By the Book by G.B. Gordon

Author:G.B. Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2022-04-02T16:33:58+00:00

* * *

By Friday, Ben was starting to get cabin fever.

Gaines was the only human being he’d seen in three days. If Gaines was human. He didn’t seem to eat. Or sleep. Or even sit down. All he did 24/7 was wander—from door to window to door, first on the ground floor, and then on the upper floor. Once every hour or so he did what he called a perimeter check outside. Rinse and repeat.

And Marshall had disappeared, not to be seen again. Fled. Ben had had time to think about it, and Marshall’s departure had definitely had an air of desperation. Whether in the face of Ben letting that stupid question slip past his half-drugged defenses, or something else, was yet to be determined. Some men didn’t react well to their own needs.

You don’t call, Ben thought, you don’t write... He laughed at his own joke, trying to find entertainment where he could.

The microwave practically exploding and vomiting Ben’s dinner all over the counter and kitchen floor hadn’t been part of that entertainment plan. Jeeezes fuckin’ Christ! Really?

The jury was still out on whether one could call a Velvet Cheesy Bowl dinner. Or even food, but it was what he’d found in the cabinets. And now it was a god-awful mess all over the counter and floor.

The door flew open, and Agent Gaines stood in the frame, gun drawn, scanning the kitchen with it as if it were some kind of evil detector.

Ben, who’d jumped up at the cheese eruption, flung both hands over his head. “For chrissake, don’t shoot me.”

Gaines threw a last look around the kitchen, especially at the microwaved mess, then put his gun away. “Whoa, cheesepocalypse.”

“No shit.” The previously white wall behind the microwave oven had been blackened in an artsy plume of electrical discharge, the microwave’s LED panel was dead.

“I’m not eating cold cereal for dinner,” Ben added with a challenging look at Gaines.

The agent shrugged. “You clean it up, and I’ll radio for a pizza.”

Ben’s stomach growled. “Fate owes me big time.”

With a grin, Gaines turned to resume his rounds, and Ben could hear his radio crackle to life when he called his dispatch or office, or whatever.

“Pepperoni, peppers, and bacon. Double cheese!” he yelled after Gaines. “On balance,” Ben said to the microwave, “you may have done me a favor.”

He found some Windex under the sink, but no rags of any kind, only a roll of paper towels. It worked reasonably well, but by the time his pizza arrived, he’d amassed a sizable mound of wet and greasy paper balls, and the roll was nearly empty. He got up off his knees with a grimace; he still didn’t move too well. His body had looked like a Jackson Pollock painting in the mirror that morning, if Pollock painted with purple, green and a brownish yellow. At least chewing started to slowly work again. Sort of. He wouldn’t try the crust.

When he opened the pizza carton, it was pepperoni. No extra cheese. After everything that had happened, everything Ma had told him, it was such a tiny little thing.

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