Fun and Games - Duane Swierczynski [43]
Hardie was reminded of zombie movies. He wasn’t into them, but his son loved them. A few lone human beings vs. insurmountable odds. Wave after wave of dead people coming after you, ripping apart drywall, busting through windows, trying to snack on your brains…
But these motherfuckers weren’t zombies. They were smart. They were determined. They had gear. They had plans. They had ambitions. They had huge breasts. And they had all the time in the world.
He racked his brain for some escape route, some ruse, some way of communicating with the outside world.
“Who will report you missing?” Hardie asked.
“Huh?”
“When you don’t show up at home, who will miss you?”
“Sad to say, the only person who will notice will probably be my manager, Haley. I told her we’d talk sometime today about future projects. But I’ve flaked out before and not returned calls. Sometimes for days. She won’t think anything of this at first.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling.”
“What about you? Who will miss you?”
“Absolutely nobody. Not for at least a month.”
“We won’t be able to survive here for a month.”
“So I guess it’s up to you. You’re the famous one. Somebody will eventually come looking for you. Maybe they’ll retrace your steps.”
But Hardie knew that was bullshit the moment he spoke the words. If these guys wanted the death to look like an accident, they would have already scooped the car and all traces of Lane Madden.
Sometime during the second hour Hardie went to splash some water on his face. He was feeling sick to his stomach. Probably because the last thing he ate was that stupid dry bagel in the airport. Hardie turned the cold-water knob. The faucet ran for a few seconds before the pipes rumbled. The faucet spat at his fingers, then went dry. Fuck, come on! Not the water, too.
No food. No power. No way to call for help. No nothing.
It drove him mad.
In the hallway, Lane was throwing up.
Hardie gathered up the remaining towels from the bathroom and helped her clean up her face, then wiped the floor. But the odor of gastric bile was making him sick, too. He had to choke it back, swallow, keep his head clear. Try to, anyway. His head was really starting to pound.
Of course, this was to be expected—they had both been through an absurd number of shocks and traumas this morning. Lane had been in a car crash and hunted up and down the Hollywood Hills in the dark. Hardie had been beaten, impaled, poisoned, suffocated, and Tasered. Adrenaline kicks in during these kinds of situations, but adrenaline doesn’t last forever. Human bodies need time to recover. They need water and food and rest and sleep—all things they didn’t have or couldn’t afford.
So of course, they were feeling like shit, throwing up, and ready to lose their minds.
But…
Some ultraparanoid part of Hardie’s mind thought it could be something else.
These fuckers didn’t use conventional weapons. They went in for poisons. Cars. Electricity. What if they had managed to pump some kind of toxic fumes into the house? And after making them puke like a freshman at a kegger, it would kill them.
Hardie tried to discern if anything smelled strange or left a weird taste in his mouth. Nothing, of course… and why would it? Only gas companies helpfully laced their natural gas supply with a delightful rotten-egg odor so you’d know when your pilot light had blown out. If you wanted to kill someone with some powerful, exotic, untraceable poison, you wouldn’t go advertising it. You’d just pump it in.
Should he try to go around the house, sealing off all the vents?
Hardie rubbed his eyes. Lane had rested her head against his shoulder and shut her eyes. It would have been a tender moment, quite possibly even a mildly erotic one, had she not been trembling