Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [15]
At first it was fine. Murph wasn’t all that great at paperwork on account of he couldn’t spell all that good, but neither could any of the other deputies, so he didn’t fuss over that.
But the sheriff, he fussed right good over the fights. They weren’t nothing at first—just the usual brawls that happen when folks get into disagreements—but for some reason, Murph was singled out. Just ’cause that damn fool whose leg he broke turned out to be the mayor’s kid—that wasn’t hardly Murph’s fault. Ain’t like the little twerp was goin’ around with a sign on his chest sayin’, “I’m the mayor’s dumb kid.” If he had, Murph probably wouldn’t’ve popped him one for talkin’ trash about Richard Petty.
Or maybe Murph would’ve anyhow. Didn’t nobody make fun of Richard Petty in his presence. Just wasn’t done.
Murph hadn’t been a trooper long enough to get a pension worth a damn, and he didn’t have no skills that nobody could use. His wife hit the road pretty much the minute he turned in his badge and gun. He moved to the city, figuring there’d be jobs in Indianapolis you couldn’t get out in Carroll County, moving into some flea trap and taking jobs as a bouncer at a strip club. That worked out fine till one of the girls charged him with sexual harassment. Murph thought she was crazy, since all he was doin’ was appreciatin’ her finer qualities, but didn’t nobody believe him.
So he strangled the little whore and left Indiana for good.
Eventually, he wound up in Montana, and there he met up with some right-thinking folks who saw that the world was going into the toilet ’cause of those big companies messin’ with the world. Their leader was a fella named Raymond. Murph had never gone for that pinko Greenpeace stuff, but this Raymond guy made sense, and he invited Murph to his bunker, so they’d be ready for when the world ended.
Then the plague happened.
Murph had never seen nothin’ like it. People’d get sick and die and then just get back up again and start eatin’ people. They took down Raymond, and Murph got the hell outta Montana before they took him, too. A bunch of Raymond’s people came with, and they wandered around, trying to stay alive, until they met up with Eddie.
Eddie was strong and smart. He knew the only way to survive in this new world was to take what you wanted. Salt Lake City was a ghost town after the plague wiped it out, so Eddie set up shop in an old TV station. Margie was real good at sounding all hysterical and stuff, so she’d get on the radio and call for help, and sure enough, some nutbar like this pretty lady would come to “help.” Murph had always liked Margie, going back to Montana, and she’d even let him bone her a few times, which was very neighborly. Weren’t much by way of companionship these days, and you couldn’t be fussy.
Not that Murph ever had been. He’d bone anything with tits, even when he was married.
Folks who were still alive and inclined to give aid to strangers these days were usually well stocked with food and medical supplies and the like, so the scam’d been workin’ pretty good, even nowadays with so many people gone.
Murph didn’t care, though. Only thing he missed was NASCAR. He’d seen on TV—back when TV was still running—that the entire Petty family’d been taken down by the plague. It was a sight that would haunt Murph’s nightmares till the day he died, seeing his hero brought low like that. It was a real shame.
And now he missed Eddie. He was the leader, same as Raymond was back in Montana, same as the sheriff was back in Indiana. Murph had lost all of them, and he was still kickin’, so maybe he didn’t need people like that. In fact, maybe he’d be takin’ over this little to-do now that Eddie was dead.
But that was for later. For now, he got to have fun. He grabbed the blond fish and dragged her to the next room, then threw her headfirst down the hole.
The hole’d already been there when Eddie and the rest of them took over the studio,