Abigail

DoubleTree Resort, New Town

When Carter Lacewood told a story, it sounded like a movie: big budget, well-acted, with a definite beginning, lots of twists and turns, all building up to a conclusive end. So when he told the children at the hotel the story about how they’d rescued Dial’s prisoners from Stock Island, he added a few small details, and left out a great many more. In doing so, he recounted a tale of one slightly inebriated girl’s miraculous vision, and how it led one remarkable dog to track a group of bad rogue policemen by scent all the way back to their hideout, wherein one determined young man challenged the mafia godmother who ruled the island, and won the freedom of the four young women who were held prisoner, and how once freed, one of the girls was so grateful that she came to live at the hotel with the boy, with whom she’d fallen in love.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The reality was that Lacewood felt an obligation to embellish their stories, because he had come to believe that very soon, he and the others living inside of the DoubleTree Resort would soon be the only living, breathing, uninfected human beings left inside the quarantine zone....

Since everyone outside the car wall was dying.

The night after they killed Dial and the others, Lindsey MC had gotten violently ill snorting a bit of the same rat poison that she’d used earlier that evening on her victims. In the midst of her ravings, she shouted out that she had seen a vision of their hideout in an office building—just like the vision that she had shared with the hospital commando named Reagan—and they needed to find it and find it right then. They tried everything they could think of to get her to calm down and sleep it off, but the girl was determined.

So the entire group loaded her into the tourist rickshaw, and Billy and Shawn took turns pulling her as she sagged and swayed on the padded seat. She watched through rheumy eyes as they let Maximus sniff some of the officers’ clothing, and then they set out, believing that they would take one loop around the square of hotels and townhomes that bordered the DoubleTree Resort until Lindsey MC lost consciousness, and then they could return to the safety of the hotel.

But she was still awake when Maximus caught the scent.

In fact, Lindsey MC was still awake when Maximus led them across the Cow Channel Bridge and took a sharp right—into Momma Chic’s territory and the place where Reagan was nearly killed by the Army zombie, and a part of the Kill Zone with a marked lack of office buildings. This led to a spirited argument about whether or not to proceed, and a chorus of angry whispers, which ended when Hunter Grant reminded them all who they were and what they had already done—but only the highlights, and not the time that Face’s big brother Carl was killed, or the nights spent on the run, or the hundreds of mosquito bites when they camped outdoors—and when he finished, they agreed to go a little farther.

By the time Maximus stopped, they stood at the door of an unassuming house with furniture and other household items strew across the front lawn. The windows had all been taped over with plastic sheets and the front door stood wide open. They all believed this was a zombie house and that it might still be inside, and Lindsey—who was still conscious—insisted it was not the right place. Thyroid moved forward anyway and almost stepped into the doorway with his usual bravado, but Billy noticed the wire and grabbed him, preventing him from setting off the trap that would have dropped a spiked board at the level of his forehead.

They found the girls in the garage.

And this is where the story—the real story—becomes a convoluted mess in the classic Wharf Rat fashion.

The girls, who were handcuffed but not gagged, had not eaten or had any water since hours before Dial’s men had arrived at the hotel. Already hostages for days, they had been beaten, repeatedly raped, and tormented to the point that they could see their rescuers and, instead of cheering at their freedom, screamed so loudly that they could be heard for an entire block. On top of that, each of them was seated on a fold-up gym mat and handcuffed to metal bars that were bolted down into the floor. This was a problem since Face—never expecting to lose sight of the hotel—had not brought his backpack, which meant they didn’t have either the metal-cutting saw for the bars or the bolt cutters for the cuffs.

So, while Billy and Shawn ran back to the hotel by themselves, the others tried to calm the girls—except Lindsey MC, who had gotten out of the rickshaw and collapsed in the front yard next to an overturned vanity. Thyroid found a metal-cutting hacksaw, and tried talking to the girls, and that was when Abby Ames recognized Vera.

Abby Ames was the oldest of the four girls at seventeen, the same age as the Rats—except Billy and Shawn, who’d both turned eighteen over the summer. She was in their grade and was the very essence of prim and proper—at least, she had been. The Rats remembered her like some bit character from an old romance novel, whose sole purpose in the story was to gasp at the pretentions of the two lovers. None of them had ever seen her wearing anything except a dress, and she was wearing one then—print flowers turned brown and gray from the dirt of the garage. Abby wiped the dirt away from a cheek with her free hand and began to introduce the other girls, a sudden change in tenor so striking that the other girls stopped screaming and settled down into fits of low sobs. The youngest was twelve.

Abby was still telling the Rats about the fever one of the girls had been running for the last two days, and how her sister Angelica had once had strep that, left untreated, had turned into pneumatic fever, when suddenly the garage door was thrown open and three of Momma’s boys told them not to fucking move. This was a mistake, not so much because of the three boys, only one of whom had a gun—a revolver. He looked slightly ridiculous holding the revolver stiffly, up against the three pistols and two rifles that the Rats had taken from Dial and his men. Because none of the boys had noticed Lindsey MC while they were outside, listening through the garage door to Abby describing the treatment for pneumatic fever, they didn’t see her get up. They didn’t see her pry a sliver of jagged glass out of the vanity, and none of them noticed her walking up behind them until she very casually tilted the head back of the boy with the gun and slit his throat.

This led to more screaming, not just on the part of the hostage girls, but also from Hunter Grant, who had recognized all three of the boys—the boy with the gun had recognized him as well, and was already lowering the gun when Lindsey MC laid open a jugular vein under a tattoo of a playing card.

For the next several frenetic minutes, Hunter tried to stop the bleeding, all the while explaining to the other boys that neck wounds tended not to be as fatal as the movies made them look, and they could likely save Spade’s life if they would just settle down and help get him into the rickshaw. They needed to move him up to the hospital, and if they didn’t settle down, his wife was going to let Maximus off its leash, and he would rip off their legs like chew toys.

When the twins finally came back, they found Thyroid holding an AR-15 to the head of one of the boys, while Lindsey MC gave a muddled apology for the huge blood stain she’d created on the driveway in front of the open garage. Hunter and Face had gone, the rickshaw had vanished, and Abby Ames continued to cry as she described the time that her father had cut his leg on piece of broken glass while carrying out the trash, and how the cut had needed five stitches to close.

Momma Chic came just before sunrise, in the back of a white panel van with the faded words ‘Rescue Plumbing’ on both sides. Momma wanted Hunter Grant, by himself, in the street, talking to the inside of a dark van. She also wanted the Rats to pay loan shark rates for trespassing and injuring one of her boys. The pivot point in the talks came when Hunter produced the ‘Wallsmasher’ bomb, which he’d taken from Face’s backpack before going out into the street, and clicked on the timer.

They turned on the interior light and Hunter saw how badly Momma Chic had been hurt. A bullet wound had shattered her collar bone, and the wound had infected. When she turned to the side to blow cigarette smoke, he could see the redness above the thick bandages. They’d seen the Army zombie and tried to take him out. That had resulted in three of her boys being killed, and two more injured, when the thing tracked them to her hideout and poured a full magazine into the living room before it disappeared. Now they had a mobile operation that had them moving from house to house every few nights.

They talked until the sun began to crest over the trees. The Wharf Rats gave up two guns, everything inside of the rogue officers’ house except for the girls—Momma wanted them gone—and a set of body armor that Face found with awe—“That’s level four ceramic plate!” It sounded like something out of Elder Scrolls, and Vera had insisted that her husband have it. The Rats promised full medical for both Momma Chic and Spade, including a room at the DoubleTree while they recovered, food privileges for the boys if they wanted to visit at dinner time—as long as they disarmed upon entry—and four cartons of Kools from Sri’s stock. Menthol.

One night, Vera Grant learned what her husband had been doing when he was a member of Momma’s outfit. Momma ran a smuggling operation.

It started after the riots. Before that, Momma was just Momma. She’d worked as a delivery driver. Rumor was that she’d done time for throwing a pot of boiling water on an ex-husband, but she was no kind of crime boss. The crime boss on Stock had been a man named Bennie Gutierrez. Bennie trafficked cocaine up from the gulf, and when the population shrank and people got out, he took over houses, then blocks, then, once it became clear that the police would no longer interfere, he claimed the entire south side of the island as his domain.

Momma didn’t care about any of this. She was just a tough old woman that ran the earliest attempt to close the highway in her truck, taking eight of her relatives and nine more neighbors up to Key Largo, then came back to find her house commandeered by Bennie’s boys. She’d never said how she killed him, but the details didn’t matter. No one had expected Momma, at least not at first. Bennie had turned his back, and somewhere he had dropped his guard, and Momma had killed him. Bennie Gutierrez had thought he was hard. Momma was hard.

The first of her boys were shrimpers. She’d needed the boat because the highway was out, and when the captain got crossways with her, she and one of the boys left him floating face down off the marina. The shrimp boys had worked with her because she had a plan and they did not. They got paid to get people out, and used the boat until the Navy seized it. Then they used a raft. After the channel run became impassable, Hunter and some of the other boys floated all the way over to the harbor side of Key West and requisitioned a twelve-seat, glass-bottom submersible—her husband said that it wasn’t really stealing since it was obvious that the owners had left—from out of a trailer. The Army had destroyed the boats in the marina, but the dock, and the wreckage of the boats, provided perfect cover for the little submarine to surface. At nighttime, it could move in and out without being seen from above.

The problem was that none of the boys knew exactly how to the work the thing, and even though the steering was easy enough, they never could quite figure out all the other controls. After a single run under the naval blockade, one of the boys had pressed the wrong switch and gotten water inside the steering compartment.

The boat was still there as far as he knew, lying under the dock with only the top hatch exposed, damaged boat hulls on either side. Hunter thought nothing of this. How could they get it onto land without the Army seeing? Even if Face could fix it, with the Army Zombie running around, and Momma Chic still nominally in control, the information was useless.

Two days after the submarine’s maiden—and only—voyage, Hunter Grant had dreamed a dream that told him to go find Carter Lacewood.

The Wharf Rats had been put together by God.

Vera hadn’t yet made up her mind about her husband’s divine calling—this was the God who took away as easily as he gaveth—but Hunter wanted them all to be like him.

Two weeks after the incident with the rogue officers, the twins gave word that the convent was breaking up, and Sister Charlotte wanted to place all of her girls in the most stable of the confines.

Hunter hounded Sri about their situation, and in the end, the DoubleTree took more than any of the others—eight in all, including Sister Charlotte. Two of the nuns started a morning Bible study on the patio after breakfast, and Hunter got all the Rats to go.

The twins whispered to each other, but were otherwise respectful; Face looked troubled; Lacewood appeared happy; and Lindsey MC smiled the smile of the utterly lost.

Thyroid, however, became a believer. Although, as Vera thought about, it was more true to say that he realized he always had been a believer, rather than having undergone any sort of change. It seemed as if the religion had assembled around him like a suit of super armor, summoned by some hidden device. Most mornings, he sat attentively, his arm around Abby Ames, the broken doll of a human being for whom he had taken responsibility when her parents in the Armstead confine had sent her back.

All the girls they freed that night spent time in the hospital wing. When they were released, the Rats found all their families. Abby’s brought her back a week later, saying she was still sick and that, if they were really a hospital, there should be something they could do to help her.

She was better with Thyroid. She didn’t scream at night if he held her, and he kept her busy during the days. Thyroid seemed to Vera to have an uncanny sense for people. He started to work on Abby by assigning her to watch Lindsey MC, to keep her from ingesting any more poisons. The next step was to set her up with an entirely new wardrobe, picked from a clothing store in Old Town while the Rats guarded the front. Now she once again wore dresses, usually with long sleeves and a high collar that covered the worst of her scars. She worked in the hospital wing delivering food and changing bedding, and she smiled when she spoke to you, but if you talked to her long enough, she would answer you with a sentence that had nothing to do with the conversation. Maybe her mind would someday return to its fully functioning self. Maybe not.

Vera envied Thyroid his easy faith. She wanted to believe, to make her husband happy and share this aspect of his life. She wanted to hear the voice of God.

In three months of marriage, her life had changed forever. She could only remember the time before as a kind of diffuse collection of images, mostly painful. She rarely spoke harshly anymore. She couldn’t manipulate Hunter, and so she simply stopped trying. This was hardly a burden, as she didn’t need to control him. Mostly she could just ask for whatever she wanted. They rarely argued, and she couldn’t stay mad at him. In fact, the only times she got mad at him were when he took foolish chances—except for the time he’d insisted they give Cleo to Reagan because they owed him—and even if she wanted to be angry, the feeling always washed away when they were in their room together at night, and her husband turned over in bed and began kissing her. Vera Krasinski had hated her body, but Vera Grant didn’t mind hers at all. It made sense to her in the way that it fitted together with her husband’s.

Lindsey MC had assured her that love only lasted for a few months, after which you got really mad at each other and he started to beat the shit out of you. Lindsey assured Vera that they were still friends, and when her husband starting hitting her, they could find something and get wasted.

Vera knew that would never happen. Hunter would never hit her. Something inside of him was permanent and immortal. It would not change, not in a few months or even in a few decades. If either of them were to drastically change, it would have to be her.

One night, she decided to pray while her husband showered under the bucket apparatus that Face had made for them after the power went out. It was hot and she only had a single candle for light. Terrance lay on the bed, while Maximus and his girlfriend Patrice, the dappled Pointer/Labrador mix that the Twins had traded for from the White Street Pier Confine, lay together on the floor.

Terrance had been wheezing in his sleep, not even walking down the stairs anymore to go outside, and she knew that he would probably die soon. While she was offering a clumsy attempt at sounding like her husband up to God, Terrance stood. He jumped down from the bed and tottered over to the door as if someone were there. Vera picked up the candle and looked over at the other dogs, but not only were they not barking—which they usually did if someone was at the door—but they were both on their feet, panting, their tongues lolling out of their mouths like they did if they were about to get fed.

Vera opened the door and looked out in the hall. Empty. She looked down to see Terrance sitting on his rear, snorting every so often, the way Granny had told her he used to do when he was younger and was waiting for her to come home. Vera almost picked him up, but thought twice about it while holding the candle, because Sri had told them all a hundred times how careful they had to be with open flames. She walked past the place where the dogs were still sitting up and looking at her, and back at the door. Then Maximus let out a little whine, and Vera set the candle back in its stand. When she turned around, Terrance was gone. She ran back to the door, candle in hand, and looked out into the hall. It took her a moment to notice him lying there by the wall, and another to notice that he was dead.

They buried him on the side lawn, under the hedges. When they went back to the room, while her husband got ready for bed, Vera tried the door.

She let go of it and it shut. She opened it let go of it again, looking at the automatic door closer, and it shut again. It worked every time. Then she went to the bed and lay down, thinking it through.

She had let go, and the door had closed with Terrance still inside. She’d set the candle down and looked back, and the door was still closed but Terrance was gone. If someone had opened it, Maximus and Patrice would have barked a warning, but they had remained quiet. In fact, they still had the same expectant look on their faces, as if something wonderful were passing by and they wanted desperately to go and be a part of it, but they couldn’t. They had been told to stay.

Vera sat down on the bed and began to cry. When Hunter came to console her and ask what was wrong, she patted the arm around her to show that everything was all right, but she couldn’t look at him. Not yet.

She understood. She’d been praying that, if God were out there, that He would show her a sign that everything was going to be okay. God had given His sign, and she could almost hear it, a voice somehow distinct from her own thoughts.

There is something wonderful on the other side of the door, and one day you and your husband will both understand, but not yet. Not yet. And I’m so sorry, Vera, but the other shoe that you have always been so afraid of is about to drop.