Pestilence

21

Howie stood up. Pain flowed through him as though someone had hooked up a hose of it to his head and let it drizzle down into his body. One of his teeth was loose, and when he tugged on it softly, it came out. He spit out the warm blood that flowed from the hole in his mouth. He walked out of the cage and around the guardsman heaped on the ground. He knelt down and held his breath, not knowing if a body could smell so quickly. He had never seen a dead body up close before.

The only one he could even think of was his grandfather, who had passed away a day short of his seventy-third birthday. He’d gone to the wake, but he wouldn’t go near the casket. He stood on the other side of the room, catching only glances of the pale, mannequin-like face that jutted out of the gleaming box.

His parents kept telling him to go say goodbye, but he knew, even at ten, that there was nothing there to say goodbye to anymore.

Ten.

He thought of Jessica. Reaching into the guardsman’s pockets, he searched for anything he could use-keys, money, cards. But the only two useful things he found were a knife and some matches. The other men had taken the rifle.

He tucked the knife, a good military-issue knife with a serrated edge, into his waistband and put the matches in his pocket. He glanced around. He had thought that fifty other guardsmen would run up once they heard the gunshot, but none came. Why would they only have one person guarding everyone in that cage?

He walked through the thicket of trees and soon came to a hill. He climbed it, each step more painful than the next, and had to stop to check his ribs. Placing his fingers over each one, he pushed on them to see how much pain it caused. When he got to the third one down on his right side, the pain nearly toppled him. The rib was fractured, or at least bruised-it had to be. But he wasn’t sure what he could do about it, so he kept walking.

As he came to the summit of the hill, Los Angeles was below him. But it didn’t look like the Los Angeles he’d grown up in. Lights were on, but far fewer than any other night. At least half the city had gone dark. And over the city were the blinking luminosities of military planes and choppers coming and going.

He tried to orient himself by searching for landmarks, but it was too dark to see much. Glancing behind him, he was surprised to see the Hollywood sign. Dilapidated and small, its reputation gave it gargantuan proportions and a mythical ambience. But, like the city, it was an illusion, and just underneath the glossy exterior lay mold and rust.

I’m in the Hollywood Hills, he thought. How long was I out?

It didn’t matter. He had to get back to Malibu. Jessica was alone.

He turned down the hill. Hearing voices, he stopped and ducked low. He slowly crawled near the trees and peeked out. He saw another cage like the one he’d been in, and another guard sat at a table in front of it. Farther out, maybe two hundred yards, was another cage and another guard. A little farther than that, though hazy in his vision, was yet another one. That’s why each cage had only one guard: they didn’t have enough soldiers to spare more than one.

He slid back into the bushes and then went up the hill a ways, careful to stay underneath the trees and away from the road. The choppers overhead were loud, and they had spotlights, but they didn’t fly over him. He kept walking, passing mansions on the way down, and realized he was still in gym shorts without shoes, and his feet were cut. In this situation, clothes didn’t matter one bit, but he needed shoes.

Palm trees adorned the massive driveway of a particularly beautiful home with a white façade and red Spanish tile roof, just up ahead. Howie crouched and was silent for a moment to make sure he didn’t hear any voices. Then he went up to the house.

The front door was wide open, so he walked inside.

The home was immaculately decorated with imported rugs, white marble busts, and a fountain in the center of the front room. Under normal circumstances, he would have been impressed and even a little jealous, but now the ostentation seemed utterly meaningless. What a waste, he thought.

He climbed a winding staircase to the second floor and located the master bedroom. Going to the closet, he found several suits on one side and women’s clothing on the other. The suits were too big for him, but he went through the casual clothes at the end and found some jeans and a silk tight-fitting shirt. He put them on and then checked the shoes. They were close enough, perhaps a size bigger than he needed.

His feet were bleeding and black. He went to the tub and washed them.

He slipped on dress socks and then the shoes. As he went back downstairs, he paused on the stairs, wondering if the house’s owners had guns. He ransacked the bedrooms and didn’t find anything. Weaponry wasn’t hidden downstairs, either. He was about to walk to the fridge before leaving, when he heard something behind him.

He froze, his fingers searching for the knife he’d tucked away. Slowly, he turned around.

A black Rottweiler with inch-long teeth was growling at him. The dog had an expensive collar, but other than that, it appeared to be a wild jungle beast.

“Easy,” Howie said. “Easy.”

The dog was sizing him up but had determined he was not a threat. Howie saw it in his eyes. He grabbed the knife and pulled it out, holding it tightly.

He turned and sprinted as barking filled the air, along with a cacophony of snarls, growls, and paws running on hardwood floors. Howie dashed into the kitchen, where gleaming pots and pans hung from the ceiling over an island cabinet. He jumped onto the island as the dog lunged for him and bit into his shoe, ripping it off.

Howie climbed up while the dog was trying to take a piece of him, leaping into the air and snapping in front of his face. He stood up as the dog got both front legs up onto the island, but it was too large to pull himself up.

Howie swiped down with the blade, and the dog yelped as the knife cut across its nose. But it only served to enrage him. It jumped again, and Howie screamed as it got over the island and fell into him with all its weight. He flew backward, hitting his head on a cupboard as he landed on the floor with a crash and several pots and pans fell over the island.

The dog bit into his arm, and he screamed. With his other arm, he thrust the knife as hard as he could into the dog’s neck. But it didn’t let go. He thrust again, and again, and again. The blood sprayed over the kitchen as if it were being shot from a hose, and Howie kept thinking to himself that he couldn’t believe how much blood was coming out of this animal.

Finally, after coating the kitchen in blood, the dog stopped moving. But its teeth were embedded into his arm, and he couldn’t pull away. He was out of breath and had to lie there, with the weight of the animal on top of him. When he had caught his breath, he reached into the dog’s mouth and lifted its upper jaw, which crinkled like paper. Pulling his arm out, he rolled the dog over and lay there another moment, staring at the ceiling and panting.

I could leave right now. Nevada wasn’t too far. The trip might take him a few days, depending on what kind of transportation he had, but he could do it. Jessica didn’t want him near her anyway. She’d chosen to live with her mother and only came around when she was forced.

He took a deep breath, and stood. She’s my daughter, he thought. She’s my daughter.

As he was leaving the house, he noticed a small rack in the kitchen, containing several sets of keys. He took them all and ran around, checking doors until he came to the garage. Five cars filled the space. He opened the garage’s exterior door and walked to the car at the end: a yellow Ferrari that would stand out far too much. Next to that was a black Mercedes. He stood and admired it a moment before climbing in, then quietly pulled out of the garage, keeping the lights off, and drove down the street at a snail’s pace.