The Raven Page 5

  Man, he missed movie theater popcorn.

  The old man asked, “You gonna take me up on my offer or aren’t you?”

  “I didn’t think you were serious.”

  “Hell’s bells, boy. If you want, I can get down on a knee and propose, though it might take a while to get back up again.”

  The ease of the man’s voice seemed a bit practiced. Though older, he didn’t look the slightest bit feeble.

  Dez chewed the inside of his mouth.

  The old man shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Dez watched him turn and disappear into the grove. He supposed that was how the man had appeared so suddenly. One minute cowled by the trees, the next staring at Dez from down the row. So yes, the man was sneaky. But was there anyone alive who wasn’t?

  Dez stared at the cleft in the peach row.

  Moonshine, the old man had said.

  Dez had never tried moonshine, couldn’t recall a time when it had been offered to him. He had little interest in drinking alcohol now, even less in hard liquor. Alcohol dehydrated you, gave you headaches. Made your mind foggy and your body listless. No, moonshine didn’t much appeal to him.

  But popcorn did. Was it possible the man had some? How long did popcorn stay good? Two years seemed an impossible amount of time, yet Dez had been surprised before. Only a month ago he’d discovered a cache of condensed soups – celery, broccoli, chicken noodle. He’d feared botulism, but he feared starvation even more. He’d boiled all five cans over a glorious three-day stretch, and he hadn’t been poisoned. If canned soup could keep for two years, maybe popcorn could too.

  Or so he told himself.

  Regardless, it wasn’t really about popcorn, was it? It was about trusting the man. Though he told himself it was unwise to do so, particularly less than twenty-four hours after he’d nearly been killed, he found himself approaching the shadowy cleft in the trees, ducking beneath a leafless branch, and scanning the grove for signs of the old man. Dez moved through the row, realizing as he did that the grass here was matted, that even though he was crosscutting the rows of peach trees, this was a path of sorts.

  After cutting across several rows, Dez caught sight of him. There was a country road about eighty yards distant. The rough path the man was treading took him toward the road, but it kept him safely concealed by the forest. Dez couldn’t tell whether the man was aware he was following. Then again, the man’s very nonchalance could be a ruse.

  Huh. Dez had no idea if he could trust him yet, but here he still was, trailing along after him, both of them moving with a casual gait, both of them potentially fatal to the other. Granted, Dez didn’t think of himself as dangerous, but how many people had he killed?

  Too goddamned many.

  Which meant the man was in as much peril as Dez was.

  Still not looking back, the man angled toward the road, and after pausing only perfunctorily, he crossed, the acceleration in his steps subtle but unmistakable.

  It gave Dez courage. If the man were afraid of being spotted, that meant he—

  The man paused and glanced back at Dez. “If you hurry up we can talk on the way. It’s just up the hill here.”

  Scowling, Dez glanced right and left, but the road appeared empty. Which meant exactly nothing. Just because the road was devoid of life didn’t mean the area was.

  Echoes of Stomper’s laughter sounded in his brain.

  Dez hesitated. “Why are you so keen on getting me back to your house?”

  The old man eyed him. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought.” He turned toward the woods.

  Just as he was about to disappear, Dez called, “Do you really have popcorn?”

  “More than I can eat in a lifetime.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Instead of answering, the old man waded into the forest across the road, and the underbrush swallowed him.

  Dez imagined the salty taste, the spongy texture. Yes, he’d risk death for popcorn.

  Chapter Seven

  Popcorn

  The first surprise was the chickens.

  Dez was used to possums, raccoons, loads of deer now that there were no cars to mow them down. But chickens?

  Like cows and pigs, chickens had all but disappeared, save rumors about them existing in cannibal compounds. The meat was not as appealing to the flesh-eaters, but palatable enough to stock and use whenever human prey couldn’t be found.

  Dez suspected that was frequently the case these days. Why else the need for Judases like Gentry?

  Only a few chickens were pecking about the fenced-in area next to the barn, but there were enough of them to make Dez believe the adjacent coop housed even more. Just beyond the coop and the weathered barn stood a yellow outbuilding, the corners and siding showing rust. Since the house didn’t have a garage, Dez figured the pole barn had served that purpose.

  The old man’s house was a two-story with yellow aluminum siding and navy-blue shutters. Dez expected the color scheme to continue inside, but the kitchen looked like every farmhouse kitchen he’d ever seen. Oak table, oak cabinets, oak flooring. Hunter-green trim along the ceiling featuring red apples. Beige wallpaper beginning to brown, also featuring red apples.

  They stood in silence, the old man in the center of the room grasping the back of a chair, Dez in the doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen. To Dez’s left, there were a couple iron hooks affixed to a board that read KEYS. On one hook there was a big key ring he figured went with the house and the outbuildings. On the other hung one with the Dodge insignia.

  “Come in if you want,” the man said.

  Despite his wariness, Dez felt a bit overprepared in the old-fashioned kitchen. The crossbow spread behind him like dragon’s wings, the Ruger and machete and everything else weighing him down, making him feel like some kind of astronaut come to inspect an inferior alien species.

  The man nodded at the crossbow. “You travel heavy.”

  “You know of the Four Winds Bar?” Dez asked.

  The man’s eyebrows gathered inward. “Best stay away from there.”

  “You know the one who owns it?”

  The old man gave a shudder, nearly imperceptible, but definitely there. “Steer clear of him. They say he’s something…unnatural.”

  “He took someone from me.”

  The man regarded him in silence. At length, he reached up, touched his wizened chin. “How do you keep your beard looking so nice?”

  “I trim it.”

  The man nodded. He leaned toward Dez. “You wanna see the popcorn?”

  Dez suppressed a grin at the other man’s eagerness. It was as if he was showing off a ’68 Corvette rather than a food that until a couple years ago was no more exotic than wheat bread.

  The old man gestured. “It’s just here in the pantry.”

  Dez started across the kitchen. “You’re not going to smack me in the head are you? I’d just as soon not wake up roasting on a spit.”

  A corner of the man’s mouth lifted. “I look like a maneater to you?”

  “Why does everyone call them that? What’s wrong with ‘cannibal’?”

  The man thumbed on a flashlight and stepped aside so Dez could enter the pantry.

  “Holy God,” Dez breathed.

  “Told you,” the man said, and though Dez wasn’t looking at him, he could sense the breadth of the man’s grin.

  Dez counted five cedar shelves in the pantry. A section about four feet wide, from floor to ceiling, was stockpiled with boxes of popcorn.

  Dez read the label on the box. “‘Bacon Popcorn. The Purest Corn in the Midwest’.” He glanced back at the man. “Bacon-flavored?”

  The man was already shaking his head. “It’s not bacon-flavored, and we all tried to tell Gary it was stupid to call it Bacon Popcorn, but you think he listened? ‘People will
think it’s bacon-flavored,’ we said. ‘But my name is Gary Bacon,’ he argued, ‘so the name has to be Bacon Popcorn. Same as Orville Redenbacher.’”

  Dez started to smile.

  The old man shook his head. “‘It’s not the same,’ we told him. ‘Orville and Redenbacher aren’t flavors, now are they?’ Gary would fold his arms and look like a kid sitting in time-out. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my name. It goes back generations.’ ‘We’re not saying there’s anything wrong with your name,’ we pointed out. ‘But at least add an apostrophe – Bacon’s Popcorn – to show that the Bacon is possessive.’”

  “No go?” Dez asked.

  “‘Not catchy enough,’ Gary said.” The man grunted. “As though Bacon Popcorn is catchy.” He shook his head. “Hell.”

  “Plus,” Dez added, “you could see it as false advertising. If people buy the popcorn thinking it’s bacon-flavored—”

  “I know!” the man said, swatting Dez on the arm. “But do you think he listened to me?” He fetched a sigh. “Well, Gary died in the first month anyway, so it didn’t end up mattering.”

  Dez reached out, trailed a finger across one of the pale blue boxes, which featured a man’s red-mustached face in the center. “That Gary Bacon?”

  “Nice enough guy. Stubborn though.”

  “You get all these from the store?”

  “From the factory.”

  Dez tilted his head. “You’re telling me there’s a popcorn factory around here?”

  The man nodded. “Less than a mile away. It’s burned to the ground now, but I got these beforehand.”

  “Lucky you,” Dez said, but his salivary glands were working harder than ever, despite his state of semi-dehydration.

  “You want some?” the man asked.

  Dez turned all the way around this time. If this old bastard was attempting to lure him to his death like the ‘Hansel and Gretel’ witch, he’d put a bullet in his forehead.

  The old man’s good-natured expression disappeared. “Can we just pretend we’re not in hell for a moment? Can we pretend we both haven’t done things we wished to God we didn’t have to do?”

  Dez inspected the man’s features but found no signs of guile. “You can’t cook these in a microwave.”

  “I could,” the man said, “but that would take the generator, and I’m not using that till winter.”

  “Generators are loud,” Dez said. “Aren’t you afraid of attracting—”

  “Not this one. It’s a whole-house generator.”

  “Really.”

  “Yep. But not for popcorn.”

  “Then how—”

  “Come on,” the man said. They started across the kitchen, but the old man paused, nodded at the pantry. “Well, bring a box. I don’t think we’ll satisfy our hunger by gnawing on that crossbow of yours.”

  Dez retrieved a box of popcorn and followed him into the living room. “That’s twice you’ve commented on my weapon.”

  “It’s a useful piece of equipment,” the man said. He knelt before a brick-lined hearth and set to work crumpling sheets of ruled paper.

  “I found it in someone’s house,” Dez explained.

  “Of course you did. Grab a couple logs from over there, would you?”

  Dez followed the man’s gaze and saw, piled waist-high between an olive green couch and the wall, a stack of logs, each about two feet long. He selected a pair and returned to the fireplace, where the man accepted them with a muttered thanks.

  “My name’s Dez McClane,” he said as he hunkered next to the old man.

  “If you say so.”

  “Something wrong?”

  The old man said nothing.

  Dez watched him position the pair of logs in the sooty iron holder. Staring at the old man’s hands, which were heavily veined and not a bit arthritic-looking, Dez said, “Ordinarily, this is where you tell me your name.”

  The man crammed the balled paper into the gaps where the logs bowed slightly. “Jim,” he said. “You were explaining about the crossbow.”

  “We were in this rich neighborhood, some guy—”

  “We?” Jim had frozen, listening.

  “This was a while ago,” Dez explained, “after the first community I was in got…raided, I guess.” His throat constricted at the memory. “It was before I joined this place called the colony.”

  Jim had set to work crumpling more paper.

  “The neighborhood was affluent. We expected some of the houses to be inhabited, but they weren’t. The entire neighborhood…I don’t know, thirty houses? All of them wiped out. No one there at all.”

  “That’s about the size of things,” Jim commented. “Could you hand me the lighter? It’s on the piano.”

  Dez looked around and was surprised to discover an upright piano in the corner. He hadn’t noticed it because the lighting in here was so dim – just the single window in the center of the southern wall – and because there was a burgundy dropcloth running the length of the keyboard.

  Dez headed over and spotted a Zippo lighter on top of the piano. Glancing at the burgundy dropcloth, Dez saw the words ALL WE NEED IS LOVE embroidered in gold.

  Without turning, Jim raised his hand for the lighter. Dez placed it in his palm, and as Jim activated the flame and held it first to one and then to several of the crumpled balls of paper, he said, “Mary was a big one for The Beatles.”

  Dez watched the white balls of paper darken and send little tongues of orange flame to lick at the coarse bark. “My mom was too.”

  “Never cared for them myself,” Jim said. “More of a Doors fan. And Hendrix.”

  The fire whorled around the logs, the bark scorching and throwing up slate-colored smoke.

  Dez considered asking the man about Mary but decided against it. His stomach felt shoveled out and achy, the prospect of popcorn nearly too tantalizing to entertain. He couldn’t jeopardize this opportunity. How long had it been since he’d eaten popcorn? He remembered seeing a movie a week or so after the bombs flew, before anyone had clued in to how the virus was spreading or what it was actually doing to them. The film had been a remake of Jaws. Godawful. But the popcorn had been otherworldly.

  Jim stood with a groan, ambled over to a built-in bookcase, and produced a cast-iron pot, which he placed on the mantel, next to the box of Bacon Popcorn. “You were saying about the fancy neighborhood.”

  Dez watched Jim rip open the popcorn box with strong, sure fingers.

  Dez said, “Most of what was worth finding was picked through. We found an indoor court where we could shoot baskets, but the sound of the ball echoing in that cavernous space…we couldn’t get any enjoyment from it. Plus, when you scrounge for every morsel…when you’re just subsisting and trying to stay alive and everyone out there is a threat…it makes you angry, you know?”

  Jim produced a pocketknife, folded out the blade, and slit first the cellophane wrapper and then the brown paper bag within. He shook the kernels into the cast-iron pot with a clatter.

  Dez grunted. “Indoor basketball court. What an extravagance, right? When some people – I’m talking about before the Four Winds – couldn’t even afford food.”

  Jim set to work on another bag. “Some might say those folks should have gotten jobs.”

  Dez’s mouth watered at the tapping of kernels in the pot. “Would you be one of those folks?”

  “Depends,” Jim said, placing the empty bag on the mantel. “Some people, sure. Laziness is bred deep inside us. We have to fight against it. Who wouldn’t rather take it easy than bust his rear?”

  “So, what…the people who owned the basketball court were just harder workers?”

  Jim slit open another bag, regarded Dez in the big rectangular mirror over the mantel. “Likely he was a rich prick who inherited everything and acted like he earned it.” He returned to his wo
rk. “Tell the rest of the story.”

  “We got sick of shooting around and were ready to leave. Truth be told, I was scared shitless. Something about that basement-level airplane hangar of a basketball court…the windows like glowing boxes near the ceiling…I imagined there were ravenous faces lined up along those windows staring down, ready to dine on us the minute we walked out of that house.” Dez didn’t much like appearing weak, especially in front of a man he’d just met and didn’t wholly trust, but he asked the question anyway. “You ever feel like that? Like someone’s watching you?”

  The rattling of kernels. A small smile. “I know the feeling.”

  “Anyway, Wagner – nobody ever knew his first name, and he never offered it – he rears back and kicks open this side door at half-court. Scared the hell out of us. ‘What are you doing?’ we ask him.”

  “How many guys?” Jim asked, glancing at Dez in the mirror.

  “Four.” Dez shrugged. “That day it was four. Sometimes it was five, sometimes three. The biggest it ever got was seven, but that was a mistake.”

  Jim picked up the cast-iron pot and knelt before the fire. “What was inside the door?”

  “Nothing much. Just one of those wide brooms they sweep gym floors with. A couple of empty pop cans. Five-gallon buckets of some cleaning chemical. More basketballs.” Jim placed the faded black pot atop a pair of iron crossbars Dez hadn’t noticed before. They looked like they were constructed for just this purpose. “There was also something in the back of the closet that caught my eye.”

  Without turning, Jim said, “Hidden compartment?”

  Dez nodded. He couldn’t decide if the man’s shrewdness was endearing or alarming.

  “There was a cedar panel behind the five-gallon buckets. You could barely see it, and even if you did, you wouldn’t think twice about it. Just an entry into the crawlspace.”

  Jim turned. “Weapons cache?”

  “It was that,” Dez agreed. “But it was more too. A hidden bunker.”