Blaze of Glory

CHAPTER 14

Buckley sat on Bennie’s shower-curtain-encased body, back against the door, hands on his knees, bound with packing twine. A semi-circle of salt had been poured around him blocking him off from the rest of the house. When they’d come for him, he'd gone down without a fight. He shouldn't have deceived them like he had. He'd put them all in danger.

"Reversal of fortune. Ain't that a bitch." MacHenry sat on a foot stool, smoking a cigar, pointing the shotgun at Buckley. He laughed softly, then took a long toke of the Havana.

"Bound to happen sooner or later," Buckley shrugged.

"I suppose."

"What happened to flame on?"

MacHenry flipped open his silver Zippo lighter and stared into the flame for a moment. When it got too hot for him to hold, he turned it off and rubbed the metal against his leg to dissipate the heat. "Flame on won't work anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Would you believe I fell in love?"

"What'd you do that for?"

"I don't know."

"Your timing’s pretty pathetic."

"Isn’t it though? Who would have thought I would have found someone like Gert at the end of the world?"

"She was there all along, you know."

MacHenry’s eyes brightened. "That’s what she said. Said, I wouldn’t have given her the time of day, else-wise."

"She’s probably right."

"I suppose."

"It’s the choices we make."

Buckley groaned audibly as a maggie popped free under his pants leg. The way he was hogtied, he couldn't get up. So like an upended crab, he shook his legs, until finally it slid free. When it hit the floor, he toed the nasty little beast into the salt where it smoked to nothingness. MacHenry watched it play out non-plussed, then spoke as if nothing had happened. "I wanted to be a lawyer, but I drank my way out of school. Became a car salesman. Same thing in a way."

"I wanted to be a soldier."

"So why didn’t you?"

"They didn’t like my heart. Said it murmured."

"Murmured." MacHenry giggled. "Like it had something to say."

Gert stuck her head out the kitchen door. "Dinner will be ready in a moment, hon. We’re having Vienna Sausages, peas and peaches in heavy syrup."

"Oh Yum." MacHenry licked his lips in mock sincerity.

"No, it’s good. You’ll see." She turned to Buckley for the first time, her face struggling to hold an emotion. She whispered. "Anything special for you, Mr. Adamski?"

"Extra salt, please."

Gert grinned sadly. "Coming right up. Especially on the peaches."

Buckley mimicked MacHenry’s earlier expression. "Double yum."

Both men stared at each other as Gert returned to the kitchen. Suddenly Sissy's laughter brightened the world, she said something, and both women laughed. The only other sound in the apartment was Grandma snoring in the corner of the room. MacHenry leaned closer to Buckley. He laid the shotgun across his knees, the barrels pointed down the hall. "Where were you when it all started?"

Scenes of violence and devastation explode from the floor model console television. Atop the television is a gold alarm clock. Behind the television is a plain, white wall. An old woman lies on the couch. Buckley sits in a chair beside her, holding her hand. He looks up and watches as words flash on the television screen — INVASION OR INFECTION.

"With my mother. She’d been sick for a long time."

"Did she die easy?"

Buckley’s mother reaches out to kiss him with the mouth that had kissed him every morning for school for eighteen years. She purses lips that had taught him the words of love, as he grew up fatherless and angry on the streets of Wilmington. She leans forward, her eyes wild with death as maggies erupt from her skin and cascade to the carpet around her like rice at a zombie wedding. Buckley struggles, screams in panic, then pushes his only mother to the ground. He barely hesitates as he shoots her in the head. Blam. Blam. Blam.

"No. She died hard."