Anthology - Dark Whispers Part 5

I nodded. I'd been sent there because the platoon had reportedly lost most of its zoms in a minefield less than a week before. It was prob-ably just bad luck, or maybe incompetence, but I had to make sure it wasn't sabotage. There'd been a case a few weeks before of somebody poisoning zombis' food with salt; they'd gone berserk as they began to die, and half a company had been wiped out, dead and alive alike.

I tried hard to suppress a s.h.i.+ver as I watched the zoms shambling quietly through the pampas gra.s.s and thorn bushes towards the village. Everyone knew that zoms were as loyal as dogs and slightly better at obeying simple commands; they were strong, d.a.m.n near invulnerable, didn't complain about their food or their quarters, and didn't need entertaining. They would walk across a minefield, through fire or gas, over razorwire, into the paths of tanks (a.s.suming the Domingues had had any) ... just what the General ordered. Of course, they'd be all but useless against a well-equipped modern army, but the UN was keeping everyone out ofthis fight, and the arms embargo was affecting both sides.

I stared through my borrowed binoculars again. "Who's the old man under the mapou?" I asked.

Legrand glanced in his direction, though without binoculars, he could barely have seen the tree, much less the man. "Jacques? Zombi-master." There was something curiously like respect in his voice. "Isn't a man alive who hates me more."

I continued to watch the old man for a few minutes; it was easier than looking at the zoms. Yes, I knew that most zoms were convicts; the General liked to boast that he hadn't restored the death penalty or conscription, boasting to the world that inhis Haitia"the Haiti of the twenty-first century, free of foreign influences and religionsa"all criminals did useful work. It was intended as a deterrent, and maybe it worked.

Maybe I'm old-fas.h.i.+oned; my father was a soldier, like his father before him, and they drummed their ideas of honor into me thoroughly and efficiently. They taught me loyalty to the army, whoever it served at the time, and they told me how they thought war should be fought, as well as how itwas fought. I was prepared to see men being killed for no reason that they understood, and I knew that zombis couldn't understand anything more complicated than a direct order. But no one had ever told me that most of the zoms we recruit were women, and seeing them stumbling into that village like that made me sick to my stomach.

"Why does he hate you?" I asked. I could see Jacques barking orders into a megaphone, but at this distancea"supposedly safe from snipersa"I couldn't hear a word.

"You see the zom near him, hanging back? Mulatto woman?"

"Yes."

"His wife," replied Legrand, softly. I lowered the binoculars, and stared at him. "Truth," he said. "I didn't know at the time, just been a.s.signed here. Jacques probably wants to see me dead," he grinned savagely, "or worse. But he won't do anything about it; too scared of what'll happen if he does."

I nodded. There's nothing new about soldiers hating their com-manders, or despising civilians, and Legrand was both.

"Look at them,"said Legrand, softly, and I reluctantly peered through the binoculars at the advancing zombis. "Life and death rolled up into a ball; what could be scarier than that? All the civilians in the village will start running like h.e.l.l, soon, so we can send the soldiers in. The zoms have their orders; they're not to shoot anybody who runs away."

I grunted. We gave zombis cheap, obsolete semi-automatic weapons with the largest magazines we could, because most of them weren't smart enough to reload. The one who killed my father had an old M-14 set to autofire, and he emptied the entire clip into him and was advancing with bayonet fixed before a live guard shot him through both eyes.There's an art to fighting zoms; you can't kill them without a handful of salt, you can't hurt or stun them, they're like marionettes with monowire strings and the best thing you can do is aim for the knees and elbows.

I glanced at Legrand. He was smiling when the zoms entered the village; he was still smiling when the soldiers left at sunset, reporting that they'd found nothing, no weapons, no signs of sedition or foreign influence, not even enough food to count as evidence of h.o.a.rding; the villagers out here probably hadn't heard of the last coup, or the embargo, or the war against the Domingues. Legrand continued to smile, as though he knew a joke he couldn't share with mere mortals. Maybe he did, at that.

MAJOR DUPRE WAS easily twice my age, which meant that he'd survived more loyalty checks than I'd had pay parades, so I wasn't expecting much cooperation. Fortunately, he'd known my father, so he treated me with more respect than I probably deserved. He was a competent officer, spoke French fluently as well as Creole, and though he was loyal to the army rather than the General he hadn't made any major political errors that I knew of. I was soon wondering why he and Legrand were stationed out here; it seemed a strange sort of reward for years of good service...

Or so I thought, until I overheard four soldiers talking in the mess tent on my second day there. They were swapping stories about wo-men, in the way soldiers probably have since the Trojan War; only the names change. Or so I thought, until one of them wished for a woman who still had a tongue. Legrand, sitting opposite me, drew two cards from his tarot decka"Death, and then the Lovers, which he lay across it.

I sat there silently, and listened to the soldiers, and tried to tell myself that it didn't matter. It may have been necrophilia, but at least it wasn't rape ... well, maybe it was, but zoms don't complain. The zom woman serving food merely stood there, her face blank, as though she were deaf as well as dead.

"Sure," said the corporal, while the others laughed."But then you'd have to make sure you didn't eat too much salt, in case youa"" More laughter.

"Me," said another, "I prefer that new b.i.t.c.h with the legs. Remember the way she used to walk? Jesus, the way she moans when youa"" The men opposite him suddenly sat up, and the speaker stopped abruptly. I turned around, and saw Jacques walk in. The conversation turned to football as the zombi master poured himself a cup of terrible coffee, then sat down at the other end of my table, not looking at any of us. I finished eating what little I could stomach, then walked out. Legrand collected his cards and followed me.

"Going to tell Dupre?" he asked, as I stomped in the direction of the latrine and the zombi corral.

"You mean he doesn't know?" I replied, sourly.

"Of course he knows. You knew too, Lieutenant; you just didn't want to think about it. Don't waste your time putting it in your report, hey? What would you want the army to do about it, anyway? Bury them all?"

I shrugged, then stopped and turned to face him. He held up his hands like a music hall minstrel. "Don't be blaming me, lieutenant."

"You make the zombis."

"Yeah, but I don't f.u.c.k *em; I do havesome pride. Besides, the soldiers here love their work,there's no point in questioningtheir loyaltya""

"And Dupre lets them do ita"or does he join in?"

Legrand shrugged. His face looked like so much petrified wood, almost as though he were a zombi himself. "I never saw him, and he doesn't boast about it."

I sighed. Legrand looked up at the sky. "Rain in a minute. You want to get under cover?"

My tent leaked slightly but insistently, and I stared out at the mud and wished I were back in the city. Any city. The empty-eyed zombi guards stood at their posts, immobile, silent, and very wet. "The Major told me about your father," said Legrand, quietly, as he sat on my sag-ging cot. "Do you know who did ita"and don't be blaming the zom; somebody live had to give him that gun and those orders."

"n.o.body seems to know," I replied. "n.o.body's claimed credit for it, so I suspect it was a screw-up, maybe they got the wrong colonel ... My mother and sister didn't believe that, but I guess I can..." It wasn't exactly a lie. Sometimes I did believe it, and the urge to kill the man or men responsible became bearable. Other times, it was like the pain of a broken bone or a bullet wound. "My mother committed suicide; Sophie escaped to Jamaica."

"It's a s.h.i.+tter, not knowing who to hate," said Legrand. "But it's no good hating the zoms. They just do what slaves and idiots used to do, or what machines do in the rich countries. We use zoms to walk across minefields, clear the way for the soldiers and the jeeps; in the Middle East, they use little boys, tell *em they're going to go to sit on G.o.d's right handa"I always used to think that meant G.o.d liked to fondle little boys' bottoms, but maybe that's something that didn't get translated too wella"and the UN has robots to do that sort of s.h.i.+t. We might use *em too, if it weren't for the blockade." He didn't sound convinced; the drugs needed to make a zombi are expensive, but much cheaper than even Korean-made robots. "You know about the pyramids? They were probably built by zomsa"climate like Egypt's, hot and dry, mummifies bodies naturally, zoms'd last for fifty years or more, and a lot of the Art's supposed to come from Egypt. Same with the Inca pyramids, and Easter Island ... It'd be nice to look at them and think n.o.body died making them, n.o.body suffered..."

"You think zoms don't suffer?"

"Nah. They're dead, or nearer to dead than I ever want to be; no soul, nogros bon ange . I've seen them try to walk with legs that bend both ways, carry on after being set alight by white phosphorus or napalm, stare into the sun *til those big blank eyes just burn out, they never even blink ... and I know all those Pyramids were built, anyway, whether it was by zoms or slaves. I know that thousands of Africans died lying in their own blood and s.h.i.+t in slaves.h.i.+ps. I know that bayonet charges used to be done with non-coms standing behind the foot-soldiers ready to shoot anyone who broke ranks, and cannon behind the non-coms for the same reason ... Is that what humans are for?" He shook his head. "Sure, we might've been better off without the pyramids and without the wars, but you know who to blame forthem ."

That was too close to sedition for me to even acknowledge. "Why are you out here?" I asked. "You used to have a good job at Head-quartersa""

"Dessalines Barracks," he replied, nodding, and then grinned horribly. "But I talk too much sometimes, even when I'm sober, so they sent me out here where n.o.body would listena"well, n.o.body who matters, anyhow." He was looking straight at me as he said it. "As for Dupre, he goes where they send him, believes what they tell him. Good soldier."

"What about Jacques?"

The Artist grinned insincerely. "Born near here." I raised an eyebrow. "Marie-Claire, his wife, was arrested by the macoutes a few years ago, while he was stationed near Les Cayes. Second anniversary of the last coup. She was h.o.a.rding food; made a full confession." He removed his Raybans to let me see his eyes, to show that he was serious. The tonton macoutes have a reputation for being able to inflict the maximum amount of pain on a person without rendering them useless as zombis, but they rarely waste time torturing somebody who's already confessed. h.o.a.rding food is an act of sedition, the least offence punishable by premature burial, but there's something petty about h.o.a.rding; as long as the food can be retrieved, it doesn't inspire the macoutes to revenge in the way that, say, graffiti would. "By the time anyone had told Jacques, she was already in the ground and out of it again. The old fool begged to be rea.s.signed here, and the Major said yes, even promoted him to zombi master a few months later. He's good at it, too; very careful of the zoms, but nottoo careful, won't spare them if it means risking a soldier." It was still raining heavily, but he stomped out of the tent and through the steaming mud towards the corral, and like a fool, I followed. "That's her," he said. There were enough women in there that he had to point with his raybans before I could tell who he meant.

She must have been handsome, back when she was alive, and she seemed much younger than Jacquesa"maybe not young enough to be his daughter, but young enough to make me stare at the other women there. Most of them were younger than she was, and though it was difficult to see past their empty eyes and empty mouths and their shambling movement, they were all notably voluptuous, and they might have been selected for a type of physical attractiveness. I mentioned this to Legrand, who merely shrugged.

"Arethey selected?"

"I don't pick them," he replied, turning around and heading for his tent, which was also the camp's hounfor.

"Then who does?" I yelled. Legrand didn't answer; maybe he hadn't heard me over the drumming of the rain. I slogged my way through the mud as quickly as I could, and caught up with him just outside his tent. "Who chooses them?"

Legrand glared at me though his Raybans, then ducked inside the tent. "Who?" I repeated, as he sprawled on his cot.

"They pick themselves," he replied. "They're criminals, aren't they?"

I snorted. "You can't treatevery criminal; half the people in these towns are probably h.o.a.rding food, if not weapons, and the drugs you need aren't cheap, the ceremonies take time ... who decides?"

"Depends what you mean," he replied, sullenly. "The soldiers and the macoutes pick out suspects for interrogation: maybe they're more likely to pick out the pretty women sometimes, as well as some strong backs. And maybe Jacques sends the men into danger first, because he doesn't like to see women die." He shrugged. "Maybe that's why he hasn't killed his wife. I would, if I were him."

"Why? You said that zoms don't suffer," I reminded him.

"Yeah? Well, that's because I'm full of s.h.i.+t. I don't know whether they suffer or not, and I don't give a f.u.c.k so long as I'm not one of them. It's the way the old man suffers that scares me."

"Why? Because he wants revenge?"

"Who doesn't?" snapped Legrand. "You want revenge for your father, right? Jacques wants revenge for his wife. The rest of the world wants revenge for the foreigners killed in the last coup. But revenge isn't worth s.h.i.+t; it always looks back, never forward. It's the dead telling the living how to live." He looked past me to the corral. "That's why none of the coups ever change anything; the new bosses waste too much time getting revenge on the people who were loyal to thelast bosses. Stupid. Don't f.u.c.k up your life going after the person who killed your father; get the f.u.c.ker who's going to kill your children."

There was no doubt who he meant, and that was close enough to sedition to earn anyone else a premature burial. "I don't have any," I said, softly.

"Then get the f.u.c.ker who's going to killmy children," Legrand replied, wearily. "You're not doing anyone any d.a.m.n good staying here."

That was probably true, but I shook my head. "Dupre wants me to see another raid; he says this one won't come up dry."

"You didn't come all this way just to witness a demonstration of Dupre's efficiency. Or is it unhealthy in Port-au-Prince at the moment?"

Despite myself, I found myself liking Legrand. "It wasn't when I left. The General's still in control."

"Really?" said Legrand. He glanced at his watcha"an ancient Rolex a.n.a.log, golda"and then shook it, grinning furiously. "You know the funny thing about Jacques and Marie-Claire?"

"No."

"I don't think she was the one h.o.a.rding fooda"where would she have gotten it? It was him, and she died to protect him."

I shrugged. The macoutes would probably have buried both of them anyway, and Legrand knew that. "So I'm not the only one he hates," said the Artist. "He hates the macoutesa"but who doesn't?a"and probably Dupre too, but he hates himself more, maybe most of all. If he ever does get his revenge, Lieutenant, he's going to have to kill a whole s.h.i.+tload of people."

TWO DAYS LATER, I was sitting in the jeep again with Legrand, while the zombis marched towards yet another village. It was stinking hot, though less humid than it usually was in Port-au-Prince, and I was almost dozing as they trudged onwards. The sound of the mines echoed through the valley, and I looked up to see a zom staggering forward on his knees, his left foot and most of his calf blown to shreds. Several others were crawling forwards while the others stumbled on, oblivious to their companions. Then, suddenly, a whole row of men disappeared from sight, as though they'd simultaneously walked into a trench. Maybe they had. I heard Jacques yelling, and all of the zombis froze in position.

"Pits," muttered Legrand. He sounded almost approving. Low-tech, simple, cheap, easy for anybody but a zombi to just walk around, and they'd just immobilized a good quarter of our force until we could dig them out. Of course, like most tricks, it wouldn't work now that we were expecting it, but whatever the villagers were hiding, they can't have been relying on the pits and a few mines to protect them...

Jacques shouted, and I saw the zombis advance, a little more slowly than beforea"then one of the males blundered into a tripwire and triggered a claymore mine. I watched in horror as steel b.a.l.l.s shattered the legs of many of the zoms still walking, and the heads of those trying to emerge from the pits. Legrand began chanting a prayer softly as the last male, trying desperately to walk on legs that bent both ways, toppled to the ground. I started the jeep and headed towards Dupre.

"I don't think you want to do this," muttered Legrand.

"I'm going to tell him to pull out," I snapped, as we lurched down the hill. "If they can afford to waste that sort of ordnance on zombis, I don't want to know what they're keeping for the soldiers. I can requisition a mortar from Gonaives or Cap Haitien..."

Legrand shook his head. "How long will that take? Dupre isn't going to wait; he doesn't want to be stuck out here in the hills forever. He's lost nearly thirty zombis in a week for almost no gain, and he wants to go back to Dessalines a heroa""

I saw Dupre shouting at Jacques, and realized that there were only three more zombis intacta"all female, one of them his wife. Zombis were cheap, but there were more than a dozen shotguns and a rifles scattered out there in the minefield, weapons that Dupre couldn't afford to let fall into the hands of insurgents. Jacques ordered two of women to advance, Dupre shouted againa"and then the zombi master unslung his old M-16 and ran after the zombis, taking care to follow in their footsteps. Marie-Claire followed him, glacier-slowly.

"Turn around," whispered Legrand. I glanced at him, then shook my head sharply. The Artist shrugged, then reached into his s.h.i.+rt pocket and removed an ornate Derringer, which he handed to me.

"I have a gun," I said, patting the Beretta on my hip.

"This is loaded with salt," he replied. ".410 shotgun sh.e.l.ls. You'll have to aim for the mouth,of course, and it's only good at close range a"" There was a soft explosion, and Legrand swore in Spanglish. I turned, and saw that one of the zombi women had trodden on yet another minea"a small one, that only destroyed her foot. She continued to walk, with a p.r.o.nounced list. I was trying to rea.s.sure myself that at least they weren't live soldiers being maimed and ma.s.sacred, that on an economic level we were still winning. I saw Jacques bend down to pick up the zombis' guns and throw them back towards the soldiers. He guided his zombis around pits, and towards the village. A few soldiers began following hesitantly in Marie-Claire's footsteps. We were maybe two hundred meters away from Dupre when one of the zombis walked into the tripwire of a Bouncing Betty mine. Jacques must have seen it an instant too late, because he threw himself to the ground as the grenade popped up and airburst just over the zombis' heads.

Zombis don't duck, and the front two were all but decapitated by the jagged fragments. Marie-Claire, three or four meters behind them, continued to walk towards where Jacques was lying, and for a moment, I thought she'd been spared. Like a fool, I tromped the brake and reached for my binoculars and looked at her profile. Most of her face was gone; she still had one blank eye, but if there had been any of Marie-Claire'sgros bon ange left behind that face a second before, it was there no longer.

Jacques lifted his head to stare as Marie-Claire tottered unsteadily towards him, then shouldered his M-16. Dupre yelled something, but his last words were drowned out by the rattling gunfire as Jacques fired a long burst in his direction. I felt the jeep rock slightly as Legrand stood, holding the winds.h.i.+eld to steady himself. I was too busy watching Dupre fall to see Jacques turn his gun towards us; I heard shots, but bullets travel twice as fast as sound. By the time I opened my mouth to yell at Legrand, he had fallen out of the jeep and I was speaking to myself.

For what seemed like minutes, Jacques lay there in the minefield, surrounded by shattered zombis. Only Marie-Claire was standing, tall and motionless as though she'd forgotten how to walk. And then Jacques, having n.o.body left to avenge himself on, scrambled to his feet while the lights of a dozen laser scopes cl.u.s.tered on his chest like medals.

n.o.body waited for me to give the order to fire, and there was no way to tell who fired first. A few stray rounds. .h.i.t Marie-Claire, knocking her down, and we left all of them there.

Two days later, I came in with a mortar and another platoon, and we cleared out the hideout. Most of the defenders died long before we drove in; they gathered most of their munitions into one shack, sat around it, and pulled the pin on a grenade, much to the irritation of the macoutes and the Artist. When it was over, the zombi-master, an obese blue-eyed mulatto named Kobylanski, ordered his zoms to carry the remains out to the pits, and bury them with the dead from the first attacka"except for Legrand and Dupre, who merited separate graves, fine and private places, dug by the soldiers.

"A pity about Legrand," said Marchant, the Artist, after the brief ceremony. "He was one of my teachers, you know. Brilliant man; such a waste."

I glanced at him incredulously. Handsome, bald, and well-groomed with an expensive taste in aftershave, he seemed as unlike Legrand as any man I'd ever seen. "They say he had the General's ear, only Artist he would listen to, but didn't let power go to his head; always very friendly. I was training for the priesthood, but he said I had too much talent just to be an army chaplain. Did you know him well?"

"No, not really."

Marchant nodded, and reached into his pocket. "There was a letter addressed to you among his things."

"Thanks."

A week later, I was back in the Casernes Dessalines.

I HALF-EXPECTED them to court-martial me; instead, somebody must have decided that the army needed heroes as well as zombis. My father was still populara"perhaps even more so, now that he was safely deada"and so they pinned the blame on Jacques and a medal on me.

It was a small ceremony, just the General, the colonels, four tall zombi bodyguards, and myself. I watched the zoms carefully as one of the colonels made a speech, and then marched forward to receive my medal. The zoms stepped aside at the last moment, and I saw the General for the first time in years. The room was poorly lit, and the visor of his cap hid his eyes, but I stared into his face, just as Legrand's letter had asked me to. His eyelids were painted, and there was no spark there, nogros bon ange . I saluted him, and flicked the derringer out of my sleeve into my hand. The muzzle was touching his lips as I pulled the trigger; then I screamed the words that Legrand had written down. A few of the colonels reached for their pistols, but the zombis had their guns at the ready, and they turned and fired. The colonels were faster, but they were also far more mortal.

Legrand had buried and revived all of those zombis; not just the General, but his bodyguards as well.And he'd ensured he would always be able to control thema"or give that control to somebody with more courage than he had.

But I'm glad one of the colonels shot me; it's a chest wound, and I should be dead before the macoutes arrive, which saves me having to do it myself. There was no point in his doing so, except that I was easier to kill than the zoms, and it may have been a stray shot. The anthem is wrong, dyingisn't beautiful, but itis surprisingly easy. Much easier than revenge.

The Layoverby Michael Laimo Since Michael Laimo's debut on the horror scene over four years ago, his name has been seen in a number of leading small-press publications. From the truly dark, to the uncannily bizzare, this writer has delivered an eclectic range of tales that are rarely less than satisfying. Some of his wide list of published credits to date include "Epitaph," "Pirate Writings" and "Crossroads." His work has also appeared in several anthologies, and in the electronic market as well. He currently resides in Rochester, New York where he is presently hard at work on his first novel tentatively t.i.tled "Atmosphere."

USAIR FLIGHT 1166 finally came to a stop at gate 18. Tony stood up as the FASTEN SEATBELT light went out, stretched out as best he could beneath the overhead storage bins, and let out a long sigh while awaiting those ahead of him to disembark.

He was pretty tired. The original flight was delayed, then canceled, and then following four hours of waiting at the Will Rogers Inter-national Airport in Oklahoma City, he was finally re-routed on the red-eye to Boston's Logan, via a short layover in Pittsburgh.

He yawned and rubbed a hand down the back of his neck as the twelve or so pa.s.sengers began to file out. He had a pounder of a headache and another hour of waiting before his shuttle left for Logan. He looked at his watch. 1:30 AM.Twenty nine year old Tony Vintano had slept through most of the flight. At first he wasn't very sleepy because of the two large coffees he drank while holed up in OK City, but as the plane was taking off, napping became imperative due to undying circ.u.mstances: he had to take a s.h.i.+t, and the only way to avoid a visit to the claustrophobic confines of the lavatory was to sleep it off.

He had not successfully visited the bathroom (in sitting fas.h.i.+on) since the previous night at home in Boston following a bowl of his mother's spaghetti; she always cooked him a big meal before business trips. Twice since then he had tried to go, once upon arrival at the hotel and again at the airport prior to boarding the plane. All of his intentions were good, but nothing had come. The urge to go didn't hit him until he was in the air, safely belted in. Predictable.

Once airborne, his diminis.h.i.+ng comfort swiftly turned to agitation as the pressure in his posterior increased. He popped two nighttime aspirins in hope that sudden sleep would help hold in the four mealsa" big company expense onesa"that he had eaten over the past thirty-six hours. It worked. He slept until the plane landed in Pittsburgh.

Entering the waiting area of gate 14, he stopped momentarily at one of the blue seats there and checked his tickets for the departure time and gate of his connecting shuttle. Gate 16, 2:15 AM. Good. He was right where he needed to be and did not have to haul a.s.s across the airport like that guy in the rent-a-car ads. And the flight from OK City must have been a little late, so the layover was minimal now, just forty-five minutes.

Then the inevitable happened. A sour grumble emanated from deep inside his gut, pointing out to Tony that he had unfinished business. Those four meals that had sought escape earlier were back, knocking at his back door. He rubbed his stubbled face, then placed his tickets back into his briefcase. He checked his watch again. 1:41. Plenty of time to squeeze it out.

He shouldered his case and walked away from the gate to find a restroom, watching a few tired travelers pacing and lazing about with no direction in mind. Looking back over his six years of travel experience, he realized that he had never been in an airport at this time of the night. It seemed uncomfortably barren, like a mall before closing or Fenway Park towards the end of another futile season. Most of the shops were closed as well.

Signs ahead to his right designated the restrooms. Tony advanced through the one labeled with the outline of a male.

Inside the empty men's room, only one color dominated: gray. The ceramic tile walls, the metal stalls, the stainless steel sinks and urinals, all similar dull shades. Overhead, a single lamp threw a pallid sheaf of light over the stalls, casting shadows across the walls and floor like black blankets. The small room had an inst.i.tutional aroma as well, like pine disinfectant; it seemed that it had been cleaned just a short time prior.

Tony entered the last of the six stalls there, placed his bag down next to the toilet, dropped his drawers and took a seat. He always did most of his best thinking with his pants around his ankles. Tonight however he would have to make an effort just to keep awake; the drowsy effects of the aspirin still lingered.

Some thirty seconds into his movement, Tony heard footsteps enter, that of dress shoes echoing across the tiles. They led directly into the stall next him, stopped, and then turned to slam the door shut. Tony squirmed and rubbed his tired eyes, aggravated, feeling that his personal s.p.a.ce had just been violated. Couldn't the guy sit a stall or two away?

Then like a shotgun blast, the man in the stall next to him belched loudly, and began vomiting.