Chapter 28

Outbreak - Day 5

Stanley, Idaho

 

Dan was at home with death. He had dealt it. He had come face to face with it many times in Vietnam. None of that made it any easier to sit with Lizzie’s corpse and wait for darkness to come.

Lizzie had taken her own life, Dan thought. What could have been so tragic and devastating to make the woman take the cowardly way out?

The power was out, but the afternoon light was enough for him to read the entire article in the Boise paper one last time. Something clicked, even though there was no mention of the grounding of the entire commercial airline fleet; Dan knew that he had to give credence to the Omega story.

Bang.

It sounded to Dan like the screen door was opening and closing with some help from the wind. Strangely he didn’t remember the wind blowing during his walk to the house.

Bang. Bang.

Now it seemed like someone or something was smacking the back door. Dan pulled his Colt from the holster and out of habit pulled back the slide to make sure a round was in the pipe. He skirted the bed and in passing, gave his old friend Lizzie a pat on her cold foot.

Bang.

“All right, all right, I’m coming - keep your shirt on.” Dan had no problem talking to himself. As long as he had lived alone, up in the Sawtooth Mountains, he had made a habit of talking to himself. It was his way of conquering the loneliness.

Dan navigated the shadowy dining room, careful to watch where he put his feet.

Bang.

He entered the kitchen and waited a moment for his eyesight to adjust to the bright light streaming in the glass pane. All he could make out was a man’s silhouette peering in through the window. He was over six feet tall and nearly filled out the doorway; probably a drunken Nazi biker, Dan theorized.

Bang. Dan put the pistol behind his leg. If the man was high or drunk, he didn’t want to make matters worse by openly brandishing a firearm.

Bang.

Dan had never seen a person so determined... yet so out of it at the same time. The guy’s skin tone reminded him of those monsters that were featured in the old Boris Karloff movies - he couldn’t remember what they were called. Damn, getting old is for the birds.

“Stop, I’m armed and will use deadly force.” Dan raised his black pistol and aimed it at the crazed man. It didn’t deter him; it seemed only to further fuel his rage. The door frame splintered a little more with each blow. I am not going toe to toe with this yahoo, Dan told himself. For some reason the famous Revolutionary War quote, “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes,” popped into his head the moment he locked eyes with the intruder. Dan noted that the guy’s pupils were fixed and the “whites” were yellow and jaundiced. The lights are on and there’s no one home, he thought, as he summoned the resolve to shoot the seemingly unarmed maniac.

The door blasted from the frame and caromed off the small breakfast table, landing lengthwise partially blocking the doorway. A normal human would try to step over the obstruction - the mindless druggie tried to bull right through it.

The man smelled rotten, worse than Lizzie. Like the tumblers in a lock everything instantly fell together and started making sense. The Boise Statesman was right, Dan thought incredulously, the dead really are walking.

Dan leveled his weapon point blank at the struggling man’s head; the pistol bucked twice in his hand. The Colt’s report was thunderous in the confined kitchen, momentarily deafening him.

The abomination collapsed over the splintered door.

The Colt .45 is a very effective man stopper, not much skull was left from the eyebrows up. Dan watched the dead man’s brain dribble out in slow motion, clumping in a mound on the black and white checkerboard linoleum.

He prodded the body with the still smoking muzzle and then rolled it over with his free hand. The fact that the unmoving corpse was already ice cold to the touch further confirmed what he had read in the fish wrapper.

His newfound knowledge of how his world had changed around him dictated his next move.

My daddy fought the Nazis, he thought, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna let them repopulate the town I was born and raised in. There has got to be someone, somewhere, upholding the rule of law.

With Sheriff Blanda swinging in the wind and Lizzie gone for good, there was no reason for Dan to remain in Stanley.

Dan searched the cupboard where Lizzie kept her car keys; he found them after moving around countless bottles of prescription medicines.

Over the course of the ensuing three hours, two more large groups of brigands roared down the main street in the direction of the Aryan’s fortress-like compound. For good measure Dan waited until half past two in the morning, with only the two corpses for company. He wanted the thugs to do their usual and get good and shitty before he attempted to sneak past them.

Dan stepped over the shortened corpse, steering clear of brain matter, and warily trudged into the obsidian black night.

***

The garage doors were closed but unlocked. In a city as quiet as Stanley, where everyone knew their neighbor, there was no need to batten down the hatches. The simple fact that the doors remained shut told Dan the old gal’s car was still parked inside. The unoiled hinges shrieked in protest when Dan yanked them open. He had his pistol trained on the shadowy interior; the only thing taking up space was the midnight blue Dodge Aries.

The rarely used four door started after a few cranks. Dan maneuvered the car from the cramped garage and let it coast down the driveway to the street.

Before leaving, Dan turned in his seat to look at the charnel house. A very important part of his past had died there. Her name was Elizabeth Eloise Paxton and he would always love her.

With a heavy heart and a lead foot he intended to put Stanley, Idaho behind him forever.

***

Well before he got to the Aryan compound Dan extinguished the headlights, hoping the occupants inside were all passed out or too drunk to notice the darkened car creeping past.

His hopes were dashed when he noticed the one man roadblock. Two fifty-five gallon metal drums with a length of yellow police line tape strung between them served as the only barricade.

Nobody said this lot had any brains.

Dan stopped five feet shy of the barrier; the lone man stood up from a plastic lawn chair and drunkenly sauntered to the driver’s side of the car. He looked like your garden variety skinhead, spider webs and skull tattoos adorning every piece of skin that Dan could see. Why they only posted one sentry, when the dead were supposedly walking all over the place, troubled Dan.

“Where are you goin’... and wish no lights?” the man slurred suspiciously. He was obviously three sheets to the wind.

With as many newcomers as Dan witnessed streaming into town, he thought it might be easier to masquerade as one of them than try to explain who he really was, so he tried to bullshit his way past the inebriated guard. “I was in town trying to find another fifth of whisky. The whole world is our liquor store now... right brother?”

“Thish afternoon we went on a raid two towns over - lotsa booshe. Ganz did stash away the besht stuff for himshelf.” The skinhead took a step closer to the car, trying to get a better look at Dan. “You wash yourshelf. Someone push shome big holes in Mikey Connell. Hish car was still running when they found him dead thish afternoon. What I’m tryin’ to get through that thick head of yours... what’d you shay yer name ish anyway?”

The kid was falling out. Had himself a little too much sauce. Dan pulled the lock blade knife from his belt and covertly flicked it open. “They call me Grady.” Dan was winging it and hoped the kid didn’t know who he was. “Since Ganz is keeping the high end stuff for himself, you want a nip of this Louis the Thirteenth cognac? I found it in some old broad’s closet... after I waxed her ass.” He hoped he wasn’t pouring it on too thick.

The skinhead instantly perked up. “Thaths the shit, thaths like, three thousand bucks a bottle ishnt it?”

Fish on; the Nazi put his elbows on the door and his face in the open window.

“Give it up old man.” The Nazi’s breath smelled like cigarettes and stale beer.

Fully expecting a mouthful of fine spirits, he instead received six inches of tempered steel buried deep into his left eye. The skinhead died with shit in his pants and shit for brains.

Dan left the Nazi where he fell, with the knife still stuck in his head. The wily old mountain man was thirty miles away before anyone discovered the dead sentry.