I knew he could sometimes be insensitive, he could sometimes be a prick, and he sometimes didn’t know when he had taken a joke too far, but he was my best friend—and, I’ll be honest, I was just glad he was in better spirits.
“But no muzzle, no problem,” Mia said. “Unlike Ell, I won’t pull my punches. So zip it, and let Ramsey finish his story.”
“Yeah, probably wise not to mess with a pregnant woman,” I warned.
Stone’s grin faded, and he mumbled yet another apology. I really should’ve been keeping track. I think more sorries left his mouth that night than in all the years prior.
Sagging in his chair, Ramsey cleared his throat and continued. “So I lit out because Liz didn’t want me around no more, and because I no longer trusted the leadership there. Any sense of order went to hell when the blizzards moved in, and got even worse when the shadows attacked. My leavin’, it was kinda…whatchamacallit…penance. But I found this little place, fixed it up a bit, and here I am.” He lowered his voice, as if imparting a great secret. “You know, if I’m bein’ totally honest, I’d be surprised if the City bigwigs let y’all in.”
His words knocked the breath from my lungs. Not let us in? After we had come all this way?
No fucking chance.
“They’ll at least accept Mia, right? She’s nine months pregnant, for crying out loud,” I said.
Ramsey shrugged and readjusted himself in his seat. “I can’t say they’d accept Mia for sure or not. The whole massacre thing shook ‘em up. Understandable. Depends on who’s in charge that day. Berretti equals bad. Rider equals good. Even then, ain’t nothin’ guaranteed.”
His words brought on a flare of anger within me. I clenched my jaw and shook my head. “Well, if they won’t accept us, we’ll make them. We haven’t come all this way to get turned back now.”
“I dig that attitude too, brother,” Ramsey said, “but even if they do let you in, there’s a price you gotta pay.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it,” I said.
“Don’t tell me that—tell them.” Ramsey rolled his left sleeve up and glanced at his watch. It was digital, and in military time, which I was only somewhat familiar with. Squinting, he relaxed. Why? I didn’t know, but I figured it was common knowledge for people living through this to disregard time. When noon looked like midnight, there were no rules. I nearly asked Ramsey why he had done that, but refrained. He wasn’t evil, not in the sense that Bob was, but he was a little…odd.
A lull fell over the conversation, and we picked at what remained on our plates. The quiet, for lack of a better word, sucked, so I decided I’d keep the conversation going by asking Ramsey a different question that weighed heavily on my mind.
“What about the Thumbprint People?”
Soon as he started talking, I wished I hadn’t.
“What about ‘em?”
“What the hell are they?” Mia said.
Ramsey sucked on his teeth, his eyes bouncing around our faces. Finally, he shook his head. “Nah. I draw the line at the Thumbprint People.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but a gentle hand settled on my forearm. Eleanor offered me a look that said drop it.
Unfortunately, Stone and Mia either ignored or were oblivious to this look.
“Oh, c’mon,” Stone said. “I was just starting to like you. Don’t make me get the gun again.”
“It’s loaded now,” Mia added.
“Guys,” Ell said. “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t have to. I think we’ve pried into his personal business enough, don’t you?”
“Nope,” Stone said. “Not nearly enough. I need to know everything, especially if I’m gonna be sleeping under the same roof as him.”
Ramsey fetched another sigh. “Y’all are relentless.”
“Ramsey,” Ell said, “you don’t have to say anything.”
“Yeah, man,” I agreed. “It’s cool.”
“Nah, it’s all right. Stone’s right, I might as well tell y’all.” Ramsey checked his watch again.
Seeing him do that produced an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if cold hands had clenched around some of my more vital organs, and were squeezing tighter and tighter.
“When I was a kid, I saw this article in a magazine about this little girl who’d stolen her dad’s truck and drove it halfway across the country to California so she could meet Barney the Purple Dinosaur—or a Teletubby or something like that. I dunno, I don’t remember. She damn near made it too, but got pulled over in Oklahoma. They had a picture of her in the magazine. A cop was on his knees in front of the open driver’s side door, givin’ her a stern talkin’ to, I think. But since the girl was only about seven years old, the magazine had to blur her face. So they put this like, I dunno, filter over her face that made her head look like it was a pressed-in chunk of wax. Sounds dumb, don’t it? Well, that little picture cost me about a year’s worth of sleep. I had nightmares every night from the ages of eight to nine because of that. All my friends and family stalked me in these dreams. Their eyes and noses and mouths were one smushed skin-colored blob. They called my name and tried to catch and make me look like them, always speaking in mumbling voices. Hell, when I think about it now, as a man in his early thirties, I still get the heebie-jeebies.” He shivered. “The shadows have latched onto the images in my head, and now I see Thumbprint People all the damn time.”
“But we have normal faces,” Ell said. “Couldn’t you see that when you were shooting?”
“Eleanor, I can’t see a damn thing when the snow’s comin’ down the way it is. That darkness ain’t much help either,” Ramsey replied. “But I am sorry, and I’m even more glad I didn’t kill none of y’all.” He pointed at Mia’s stomach. “Especially with what you got goin’ on over there.”
I nodded as he
