* * *
Maybeline Adams drew the entire town—or so it seemed—from their sleepy dens to her little stretch of Peach Street merely by placing a few well thought-out phone calls. And so it came to be that by ten a.m. Officer Bob Wendt was forced to cordon off a section of the street in front of the rabbit house. Fortunately, the show (that was how Bob thought of it) didn’t last long. By two, most of the looky-loos had left, the searing heat driving them indoors.
A few stragglers remained to gawk at the CDC crew as they carried their bright, orange bags to their shiny, white van. To Officer Wendt, the crowd resembled fish following the flash of a lure: utterly unaware of the potential danger in front of their noses. After all, those guys didn’t wear space suits for nothing.
Leaning against a sawhorse barricade, Wendt listened in on their conversations. Some speculated that the bags contained rabbits, others human body parts. The lunacy of the latter struck home with the other cops who happened to hear that jewel of a theory. Ernie Richardson snickered, covering his mouth as he did so, then muttered something low into Ronny’s ear. It sounded like "bumpkins" and it probably was.
To which Owens replied, a little too loudly, "Yeah, they’re always sendin’ the CDC in to do our jobs. Next thing ya know they’ll be settin’ speed traps and writin’ parking tickets."
Wendt noted how the gawkers’ faces changed when Owens spoke. Scowls and expressions of shock replaced looks of open curiosity and growing boredom. One person yelled, "Fuck you!" Only it sounded more like, "Fuck yewwww!" his accent thick enough to illicit laughter from some of the younger onlookers.
"What’s in them bags?" someone yelled.
"Yeah, whatcha got in there?" Another voice.
Ernie, who by designs not of his own choosing happened to be closest to the crowd, wasn’t sure if their questions were directed to him or the CDC guys. He looked over his shoulder for help, but that son of a bitch Wendt had ditched him and Ronny and was walking over to the other barricade, the one with no people behind it. And the reason there were no people behind it was because Wendt the Dumbass had erected that barrier at the butt end of a dead end street. Ernie turned to his older, but not wiser, partner for advice on how to proceed, but when he noticed the blank look on Ronny’s drenched, plump face, he surmised that his brother in arms was just as clueless as he.
Then, without uttering a word, Richardson nudged Owens and the duo began a casual stroll over to the other barricade. Wendt, who had since arrived at his lonesome sawhorse and was resting his elbows and leaning against it at the same time, saw them coming and tried dispatching them back to the other end of the street with a reproachful flick of his hand.
"What the hell ya’ll doing?" he said huskily, removing a lit cigarette from his lips. "Git back!"
"We need a break," Owens whined. "It’s hot and we were promised relief two hours ago."
"I don’t care what ya’ll were promised. In case you haven’t noticed," Wendt nodded to the CDC van, "the shit has hit the fan. I’m sorry your fat ass is hot, Ronny, but you’ve got a job to do and you’re gonna do it ‘til our relief gets here. Got that?"
"Yeah."
"Now git back." He dismissed them with another snap of his wrist.
To Ernie, flicking your wrist like that was how you got out of playing fetch with your dog after he’d already brought you the ball.
Who the hell does he think he is anyway? Ernie thought of Wendt.
Bob watched the fat cop and the skinny cop turn and walk back to their end of the street. Along the way, the fat one—Ronny Owens—stopped at his squad car, leaned through the window, and came out with a plastic water bottle, which he carried to the barricade with him. Ernie Richardson—the skinny one—didn’t see his partner veer off and continued forward on his own, wobbling like a slowly spinning top.
Wendt eyed the backs of their sweat-soaked uniforms with a sneer: Weak.
Not long after they resumed their positions in front of the barricade, a squad car turned onto Peach Street and squawked a blurp of noise, startling the onlookers and the two cops closest to them. The cruiser rolled over a curb and across a dying lawn before parking next to the other two cruisers. When the driver and his passenger got out, Owens nearly collapsed with joy.
"Our relief’s here, Ern!" he exclaimed, jowls dripping salty water. "We can finally leave!"
Again, he spoke too loudly, and the crowd that had gathered (all sweating themselves) collectively began hectoring the new guys, asking them for information they didn’t have. Some moron even threw an empty Coke can, which barely missed the side of Ronny’s head and went skittering down the street.
Walking past his relief, Ernie said more to himself than to Officer Chavez, who, after hearing what Ernie said, nodded in agreement, "If ya’ll are going to act like a bunch of animals, don’t be surprised when ya’ll start getting treated like a bunch of animals."
"You’re right, Ern. Bumpkins—all of ‘em," Owens remarked, pulling the driver’s door to his cruiser open.
Fastening the seatbelt on the passenger’s side, Ernie replied, "Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on them, Ron. It ain’t their fault they’re of simple mind."
A puzzled look swept over Owens’s face. "What makes ya say that?"
Ronny drove over some poor person’s front lawn, and Ernie cranked the AC to high.
"Because they’re from Alabama," Ernie replied, stifling a snicker.
Ronny chugged from the water bottle and pretended to take offense. "Goddamn Texans. Ya‘ll think ya’ll are soooo special, don’tcha?"
"We are!"
Ernie then asked the question that was on both of their minds. "What do you think was that killed those animals? Tell me, Ron, because I don’t have clue one. I mean…I do have a clue—I told you earlier what my opinion on the matter is, but what I’m thinkin’ and what I saw with my own two eyes don’t add up. Know what I mean?"
Owens nodded.
"Because when an animal catches rabid—even a coyote—it doesn’t…it doesn’t do what we saw back there. It just doesn’t, okay." Ernie got the impression he was talking to more to himself than to Ron, but he knew his partner was hanging on to his every word. Richardson went on: "All those critters torn open like that—Jesus Christ. And do you know what the funny part is?"
"There’s a funny part?"
"I’m not sure I’m upset over seeing what I saw. Because, on the one hand, it was disgusting. But, on the other…it was so crazy and exciting—"
"You’re crazy."
"Fuck you and let me finish. On the other hand, it was exciting because it wasn’t the sort of thing we get to see every day."
"Made me sick to my stomach."
"That’s what I mean! It was a rush, man! All those bloody rabbits everywhere. It’s like we were privy to something we’ll never get to experience again, and we were fortunate to be part of it. I don’t know what that means exactly, but it’s true. I’d bet my life on it."
They continued along in silence for a few minutes. Owens, who had long since drained the water bottle, was now popping dimples into the empty container with the flattened tip of his clubbed right thumb. It was then, with a sloshing, gurgling belly, that he realized he had missed lunch, a rare occurrence for a man of his girth.
"You hungry, Ern?"
Ernie, who sat picking absently at a scab on his left arm, looked up and replied, "Yeah, I could go for something."
"Ursie’s?" Ronny suggested.
"Sure, I guess."