“Speak up,” he says.
“Screw. You. Asshole.”
I jerk my left arm up, ram my elbow into his gut. He jumps back in time to avoid most of the damage, but gives me an advantage in doing so: his fingers have released enough of the rope for me to twist around, snatch up the slack, and yank it from his hands.
It’s too dark to see the rope burn through his skin, but his muffled yelps deliver the message.
“Lunatic,” he says when he recovers. He drags me by the arm back up the stairs into the house I just left. “Talk. But not too loud.”
“Where’s Lisa?”
“Dead.”
My heart is an elevator with broken cables crashing through the floors all the way to my feet. I snap. I can’t help it. My fist crashes through something in the dark. It feels like it might be his face. A palm collides with my cheek. Teeth rattle in my head. A sob claws its way through the miserable lump in my throat.
“You bastard. She was just a damn kid.”
“A stupid girl, outside in the dark alone. You should have raised her better than that.”
“She’s not mine. Just my responsibility.”
“Well, then she’s a fucking stupid child. A stupid dead child now.”
“What did you do?”
He shoves me to the window, points. “Do you see that light?”
The light is still there. Steady. Constant. “I see it.”
“Your idiot friend is there. What is left of her.”
“I want to see her.”
“Not yet. First you must answer my questions.”
“I want answers, too.”
“No. You have no choices now.”
The accent, I still can’t pinpoint it. Somewhere European. German, Austrian, Swiss maybe. I can’t tell the difference, which makes my stomach squeeze with shame. How little of the world I knew before it was almost all gone.
Lisa is dead. It’s just me now. Me and this guy.
“I’m nobody. A cleaner at a drug company.”
His laugh is tight and bitter. “A cleaner. You are telling me a janitor made it this far?”
“Why not?”
“You’re as stupid as your friend. Come with me.”
Like I have a choice. He loops the rope around my hands so I’m forced to follow him back down the steps. The wind has flatlined. There’s no sign of rain. It’s cloudy with a good chance of death.
I see his shape in the dark. There’s not much to him, although what there is of his physique is hard. He’s made of wire, not bulk. My height, in heels. I can take him. If I wait, I can take him. I hope. For Lisa’s sake. For mine. Because nothing will stop me from meeting that boat.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and hope that Lisa can forgive me.
“I am going to show you something. But if you make a noise, I will snap your stupid neck. Nod if you understand.”
I nod, show I understand, although in truth I’m more ignorant than I ever was.
The stone behemoth squats in a field past the village’s rim, malevolent in the dark with its single glowing eye. It’s a half-blinded beast from a world that came to a different end to ours.
My captor creeps now, each step deliberately pressed into the damp grass. He pulls me with him and I see no good reason not to obey. He has all the information and all I have is a sense of foreboding that fills me with frosty dread.
When we reach the window, he shoves me into the shadows, holds a finger to his lips, lifts his face to the glass.
I want to see, too. I need to. Even if all the horrors in all the world are collected in this barn, I need to look inside.
He senses my urgency, the fair-haired man with cheekbones high enough and sharp enough to slice cold cuts, and indulges my desire.
From beams thicker than my thigh, hooks dangle, Spanish question marks that ask a question for which I wish I had no answer. But I do; I know what happens in this place and I wish so hard I didn’t. I’m a city girl, born and raised. My meat used to come with price tags and a dose of carbon monoxide to keep it red. But here, meat moved in herds.
The village has survivors and they’ve gathered, the half dozen of them wrapped in clothes that will never know good days. My gaze zooms in. Pans and scans. Breaks everything into can-deal chunks. Takes in the nest these once-people have created. Bones and rust-colored straw litter the barn. Decaying gore. Old bones, judging from the meatless sheen, from chickens and other livestock. They’ve been picked clean, snapped in two, the marrow slurped from their centers. Heaps of cans rust in the corners. Empty food wrappers form a carpet that will never rot. Tools hang on the walls, abandoned. No more harvests under a bulging autumn moon.
One of the villagers breaks away, crawls across the floor to a wooden bucket jerked from a well, but his pose is anything but penitent. A row of jagged bones forms painful-looking spikes along his spine. They shudder as he swallows. When he’s done, he sits on his haunches, rivulets racing down his face, dripping onto his food-stained chest. Animal blood has dried on his tattered shirt many times over, then soaked anew. The others crouch in a crude circle, staring up, up, at some object of fascination. So I follow the path of their obsession. My gaze slides along the networked beams until it catches on something blond and blue. My heart lurches.
Lisa.
Desperation and terror must have pushed her up so high. I can’t see the
My shoulders twitch with need-to-go, need-to-get-to-her. The stranger holds me back, steers me until Lisa disappears from view. He turns us around, walks us back to the village proper.
I clutch at the damp lapels of his jacket. It’s too dark to see here, but I remember it being the drab green of all things military. “You said she was dead.”
“She
Now I see the burden he carries: a backpack filled with secrets.
“It was you at the church, wasn’t it?”
He doesn’t confirm, only grunts.
“You can’t do it. Not with her in there. I won’t let you.”
“You have no choice.”
The jar is heavier than it looks, as though its core is filled with sand. Or maybe good intentions. Silence is the only protest as I walk it backwards and lean its top half onto the soft ottoman.
Something shifts inside. There’s a whisper like old, discarded snake skins rubbing together. A chill tiptoes down my spine’s spurred steps.
My knees dig into the beige carpet’s level loop pile as I kneel to follow Dr. Rose’s recommendation. Maybe there’s a clue here about what lies beneath. I look. Nothing. A whole lot of nothing but more of the same. Smooth, with a hint of chalkiness. It’s left a faint dusting of itself on the carpet, and I can’t help but run my fingertip across the cheap fibers. The residue is soft and silky like cornstarch.
A frustrated sigh rides my breath. I wanted there to be something. Even if it was a Made in China sticker.
This time Dr. Rose doesn’t wait for me to speak. We settle into our respective chairs and roles, or so I think until he sets his notepad aside. Instinctively, my legs cross and I lace my fingers together, clasping them over my top knee. A model of cautious propriety.
He drinks in my defensive pose with his dark gaze, then knocks it aside with his question.
