death as maggies erupt from her skin and cascade to the carpet around her like rice at a zombie wedding. Buckley struggles, screams in panic, then pushes his only mother to the ground. He barely hesitates as he shoots her in the head. Blam. Blam. Blam.

'No. She died hard.'

CHAPTER 15

'Dinner’s ready.'

Gert brought a plate of food which she placed on the floor at MacHenry’s feet. She handed him a fork. When he took it, they exchanged a brief but warm smile, then she spun on her heel and headed back into the kitchen. A towel hanging over her shoulder and her hair up in a scrunch seemed perfect casting for middle-aged housewife. No one would ever have known that she'd plied her trade on the corner of Main and Sixth. And no one needed to know. She'd remade herself. The world where she'd been a whore no longer existed. For all intents and purposes she was a middle-aged housewife. At least, if given the chance, it seemed the most practical conclusion to the relationship she had with MacHenry. She returned with a glass of water and a Ziploc bag filled with salt. She laid these beside the plate, offered Buckley a sad soulful smile, then once again left the room.

MacHenry pulled out a pocket knife and snapped it open. He moved the blade to the twine securing Buckley's hands. 'On your honor?'

Buckley nodded, then added 'I ain’t going nowhere.'

Once he sliced through a few strands of the twine, MacHenry stood and waited for Buckley to untie the rest. When he finished, Buckley glanced up, rubbing the patterns dug into his wrists.

'We'd appreciate it if you didn't move out of the circle.'

Buckley nodded. 'Don't worry; I'll stay here with the dead.'

'Sounds pitiful.'

'Didn't mean it that way. Or maybe I did. I don't know. But don't worry about me. I'm not gonna put you folks in any more danger.'

'On your honor?'

'On my honor.'

MacHenry nodded to himself as if he'd satisfied some interior concern, then turned and shambled into the kitchen. As he passed Gert setting food on the large table, he let his hand drift across her ass, then linger on her hip. He leaned over, whispered something in her ear that made her blush and giggle, then took a seat. He cast one look back at Buckley, then began to heap his plate with the canned cuisine.

Buckley grasped the fork and his plate. He pushed the peaches around, but the heavy syrup stuck to them like motor oil. The Vienna sausages looked like baby's fingers. And the peas, well, he'd never liked peas. He should be hungry. A part of him understood that he needed energy, but he couldn't bring himself to be hungry. Perhaps the prospect of death was too much for him.

Finally he picked up the bag full of salt. With the plate balanced in his knees, he began to sprinkle the salt atop the food. A crazy thought pinged in his brain. If he ate enough salt, he could kill the maggies in his body. The sprinkle turned to a thin pour, then finally an avalanche as he let the entire contents of the bag cover his food. He tossed the empty bag aside and stared at the white-capped plate.

Fuck it. It was only salt. He scooped up a forkful of food and shoved it into his mouth. As he began to chew, his gag reflex tripped and it was all he could do to keep from retching. When he finally swallowed, he took a sip of water. Then he took another bite of food. By his fourth bite he'd learned the trick to keeping down the salt. By the sixth bite, his bile had risen so that it was all he tasted. Each mouthful was a battle to keep down, and he barely survived the meal.

CHAPTER 16

Dinner had been over for an hour and things were relatively quiet. In fact, a passerby, if there were to be a passerby in the fortified penthouse apartment of the Franklin Hotel, would think nothing more of the gathered group lounging around the living room, other than they seemed at peace and at home with one another. Sissy and Little Rashad knelt on the floor playing a card game called Tonk. Samuel, Gert and MacHenry sat on the couch staring restfully at the peeling paint on the far wall. Grandma Riggs smoked crack. And Buckley, well Buckley was the only one out of place. Separated from the others, he sat on a body bag, his back leaning against the front door of the apartment, a white-encrusted black man as stone-still as a mannequin in a Christmas display. His skin and hair and clothes had been covered by a thick layer of salt. Occasionally he'd blink, the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes dislodging some of the crystals. But other than that, he held very still. He was doing everything he could think of to fight his infection. And he'd do anything more. There was one thing that was a perfect truth and that was that Buckley Adamski, one time garbage man, part time hero, didn't want to die. And to the credit of the others, they didn't want him to die either.

'So I had this idea during dinner, you know. Something, that I think, might let us live.'

All eyes went to Sissy, even Buckley's. As timid as a mouse, she rarely spoke, so rarely that her voice always sounded a little strange to Buckley. Then he noticed that the others had shifted their gaze and were staring at him. Buckley felt immediately uncomfortable, and for once understood how the babysitter felt when the Adams' children looked at her in that horrifying book by Mendal Johnson. If he had to bet, this was the end. Sometime during dinner they'd decided to push him out the door with the dead gangbanger as part of some whacked out plan to save them, and they were using cute little Sissy, the Stepford Barbie twin to Marsha Brady, to break the bad news.

'Did you hear me, Mr. Adamski? I had this idea.'

'I heard you.'

'Are you ready?'

How could I be ready? Are you ready to be hit by a car in the crosswalk? Are you ready to be crushed by a falling piano? Are you ready for maggies to infect you because one of the people who were supposed to be watching the door was fucking in the next room, smoking stogies and talking about flame-ons and hard-ons and sweaty Cuban thighs. Could anyone be ready? Fuck it. “I’m ready.”

'Okay,' she began, offering an embarrassed smile to the others. 'Bear with me a moment, will you? What kills maggies?'

Buckley wasn’t expecting a game show. “Things That Kill Maggies” for a Hundred, Alex. Was this some sort