Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 98

Fleshbags, ep XXIV

Ms. Mila was worried. Not for the children, but that whatever was going on wasn't going to be resolved soon enough for the parents to pick their brats up before six o'clock. It had been two hours since that officer had told her to keep the children inside, that someone would be along to give the all-clear, but nobody had been by. The phones still didn't work, the internet was down, and so was the television. Maybe the radio worked.

She should probably stay here with the children, but the chance to sit in her car alone was too good to pass up.

"Ms. Margie," she said to the pert twenty-something in the toddler room, "I'm going out to my car. To check the radio." Ms. Margie nodded her pretty little empty blonde head. "Get Ms. Alice to cover for you a minute and wait by the door for me?" Ms. Margie nodded again and put down the baby she'd been holding in her lap. She got out of the rocking chair and followed her out of the room.

Ms. Mila went to her purse for her keys and then waited for Ms. Margie to join her at the door. The police had left that body right there on the sidewalk. She didn't know proper police procedure, but that didn't seem right. She was curious to see what it looked like up close; the only dead bodies she'd ever seen were at funerals, never a fresh one.

"I got Ms. Gina to watch," Ms. Margie said behind her. Ms. Mila jumped, putting a hand to her chest. She nodded.

"I'm just going to step outside and see if there's anything on the radio." She realized she was repeating herself, but it was necessary with Ms. Margie. Ms. Margie started nodding her head again, much like her children and Ms. Mila turned away. The girl may have been young enough to be her daughter, but she was still an adult.

Ms. Mila pushed open the door to the vestibule and steeled herself at the outer door. She wasn't doing this to be brave. To tell the truth, she knew she was a coward. Her stomach was churning, so she dug a pill out of her pocket, popped it in her mouth, and dry-swallowed. By the time she got back in she would allow herself another bite of sandwich.

She should have worn her jacket. The weather man this morning said it was supposed to be in the mid-sixties, but it couldn't have been more than forty. It was just as well she'd brought the children in, the sickly ones were likely to have caught colds had they stayed out too long. Ms. Mila thumbed the button on her key fob to unlock the doors and slid into her car.

She locked her doors, even in a city as supposedly safe as this there were rapists and thieves about, and put the key in the ignition. The radio blasted some song she'd had on CD and she jumped in surprise before turning it down. Ms. Mila peered over her shoulder at the spot where she thought that body had been, but didn't see it. Maybe it was farther over behind the weeds at the edge of the next lot.

She turned the FM on and there was only static. All her presets were out and she scanned through to find nothing was on. Ms. Mila switched to AM and the manufacturer presets were all static too. She scanned all the way up and then all the way down, knowing there wasn't going to be anything, but a smattering of panic drove her on.

There was a beep.

It was buried deep in a wall of white noise, but it had been there. She was concentrating on trying to hear if there was anyone talking when something bumped into her car. Ms. Mila looked around, but didn't see anything. Another bump. She looked in all her mirrors and was about to open her door when she looked over at her blindspot.

There was a naked man standing there.

Fleshbags, ep XXIII

"Give me the paper towel and go get me some tape." He handed her a roll and she shoved it under an arm and began ripping off the plastic with her good hand.

"What kind of tape?"

"Scotch tape would be best. I don't want this coming off when I start to sweat."

"Sweat? It's in the fifties outside." He walked down the aisle for car stuff and began scanning for tape.

"Yeah, but we're gonna need to run."

"Why?" Sentinel looked up.

"Because my partner just got off the bus along with a few of his friends."

Sentinel looked out the window and saw several of them climbing out of the back of the ambulance. Why didn't they have on clothes?

"We gotta buss a move."

"No. We have time yet. They don't see us."

Sentinel looked a moment before coming over. He grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from an endcap and had it open by the time he'd reached her.

"What's your name?"

She looked at him. Her pupils were huge. "Veronica," she said. "Veronica Costa."

"This might sting a bit. I've never put this on a… wound this big. I'm Sentinel, by the way." He poured a generous amount over the side of her face. It fizzed and hissed and she turned her head to the side, spitting out what had gotten in her mouth.

"You mean like a guard?" He poured a generous amount of the hydrogen peroxide over his hands and rubbed it in before tearing off several strips of duct tape, the approximate length of the wound on her face. He overlapped them before tearing off and folding up three sheets of paper towel and placing them on the duct tape, leaving a bit of adhesive exposed all around.

"Yeah. My daddy had a theme goin'." He smiled. "Never bothered tellin' anybody what it was. Now hold still so I can get this on straight."

Veronica closed her eyes and held still. The makeshift bandage went on easily, but he applied two more strips of tape just to be sure it would hold. Then Sent poured some more hydrogen peroxide onto another paper towel and dabbed at the scrapes on her face.

She turned and looked at her transparent reflection in a refrigerator door for all different juices. "Not bad," she said. "Actually, it's pretty good. You got some practice somewhere."

"In prison," Sentinel said. It wasn't exactly the truth, but if they lived long enough maybe he'd go into detail. All those years taking care of his mother had been a jail sentence of a kind. "Look, they're startin' to get close. I can make a sling for that arm, but not here."

"Cool, but turn your head," Veronica said, reaching for her pocket. Sentinel didn't ask. He looked outside, watching them. The other EMT was making a beeline for the gas station, the other ones were spreading out in the street. And then he saw what looked like an older Indian dude, in brown slacks and a short-sleeve button-up shirt, smoking a cigarette with a man purse slung over his shoulder.

"Okay," Veronica said behind him. Sentinel looked at her as she stood and grabbed a bottle of Tylenol. "Just in case—my back is really killing me. And I'm gonna say it for the record. I'm a girl and all, but I just started having wicked gas pain. If you think you smelt it, I probably dealt it."

Sentinel nodded. "All right to run, right? We need to get out into the open. We need lots of elbow room. I came up against some of these guys at the place where my car was gettin' fixed. They're slow, but they close in pretty fast. About thirty feet away is a weapon I was carryin' and I'd like to get it back.

"Did you kill any of them?"

"I don't know. I try not to. I mean, whatever's in those stomachs, I don't want to get any of it on me. Who knows if it's catchy."

Sentinel thought she made a face, but didn't press it. He was about to push open the door when the first shot went off, ricocheting somewhere nearby. They both ducked. When he peeked, the guy EMT was almost at the door. Sent spotted the Indian crossing the street, the gun in his hand trained in their direction.

"What's going on out there?" Veronica asked.

"Some guy with a gun. He's shootin' at your partner."

The second shot shattered the window next to them.

"And he's a really bad shot."

Fleshbags, ep XXII

He'd seen a few people go into shock before and they were all different. Some people just screamed, some just kept moving and talking, on auto-pilot like they were robots or something. She fell in that second category.

So long as she played along he could deal. Sent thought she would sit when they got off the street; instead she pulled something out of her shirt pocket and before he knew it, was giving herself a shot in the neck.

"Ay, man!" he said, turning away. Sentinel's stomach did flip-flops as he got that coppery taste at the back of his mouth. He'd seen gunshot wounds, stabbings, compound fractures, but needles…

"It's done," she said. He kept his hand up to his brow as if she would inflict the vision of the needle in her skin on him again. He hunched over, putting his hands on his knees, breathing deep and closing his eyes. "Squeamish?"

Sentinel could only nod. He had no clue how he'd been able to give his mother her shots all those years, maybe it was a psychosomatic thing, but now he could barely even look at a needle. He got that tinny feeling in his head and dry-heaved a couple times before reigning it in.

"I'm on the sea-I'm on the sea-I'm on the sea," he chanted.

"What's that?"

It took him a moment before he could speak. "I got seasick on a boat once. After I found out about my… thing with needles I realized if felt like gettin' seasick. I had a guy tell me I needed to be 'hyperaware'. He told me to chant I was on the sea and picture it so that my brain could work through it."

"Is it working?"

"No." And with a big heave everything Sentinel had eaten that day came up and out. Even though he always hated vomiting, it almost always made him feel better. After two more, smaller heaves he slowly stood up straight.

"You all right?" she said, resting a hand on his back. He laughed, his stomach still aching. He should have been asking her that.

"Did you watch me?"

"Yeah. I see people get sick a lot and I always do. I'm OCD like that."

Sent made a face, but let it go. He guessed a person had to be bent to go into the medical profession at all.

"How are you…" he trailed off.

"Standing upright still? My magic potion." She patted her pocket. "Got a few more in here. Want one?"

"No thanks." He waved at her. Sentinel had smoked part of a cigarette with his older brother once, choked on it, and had never touched anything else since. Besides, she would have had to poke him.

"I need something for my face." That much was for sure. They turned and headed for the gas station he was about to go in before the ambulance almost ran him over.

Sentinel pushed open the door. They walked over to the aisle where the paper towel was and saw a pool of blood that someone must have slipped in.

"That's weird," she said.

"What?"

"The blood. It's separating. There's a layer of plasma on top."

"So?"

"Is that not supposed to happen?"

"No. It is, but look. You can see it happening."

Sentinel looked down again and sure enough, it looked like it was changing some kind of crazy way.

Fleshbags, ep XXI

All across the southern end of the city, from Adams to Dequindre they began rising. Had Capel seen it happening he would've known. He would've seen the ones he'd shot and killed, rising from apparent death, save for the one he'd shot in the head. Maybe he would have known what to do. Maybe he would have shot them again and then turned the gun on himself, after all, he had to have known he was infected with the same thing.

They had all been shambling, mindless creatures, attracted to fellow humans, although they would not have been described as such by scientists who knew what was coursing through them. Prior to being shot by police officers they did not bite, scratch, or become aggressive in any manner. They craved proximity. But now the ones that had been 'killed' rose again with an aggression absent before. There were only two busses rounding up the bodies. One had picked a body that turned out to be not as dead as they'd originally thought. The EMT had managed to get the body strapped down, but eventually the infected corpse had escaped and attacked and killed both technicians.

The other bus came to a stop at the corner of Main and Fifteen Mile. Officer Drew Cooper had shot and killed this one and it was moments away from rising. The two EMTs got out and rolled it into a body bag before zipping it up. The male (thus referenced as he would soon be dead and rise again shortly after) had expressed his distrust that they were being told the whole truth, that anyone whose body was in that condition had to have been dead before he'd been shot. He hadn't quite worked out the conspiracy, but he was sure there was one considering their superiors' lack of forthcoming. He was right for all the wrong reasons.

The female only wanted to get the job done. Her back had begun aching for some reason (they'd been assured that whatever it was these people had been afflicted with wasn't contagious), probably from all the lifting they'd been doing in such a short amount of time.

They'd parked the bus on the easement, getting it as close as possible to the body so they didn't have far to walk with it. Once they had the body by the rear of the bus, they'd counted one, two, three! and tossed the body atop a stack of others before piling in the front and driving off.

The female would have sworn she'd seen something odd, like a finger poking out one of the body bags in the middle, but they didn't have time to peek inside and she kept it to herself as they sped off to the next body somewhere on Stephenson.

They'd gone two miles when a hand fell on her shoulder. She turned to her partner to say something, but saw him staring out his window. The closing seconds of her life were occupied by a man's mouth closing on her face. The male screamed, bashing his own head against the passenger side window, cracking it. He remained conscious, barely, and by the time he was dead several others had joined in.

The female had managed to get her door open while the bus was traveling at more than sixty miles an hour and tumbled out. The bus crashed, narrowly missing another male who managed to dive out of the way. She was struggling to her feet when he spotted her.

Sentinel dusted himself off. If only an ambulance almost running him over was the craziest thing he'd seen today he'd count himself lucky. There was a woman in the middle of the street, trying to get up. He cursed himself, looked both ways, and jogged out to her.

She was in bad shape. She must have been in the ambulance because she had a patch on the shoulder of her shirt with 'EMT' on it. Did she jump out?

"Hey lady, you all right?" The question sounded stupid as soon as he'd said it. At least her wrist was broken, it was bent all wrong. He reached to help her up, but drew back. "Hey, I think you s'posed to lay down."

"Not a good idea." Her words sounded funny. Then she turned her head up at him and he saw her mouth was all jacked up. Part of her cheek was gone and where she should have had a bunch of teeth was a jagged, bloody mess. "We're in the street."

Another Great Review

Just got a fantastic review of Goners over at The Written Universe.

Fleshbags, ep XX

His hairline shifted as realization crossed his face. "Kara? It's a small world, huh?" She hadn't seen 'White' Dwight Miller since… Junior year and hadn't recognized him with the dark hair and clear skin. Dwight was an outcast amongst outcasts. Had he played a sport or had some kind of swagger he would've fit in somewhere. He'd been one of three white students in their high school and the only boy. She'd felt bad for him, but not bad enough to risk being exiled by her own clique (which included one of the two white girls). She'd done what most people in her situation had done: she forgot about him.

"You remember me?" Kara said.

"Yeah, I do." He smiled and the dorky expression brought the face she'd last seen fifteen years ago into crystal clarity in her mind's eye. "You were fiiiiine." He tried to get up and winced. "Uh, not that you're not now. Can you help me up?"

Kara went from blushing to outright embarrassment. That was the other thing about Dwight: he hit on all the fat girls back in the day. None of them talked to him, either. She bent, wrapped her arms under his and wrenched him off the floor, feeling a little sour at the implied comparison. Dwight cried out, but held his feet.

"You gotta be quiet," she said. "I was serious—I do have a patient here. I don't want her waking up and hearing you make noise. I don't want either one of you bringing any of them around." She thumbed toward the window and Dwight nodded.

She looked around at the various objects throughout the basement. She spotted what must have been an old dresser, covered with a dusty white sheet. Kara had no clue if Mrs. Carter had a hammer and nails around and did not want the attention the noise would bring anyway. The dresser would have to do.

"Can you help me lift that?"

"So long as it's not too heavy, yeah," Dwight said, stretching his back. It popped audibly, several times in quick succession. Kara went over and he limped behind. She found a handhold around the edge and nodded to Dwight when she saw he had it too.

"One, two, three." They lifted and he pulled an agonized face, but didn't say anything. As they were almost to the window, though, he set it down before Kara and it scraped against the floor.

"Hello?" came Mrs. Carter's voice from upstairs.

Kara balled up her fists, but held back from lashing out at Dwight, feeling guilt for reasons other than what she'd done to his back.

"Stay here," she said, heading for the stairs. "And be quiet."

Mrs. Carter stared at her when she came in the bedroom. She looked like she'd seen a ghost.

"Somebody was at the window," she said. Kara felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end at the thought of one of those people pressing against the glass again. But the shades were drawn. Kara walked over and poked her fingers through the slats to take a peek. There looked to be even more out there, but they still weren't too close.

She took a deep breath, relieved. "Mrs. Carter, there's nobody there."

"I know what I saw," she said. "There was somebody at the window. Check it again—I heard it break."

"I looked, Mrs. Carter. It isn't broken."

"Do you have a boy in my house?"

"I… no, Mrs. Carter. There's only us."

"Oh," she said, making a face. "I have to use the W.C."

Kara helped her out of bed and to the bathroom. She stepped out to let Mrs. Carter preserve her dignity and helped her to the sink when she was done.

"I know who it was," Mrs. Carter said, smiling. Her voice was softer. "It was my Diallobé. When he comes back you'll let him in?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea, Mrs. Carter."

"Oh no! It'll be fine. Charles won't be home for several hours yet."

Fleshbags, ep IXX

She'd finally gotten Mrs. Carter to go to sleep. Kara was afraid if she kept making noise she would attract more of those… people to the window. There had to be at least fifty of them out there now and more filtering in by the moment. A couple had come near the house, but had wandered off before they got to the porch. Mostly they just stood out in the street, bumping into each other.

What did they want? Kara tried her cell phone again, but it still wasn't working. She was already finger-scooping apple butter before she realized what she was doing. Kara didn't try to stop herself.

She went into Mrs. Carter's closet and rummaged around until she found that radio. She brought it back into the kitchen and unscrewed the back with a butterknife. There were a couple frayed wires in there but it should have been able to get something.

Kara blew the dust out of it, which caused a coughing fit. She plugged it in and got static. For a moment she was crestfallen, but then she tried the dial. There was no signal either way she turned.

She cursed and spun it. Kara dropped her head, wishing there was something she could do other than eat.

But for just a second… she thought there was a beep. There it was again. It was in a cloud of static, but there was definitely beeping. Kara wanted to adjust it, but she was afraid of totally losing the signal.

Maybe it was an emergency signal. She'd always remembered seeing those on TV, but had never been in an 'actual emergency'. Maybe if she left the radio on instructions on what to do next would follow.

Then she heard a glass break.

It came from the same direction as Mrs. Carter's bedroom, but Kara wasn't so sure she wanted to see what it was. But if someone was coming in, especially one of those people outside, she wanted to know sooner rather than later.

She walked swiftly into the bedroom and checked to see the windows were still in tact. But if not here…

There it was again. She headed out of the bedroom again and past the basement door.

Could it have been coming from down there?

Kara grabbed a small pot from the stovetop and headed down.

Whoever it was was halfway through when she saw him. His legs were dangling as he slid slowly inside. Kara came to the bottom of the stairs, took three long strides and began hammering his back with the pot. He had on a leather jacket, but he made grunt-screaming sounds with each blow.

He fell inside and landed on his butt. Kara wished she'd grabbed a knife, but she was pretty certain she could split his skull with this pot. She reached over her shoulder, readying for a two-armed swing.

"Wait-wait-wait!" the man screamed, holding out his hand. "Please!"

She paused, knowing she could knock him out at any time. He was a skinny white kid with all of three hairs on his chin.

"Why are you breaking in here?" she asked.

"Didn't you see those things out there?" he said.

"I have an elderly patient. You have to leave."

"Are you kidding me? Leave? There's nowhere to go!"

"You can't stay here." Kara glanced out the back window. "You—I don't know who you are."

"Here!" He dug out his wallet and held out his driver's license between his fingers. "Ow, my back."

Kara was hesitant, but she took it. She read his name and realized it was familiar.

"Dwight?" she said. "White Dwight?"

Fleshbags, ep XVIII

Bill swiped the papers off the floor and began scanning through them. They were little forms of some kind, looked like they were meant to catalog information. At the top of each was a handwritten four digit number. Below were three lines preceded by 'volatile', 'docile', and 'other'. The initials, 'AA' were scribbled at the bottom in ragged cursive. Most had a check mark by 'docile' but there were at least a half dozen 'volatiles'. Two in the middle had a check by 'other'. He turned them over, but there wasn't any writing on the back.

"Hm, that's funny," Bill said, looking at one of the 'other' ones. The three digit number at the top had the same street number as Mr. Anders' house. He tossed the papers aside and walked over to the couch. Maybe the keys had slipped under a pillow.

"My stomach hurts," the guy upstairs said. "Please hurry." Bill tossed the couch to no avail, ignoring him. Nothing.

He looked up just in time to see the basement door creak open the tiniest bit.

"Aw hell no." Bill stared at the door, not wanting to go. But with no phones, no police who knew how long it was going to be before help came? He stalked over to the powder room and saw Sarah through the windows. She looked more worried than ever. He gave his best smile and gave her a thumbs up.

He took a deep breath. No need to procrastinate. The guy upstairs was moaning now. Big baby and his tummy ache. Bill was the one waltzing around this creepy house. He threw open the basement door and went down.

There was a fluorescent light on. Bill stepped gingerly until he got to the bottom. He rounded the stairs and there was Mr. Anders… with a thing in his mouth. It was some kind of tube with a plunger. He was drawing the plunger back, filling the tube with some kind of fluid. Mr. Anders pulled the tube out and it was twice as long as Bill had originally seen with a syringe tip. Mr. Anders regarded it for a moment like he was amazed at how much had been in there. Then he turned to a tray he had on a table and filled about two dozen specimen cups. There were many more specimen cups on several stacked trays on the floor against the wall. All of them looked like they'd been filled with the same stuff.

Mr. Anders tried to clear his throat several times before picking up a bottle of water from the table. He swished it around in his mouth then gargled before spitting on the floor.

"Better," Mr. Anders said. His voice was like a long gravel road. Bill knew he shouldn't be watching, that he should be hightailing it out of here back to his own house, locking the door and grabbing a hold Sarah. But he couldn't move his feet. Mr. Anders picked up a clipboard and Bill could hear the pen carving into it as his arm jittered up and down before he set it back down with shaky hands. "There appears to be… some residual… khaff!"

Mr. Anders began a coughing fit, reaching for the syringe again. He ejected the contents onto the floor and shoved it back into his mouth until only the end of it could be seen. His hand drew back with the plunger and when he pulled the syringe out it was full again.

"It appears all of the blood has been metabolized by the virus," Mr. Anders said. "The patient will need more unaffected tissue to survive, else the remaining organs will be cannibalized as well."

Then he said a bunch of other brainy stuff Bill couldn't have even begun to understand, but he'd heard enough. The word 'virus' had been spoken and those things were almost never good. Bill turned around to run back upstairs, slipped and banged his shin on a step. He fell on his side, cradling the leg to his chest and hissing like a snake.

Mr. Anders shuffled in his spot until he was turned around. He looked at Bill as if he didn't know what he was.

"Todd?" he said. He was shirtless and Bill could see everything inside him from his low hanging belly to his collar bone. "How did you get down here?"

Fleshbags, ep XVII

This was gonna be so awesome. He couldn't wait to tell Sarah. He had some muscle-bound dude chained up in the bedroom? Oh, it would be worth losing out on round two. He had a haircuit like Bill's, in fact, he looked like he could have been his cousin. They even had the same build.

Wait a minute.

"Hey, uh, how tall are you?"

"What? I-I'm six-three." The guy shook his head. "You gotta get these cuffs off me."

"Just a sec." Bill stepped out of the room. He tried to be as quiet as possible, but he couldn't help but laugh. Mr. Anders didn't want Sarah, he wanted him!

When he was finally able to compose himself he came back in the room. There was probably a key in one of the drawers or something.

"So… what were you guys up to?" He snuck a look at the guy as he was checking through Mr. Anders' drawers. At least he had the dignity to look embarrassed.

"Nothing I want any part of," the guy started. "Look, I'm from a service. This isn't a career or anything for me, but it pays bills until I get done with school. Al and I don't have sex, we… roleplay."

Bill highly doubted the naked (his pants and tighty-whiteys were thrown over the edge of the bathtub) man and Mr. Anders had never gone a round or two, but that cocked an eyebrow. "Hey, you don't owe me an explanation." He hoped his attempt at reverse psychology worked.

"Hey man, I'm not gay. The guy just likes to look. And play doctor. He gives me colored water to drink and pretends to mark down my vitals after."

"Buddy, you don't have to explain anything to me." Bill shook his head. "I'm not finding any key. Maybe he has it downstairs."

"Please don't leave me here. I was already waiting for him before he came home. I handcuffed myself to the bed like always, but when he came in, there was something wrong with him. He looked… wet. And he had this big syringe in his hands. I tried to talk to him, but he was just off. He wouldn't say anything. I took a sip from the syringe and he shot the whole thing in my mouth."

I bet he did, Bill thought.

"It didn't taste right and I spat it out. But I think he really gave me something this time. I feel sick."

This just kept getting better. Bill didn't know how much more he could take.

"I'm gonna check downstairs and come right back. You just stay cool, okay?"

Bill ran back down the hall and downstairs. He'd never been into the kink kind of stuff so he had no idea where you would keep keys to handcuffs. Maybe on a keychain?

"Keys, keys, keys," he said, walking around. They weren't on the dining room table, the island or counters in the kitchen, the coffee table or the entertainment center. Sometimes he left his keys in his jacket pocket and Sarah was always on him about putting away his jacket. Bill opened the closet door and started combing through the jacket pockets in there.

The old guy had some pretty decent threads in here. He'd gone through half the jackets when he came to a white lab coat. Even before he spotted the blood it didn't look like it belonged in a regular closet.

Bill took it out of the closet on the hanger still. The red stuff was smeared across the front like he'd been wiping his hands on it.

What kind of experiments were they doing in there?

He was a little hesitant to check the pockets. He'd hated needles ever since he was digging through his Aunt Brenda's backseat for change in her station wagon and gotten poked with one of her old insulin needles.

Bill turned the lab coat upside down and shook it until everything fell out of the pockets and fell on the floor.

Some loose coin, a badge, a couple of those pens that wrote in three different colors of ink and some slips of paper. Great. No keys.

Fleshbags, ep XVI

"Time to get back on the clock." Bill walked back into the great room. Nothing going on in the living room, powder room, here, or the kitchen. That left laundry room, basement and upstairs. He wasn't in a rush to go to anybody's basement (that included his own, but he'd never tell Sarah that) and he doubted Mr. Davis had come in, thrown on a load of wash and had a heart attack, so that left upstairs. Bill started heading that way when he saw the entertainment center.

Hold on a second…

What was the guy into? Maybe if he saw what kinds of movies he watched he'd have a better idea of what he was dealing with. He thumbed down the tower, reading the titles. Just like he thought: a bunch of stuff he'd either never heard of or would never watch anyway. Sarah would probably love to watch movies with him.

There were three big drawers beneath the giant television. He slid open the first one and more movies. Some action flicks in here, some horror movies. Okay, maybe the guy was just a fan of cinema in general. He slid the drawer back and went for the next one and his eyes almost jumped out of his head.

Games. All the new stuff. Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii. Sports, first-person shooters, puzzles. Mr. Davis might not be such a bad guy after all! He opened the door next to the television and his eyes began to water. All three systems were there, but he had everything. Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox, Nintendo 64, NeoGeo, Jaguar, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Nintendo and even a Sega. But wait a minute. At the very bottom were an Atari 2600, a 5200 and…

Was that a Colecovision?

Bill had spent countless hours playing Tarzan and Popeye. This time a tear did come to his eye and he was unashamed. He slid the second drawer closed and pulled out the third and saw just about every classic cartridge he could remember.

If Mr. Davis were dead Bill would see to it himself he was buried right. He was a man amongst men.

As he turned to the stairs he heard a bump. Then another one. Steady now, consistent. Bump-bump-bump-bump. Maybe Mr. Davis had stroked out and had only one good leg like in that movie. He raced upstairs and looked around. All the doors up here were shut.

Bill figured there were four bedrooms and a bathroom, with another bath in the master bedroom. Mr. Davis had the next size up from theirs and Bill knew the layout for the most part. He'd painted his walls—Bill had yet to do theirs that color Sarah had picked out—and had a row of paintings hung on them going down the hall.

Bill opened the door closest to him. There was only a bed with modest sheets covering it. He turned to the next door and opened that one. The same, except the sheets were white and a lot nicer. Lacey. He jogged down the hall and took the door on the left. There on a bed was a shirtless man handcuffed to the bedpost.

"Thank goodness!" the man said. "I thought I was going to be here forever. I think Al's sick."

"Al?" Bill said.

"The guy who lives here. Do you live with him? I'm so sorry if you two…"

"No-no," Bill interrupted.