Cruel World (5 page)

Despite the sheen of sweat that coated her face, he could spot the tracks of her tears easily. They ran down the grooves that time had worn in her cheeks and disappeared below her chin.

“It was the biggest mistake of my life, one I never got over. He’s out there somewhere and I hope he’s safe. The last I heard he was a father himself with two children of his own, grandchildren that I’ll never meet. And I don’t deserve to meet them.”

“You can’t say that,” Quinn said, his voice thick. “That’s not true.”

She coughed again, but it was feeble and the fit lasted only seconds. She appeared further away somehow, more distant than she had been moments ago even though neither of them had moved.

“Then I came here and you were my light all these years. You were such a good student, so smart. You’re the son I got to raise as a second chance. You’re ready for the world now. Don’t be afraid. The fear…” she wheezed again, not a spasm at all but a constriction within her that didn’t allow her to speak. “…it’s a thief. It steals from us if we let it.”

“You need to rest. Here, have some water.” He tried to retrieve the glass from the table but she held his hand fast.

“Don’t let it steal from you. Don’t be afraid…” Her voice drifted and he saw the ocean in her eyes, a wave receding from the beach that didn’t return. “…my son.”

The fingers within his hand were brittle and very dry. The shine of perspiration was gone and her mouth hung open a little, her last breath escaping without any effort to draw another.

“Teresa,” he said, already knowing somewhere inside where all truths are told that there would be no answer.

He rose and placed a hand against her lined cheek. Her skin was warm again, like that of floorboards resting in a setting sun, the heat draining along with the light. Words came from his mouth but he didn’t know what they meant. They sounded alien to him, a language he’d never spoken before made of broken syllables amid sobs that twisted his insides into a plucked guitar string.

He sunk into the chair again and sat forward, his face resting against her hand, the scent of rose petals everywhere, the smell of his childhood long since passed.

It was forever before he sat up, his own tears drying. A dream had surrounded him, so he must have slept leaning against her bed with her palm pressed to his face. In it he had walked to the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean. The sea had undulated in a strange way, not moving as water should, and it took him several moments to realize that there was no ocean below but only bodies floating together, dead flesh interlaced as waves of blood brought them onto the shore and drew them away.

He stood and looked at the woman in the bed, the only mother he’d ever known. She was shrunken and small, flattened in a way that made her appear like one of the blankets. When he stepped closer, he saw that it wasn’t an illusion.

Teresa was sinking in on herself.

Her body was slumping inward, her features smoothing so that her face was nearly level, a two-dimensional drawing of how she looked in life. A foul odor met him and he brought his hand up to cover his mouth and nose. A scream wanted to tear from his lungs. It would rip through his chest if he didn’t let it out. He struggled with himself as the room canted at his feet, threatening to slide him into a corner where he could sit and fall in upon himself just like Teresa. Collapse into nothing and be done with the nightmare.

Quinn bit down hard on the inside of his mouth, clenching his jaws until he tasted blood. The room righted itself and he breathed in the stink that filled it. Unwilling to look at what she had become, he drew the blankets the rest of the way over her form, turning the ever-present scream into a moan as he heard and felt her body implode more with the movement. The odor increased and he gagged, turning away from the bed and its shrinking occupant.

The hallway held blessedly clean air that he drank in with long breaths, filling himself over and over. As he made his way to his father’s room, he slowed, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. What would he find inside? The same as what he’d just left? Worse? His stomach roiled and the urge to simply sit down nearly overcame him, but instead he turned the handle and stepped inside.

The room was dark but enough light shone in from behind him to see the rise and fall of his father’s chest.

He went in and sat beside him, fumbling for a second in the dark looking for the other man’s hand. And when he found it, it was warm.

Quinn swallowed, looking at his father. “Dad?”

There was a pause and quiet, longer and more silent than any he’d ever known, then James opened his eyes. He looked around the room as if studying it for the first time before his gaze slid onto Quinn. Nothing there for a long moment, no recognition, no softness or love, just a dull comprehension that he saw him.

“Can you hear me, dad?”

James licked his lips and his tongue made a scratching sound.

“Quinn.”

“I’m here, dad, I’m right here.”

“Run away.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You run. If there’s something wrong, you run and don’t look back. Run and hide.”

Quinn searched his father’s face for some other meaning. The man that lay before him didn’t look like someone barely past fifty years old but instead closer to eighty. His hair, so lush before, receded from his forehead, creeping away to expose the withering effects of the disease on his features. Did he know where he was now? Did he know what was happening? The sickness had taken Teresa so quickly, but his father was still here, still surviving. He reached out to place a hand on his forehead but stopped and dropped it back into his lap.

“I’m going to get you help, okay? You just need to stay with me and rest.”

Barely a nod, then more words that he couldn’t make out echoing up from the husk his father had become.

“I couldn’t hear you, dad.”

James licked his lips again, the same rasping sound, a shoe being drug on concrete.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry. My fault.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s not your fault. Everything’s okay. Everything’s taken care of.”

Quinn reached for the water and held the straw to his father’s lips, but the older man coughed, liquid rumbling deep in his chest now.

“Think I’d like…” James paused, his jaw working as he searched for the strength to continue. “…a beer.”

Quinn couldn’t help the laugh that came out. “Okay, I’ll get you one.”

He started to rise but his father’s hand gripped his harder, pulling him down. He then let go and reached, reached up, his arm trembling as he struggled against gravity. Quinn leaned in, noticing with alarm that the muscle in James’s arm sagged like taffy inside the skin, the bones pulling taut on the opposite side. The older man’s hand found his face, the fingers dry against his cheek. They flitted there, rubbing the malformations beneath his own skin, the touch beyond gentle.

“Beautiful boy,” James whispered and lowered his arm to the bed. A small smile creased his cracked lips. Quinn swiped at his blurred vision, standing again.

“I’ll be right back, dad.”

James nodded and blinked several times at the ceiling.

Quinn hurried from the room, jogging down the stairs to the kitchen and froze in the doorway.

Mallory and Foster stood at the opposite end of the room, both wearing masks that he’d seen the groundskeeper use when painting one of the houses. Their eyes were wide above the masks and they paused when he entered the room, the heavy canvas bag between them bulging with something.

“What are you doing?” Quinn said.

Foster glanced at Mallory and then cinched the bag shut before throwing it over one shoulder. The housekeeper sidled toward the door, knocking over the pot Quinn had warmed the chicken broth in. It clanged and both Mallory and Foster jerked at the sound. He took a step closer and Foster held up a hand, his forehead pinched into horizontal lines.

“Stay back.” His voice was muffled but the words were clear enough.

“What are you doing?” Quinn repeated. There was something in Foster’s eyes, a fluttering that became decision as he blinked and turned toward the door leading to the front yard.

“I’ll be in the truck,” Foster said to Mallory.

As he left, Quinn caught sight of several water bottle caps protruding from the end of the bag that wasn’t zipped shut. Mallory reached beneath the mask and began to pull at her throat.

“You’re leaving?” Quinn asked. He took another step forward without meaning to, unable to help it. Mallory retreated.

“I’m sorry, cariño. Graham is sick now too and-”

“But where are you going? There’s nowhere to go.”

“Foster’s cabin in Pennsylvania is on a mountain. It’s secluded and safe.”

“Nowhere is safe,” Quinn said, the anger in his voice cutting through the air. “You’re leaving us but there’s nowhere safe out there past those gates.”

“We can’t stay; the sickness is here. We have to leave before it’s too late.” Mallory said, edging backwards and now tears ran from her brown eyes onto the lip of the mask. “I’m sorry, so sorry. We left food and water. We only took what we’ll need to get there.”

“Teresa’s dead.”

She paused for an instant and then backed the rest of the way out of the house.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and hurried to where Foster’s extended-cab Ford waited, the darker shadow of Foster himself in the driver’s seat. Quinn moved to the doorway and watched them reverse until the groundskeeper could turn the vehicle around. Mallory removed her mask and stared out at him, her face streaked with fresh tears. She didn’t wave as they accelerated away, their taillights flashing once before the truck rounded the first curve and disappeared.

He stood there for a long time, his hand resting on the doorjamb, eyes focused on the spot where the truck had vanished. The wind pushed its way through the trees and found his face, cool and still holding the last bite of winter. Silence, pure and unbroken.

After a while, he shut the door and stared at the kitchen counter, the partially open pantry, a muddy print from Foster’s shoe. He made his way to the fridge and took out a cold can of beer from the top shelf, gripping it tight. He wound his arm back to hurl it through one of the kitchen windows but stopped, breathing hard as he forced himself to swallow the jagged lump in his throat. He leaned against the nearby countertop and squeezed the can again, waiting for it to explode in a flurry of foam. His fingers ached and a pain began to pulse behind his eyes. Maybe this was how it started.

He trudged up the stairs, opening the beer as he went. The smell from Teresa’s room had crept into the hall and invaded his nostrils. Quinn closed his eyes and entered his father’s room.

James lay on his side facing the window, his legs drawn up beneath him. Quinn circled the bed, pausing to grab the straw from the water glass and stopped short.

The drawn guitar string inside him tightened and then snapped.

His father’s face was pale and slack, a melting wax likeness of who he had been. One arm hugged a pillow close to his still chest and his eyes were half lidded as if he were only drowsing.

A pressing hand Quinn couldn’t see forced him down, his legs folding beneath him until he sat. The beer fell from his grasp and spilled on the floor, a faint chugging coming from its mouth until it was gone and all was quiet in the house except for the sound of his weeping.

Chapter 6

Three Graves

He buried them side by side beneath the biggest pine on the north lawn.

Despite the shade the reaching branches provided, the ground was soft from the melting snow and came away in chunks with the shovel. He’d wrapped his father and Teresa in the bed sheets and carried them down once the graves were dug. As he placed them in the holes, he ignored the way the bodies felt beneath the wrappings, insubstantial and watery, as if they would pool out onto the ground at any moment and soak into the soil the way the snow had done.

He stood on the side of the holes looking down at their shapes, letting the time slip away and the breeze chill the sweat he’d worked up digging. His mouth tried to form words, something of meaning, but every time he began to speak his throat closed, cinching off any speech. When he started to shiver, he picked up the shovel again and filled in the graves, humming a song beneath his breath to drown out the sound the dirt made when it fell. It wasn’t until he finished that he realized it was the Sinatra tune his father had been singing the night he came home from his trip.

Quinn left the shovel beneath the tree, stuck in the ground at the head of what could be a third grave. The flickering pain behind his eyes was still there but dimmer than before and his skin was warm, not cold. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed. At the door to the house, he stopped and looked down the driveway, dead leaves skipping across its divide. Inside he poured the last of the broth into a Tupperware bowl and covered it before walking down the silent drive.

Graham’s house was the first on the left, tucked into the thick forest behind a short turn in the narrow road. His father had spared no expense on the employee homes, building each with its own character and style. Graham’s was a brick, cape cod style with two dormers and gray shutters. The chef had said his Nordic blood demanded a sauna, and James had complied upon hiring him, building a small addition onto the already completed house.

The smoke that almost always curled from the little chimney atop the sauna was absent as he approached and Quinn sighed, mounting the steps to the front porch. He knocked hard on the front door and waited only seconds before trying the knob. It turned and he stepped inside.

The house smelled much like the kitchen he’d just left. Garlic, cilantro, and the scent of homemade dinner rolls permeated the air, but beneath it there was something else. Quinn paused after closing the door and set the chicken broth down on the counter.

“Graham?” Silence chased his voice from the house, and he listened for the rustle of sheets, a squeaking floorboard, something, but there was nothing, only the same quiet that filled his own home.

He moved across the wide living room and into a hallway. The smell was stronger here, choking out the aromas of food with its stench. It hung in the hall like something alive, festooning the air with a message that couldn’t be denied.
Only death lives here now
.

Quinn shivered and stopped before Graham’s bedroom door. It stood partially open, a slash of afternoon sunshine beating through the window and ending near his feet.

“Graham?”

He braced himself and pushed the door all the way open.

The room was in shambles.

A heavy oak dresser lay on its side, the mirror at its top shattered and reflecting the ceiling in its shards. Sets of clothes were piled and scattered everywhere as if Graham had been trying them on and discarding them in haste. Blankets and pillows were strewn across floor and beneath the bed. The bed itself was stripped bare and there were several puffs of fabric pulled up at its center.

Quinn moved into the room, stepping around the broken mirror until he stood beside the bed. The smell of putrescent fish was so thick here he could barely breathe. He placed a hand to his nose, but it did no good so he dropped it away. The mattress was partly discolored; its deep red fabric stained a darker brown in some places. When he reached out to touch it, he found that it was wet, soaking almost. A clear fluid dripped from the bedframe and added to a puddle on the floor he hadn’t noticed at first. The tufts of material near the center of the bed had long scratches at their edges along with trails of red that could only be blood.

He swallowed the gorge rising up from his stomach and stepped back, stumbling over on overturned chair. The puddle on the floor, it was Graham, it had to be. He had succumbed faster to the sickness and completely disintegrated into the foul-smelling fluid. This was what was happening to his father and Teresa right now, down in the damp ground where he’d buried them.

Quinn turned and half walked, half ran from the room, sucking in great lungfuls of stinking air that only choked him. He stopped in the living room, knowing he would be sick but trying to hold it at bay. The back of the sofa was under his hand and he swayed there, drunk with the knowledge that he was now truly alone. A sound along with movement came from the rear of the house, startling him. He swung his head to the left, a cold hand clamping down in the center of his chest.

The back door eased open and then closed, banging against the frame beneath the wind’s insistence.

Quinn watched it for a moment and then moved to the front door, leaving the broth on the counter.

~

He cleaned for the remainder of the afternoon, scrubbing the carpets upstairs in both his father’s and Teresa’s rooms, but nothing would take the smell away. Eventually he resorted to hauling the mattresses out to the backyard, stacking them near the tree line to burn in the morning. When dusk came, he showered, standing under the hot spray until it scalded his skin, his fingers rubbed raw from the brush and soap he used to clean his hands and nails.

The fridge held nothing that interested him, so he settled for a cup of tea, stirring in sugar as the last holdings of light faded from the sky. When he finally turned the TV on, the news stations were down, their logos filling up the screen. He flipped through the rest of the channels finding only re-runs of sitcoms and reality TV. He went through all of them again just to be sure and then turned the set off. The stillness of the house settled around him, and he went to the kitchen window to look out at the giant pine and the two mounds of dirt beneath it. They were only blurs of shadow now, simply another part of the landscape that would grow grass and become indistinguishable in the years ahead.

Quinn poured his tea down the drain and looked in the direction of his father’s office. The internet might still be a resource, perhaps it would give him a better idea if there was anything left of the world outside the gates.

As he moved toward the hall, a humming began to fill the air and he paused, listening to the growing buzz that became a static hiss. The last nor’easter that had howled down upon them in February had sounded something like this with its relentless wind and rushing snow. The sound grew and grew until he began to crouch out of reflex, his hands coming to the sides of his head. A glass sitting on the edge of the counter pitched to the floor, exploding into a thousand pieces. The roar built, vibrating his teeth in their sockets as he realized what it was. He hurried to the front door, throwing it open to the night as the commercial airliner cruised past, its running lights blinking barely a hundred feet over the trees. It was like being underwater and seeing a giant predatory fish swim by, gliding past in search of food. The massive plane disappeared into the night, engines whining against gravity and he waited, staring after it until the concussion boomed in the distance and a glow lit the horizon in a sickly, licking orange.

The flames climbed for a long time, burning high into the dark heavens before relenting and falling into a somber radiance that would’ve seemed peaceful had he not known its source.

Quinn shut the door and paused at the juncture in the hallway, staring down its darkened length to the office before continuing on into the conservatory. He laid on the daybed, tucking one arm beneath his head and knew that sleep would not come, there would be no way it could. Not after today.

But after he gave the brightening stars a last look through the room’s curved glass, he closed his eyes and drifted off within seconds.

~

A keening scream woke him hours later in the dead of night. He bolted upward at the sound, almost sprawling to the floor as vertigo swept over him, the embrace of sleep still strong in his limbs. The cries were high and short, screeching across the grounds in blasts that curled his guts in on themselves like coiling snakes. It was a rabbit in distress, there was no mistaking it. He’d heard it once before when a female had given birth to a litter beneath Mallory’s back porch. Foster had live trapped them but one of the young had gotten pinned beneath the trap’s spring-loaded door. Its cries had echoed all the way to the main house. Foster had tried to save it but it had died a day later, its spine crushed, its hind legs limp and useless.

The screams cut off as abruptly as they began and Quinn moved to the west end of the conservatory in the general direction the sounds had come from. He leaned into the glass, its surface cold beneath his palms.

The grass shone silver outside beneath the light of a half-moon. The woods were drapes of solid shadow. He watched the tree line for movement but none came. He stood there for a while, hands pressed to the glass like a patient observer at the zoo. His breath began to fog a section below his face and he reached to wipe it away as a strange sensation sprouted like a seed within him. It made gooseflesh erupt across the nape of his neck and down the backs of his arms in sickening waves. He stepped away from the glass quickly, retreating until he stood at the entrance to the conservatory. The urge to flee expanded until it was all he could feel, the same instincts that he was sure the now silent rabbit possessed in life, calling out to run, run, run.

Quinn swallowed and made his way through the dark house until he was in the living room. He wrapped himself in a thick quilt hanging over a chair and laid down on the large sofa, his eyes glancing around the room. The house ticked as it settled on its foundations. The small sounds that he knew so well were alien to him now. Each creak was a footstep, each click a doorknob turning.

He fell asleep without knowing it, sliding seamlessly into a dream of running through an endless forest, dark and twisted branches tugging at his clothes like beggars seeking change. There was something behind him but he couldn’t gather the courage to look back. In the late morning, he woke covered in sweat and breathing hard, as if he had actually been sprinting only moments before. He rose and refolded the blanket before making his way to the kitchen.

When he looked out the window, he saw that the graves had been dug up during the night.