James Axler – Watersleep

“You’re welcome to come with us, Bill,” Ryan said. “Nothing left for you here, and when those Cajuns back in the swamp don’t report in, I imagine there’ll be others out looking for who chilled them.”

“Thanks, but no. I’m staying put. I’m too old to change my ways now, and I know where everything is. Don’t want to have to go and relearn. Those Cajun bastards won’t bother me. Besides, my wife’s buried here, and I’d just as soon stay close to her until my time comes.” The older man’s voice dropped. “Don’t know if a man like you can understand that, Mr. Caw­dor, but that’s how I feel.”

A younger Ryan Cawdor wouldn’t have understood Bill’s logic of wanting to remain behind, tending to his dead wife’s memory. A more experienced and wiser Ryan Cawdor knew exactly what their new comrade meant.

“I never question a man’s feelings,” Ryan said, and extended his hand. The old man took it and gave Ryan a firm handshake back. “Watch your rear flank.”

“And you, yours.”

The old man stood in the rain and watched the group depart. He stood there for a very long time before he turned and went home.

AS A BENEFACTOR, Bill was second to none. He had insisted on sending them out with a small smattering of foodstuffs from his own kitchen, and some fresh underclothes taken from one of the plastic-wrapped supply rooms that once fed the numerous Greenglades Theme Park souvenir stands.

“You’d look great in mouse ears, Doc,” Mildred had said.

“Wrong theme park, madam!” Doc snorted. “No mouse ears or ears of any sort other than my own shall adorn my noble brow, and I am not about to wear a hat decorated with the bill of that cursed goose mascot that adorns so much of the decoration here. However, you would do well to wear such attire.”

“Why’s that, Doc?” J.B. asked, playing along.

“All the better to tell the world firsthand she’s a quack.”

“Ow,” J.B. cried out as Mildred slapped his upper arm. “He’s the one who said it!”

“Yeah, but you were the one encouraging him, John.”

However, despite Doc’s reluctance to serve as a corporate shill, Dean and Jak had both eagerly ac­cepted standard-issue baseball caps with the official Greenglades logo embroidered on the front. The rest had decided to stay with their own familiar fedoras and hats for protection.

“A little keepsake of your stay,” Bill had said wistfully as he pulled the hat down on Dean’s head.

Considering the rain had only let up for intermittent periods during their journey, the hats had been a wise choice. Day upon day and night upon night had been dank, dark and wet

Roughly at the midpoint of their journey across the state, the small procession slouching through the pummeling rain for yet most of another long day’s walk discovered a sign.

The sign, in red letters on white, read Good Fod Fast.

“I fear proper spelling is following close on the heels of the eradication of the King’s English in modern society,” Doc commented, tapping the misspelled word with the end of his swordstick as the group stood in a half circle and looked at the badly painted enticement.

“Doesn’t matter, long as the food’s good,” J.B. said.

“You mean ‘fod’s good,’ John,” Mildred said with a smile. “You’re right, though. Illiteracy never stopped a good cook unless he mixed up the sugar and the salt.”

“They must’ve painted over an old highway road sign,” Ryan said, using the edge of his panga to scratch away at the outer coating. He was rewarded with a flash of silver-and-bright-green metal beneath the badly applied cream-colored layer.

“I’ll bet this was the exit sign for drivers,” Mildred agreed. “Not much use for it now.”

“We talk or we eat?” Jak asked impatiently.

“Might as well,” Ryan said, taking the point and leading the group down the exit to the restaurant be­low. “Get us out of this rad-blasted rain for a while, anyway.”

“Who’s Tuckey, dad?” Dean asked, looking at a ruined but still legible mass of plastic that rose im­posingly on twin steel legs above the sloped roof of the restaurant. One corner of the towering edifice was missing, but the name of the eatery was still readable. “Think he owns this place?”