Authors: Joe Hart
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Suspense, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Horror
Cruel World
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©
2014 by Joe Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
To all of the less fortunate and those who care for them. You are the shining examples of hope and beauty that we all can learn from and should strive for.
Special Thanks
I would like to thank Christine Clouser for her immense help with the technical side of the book. I did take some fictional liberties with the information, but Christine provided excellent insight and facts concerning viruses and their genetic structure. I can’t thank you enough, Christine. And as always, thanks to my family who is in constant support of my writing as well as the readers who make my job worth doing. I love you all.
Across the Ocean
Before the plague took him, Quinn’s father would say,
the world is a cruel place. Beautiful, but cruel.
He always looked directly at Quinn when he said this, his clear gaze unwavering. Diamond blue eyes unblinking, making sure he understood.
It’s like the sea
, he would say, and gesture in the direction of the Atlantic that beat against the coastline, close enough to hear most days if the weather was good.
Its movement is graceful and timeless, gorgeous and hypnotizing to watch, but if you’re not careful, if you don’t respect it enough, it will end you like that
. And James Kelly would snap his fingers to punctuate his point each time. That brief sound would resonate within Quinn and bring pictures to mind of tomb doors being closed with a finite bang that echoed of forever.
Quinn would watch him, watch his father’s lips move like they did in each movie he’d starred in, the same way he would deliver his lines with perfect timing, sometimes with a roguish smile, or deadpan and a coldness in his eyes that was never there off-set. He watched how his long-fingered hands would move, gesturing at the air or steepled together if he were lost in thought. Sometimes Quinn would catch him this way and observe him for stretches of time. James would stare out his office window at the long yard, its manicured grass and the rough walls of pine that grew rampant on the property, to where the sea met the cliffs. His fingertips would touch and rest just beneath his chin, his eyes never leaving the window, and Quinn never leaving the door while he observed him. His father’s profile was perfection against the glare of daylight outside. Quinn would lock them away, these moments of silence, into boxes of memory saved for later when he would cross the path of a mirror. He would gather the courage to look at his own reflection, eventually comparing it to his father’s features. But there was no comparison. There could never be.
Invariably Teresa would find him standing there, tears clouding his vision, and guide him away with soft, papery hands that always smelled of rose petals. She would kneel before him, her curled white hair feathery and so light he always imagined it floating away like smoke on wind.
I always find you crying, Quinn Michael, and there is never a reason
.
I’m not like daddy
, he would reply, the conversation the same since he could remember, Teresa’s lined face before him, her words like balm.
You are more like your father than you know, and your tears should be reserved for true mourning, not because you want something to change. Beauty is here
, she would say, and run her rose-scented fingers over his misshapen brow, down to the twisted bones beneath his cheeks.
But that is fleeting and age steals it from us all. Do you know what true beauty is?
She would ask. He would simply watch her, waiting for the words.
True beauty is doing the right thing when you know no one is looking, and that comes from here
. Her fingers would tap his chest, twice, softly.
And you, Quinn Michael, have beauty in both places
.
Then she would lead him to the kitchen, shooing the cook out so that they could have privacy while she made him cocoa or hot tea. They would sit there for an hour or more, sipping drinks while Teresa gradually drew him out of the cocoon of despair he’d spun for himself until he was ready to go outside.
The outdoors welcomed him in a way that the inside of the house never did. The large rooms, even with their vaulted ceilings, sprawling layouts, and sweeping views through massive windows couldn’t compare to the air and the trees and the architecture of the Earth.
Nature drew him. It called whenever he ran outside, flying from the wide steps into the breezy Maine mornings, the pines shushing and whispering to themselves. He would stand under them some days and listen to their language, trying to discern a pattern, some telltale sign that there was more than the wind at work in their branches. Sometimes needles would drop from far above and land in his hair and on his shoulders, resting there until he plucked them away, always smelling their fresh scent before letting them fall to the ground.
But the sea was where he would always end up. The cliffs that bordered their hundred acres was highland, surrounded by a wrought iron fence that stretched in a half circle beginning at the south cliff edge and ending at the north. The property ran out into a jutting peninsula like a tongue tasting the ocean and dropped away sixty feet or more in places before leveling to a coastal shore of great, flat boulders. Quinn learned to climb down the precarious cliffs when he was only seven, his father coaching him from below, placing his feet into holds that he couldn’t see until he knew the crevices by touch, finding them without effort and knowing in his heart that he could descend the bluffs in the darkness of midnight with ease.
The flat stones worn smooth by the constant embrace of the tides were his thrones. He sat upon them, governing an army of sea creatures who had hideous countenances and who worshipped him because he was the most handsome of them all. Sometimes the fantasies would fade and he would gaze out across the rolling waves, far into the horizon that hurt his eyes if he looked too long. Such amazing distance the world contained, the immensity of it all, like looking at a grain of sand upon the beach among all the others and seeing that the single grain was him in the world, nameless and adrift in the mercy of life.
Most days he spent in the solarium on the north side of the house. When the structure had been built, two years after his birth and a year and a half after his mother had left forever, his father had planned on it being a greenhouse full of foliage that he could keep blooming throughout the harsh northeastern winters. But the plants had withered despite the insulation and good sunlight, and his father had removed all but a select few of his favorites, leaving the space to become what it was now, Quinn’s classroom.
Teresa had been a teacher. She normally said she’d been a teacher in her former life. When Quinn asked her what she meant, a sad smile would crease her face, touching her kind eyes, and she’d say she would tell him someday. She’d also let slip a mention of her own son, and when Quinn asked further about him, she firmly guided him on to his next chapter.
Their lessons encompassed all subjects without definition or true structure. Some days they would spend pouring over a world map, Teresa pointing out great cities and capitals, their history unfolding from her stories in a way that always seemed like an adventure. On others they would read snippets from Shakespeare, and she would ask him what the great writer had meant after each section. Quinn would attempt an answer, and Teresa would tilt her head on her slender neck, her smoky hair tipping also, saying yes, he was right. It was only when he was twelve that he finally answered that he had probably meant several things all at once. Teresa’s face had lit in a smile that followed him throughout the rest of the day, and the squeeze of her hand told him that he’d finally understood.
At night his father would read to him after dinner, sometimes for hours in the library containing high mahogany shelves filled with books. They would rest on the leather couch before a fire crackling in the immense hearth if it was winter and holding cool glasses of iced tea if it was mid-summer. James would read, his voice sonorous and strong from years of projecting lines before a camera, the subtleties of his speech changing with each character until the story filled the room. The library would disappear around them and they would be on Mars, the red dirt glistening beneath a baking sun at their feet, or the walls would become massive trees, towering beyond sight so that their branches and leaves were lost in the blinding white of a forever sky.
Quinn would sit beside his father, sinking toward him as the night spooled out, his shoulder gradually resting against the older man’s arm until James would cuddle him in closer, stroking his hair and running his fingers over Quinn’s eyes until sleep carried him away.
These were the days of before, his life as the months became years and the world turned without him witnessing it for himself. And no matter how hard he stared across the ocean, he could never see the other side.
Jackals and Buzzards
The day after his sixteenth birthday, he heard his father and Teresa argue about him for the first time.
He’d drifted off on a settee in the solarium, a book of Robert Frost poems open on his chest. Soft rain drummed against the half-domed ceiling of glass, the drops exploding as they hit only to reform into stitching rivers that flowed down the slanting wall and out of sight.
Quinn sat up and closed the book, marking his place before setting it aside. It was early evening, the sun lost somewhere behind the storm clouds and dense pines to the west. Lightning walked in a twisted stream across the sky and he listened, counting off the seconds until the thunder replied.
He made his way down the hall toward the stairs that led to the second floor and his waiting room. His muscles ached from a long run and climbing the cliffs all morning. It had been a glorious spring day, one of the first, the smell of melting ice and the air strangely warm, like an unexpected blanket placed over you during a nap.
Quinn paused, his foot on the first tread, as a voice filtered down the hall from the furthest room, his father’s study. The tones of conversation were off, unsteady and varied, sounding like the cook’s voice did when arguing over a recipe with the housekeeper or telling a joke. When heard from a distance, humor and anger sounded almost the same.
He walked down the hall, his sock-feet silent on the oak floorboards, ignoring the long mirror on the wall when he came even with it. He was good at not seeing mirrors now. He’d had them all removed from his room when he was fourteen and barely noticed his gliding reflection when he passed them in other areas of the house.
When he came to the T branching off to the rest of the home, it was empty. Mallory, the housekeeper, had left for the day, as well as Graham, the cook, and Foster the groundskeeper, each retiring to their respective guesthouses a short distance down the lane. The house was devoid of life save his father, Teresa, and himself, the way it was every evening. A word echoed to him that sounded like
can’t,
and it was Teresa speaking. Her voice would’ve been recognizable to him in the middle of a tempest. Quinn edged closer to the door and saw it was open a fraction of an inch. He stopped, waiting and listening, holding his breath.
“Do you think I haven’t gone over it and over it, Teresa?” His father’s voice, strong but without force, tired sounding, like he hadn’t slept for years and only wanted to lie down. “I’ve lain awake nights weighing it out, turning it over, worrying it like a stone.”
“It’s his life, not a stone,” Teresa said from somewhere to the left of the door.
Quinn leaned forward to see if he could get a glimpse of them through the crack but saw only the darkening window looking out toward the sea cliffs.
His father sighed. “I know that. I feel like I came to a branch in the road of our lives years ago and chose one, and after walking for all this time, it may have been the wrong choice, but now I don’t think I can find my way back.”
“I’m not faulting you for what you did, any parent might have been tempted. The difference being you had the power to make it happen, to hide him away here, to remove yourself from the public eye, where other people wouldn’t have been able to do that. But that isn’t the issue; the issue is he’s sixteen now.”
“I know how old he is,” James snapped.
Quinn blinked. He’d never heard his father truly irritated before. Upset, yes, but bark at someone like that? Never.
There was a clinking of glass, and Quinn imagined his father pouring several fingers of whisky into a tumbler he kept on his desk. He’d seen him drinking more in the last year than he ever had in his life.
“I’m sorry,” James said, his tone level again. “It’s hearing the number that sinks it home, how long he’s been inside the walls I’ve built around him.”
“I know, and I know how you must be feeling-”
“You don’t, you can’t, but that’s okay. You’ve been like a mother to him after the pathetic excuse for one ran away to ‘live her own life’ as she called it. He loves you with all his heart.”
“And he loves you more, Jim. Talk to him. See what he wants. There’s no way you can keep him here forever.”
There was a rustling sound and then a quiet clap, a ream of papers dropping onto a desk.
“The test results came back. He’s not eligible for the surgery.”
Quinn closed his eyes and slumped against the wall. The team of doctors had come to the house the week before, bringing cases of equipment with them. They’d drained massive amounts of blood from his arm while taking digital readouts of his facial structure. They’d even set up a portable X-Ray in the solarium, taking shot after shot of his skull, all the while his father hovering in the background, watching him. But there would be no surgery that they’d spoken tentatively of over the past six days, treading around it as if it were something priceless and breakable. There would be no hope.
“Are they sure?”
“Yes. The Fibrous Dysplasia goes deeper than they thought, deeper than two years ago when he had his last checkup. The bones aren’t brittle anymore after the supplements and medication, but the deformity has grown inward.”
“Inward?”
His father’s sigh again, long and deflating. “Yes.”
“Well, is there any danger-”
“No, they said the bones won’t continue past a certain point, but the reconstruction they were promising won’t be possible.” James paused, the silence drawing out like a tightening wire. “I should have known. I should have guessed.” Emotion clogged his voice, and there was another pause as he drank and set down the tumbler with a short bang on the desk.
“They’ll find something. They’re making new discoveries every day. We have to have faith.”
“I’m running low,” James said. There was the clinking of the bottle again. “I haven’t had much cause to keep it in stock lately.”
“You know life isn’t assurances, it’s chances and choices. We can choose to go on with our heads up or we can bury them in the sand, but life continues no matter what.”
“Well, I’m tired of it, tired of the bullshit promises the doctors peddle, tired of waiting for the next idea to hope on. I’m tired of seeing my son, my beautiful boy, and knowing he’ll never have a chance in the world. He’ll never know kindness outside of these walls and fences because the truth is the world is full of jackals that call themselves people. I’ve seen the worst in humanity, witnessed it and might’ve even been a part of it at one time in my life, and there is no way I’m going to let him willingly walk out and be consumed by that.”
Quinn pushed the door open and stepped into the room.
His father was where he’d pictured him, standing behind his desk, crystal glass in hand, his dark hair mussed, and a dress shirt open at the throat. Teresa was to the left, clutching her elbows with her hands, arms folded over her chest. When he entered, their eyes widened and his father set the glass down, his face falling as if receiving more bad news.
“I’m not afraid,” Quinn said, locking his gaze with his father’s before shifting it to Teresa whose lips pressed together into a paper-thin line.
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Teresa said, moving toward the door.
“You can stay,” Quinn said.
“Actually, I’d like to speak to you alone,” James said, nodding once to Teresa who gave Quinn a tight smile and a squeeze on the arm before letting herself out of the room. When the door clicked shut, James made his way to the window and stared out at the storm. His hands played across the polished sill as more lightning stabbed the clouds.
“How long were you listening?”
“Long enough. The surgery’s not an option?”
“No, I guess not.”
“I didn’t think it would be.”
“I had hope.”
He studied his father for a while. “I’m not afraid,” he repeated.
“I know you’re not, but I am. I know what’s out there. The world is-”
“A cruel place,” Quinn finished, moving closer to the desk. “You always tell me that. But it’s also beautiful; you say that too.”
James was quiet for a long time and then turned to face him. He looked older, or maybe it was simply the grayish tinge set to his features by the storm.
“Three years before you were born I was in Mali filming Standoff. It was hotter than hell while we were there and dry, so dry. The wind would blow across the plains where we were shooting and it would literally leech the moisture from you, pull it right from your skin. We would film during the daylight hours and then head back to our hotel in the evening, which was over an hour away. There were several local warlords battling in the area, over what I don’t know: food, gold, drugs, everything, I suppose. Skirmishes were common, and once we even heard gunfire at night not far from our hotel. Needless to say, our security was heavy.
“One afternoon a storm rolled in, kind of uncommon for that time of year but not unheard of. If you remember the movie, everything was filmed in the desert specifically to capture the arid setting, so a rainstorm wasn’t extremely useful for us. Trent, the director, called off shooting for the rest of the day, so we all packed up and started back to the hotel. I was riding in the first truck when we saw them.”
James’s eyelids fluttered and he looked at the floor. There was a swallow of whisky left in his glass, and he picked it up, bringing it halfway to his mouth before stopping.
“It was a little girl and a man. They were on the side of the road. He’d been shot. There was blood on his white shirt that had gone a rust color. You could see it drying in the heat and sticking to him. The girl couldn’t have been more than seven, and she was starving. Her skin was plastered to her bones like shrink-wrap, and her hair was falling out. She had these huge, dark eyes that watched us as we got closer, but she never moved. She was sitting behind him, kind of holding his head up, and he wasn’t conscious. His mouth was open, and for all I know he might’ve been dead, but I don’t think he was. My driver started to slow down, and I watched her look at us. I know she couldn’t see us since our windows were tinted, but she stared right at me as we came even with her. Those eyes boring into mine through the glass.”
James blinked and brought the drink to his lips, pouring the whisky down his throat with a toss of his head. Quinn sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk and perched there, watching his father.
“I told the driver to just keep going. We had a huge cooler full of ice and bottled water in the back of the truck and there was probably enough money in my wallet to feed her and her village for a week, but I told him to drive.”
Thunder rumbled over the house and heavier rain pattered against the office window.
“Why?” Quinn asked. His father was a different man in the low light, not a dashing movie star but a haggard, weary soldier with dead eyes.
“Because of who I was then. That girl and the man on the side of the road might as well have been in another universe, that’s how distant I felt from them. They were dirty and starving and wounded, and I was none of those. I was riding in an air-conditioned truck with personal security and a soft bed to sleep in that night. I was rich and unconcerned with the world outside of my own. Those two people were part of that outside world that was so different I couldn’t relate to them. I got a sick feeling seeing them there, but it was the wrong kind of sick feeling. I felt sick at the thought of getting involved, of helping them, or leaving my comfortable world that I lived in. Being indifferent was easier. Forgetting was easier.” James set the empty glass down on the desk and reached for the whisky decanter. His hand rested on the crystal stopper, but he didn’t pour himself another drink. “At least I thought it was.”
He glanced up and watched Quinn for a long second before looking away.
“That is the world that’s waiting outside of these walls, son. That’s what it has to offer. There’s millions of people out there that are just like the person I used to be, who don’t think past their first impressions and don’t have the empathy to see who you really are. You’ll be shunned based on how you look by people that can’t relate, that don’t know how or care.”
“You can’t say that. Not everyone is like that; they can’t be,” Quinn said. His mouth was parched, and his heart knocked against his breastbone.
“I saw it, Quinn. I was one of them. They’re the people that do what I did every day. They’re the ones that appear normal but hide hate and resentment below the surface. They’re the ones that produce and read things like this.”
James opened a drawer in the desk and scooped out several magazines. They were outdated but in good shape as if they’d been laid in the drawer years ago, untouched until that moment. He tossed them onto the desk and they spread out, fanning away from one another so that Quinn could see the covers.
They were entertainment magazines, the kind he’d seen on television over the years. They chronicled the lives of celebrities: their work, their children, even their clothing choices in such detail that it was as if they were reporting on rare, endangered species of a rainforest rather than actors and actresses living on a California coast. The magazines were all similar in the fact that their central pictures, sandwiched between miracle weight loss diet claims and the latest fashion faux pas, were of his father and himself as a young child. His father was carrying him in a bundle, hugging him close to his chest. James was youthful and even more handsome than he was now. The distinguished gray at his temples was a lush black, and even with the harried look in his eyes, they still shone with confidence and purpose on the glossy cover. Quinn could see only a portion of his own face in the picture, but it was a miniature version of how he appeared now. The child’s features in the photo were uneven and slanted to one side, the bones already growing askew of proper balance. His brow was enlarged and one eye was shut, caught in mid-blink.