This is it, thought Mortimer. The way out. Mother Lola had kept it hidden, kept all her little subjects trapped in her morbid little kingdom. But they’d made it through. They ran down a long hall, Mortimer’s heart thumping.
“Wait! What’s that?” Ruth halted abruptly, pulled on Mortimer’s arm.
They held their breath, listened.
From behind they heard movement, hard footfalls on a tile floor, muffled voices.
“Oh, God, they’re coming.” Ruth’s eyes shot wide with animal panic. “Mother Lola knows. She’s coming.”
“Hurry!” Mortimer pulled her forward, ran down the long hall.
They turned a corner, saw a smear of daylight. Double doors leading to the outside. They ran. Ruth faltered, almost stumbled, but Mortimer jerked her upright and kept running. Flashlight beams behind them now, harsh shouts to stop.
They didn’t look back, hit the doors at a run, bright sunlight washing over them as they erupted into the open.
“Run for it!” Mortimer let go of her wrist, ran full speed for open ground. “We can make it,” he shouted into the wind. “Keep running!” He turned his head, expected to see her sprinting for her life.
She wasn’t next to him.
He stopped, turned, saw her still only a few yards from the hospital entrance. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I…I can’t…” She took three halting steps, then froze, shut her eyes tight, put her hands in the air as if fending off some unseen ghost.
Mortimer ran back, grabbed her, started running again. It was like pulling a sack of bowling balls. But then she jogged, tried to keep up, Mortimer pulling and urging her. Abruptly she fell to the ground, sliding out of his grip. She curled into a ball.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He grabbed under her armpits, attempted to hoist her up. She went limp, dripped from his arms.
“I can’t…I didn’t know.” She shook her head, the words coming breathless. “I didn’t know it would be like this.”
He grabbed her, ran sluggishly with her a hundred yards before they fell into a pile. Mortimer panted, gulped for air, his breath steaming in the cold. “What the hell is your problem?”
“It’s too much,” she gasped. “I didn’t know it would be so big. I can’t do it. It’s so much. So open.” She put her hands over her head like she was trying to fend off the sky, gigantic open spaces threatening to crush her into the earth.
Mortimer stood, looked back at the hospital entrance. Three women stood in the doorway. Mother Lola with a fox fur around her neck, two women flanking her. Both holding bows and arrows.
“Unhand her, vile abductor,” bellowed Mother Lola.
Mortimer dropped next to Ruth, whispered in her ear, “We have to go right now.”
“I can’t. It’s too much. There’s nothing between me and…and…” She waved a frantic hand at the sky. “Everything.” She staggered to her feet, ran for the hospital. “I have to get back inside.”
“Are you crazy?” Mortimer leapt, tackled her around the ankles. They both went down, Ruth screaming.
She kicked at him, writhed, twisted from his grip. She was up again and running.
Mortimer started after her when an arrow landed with a meaty
“Holy fucking shit, that hurts!” He hopped on one leg, gritting his teeth and uttering curses. He grabbed the shaft, pulled the arrow out with relative ease. A nonbarbed target arrow. It hadn’t penetrated deeply, but it stung like a son of a bitch.
Mortimer yelled, “Ruth!”
She didn’t turn, fled weeping into the arms of Mother Lola.
He stood a moment looking at the women and the hospital, vines creeping up the building on all sides as if the earth were trying to swallow it whole. He saw Mother Lola and Ruth disappear back into the darkness within.
Another arrow whizzed over his head.
“Okay, okay. I can take a hint.”
Mortimer limped away as fast as he could. They didn’t chase him. Maybe his seed wasn’t so desirable after all.
XIX
The cold tore at Mortimer’s bare ankles, whooshed up his pant legs to do fierce, shrinking things to his genitalia. He shivered and trudged, favoring the leg with the shallow arrow wound. The winding, narrow road twisted and curved through the forest away from Saint Sebastian’s and toward nowhere he could guess. He assumed the asphalt would eventually take him to some village or town. He’d settle for a farmhouse where he might beg a scrap of food.
He could not shake the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ruth. Poor girl. What should he have done for her? Ultimately another victim of the world’s implosion. After growing up in her sterile cocoon, how could she possibly
