Alive in a Dead World

least to take him with me, Mary. I’m just telling you what is going through the boy’s head. He’s growing up fast because he has to. Just because last year he might have been playing with Pokemon cards and plastic dinosaurs doesn’t mean he can’t comprehend the danger around him now.”

Mary sat down hard, I thought for sure she was going to miss the couch completely, again. As it was, she had to put her hand on the armrest to keep her ass from going to the ground. After she had situated herself properly, she brought her wet hand to her face. “What the hell is this?” she said, showing her hand to me.

What the fuck? I thought. It’s not like I took a piss on her couch while she wasn’t looking.

BT raised his hand like he was in the second grade. “I tend to drool a little, when I sleep sometimes,” he finished, adding the qualifier.

“Gross,” Mary said, heading for the kitchen to wash her hand off.

“Thanks man,” I said to BT. “That took the heat off for a minute.”

“She’ll be back,” he said as we heard the water running in the next room.

“Wow, she’s pissed,” Gary said, coming into the room with us. He was talking, but looking at the wrapper to the granola bar he was eating. “These are fantastic, I’ve never heard of them,” Gary said around a mouthful of nuts. (I’m not sure exactly about the contents he was chewing on, I just wanted to write that). “I’d sleep with one eye open, nope maybe both eyes, one for Deneaux and one for Mary. It really is kind of funny how you bring out the worst in the females around you.”

“Ah, brother, the one constant I have in life, no matter how far I fall, someone in my family will be there to kick me where I lay.”

He smiled.

“Touching,” Deneaux said sarcastically. “What time are we leaving in the morning.”

“We?” I asked her.

“I want to find him as much as you do,” she said falsely.

“You don’t lie as well as you think you do,” I told her. “And you’re staying here.”

Her facial expression nearly matched Mary’s from a few moments previous. Deneaux left, heading to the opposite side of the house where there was a sitting room and a large chair. I could only hope that she would get sucked into the oversized cushions and teleported to an alternate reality, one where old crones were stoned for being witches. I think Salem may have had it right.

“Why would you let her know you’re suspicious? I’d rather tell a pit viper I was highly allergic to its venom and I didn’t have an antidote,” BT said.

“No way,” Gary said. “I’m calling your bluff.”

“Let it go, BT,” I said as BT turned to Gary. “He knows not what he says. And I want her to know because if she had anything to do with Paul getting hurt, I’ll kill her and she knows it. She’ll get desperate and even the devil can make mistakes.”

“So you’re going to leave her behind with me? Thanks, I don’t remember when I ended up on your shit list.”

“Luck of the draw.”

“Wonderful.”

“Maybe you can try to keep her away from Mary. The more Deneaux talks, the more poison she spills into Mary’s Kool-Aid,” I said.

“What does that even mean, Mike?” Gary turned to me.

“You know. Kool-Aid,” I said, not clarifying a thing.

“I have no idea what he means, do you, BT?” Gary asked.

BT shrugged. “I understand about half of what he says and of that only twenty-five percent makes sense.”

“You guys should take it on the road. I’m saying that Mary’s Kool-Aid is her business and that Deneaux is spreading lies about us, well, me specifically.”

“I know what you’re saying. I was making sure that you did too,” Gary said.

“Should we take shifts?” BT asked, eyeing his couch hungrily.

“I’ll take first watch,” I told them, my gut was telling me something was not quite right with the night. Odds were it was the road kill meat MRE, but it had been a while since I’d felt lucky and I’d rather be awake and alert for whatever came down the road.

Nothing happened while I stared out that window, yet the unease in me did not abate, but rather grew. I kept waiting for something, I occasionally even checked on the softly snoring Deneaux to see if she was trying to sneak up behind me and plant a knife in my neck. I could swear on more than one occasion, I felt the icy, cold tip break skin. Only once, did she scare the hell out of me when, on one of my many circuits around the house, her black eyes were staring at me through the gloomy night. She must have had a lot of enemies in her day; she was sleeping with her eyes open. This I knew because her snoring had not stopped. She looked like a cold, calculating reptile like that and I more than half expected her to strike from that chair. I’d take Durgan any day. He wasn’t smart enough in life to do anything but come straight at you. Deneaux seemed to have mastered the fine art of subterfuge. There wasn’t an angle she probably hadn’t exploited at one time or another, and I was wholly convinced, up to and including murder.

I returned to my chair, I had the jitters. My legs were bouncing up and down, restless leg syndrome, my ass, this was a full on epidemic. I won’t swear on a stack of Bibles that it was three am (mostly because I was afraid the Bibles would burst into flame), but it seemed that the witching hour had come to fruition and then the dread of death washed over me and was gone.

“Shit!” BT yelled, sitting up. He turned to me. “Was that Paul?”

My head dropped as I nodded.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Paul was foggy as he began to pull from the slumber. Something darted by his face. The swish of a tail under his nose would have tickled if not for the fact that the pain from his broken leg blotted every other sensation into near muteness. All of his other injuries combined were little more than dots in the rearview mirror of the semi tractor trailer that was his broken leg. Another something landed on Paul’s stomach, he barely registered it.

It was night and that was the only thing Paul was certain of… Oh, and that he was still alive; he could tell because his leg repeatedly told him so.

“Got to sit up,” he said gritting his teeth. He craned his head around, looking for a chair or a couch that he could pull himself up to. “Coffee table will have to do,” he said, uttering the words more to shatter the silence and to help him concentrate on anything besides his leg. He first tried to use his hands to pull himself over, but the shards of glass still embedded in them made that an impossible task. He cried out, not in fear, not in frustration, but in futility. His leg, which he thought could not hurt anymore, became ignited with a white phosphorescent flare of immovable pain. He used his shoulders to prop up and see what was going on. A cat had bitten down on his pants where his broken leg was protruding, trying to get at the blood and meat that lay beyond the material. Paul tried to kick it away. The emaciated cat was faster, however, and hissed at him for his troubles.

The burst of adrenaline got him moving. At least, it lasted long enough for him to get his back up against the wooden frame of the table. He cried out again when he placed some weight on it and it slid further back, this time resting up against the couch beyond. Paul looked behind him and up; two cats with swishing tails and hungry looks stared back at him. I love cats, Paul thought. He had read the stories growing up about how when an owner had died and was not quickly discovered that his, but usually her, cats would eat their former master. He had believed it to all be propaganda perpetuated by dog owners, who invariably pulled out the article about the dog that had died on top of its master’s grave, presumably from a broken heart.

Paul clucked his tongue, trying to establish some sort of repertoire with the feral cats. One hissed and one jumped down by his left side, making sure to stay out of the range of Paul’s arm. The third pulled up his front paw and began to lick it, Paul could not help but think it was washing up before it dined.

“I am not food!” he yelled. The paw-licking cat looked up momentarily and then resumed its business. The one that had come down had jumped on Paul’s leg, ripping a small piece of denim away. Paul had to bite down on his tongue to keep from passing out again; he knew he would not awaken a second time. He blindly kicked out,