Dead South Rising (Book 2): Death Row by Sean Robert Lang Page B

his wife?”
    David dipped his chin. He didn’t like the look on the Janitor’s face, prompting an explanation. “The night we left our old place, the trailer. A shuffler, or at least I thought it was a shuffler, stepped out in front of the truck. I tried to stop. I did, Gabe. I really tried. Stood on the brake.” David rubbed his thumb on his wife’s hand, squeezed, as though she were right there in the room, promising her everything would be okay. “But it wasn’t enough. I… I ran down whoever it was. Whatever it was.”
    “Were they alive?”
    An unsure head shake. “Not sure. Just… not sure. Couldn’t risk stopping. Dangerous men behind us. I was trying to keep the group safe.”
    “Killing another man’s wife… intentional or not… I imagine that’d light quite a fire under a grieving man, fill his heart with hate.” His eyes looked as though he spoke from experience.
    David felt that familiar, invaded sensation, like Gabriel was inside his head, his heart, observing from within. Every feeling, every thought—violated. Known. Prying with his crowbar where he wasn’t welcome.
    He experienced this during their first meeting, and here it was again. He gazed at the old man, studied his long, silver hair, the push broom mustache, his lanky frame. But the outside revealed very little, other than he’d experienced a full life. It was his eyes—those gray, soulful lakes of reason and understanding and influence—that picked at David’s emotional lock. He swore the man was a spiritual locksmith.
    “So what now, Gabe?”
    The old man did not answer right away, his eyes no longer poking and prodding at David’s exposed emotional tumblers, instead sadly and wearily rolling over the bodies of a friend and his son.  
    Finally, a heavy sigh. “It’s not up to me, Dave.”
    “Not up to you?”
    Gabriel shook his head. “The council. They’ll decide.”
    “Decide? Decide what?”
    “What happens next.”
    “With me?”
    The Janitor nodded.
    “But… you run this place—”
    “No, Dave. I explained to you before. There’s a council—”
    “Come on, Gabriel. You’re the power behind the throne. I haven’t been here long, but I see it. These people look up to you. They listen to you. You even told me yourself, that you didn’t ask to be the leader, that it just happened naturally. You have influence and—”
    Gabriel waved him off. “The Infirmaries outnumber us now. Been fighting a losing battle with ‘em these last few days, while you’ve been recovering. Ever since Scotty wandered up to that fence out there a week ago, got Roy riled up, changing folks’ minds.” He shook his head. “Somehow, that dead man gave people a false hope. Like goddamned Jesus Christ himself had strolled up to the gate, walking on water pushing a wheel barrow full of wine and bread and fish.”
    “Infirmaries?”
    “The folks who believe the dead are just sick. They even got Luz—a medical doctor, mind you—buying their snake oil, believing their bullshit.”
    “How can they not see it, Gabe?”
    The Janitor motioned to Natalee’s dismembered hand, still clutched tightly at David’s side. “Doesn’t look like you’re quite convinced yourself, Dave.”
    And the final tumbler dropped, the Janitor figuring out the combination to David’s psychological lock. More tempestuous feelings flooded him, ravaging his fragile, overworked heart. But he didn’t blame the Janitor. The man seemed to have a bubble of armor around him, impenetrable to anything of evil, ill-intentioned consequence. Even if David had slung his anger at the Janitor, it would have simply bounced off the old man and ricocheted back at David.
    I’m rubber, you’re glue, what bounces off of me, kills you…
    No, David fully acknowledged his own hypocritical history, saw it for what it was. Clear as motherfucking day, it was. And this—the fact that he recognized it clear as motherfucking day—actually scared him more than the dead roaming