Wormwood

“Just singing a little song to Court,” Larry answered in a mellow tone, one that reminded Shane of Bob Ross, painter of happy little clouds on public TV.

“Vancomycin, Vancomycin; singin’ to Court ‘bout Vancomycin.

Hey nonny-nonny hey.”

“I wouldn’t quit your day job,” Shane said, turning back to the shelves.

7

A young woman in sandals and a yellow print dress came staggering out of the darkness of the magazine aisle, a hook of dried blood drawn from the corner of her mouth like a hasty comma, black and restless in the flare’s sputtering light. She didn’t come with a nametag pinned to her shapely breast, so Larry christened her “Julia” and began to sing the Beatles’ tune of the same name.

Julia, however, was not moved or placated by the off-key serenade. She let out a breathless screech and flung herself at the security gate, tearing at it with her pointed fingernails as if she would go on doing so until one or the other gave completely away. It reminded Larry of his dead son scratching at the basement door and the tune died on his lips, the mood gone.

Court, agitated by this new presence, began to hiss and pick at the gates as well, and before long Larry pictured them as two terriers, yapping and jumping at a chain link fence.

“How’s it going back there?” he hollered to Shane, a headache quickly developing.

“It’s coming,” Shane answered. He’d already found several items on the list, but not the one at the very top. The one his mother had spelled out in large capital letters.

“If you come across anything with Codeine in it, throw me out a bottle,” Larry joked, massaging his temples. To his surprise, a large white bottle sailed over the counter. It bounced off the gate and landed at his feet, half full of tablets.

Paveral. 30 mg.

“Toss that back when you’re done,” Shane said, raising his voice to be heard. “It’s on Mom’s list.”

Larry had to squat at the knees and reach down blindly to pick it up, which only seemed to upset the gallery. God knew why. He unscrewed the top and looked inside with the penlight, shaking his head and laughing softly to himself. There had to be 500 tablets left, enough to keep a man smiling and relatively pain-free for over a year, barring gangrene or wholesale amputation. He reached inside the wide mouth with his fingers and came back with roughly a dozen.

I could just take these, he thought, rolling the tablets loosely in his palm. I could swallow these down and take another handful and just drift off to sleep. Easy as pie. No more worries about food or safe water or ammunition. No more worries at all.

Except what you’re going to say to God.

“Oh, I’ll have plenty to say to Him,” he murmured, tipping the pills back inside the bottle; all except two. He looked at these after the lid was screwed back down and decided to tuck one in his pocket for later. Once they found a place to bed down for the night, the manager’s office or whatever. No sense turning himself into a zombie before his time. Ha-ha.

“Good one, Lar,” he grimaced, popping one of the tablets into his mouth and dry-swallowing.

“Heads up, Shane,” he called, lobbing the jar back to where it came from. Glad to be rid of it and the nagging temptation. Of course, he could always pull out his revolver and end it that way, but that would take some working up to; some serious reflection. Pills were something he was used to, something he took all the time. Aspirin, cold capsules, decongestant… what difference would his hand know, or his mouth?

“Ah-ha!” he heard Shane explain. “Found it! The last thing on the list except syringes.”

“Look up front for those,” Larry advised. “I usually see them while I’m waiting for a prescription. Insulin syringes. They come in pretty good-sized boxes.”

“Yep, here they are,” Shane replied, his voice closer to the counter now, right over Larry’s shoulder. “Shit.”

“What’s the matter?” Larry asked, raising his voice again. Shane’s emergence from the back shelves had excited Court and Julia.

“These boxes have like, a hundred… two hundred syringes in them. I don’t have enough room in my backpack for that many!”

“So don’t take the whole box. Take half, or a third; whatever you need. The needles should be capped. There’s no sense hauling back two hundred syringes if you’re only going to make a few injections.”

“Yeah,” Shane realized. “I’m gonna have to.” Larry heard him unzip his pack. “How’re you doing out there? It sounds awfully noisy.”

“Well, we’ve got two new friends at the moment,” Larry shouted. “I’d like to get out of this cage before we pick up any more. Two we can take care of; more than that and it starts to get dicey.”

“Almost done,” Shane assured him, his backpack zipping again, though reluctantly, as if he’d like to take more. A moment later his feet came sliding over the counter, the pack riding up against his neck as he slipped down beside Larry, as lumpy as a pillowcase stuffed with bricks.

“Looks like you just about cleaned them out,” Larry commented, eyeing the pack as Shane reached for his axe.

“Hardly,” Shane grunted. “This is just a skim off the top. You never know… someone else will probably need these drugs just as bad as we do, and I’d hate to have come all this way to find some asshole had cleaned out the shelves, taking more than he needed or could carry.”

“You’re a good kid, Shane,” Larry nodded, impressed. “No, seriously. We’ve lived next door to one another for years and I don’t think I ever realized that.” He offered a passing smile. “It makes me sorry we never got to know one another.”

“I’d say we made up for that today,” Shane said, his face bright pink in the light of the flare. “We’ve just about been joined at the hip.”

“Thank God for that,” Larry nodded, laughing. “I don’t know what I’d’ve done if I’d been cooped up in that house today.” A small shudder passed through him. “I don’t even like to think about it.”

“So don’t.” Shane clipped his penlight to his shirt collar, checked his pistol, then took a firm hold on his axe. “Think about how we’re going to get to the manager’s office.” He gazed at the darkness on the other side of the flare. “And where it might be.”

“That’s no mystery. It’s at the front of the store.” He nodded past Court and Julia. “Straight ahead, past the checkout lanes, then down a narrow hallway past the bathrooms.”

Shane cast him a sidelong glance. “It sounds like you’ve been there before.”

Larry shrugged. “I’ve never been inside… but a man’s got to occupy himself somehow while his wife’s in the powder room.”

“I guess so,” Shane nodded, his smile fading as he looked at the two obstacles they’d have to cut through to even get started. Court he’d seen, but the woman… He guessed she’d been pretty once, before Wormwood got a hold of her; maybe even beautiful.

The axe in his hands suddenly seemed much too heavy-handed, a brutal thing, almost obscene. He immediately recognized the danger of this way of thinking and pawned her off on Larry, who was unholstering his pistol. Court, on the other hand, could only benefit by the blade.

He tried to make the offer sound magnanimous, as if he were handing Larry a bargain. Larry, to his credit, accepted this arrangement without a word of protest.

“Ready?”

Shane took a deep breath and nodded.

“Mind where you’re swinging that axe,” Larry cautioned, reaching down with his free hand and getting a grip on the gate. He took his foot off the lip and rolled it up.

And to his horror and surprise, the barrel of his revolver caught in the blur of passing links and jumped out of his hand. It tumbled down his leg, off his boot, and clattered away into darkness.