Cruel World Read online

  It was even taller and skinnier than he’d thought. Its legs were long, twice the length of his own. One was drawn up as if attempting to curl into a fetal position while the other was straight, locked in a line at the bulbous knee. Its arms were equally long and would easily reach its knees while standing upright. The hands. They looked bigger in the light of day than the night before. They reminded him of enormous, pale sea-crabs. The digits were a foot in length, except for the missing left index finger that ended in a gored stump. Its torso was emaciated, that of a starving animal, ribs pronounced like xylophone bars. The bones beneath the skin resembled bamboo, its skin almost translucent and drawn tight over them like a circus tent wrapped over poles. His gaze traveled up its unreal size and stopped on its face.

  The features were nearly unrecognizable. The .45 caliber bullet had destroyed an area of its upper nose and forehead the size of a silver dollar, yet even before that its countenance hadn’t looked entirely human. Its head was oblong and slanted, the face stretched and uneven like a person’s visage reflected in a funhouse mirror. The mouth hung open revealing tombstone teeth, chipped and sitting at varying degrees within gray gums.

  But its eyes. Its eyes were Graham’s.

  They were half-lidded and bloodshot, but there was no mistaking them. How many times had those eyes smiled at him while slipping him a treat prior to dinner that his father had forbade? How many times had they studied a glistening sauce, seeking the exact moment to remove it from the heat? Even in death they hadn’t lost their character, their Nordic blue.

  Quinn sat back from the corpse, letting the unreality wash over him. The wind coasted across the grounds, picking at his clothes. After a long time, he gathered himself and stood, then walked to the big pine tree where the shovel lay in the grass.

  ~

  He spent the rest of the morning burying the body. He dug a long trench beside Teresa’s grave and pulled the thing that Graham had become into it. Dragging the corpse across the grass was like moving a pallid marionette; rigor mortis hadn’t set into the muscles and joints, and its head flopped on a limp neck. It was much heavier than he’d expected. When he’d covered the last of it, he began to speak. But no words would come, so he settled for cutting three rough crosses from a stand of slender willow. When the crosses stood at the head of each grave, he waited for the tears. The crosses were so fragile and sad. But he couldn’t cry. After the wind had chilled his face to the point of burning, he turned away.

  ~

  The gate’s lock at the end of the driveway was ruined. The brothers’ hammer strikes had bent and twisted the box that housed the mechanism. Quinn started back for a length of rope to tie the gate shut but instead left it partially open. Maybe it was better to leave things broken now.

  He found an old duffel bag in Foster’s house and filled it with what food the groundskeeper had in his pantry, which wasn’t much. Graham and Mallory’s homes didn’t yield any better since most of the food was stored in the main house. All told, he came away with a can of clam chowder, four bottles of water, two bags of salt and vinegar chips, three cans of stew, a bag of apples that hadn’t turned yet, some half dried marshmallows, and a package of Norwegian chocolates hidden in the back of Graham’s closet. He almost left these but at the last moment took them. Life, more so now than ever, wasn’t so sure that you could leave chocolate behind.

  Quinn brought the bag back to the main house and then inspected the front door. There would be no fixing it from where Rick had kicked it in. In the garage he found an ice chisel that Foster had used on the sidewalks around the house in the winter. He brought it back to the front door, measuring its length while leaning it beneath the knob. After making a mark on the wood floor, he hammered the chisel into it, breaking through the gorgeous teak until he’d created a hole to the sub-floor. He left the sharp edge jammed there and then wedged the other end beneath the kitchen doorknob. It fit tight, and after yanking on the door several times, he nodded to himself and drank down half a bottle of water.

  He cleaned the solarium the best he could, sweeping glass and piling the fallen framework in one corner. The pools of blood that hadn’t been touched by the rain had dried to a crusted black at the centers, fading to a deep maroon near the fringes. The rest of it had run like a monochrome painting doused with turpentine. The whole room stank of death. It smelled like a saltwater brine gone foul. He went to the bathroom to gather supplies to clean the gore but realized there was still no water. He settled for shutting the solarium door and nailing a length of two-by-four across it.

  When the house was fairly secure, he gathered an armload of firewood from the garage and set it beside the hearth in the living room. In fifteen minutes hearty flames danced and sent smoke funneling up the chimney. The chill that settled over the house during the night and day without power receded from the living room, the fire’s heat creeping into the kitchen and hallways.

  Quinn warmed a can of chowder beside the coals, waiting until it began to bubble before eating it directly out of the container. He sat staring out the window afterward, taking a sip of water now and then. The day had grayed over as if the sky were molding. The wind continued to blow, sounding like a distant foghorn in the chimney, and it lulled him into a stupor as he gazed into the fire. He set the XDM on the couch beside him and leaned back into the couch’s thick cushions. He would just close his eyes for a second. He couldn’t bear their weight anymore. Every inch of his body hurt, but if he sat still, he was outside of it, outside of the pain. It was someone else’s, and he was empathetic to them. But right now he was tired and needed to rest for a moment. Just a moment.

  He awoke at nightfall, consciousness coming with the stiffening of his limbs and an explosion of pain in his ankle as he pushed himself upright. He blinked into the dimness of the room, the fire long since burned out.

  There was something outside the kitchen door.

  Awareness washed over him like a wave of ice water, his senses sharpening to needle points. The rasp of a footstep. The kitchen door shook gently and then harder before going quiet. Quinn snagged the pistol from the cushion beside him as he rose from the couch and almost sprawled in the midst of concussive pain. Every joint in his body was full of acid, but adrenaline was washing away everything but the hammering of his heart. He kept low and entered the kitchen, the XDM trained on the door. It was silent now, everything still save the wind. He moved to the window and peered out.

  Evening had crept from the tree line, hemorrhaging shadows across the yard as it closed in on the house. But two darker forms moved against the wind, their shapes indistinct in the failing light. They were there, then fleetingly gone around the side of the house.

  Quinn shoved away from the window and hurried down the hall to the back door. Maybe it was the brothers, back to take shelter after rethinking their situation. Or maybe it was more of the things like Graham. But they hadn’t looked tall enough. As he watched through the back door’s window, they appeared, merely deeper shadows against the dark. He would not let them come into the house again, no matter who they were. They wouldn’t take anything from him, not now, not ever. If it was the brothers, he would get his father’s boots back. With a yank, he pulled the door wide and crouched in the opening, centering the sights on the taller of the two figures.

  “Stop right there.”

  There was the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked and he nearly fired his own weapon, but paused as a voice, hard edged but feminine, came out of the darkness.

  “I’ll fucking shoot you right now. Drop the gun.”

  “Drop yours.”

  “Look, we smelled smoke and saw it above your house and came looking. That’s all. We’ll leave and you can go back inside, but if you come out here or make another move, I will kill you where you stand.”

  Quinn squinted, slowly taking in the woman’s figure. She was slight and fairly tall, but that was all he could make out. The person behind her was shorter and mostly hidden, but he could see smal
l hands clutching at the woman’s waist.

  “Are you alone?” he asked after a long pause.

  The woman waited a long time, but the hand holding her weapon didn’t waver.

  “I have my son. No one else.”

  The little hands around her waist shifted and a small outline of a head appeared at her hip.

  Quinn lowered the XDM and shoved it in the back of his jeans. He held up his hands.

  “Come in. I won’t hurt you.”

  The two shadows stayed where they were, the woman’s gun still hovering on his center mass.

  “There’s no one else here, they all—” He let the last word fall away, and he dropped his eyes to the entryway floor. “Come in if you want,” he said, and made his way back to the living room. He knelt by the hearth and stirred the ashes. Beneath the feathery soot, a single ember glowed. Quinn rolled it to the center of the fireplace and began setting kindling over it. He blew into the hearth, ashes taking flight. The ember’s flare was the only light in the room, rising then falling with his insistence. After a few minutes, a flame sprang into life and began to lick at the small sticks of wood. As he was placing a larger piece of oak on the fire, the back door creaked and closed quietly. Quinn stood beside the warming fireplace and waited.

  The woman appeared first in the doorway, sideling into view. A revolver, so large it was nearly comical, was in her left hand that she kept aimed at the floor. She looked close to his age and was thinner than he’d originally thought, and taller, almost as tall as he was. Her hair was very straight and very dark, hanging past her shoulders in a languid wave that nearly blended with the shadows behind her. Her face was round and ghost-white with two spots of color on her sallow cheekbones. She had a sharp nose that was incongruent with the rest of her face, though it seemed to lend an air of harsh beauty that was only more accented by her eyes that were like two sapphires reflecting the firelight. An ugly gash ran across the top of her forehead. Crusted blood dried in an uneven line from her right temple to her chin. She glanced around the large room, taking in all its corners before finding him, pinning him to the wall with her gaze. There was movement beside her in the hall at that moment and she reached for it, shielding the small shape beside her as she raised her handgun.

  “You’ve got it!” she said, inching backward.

  Quinn raised his hands, looking from one to the other, then back at her.

  “Got what?”

  “The disease. You’re sick, aren’t you?” She shot a look further into the house and then back at him as she retreated another step.

  Realizing what she meant, Quinn put one palm against his face and then let his hands hang at his sides.

  “No, I’m not sick. I’ve been this way since birth.”

  “Bullshit, you’re just something new.”

  “It’s called Fibrous Dysplasia. I’ve always looked this way.” He watched her, barely visible in the darkness beyond the doorway. “My name’s Quinn.”

  There was a long pause and then a small voice came from behind the woman.

  “I’m Ty.”

  “Tyrus! We’re leaving. Don’t come any closer.”

  “I’m telling the truth. I’m immune, or whatever passes for immune I guess. My father had it first and then my—” he almost said mother, but stopped himself and continued “—teacher got it. They both died. Our cook had it too, but he…”

  Quinn frowned, the images of what Graham had become playing across his mind. How the cold, pale flesh had felt beneath his fingers. “He…”

  “He turned into one of them, didn’t he?”

  The woman was standing inside the doorway, the gun at her side again. A little outline in the hallway became a boy as he stepped forward. He was around five years old with tousled, brown hair and glazed eyes the same color of his mother’s that stared past Quinn, through him.

  “He turned into a stilt,” the woman said.

  “A stilt?”

  “Because how tall they are.”

  “You mean you’ve seen one too?”

  The woman huffed a derisive laugh.

  “One? Try dozens.”

  Quinn’s mouth worked but nothing came out for a moment.

  “Dozens? There’s more of them?”

  “Are you slow too? Part of your…” she gestured at his face. “…disorder?”

  “What? No, I’m just—I thought Graham was the only one.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but no. There’s a lot of them. Way more than immunes.”

  Quinn moved to the sofa and sat, the aches in his legs and ankle muted by what the woman had told him. Ty shuffled further into the room, one hand on his mother’s belt, not looking around, only staring in the general direction of the fire.

  “You’re really alone?” the woman asked.

  “Yes. There was two others but they left.”

  “Were they two men?”

  “No, a woman and a man. They were our housekeeper and groundskeeper. Why?”

  “Because two maniacs in a truck nearly killed us yesterday. They started following us outside of Pearlton, just hovering a half-mile back, never getting closer. Then they came up fast and tailgated us for about ten miles, both of them waving for us to pull over. I would’ve rather chewed glass, so we kept going until they forced us off the road about a mile from here. I lost control in the ditch and hit a huge transformer. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up this afternoon. When I did, all our supplies were gone. Good thing the boomer was under the seat or it would be gone too.” She waved the handgun once and then slid its bulk beneath her belt.

  “They were here too,” Quinn said. “They came in and took all of my food and water.”

  “Why didn’t you shoot the bastards?”

  “I guess I was in shock. I didn’t know what they wanted when they showed up, so I hid.”

  The woman’s lip rose a little on one side in a sneer. “They better hope they never run into me again. Ty lost consciousness too, but he woke up before me and had to sit there wondering if I was dead until I came to.”

  Her jaw clenched, and the muscle in her cheek bulged as she looked away at the fire. Ty shivered once beside her.

  “Come sit down by the fire,” Quinn said, rising and motioning toward the couch. “I’m guessing you’re both cold and tired.”

  “Listen, we don’t need anything from you. We might stay the night just because it’s not safe in the dark anymore. Looks like you’ve got a pretty good perimeter set up around your property, but it doesn’t really matter if a stilt wants to come in.” She looked out the window and then glanced at him again. Their gazes held for a moment before she looked back at the fire. “My name’s Alice.”

  Ty inched forward, one hand still attached to his mother’s waist while the other groped at the open space before him. Suddenly the glazed look in his eyes made sense.

  “Here,” Quinn said, stepping out of the way. “The couch is to your left.”

  Alice guided her son to the plush sofa and helped him onto the cushion. The little boy’s face remained stoic for a beat and then broke into a shining smile.

  “This is really soft,” Ty said, looking about the room with his sightless eyes. He shivered again, holding his hands out in the direction of the fire. Quinn moved to get the blanket from the back of the couch, but Alice headed him off, covering her son with it before he could help.

  “Are you hungry?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes, really hungry,” Ty said, the smile still there.

  “If you have something, I can pay you for it, not that money’s worth anything now.” Alice said. “I’m fine, but if there’s something you could spare for him.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Quinn said, moving into the kitchen. He picked up the flashlight on the counter and began examining his stores when he noticed Alice in the doorway, her hand on the butt of her pistol again.

  “Sorry, just making sure you weren’t planning anything.”

  “Only dinner. I’m r
eally not dangerous.”

  “I kinda guessed that when you weren’t able to defend your home against those jackasses.”

  Quinn paused in turning over a bag of chips and then shrugged. Alice shifted and fingered the pistol’s grip.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. Sometimes there’s no filter between here and here,” she said pointing at her bloodied temple and then her lips.

  “It’s okay. I can assure you that I won’t hurt either of you.”

  “Dude, you can’t assure me of anything. I don’t know if I’d trust God right now.” She glanced around the kitchen. “In fact, I know I wouldn’t.”

  Quinn shifted the food around in the bag on the kitchen floor and retrieved the three cans of stew and opened them. He dumped them into a large steel pan and stirred the congealed mass with a wooden spoon. Alice had moved back into the living room, and he followed her, setting the pan near the fire’s edge. Ty huddled beneath the heavy blanket, only a shock of untidy hair and his face visible.

  They didn’t speak for a time, settling instead to simply watch the fire as the tantalizing smell of stew filled the room. Even over the popping flames, the intermittent growls of Ty’s stomach could be heard. When the stew bubbled within the pan, Quinn returned to the kitchen to gather three bowls, ladling the brown and chunky mixture into each of them. He took less than half of the amount he’d dished out to Alice and Ty, eating slowly and watching them devour the meal. Ty ate with excellent dexterity, gathering a spoonful and bringing it to his mouth each time without spilling a drop. Now that the fire burned fully, Quinn could see the boy’s eyes weren’t exactly the same as his mother’s. A thin, gray veil covered them, dimming the color that shone so sharp from Alice’s. When his spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl he smacked his lips and let out a small burp.