With a sigh, I slumped onto the flimsy seat, whereupon he zip-tied my wrists behind my back and attached them to the chair. Then, he secured George and Clare in the same fashion. If we hadn’t all been so drained by the events of the past few days, we might’ve tried to defend ourselves. One of us could’ve lunged for his gun or beaned him in the head with a stapler, but the fight had gone out of us.
I knew we needed to escape this mess—and get back on the road—but I didn’t have the physical strength or mental clarity to come up with a solid plan. We required a distraction, something to keep Ranger Bob busy while we fled back to our campsite.
Jill caught my eye. As frustrated as I felt, it was hard for me to get pissed at her knowing what we knew, knowing her time on Earth (as a human) was dwindling fast.
“Sorry, Joe.” She smiled impishly, a momentary twinkle in her otherwise pain-stricken eyes. “Look at it this way, though… Maybe when I turn, I’ll bite Ranger Dickhead’s nose off his stupid face.”
She glared menacingly at our captor, who’d paused beside her chair. His face was a swirl of emotions… apprehension, fear, uncertainty, pity, even annoyance.
All kidding aside, though, I acknowledged a sad truth: As far as I could remember, that was the first time my mother-in-law had ever apologized to me. She had to feel pretty hopeless to muster that kind of humility and compassion.
OK, maybe those were strong words. But based on Jill’s usual behavior, her brief atonement had seemed like a real Mother Teresa moment.
Hesitantly, Bob approached her, with the obvious intention of zip-tying her as well. But before he could, a coughing fit overcame her. She gripped the armrests, her knuckles whitening in the gloom, and leaned forward, her body racked with convulsions.
Ol’ Bob may be losing his nose sooner than he thinks.
Chapter
11
“Never say, ‘Who’s there?’ Don’t you watch scary movies? It’s a death wish. You might as well come out to investigate a strange noise or something.” – Ghostface, Scream (1996)
“Oh, god, Mom,” Clare said, squirming in her chair and tugging at her secured wrists in a valiant attempt to comfort her mother.
Her face strained with the effort, but when a few seconds passed, and she realized she couldn’t free her hands, she slumped back in her seat, sighing in disappointment.
Meanwhile, Jill’s coughing fit subsided, but she looked worse than ever, with blackish blood dribbling down her chin, her gray-rimmed hazel eyes filled with unimaginable pain, and her face so gaunt and hollow she resembled the zombie she would soon become.
Jill had always bragged about her high pain threshold, proud of the fact that she’d suffered through several hours of natural childbirth so she could “feel every second of bringing my daughter into this world.” But I had no doubt this was the worst pain she’d ever endured.
Bob, meanwhile, had stumbled backward and fumbled for the bandanna sticking out of his shirt pocket. Even if he didn’t believe that Jill had been infected with a zombie virus, he had to realize that he’d already been exposed to whatever ailed her. Since he’d allowed himself to be cooped up in a stuffy car with her, using the bandanna would do him no good now—but perhaps he felt too unsettled to think about the scenario rationally.
With his mouth covered, he ventured toward Jill again, his last zip tie at the ready.
“You can’t be serious,” George shouted. “You’re going to tie her up after seeing the condition she’s in?”
“Well, I…”
“At least don’t tie her hands behind her back,” she added. “She’s already in enough pain as it is.”
“And if you cherish the varnish on that shiny new desk of yours, I wouldn’t tie her to the chair.” I gestured toward the far corner, where a lidded steel trash receptacle stood. “Even on wheels, she might not be able to reach the can in time.”
With a melodramatic sigh, the mulish ranger secured Jill’s hands in front of her, paused for a few seconds, and then retrieved another zip tie to link her restraints to the handle of the nearest desk drawer. Before I could protest the lack of logic, Ranger Bob circled the desk, grabbed the trash can, and set it beside Jill’s chair.
“Thank you,” Clare said, her tone less cordial than usual.
I could sense her frustration, a mixture of anger toward the ridiculous ranger, dismay at the hopeless situation, and concern for her mother.
As the ranger circled the desk, passing close to my chair, he abruptly stopped, staring at an open folder lying beside an old-fashioned ink blotter. Suddenly, his eyes widened and his skin turned ghostly pale, then as if a light bulb of recognition had exploded in his brain, he whipped his head toward me, his cheeks blooming with anger, his eyes seething with rage.
“You better not have hurt any of them!”
“Hurt who? Now, what the hell are you talking about?”
He loomed over me, his itchy fingers resting on his holster. “Were you planning to hurt those kids? Kill them even? Was that their blood all over your disgusting van?”
A part of me wanted to defend my awesome zombie-mobile, but he had a valid point: She really was filthy on the outside. Disgusting even. She needed a good scrub-down or, better yet… a Cat 5 hurricane. Too bad it was so late in the storm season.
In a matter of seconds, our accuser had morphed from a nerdy, overweight ranger reject into a deranged version of a gunnery sergeant from some old war movie.
“Seriously, man, I have no idea what you’re ranting about.” I eyed his gun, which seemed poised to take my life.
