by Perrin Briar
The sun had set hours ago, but there was still a flickering orange glow on the horizon. There was the faintest hint of smoke, weak like the taint of a life-long smoker’s touch. It didn’t take a detective to put the smoke and orange glow together. Dana and Hugo shared a disconcerted look.
A fire somewhere in the city. A big one.
Dana only hoped they could get to the university and rescue Max before they met it.
By the time they arrived at the bridge, the smoke had created an artificial smog, a gray haze that shrunk the world to their close proximity. They were a bubble passing through the world.
“We’re on fumes,” Dana said, eyeballing the fuel indicator.
“I thought the tank was almost full?” Hugo said.
“It was,” Dana said. “It must have been hit and we’ve been losing fuel fast. We’ll have to ditch it and get another car.”
“We could go to my place,” Hugo said. “Take my mom’s car.”
“Is it close?” Dana said. “It’s got to be for us to get there.”
Hugo pointed in a vague direction through the smoke.
“Just over there,” Hugo said.
It would be good to wash up, Dana thought. And it beat wandering through the smoke to find another car. Anything could come lurching at them.
“Lead the way,” Dana said.
Chapter Five
THE BEETLE, beaten and battered, came to a slow gasping stop to the curb. It was lucky. They had just reached their destination.
Hugo’s house was a large brownstone. The street itself was quiet. Dana could imagine dogs barking in the distance and BBQs on the front lawns during summer months. The smoke was thinner here, and Dana was relieved they weren’t heading directly into the eye of the flames.
Dana’s mother’s car sat on the driveway. It was large, an old fifties style automobile that Dana had no name for.
Hugo’s hand shook as he reached for the gate post. He laid it on top, the smooth surface a nice fit inside his cupped palm.
“Maybe I should wait out here,” Hugo said.
“What for?” Dana said. “You know where everything is. We can stock up on supplies while we’re at it.”
Hugo blinked, and then nodded, hesitant. He didn’t want to go inside. That much was obvious. The question was, why?
At the front door, Hugo bent down to lift up a plant pot. He upended it so he could peer at the bottom. He unhooked the key and inserted it into the door lock. He took a deep breath before he turned it and pushed the door open.
The door opened silently. The hallway was perfectly neat, tidy and clean. Dana’s stepmother Amanda would have approved. Everything was in its right place. This house too smelled of Dettol. The obvious giveaway of a housewife with too much time on her hands.
Hugo still stood on the front doorstep, looking like a lost boy who had been left here by accident. He didn’t know whether he should enter or not. His face was pale—even paler than usual after they had contracted the virus. He looked on the verge of tears, or at least like someone who didn’t want to be there.
Hugo, in his large plain pastel T-shirt, looked at odds with his surroundings. He instantly made the house look untidy. The technology-obsessed nerd Dana had been hanging with did not belong in this house.
“Where are the keys?” Dana said.
“Hanging,” Hugo said, his voice whisper thin, barely a gasp. “Hanging in the kitchen.”
“I’ll just go and get them then, shall I?” Dana said. “How about you gather all the things you think might be useful upstairs while I clear out the kitchen?”
Hugo gave the barest of nods before he stepped in the house. It was as if there was an invisible forcefield and he couldn’t pass through it easily. He gave a sigh of relief when he finally did enter. He opened his eyes and looked at Dana.
“Okay,” he said.
What happened here? Dana thought. What was up with Hugo?
Was it just returning to a place that had once been home to his family and happy memories? Judging by what he had told her about his father, she found that hard to believe. But Dana was not the type to pry. She neither wanted nor needed to know.
Hugo’s footsteps, slow and heavy, moved up the staircase. This was not a happy place for Hugo. Not happy at all. And yet he still had the courage to invite her into his home, for them to take his mother’s car and use it for their own purposes.
Dana instinctively moved to the room at the end of the hall and pushed the swinging door open. She peered around the corner, opening the door slowly. There was no telling what was in the room. It was empty.
Everything was once again in its right place… save a dining chair that sat in the middle of the room, away from the table and other conspiring chairs.
Why would anyone sit in this chair? Dana wondered. She turned to look in the direction that the chair was facing. It was toward a blank wall. Hanging from a hook was a car key.
What the chair’s purpose was now, Dana didn’t know, but she was thankful for it pointing out the key. Dana crossed the room and picked the key up. She tapped it against her palm.
She just couldn’t let the anomalous dining chair go. She turned to look at it again. Yes, it was a very strange thing to see.
Dana shrugged. She moved to the cupboards and began packing the food up. She chose those things with a long shelf life. She supposed it wouldn’t be long before someone from a newly established community would be here to harvest these things. Better that she take what she needed first. She stuffed everything she could find into double bagged carrier bags.
It was then that she saw something swaying out the corner of her eye. She spun around, fists raised… But there was nothing there.
Her head tilted up to see a frayed rope hanging from the ceiling. It was cut short, no more than a couple of feet in length. It was black, a strong cord often used for climbing. There would have been some slack in it. Needless to say, it was an odd thing to have in a kitchen.
Dana was intrigued, but she would stay out of Hugo’s business. If there was something he wanted to tell her, he could. But she wasn’t about to force the issue. She carried the packed bags to the foyer. They were stuffed full with food.
“Hugo?” Dana said, calling up the stairs. “Hugo? Are you up there?”
There was no response.
“Hugo?” Dana said, taking the first step on the stairs.
“I’m okay,” Hugo said, leaning over the bannister directly above Dana.
His sudden appearance made Dana jump. He had too perfectly mastered his ability to creep without making noise. Snatch had taught Hugo well.
“Nearly done,” Hugo said.
“All right,” Dana said. “I’ll just be down here when you’re ready.”
Dana turned to look at the open door to the kitchen. The rope beckoned her, seducing her thoughts. But she wouldn’t heed them. But while she was waiting, she might as well have a little look round.
Dana pushed the swing door to the lounge open. The carpet was thick and absorbed Dana’s footfalls as she crossed the space. It, like the rest of the house, was perfectly proportioned. There was a real ageless style to it that begged to be admired. In the glass-fronted cabinet Dana could make out picture frames, tastefully arranged.
Dana crossed the room, taking note of the little knick knacks and bric-a-brac from all four corners of the world. On the other side of the glass cabinet, she was greeted by the happy images of a three-person family, fixed false smiles perfectly aligned.
The woman in the picture, who must have been Hugo’s mother, wore her smile easily, though it looked strained, as if she had a secret she told no one. It was plain as day to Dana, because she had seen that exact same smile a thousand times before… on the face of her own mother.
And then the severed rope made sense. And Hugo’s discomfort of returning home.
One mother taken by rope, another by razor, Dana thought. She and Hugo shared more than their special genetics. They shared a tragic h
istory too. Maybe it was something that had drawn them together since the start, something their unconscious minds simply knew and took for granted, the conscious mind struggling to catch up. The reason for Dana’s mother’s early check out of this world was her abusive father. Was that the cause of Hugo’s mother’s too?
Her eyes drifted to Hugo’s father.
Dana gasped, taking an unconscious step back and putting her hand to her mouth.
No, she thought. It can’t be…
But it was. It was him.
The colonel.
The one who had run the quarantine facility at the detention center. His grey hair and bushy mustache were the same. His scowl of superiority, identical.
Dana couldn’t imagine having this man as her father, not that she believed he would have been any easier to deal with than her own.
The difference between her and Hugo’s response to their parents was staggering. They were polar opposites. Hugo had been browbeaten into submission, eschewing Dana’s outright rebellion for passive hostility.
And if the colonel was in charge of running the quarantine center, that meant… But no, it wasn’t possible. No one could be that callous. Especially not a family member…
Hugo’s own father had condemned him to death, sentencing him to be eaten alive. His own son. It boggled the mind.
Dana couldn’t imagine what Hugo must have felt, knowing what his own father had done to him.
Dana shook her head. This was why she didn’t like to connect with people, to get close to them. It meant she developed feelings for them, cared about them, and that was never a good thing, especially not in the modern world.
She’d forget what she’d seen, what she’d learned about Hugo and his family. It did her no good to know it.
Dana turned and headed out of the lounge, back into the front entrance. Hugo still wasn’t there. Frankly, she was relieved he hadn’t seen her coming out of the front room. Things would be complicated enough between them emotionally. But in future she might try to be kinder to him. Might.
She ought to get the car loaded up, she thought. She hated nothing more than being forced to wait for someone, but even that was better than the stifling claustrophobia she suddenly felt.
Dana opened the front door and peered outside. She would need to get used to checking the coast was clear before she headed anywhere, even when she was in a panic. There was nothing there, so she picked up the bags and moved outside.
She headed for Hugo’s mother’s car and pulled at the door handle. It was locked. Of course it was. Dana put the shopping down, reached into her pocket for the key and unlocked the doors. She put the bags inside and climbed into the driver’s seat. She shut the door behind herself.
She gripped the steering wheel in her hands and took a moment to calm herself down. She liked being inside. She liked that she had some protection, flimsy though it might be.
Being outside now left her feeling exposed. She was vulnerable. There was always the chance something could come and strike at her at any moment and she wouldn’t be able to get away. Her life was constantly on the line when she was exposed to the elements.
The smoke was getting thicker, and Dana coughed to rid her lungs of its whispering grate.
She kept an eye out the windows, peering around at her surroundings. The world looked like it could have been the same as it always was. Birds tweeted and flitted from one tree to another without a care in the world. A car sat parked in their neighbor’s driveway. Ready for its Sunday clean.
Dana glanced in the rearview mirror and caught sight of the garden gate that led around the side of the house and into the back garden.
It was open.
Dana turned her head to the side and frowned. She was certain it hadn’t been open when they’d first arrived. But she might have been mistaken.
Then she thought about it.
She hadn’t seen Hugo in a while. Perhaps he wasn’t inside the house any longer. Perhaps he had come out earlier, while Dana was in the lounge, and something had chased him into the back garden.
Dana’s senses switched to high alert mode.
Dana pulled on the door handle and climbed from the safety of the car. She shut the door firmly but quietly behind her. She headed for the small gate. It was sitting off its latch by the time she reached it. Someone had been through recently. She pushed the gate open and shut it behind herself.
She took in the garden she found herself in. It was large for a townhouse, green and lush, boasting a small rockery and fountain. In one corner was a small vegetable garden. Someone clearly thought a lot of their garden. But none of that was what had gotten her attention.
It was the figure who sat forlornly at the edge of the pond, staring into its calm surface.
Dana wanted to tell Hugo that it was time to go, but one look at his beaten form and she knew there was no way she could be so harsh. He needed time to think. That was why he’d come out here in the first place. To be alone, to think.
She had come at him from behind, and felt a slight flare of anger at him that he hadn’t cared enough about his own survival that he might protect himself, leaving himself open like this. After all the training they’d been through too.
Dana turned to leave, secretly relieved Hugo hadn’t heard her approach. She began to creep away.
“Don’t leave,” Hugo said.
Dana’s shoulders slumped. And here she was, thinking she’d gotten away. She put on a brave face and turned back to him.
“I know we should get going,” Hugo said, as if he was reading her mind. “I just need five minutes and I’ll be ready, I swear.”
“It’s okay,” Dana said. “Take your time.”
She gritted her teeth and surprised herself by taking a seat next to him.
“It was her clothes,” Hugo said. “Her smell. While I was sorting through her things it hit me. It’s surprising how something like that can cast you back, isn’t it?”
“They say memory is linked to smell,” Dana said.
That was about all she had to say on the subject.
“It’s weird,” Hugo said. His eyes hadn’t moved from the pond yet. “How they’re there one minute and not there the next. You think you’ll hear their voice when you come home. You think you’ll see them again, smell them again. But you won’t.”
Dana ran the words through her mind and found she couldn’t associate any kind feelings with them. Certainly not with her own parents.
“I was the one who found her,” Hugo said.
He curled his hands up into small tight fists, fists that had never been designed for fighting. His arms shook at the recollection, imagining the feel of the fabric of his mother’s dress. Dana could hardly understand the words that poured from him, as he had his hands almost covering his mouth.
“I lied to you before,” Hugo said. “My grandmother didn’t bite me. It was my mother. I came home and found her there, hanging in the kitchen. She’d never been the most stable person, and I always had to come home after school to take care of her. And then one day, there she was…
“It’s hard to describe seeing her strung up like that. It didn’t seem real, like this wasn’t happening. I heard her growling, groaning, but I thought it was just from having the rope around her neck. I thought she was trying to speak to me, to tell me she wanted me to save her. I guess I heard what I wanted to hear.
“She fell on top of me, and I tried to support her, to help her, and she buried her teeth in my shoulder. It hurt, but what hurt more was the fact it had been her who had done it. Father…
“He has a bad temper, and he hurts me sometimes. It was always by accident, he said. That I shouldn’t provoke him, shouldn’t anger him. He always made it sound like it was my fault.
“And when I grew up, I learned that it was never really my fault. Not really. My mother never stood up for me, but I didn’t blame her. She had to take care of herself. She was fragile already. She always brought me ice afterwards, for when my bo
dy hurt.
“When my father came home and saw she was dead… He blamed me. Was glad I was bitten. If I’d come home earlier, he said. If I’d been there when she needed me, she would never have ended up dead. She would still be alive.
“He sent a regiment out to go find her, to bring her back to him. He said it was for research purposes, that she was important to the discovery of the cure, but she wasn’t really. He was just desperate to get her back.”
“And then he put you in quarantine,” Dana said.
“It was all he could do,” Hugo said.
“He could have kept you somewhere else,” Dana said. “Could have kept you away from the others until someone found a cure. Instead, he threw you to the lions.”
“He didn’t know I was Resistant,” Hugo said. “I don’t know if he even knows there are people like us.”
Dana felt awkward. She was not good at expressing emotions, even worse when it came to offering comfort to others. She raised a hesitant hand and put it on Hugo’s shoulder. Even that felt too much to her.
Hugo looked up and smiled at her. He seemed to take a great deal of genuine comfort in it.
Dana wished she could have said something reassuring like, “Things will be better soon,” but she wasn’t in the habit of lying. At least not when it provided no obvious benefit.
ROAR!
It hadn’t been emitted from the throat of an undead or a creature, but a piece of modern technology. A car.
And it was coming from Hugo’s front drive.
“No…” Dana said.
Her heart leapt into her throat. She got to her feet and ran at the gate, putting her hands to it and vaulting over it in a single bound. She landed on the other side and kept up her pace. Her feet found the hard concrete of the now empty drive, and then the black of the street’s tarmac.
The thick smoky haze had come so quickly. The fender of Hugo’s car looked like it was grinning as it reversed into the fog and disappeared. There was a screech as the car picked up speed and disappeared into the smoke.
