Cruel World (10 page)

Quinn paused with his drink partway to his mouth. “Everyone?”

“Everyone. Except for the stilts. There were a few of them wandering around, eating things.”

Alice shivered and took another long sip of vodka.

“How did they…turn? Was there anything on TV?”

Alice shook her head. “Nothing. By the time they started showing up, almost everyone was sick. The only thing I saw was the video that someone uploaded to Yahoo.”

“I saw it too,” Quinn said.

“Super creepy. They’re mutations of some kind. That’s all I know. The disease must’ve affected certain people somehow and did that to them.”

“Our cook, my friend, Graham, turned into one of them. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. He was still wearing the earring he always wore.”

“Oh yeah, you can tell sometimes who they were before. Once in a while there’s still a remnant of clothing on them, but most of them grew way too much to have anything on. Tattoos are still there, scars, birthmarks, some jewelry. The first one we saw was my neighbor, Mrs. Wilhelm. God, she was a pain in the ass while she was human. It was a day or so after everything went down and the media was going nuts. We live—lived—in a shitty apartment building on the north side of town and the bat was across the hall from us. She was a stinky old cat lady, but she had money. I don’t know why she retired in that apartment. I know she’d always been there and her husband died a few years before we moved in. Rumor was she got paid a huge life insurance sum after her old man kicked it and she lived off of that, but she really only spent money on those cats.”

Alice rolled her tongue around in her mouth as if she’d tasted something bad and then took another drink if vodka.

“She’d just gotten back from vacation, somewhere in California I think, heard her mention it to the building manager after she finished complaining about the heat not working for the hundredth time, and those cats had already started yowling again. She’d brought them somewhere while she was gone, and it was awesome not to hear them scratching and clawing on the door at all hours of the night and day. That night I’d just gotten back from The Cabinet, it’s a liquor store where I work—worked—anyway, I was coming up the stairs, and there’s this pale, scrawny thing crouched half in and half out of the old bat’s apartment. I remember thinking that somehow one of her chairs had mildewed and she was trying to shove it out through the door. I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what I was seeing. She heard me and stepped out of her apartment all hunkered down because Mrs. Wilhelm was about five foot nothing and this thing was over eight feet tall. It had a cat in its mouth, one of the tabbys. I remember the orange and white stripes on its tail and ass that hadn’t been chewed up yet. Its fur was all matted down with saliva and blood. The thing just looked at me for a minute. It had pieces of gut on its chin, and it just stared at me with Mrs. Wilhelm’s eyes.”

Alice set her empty glass down and swallowed. She gazed into the fire not saying anything. After she’d been quiet for over a minute, Quinn cleared his throat.

“You don’t have to finish; I get the picture.”

“She came for me,” Alice said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “She spit the chewed cat out and started toward me, her long skinny legs pumping and hands touching the floor like some sort of hairless monkey. I grabbed the closest thing to me, which was one of the old fire extinguishers hanging on the wall—they were everywhere in the building—and I swung it up right as she lunged for me. It hit her in the side of the face and her head bounced off the wall as she grabbed at me. I fell on the stairs and managed to snag the bannister on the way down, but the old bat wasn’t so lucky. The stairway was one of the old ones with a landing for the second floor and then for the third but it didn’t turn at all. You could look down from the third floor and see the first floor landing. I was always terrified Ty would trip down them. We would’ve never moved into that damn place if we could’ve afforded somewhere else.”

Alice seemed to come back to herself and looked around the room. Ty turned in his sleep and sighed. The fire cracked, and a couple of embers flew out of the hearth, fading away in midair.

“She fell and I heard her neck snap on the second landing. By the time she hit the first floor, there were bones sticking out of her skin and blood running along the treads. All I could think of was, had she gone across the hallway and visited Ty and his babysitter while I’d been gone?”

The fire eating at the dry wood became the loudest sound in the room again. Alice turned her empty glass slowly on the table.

“But they were okay.”

“They were fine. His babysitter was freaked after hearing the commotion outside the door, but I was so thankful she hadn’t opened it. If she had…”

“Did you leave right away?” Quinn asked, trying to keep her from focusing too much on the memory.

“Pretty much, if you don’t count the time it took to put some clothes and food together. My car’s a shitty Pontiac Grand Prix, but it never gave me any trouble. It would still be going if those assholes hadn’t run us off the road.” Her eyes swam with tears and she blinked once, long, and when she opened them again, the tears were gone. “They even took his walking cane. I don’t know why or what they’d use it for, but they took it anyway. I looked in the ditches hoping they’d tossed it out after realizing they had no use for it, but it wasn’t there.” She sniffed once and swallowed.

“I can make him one, I’m sure. Something around here would work,” Quinn offered.

“No. I’ll find him one when we get going again. There’ll be a medical supply store in Portland.”

“That’s where you’re headed?”

“Yeah, well, it’s a stop anyway.”

“Why Portland?”

She looked at him again, tracing his face with her eyes so that it seemed like fingers were probing his features. He nearly shivered.

“My mother. She’s in a home there. She’s got early onset dementia.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” Alice gripped the vodka bottle and poured one more small shot into her glass, downing it with a toss of her head. “I’m still weighing whether to go or not. I’m sure Portland will be bad, and it’s the last place I want to bring Ty, but I have to know. I couldn’t live without knowing.”

“And if you find her, where then?”

“Iowa.”

“Iowa?”

“There’s a command center there. It was on the news before most of the stations went down. The government set up a huge compound inside some park or mine in Fort Dodge. They were telling everyone it was a safe haven.”

“Why Iowa?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with being centralized in the country. I’m thinking I would have set up a safe zone somewhere better than Iowa. Somewhere warmer, like Florida.”

“Iowa’s not nice?”

“You’ve never been there?”

He hesitated, almost saying,
I’ve never been anywhere
.

“No.”

She watched him for a long moment and returned to spinning her glass again.

“I’m guessing it’s the safest place in the country, if you can get there.”

“If you can get there.”

They both fell silent, watching the fire. Ty turned in his sleep again and murmured something. Alice rose from her chair and moved to his side, stroking his brow and smoothing his hair back. Quinn took advantage of the gap in conversation to gather the blankets and pillows from the upstairs closet. He brought them back to the living room and spread them out a makeshift bed on the floor beside the couch. Ty was quiet, and Alice had brought their glasses and the mostly empty bottle of vodka to the kitchen. When she returned and saw the blankets and pillows, she gave him half a smile as she knelt to arrange them further.

“Haven’t slept in a fort bed since I was fourteen. My dad used to make them when I’d have sleepovers.”

“Where’s your dad now?”

Alice paused in smoothing out the comforter on the floor and then resumed.

“Thank you for everything, for taking us in. You’ve been great. Sorry I freaked out on you earlier. It’s been one of those days.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “The last week has been one of those days.”

She stood and they looked at one another for a beat before he motioned to the hallway.

“There’s a bathroom next to the office if you or Ty need to use it. The water’s off, but we’ll deal with it in the morning if need be.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll sleep in the office tonight if you need me.”

“We’ll be fine.”

He stoked the fire one last time and left the room as Alice settled in beside the couch. He found a sleeping bag in the upstairs closet and unrolled it on the office floor in front of the desk. From there he could see the window and down the hallway. He set the XDM on the floor and positioned himself so that one hand rested on it and closed his eyes. The wind caressed the glass, and several times he nearly sat up to investigate a noise. But when nothing further came, he drifted off into a shallow sleep, dreaming of eyes that watched him from the darkness, unblinking and filled with hunger.

Chapter 10

Limbo

He woke to laughter.

Quinn sat up in his sleeping bag, the pistol rising with him. There was a span of seconds in which the sounds coming from the living room were completely wrong; they shouldn’t be there in his house. But the prior night’s events came back to him, and he relaxed, wiping away the scratching sleep in his eyes.

He climbed free of the sleeping bag, his injuries protesting, but not near as loudly as the day before. The ankle was the sorest, and he rotated it clockwise then counterclockwise, standing on the other foot. It creaked and cracked, but there was very little impingement, and the joint didn’t seem to be damaged beyond a strain. After testing it with his weight once more and finding it was definitely better than yesterday, he moved down the hall.

Alice and Ty were both awake, Alice sitting at the far end of the couch from Ty, gently pinching his wriggling toes that poked from beneath the blanket as she recited a quiet rhyme. He laughed each time she gripped his feet, his face lighting with a smile that exposed his small, even teeth.

“Snapping turtle dives, under the pond, up he comes, and chomp, he’s gone. Little froggy says, where did he go? Fish swims past saying look out below.” Alice’s voice was soft and smooth as she sang the rhyme. She recited it once more beneath Ty’s giggles before she noticed Quinn standing in the doorway.

“Morning,” she said, turning toward him.

“Good morning.”

“Hi Quinn,” Ty said, still smiling and wiggling his toes.

“Hi. Are you guys playing a game?”

“An old rhyme,” Alice said, rising from the sofa.

“It’s Grandpa Fischer’s. He made it up,” Ty said.

“Yeah. Okay, Ty, get dressed now.”

Without protest, the little boy swung his legs free of the blanket and began to grope on the floor for his pair of jeans.

“They’re to your left,” Alice said. Ty adjusted his reach and snagged the pants and began to put them on.

“How did you sleep?” Quinn asked, moving toward the kitchen. Alice followed him, pausing in the doorway.

“Okay. I think I may’ve gotten a concussion yesterday. It felt like I was lying on a boat last night.”

“How do you feel this morning?”

“Better. A little weak, but that might be the vodka.”

Quinn poured two bottles of water into a pan and brought it to the fireplace. In a matter of minutes, he had the few leftover coals stoked into a blaze, the pan heating beside it.

“When that water’s hot, you can bring it to the bathroom down the hall and clean your forehead. There’s washcloths in the closet beside the door along with hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet.”

Alice blinked at him, her mouth opening and then shutting again. Her eyes roamed his face, and after a moment, he glanced away. No one had ever looked at him the way she did. Not unkind, but curious, probing. He was onstage and she the only audience.

“Sorry,” Alice said, noticing his discomfort. “I—”

“It’s okay. I know how I look.”

“It’s not that, I just—”

“I’ll find something for us to eat,” Quinn said, turning away. He rummaged in the food bag with his head down until Alice retreated from the room. After a few minutes, she passed on the way to the bathroom carrying the pan of water. Quinn cut four apples into sections and put them on plates, then opened a bag of chips, placing a handful beside the apples for each of them. He brought the food into the living room and found Ty sitting beside the glowing hearth.

“Are you hungry, Ty?”

“Yeah, really hungry.”

“Okay, here you go. There’s apple slices there along with some chips.”

Ty took the plate from his hands and lowered it to his lap.

“What kind of chips?”

“Salt and vinegar.”

“Oh, that’s my favorite.”

A smile tugged at Quinn’s lips. “Mine too.”

“Mom might be mad that I’m eating chips for breakfast,” Ty whispered.

“You can blame me,” Quinn whispered back. Ty grinned and began to eat.

Although he wasn’t hungry, Quinn started to pick at his food also. The apples were on the verge of going bad, their flesh sandy on his tongue, but he ate them anyway. When they were almost finished with their plates, Alice returned, her hair wet and combed straight back from her forehead that now had a wide Band-Aid across it. The blood was gone, and her face was fresh and smooth. Quinn caught himself staring, and it was his turn to look away, heat rising in his cheeks.

“Chips for breakfast? I don’t think so little man!” Alice play-wrestled with Ty as he tried to bring the last chip to his mouth and finally succeeded, chewing purposely with his mouth open. “You little brat,” Alice teased, tickling his neck. She took up her own plate and popped an apple into her mouth. “Thank you,” she said after swallowing.

“It’s not much.”

“It’ll make a turd.”

Quinn paused with his hand partway to his face and glanced at her. Ty giggled and clapped a hand to his mouth. Alice shook her head as Quinn let out a small laugh.

“I’m sorry. Old saying of my dad’s. It slips out sometimes. And don’t repeat that, young man,” She said, nudging the still-smiling boy. He nodded once but the grin didn’t fade.

When they were all finished with their makeshift breakfast, Quinn took the plates to the kitchen and Alice followed him while Ty pulled on his socks and shoes.

“I hate to ask you, but you wouldn’t have a vehicle to spare, would you?” Alice said. “I noticed the other homes on the way in and didn’t know if they had cars.”

“You’re leaving this morning?”

“We should. I spoke to my mom right after this all started. She was having a good day, knew who I was and where she was, but that might’ve changed by the afternoon. I would’ve went sooner, but it all happened so fast.”

“It was like a wildfire,” Quinn said, gazing at the floor. One of the brothers’ boot prints was still there, faded and ghostly.

“Exactly. I have to know if she’s okay or not.”

Quinn glanced at her, the set to her jaw and the way her eyes lanced the room with their brightness.

“Graham has a car, but it’s really small and sporty. Mallory has a minivan, since she nearly always made the runs into town for groceries.” Quinn looked at his hands and then out the window. “But if you’re set on leaving today, you should take the Tahoe in the garage. It’s the newest and has four-wheel-drive.”

“But that’s your car. We can’t take yours.”

“I’ve got the other two. You guys need the Tahoe.”

“Quinn, no—”

“Look, you have people to worry about and I don’t.”

Alice opened her mouth to say something and stopped. He turned and shuffled the dishes around on the counter into a pile, keeping his back to her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

“What?”

“Helping us?”

He faced her, not able to hold her gaze for more than a second. “Because it’s the right thing to do.” When she merely studied him, he motioned to the rear of the house. “I’ll try to get the generator running so you can take some water with you, have a shower or a bath too if you’d like.” He didn’t wait for a reply. Grabbing the manual from the counter and dislodging the ice chisel from beneath the kitchen doorknob, he walked outside.

The day was cool again, but the clouds were gone, and an unblemished powder-blue-sky awaited him. He stayed still for over a minute on the stoop, studying the trees and listening for any movement. When nothing but birds flitted in the very tops of the pines, he stepped down into the yard. Dew soaked his shoes within steps, but he barely noticed. There would be a lot to do to get Alice and Ty ready to leave. Then it would be just him, alone again in the big house. He and the three graves.

The wind was negligible, and the waves coasting in below the cliffs were murmurs as he rounded the house and opened the generator enclosure. After ten minutes of reading, he saw nothing that was indicative of the generator’s inability to run. He tried hitting the start button again, but it merely produced the same dry click. There were four twist-locks set into a panel below the controls, and he undid them, setting the loose piece of steel to the side before crouching to look into the generator’s housing. All was fuses and bundles of wires leading into darkness within the shroud. The more he studied the components, the more they blended together into one confusing mass. He sat there, staring at the alien mechanics of the machine, while all he could see was the open road beyond the gates—the breeze blowing in through the window of the Tahoe coating his skin as they drove, trees whipping past in a blur of green on either side.

He blinked, coming back to the present. His ankle throbbed from the position he sat in, and his legs were cramping. He was about to return the panel to its former position and lock it home when he spotted a wide, plastic switch set above a row of long fuses. There were no markings on or around it, and when he put pressure on it, there was resistance. He pushed harder, and the switch snapped in the direction he pressed it. There was an electrical click of contactors engaging, and the generator’s engine cranked into life. The entire enclosure resounded with the machine’s vibrations as the engine rose to a steady hum.

“Yes!” Quinn said, his eyes widening.

He replaced the panel cover and climbed free of the housing. With the door shut, the machine’s growl became much lower, and when he rounded the side of the house, it was lost to him completely.

In the garage, he climbed into the Tahoe and keyed the ignition on. The fuel gauge sprung to a hair’s width of the full mark. His father must have filled up in Portland before coming home. He found two semi-full gas cans in one corner and loaded them in the back, leaving the hatch cracked for the fumes. He was about to go into the house when he spotted a small, wooden dowel sitting on one of the shelves. It stuck out from beneath a pile of loose lumber that Foster kept for odd projects. When he pulled it free, he measured it by holding it out before him in one hand. In the drawer of the workbench, he found a roll of black electrical tape and carefully wrapped the dowel until none of the wood was visible. He tested the strength one time, bending it. It sprung back into a straight line.

When he entered the house, Alice was giving Ty a bath, the door partially open. She noticed him in the hallway and turned from where she knelt beside the tub.

“Saw the lights come on and thought I’d better get the rug rat clean before we go. No telling when he’ll get another hot bath. Thank God for instant hot water heaters, huh?”

“That’s for sure,” Quinn said, leaning the dowel against the wall. She looked down at it then back to his face.

“I told you you didn’t have to do that.”

“I know. I saw it and…it only took a minute.”

Alice started to say something else but stopped and turned back to Ty who was gathering bubbles before him like a sudsy blanket and running his palms over the top, popping many as he did so. Quinn hesitated for a moment and then went to the kitchen and began to clean the dirty dishes in the sink.

When the dishes were clean, he swept the floor and wiped down the counters, his hands having to do something as his thoughts wandered. Besides, Mallory and Graham would’ve hated seeing the kitchen this dirty.

No sounds came from down the hall. It was as if his guests had already left, the house was empty again, and he was alone. He dumped the dustpan into the garbage and stared out the window at the beautiful spring day. The trees were motionless and he could make out a few faint buds of green and red at the tips of their branches. The forest would change fast from a skeletal domain to an emerald expanse, hiding the house from the rest of the world until fall stripped the trees bare again. The snows would come along with the wind that never seemed to quit blowing during the winter. And where would he be? Here. In the house by himself, huddled around the fireplace eating whatever canned good he could find. And where would they be?

The sound of Alice entering the room brought him free of his trance and he turned to her.

“We’re pretty much ready to go,” she said. Her voice was even. Not unkind but not friendly either.

“I’m coming with you.” The words had escaped him before he knew he’d spoken, and only the startled look on Alice’s face made him realize what he’d said. “I mean, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to come with. At least to Portland. There’s barely any food left here, and I’m going to have to go at some point.”

“No.” Her reply was flat, and she crossed her arms as if barricading herself against any argument.

“You don’t trust me,” Quinn said, setting the broom and dustpan aside.

“I don’t trust anyone except that little guy in the other room.”

“If I had wanted to hurt you, I could’ve last night while you slept.”

“You could’ve tried. The thing is, I don’t know you or what your game is.”

“I don’t have a game.”

“Everyone has a game.”

“What’s yours?”