White Smoke by John Gilstrap

Author:John Gilstrap [Gilstrap, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE NIGHT WASN’T AS DARK AS PENN HAD THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. It was clear and chilly and the moon hung high, casting blue light and dark shadows. Small fires burned everywhere, marking the locations of individual campsites, he imagined. The smoke from the fires stung his eyes a little, and the smell irritated his sinuses.

But it wasn’t just the smoke that polluted the air. There was something ... rotten.

“The cremation pits are up there to the right and around the corner,” Jason explained before Penn could ask the question. “The people here live like pigs. I don’t get it. I understand that these are tough times, but there’s never an excuse to surrender your humanity.”

Penn followed as Jason turned left out of the steel door and started down a narrow roadway. In the dim light, the black strip against the charcoal gray tree lines could have just as easily been a stream.

“What’s it like inside the hotel itself?” Penn asked.

“A little better. But you have to be a friend of Roger’s to be allowed in there. As you might guess, that’s a pretty small list.”

“Why do the people stay here?”

“Where else are they going to go? Most of these folks traveled for days or weeks to get here. I guess they feel safer surrounded by other people.”

“You sound like you disagree.”

“Damn straight I disagree. You can smell the shit in the air. This place is a disease factory. Some of the toilets inside the hotel still flush, but you have to prime the tanks with water first. There aren’t enough toilets for all the people on the grounds, and even if there were, I don’t think a lot of them would bother to use them anyway. They just drop trau, squat and let it rip. It’s disgusting.”

“How many people are here?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. Hundreds, but I don’t think a thousand. It’s a pretty big bit of property.”

“How do they feed themselves?”

“I don’t think I want to know. Remember, I was an FOR—friend-of-Roger. I didn’t have to deal with the shit that these poor folks do. Given the awfulness of the times, I had it pretty comfortable.”

Penn found it difficult to comprehend that he’d had no idea of the scale of the desperation that teemed just outside the Annex. Scott Johnson, and the others in Solara who ran the operation of the physical plant, had made reference to hearing and seeing signs that people were moving around the grounds of the resort, but there’d been no indication of hundreds.

Or maybe Johnson had known exactly how desperate the situation was, and he’d chosen not to share it with the residents of the Annex. What good would the knowledge have done when there was no option to open the doors before a minimum of sixty days had passed?

Jason walked quickly, fast enough that it was hard for Penn to keep up. He blamed his stiffness on the weeks of inactivity while wasting away in the jail cell. “Can you shorten your strides a little?” he asked.

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.