“Murrrrow.” Tiger stood on Hugh’s desk, staring at him from over the screen on his laptop. Another thought occur to him, and a chill raced down his arms. He could hardly think of the implication.
4. The Shisa are only attacking humans, no animals.
A soft, hesitant knock sounded at the door. Hugh stood from his desk and headed over to the peephole. It showed a distorted vision of the little old lady from down the hall, Mrs. Marquis. Hugh frowned, scrubbed the growth of his beard, and ran his hands through his hair. He glanced down at his grey sweats and bare feet. Not the best time for company, but he shrugged and opened the door.
He smiled apologetically at the woman. “How can I help you?”
Mrs. Marquis’ hair was dyed a platinum blonde. In tight curls, it stood out about an inch from her head in every direction. Square, silver-framed glasses covered her bright blue eyes. “Mr. Harris. I’m so glad you’re home. Listen, could you give me a hand with something?”
Hugh looked down at his bare feet again, and said, “Umm, sure. Give me just a minute. Would you like to come in?”
Mrs. Marquis smiled and peered into the room past Hugh. “I don’t know that it would be appropriate. Me, a widow and you, a bachelor and all…no need to set the apartment building aflame with scandal.”
The twinkle in her eye was enough to make him blush. “Let me get my shoes.” Just as he began to push his door shut, Tiger leapt through the crack.
The cat had just started down the hall when Mrs. Marquis scooped him up and scratched him behind the ears. “There’s a good kitty. Did you want to come out and keep me company?” She winked at Hugh.
He shook his head. He knew the cat’s only intention was to prove he could escape and nothing else. But since closing the door had been only to keep Tiger in, he pulled it open wide and reached for his Converse sneakers. “What do you need help with, Mrs. Marquis?
“Oh, I need to get something of Carl’s from the top shelf of my closet. It’s too high up. I can’t reach it.”
He slipped on the shoes and stuffed the laces into the high tops. When he stood again and came to the door, Mrs. Marquis held Tiger out for him.
“Here you go.”
The lady’s eyes seemed slightly saddened to let the cat go. Part of Hugh wondered if she’d like to keep the cat, but with the food shortages, the last thing she needed was to take care of more than herself, right? He took Tiger from her hands, tossed him lightly onto the couch, and closed the apartment door.
Mrs. Marquis led him down the hall. “Now, I would have asked Mr. Dunn to do it, but he can be such a busy body at times that I feared he’d let the whole building know about the favor.”
Hugh shook his head behind her back and waited for her to unlock her apartment. She opened it and stepped in, leaving the door standing open for him. He couldn’t help but ask, “Why, madam, is it inappropriate for you to come into my apartment but it’s okay for me to enter yours?”
She spun around and smiled at him playfully. “Because, Mr. Harris, in this situation, you are but a gentleman helping the little old lady reach a high shelf. In the other, I would be the cougar entering the bachelor’s pad.”
He shouldn’t have asked.
The small apartment had the same floor plan as his own but twice the furnishings. The diverse mixture of hardwood antiques and bamboo patio furniture paid homage to the old woman’s eclectic personality. She led him toward the hallway closet and opened the door. Each shelf held a colorful array of towels and linens. “It’s just up on the top shelf there, behind the quilt.”
“What is it I’m getting for you?” Hugh asked, pulling the colorful patchwork coverlet down.
“That black box right there,” she said, pointing at the plastic case just visible at the back of the shelf.
He pulled it from the shelf and handed it to Mrs. Marquis. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” She set the box gingerly on the table and rolled the lock to the numbers 1-2-3-4.
Not the most secure of combinations. He couldn’t help but watch over the woman’s shoulder as she revealed the contents. Within the box lay a silver 1873 Colt .45 Army revolver. Hugh swallowed hard and rubbed the back of his neck. “Ma’am, I really hope you’re not planning to use that thing. I know things are getting dangerous out there, but do we really need to resort to this yet?”
She turned and flashed him a brilliant smile of unnaturally straight teeth. “Of course not, dear, but I’m, also, no idiot. Carl would have wanted me to be prepared for any possibility, and I intend to do as he says.”
“I can understand that.” He shifted uncomfortably and wondered if her eyesight was well enough to prove her a good shot.
She pulled the silver gun out by the pearl inlaid handle and spun the cylinder with confidence.
Hugh cracked a smile. Mrs. Marquis was full of surprises, as usual.
Jennie
MICKEY YAWNED SO BIG, JENNIE was glad a fly didn’t make its way in. He rubbed his eyes and continued to look out the gauze curtain with her. They were two sentries waiting for the return of their father. But now, she looked at her brother with worry. “Do you want to take a nap?”
He shook his head and yawned again, trying to keep his mouth shut.
“I don’t know about you, but I could use a nap,” she said, stretching her arms out and feigning a yawn. “I haven’t slept well in days. Those pews sure weren’t very comfy.”
“Yeah, me too,” he finally admitted, and his eyes drooped.
“Tell ya what, I bet Dad won’t mind if we go lie down on his and Mom’s bed. What do you say?”
“Okay, if you’re going to lay down with me.”
“Of course.” She smiled, and started up the stairs.
“I hope Daddy comes home soon.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I know, but we’ve got to wait for Daddy, right?”
“Right.”
At the top of the stairs, Mickey headed directly for their parents’ bedroom, picking up a little jog and throwing his body on top of the bed. Jennie did the same, and it brought the giggles out of both of them. They snuggled under the white coverlet, fully clothed.
The moment his eyes were shut, Mickey’s breath evened out, and his mouth dropped open in a gentle snore. While she lay in her mother’s bed, surrounded by the smells of her soaps and shampoos, Jennie felt comforted and suddenly sad. Tears spilled over both of her temples landing in the crooks of her ears, as she looked at the ceiling. What if she never saw her mom again?
Embraced in the memory-foam mattress, her muscles loosened and relaxed. If she didn’t get out of the bed soon, she would fall asleep. She needed to be ready to help her dad when he returned. There used to be a commercial on TV for her parent’s mattress, where a woman jumped up and down on the bed next to a glass of red wine. The claim was that a sleeper would not be disturbed as his or her partner left the bed. As she slipped slowly out of the coverlet, she hoped the claim was true this time.
“Jennie!” Her father knocked on the door, with the sound of panic in his voice that traveled up to the second floor.
“I’m coming!” she yelled, the moment she reached the stairs. She hated to think the pounding might wake Mickey up. Considering she’d been checking the window every two minutes for the minivan, it was Murphy’s Law that he would show up the moment she was upstairs and no longer standing sentry for him.
When she got to the door, she pulled the deadbolt open and yanked the door. Her father was drooped, holding his thigh, and sweat beaded on his forehead. The look in his wide eyes made Jennie choke back a scream.
Her father had been bitten.
THE SOBS SPILLED OUT AS Jennie panicked. “Dad, no...no…don’t tell me that you—”
His face was as gray as his eyes. He nodded and stated the obvious. “Yes, I’ve been attacked.”
She wanted to scream in her pain. Why was this happening to her? She needed her father, and if her mother was gone,
too… “What am I supposed to do?”
“Listen.” He grabbed her chin and raised it. He shoved the black shotgun in her hands. “I need you to take this.”
She shook her head. He was only a blur through her teary vision.
“Yes, Jennie. You need to take care of your brother. I know I don’t have long. I was bitten about fifteen minutes ago.” His leg was wrapped with his jacket. “You know we don’t have much time, right?”
Jennie nodded, not able to think. Panic.
“Go next door to the Cassels. They must have food and maybe even a way to get you and Mickey to one of the bases. The minivan ran out of gas just before I turned into the neighborhood.”
The car, too? No food, no car, and no parents? How was she supposed to survive? How was she supposed to take care of Mickey?
“Where’s your brother?”
“He’s upstairs. I put him in your bed for a nap.”
Dad leaned hard against the door and closed his eyes. “I’m so tired, Jennie. I’ve never felt so tired and weak in my whole life. All my joints are aching. I wonder if this is how your mother felt. It’s almost like I can feel my life draining out of this wound in my leg.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
He opened his eyes and met hers. “It’s the truth, Jennie. There’s no point in sugar-coating it. I figure I’ve got about forty-five minutes before I become one of them. You need to hurry next door with Mickey.”
An order, something to do. It was just what she needed to get her feet moving. Even though the floorboards felt more like molasses than wood, she pushed herself up the stairs as fast as she could. Mickey had kicked off his blanket, his chubby cheeks red from the heat in the upstairs room.
“Mickey, we’ve got to go.”
His eyelids cracked open a sliver and then closed again.
“Come on. We’ve got to go.”
He shook his head and grabbed to pull the blanket over himself.
“I’m serious, Mickey,” she demanded, as she pulled him to a sitting position.
Like a jellyfish, his body couldn’t hold the position and wilted back into the mattress. She pulled him up again, and this time, slung his limp body over her shoulder. He didn’t weigh much more than some of the backpacks she’d carried in school. She could handle this.
Going down the stairs with the extra baggage was difficult, but not impossible, if she kept her weight back on her heels. She gripped the rail as she went, concentrating on placing one foot after the other. Her father sat in the foyer with his back against the large, white front door. He opened his eyes when they hit the bottom step.
“Good.” He pulled on the door handle to rise up weakly. His eyes filled with tears, and he pulled her in a one-armed hug and kissed both their foreheads. Then he closed his eyes and pushed her away gently. “I love you both. Now, hurry.”
The front yard to her house had never seemed as large as when she made the long trek around the side fence to the neighbor’s yard. Her breath came out in gasps while she started up the three steps to the porch. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and adjust her brother’s unmoving body to the other shoulder.
Under her feet the mat said welcome. She stepped up to the green front door of the Cassel’s house and gripped the brass knocker. After giving it three raps, she waited. Her eyes darted in all directions, ears alert for wailing or rumbling. After a minute, and no answer, she rapped on the brass knocker again.
Inside, someone shuffled, and the curtain to the side of the window moved. Mrs. Cassel looked out and quickly replaced the curtain. Jennie waited a reasonable moment for her to open the door, but after almost three minutes, the door never moved.
“Mrs. Cassel?” Jennie’s voice shook as her whole body shivered with the terror of the realization that Mrs. C was not going to open the door.
No answer.
Gripping the knocker, Jennie rapped again and called out, “Mrs. Cassel?”
No answer.
Mickey stirred in her arms, his sleep disturbed by her voice. On the edge of her hearing, a wail began, and Jennie panicked. She beat on the door with her fist. “Mrs. Cassel, please open the door! One of the wailers is coming. I hear him. Please open the door! My father’s been bitten. We have no food. I need help! Please!”
She waited another full three minutes. The door did not budge, the curtain did not move, the Cassels did not respond. The wailing continued to grow louder, as the attack victim approached. She needed to move if she didn’t want to be spotted. Unshed tears blurred her vision.
The wind picked up and whipped the flyaways of her hair around her neck. Her brother’s gentle breath warmed her shoulder. She shivered and rushed back toward her house. Her father stood in the doorway with a worried expression on his face. “What’s going on?”
“They wouldn’t answer the door.” Her voice cracked, and the words spilled out with her tears. “I saw them, Dad. Mrs. Cassel moved the curtain. I yelled and pounded on the door, but still they didn’t come. They don’t care, Dad. Why don’t they care?”
Dad narrowed his eyes at the house, his hands gripping the barrel of his shotgun. “I’ll bet they’re the ones who broke into our house and stole the food.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Would they really do that?”
“Desperate times, Jennie.” He shouldered his gun and headed next door. “I’ll go see if I can’t get them to make a change.”
“Dad, there’s a wailer.”
“A what? Oh, you mean another victim.” His eyes turned suddenly sad. “It’s not like I need to worry about that now. But you two head inside, I’ll be back in a minute.”
“You’re not going to shoot them are you?” Her eyes glued to the black shotgun in his hands.
He looked at the weapon and smiled at her. “Of course I’m not.”
Relieved, she headed inside and put her brother on the couch. Her arms ached from holding him. His long brown eyelashes curled against his chubby cheeks. Her shoulder was wet on the jacket in a spot where he drooled. “Thanks a lot, kiddo.” She grabbed the throw blanket that sat on the top of the couch and pulled it up to his chin.
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten much in the two days since her mom was bitten and hadn’t eaten at all since the night before. Right about now, anything edible would do. She headed back into the kitchen in the hopes that something might have been left behind. She hadn’t checked the refrigerator yet.
She opened the door and found several salad dressing bottles, catsup, and mustard on the door. The shelves were otherwise bare except for eggs which had expired the day of the attacks. Had her mother’s tomato plants begun producing? She snorted. Unlikely. In the back of the fridge she found a pickle jar with seeds floating in the brine and one pickle left. Apparently whoever had stolen their food didn’t feel the one pickle was important enough or worth sticking their hand in the brine for the last small piece.
It was worth it to Jennie.
A sharp vinegar-laden smell struck her as she twisted the top and stuck her hand in the brine. The little piece floating inside was only about an inch and a half long. Good enough for one bite only. She put the piece in her mouth and chewed as slowly as she could, hoping it would last.
The sound of a gunshot reverberated through the house, a loud clap that overcame the droning background noise. Jennie jumped, and the pickle jar slipped from her grasp and shattered on the kitchen floor, splattering the noxious contents in every direction, including her jeans. She swallowed hard, and the piece of chewed pickle went so slowly down her throat that she felt its entire travel.
“No way. He didn’t,” she spoke to the air and left the pickle mess in the kitchen, running for the front door.
Reaching for the handle, she suddenly remembered the wailer outside. She pressed her ear against the door and heard nothing but the constant drone from the aliens. The deadbolt flipped quickly in her hand, and she ripped the door open. She stepped onto the porch and looked over at the Cassel�
�s porch next door. Her father stood on the bottom step.
His shotgun was pointed at a body on the lawn. The injured person gurgled and attempted to maneuver itself. In gory fascination, she walked across her front porch and leaned over the railing to get a closer look, hoping he hadn’t shot one of the Cassels.
From her vantage point, she could see that it was the wailer. His eyes were swollen shut and his hair was ripped out in huge chunks. The shotgun in her father’s hands clicked again and again. He was out of ammo.
Sweat beaded on Dad’s forehead and dribbled down his face like a trail of tears. The victim on the ground pulled at the clumps of grass, dragging itself in her father’s direction. The shotgun blast had ripped through its body and rendered its legs useless.
Taking a running half step, her father made a swift kick to the man’s head. Jennie closed her eyes against the gory horror but couldn’t block out the sickening crack as her dad made contact. Her world was caving in around her, and a wave of dizziness washed over her. She wrapped her arms around herself and sat on the porch, rocking. This couldn’t be happening. Surely she’d wake up and her mother would be fine. Her father would be fine. Her neighbors would be the nice old couple that always bought Girl Scout cookies from her when she was a kid.
How long she sat there like that, she didn’t know, but it wasn’t long enough because the pickle juice smell hadn’t gone away.
When she felt the hand on her arm, she opened up her eyes to see her father’s bloody hiking boot next to her leg. She screamed.
THE SUV WAS THE PERFECT vehicle for the journey. Brad had it in four-wheel drive the whole way and trucked along at a steady twenty-five miles per hour over the medians and other grassy areas in order to make it around all the abandoned vehicles. The on-ramp to the beltway was backed up. When he couldn’t find a way around it, he drove up the cleared off ramp and made a three-point turn on the median to get going the right way again.
He found creative ways around every barrier. The music in the car blared as he drove. One of the bite victims had made the mistake of getting in front of his car once, and a reddish-brown stain on the hood was all that was left of ’em. Behind him, stretches of road packed bumper to bumper with cars scattered along the road and even in the median. But overall, the grassy space between the opposing sides of the highway was clear. Occasionally he had to steer around a copse of trees, but most of the time, it was smooth four-by-four sailing. Twice he’d passed other trucks headed in the opposite direction. That was when he was closer to the city. He hadn’t seen anyone in over two hours.
Sanctuary Page 8
