Wormwood

“I wanted to clean up those scratches,” Larry said, pointing, “but Jan wouldn’t let me. She absolutely wouldn’t let go of the boy.” He squatted down beside his son and lifted the back of his shirt. “See there,” he said, tracing a group of deep gouges with his finger, looking up at Rudy. “Those aren’t junipers, they’re fingernails.”

Jan Hanna was gazing at Rudy above Mark’s left shoulder. He met her eyes, looked away, but found himself being drawn back to her eyes and the bullethole in the center of her forehead, which was neat enough to have been placed there by God.

Larry let his son’s shirt drop and rose to his feet. He gazed openly at Rudy.

“What do you think?”

“I think,” Rudy had trouble finding his voice, “I think I need to go back outside, Larry.”

Larry shook his head, not denying him passage but confounded, as if for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what had happened. “The scratches aren’t that deep!” he insisted, reaching for the shirt again so Rudy could see. “Look here,” he said, tracing another. “There’s hardly any blood!”

Rudy wasn’t sure what was worse: the sight of Mark’s raw back or the small, glistening hole in the back of his head. When Larry lifted the shirt to show him one, the other disappeared.

“How could those scratches kill him?” Larry demanded, his voice rising now. Indignant. Angry.

“Germs, infection…” Rudy suggested, shaking his head, taking an unsteady step toward the door. “I don’t know. He went through a great deal yesterday. Perhaps it was simply shock.”

“Shock,” Larry whispered, his eyes drifting again, as if this were something he hadn’t considered. A stone he hadn’t turned during the night. His expression narrowed. “Is that possible? He’s just a boy. Not even eight.”

Rudy nodded. From his new position, Jan was no longer staring at him. He could see, however, the terrible damage that Mark had done to her. Several savage bites had been taken before Larry shot him. Her throat opened from jaw to breastbone; the last bloody lump was still in Mark’s mouth.

From the neatness and accuracy of her final wound, Rudy guessed that Larry had put the muzzle to his wife’s forehead and fired before she had a chance to come back; tenderly, as a parting gift from a husband to his wife.

“Do you think it was painful?” Larry asked, looking down at the two of them. “Do you think he suffered?”

“I don’t know,” Rudy replied, staring at Mark’s rabid expression, thinking it certainly hadn’t been very easy on his mother. “If it was shock, he might have been unconscious when he died.”

Larry nodded, satisfied. He turned and set his rifle aside, then picked up a thick woolen blanket. When he turned back to the light there were tears in his eyes, as if his mind hadn’t allowed him to grieve until he understood what killed them. He leaned down and kissed his wife and then his son. An awful sound caught and tore itself from his throat, a sound as close to the end of the world as Rudy could imagine. He found tears on his own face as Larry whispered a husky goodbye and covered his family with the thick gray blanket.

“Even if I make it back from town,” Larry vowed, “I won’t come back to this room. I’ll put a bullet through my head first.” He wiped his face and pointed to a corner of the shelter piled with brown cardboard boxes. “Something crept in and squatted in the shadows over there during the night. I don’t know what it was; a dream, maybe: but it crouched on top of that box and watched me for the longest time… hardly moving, like one of those tree sloths.” Larry looked soberly at Rudy. “I was thinking about killing myself then. What do you suppose that means?”

Rudy shook his head, his eyes moving from Larry to the corner. The top of the highest box looked slightly crushed, dented inward, as if something the size of a bulldog had perched there. “I don’t know,” he heard himself say, imagining what Larry must have gone through during the night, sitting in the shelter with the bodies of his wife and son, their deaths a sudden and violent nightmare. Like nothing a man could prepare himself for… then to have to shoot them on top of that.

Who was to say what he might imagine in a shadowy corner, urging him toward suicide?

“I want you to do a favor for me,” Larry said, picking up his rifle.

For a dreadful moment Rudy was certain he was going to ask him to shoot him, right then and there. To take the terrible burden of life from his shoulders and set him free. Larry had always been a faithful Christian; perhaps the sin of self-destruction terrified him more than Wormwood.

“If I don’t come back tonight, will you burn them like Brian and the others? I know it’s an awful thing to ask, but you’ve always been a good friend and neighbor to us… better than I’ve deserved lately… and I know I can trust you to do it, if you say you will.” Larry glanced around the bloodied clutter of the shelter and sighed. “I hate to think of this as their final resting place.” His eyes came to rest on the blanket and the tears were back, bitter with failure.

“They deserved so much better.”

5

Shane was waiting for them, his father’s shotgun propped between his knees as he sat on the curb opposite the Hanna’s. When he saw them, he got to his feet, crossed the cul-de-sac and met them at the end of the drive. Rudy told him that Jan and Mark had died during the night. Shane glanced briefly at Larry before directing his eyes toward the asphalt at his feet.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hanna,” he said softly, his voice so low it might have been the wind. He glanced up at Larry again. “Does that mean you won’t be going to town?”

There was no anger or sullen protest this time, only a quiet curiosity and determination, as if he planned on going whether Larry drove him or not. He’d simply learn to drive the motorbike along the way.

“No Shane,” Larry said. “I’ll take you. There’s no reason for me to stay.”

“I thought maybe… you know,” Shane shrugged. “You might want to be with them.”

Larry looked down at the street, giving himself a moment to sort out his emotions.

“I was with them most of the night,” he finally said, and left it at that.

6

The door to the Sturling house was locked.

They’d done this the previous evening as a precaution against trespassers: locking all the doors and windows in the unoccupied houses. Not because they feared someone might walk in and steal the television or the microwave oven (and with the electricity out, who would bother?), or the food and ammunition (they’d done that themselves), but because it was possible that someone passing by — or worse yet, a group of desperate strangers — might see the plywood reinforcements and decide to take up residence during the night. Someone who wasn’t as neighborly as Keith and Naomi Sturling. Someone who might dig in and take the rest of the street by force.

Of course, if they were that determined, a lock wouldn’t keep them out for long, but they would have to make some noise breaking in. Then again, the city was full of unlocked houses… maybe the effort alone would persuade them to try something along the next block, something easier.

So once they’d collected the bodies for the pyre, they’d locked the houses up as tight as they could and hid the keys in a place where everyone in the cul-de-sac could find them. Just in case.

Rudy felt the underside of the Sturling’s mailbox and found the square of duct tape hiding the house key. He peeled it free and inserted it into the front door.

The house opened up its jaws, expelling a stale black odor.

“I’ll go through and open the garage,” Rudy volunteered. He looked back at the two men huddled on the step behind him and when neither one spoke up or offered to accompany him, Rudy switched on his flashlight and