White Horse

by Alex Adams

  Who am I to argue? I’ve got a soft spot for that hunk of orange fur with the Kiss my ass, but not too close attitude. A roll of tape gets dumped on top of the paper stack.

  “Put them everywhere. Cover other people’s lost pets if you have to.” He takes off, shoving fliers at all available warm bodies. Purple paper floats to the ground, but Ben doesn’t notice that people think he’s just another loon with something to shill.

  The opposite direction is mine. I’m more conservative as I tape Stiffy’s face to walls and poles. I smile at a few people, but they glance away, focused on their own troubles. At the end of the block I turn back. That’s what we agreed to. Ben and I meet in the middle outside our apartment building.

  His top lip twitches beneath his crusty nose. When I ask how he is, he shrugs.

  “Just a cold,” he says. “And I think maybe I’m pregnant, because I’m always riding the porcelain bus, or thinking about it.” He sounds like honking geese when he laughs. “I’m happy now, though, because someone’s going to find Stiffy. He’ll be back by tonight, I know it.”

  He’s wrong. The fliers yield nothing more than a handful of obscene calls and one guy with a Korean accent inquiring about a job. Stiffy shows up a week later, gaunt and matted and filthy from some adventure that only makes sense to him. He saunters through my window with his usual nonchalance and takes the front-row seat in front of the jar.

  Something cold and scaly uncoils in my gut.

  “Stiffy.”

  Usually he’ll glance up at me, rub my shins, make noises about food. But this time he employs selective hearing and ignores me. When I approach him, he spits, lashes out, nothing like the cat I know. I shut the window and call Ben. The phone rings in stereo, through the floor and in my ear. Nine rings. I dial again. Three more and he picks up.

  “Hold on.” His throat forces out noises that sound like he’s coughing up a hairball. “I can’t stop puking,” he says, but he makes an effort when I tell him I have his cat.

  A minute later he’s busting through my door, his skin waxen, his breath acidic and foul.

  “Stiffy!” He rushes to hug his cat.

  Ben leaves with a spring to his step. The last image I see of Stiffy is the marmalade cat wide-eyed and unblinking, staring at the jar over his owner’s shoulder.

  SIX

  DATE: NOW

  New physiology brought with it change to old patterns. Humans infected with White Horse mutated in unpredictable ways. Ninety percent died. Of the remaining ten percent, maybe half were immune. The other five mutated in a way that was survivable. Unless pushed by career or some other drive such as the burning desire to beat the next level on a video game, humans are not nocturnal. Oh, we can do it, of course, but never wrench from it the satisfaction that comes from sleeping nights.

  But in this leftover world, in the dying gasp of humanity, some things now hunt at night. Which means during the day they sleep. …

  The once-woman twitches like a dog mid-dream. Is there enough human in her that she dreams of an exorbitant shopping trip in Milan, or has her mind slipped into the primordial stew where her single-cell body propels itself to its next meal with a whip-like flagella?

  All six creatures are sleeping like obscene, fattened kittens nestled in the straw. Their mouths chew in their sleep, but they’ll stop when the Swiss blows this barn clear off the field. These stones have withstood earthquakes, weather, and war, but they will crumble in a duel with plastic explosives.

  Lisa. I have to get her. I can’t leave her here.

  She’s crouched in the same wooden intersection, knees drawn to her chest as though they’re a shield that will keep the monsters at bay, the equivalent of a blanket warding away the bogeyman.

  When I move several inches to the left to gain a better view inside the barn, Lisa’s head jerks as though she’s spotted me. But it’s a lie. Her eyes are flat and lifeless. She’s given up. Probably thinks I’m dead, or as good as, too.

  Please don’t let her move. While the creatures sleep, there is a chance.

  The backpack slides off my shoulders. I cover several dozen feet and drop it at the base of a tree. The paring knife is already in my pocket, and a moment later I am wielding the cleaver. It has good balance.

  Please don’t let me need to use it. Would that my wish held more magic than a prayer.

  The barn has one set of doors. A rusted padlock is a broken arm dangling from an equally oxidized latch. It’s a low building with the characteristic red roof that dots the Italian countryside like the measles. Three windows. One on each wall that doesn’t have a door. None are large enough even if they did open. Which leaves me with the door and hinges so old they’ll sing soprano at the first touch.

  I pray Lisa can hold on.

  At the house, the Swiss is poking through a metal box. He slaps it shut as I stride past him with silent purpose, straight to the tiny galley kitchen.

  “Were you unlucky?”

  “No.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing.” I pull a gallon can of olive oil from its hiding place beneath the narrow strip of counter. There are no cabinets below, just curtains concealing pots, pans, and baking goods from polite company.

  “Olive oil?”

  “No kitchen in Italy is complete without it.”

  “You can’t save her,” he tells my back. “They probably ate what was left of the other villagers. They won’t care about your stupid friend.”

  It’s not just college grades that fall in a curve. Human decency is bell-shaped, with some of us slopping over the edges. Saints on one end, sinners on the other—if you want to be biblical. There’s no way of knowing where these posthumans fall, how much of the person is driving the meat bus.

  I can’t play the genetic lottery with Lisa’s life. I’m armed only with my own good intentions.

  Oil slops over the hinges, seeps between the metal cracks. I pray to a God I don’t really have faith in just so I feel like I have company, but He doesn’t answer. Minutes tick by. I wait as long as I dare; I don’t know how long the posthumans will sleep. For all I know, they’re like dogs, sleeping with one ear open, waiting for food to fall on the floor in the next room.

  Behind the dense high clouds, the sun is a spot of lighter gray. Morning is here in full. Enough light that I can peer through the window and tack together some kind of rescue plan.

  The door barely complains as I inch my body through the narrow slit I’ve made. And then I’m in a scratch-and-sniff snapshot of hell. The church was just a warm-up. These things sleep here. They shit here. They eat here amongst their own filth.

  My boots poke holes in the straw. I look down because I don’t want to step in the brown sludge piles littering the floor. In places it’s thick, like a melted-down mud hut. It is this disjointed dance of one hesitant step after the other that carries me to the beam holding Lisa.

  One of the beings stirs.

  I hold my breath until it settles again.

  Hold.

  The pressure stings. Carbon dioxide burns my lungs, but I don’t dare release too soon.

  Hold.

  Tears fill my eyes.

  On the barn floor, the creature is still once more, lost in its wretched dreamworld.

  Quietly, I mouth to Lisa, then reprimand myself for forgetting. So I wrap the word in softened breath.

  Lisa’s lips move, forming the shape of my name.

  Matted, bloody hair clings to her right ear in a red poultice. Her right eye is beaten to a blackened slit. They must have knocked her out to bring her here, although I haven’t yet figured out how they got to her and not me. She must have gone exploring after I fell asleep, probably through a window, because the door was blocked by what there is of me.

  No. Something must have lured her. There’s no way she’d go alone.

  Idiot kid.

  Thank God she’s alive.

  Blood flakes from the red-brown crust around her mouth. She seems even thi
nner than yesterday. Her legs are compasses bent at tight angles beneath the denim. I want to cry. I want to hug her. I want to shake the stupid from her bones.

  There’s the scraping of the doors closing and locking as the rusted parts rub together.

  I run to the doors.

  “No,” I whisper as loud as I dare. “Don’t do this.”

  His voice is as cold as winter in his homeland. “They’re an abomination. I warned you.”

  “You prick.”

  “If you can survive this, maybe your life is worth saving.”

  “Your logic is flawed.”

  “Is it?” He sounds surprised.

  “I’m going to Brindisi, and I’ll be damned if some cheese maker is going to lock me in a barn and blow me off the planet. I haven’t come all that way for this.”

  “Have you heard of Charles Darwin?”

  “Origin of Species. Natural selection. I picked up that bit of trivia before I went to work for Pope Pharmaceuticals.” Sarcasm is my intention, but it sounds like desperation.

  He falls quiet.

  “Hello?”

  The locks scrape. The sound is an alarm clock for the sleeping beasts. Sleep falls from them in ragged sheets. Enough of their stuffing is still human that they wake in a fog, clawing at their eyes, trying to figure why they woke prematurely. Who knows if they’ve conquered caffeine addiction yet?

  “Lisa?” I scan the barn, search the seams for a way up. “How did you get up there?” But then I spot the heap of rotting sticks on the ground. Leftover ladder parts.

  Think, Zoe. Harder.

  Being quiet won’t save us now—only being fast.

  “Lisa, you’re going to have to jump.”

  Her head and body shake with the idea.

  A slit appears between the door and jam. The Swiss stares at me, eyes devoid of warmth. “On the Origin of Species, to be precise. I am Swiss. People rely on our watches for their accuracy.”

  I risk it all in one harsh breath. “Lisa!”

  Her head jerks up. Her mind engages long enough to understand my demand. I snap my fingers, give her an aural goal. Move toward me, not them. That way lies madness; she’s known enough of that for all the lifetimes of all the people left in the world.

  Three sets of eyes swivel toward me. Two more don’t. The largest male, a man maybe forty years old before White Horse, pins one of the females to the floor facedown, mounts her like a four-legged creature. She squirms beneath him, but only until he bangs her face on the shit-crusted planks. The others crawl towards me, their backs hunched and tense. The sixth villager staggers to her feet. She spasms like a puppet tied to strings, then her joints seem to melt and her bones no longer hold her upright.

  White Horse kills a hostage. The once-woman’s body seizes, flinging straw with dying fingers. For a moment, the scene reminds me of macaroni art. A second woman scrambles to her side. She pulls the other close, smoothes the snarled hair with a ruined hand, cradles her until Death rides away with his prize.

  “Now!”

  For a moment Lisa hangs in the balance, until gravity tucks a finger in her shirt pocket and pulls. Then she’s falling like a pretty pebble.

  I collapse under the weight of her, but refuse to stay down. My will to survive is our trebuchet. I shove her ahead of me, squeeze her through the door’s gap into the light, thrust myself into what’s left of the space.

  It’s the still-human sobbing that jerks me still. The world is filled with tears; these should be drips in an overflowing bucket. I should be immune. But I still have a heart, and it rushes to sympathize.

  I taste their grief when I bite down on my lip. It’s salt with a hint of winter.

  The Swiss snatches a fistful of my shirt, drags me backwards.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he says. He locks the doors in silence, although the silence is only his. There’s Lisa’s crying. Then there’s me.

  “They’re still people.”

  “They’re an abomination,” he says. “Unnaturally selected because of a disease we made.”

  I don’t ask how he knows about the disease’s origins or how much. Not now. Later, maybe. Right now I want to check on Lisa and get us moving again.

  We go as far as the tree where I left my backpack, she and I. Pink rivers take the southern course down her youthful skin, more rain than blood. Her chin is awash with strawberry fluids. The cuts on her head don’t appear to be serious, although there is no way of knowing how deep the damage goes. Could be she’s a time bomb, the seconds ticking away until the pressure inside her skull squeezes the delicate pink hemispheres and … pop.

  “Hurry,” the Swiss says. He’s sneaked up on us. “The doors are locked, but they might find another way.” He nods at Lisa. “She will recover.”

  “What are you, a doctor?”

  “Yes.” Equally blunt. He grabs her chin, tilts it up. “As I said, she will be fine.”

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  Lisa’s nod blurs into a shake.

  “How did they get you?”

  Another shake.

  “Her eye is gone.” He shoves up her eyelid, revealing a bleeding hole where there used to be a whitish orb with a pretty gray-green center. “Perhaps they popped it out like a grape. The soft bits are a delicacy.”

  “Lisa, baby girl, how did it happen?”

  She lifts her head from the Swiss’s hands. In her lap, her fingers curl like dying leaves. They’re wet with tears. “I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Beneath the worn cotton, her shoulders tremble.

  The Swiss isn’t done speculating. “The stupid child did this to herself.”

  I stand, pull on my backpack, help Lisa to her feet. I need to get her fed and cleaned, then get her away from here before the once-humans find that way out.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask him.

  “She’s blind.”

  “She always was.”

  “And yet, she wanders out here unsupervised. She’s a fool and a liability. You should not trust anyone,” he says. “Not even her.”

  “Shut up,” I say. “Just shut up.” But he’s planted a seed and now the vines of it are creeping through my mind.

  DATE: THEN

  “Have you looked inside the jar yet, Zoe?”

  “No. I know I have to.”

  Dr. Rose’s voice gives me confidence. He washes me in calm.

  “If you’re going to move past this, you have to look inside.”

  “I know.”

  “I know that you know.” Our smiles meet and touch in the center of the room, the way our bodies never will.

  By the time I reach my apartment my mettle has melted, leaving only fear.

  DATE: NOW

  “He’s going to blow up the barn,” I tell Lisa. “I can’t stop him.”

  The bicycle is heavy with food again, all of it canned, from the village’s pantries. I found bandages and antibiotic cream that she now keeps in the waterproof pocket of her rain jacket.

  We stand on the road we crossed just yesterday, the world still and damp around us. Then it explodes and fire fills the sky. We don’t fall to the ground this time. We stand and watch and I am not glad the barn is no more. All I can do now is hope those people found a sort of peace.

  “I thought I was going to upchuck again,” Lisa says as we watch that piece of our past burn. Her voice is pale and numb. “I heard the rain stop, so I went out for fresh air. I got lost, couldn’t find the window to climb back in. I heard them coming. Making noises like dogs, they were. I didn’t know they weren’t dogs. Not at first. Not until I woke up in the barn. I was trying to get out when I found a ladder, so I climbed it.”

  “What happened to your eye?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “You’ll think I’m stupid. A stupid blind girl.”

  “A stupid person wouldn’t have climbed that ladder.”r />
  For a moment she fades away. Shock is still lingering around her edges.

  “It wasn’t the dog people. There was something sharp in the wood. A nail, maybe. A big, fat nail. See? I’m so stupid. No one will love me now. Not with one eye.”

  An invisible line scratched in the ground between us stops me from crossing the breach. And I’m all out of useful words.

  “I was supposed to get a Guide dog, before all this. I always wanted a dog. Dogs love you no matter what.”

  “What happened?”

  “My dad said we didn’t need another mouth to feed.”

  She turns away.

  DATE: THEN

  I don’t know why I’m perpetuating the lie. Maybe because it’s like an express train: once the journey’s started, there’s no changing tracks until the end of the line. Or maybe I’m just a bad person. But I don’t really believe that.

  “I dreamed about the jar again last night,” I start, and then I stop, spread my fingers wide enough that I can massage both temples with my thumb and middle finger. “Actually, no. No, I didn’t dream about the jar at all.”

  He’s wearing his business face: smooth, nonjudgmental, eyes bright with awareness. Nowhere can I catch a glimpse of the man who showed interest in knowing more about who I am when I’m not playing a basket case on this couch. He glances down at the notepad, scribbles, lifts his gaze to meet mine.

  “Do you feel like that’s progress?”

  “What did you just write?”

  He stretches back in the chair and, in a blatantly male move, rubs his hand across his stomach. Through his shirt, I can see it’s hard, flat, lightly defined.

  “Does it matter?” he asks.

  “Probably not. I’m just curious.”

  His laugh is tight.

  “What?”

  “I can’t convince you to open the jar, but you want to look at what I’m writing.”

  “Maybe I want to know what you really think about me.” My legs cross. I lean forward. Give him a look Sam once told me was equal parts trouble and seduction. Guilt flashes like lighting in my mind, then disappears. We’re doctor and patient. No, client. That’s what he said. But I can’t help reacting to him any more than he can help sitting there with his legs apart, hand on his stomach, all but pointing the way to his cock. Our bodies do what they do—sometimes without our permission.