Wormwood

of his former neighbor, Mike felt the presence of the grave again, the raw scattering of soil beneath his feet. He wanted to get away from the Iverson’s garden because he didn’t like the way his eyes kept pulling toward it, lighting on Bud and Helen like nervous flies, waiting for one of them to stir.

But Rudy was reluctant to let the gunshot go. His gaze remained on a gray slice of the Hanna’s, which was all they could see from where they stood.

“Look,” Mike argued, feeling jittery and impatient, “we have more pressing concerns to deal with at the moment. Let’s finish what we started before we go knocking on doors, asking for more. All right?”

He broke open his shotgun, extracted the empty shells, then felt in his pockets for more. He came up with two, but that was all. He plugged them into the barrels and snapped the breach shut. “Besides,” he grumbled, “Larry’s been taking care of himself pretty good so far. I sure as hell didn’t see him running out in his bare feet to save your ass.”

Rudy opened his mouth to protest, to somehow defend Larry’s actions; in the end, however, he simply nodded. Mike was right: the Iversons had been a tragic diversion, but they still had unfinished business awaiting them. When that was done, he would go check on the Hannas; by himself, if necessary.

He realized he still had the shovel in hand. It seemed almost a part of him now: a long and rusty tooth that had hacked off heads and punched in faces. A shiver passed through him at the memory and he felt no regret exchanging it for the rifle; a more refined tool that would keep death more than an arm’s length away.

He checked the clip and the safety. It was just as he’d left it.

With a nod, they moved toward the thick green hedge that separated the Iverson’s from the Navaro’s.

19

Eventually, as their sobs subsided, the others heard it too: the dry scratch of Brian’s fingers against the basement door. To Larry, who’d been aware of it all along, it almost sounded like tree branches bobbing in the wind, mindless and eternal, as if they could go on tapping until there was nothing left but a small white skeleton reaching beneath the eaves.

“What is that?” Jan wondered, raising her head from Mark’s and tilting it toward the door.

Larry wondered how she could ask such a thing. Surely she had seen what had become of Brian when the door flew open? He remembered her screaming, but perhaps that had just been surprise at his tumble. At any rate, Mark had been pretty damn quick to slam it shut again, so maybe she hadn’t.

Still, she ought to be asking about Brian… wondering where he was.

In the dim light that shone down the stairs, he studied her face. There was an expression there (or perhaps a lack of one) he didn’t recognize, as if she were paging through a book written in a foreign language.

Maybe she had seen and was in a state of shock, or denial?

Larry?” she said, her face an open question mark, troubled by the way he was looking at her.

“Never mind,” he said, picking up his rifle and grunting to his feet. There was a small, egg-shaped knot on the back of his head, tender to the touch. It shot off pinwheels and sparklers in the gloom of the basement and made his head ache with its own dull pulse. Grimacing, he waited for these things to fade, then beckoned to his wife and son. “Come on,” he said. “Come wait in the shelter while I have a look around.”

They went without argument, like grateful sleepwalkers.

The bomb shelter was a small and unglamorous hollow of reinforced concrete directly off the L-shaped turn in the stairs. The interior had been painted a solid shade of aquamarine, as if studies at the time had proved beyond a doubt that this was the most tranquil, the most soothing shade in the spectrum. Currently, it looked like moving day, with small comforts and essentials piled in boxes and shoved against the walls. Larry’s eye happened to fall on a small stuffed animal, a dark brown bulldog that Brian had brought down, and suddenly the shelter seemed trite and meaningless, its purpose already a failure.

He reeled his gaze back in and closed the door, assuring them he’d be right back.

Rifle in hand, he climbed the remaining stairs.

Most of his spare ammunition was down with Jan and Mark, but he’d left a box high on the upstairs bookcase with a vague idea of sniping. Never in his worst nightmares, however, could he have imagined the purpose he now planned to put it to, but this was what the world had become. As careful and diligent as he’d been, this was what the world had become. He need look no further than his own back door for proof.

Leaning the heavy rifle against the sofa, he took down the box and filled his pockets with a dozen or so shells (keenly reminded of the feeling of being caught without them in the back yard). As he did so, he drifted back to the high picture window and parted the curtains and inch or two, gazing down on Quail Street.

Bodies were laying in bloody rags and pieces, looking like debris that had been dumped from a passing plane. At the far end of the street, they were far enough away to be unidentifiable and Larry had no urge to get his binoculars to bring them any closer, so he simply let his eyes pass on.

The street seemed at something of a lull; no doubt gathering up strength for its next outburst. A glimmer of movement caught his eye across the cul-de-sac and he spotted the Dawley kid leaning against the rough brick backrest of his chimney, looking as pale as a death’s-head beneath his dyed black hair. His mother was beside him — a sleek pistol dangling loosely over her knee — and the two of them were talking, casting occasional glances over their shoulders and along the street.

Larry wondered if they knew what had happened in his back yard, if they were laughing ironically over it, and decided it didn’t matter. The world itself was a laughing black bird that would crow over each of them in turn.

He let the curtain drop and carried the rifle to the kitchen.

The view from the window above the sink was shorter, narrower, but there were still bodies to be found. At the edge of the lawn, half-concealed by the shade of a dying elm, Chase Navaro lay where Larry had dropped him, a preening black raven on each slender shoulder. They squawked and fluttered as he opened the window and punched out the screen with the butt of his rifle, but in the absence of a visible threat, soon swooped back to the boy.

Larry set the gun aside for the moment and climbed awkwardly into the sink, a vantage he’d never enjoyed despite nine years in the house. There was little enough enjoyment to be taken from it now, but a spring breeze took pity on him and sent a cool, caressing hand over his brow, bringing with it the sweet fragrance of cherry blossom and wild honeysuckle.

He angled first the rifle then his right shoulder out the window, his head an uncomfortable fit just behind them.

The blackbirds shifted nervously on Chase’s shoulders. The junipers along the back fence bristled and shivered.

Below him lay his son, his small head (achingly familiar in its swirls and cowlicks) nodding against the ground, as if he hadn’t the strength to hold it up any longer; which, of course, he didn’t. The muscles which might have allowed him to do so were halfway down Chase Navaro’s throat, which in turn would be eaten by ravens.

Mother Nature was a wonderfully efficient and unsentimental old bitch, Larry decided, wincing as the edge of the windowpane dug sharply into his ribs. He let the barrel of the gun list toward the ground as he adjusted his seat on the sill, and then braced the butt of the rifle against his right shoulder. Gripping the barrel as best he could with his left hand, he squinted down the sights.

With a dark twinge of dismay, he realized that all the logistics were in place: God had conspired to make it physically possible — necessary, in fact — for him to shoot his own son. Until that moment, the greater part of him had been silently hoping that it wouldn’t work. That the window would be too narrow or that Brian would be at an angle that was beyond him or that the gun would simply cease to function or fall from his grasp and shudder to the ground. Of course, it was still possible that the rifle wouldn’t fire, but Larry had faith. God had been with him this far, he thought sourly, surely He wouldn’t abandon him now. Larry Hanna had had it much too easy all his life; it was time he started to know humility and suffering, starting with his son.

“Please,” Larry wept, tears in his eyes as he sighted down the barrel, trying to keep it steady, a thousand conflicting emotions batting and tugging at him, ruining his aim.