The Hand That Feeds: A Horror Novel (27 page)

4.

The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Cell phone towers are designed to run on full automatic. The landline system, also designed for low-to-no-maintenance, works on batteries. Even if the lines were overwhelmed by chatty survivors you wouldn’t get a dial tone, let alone a ring on the other end.
Just dead air.

Then again, if four years of sporadic “customer care” temp gigs have taught me anything, it’s that modern civilization runs on duct tape and good intentions. There’s also the simple fact that too many people are either sick or taking care of their sick to do the most basic upkeep, let alone full-on relay station repair.

I’ve got to find some breakfast to help me kill time on top of hunger while waiting for the office to open. I’m already three blocks from the hotel when I catch sight of the OPEN sign beyond the blinking DON’T CROSS light I’m ignoring.

I pause in the middle and take in the full 360 degrees. Except for a lone mutt sniffing along the walk on one side, a couple of raccoons having at a trash basket on the other, there’s no movement for as far as I can see. Not a soul in the street.

The door of the glass-fronted diner is open. There’s a guy behind the counter. He’s waving me in. God help me, I’m probably going to regret this.

“Just so you know,” he says as I walk up to the counter. “We’re all you’re going to find open for miles.”

“So what’s that mean? You’re charging a hundred bucks for a cup of coffee?”

“
You paying it?”

“No.”

“Wait, wait! Don’t worry about it!” I turn back around. “Credit card machine probably doesn’t work anyway,” he says.

“I was going to use one of these,” I say, pulling the voucher from my pocket.

“Whoa!” he says. “You’re a guest of theirs? Sure, whatever you want! Just give me a few minutes to scare it up.”

After ten minutes or so my patience is rewarded with a heaping plate of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and grits, along with a smaller plate topped with biscuits, with options for jam or gravy. The cook/proprietor busies himself in his kitchen, giving me space to eat.
Which I greatly appreciate.

He takes my plate after I’m finished. “Don’t think much in the way of business is getting done today,” he says, watching me try my cell.

I listen for the ring-click. The man’s comment strikes me as strange until I remember I’m wearing a suit. “We’ll find a way to make it happen,” I say, thumbing off the phone.

“Too late for my daughter,” he says.

“What?”

“This morning.
She…she couldn’t breathe.”

“How long was she sick?”

“She went to bed right as rain Saturday night! Woke up with sniffles and a cough on Sunday, went to church, no big deal. Yesterday she got really bad, but that’s the way it is sometimes, right? You get a little sick, then you get real sick…and she….” He squeezes his eyes shut. He shakes a little, then opens his eyes. Looking at nothing and no one in particular he says, “She couldn’t breathe.”

I get up from my seat. “My wife went to bed feeling just fine Saturday night,” I tell him. “She woke up a little sick Sunday. She was too sick to drive me to the airport yesterday. It’s her I can’t get on the damned phone because everyone else is dying, too, and shit’s falling apart.”

“I’m sorry,” the man says. “I just needed to tell somebody. Must be hard being so far away and nothing you can do….”

I take a deep
breath, wrap it tightly about the rage I feel at this fool. “Ask yourself this,” I say quietly. “Would your daughter want you to give up?”

“No.
No, of course not. “

“Good. So where’s your wife? Shouldn’t you be making funeral arrangements?”

“Look around you! You think even the funeral homes are open?”

Shit.
Hadn’t thought of that. “So what are we supposed to do with our… deceased?”

“They said…the man said we should clean her up as best we can. Then wait for the announcement.”

“Announcement?”

“They’re picking up the bodies. They’ll be doing…mass burials.
In the city parks. They’ll have a service.”

“Huh. Usually they burn the bodies in situations like this.”

“No! No! We’ll bury them in the temporary place until we can put them in individual plots with their families. When things get back to normal!”

Normal.
Right. I sign the voucher and slide it across the counter. He begins choking and weeping as he puts it under the tray in his register. “Sorry for your loss,” I say. I turn and I’m out the open door and crossing the empty street to the far corner. 

The manager has already left for home when I return the hotel. Angie’s family is out of state; she has nothing better to do than mind the fort. Still, she’s irritated with the manager for leaving her alone so Angie lets me use the office land line to call my house. Dial tone. Ring. Click. Dial tone. That’s all. I do this three more times, then once more “just to be sure” before giving up.

“That’s funny,” says Angie. “I haven’t had any problems calling locally.”

The only person I could think to call locally would be Giselle. If she’s there. Anyway, I need to talk to someone face-to-face, see what I can salvage from this. I thank Angie and walk away towards rear doors of the lobby leading to the garage.

“Where are you going?” she calls out after me.

“Gotta check one more thing,” I say.

“You’re coming back, right?”

“Of course!”

“Please don’t leave without saying g—without checking out, okay?”

I smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Angie.”

“Seriously.
You need to come back.”

“This won’t take long.”

The look on her face makes me feel even worse for lying to her. But if whoever’s left at the office can check me out of the hotel from her desk while clearing me to leave with the rental, then I’m going straight out on the road. I’m sorry you’re afraid, Angie. But I’ve got two people 600 miles away I need to do that being-afraid stuff with. And 600 miles is one long mother of a drive….

I almost miss seeing the only other car on the road. It’s going so fast on I-70 east it’s there and gone. Warp Factor Fuck the Police. I smile for the sheer give-a-shit
ballsiness of this guy.

Then I realize what it means and the bottom falls out of my stomach.

There are all of three cars on my level in the parking garage. The door is unlocked. I take the elevator to my floor. Breathe. Breathe….

The doors open on a darkened lobby.

“Who—what?” I hear Giselle say as I come out of the shadows. “You’re still here?”

As with Stefani Dunham, something has aged my Hot Librarian by ten years overnight. The sweat glistens on her pale, not-so-apple cheeks where the rims of her glasses rest. “Nice to see you, too, Giselle.”

“Oh! I’m – look, it’s just me and Don and Chris performing last rites here.”

“Last—?
Did this company just close down under me?”

“I don’t know how permanent it is but those were the exact words from the acting CEO: ‘Close and secure all operations until further notice.’ Then the networks went down. We don’t even have phones.
So how we’re going to get that ‘further notice’ is something of a mystery.”

If the bottom had fallen out of my stomach at the sight at that car, the ground dissolves beneath my feet at the sight of the box behind her desk, packed with Giselle’s framed photos and knick-knacks. “Yes,” Giselle says, “we’re all out of work now.” She sniffs loudly, draws herself up. “Look, I don’t mean to be
short with you but—” Giselle pulls a stack of vouchers from beside her desk. “Take all of these! Get out of town while you still can! Just take the rental and go!”

“Did you get authorization for that? I waited for your call yesterday.”

Giselle freezes. Her Hot Librarian face is awful to behold:  “I don’t know where you’ve been getting your information,” she says, “but people started dying yesterday, my mother among them. I know you’re tired of hearing me apologize but I was distracted.”

“Of course,” is all I can think to
say.

“I’m sure your teenagers would want you there to help them bury their mother. I’m burying mine tonight. They’re picking her up from the house. They’ll bury her in some mass grave.
Like in some awful Third World country!”

Her eyes squeeze shut. Fortunately, I only have to endure a moment of this before a sandy-haired young man leans out the door behind Giselle.
“You the guy from Colorado Springs? Supposed to interview with Rob?”

“That’s me.”

“Rob’s dead. His wife called in this morning.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” says Giselle, weakly. “I probably should have mentioned that.”

“Figures,”” I say, but not to Giselle. It seems everyone’s dropping dead these last 24 hours.
Which means Claire….

The sandy-haired young man shrugs. “I don’t know if you’ve been listening to the radio but it might be a while before you can get home. The acting governors of Kansas and Missouri have activated their National Guards. They’re closing the borders and sealing off the cities against looters. Anyone not in an official capacity working downtown has to go home and stay there until further notice.”

“Shit!”

“We’ll give you a call once things are up and running,” says Giselle.

“Giselle, look, I’m sorry. Thanks for—“

“No! No….it’s okay. Seriously, I’ll call you. We’ll need everyone who’s willing to come in to work. Good luck.” Giselle gives me a game smile. Bless her never-before-broken
heart, she’s going through every letter in her emotional alphabet, looking for an attitude to sustain her.

“We got to go,” the young man says. “All of us.
Now.”

“Good luck to you, too.” I take the vouchers from the counter and walk to the elevator.

The doors close and I realize I’m not getting paid. My family is doomed to homelessness. In the middle of a freakin’ plague.

Will it matter? Will anyone notice we still haven’t paid our mortgage payment? Maybe Giselle was right, maybe she wasn’t just blowing smoke. Maybe she meant that about calling in everyone who was willing to work. It stands to reason that if this many people are out they’ll need people to help run things once this all settles….

I’m pulling out into the street when the military Humvee blocks my path. Hard-faced bastards in cammies carrying M4s surround me. I roll down the window.

“State the nature of your business,” barks someone with staff sergeant stripes.

“I just checked in with the people at my office,” I say. “I’m on my way back to the hotel.”

“You’re going straight back to the hotel.”

“Yes, I am.”

A 2nd lieutenant steps up and whispers something in the sergeant’s ear. He walks away.

“Go to your hotel,” says the sergeant. “Stay there. In half an hour we’re locking down these streets. If you don’t have a reason to be out, you will be shot. Understood?”

“Got it,” I say through clenched teeth. “Thanks, Sergeant.”

I see Guard patrols at the entrance ramps. They’re likely up and down the Interstate and not all sergeants and 2nd lieutenants are going to respect the suit and the executive SUV. I request an alternate route back to the hotel on the GPS and thread my way through the city.

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