Well Fed by Keith C. Blackmore

Author:Keith C. Blackmore [Blackmore, Keith C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2014-11-19T13:00:00+00:00

By the time the day darkened with evening, they had checked five more residences along the highway. Some places were hidden behind fences of trees while others presided over front lawns that had probably been the envy of the neighbors at one time but were overgrown and yellowed. Sometimes Gus went into the house, sometimes Wallace. The soldier didn’t apologize for his earlier remark, which irritated Gus even though he knew he shouldn’t have been staring at the guy. Still, in his mind, Wallace could have been a little more civil.

Or maybe, Gus considered, maybe the guy had a point.

Their collective thoughts centered on the growing mystery of the houses. Three of the homes had been forced into, the doors splintered and hanging off the hinges. In two, shotgun cartridges as well as nine-millimeter brass casings lay around desiccated corpses made dead yet again. In the other residences, entry wasn’t forced, which suggested someone had actually lived there until whoever was making the rounds had come along. Perhaps the homeowners had welcomed the visitors with open arms before becoming victims. Gus, Collie, and Wallace didn’t think they were victims, however, as there were no signs of executions to the degree Gus had witnessed on his farm, nor were there any corpses.

All properties had been scoured clean of clothes, food, water, fuel, and anything else useful.

“Someone’s being a pack rat,” Collie declared, relaxing in the driver’s seat of her RV with a glass of rye whiskey. The interior blinds had been pulled and a single light turned on, drawing from the battery, as Wallace had cautioned them about turning on the generator. Heat was a luxury they’d have to do without that evening, so both sat in the dim interior, bundled up in their day’s clothing and outerwear, recapping the day’s discoveries. Wallace roamed outside, having volunteered to keep watch through the night.

Gus sat at the small table and swished a glass of water, still holding out on cruising the booze boat until Maggie and the kids had been found. That would be reason enough to drink, although he had twice caught himself wanting to pour himself a shot and down the whiskey like cold tea. He wasn’t entirely surprised by the urges, but he didn’t give in.

“Yeah,” Gus said slowly. “Or something else.”

“You got a theory?”

He took a breath, took another pull of his drink, and refilled his glass from the bottle on the table.

“I ever tell you about the time I was almost eaten alive by rats?”

Collie’s face furrowed with interest, and Gus gave her a history lesson. The story came out of him easily, minus the details about him attempting suicide by way of alcohol poisoning.

“Holy shit,” she breathed when the story had been told. “Rats?”

“Rats.”

“Never saw anything like that in the last four years.”

“Maybe it’s just an East Coast thing.”

“Sure as fuck hope so,” Collie declared. “But there wasn’t any evidence of what you just described to me. The dead in the hallways and such were still there, remember?”

“Yeah,” Gus conceded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.