ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) by Shawn Chesser Read Free Book Online Page A

of hay fever. Though his eyes itched, he figured he’d
survive the small dose of pepper extract and that had started him thinking
about lunch. Subliminally steered his thoughts to the food cart down the block,
whose pepper-and-cheese-slathered tamales were the best he’d ever had. And he
had sampled tamales in nearly every city host to an NBA team prior to the
expansion into Orlando and Minnesota. Twenty-two years out of the league, he thought. And broke as a joke. But damn, he could justify sending out
for some eats from La Carreta de Rosa.
    A sleek Audi four-door rolled up silently. If it wasn’t for
the sedan’s glowing daytime running lights and the subtle squeak of
high-performance rubber on the smooth garage floor, he would have been dialing
his friend Javier and ordering up his lunch. But the food could wait. The look
parked on the face of the octogenarian philanthropist driving the car caused
him to start. Last time he’d seen one like it, was on the face of a man in blue,
hunched behind a Plexiglas shield and brandishing a collapsible whip baton. And
stranger still, he had only seen the look—an amalgam of terror, incredulity,
and astonishment all in one—twice in his life. And almost too much a
coincidence to believe, both instances were a mere hour apart.
    Concerned, Don asked, “Mr. Childress … is everything okay?”
    The bald man said nothing. Eyes never leaving Don’s, he
whirred his window down a few inches, reached through the narrow gap, and waved
his passkey in front of the reader. The older man’s body language made Don wonder
if the eccentric saw his puffy eyes and assumed he was carrying a bug deadly to
someone pushing ninety.
    Childress’s icy gaze didn’t leave Don until the barrier arm
was in the full-up position. Then, shooting Don’s supposition out of the water,
the man turned his head and focused on the rectangle of daylight. In the next
beat, as if flung off an aircraft carrier’s deck, the low-slung sports car
accelerated rapidly, scraping its undercarriage where the garage floor
transitioned to ramp. It picked up speed on the incline and rocketed across the
sidewalk, missing by inches a pair of pedestrians seemingly oblivious to the
warning buzzer and flashing lights positioned above the garage entrance at
street level.
    Don slid the door into the pocket and hinged his upper body
out the opening. “Would have been your fault, Childress,” he said, his voice
bereft of any conviction. Truth be told, the old man had just avoided a huge
lawsuit that he would have been able to easily afford, but furious at having
wrought. And Don had narrowly avoided having to choose whether to lie for the man
in order to keep his job, or tell the truth and live on his meager pension.
    With the warning chime still echoing about the garage, he
watched the silhouetted pair stop mid-stride to swipe drunkenly at the airspace
just vacated by the speeding car. Then, as Don reached for the phone, the lucky
pedestrians conducted near-identical pirouettes and started down the ramp in
his direction.
    Seeing nearly the same thing that Charlie had at shift
change, the difference: two backlit silhouettes instead of a single giant-sized
one, Don strained to make eye contact. Last thing he wanted to do was fill out
paperwork for a non-event.
    “You didn’t heed the warnings,” Don said. A half-truth.
    Slow and deliberate, the pair kept coming.
    “No pedestrians on the ramp!” Don implored forcefully.
    The obviously drunken duo were nearly to the point where the
undercarriage of Childress’s Audi had left a fresh gouge in the cement floor.
    Eyes locked on the trespassers, Don reached blindly for the
phone … to call security, not to order tamales. He didn’t have time to
do either, because simultaneously, three things happened at once. His fingers
brushed the handset, knocking it off the cradle. A coppery odor, like a jug
full of old pennies, hit his nose. And just reaching the bottom of the ramp, the
pair