Life of the Dead Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 7

  Bundy only recognized one of the other inmates, a beanpole everyone called Cob because he didn’t just eat the corn, he chewed on the cob until it disappeared. Probably why he’s going to the hospital, Bundy thought. That can’t be healthy.

  The rest of the group was hacking like they had whooping cough. It seemed like almost everyone in the prison was sick. According to the lifers that was normal. “One gets sick; we all get sick,” they said. But these six were particularly ill.

  Two guards chaperoned the inmates. Errickson, the younger of the two, suffered from little man syndrome with bodybuilder arms and no visible fat. He sported a high and tight, nerd glasses, and a bad attitude. He stood beside the bus door and was all too eager to herd them on. “Squeeze your fat ass in there, Bundy,” Errickson ordered. “If it’ll fit through the door, that is.”

  Bundy ambled along in no particular hurry. “I’m coming, Boss. Don’t work yourself up.”

  Errickson scowled and rested his hand on his utility belt, which contained his collapsible baton, taser, and pepper spray. Bundy held his handcuffed hands up before him to mime surrender. “Don’t taze me, bro.”

  Bundy chuckled. Errickson didn’t.

  The bus sagged down when Bundy stepped aboard and the old metal creaked as he climbed the two steps and moved toward the seats. The other guard, Allebach, was pushing fifty and much more relaxed than his young partner.

  “You good?” Allebach asked as Bundy moved sideways through the narrow aisle.

  “Sure thing, Boss.”

  Bundy was the last prisoner on. The rest sat side by side, cuffed together in pairs. Bundy got his own seat. Being huge had its advantages.

  Allebach took a seat at the back of the bus while Errickson stood watch at the front. The driver, a wheezy old fart, who looked like he should have retired a decade ago, looked over his shoulder to his passengers. “That everyone?”

  Errickson nodded. “Hit the road, Pop.”

  Bundy couldn’t see the driver, but he suspected the man sneered. He certainly would have.

  Chapter 13

  Juli Villareal chain-smoked Camels as she sat in front of the gigantic LCD screen and watched Donald in the Kitchen on the Home Shopping Channel. She didn’t care if Donald was going gray, getting soft around the middle and queerer than Elton John. On days like today, he was her whole world.

  “And if six inches isn’t enough, we also have an eight for those of you who appreciate a few extra inches,” Donald said with a smile and a wink. “And don’t even get me started on the ten inch! Oh, lordy!”

  Juli laughed out loud. LOLed, as she thought her kids would say, only they wouldn’t actually say that of course. Oh, that Donald was so naughty sometimes. She grabbed the phone and punched in the HSC number without even looking. It rang twice.

  “Thank you for calling the Home Shopping Channel. How may we brighten your day?”

  “I was calling about the Venice Cookware Donald’s selling.”

  “Oh, yes, Ma’am. Would you like to place an order?”

  “Actually, I already own a set. I thought maybe I could give a testimonial on the air.”

  Juli had given two live testimonials in the past and both times she got so excited that she thought she might pee her pants. Donald talked to her on the air and thanked her for her call. It was heavenly.

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but we already have two other callers waiting to share their experiences with the product. Are you sure you don’t need another set? These just became available in McIntosh red.”

  Juli’s eyes widened. Her pans were boring silver. McIntosh red? That was too good to pass up.

  “Yes, I would!”

  She rattled off her name and the salesman pulled up her account. Juli Villareal was a superb customer at HSC and they had all her info on file.

  She hadn’t always been a shopaholic. From ages twenty-two to thirty-six she was a blissfully happy stay at home mother and a darned good one. Everyone said so.

  Her twins, Matt and Marcy, were everything she could have ever wanted. And her husband, Mark, was the type of man every girl grew up wanting to marry. He was handsome and kind and a good provider. He’d been the top salesman at Evergreen Insurance for twelve years running. It was the perfect upper middle class life. Until it wasn’t.

  Four years ago she was trying to find a video of Marcy’s dance solo on Mark’s iPhone when she uncovered a clip of a young blonde woman with enormous breasts treating a penis like it was a lollipop. There was a perfect, round mole at the base of the penis. A mole that was much too familiar for Juli to mistake.

  When Juli confronted him with the video, Mark admitted the affair. The blonde with the big boobs was his colleague. He promised to end it and Juli believed he had. He even transferred to another office to ease Juli’s mind.

  It helped to some extent, but their marriage was like a piece of china that someone dropped and glued back together. It seemed fine from a distance, but if examined up close, you could see the cracks that would never go away.

  Juli kept herself busy being the best mother she could be. She never missed a soccer match, dance recital, awards ceremony, or little league game. She chaperoned school trips and volunteered for the PTA. She took the twins to the mall and the movies and amusement parks.

  They were best friends — the three musketeers. Until they weren’t.

  About the time the twins started their journey through puberty, their desire to hang out with their mother faded like a bright cloth left out too long in the sun. Marcy broke off first.

  She needed a new dress for the Christmas Pageant and Juli was excited to take her shopping, but Marcy said she’d rather have her friends go with her to pick it out. It was a throwaway remark and the girl didn’t mean to hurt her mother’s feelings, but to Juli, it was like someone had chopped off her left arm.

  About a year later, she surprised Matt with tickets to see the new Transformers movie in Imax on opening night. She’d bought them weeks in advance and she wasn’t even sure what Imax was, but it sounded exciting. Only when she handed the tickets to Matt, he said he was too old to go to the movies with his mom. He must have seen the pain wash over her and quickly said they could still go this time, but the damage was done.

  Her family didn’t need her any more, but at least she had Donald in the Kitchen. Her brand new set of McIntosh red cookware only cost her $139.99 and they even split it into four easy payments. Life wasn’t so bad after all.

  The front door banged open. Matt walked in, talking into his cell phone, “I can’t tonight. I have practice at six.”

  Juli looked toward him, hoping for a ‘Hi, Mom,’ but didn’t even garner a nod.

  “Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we’ll go this weekend. I promise. Uh huh. Love you, too.” He tossed down his book bag beside the door and kicked off his Nikes.

  “Hello, Matt.”

  He glanced at his mother. “Oh. Hi.”

  The boy was tall like his father and even more handsome. His blue eyes stood out against his olive skin and patches of black stubble grew on his cleft chin, making him look more like a twenty-year-old than his true age of fifteen.

  “Was that Laura?”

  His brow furrowed. “No. Elise. I broke up with Laura a month ago. Jesus!”

  “Sorry. Sorry. Don’t bite my head off.”

  He looked to the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?”

  Despite a kitchen filled with high quality cookware and gadgets, Juli hadn’t given it much thought. She considered the options. “There’s some lasagna in the freezer. I’ll heat it up.”

  “We had lasagna last week!”

  “That’s why they’re called leftovers, my son. They won’t kill you.”

  “Whatever.”

  He sneezed twice without covering his mouth, spraying spittle over the granite countertops.

  “Bless you.”

  Matt stomped up the stairs to his room and Juli heard the door slam shut. She climbed off the couch, grabbed a paper towel and wip
ed off the counter.

  I wonder if he’s got that bug that Marcy has, she thought. Marcy had woken up that morning coughing and sneezing almost non-stop. Juli offered to take her to the doctor, but Marcy only glared, took a Sudafed, and said, ‘I’m fine!’ before fleeing the house like she was making a jailbreak.

  There was so much love in the Villareal household, Juli almost couldn’t bear it.

  Chapter 14

  It was a quarter of one in the afternoon and the boy who cut Emory Prescott’s lawn should have been there by noon. Emory paced back and forth on the porch, casting frequent, furtive glances toward the long bricked driveway. He kept expecting to discover him, but kept ending up disappointed.

  Christopher, the boy, was ordinarily quite timely and had not been late once in the two summers he’d been under Emory’s employ. The old man was getting anxious.

  He wasn’t worried about the lawn. Spring had been dry and the grass had grown less than an inch from the week prior. Emory was upset because he’d become fond of the boy and his visits. Sometimes he didn’t even bother Christopher to take the mower out of the garage, they would simply sit on the big porch and sip sun tea and chat.

  It was an odd pair; that was for certain. Emory was seventy-eight years old, but his trim build and good health made him appear at least a decade younger. Christopher was more than sixty years his junior. He wore his pants so low that his boxer shorts showed and Emory took more than a little enjoyment watching his nebby neighbors stare as the boy strutted about.

  Emory had always hated Fox Chapel, with all its bankers and lawyers and local pseudo celebrities. He only moved there at the demand of Grant, his partner of almost thirty years, who pleaded that he wanted to live in a “good section of the city” after growing up poor and scared in the Hill District. Emory obliged, but always resented him for it.

  Grant was twelve years his junior. When they met, he was a dance major at the city’s premier arts school. Emory saw him for the first time when he was at the school to give away some of his family’s money. As the superintendent gushed over his generous donation, Emory's attention wandered and he caught sight of the nineteen-year-old beauty as he twirled and floated across the stage during rehearsal.

  Emory stayed until the class ended and waited for Grant to exit the changing room. When he did, he saw the young man was stunning up close, too. He asked Grant if he’d ever been to New York City and, when he said no, Emory offered to take him. Within a year, they were living together and would have married if such a thing were possible.

  The first few years of their coupling were full of love and passion, but as that wore off, the differences in their personalities took a toll. Grant loved the money. Emory did, too, mainly for the freedom it provided, but Grant became addicted to it. Shopping trips to London and Paris. Vacations in Tahiti and Tuscany. The winter home he had to have in Key West.

  Emory loved making his beautiful beau happy, but sometimes happiness seemed as elusive to Grant as a trip to Jupiter. He acted the part, went to all the galas, sat on numerous charity boards, dined with the city’s elite; the things rich people do, but Emory often thought his lover never looked as happy as he had that first time he saw him, jumping into the air under the purple and pink stage lights.

  As they grew older, it was clear their love story wasn’t the storybook romance Emory always longed for. Neither broached the subject of separating and, as far as Emory knew, there had been no trysts or affairs, but they felt more like roommates living under one huge roof. Ships meeting only occasionally at port. Emory sometimes felt his greatest failure in life was that he could never give his one, true love the happiness he deserved.

  Their glorious mansion on the hill felt more like a prison than home for the past fourteen months. That was after a three pack a day smoking habit and lung cancer put Grant in the ground and ever after became never was.

  Emory kept meaning to find a realtor and list the house. He wanted rid of it and fancied he might buy one of those obnoxious motor coaches with names like Born Free or Renegade and drive it around the country while there was still a country worth seeing. Maybe it would even inspire him to write the book he’d always talked about writing, and which Grant had so encouraged, but never got around to doing.

  Just as he began to think he must have mixed up his days — something that happened more often than he cared to think about lately — the whiny drone of Christopher’s moped came within earshot. A grin which deepened the road map of wrinkles that etched Emory’s face appeared, and he skipped down the porch steps to meet the boy in the driveway.

  Christopher’s moped skidded to a stop and he jumped off without bothering to drop the kickstand. It crashed onto its side as the boy yanked off his helmet. He was tall and built like an athlete, which he was. Emory had gone to every one of his football games and cheered him on like he was his own son.

  The boy’s actual father had never been around and his mother died in a traffic accident a few years earlier. He lived with an aunt who worked too much just to stay ahead of the bill collectors and Emory knew much of the money he paid Christopher also went toward those bills.

  Emory had given him generous Christmas bonuses and raises at every opportunity, but was wary of appearing as if he was trying to buy the boy’s affection. He was enamored with Christopher and didn’t want it to show. Nothing sexual — Emory’s sail hadn’t flown past half mast in over a decade and that didn’t bother him in the least — but the boy's very presence was intoxicating.

  Emory lusted after Christopher's youth because, even if he was less than two full calendars away from becoming an octogenarian, he still felt like he was Christopher’s age in his mind. He would have eagerly traded everything he owned for that youth, for the chance to live life all over again. Impossible, of course, but the daydreams alone could brighten his mood on even the darkest day.

  “I was worried you weren’t—” Emory stopped when he saw Christopher’s panicked, wide-eyed expression. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s my aunt. I think she’s dying.”

  “Oh, my. I’m so sorry, Christopher. You certainly didn’t have to come here today if she--”

  “I need you to help her. You have to. Right now!”

  “I—” Emory paused, confused. “Why didn’t you call for an ambulance?”

  The boy pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “The phones are all out. Nine-one-one doesn't answer. I tried the hospital, too, and it won’t go through, either.”

  Emory tried his own cell, a Nokia so old it was practically an antique. He attempted to make a call and in his ear heard only the dull, continuous tone signaling a line out of order.

  “Please, Mr. Prescott, I didn’t know where else to go.”

  The boy, all six feet and sixteen years of him, was on the verge of tears

  “Of course. Of course, I’ll help, Christopher. Get in the Mercedes.”

  Chapter 15

  Eight months in culinary school and this was the result. Slicing off fatty roast beef and gristly ham and shoving it onto plates at the Hearty Buffet.

  Mead hadn’t graduated from the culinary academy, of course. He rarely finished anything. He dropped out of high school junior year. He had a nine month marriage when he was twenty-three. He had a kid that he hadn’t seen in three years. No “Father of the Year” or “World’s Greatest Dad” t-shirts coming in his future, that was for sure.

  Being a chef would be different, though. He’d wanted to be a chef since he was seven years old and always knew it was his destiny. But culinary school wasn’t any different than high school. Asshole know-it-all-teachers that treated him like shit. Uppity classmates who refused to talk to him after realizing he was white trash. He wanted to cook but he couldn’t deal with that bullshit. Life was too short.

  He was twenty-nine and thought he’d have accomplished something meaningful by now, but hadn’t. This job would turn things around, though.

  It was close to his shitty apartment, which
was good because his rusted out Cavalier knocked like the engine would blow any day now. The nine dollars an hour pay wasn’t great, but wasn’t terrible for the area. And best of all, he’d finally get to do something he loved.

  That’s what he thought when he landed the job. Reality was less romantic. The most cooking he’d done in three months was frying omelettes every Sunday morning, but even those eggs came pre-scrambled and poured out of a box.

  Every disgusting piece of food on the buffet, except the salad, came in frozen. Occasionally, they’d fire up an oven, but most of it got nuked in the industrial microwaves they kept out of sight in the back. Yet the poor, fat clientele that voted the buffet “Johnstown’s Best Value Eatery” three years running ate the shit up like it was farm fresh and made of gold.

  A wheezy, old woman with blue hair sidled up beside Mead’s station and looked at the two hunks of grayish meat. “Is there MSG in this?” she asked.

  “Probably.”

  “I can’t eat MSG. Gives me the trots.” She rubbed her ample belly as she said that.

  “That’s why we have plenty of bathrooms, Ma’am.”

  She examined him for a moment, trying to decide whether he was being rude or funny, decided on the latter, then chuckled.

  “Give me a slice of each. You only live once. Isn’t that what you kids say?”

  It flattered Mead to be referred to as a kid, even if she was old enough to be his grandmother, and gave her two extra large portions. She grinned at her haul, but before she could walk off she was surprised by an almost violent sneeze. Ropes of green snot hit the plexiglass covering the meat with a wet thwack. Mead was never so happy for the sneeze guard in his life.

  “Scuse me,” she said and didn't bother to clean up her expelled fluids before walking away.

  Mead tried to ignore the ooze but, as it precariously neared the edge and risked dripping onto the ham, he gave up, pulled a food-stained rag from his apron and wiped it away. A foggy haze remained behind, but he pretended not to see it as he deposited the rag straight into the trash bin.