White Horse

by Alex Adams

  “Soon.”

  I hang the baskets on the handlebars before curling Lisa’s fingers around the broom handle.

  “It’s a cane,” she says, lightly tapping the tip on the foot-worn paving stones. “So sticks and stones won’t break my bones. Thanks.”

  My gaze fixates on the church at the village’s eastern edge. Doors bolted. To keep something out. Or maybe in? There could be supplies in there, a makeshift sanctuary.

  “Did you find medicine?” she says.

  I stark walking. “There wasn’t any,” I throw over my shoulder. “I want to check out the church.”

  “I’m coming, too.”

  “Someone needs to guard the food.”

  “I’m blind,” she says. “Not useless.”

  “Okay. But if anything happens, run in the quietest direction and hide.”

  In. Definitely in. Because a heavy beam has been dropped into brackets attached to the door’s frame. What is this village hiding? Who sealed the doors and where did they go?

  I suck in as much air as I can. I already know I’m going to throw them wide, because what we need might be inside, and because I can’t help myself. Knowledge is power. Or maybe it will lead to capitulation. Best-case scenario I get to talk to God. Because we need to have a talk, He and I, though we haven’t done so in some months. And there’s a good reason for that.

  Don’t do it, Zoe.

  Do it.

  Remember the jar.

  Coincidence.

  Words written on a bathroom wall: There is no such thing as a coincidence.

  Curiosity killed the cat. Then it killed the world.

  The thoughts swirl until they’re swept away by my determination. I reach for the makeshift lock that reminds me of the Middle Ages. I wasn’t paying attention in class the day they discussed the history of doors.

  “Tell me what to do,” Lisa says.

  I guide her hand toward the problem.

  “We’re going to push up, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Constant dampness keeps the wood swollen; it bulges in a mockery of gestation. My fingers pull from above, then push from below to no result. Lisa’s shoving, too, her face screwed up and intense—the same expression I feel on my face.

  The beam shifts, groans, shoots straight up like a rocket, and we both stumble in its wake.

  “Thanks,” I whisper. Lisa smiles and dusts her hands together, wipes them on her jeans and does a little Voilà! move like she’s a gymnast. I can’t help it, I join in. We spin, twirl, pose, like we have an audience of millions. This is Italy and my inner child is at the helm. I want to throw my coins in the fountain, meet my prince, spend my last dime on a villa, lose myself in the grandeur of Brunelleschi’s dome, be kissed between the legs of Titus’s arch. I want to live here, not die.

  Then just like that, our performance stops and we’re ground down by the journey once more.

  “What do you think is inside?”

  Lisa looks flushed from our silliness. I probably do, too. Tugging the elastic band from my hair, I finger comb the damp strands, then smooth everything back into place and fasten the thick bundle.

  Decomposition has its own smell. It’s the mugger of scents, slapping your face, kicking you in the gut then bolting with your wallet while you’re busy staggering and recoiling from the stench. Every so often I catch a whiff of that rotting meat smell. But also … something else I can’t define.

  “There’s only one way to find out. Could be something, could be nothing.”

  “Whatever it is, you have to tell me.”

  “I will. I’m going in.”

  She backs up fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I wrench the doors open wide.

  My mind goes into overload. Acid bubbles up into my mouth and I wrestle to force it down.

  Detach or go crazy.

  Holiday snapshots from rainy Italy: corpses, mutilation, rotting flesh. Atop the priest’s corpse a rat died nibbling at what was left of his face. DNA gone so far wrong that even the bones are so gnarled, so anomalous, they’ve ripped through his skin from the inside. What looks like a tailbone. Not just the nub people have, but a lengthy ladder of bones that hangs past the knees. Horny protrusions jutting from what used to be faces. Bodies, unrecognizable as human but too similar to be alien. Italy has made grisly art from the Reaper’s work.

  There is a wet sucking sound. I know it. I don’t dare close my eyes to think, and I can’t focus on single pieces long enough to isolate its meaning. It’s a cat’s tongue dragging along a meat chunk, keratin hooks stripping away the flesh. It’s the slurping of noodles from a foam bowl. It’s the sucking of marrow from freshly snapped bones.

  Something is feeding. A monster who would be man were it not for a madman’s experiment. Its inhuman lapping is both a whisper and deafening, and my eardrums clang with the sound.

  Someone shut them in here. Someone locked them in this place before abandoning this living tomb, and I cannot fault them for that decision.

  My hands can barely hold the wooden beam steady. With Parkinson’s-esque control I tamp it down into the brackets with my fists so that thing inside can never get out. I walk away, back to Lisa, fists tight at my side.

  “What was it?” she wants to know, but I don’t know what to tell her. That thing used to be human once, but now it’s a new link on the food chain.

  I shake my head. I can’t speak. If I do, I’m going to lose the beans.

  We’re maybe a half mile away. The rain is lighter now and tickles my wet face before rolling under my rounded shirt collar. Lisa is chattering and I welcome the way in which she throws around words in any which order, because at least it takes my mind off the church.

  Another mile. The compass indicates we’re still headed east with a slight jag south, which is exactly where I want to be. The sky feels low enough to reach down and touch my head. The clouds are congealing into a solid dark mass. The world is sucking in its breath, but for what?

  Then everything blows apart at the seams. A roaring boom shakes the countryside until even the grass sinks to its knees. We hit the ground, our stomachs flat against the soft soil, arms forming a protective M over our heads. Food scatters as the bicycle falls between us.

  The air thumps. Pressure forces us deeper into the grass.

  “Are you okay?”

  Lisa nods, her cheek flattened by the ground. Her eyes are wide and unblinking. She’s unhurt—or at least not bleeding on the outside. I determine the same about myself and roll onto my back, propping myself up on my elbows.

  “You?” she asks.

  “I’m okay.”

  “What was that?”

  “Something blew up.”

  The explosion came from behind us. I know this because that’s where the fireball is rising into the sky. Smoke is a voluminous, billowing, high-fashion cloak framing the fire, enhancing its dangerous beauty.

  Its significance is not lost on me, and the surge of hormones that is my flight-or-fight response whips my pulse onward, telling me flight is smarter.

  “We have to go. And we have to get off the road.”

  Her lips sag at the edges. “But that means we have to go through the mud. Our feet …”

  “I don’t like it, either, but we don’t have a choice.”

  “But why?”

  “Because that explosion means there might be someone behind us. So it’s better if we stay out of sight.”

  “Do you think it was the church?”

  “Probably.”

  There’s a short pause. “What was in there?”

  “Have you ever heard of those old maps, the kind from before we knew what the continents really looked like, when people thought the earth was flat?”

  “I think so. In school. Why?”

  “Some of them used to have pictures of dragons or other fantastical beasts strategically placed in unexplored areas.”

  The wheels turn. “Are you saying a dragon did this?”

  “No. I’m
saying that the whole world is dangerous now. And there are monsters out there that used to be us.”

  We move on from this place, sticking to the thicker grass so our boots don’t sink and us along with them. The rain persists.

  DATE: THEN

  I hate you, I mouth across the table at my sister.

  She shrugs. What?

  I scratch my nose with the middle finger of my right hand. Grown women acting like teenagers.

  “The Chinese,” the voice next to me drones on. “Now that’s our biggest threat. They’re playing God over there with their weather modification program.”

  “So they can dry their laundry faster?” my brother-in-law asks. Mark is no racist, but I can see he’s as bored with the boob next to me as I am.

  My blind date’s ego is made of yeast, and the hotter it gets, the more he puffs up. It’s a marvel his trendy polo shirt and chinos don’t pop.

  “They did it during the Olympics,” I say. “They shot silver iodide pellets into the sky. But it’s not just China. We do it here, too.”

  Daniel, the dough man, recoils like I’ve slapped him. “We do not.”

  “Yeah, we do.”

  Jenny picks at the tablecloth. She knows I won’t let this go. Anyone else and I might, but this guy is rubbing sandpaper on my raw nerves.

  “What did you say you do again?”

  “I work for Pope Pharmaceuticals.”

  He nods. “I’ve seen their products advertised. Antidepressants and sleeping pills.”

  Over bagged lunches the cleaning crew jokes that Pope Pharmaceuticals is an insurance policy: it manufactures drugs for every contingency, including things you never knew you had.

  “And drugs for dicks,” Mark says. “For when you can’t get it up.”

  Daniel ignores him. “What do you do there?”

  “I clean.”

  He throws his hands in the air like he’s won some victory in some competition only he knows about. “Ladies and gentlemen, domestic engineering now qualifies a person as an expert on weather control.”

  It’s all I can do not to shove my wineglass down his throat.

  “Excuse me.” I take off for the privacy of the backyard. I pace the length of the pool, stop, turn, retrace my steps. The moon is bright in its glassy surface. By the time I reach the diving board my fingers are searching for my phone.

  I dial. Four rings. The fifth breaks as the connection is made.

  “You’re there. I thought you’d be gone for the day.”

  “Who is this?” Dr. Rose asks.

  My voice catches and he laughs.

  “I’m joking, Zoe. Are you okay?”

  “No.” I rub my fingers over my forehead like it’s a piece of crumpled paper and I’m smoothing out the lines. “Yes. Can I ask you something?”

  “Boxers,” he says. “Briefs exacerbate my claustrophobia.”

  Normally I’d laugh, but my body is a violin string held taut to the point of snapping.

  “I’m on a blind date. It was my sister’s idea.”

  He lets out a grunt that triggers an image of him leaning back in his chair, resting his feet on his desk, because this is going to be a long night and he wants to be comfortable.

  “A blind date,” he says. “How—”

  “Please don’t ask me how I feel about it. If I had to pick a word, I’d say homicidal.”

  “That answers my question. Which was going to be ‘How’s it going?’”

  I throw a leaf into the pool and the moon shivers.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. You have a life outside of neurotic patients.”

  “You’re not neurotic,” he says. “You’re on a blind date. The only other question is: Why aren’t you drinking heavily?”

  “I’m allergic.”

  “To alcohol?”

  “To assholes. I get hives when I mix the two.”

  I can feel him smile.

  “You mentioned a husband in our first session.”

  “Sam.”

  “Sam. Tell me about him.”

  “What’s to tell? We fell in lust, married in a quickie ceremony in Las Vegas, then he died before we had a chance to fall in love.”

  “I’m sorry. I assumed you were divorced.”

  “That’s the logical conclusion these days.” The question hangs in his silence. “Car crash. His mother was driving.”

  “Drunk driver?”

  “Seizure. She drove straight into the path of a semi.”

  His voice is cool balm on my raw nerves. “I’m sorry for your loss. How long ago?”

  “Five years. My family think it’s time I moved on.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’d like to move on with a non-asshole. I hear they can test DNA for that now.”

  There’s silence, and for a moment I think we’ve lost our connection. Until he laughs.

  Daniel pokes his head around the open door frame, an extinguished pharos incapable of shedding revelatory light.

  “Come on,” he says when he spots me. “Don’t be a pouty brat.”

  “Excuse me,” I tell Nick. “I think my invisibility cloak just failed.”

  “If you kill him, call me. I’m bound by doctor-client privilege.”

  “Really?”

  “No. But the courts make exceptions for assholes.”

  I follow Daniel into the house.

  “I’ve got tickets for Waiting for Godot.” He says this like he just laid a golden egg.

  “I’m right about the weather,” I say. “Tell Jenny and Mark I said good night.”

  DATE: NOW

  Darkness creeps across the countryside. When it catches us, we have to stop. There are no worn paths here where hundreds of feet have gone before us, or even the same pairs of feet hundreds of times over. The ground is virgin, and each step a potential danger.

  “We’ll take turns keeping watch. Between your ears and my eyes, we should be okay.”

  Lisa’s tired. We both are. There’s a weariness to my bones that has become a part of me, like a leg or an ear. It belongs to me. In return, it owns my body and dictates when I should rest, sleep, yawn from fatigue. Every day a fear flashes through me: that I have White Horse and it’s the disease commanding my routine, not the journey. But there’s been no blood, no tissue-deep pain, so the fear creeps away and hides until it can ambush me the next time.

  I set the cups and flasks outside the tree line so they can refill.

  “I’ll take the first shift,” I reassure her. She rubs her eyes with balled fists, then curls up between the tree’s roots. My body stays rigid. I play games with it, tensing the muscles until they weaken, then relax so blood flows back in.

  Seconds tick by; minutes meander; the hours drag a ball and chain. Night is out there beyond the tree. It’s still there, waiting, watching, when I wake Lisa at two. I wish we had a dog. A dog has ears and eyes. A dog is always on guard, even in sleep.

  “Peach or strawberry?”

  “Peach,” she says, then settles against the tree trunk, half here, half in Dreamland, where the pretty things live.

  I worry that she’ll fall asleep. That whoever caused that explosion will find us here, vulnerable kittens for the snatching. That they’ll be a monster clad in human skin. And that my instincts won’t let me see the truth. But my mind is performing one last walk-through for the night, flicking off the switches of my consciousness. Worry is for the waking. So I roll onto my side, back protected by the tree’s broad trunk, and let my mind douse the last light.

  DATE: THEN

  The world is ending, the population halved, then halved again. I have to get to Brindisi. I’m stuck at the airport waiting on a plane, any plane, to get me to Europe. No money changes hands; it’s meaningless now except as mattress stuffing.

  “You, you, and you,” the man says, pointing to me and two others. “We’re aiming for Rome. Do you accept the price?”

  I do. The price is nothing more than a bag of blood. I’ve
got plenty of that.

  On the tarmac, they tap a vein. My fists clenches and releases to force the blood out faster.

  “Why blood?” I ask.

  The nurse preps another traveler’s arm, shoves the needle in deep.

  “There’s a small group of scientists who still believe they can stop this. Word is they think they can find a cure in healthy DNA.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what they say. Course, I never cared much for what people say. It’s what they do that matters.” She passes my blood to someone else. The red liquid sloshes in the bag. “Have a cookie.”

  Everyone ahead of me is holding a fortune cookie. We’re too dazed to eat them. My mind feels detached from my body like it’s a full step behind the rest of me, a lagging toddler trying to make sense of a much bigger, more adult picture.

  There is no attendant with a breezy impersonal smile ushering us onto the plane, just a couple of soldiers holding weapons they look too young to carry. A few short years ago their mothers were tucking them into their beds, and now they’re primed to kill if necessary. The toy soldiers don’t speak as I inch my way past and drop into the nearest empty seat, but their eyes swivel, then snap to attention. I take the aisle although the window is vacant. I don’t want to look out and down. I don’t need to pretend things are normal. That kind of self-deception can only lead to madness. It’s best to accept that this is and all the blood donations in the world can’t drag the calendar backwards.

  People squeeze down the aisle after me. Some have nothing. Others are minimalists like me, toting a single backpack and maybe a pillow.

  A worn woman stops inches away. She hugs a small Louis Vuitton suitcase to her chest. “Is that seat taken?”

  “It is now.” Although I mean to sound light, my words are pancake flat.