The Last Days of October (3 page)

“To the man you’re
obviously stepping out on me with.
 
Is it
in your purse?
 
Get it out and unlock
it.”

She crossed her
arms over her chest and glared at him.
 
The phone was indeed in her purse and it would have been a simple thing,
such a simple thing, to pull it out, put in the passcode and show him.
 
Show him there was no other man, there were
no other people, not even friends, because she had nothing, no one other than
him.
 
The world’s most pitiful contacts
list—she had houseplants with more Facebook friends.
 
Show him, then call him an asshole for even
suggesting
she was capable of something
like that.
 
It would have been easy.

And she could have
done it.
 
Just not that day.

“I’m not letting
you search my phone.”

“Why?
 
Don’t want me to see you telling him how
you’re going to suck his eyeballs out through his dick?”

“He doesn’t like
blowjobs!”

Bad, bad
joke.
 
Wrong thing to say.
 
Wrong, wrong,
wrong
thing to say.
 
Before
she could speak another word, he leapt from the chair.
 
She retreated until her buttocks pressed
against the edge of the counter and she could retreat no farther.
 
Their noses almost touched as he breathed on
her face and she smelled the beer he’d consumed while raking leaves
earlier.
 
He was only five-ten, but at
this distance the six inches difference between them made her feel as if she
stood in the shadows of a skyscraper.
 
A
tall,
angry
skyscraper which,
considering how quickly this had escalated, had maybe sucked down more than
just one little beer.

“You think that’s
funny?
 
Saying that to me?”

“No!
 
Calm down, Mike!
 
Jesus, if I was cheating on you do you think
I’d leave the evidence on my phone?
 
Or
say something like that?”

Without taking his
eyes off hers, he reached behind her into her purse and pulled out the
phone.
 
He removed one of her hands from
the edge of the counter and pressed the phone into it.
 

“Unlock it,” he
said.
 
“Unlock it and show me.”

Unlock it and show him.
 
Or this could get really bad.

“No,” she said.

Something dark and
crazy flashed in his eyes, and her body tensed for the impact sure to come.
 
But he didn’t hit her.
 
Instead, he snatched the phone back and laid
it on the counter.
 
Then he made a fist
and drove it into the cabinet beside her head.
 
He did it again.
 
And again.

She flinched with
each punch.

That could have been your face.

He drew back to
punch the cabinet again.
 
She moved
sideways and realized then that he’d punched straight through the thin
wood.
 
He reached forward and swept her
purse, the sugar bowl and the toaster off the counter with one angry
thrust.
 
Blood from his right hand
smeared across the laminate top in a sticky arc.
 
The sugar bowl struck the floor and
shattered.
 
She flinched again.

“Mike, stop!”

But oh, no.
 
He wasn’t going to stop.
 
No sir, no ma’am, that was a big fat
negative, because she’d wound up a funnel cloud, a human tornado, and no
tornado could ever be happy until it tore through at least one trailer park and
fucked up a
whole
lot of people’s
shit.
 
Mike grabbed the coffeemaker and
spiked it on the floor.
 
Everything on
every countertop, the tabletop, swept away.
 
Pulverizing glass, shattering ceramic; the breadbox jerked from its
comfortable little position beside the sink and dashed to splinters beside the
poor coffee machine.

“Mike…”

But he didn’t hear
her.
 
His normally handsome face was a
twisted rictus of rage.
 
Eyes wide, lips
pulled back from his teeth in an animalistic snarl, he raised a chair over his
head and hurled it at the wall.
 
It
bounced back and struck him, so he picked it up and hurled it again.
 
The effort strained something in his back,
though, and he cried out in pain.
 
The
chair fell to the ground.
 
He fell to his
knees.

“Ohhh
fuck
!
 
My back!”
 

Normally, she
would have run to him, helped him up.
 
This situation, though, could not coexist on the same plane of
understanding with any form of the word
normal.
 
She stared at the minefield of shattered
glass and broken dishes between them and let her eyes crawl up the baseboard to
the holes where the chair legs had stabbed through the drywall.

“Mom?”

She whirled
around.
 
Amber, fresh from her afternoon
jog around the neighborhood, stood aghast in the doorway between the kitchen
and the hall that led into the foyer.
 
Her mouth hung open.
 

“Go upstairs.”

“What…”

“I said
go upstairs!
 
Now!”

Amber turned and
fled.

Heather felt like doing
the same but couldn’t; this mess was hers.
 
Her eyes centered on a piece of Mike’s peanut butter toast, stuck to the
wall.
 
She watched it hang for a moment
and then slowly peel away until it fell and hit the floor with a
plop,
leaving behind only its peanutty
ghost on the wall.
 
The sight was so
overblown, so ridiculous, that she almost burst into gales of insane
laughter.
 
But at the same time, she’d
never felt less like laughing.

“My fucking
back,
” he groaned.

She bent down and
retrieved her phone, which had found its way to the floor in the melee but had
survived miraculously unharmed.
 
She
punched in the passcode and then walked over to Mike, her sneakers crunching
over broken glass and dishes.
 
She laid
it down beside him.

“I’ve been playing
Candy Crush,” she said quietly.
 
“Amber
got me hooked on it.
 
I’m on level
145.
 
Go ahead, look.”

He glanced at the
phone.
 
He tried to move, but whatever
pulled muscle had ended his tantrum evidently decided he wouldn’t be going
anywhere just yet and so he remained in place on his knees.
 
He sucked in air through his clenched teeth
and closed his eyes.

“Look through all
my text messages.
 
Look through my
email.
 
There’s nothing there.
 
I have no friends, Mike, none.
 
Look.”

“I’m sorry,” he
moaned.
 
“I don’t know what came over me,
I really don’t.
 
I don’t know what the
fuck just happened.
 
God, my
back
!”

“Leave the phone
on the counter when you’re done.
 
Then
clean up.”

“I will,
baby.
 
Just as soon as this goes away.”

She folded her
arms and stared down at him.
 
With his
demons exorcised—for the moment, anyway—all his menace had vanished and left
him looking pitiful, almost silly.
 
She
experienced the sudden and powerful urge to help him, get him up off the floor
and guide him to the sofa in the living room.
 
Because clearly he was himself again.
 
She could…

No.
 
Not again.

“Amber and I are
going camping without you,” she said.
 
“And I think we’ll be leaving this afternoon instead of tomorrow.”

“Okay.
 
I know.
 
I’m an asshole.
 
I’m a
real
asshole.
 
Jesus, Heather, I don’t know what’s wrong
with me!”
 

“And when we come
back…”

She trailed
off.
 
She didn’t know if she could finish
the sentence.

But she didn’t
know if she couldn’t, either.

“I’d like you to
be gone,” she finished.
 
“Find someplace
else to stay.
 
Anywhere but here.”

He began to
cry.
 
The sound stabbed her in the
stomach and made a hole there through which drained all but the thinnest traces
of her resolve.
 
Recognizing what was
happening, she stepped back again, and then turned for the doorway.
 
But his voice reached out with a surprisingly
steady hand then and grabbed her.

“Heather?”

She stopped and
turned around.
 
He knelt with his back to
her, hunched over there on the floor with one hand on his back and the other
supporting the weight of his torso over his knees.
 
She could hear the labor of his
breathing.
 
She knew from the sound that
he was in pain, considerable pain.
 
But
his voice climbed over it.

“I said I’d kill
myself if you ever left me,” he said, “and I will.
 
I’ll take that handgun and spray my brains
all over the bedroom ceiling.
 
Only way
I’m leaving this house is in a body bag.”

She stared at his
back.

“But that’s okay,”
he continued, “because you’re not leaving me.
 
You can’t.”

“I don’t need you
anymore,” she said.
 
She had always
pictured herself saying such things in a ringing declaration of independence,
an assertion of strength.
 
But now she
found her voice sounding tinny, insubstantial.
 
“I’ve got my own money.”

“You can’t,” he
repeated.
 
“And you won’t.
 
You don’t want me along on the trip, fine, go
on.
 
But cut the bullshit.
 
You’re not leaving me.
 
Ever.”

He pronounced it
as fact, borne on an almost smug air of confidence that rendered her
temporarily choked with anger and frustration.
 
Anger at him for thinking he could control her for the rest of her life;
frustration with herself for the knowledge that maybe he could.
 
She wanted to say something caustic and
witty, something she could be proud of in the days and years to come when she
remembered the moment when she’d finally had enough.
 
And let him know in no uncertain terms.
 
Something she could repeat over drinks with
friends she’d never had before but would have now, a band of free and happy
women enjoying wine and martinis with their comrades in arms.
 
And do
you know what I told that nasty son of a bitch?
 
You know what I said to that controlling,
bullying
little baby asshole when he tore up my
kitchen and then tried to tell me that I
wasn’t
going to leave him?

Her imaginary
friends leaned over their drinks, eyes wide.
 
They waited.

And waited.

What did you say?

She couldn’t
answer them.
 
She couldn’t answer them
because here, on the spot where she was supposed to make history, she couldn’t
speak a word.
 
Nothing came.
 

And so she did what
she always did in these situations: she retreated.
 
She turned and fled down the hallway,
hurrying for the stairs.
 
Before what
remained of her wits eroded and she degenerated into a crying mess.

4.

In the passenger
seat, Amber rocked back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees.
 
Once, Heather would have fussed at her for
putting her feet on the upholstery—Mike had a thing about keeping the cars
clean.
 
But that time had passed.

She slowed and
made a right onto Litchfield Avenue.
 
Leaves from oak and maple trees lay scattered in a brown carpet that
stretched from the street to the front porches of the two-story colonials on
both sides.
 
The leaves covered each yard
without discrimination, the coverage varying in intensity only by the size and
type of trees in the immediate vicinity.
 
No one had raked.

Pulling up behind
Mike’s Ford F-150 pickup, the feeling of doom that had followed her away from
the Shell station intensified.
 
As soon
as the Durango rolled to a stop behind the pickup, she threw open the door and
jumped out.
 
“I’m going to find your
father,” she said.

“Mom, don’t!”

“His truck’s here,
and that means
he’s
here, too.
 
He’s probably inside.”

“Mom,
stop
!”

But Heather wasn’t
listening.
 
She slammed the door and
charged around the front bumper, banging her shin on Mike’s trailer hitch in
the process.
 
She stumbled but didn’t
fall—she didn’t have time to fall.
 
She
had to go see Mike.
 
Because Mike was
home, he
had
to be home, because as
mad as he’d been at her, as big a fight as they’d just had he would have
never
…

“MOM!
 
STOP!
”

Amber tackled her
right on the edge of the leaf-strewn grass.
 
She stumbled with the impact, waving her arms for balance.
 
Amber pulled her backwards until they both
slammed against the side of the truck.

“What are you
doing?”
 
Heather gasped.

“Mom, the door!”

Heather looked.

The front door to
their house stood open.
 
Only a crack,
but at an angle just slight enough to make visible the large cross spray
painted there.
 
Heather’s stomach
flipped, rolled and fell straight into her feet.
 
Her heart hammered against her ribs.

“I’ve got to check
on Daddy,” she said.
 
“So let go of me,
okay?”

Amber had her
enveloped from behind in a bear hug that she tightened now.
 
Heather worked a hand up between her
daughter’s arm and her own chest in order to keep breathing.
 
“We don’t know what’s in there,” Amber
said.
 
“It could be a quarantine sign or
something.
 
Like a disease or something.”

“I know.”

“And if you go in
there you’ll get it.
 
You’ll die.”

“If he’s not in
there, I’ll come right back out.
 
I
promise.”

“And if he is?”

Heather swallowed
and closed her eyes.
 

“Then I’ll still
come right back out.
 
Okay?
 
Listen, we went inside that gas station.
 
I touched the screen door up at Mr. Cagle’s
house to tell him we were leaving.
 
If
there’s some kind of superbug on the loose, we already have it.”

Heather felt Amber
shaking.
 
Gently, she reached her other
hand up and peeled her arms from around her chest.
 
She turned around and kissed her forehead.
 
Then she opened the door and sat her firmly
on the passenger seat.

“Stay here.
 
I’ll be right back.”

She turned and
started towards the house.

Please, God, let him be in there napping on
the couch or something, maybe him and Clyde passed out on the floor from too
much beer, we can work all this other bullshit out if he’s in there, I’m sorry,
I’m sorry, I’M SORRY.

But Mike wouldn’t
be in there.
 
She knew this on a very
fundamental level as she climbed the porch steps.
 
Mike knew where she had gone, knew where
they
had gone.
 
He knew how to get there.
 
When the shit hit the fan down here, he’d
have come to get them.
 
He’d have done
this no matter what she’d said to him before they left.

I will cover him with a sheet so she won’t
see him.
 
She will not see his dead face.

“Mike?”
 
she called out.
 
“It’s me!
 
We’re home!
 
We’re okay!”

No response.
 
Closer now, she could study the cross.
 
Mike—or whoever had applied it—had stood too
close to the door when he sprayed it, and it had run.
 
Little tendrils had dribbled and dried,
giving it the same rushed appearance as the others.

With her leading
foot, she reached forward and pushed open the door.
 
When nothing jumped out at her, she peered
into the foyer and stepped across the threshold.

Just beyond the
door, the sofa stuck part of the way out of the living room, as if Mike had
tried to move it into the foyer.

“I’m home!”
 
Louder this time, fear creeping in from the
edges.
 
Her voice vanished up the stairs
and into the darkness of the second floor.
 
Again, no answer.

But she hadn’t
expected one.
 
Fighting to keep stomach
acid from reaching up and burning her throat, she sidled through the gap
between the edge of the couch and the wooden banister and made her way up the
hall into the kitchen.

Mike had cleaned
up the mess from his tantrum, but the refrigerator had migrated from its pocket
in the wall next to the dishwasher to the back door.
 
The loose power cord lay across one scuffed
floor tile.
 
Sunlight made its way in
through the gauzy white curtains covering the window over the sink.
 
Next to the sink lay a hammer, a saw and
several boards.
 
It didn’t take a degree
in crime scene investigation to know Mike had been planning to nail the window
shut.

She continued
through the dining room to the living room.
 
On its way to the foyer, the sofa had knocked aside the coffee table and
loveseat like rowboats before an ocean liner.
 
The curtains were drawn in here, darkening the room in a way she found
disturbing.
 
She threw them open.
 
Immediately, the room flooded with sunlight.
 
Her eyes fell on the coffee table.
 
There, face down atop of three months’ worth
of Amber’s
Glamour
magazines, sat her
grandmother’s Holy Bible.

She blinked.
 
She could count on one hand with several
amputated fingers the number of times Michael Palmer had ever even touched a
Bible, much less opened one.
 
Yet here
lay her grandmother’s copy.
 
Heather
turned it over and read the passage to which Mike had opened it to the Book of
Isaiah.

Therefore the anger of the Lord is aroused
against His people; He has stretched out His hand against them and stricken
them, and the hills trembled.
 
Their
carcasses were as refuse in the midst of the streets.

She slammed the
book shut and dropped it on the coffee table.
 
Then she continued through the home.

She found nothing
upstairs.
 
His clothes remained on their
hangers in the closet, his toiletries a typical scattered mess on the bathroom
vanity.
 
Everything remained as it had
been when they’d left to go camping.
 
No
clues.

Except for
one.
 
A box of 9mm bullets lay open on
the nightstand, and Mike’s Ruger P89 pistol was gone from its box in the
closet.
 
She finally found it on the
floor downstairs in the foyer, just behind the door that had concealed it from
view when she first arrived.
 
She bent
over and picked it up.
 
It held a full
magazine.

He’d left the
safety off.

“Where are
you?”
 
she whispered.
 
The gun felt cold and heavy.
 
Ugly, like knowing that whatever had happened
to Mike had happened because she had booted him from the camping trip.

He’s okay.
 
Wherever he is, he’s okay; guys like Mike don’t go down easily.
 
If anybody could survive whatever happened
here, it would be him.

Amber stood
outside on the porch, arms folded, nervously glancing up and down the
street.
 
Heather opened the screen door
to admit her.

“Where is
he?”
 
Amber asked.

“I don’t know.”

She took Amber on
the nickel tour of the Palmer House of Horrors, saying little.
 
When they finished, Amber sat at the bottom
of the stairs and cradled her head in her hands.

“Oh my God,” she
moaned.

“It could have
been worse; I could have found him in here dead.
 
We can still hope.”

“How?”
 
Amber asked.

Good question.
 
Heather turned and looked through the screen
door.
 
Beyond the porch, brown and gold
leaves littered the yard, the sidewalk, the street.
 
The temperature was falling as the day aged;
it would get cold tonight.

And it would get
dark.
 
Her watch said it was half past
four; at this time of the year, sunset would approach quickly.
 
Another wave of foreboding washed over her
insides as she considered the oncoming night.
 
Suddenly, she wanted nothing less than to remain here when night arrived
in Deep Creek.

But she didn’t
want to be on the road, either.
 
Not at
night.

“So what do we do
now?”
 
Amber asked.

“I have no idea,”
Heather said.
 
“But I think it’s going to
involve us driving to Burlington in the morning and seeing if we can find
anybody there.
 
If not, we ride on and go
to the army base at Fort
Bragg.
 
If there was an evacuation or civil emergency
or something, people around here would go there.”

“We should check
the high school first.
 
Don’t people
usually seek shelter in gyms and stuff?
 
We could go now.
 
It’s not far.”

No, it
wasn’t.
 
But outside, the wind blew and
rustled the leaves, and Heather felt its chill even within the confines of her
home.

Stay put,
it said.
 
And
stay quiet.

“We will,” Heather
said.
 
“Tomorrow.
 
But right now, let’s get the truck
unloaded.
 
It’s getting late.”