Wormwood (4 page)

“Larry,” Rudy said softly.  “Listen to me.  The issue of God aside, we may not have much time.  Every hour, every
minute
that we sit here debating, the shelves at the hardware stores and the supermarkets are going to get thinner and thinner.  People are going to see what’s happening back east and start to panic.  Some of them will pack up their families and leave town, head out to less populated areas to try to get away from it, but most of us will probably stay in our homes and dig in.

“Now it’s my suggestion, for whatever it’s worth, that you take care of your wife and your two sons, take care of
yourself
, and let God worry about His own plans.  It may be that He’ll surprise us all in the end — who’s to say? — but we’ll have to keep ourselves
alive
long enough to see it.  There are more ways to commit suicide than pills or a gun to your head… sometimes just giving up is enough.  Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Larry looked up soberly and nodded.

“Good.”  Rudy picked up his lemonade and took a long drink, as if clearing his palate.  He set the glass down and let his eyes roam over the faces of his neighbors.  “Now what I’m proposing is simple enough: we pool our resources and protect one another’s backs, when and if this thing finally shows.  We buy supplies — canned food, bottled water, guns and ammunition, whatever we need to get ourselves through this — and we stick together as a group to keep it from marching up Quail Street.”

“Look,” Keith Sturling spoke up, “I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but I just saw a U.S. Army base overrun with those things.”  He glanced around the circle and came back to Rudy.  “How do you expect to hold them off here, using rakes and shovels, when they couldn’t keep them out with an entire armory at their disposal?”

A murmur of assent greeted this.  Don Navaro snubbed out his cigarette, nodding.

“He’s right.  All I’ve got is an old shotgun and a hunting rifle.  That’s not going to last long against a mob like that,” he said, gesturing toward the television.

Rudy held up his hands, palms open, as if surrendering.  “Look,” he said, “I don’t pretend to know any more about this than you, but what I
do
know is I’m not going to give in without a fight.  It may well be our fate to be overrun after firing a few futile shots, but I’ll go to whatever awaits me knowing I
fired
them.  On the other hand,” he continued, “what we saw on television is just one perspective of what’s happening on that base.”  He nodded at Keith.  “How many men are
inside
that base that the helicopter can’t show us, holding their own against the attack?”

“I don’t know… a hundred,
five
hundred?”  Sturling shrugged and conceded the point.  “But how long can they hold out?  And what’ve they got left to return to once it’s over?”

Bud rose to field that one, his tone snappish, impatient.  “I don’t think all of you understand what’s happening here.  This isn’t a choice between balling Miss America or winning the lottery, and choosing not to play
isn’t
an option.  This disease, when it comes, isn’t going to play by any sense of fairness.  It’s going to be
ugly
.  It’s going to be
death
or
survival
, and if that weren’t bad enough, there seems to be a big gray area in the middle that sends you back to play for the other team once you’re dead, which means that if it happens to
you
, you’re going to be doing your level best to tear apart everything you’ve come to love and cherish.  That means friends, family… maybe one or two of
us
as well.  Get that through your goddamn heads.  What Rudy’s talking about here is a choice between sticking together or going it alone.  There are no odds or guarantees in that, but if it helps think about this: if by chance you do get infected, at least you know you’ve got someone beside you to put you back down; and from what I’ve seen, that’s no small blessing.”

Bud sat down, blew his nose into a handkerchief, and crossed his arms, his position well-apparent.

“I don’t think I can add much more to that,” Rudy conceded, gathering up a small stack of computer printouts: the map he’d drawn of the cul-de-sac and a list of supplies they’d need to make their stand against Wormwood, much of which he’d taken straight off a survivalist’s site on the internet.  As no one got up to leave, he started passing them around the room, pausing when he came to the only member of the group who’d yet to voice an opinion or objection.

“Shane,” he said, hoping to encourage the teenager forward.  “Is there anything you’d like to say?  This is all uncharted territory, so I can promise we’re open to just about anything?”

Shane Dawley glanced uncomfortably at the men gathered around him, men who, up to now, he’d regarded as unfriendlies, trip-mines to be avoided much like policemen and school administrators.  And he’d been happy to do just that.  Sitting here amongst them, sipping lemonade in a bright corner of the rec room, made him feel uncomfortable, out of place, because the longer he sat with them, the closer he felt himself pulled toward an indefinable line.  A line which divided a great many things: inclusion and exclusion, responsibility and indifference, childhood and maturity
¼

He sensed that he might soon cross that line, and any hint or suggestion of participation on his part would only hurry him toward it, and that scared him.

It scared him almost as much as the reports on TV.

With all of them looking at him he felt he had to say something, yet, strangely enough, it was his father who was foremost in his thoughts — his father who should have been sitting here where he was, conversing with these men and making the difficult decisions; his father who knew them and would call them all by their first names.  None of this
Mr
. Cheng or
Mr
. Hanna or
Mr
. Iverson shit, as if he were always at arm’s length.

He opened his mouth, unsure what would spill out, but of course, given the circumstances, it was his father.  The idea that these men were busy building a barricade and his father might be standing on the wrong side of it.  He told them as much, using words that came stubbornly, haltingly, as if each were a small shape he had to cut out of himself.  A vein he had to jab open and bleed.

It was the most he’d said about the man in the seven months since his parent’s separation, and to men who were little better than strangers, though none of them laughed or made fun of him as he feared they might.

Rudy Cheng put a hand on his shoulder and the gesture didn’t feel weird or condescending, but sympathetic, as though he understood and wanted to help.  “Would you like to call and invite your dad to the rest of the discussion?” he asked, taking his hand back to point out the phone.  “I think it’s right that he should be here.  God knows we could use his help.”

Shane nodded.  Yes, he would like that very much.

Rudy held him back a moment.  “You understand that doesn’t mean we want him instead of
you
, Shane.  When the time comes, we’re going to need every man we can get, and young men like you especially.  All right?”

Shane nodded.  He broke for the phone, deciding he might have a part to play in this after all, so long as they told him what to do and didn’t call on him to make any life or death decisions.

As long as they kept it on those terms, he would be just fine.

8

After the meeting broke up, Rudy drove downtown to Jed’s Sport Shop and bought two handguns, a rifle, and a shotgun.  The man behind the counter didn’t seem at all surprised, as though Rudy were the fifth or sixth customer that day to buy himself a small arsenal.  With Wormwood on television, perhaps he was.

“The rifle and the shotgun you can have today, but you’re going to have to wait five days on the handguns,” he said, tapping the countertop with a fat index finger.  Rudy nodded and the two of them waited while his MasterCard was run through the system.  “Can I show you some accessories for those?” the clerk queried.  “Scopes, cases, ammunition?”

“Cases I don’t need,” Rudy answered, “but yes, I’d like a scope for the rifle and as much ammunition as I can walk out of here with.”

The man looked at Rudy.  A long, appraising gaze.

“You can buy as much as I’ve got, but hunting season is still a long way off.”

Rudy offered the man an embarrassed smile.  “I need a lot of practice.”

The man smiled back.  “How much practice do you think you need?”

Rudy looked at the prices posted on the shelves.

“Say about a thousand dollars worth.”

A small grunt escaped the clerk.  “You must not be very good.”

“True,” Rudy agreed, “but I’m hoping to improve.”

9

Between 7:00 and 7:50 Rudy made three phone calls, all within the neighborhood.  The first was to Larry who, though still sulky, told him, despite his better judgment, he
had
gone to the lumberyard and picked up enough plywood to fully reinforce the ground floor of his house.  “As a matter of fact,” he went on, “Jan and I were just discussing that, and how we were going to tell Mark and Brian what we plan to use it for.  Since it was
your
big idea, we were wondering if you had any suggestions?”

Rudy bit his lip and decided to let his neighbor’s resentment pass through him as if he were a ghost, already dead.

“Larry, you know your boys better than I do.  I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to handle them.”

“No?”  Larry seemed to smile sardonically at that.  “Just how to handle
myself
, huh?”

“Larry…” Rudy said, taking a deep breath, “I’m
not
trying to tell you what to do.  I just think we should be prepared.  There’s no harm in that, is there?”

“Well no, but my bank account might disagree, after spending three hundred dollars on lumber today.”

Rudy laughed softly into the telephone.  “Would it make you feel better to learn I spent over two thousand on guns and ammunition this afternoon?”

“You know, strangely enough, it does,” Larry laughed, his anger gone for the moment.  The moment passed.  “I’ll have to mention that to Jan; once she stops crying, that is.  I’m sure she’ll get a real kick out of it.”

“If you really want my advice, Larry, I wouldn’t attempt to explain what’s happening to Mark and Brian.  They’re too young to understand and it would only upset them.”

“True enough,” Larry agreed, “but we want them to be
prepared
, don’t we?  I mean, that’s the
important
thing, isn’t it?”

Rudy put the phone down at his side for a moment, waiting for the dark clouds to lift.

“I can see that I called at a bad time,” he returned, his jaw clenched.  “Maybe we ought to talk about this tomorrow?”

“Assuming we’re all still here,” Larry sneered, “and not snacking on one another.”

Rudy said good-bye and hung up before he could say something he’d later regret.

10

He closed his eyes and relaxed, clearing his mind of everything except the sound of his own breathing.  He did this until his heart rate was back below 70 beats per minute and his hands were no longer clenched and knuckled at his sides.  Until he felt somewhat himself again.

Then he picked up the phone and called the Dawleys.

11

“Just a minute, Mr. Cheng.  Let me put my dad on.”

Sitting behind the desk in his upstairs study, Rudy raised a surprised eyebrow, though he wouldn’t have been quite so surprised if he’d gone to the window first and looked down at the Dawley’s driveway.  Mike’s black Cherokee was sitting squarely on the concrete, in its old familiar space from months past, before the separation.  Perhaps he and his wife had had a reconciliation, or perhaps they’d simply decided to cease hostilities until the present crisis had passed.  Whatever the reason, Shane sounded absolutely thrilled about it.