Chapter Ten

Missing Obi-Wan

October 22nd

I can’t see the Four Winds Bar yet, but I know it’s there. First off, there’s the sign I passed a minute ago. If it was any indication, this is going to be more unpleasant than I assumed.

I guess that’s why I’m sitting here in this copse of forest rather than striding my way down the crumbling macadam toward Bill Keaton’s headquarters. Oh, I’m not going to drive there. No way. If the patrons – or worse, one of Keaton’s goons – see this truck, they’ll seize it before I set foot in the door. The only chance I have of keeping it is stashing it here and hoping no one discovers it. That way, if I get the chance, I can return here and drive away afterward.

Something tells me I might need to leave in a hurry.

I know I should tell you about Bill Keaton now, but the thought of that son of a bitch makes me grip this pen so tightly I fear I might snap it. So first I’ll tell you about the sign I passed.

It’s impossible to know what the sign used to advertise. It’s broad and tall and arched at the top. The whole thing has been spraypainted black, with the letters done in red. It would have been more logical – more legible – for the sign’s creator to have used white since that would have shown up better than red, but I suspect that red’s similarity to blood had something to do with this decision, even if you can’t read the damn thing unless you slow to a crawl and squint at it.

THE FOUR WINDS BAR, it says in dripping crimson letters.

And beneath that: HOME OF BILL KEATON BARTER AND TRADE.

That might sound innocuous to you, but when you consider what Keaton barters and trades, any trace of harmlessness vanishes like a filigree of smoke from one of Keaton’s smelly cigars.

Keaton deals in human flesh.

His chief clientele are vampires and cannibals, though I hear the satyrs have begun to creep northward in search of new victims.

Bill Keaton is more than happy to accommodate them.

Back in March, I first became aware of Keaton from a whiff of his foul-smelling smoke. I was out scrounging for food when I smelled it. My first reaction upon detecting that withering odor – a combination of flatulence and wet, rotten grass, the kind caked on the bottom of a lawnmower after mowing a yard you’ve put off for too long – was slow-witted confusion. I stood there frowning and wondering who in the vicinity was smoking. Not even worrying about the threat they might pose.

It was early morning at the time, so maybe that was part of my sluggishness. But most of it, I’m sorry to say, was complacency. Susan and I had survived far longer than just about anyone. A slatternly, stupid compartment of my brain had come to view our new existence as permanent, that the universe had somehow been put right again, that the worst was behind us.

My God, was I a fool?

You might think I bolted in the direction of the camp then, but you’d be wrong. What followed was a sort of agitated incredulity. Who, I remember thinking, still smoked cigars in this bleak new age? How did one even find cigars when it was difficult to go anywhere without becoming someone’s dinner?

The answer, of course, was if you were powerful – say, powerful enough to build a depraved empire using fear, intimidation, and animal cunning – you could locate all the cigars you desired. Or have them found for you by your army of emissaries.

It was the voices of Keaton’s thugs I heard next.

That and Susan’s screaming.

What happened next…I can’t think about.

I still might have tracked them down had I not run into another Latent that same night. It was a man with a nasty scar on the underside of his nose. The guy claimed to have seen Keaton’s men transporting a woman fitting Susan’s description north on Highway 421. He claimed there was a cannibal compound in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Keaton’s most generous buyer resided.

I spent the better part of three months making my way to Kalamazoo, only to learn the whole city had been burned to the ground long ago. Then I spent the next three months getting back to where I am now.

For the false information, I had paid the man with my best gun – a nearly-new Smith & Wesson .38 – and all the food I’d scrounged.

I failed. Miserably. And the problem with failure, at least where I’m concerned, is that I can’t let it go. In fact, I’ve never been able to let anything go, but failure most of all.

I was a teacher in my former life. English, Creative Writing, Short Stories, whatever else my department head needed me to do. My strength as a teacher was the fact that I gave a shit about my students.

This is also a reason why my students still haunt me.

And not just the ones who died or became monsters when the world changed. I’m talking about the ones from before the Four Winds, the ones I tried to help but couldn’t.

Dammit. I can’t think about that now. I have work to do tonight. I didn’t survive a werewolf attack and drive all this way down hazardous, bottlenecked roads in order to camp out in this thicket, as pretty and peaceful as it might be.

I came to find Bill Keaton.

I’m close. Less than a mile away. The sunlight is fading, and in another hour it’ll be full dark. It’s no good to be out at night. Exposed.

Not that the Four Winds Bar will be any safer, if the rumors I’ve heard are true. If what Jim the Werewolf told me before he transformed is right. If the behavior of Keaton and his henchmen were any indication.

Crazily, I’m reminded of a line from Star Wars, Obi-Wan telling Luke, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

God, I miss Star Wars. I miss movies.

I remember the first time Dad showed me the original trilogy. We watched the VHS cassettes when I was ten years old, and it was magic. I remember believing my dad was a lot like Obi-Wan, even if he wasn’t much like him at all. At least, not physically. While Obi-Wan was white-haired and sort of slender, my dad was full-bellied and his hair was a gentle brown until the day he died.

The day he died, we were watching the news – everyone watched the news when the outbreak happened – but what we should have been doing was hunkering down inside some safe place. Before the bombs flew, people made fun of preppers. I suppose I was one who mocked them. But I’ll tell you, a stocked bunker sure as hell would have come in handy that awful autumn afternoon.

CNN was running a story about the apparent transformation of a prominent politician into a vampire. The politician, a high-ranking Democrat whose views on immigration and global warming I respected, began to lose it in the middle of a press conference. Her eyes, brown before, glowed a lambent orange. She lunged at an unfortunate aide standing beside her podium. The camera had cut off at that point – or CNN had ended the tape – and while my dad and I sat there flabbergasted at what we’d just witnessed, a crash sounded from the front of my dad’s house.

We’d told ourselves that the house was fortified, but looking back, the measures we’d taken had been a joke. I barely had time to push out of my chair before the pair of cannibals appeared in the hallway. My dad was still attempting to climb out of his recliner – as I’ve mentioned, my dad was not a small man – when the pair fell on him. Like I wasn’t even there.

And that was the worst part. Being ignored. Being discounted.

I lunged for the recliner, where they’d begun to rip and tear at him. They must have recently fed because their strength and ferocity were nothing short of ghastly. I grabbed one of the cannibals by the shoulder, who I’d first assumed was a long-haired man, the kind who’d been into heavy metal before the Four Winds shifted his interests to devouring human flesh. But the cannibal was a woman; she snarled at me. I aimed a punch at her, and she backhanded me such a blow that I flew across the room and cracked my head on the carpetless wood floor. I thought for sure she’d come for me then, but as I crawled away, I saw she’d returned to feasting on my father. One of the best men I’ve ever known.

Could I have saved him had I acted faster, or more heroically? I don’t know. But I do know I didn’t try hard enough.

I should have done more.

And Future Reader, whoever you are, I suppose I’ve just admitted something to you. My darkest secret. It’s a simple one, sure, but it’s still a difficult truth for me to accept.

I’m a coward. I’ve proved it again and again. Any steel I’ve shown has been feigned or dumb luck. I’m scared pretty much all the time, even if I don’t admit it to myself. Hell, I was scared before the missiles flew.

Now? My nerves are stretched taut all the time. My sleep – what meager sleep I manage – is a carousel of nightmares. I see the faces of my loved ones every time I close my eyes.

Will. Joey. Susan.

And my father.

I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry I failed you the way I’ve failed everyone.

I wish I’d been a better son.

And now, as I sit here in the savaged pickup truck, I find myself wishing I had a companion, someone like my dad. Or someone as sage and formidable as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Maybe I should have tried to persuade Jim to travel to the Four Winds with me. Werewolves are dangerous company, I realize, but at least Jim craved normalcy. He didn’t wish me harm.

I heave a rueful sigh and peer at the early evening horizon, the sunset-washed trees. If Jim ever sees me again, he’ll kill me. Hell, he might be pursuing me now, just as Stomper and Paul might be pursuing me. It seems everyone wants to kill me these days.

Might as well add a few more adversaries to the list.