“This is bullshit!” Pollard said, slamming his fist on his desk.
The man seated across from him jumped in surprise. “Sir?”
Pollard stood and pointed at the door. “I’ve heard enough. Get out!”
His anger was fueled by the report he had just received. Food was running low, and despite his continued prodding, Hollister was ignoring him, instead focusing their collection efforts on drugs and weapons.
“We need these drugs,” she had insisted during their last confrontation. “The people expect them. They need them...”
Pollard had exploded at this faulty logic, responding that an army traveled on its stomach, not its nose, something Hollister, with all of her graduate degrees and military experience should have known. The thing that burned him up most of all was she just didn’t seem to care anymore. It was as if she had given up, consigned him and all of the other people following her to a slow and painful death. She seemed perfectly happy to fuck her way through the population, to inhale every gram of cocaine that passed her way, and to let this last vestige of civilization crumble into nothingness.
Pollard’s anger mounted. Sending Woo to Tucson had been a mistake, he now realized. He should have used someone else. He hadn’t heard from the teen since he had left. He had to assume the worst. For all he knew, the kid was a zombie now, stumbling around the desert, searching for his next meal.
In a blind rage, Pollard stormed from his office and stalked across the street, heading straight for Hollister’s quarters. He pushed past her guard and burst into the front room without knocking. “Hollister!” he yelled. “Where are you?”
Music pulsed from the back room and the dank, earthy smell of marijuana permeated the air. Pollard’s blood pressure spiked and a sense of righteous indignation washed through him. His vision constricted to a red-tinged tunnel. Boom, boom, boom. His heart hammered in his chest.
Outside of Hollister’s bedroom door, he discovered a skeletal, barely-dressed young woman passed out on a cracked-leather loveseat. The woman’s shirt rode up her midriff, exposing the bottom half of one plump, silicone-enhanced breast. A bottle of tequila was wedged in her crotch. Her weapon, a silver Colt 1911, lay on the floor, well out of her reach. Pollard trembled, his rage vibrating like a mad tuning fork. This has to stop!
He slammed into the door with his shoulder, and it exploded inward with a bang. He stepped inside Hollister’s lair and sucked in his breath as he took the sight of a mass of bodies writhing on the bed. Snoop Dogg rapped from a battery-powered radio in the corner. Where the fuck does she find these people? He stood there for a moment, absorbing the scene, consumed by the rage burning through his body. He was past the point of no return.
A wall mirror covered by a massive mound of cocaine rested on a chair beside the bed. Sliced-open kilo bags lay discarded on the floor like clear snakeskins. Trash bags full of marijuana were stacked against the far wall. A thick layer of cloying smoke extended from the ceiling almost to the floor, making him gag. No one paid him any attention. Lost in the midst of their drug-fueled orgy, the people on the bed were oblivious to the armed man about to lose his temper for the last time.
Pollard heard a stirring behind him. It was the woman on the couch. She rolled over, let out a long brassy fart, and then fell back into her slumber. He fired five times, one shot for the woman in the hall and four more for the people on the bed. Each shot was like a miniature sun, illuminating the room in a red and orange flare of fury until the gloom snuffed it out. When it was all over, the smell of cordite permeated his nostrils, mercifully blotting out the dried-shit stench of the pot.
Silence flooded into the room as he lowered his gun.
A door creaked open behind him. A loud click broke the calm. “Andrew?”
Pollard’s breath caught in his throat. He blinked. Fuck. He turned.
Hollister stood there, naked, glassy-eyed, glistening and sweaty. A lopsided grin stretched across her mouth. Traces of cocaine ringed her nostrils. She took a step closer, pressing the nickel-plated .38 in her right hand into his forehead.