The Devil's Alphabet (34 page)

“I’ve never done it before, but I can ask people. I bet some of the argos at Alpha Furniture would know how.”

“Paxton, she’s not going to let me go home, no matter how clean or fixed up the house is.”

Pax glanced around. Rhonda’s office door was closed—he knew she wasn’t at the Home, but he still had to check—and no one else was in the atrium. “I’m going to force her,” he said.

Harlan pursed his lips, somehow expressing both pity and frank disbelief.

“Deke knew it,” Pax said, his voice low. “Jo knew it. She had proof Rhonda was ripping off the town. I’ll find it, and then I can—”

“Stop it, Paxton.”

“Are you telling me you don’t want out of here? Look what happened this morning, Dad. They’re not taking care of you. Things are falling apart.”

“That’s the first time that’s happened. I’ll get by.”

“You hate it here. I’ve felt what it’s like—” He almost said,
Felt what it’s like to be you
. “I know you’re dying to get out of here. I’ve been dreaming about it.”

“Your dreams told you this,” he said skeptically.

“You know what I mean,” Pax said. “Not dreams, exactly.” Some nights when he took the vintage, distances collapsed, the lines between self and not-self disappeared. He’d lie in the dark not knowing which bed, which body he inhabited. His father’s despair became his own.

“Oh, Paxton,” his father said. He looked disappointed—that particular frown that could wound Pax so effortlessly. “Every drunk thinks he’s found truth in a bottle.” He held up a big hand before Paxton could object. “Look at yourself, Son. You’re half-starved.”

“I’m fine. I admit I’m not eating all the fried crap I used to eat, but—”

“I want you to stop coming,” his father said. “Starting now. And when the quarantine is over, or whenever you can, I want you to go back home to Chicago.”

“You’re not doing this to me again,” Pax said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on.” He couldn’t stand it when Harlan played dumb. “You sent me away once. I’m not going to let you do it again.”

“I did that for your own good—I’m doing
this
for your own good.”

“You did it for yourself, Dad. You were petrified people would talk and you’d lose your church. You were ashamed.”

Harlan’s face reddened. “That didn’t have a damn thing to do with it. Do you even remember what you were like? You were the one who was—where are you going?”

“This isn’t happening,” Pax said, meaning the day’s vintage. He picked up his shirt that he’d laid over the chair back. “I’ll come back in the morning.”

“Sit your ass down.”

His father never swore, and he’d done it twice in ten seconds. Paxton put his hands in pockets but didn’t sit. He kept his face neutral and waited.

“Please,” Harlan said.

Pax breathed for a moment, thinking, and then pulled the chair over a few feet so that they could sit opposite each other.

“You were special,” his father said. The sun was in his face; he squinted and looked at the floor next to Paxton’s feet. “You’d been passed over. God had plans for you beyond this town. Nobody knew if the Changes would start again, or if they’d quarantine us again. Either way, if you didn’t leave here you’d be trapped.

“I was trying to save your life, Paxton. Your mother wanted you to go to college, get married to a nice girl, have children. You couldn’t have any of that here. And if the Changes came back and killed you, or turned you into something …”

Harlan shook his head, and looked up. Tears glittered in his eyes. Paxton sighed.

Somehow his father had recast everything from that year. It wasn’t his anger at Jo Lynn’s pregnancy, or his fear that his only son might be some kind of triple pervert who was fucking both Jo and Deke, or his dread that the whole town would find out and drive him out of his church … No, it was purely for the love of his son.

“I was only trying to spare you,” his father said. “All this … disease. This death.”

Pax leaned back. “Well,” he said quietly. “That didn’t quite work, did it?”

Jo had died anyway. Deke had died anyway. It didn’t matter if Pax was in Switchcreek or Chicago or halfway around the planet. His presence couldn’t protect them, and distance couldn’t protect him.

He was alone. The sole surviving member of the Switchcreek Orphan Society. Hell, he was the fucking president.

“You have to understand,” his father said, the words slurring. “Nobody knew. I was only trying, trying to …” The smell of vintage charged the air.

“I know, Dad,” Pax said. He stood and walked to retrieve the extraction kit.

When he finally heard the banging at the front door he thought the soldiers had returned. It was 9:30, a half hour past the official curfew. Pax put down the mallet and scraper and turned off the radio. The hallway was a mess; the carpet had come up cleanly enough, but the ancient rubber backing had disintegrated into something like tar and had glued itself to the wood. It had taken him hours to scrape the living room, chipping away at piece after piece. He’d slowed as he tired, and so the hallway was taking as long as the front room.

He walked to the living room, rubbing his palms on his jeans. The banging stopped, and suddenly the front door pushed open.

“Jesus Christ, Tommy, Pax said. The beta man stood in the doorway, holding the handle. “It’s after curfew. You nearly gave me—”

“Where are they?” Tommy said.

“Where’s who?” Pax said, though he knew perfectly well who he meant. “And what the hell are you doing barging into my house?”

Tommy walked across the room, put his head through the kitchen door. “Sandra! Rainy!”

He turned, marched toward Paxton. “Are they in the bedrooms? They better not be in the bedrooms.”

“The girls aren’t here,” Pax said, and stepped aside as Tommy went past him. “I haven’t seen them in weeks, not since the town meeting.” He realized that he hadn’t seen them at Deke’s funeral either, though they might have been there. Much of the day had been a blur.

Tommy opened his father’s bedroom door, then the guest room. When he reached for Paxton’s childhood bedroom Pax grabbed his arm. “That’s enough, Tommy.”

Tommy spun and seized Pax by the throat. His grip was incredibly strong, much stronger than those thin beta arms suggested. His lips pulled back to reveal small white teeth. Then he began to march Pax backward down the hall.

Pax backpedaled, prying at the man’s fingers, and then he stumbled over the radio and Tommy thrust him away, sent him sprawling to the floor.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” Tommy said, breathing hard. “To love them this much. To feel as
helpless
as this.”

Pax sat up, coughing.

“I feel sorry for you,” Tommy said. “When I was like you, I felt nothing for anybody else. I couldn’t even see
the point
of feeling anything.” He bent, picked up the mallet at his feet. It was a big chunk of metal on a wood handle that Paxton’s grandfather had owned, a tool too primitive to wear out. “Becoming a beta saved me. Becoming a father saved me. Suddenly I could see the
future—it became real. Generations of grandchildren stretching out in an unbroken line, clear as day. More real than you are.”

“The girls aren’t here,” Pax said. “I don’t know where they are.”

“Tell the truth.”

“Search the fucking house! I told you, I haven’t seen them since the meeting.”

“They weren’t at Jo’s house,” Tommy said. “This is the only other place they’d go.”

“Then maybe you don’t know them as well as you think you do.”

Tommy stared down at him. The mallet twitched in his hand. Then he crouched and leaned in so that their foreheads almost touched. Even this close, inches away, his eyes were empty, his face as indifferent as a wall.

“You won’t be seeing them again, Paxton,” he said quietly. “You won’t be able to find them. You won’t be allowed to even look for them. There’s too much that depends on them. If you even got within the same state, I’d be forced to kill you. Without a second thought.”

Tommy rose to his feet, the mallet still in his hand. “I wanted to warn you. I owe the twins that much.”

He walked to the living room. Pax sat very still.

A moment later he heard a double clunk—the mallet dropping to the floor—and then a few seconds after that the sound of Tommy’s Bronco starting.

He waited a short while longer, and then Paxton pushed himself to his feet. He went into the kitchen, opened the junk drawer, and found the flashlight. Dead, of course. He shook out the corroded batteries and replaced them with the D-cells from the radio; a few shakes and the light came on.

He grabbed his car keys, walked to the front door, then turned back to the kitchen. The bag Weygand had left for him was still on the kitchen table. He picked it up, then quickly added to it a couple cans of soup, a box of Saltines, and a small plastic jar of Peter Pan peanut butter.

He looked at the freezer door, then opened it. On the top rack were two old vials and the six fresh ones he’d extracted this morning—the most he’d ever had at one time. The father load.

Pax tucked one of the plastic tubes into his front pocket, and left the house before he decided to open it.

I
T WAS NOT
yet ten, but the night was already pitch-black, the moon snuffed by clouds, and Piney Road was a ribbon of lesser black winding through the trees. Pax hoped the Guard didn’t have curfew patrols out on the smaller, interior roads. Or if they did, that they were already busy chasing Tommy.

Pax turned south onto Sparks Hollow Road. A hundred yards before the T intersection with Creek Road he stopped and cut his headlights. He reached for the flashlight and turned it on.

He eased the car forward, driving with his head out the window, playing the feeble light of the flashlight across the road ahead of him. A few feet from the intersection he turned off the flashlight and nosed ahead. To his right was a dim glow that had to be the guard shack or the interior lights of some vehicle. Did Humvees have dome lights?

The western checkpoint was only a quarter mile down Creek Road to his right, a straight shot. The guards would see headlights as soon as he pulled out, and then as he drove away his taillights would be glowing like fox eyes.

But he had to go east only five hundred, six hundred yards before the road bent again and he’d be out of their sight. He could drive blind for a couple football fields, right? And if he drove into a ditch, so be it. It was only a fucking Ford Tempo.

He turned the wheel left and gently tapped the gas. He could see nothing; the windshield was a black canvas. At any moment he expected to bang into a tree or tilt off the road into the ditch. He leaned over the wheel, ears straining, eyes wide.

Thirty seconds passed and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He touched the brake—and the red glow lit up behind him. Shit! He’d forgotten about the brake lights!

Fuck it, he thought. He switched on the parking lights and accelerated. The faint yellow glow barely illuminated the pavement in front of him, but he thought he could make out theedges of the road.

Thirty seconds later he almost drove into the side of the mountain as the road hooked a hard right. He cranked the wheel, then flicked on the headlights to full and gunned it. He rifled through the single-lane bridge at fifty miles per hour and swung through the next big curve with wheels squealing.

No headlights appeared in his rearview mirror, no small-arms fire shattered his back window.

Jo’s mailbox appeared faster than he expected. He braked hard, swung onto the driveway, and snaked up the drive. The little house was dark, the patch of gravel out front empty of cars.

He shut off the Ford and got out, his heart still beating fast. He walked quickly to the edge of the slope, where he could look down on the stretch of shadow where the road lay. No headlights, no sirens. The only sound was the rattle of leaves in the chill breeze. His right hand shook along with the invisible leaves.

He patted the vial of vintage in his pocket but didn’t take it out.

All right, then.

He walked back to the house, calling, “Sandra! Rainy!”

———

He went from room to room through the dark, using only the flashlight because the house lights might attract Tommy or the Guardsmen. The girls weren’t inside, but he’d guessed that—known it—as soon as he’d entered.

He went out to the back door and flicked the light across the backyard. The tree seemed to jump out at him, gray bark materializing out of the night. He raised the beam of light until he saw the bit of frayed rope still dangling from the tree limb. It would take a strong man to hoist someone up into the tree. An iron grip to hold on while he slipped the rope around her neck.

Paxton walked to the edge of the lawn where the forest began. “Rainy! Sandra! It’s me, Paxton.” He walked into the trees. “Girls? You can come out now.” He stumbled against a root, stumbled again, and aimed the light up into the canopy. “Tommy’s gone—he’s already checked the house. Come inside. I’ll make you some soup.

“I have
Sal-tee-eens,”
he sang out.

He swung the light across the ground. A dirt path ran up into the trees, climbing the side of Mount Clyburn. He followed it with the light—and froze.

A small black figure hung from a tree branch, legs slowly twisting.

He shouted wordlessly, and the next moment the silhouette became a girl hanging by her arm. She let go and dropped to the ground, landing easily. She straightened and smiled into the glare of his light: a bald, dark-skinned girl dressed in jeans with a torn knee.

“Rainy?”

She ran down the path to him, her huge backpack bouncing, and threw her arms around him. “Paxton! We missed you!” Her hug nearly drove the breath from his lungs.

“You scared the hell out of me!” he said.

She laughed—he’d forgotten how she could laugh.

“Where’s Sandra?” he asked.

“She’s coming.”

They walked up to meet her halfway. She looked like an old woman: she wore a blanket draped over her shoulders, and below that was a long dress and furry boots. The path was steep so that when they reached each other her head was above his. She leaned down to him from her hips, embracing him at the shoulders like a grown-up. She seemed years older.