by Pike, JJ
She ran her hands along the top of the visor. It totes wasn’t going to deliver, as Petra would say. Funny how her sister didn’t sound like her sister anymore. A week ago—ten days, two weeks, who knew how long this had been going on, it felt like forever—Petra would have been glued to her phone, making 30-second videos on the side, talking to her glamorous friends with their overpriced bags and shoes and accessories and whatever-was-grabbing-the-headlines-right-now. But she’d come down to Earth in a way Aggie hadn’t expected. A week ago she might not have left Dad with Petra, especially given the state he was in, but there was an 85% chance her newly formed, sensible sister would be able to handle him. Weird.
There were no keys anywhere in the front of the car. She leaned over the seat and took a look in the back. No way. There was a small, khaki backpack on the floor behind the passenger-side seat. She pulled it into the front. Was it weird to be looking through a dead woman’s personal property? Actually, no. Fran had been on the run, like Mom. There wasn’t going to be anything super-personal in there. Aggie closed her eyes, banished all thoughts of the dead woman and her splattered brains, and jammed her hands inside the pack, hunting for the keys. There were none of the usual things you’d expect to find in a backpack or purse. No wallet, no cosmetics, no day-planner or phone or anything that would identify the owner. But there were papers, some stuff with the K&P logo—files and folders and a couple of envelopes—all of which made it clear this was Fran’s bag. Most importantly, way in the bottom, under all the K&P nonsense, was a car key.
Aggie couldn’t believe it. She jammed it in the ignition, her heart in her throat. She had scored a Humvee. She rapped her knuckles on her head. “Knock on wood this is just the start of my good luck.” Aggie had been driving for years and here, now, with the S most definitely hitting the F, there were no traffic police to see her and give her a ticket. She was going to jet all the way to the mines. Well, not “jet” exactly. It was rough terrain. But it was going to be a lot better than, say, walking.
Riding Indie, of course, was the fastest way to get from A to B now that so many of the roads were impassable, but Betsy had a point: Paul would be rattled and shaken and bumped like crazy if they dragged him all the way to the mines.
She pulled out of the ditch, the Humvee barely straining against the steep angle. Their lives had just gotten a whole lot easier.
One of Mom’s dogs came charging down the path. It was the big one. What was his name? No, he was a she. Aggie wound down the window. “Maggie-loo!” she shouted.
The dog paused, looked at her, looked down the path, and took off again. Great. Mom so didn’t need a dog getting in her face right now.
Aggie pulled onto the path, checked her rearview mirror to make sure Maggie-loo wasn’t close by, and headed for Betsy’s house. She had a vehicle! She had a vehicle! VEE-HIII-KUL! She wanted to sing and dance and—shoot—the wiener dog was plodding along the path, stopping every few galumphs and yipping after his disappearing friend.
Aggie hopped out of the cab of the Humvee and crouched down low. “Mouse? Come here, good boy. Come to Agatha. Come on. You know your little legs aren’t going to take you too far.”
The wiener dog did as he was told and wobbled to Aggie’s open arms. She plunked him on the passenger seat, massaged the kink in her neck, and rested both hands on the steering wheel. It was going to get better. She’d requisitioned a vehicle and saved a dog. Now all she had to do was bring her dad back from Crazytown, get Paul into the Humvee, and they’d be all set.
Mouse craned his head towards the open window, his ears twitching and flapping as they crunched and bumped their way along the familiar pathway.
Aggie reached for the radio. It was a military vehicle. They had to be connected to other frequencies, right? She could tune in to, like, a police scanner or something. She punched button after button but there was nothing but static.
The gas gauge said she had a quarter of a tank. Great. So she had to go gas hunting as soon as she got back. At least she had options. It wasn’t as if Jim didn’t have a garage full of cars, most of them prepped and ready for action.
When she got back to the house, Dad was still groaning, Petra hovering. Mimi and Bryony had come out to join them on the porch.
Aggie lifted Mouse down from the cab and waved at her sister. “Just going to get some gas.” She pointed towards the garage.
“No!” Petra shouted back. “I’ll get it. You come take care of Dad. He’s loop-de-loop.”
Mimi waved her hands in the air. She was trying to be subtle, not let Bryony see her, but the little girl looked up at the Everlee grandmother as soon as she raised her hands over her head to call Aggie over to them.
Aggie trotted to the back porch. Dad looked like he’d been slapped into next Sunday. She’d never actually heard Mimi say that to him, but he swore she used to say it all the time when they were kids. “He seems okay-ish. I guess…”
Bill oriented himself towards her voice, though no one would have called his eyes, or his attention, particularly focused. “Agathon, is that you?”
She raced up the steps. This was her chance to get him to come back to her. He was partway there. If she reached in and grabbed what remained of her father she might be able to wrench him to safety. “I’m here, Dad. I’m right here.”
He fumbled for her hand with his mashed-up fist. The jagged scar where the bear had taken a swipe at him was red and raw and bunched up in scabbed ridges. It needed treatment and bandages. Boy, he was going to be so sick of being babied by the time this was all over. She took his hand as tenderly as she could, easing her fingers into his palm, but not closing them over the back of his hand. “You had us worried there.”
He blinked away the tears. “Is it really you? You’re okay? You’re here? You’re home? We made it?”
“We made it, Dad. We’re all safe.” Kind of. If not having a spleen or wearing a helmet to protect your exposed brain could be counted as safe.
“Do you have it?” He shook her hand in his, flinching and wincing each time his hand bounced against his knee.
“What?” Aggie looked to Petra.
Petra shrugged. “He asked me the same thing, but I couldn’t get him to tell me what he was talking about.”
“Do you, Agg? I won’t be mad if you do. I just need to make sure that it’s safe.”
Aggie had no clue what he was talking about, but at least he was talking in whole sentences. “Has he had any fluids? I think he might be dehydrated on top of being in shock.”
Petra held up an empty juice box. “He drank it down in one go.”
“Good.” Aggie turned back to her father. It might take time to get him to come around, but they’d already made a lot of headway. He wasn’t screaming and he’d managed to string a few sentences together. Things were looking up. “Dad? I have to run a couple of errands. I’ll be right back.”
His grip tightened. “Who has it?” His voice had changed. If she hadn’t known better she’d have said it was menacing. “I know it was there. I didn’t imagine it. It was right there in her hand before she…” He sobbed.
“Oh!” Aggie fished inside her pocket. She had the little wooden doll he’d been clutching when she found him. “Is this what you mean?”
Bill’s mouth fell open, his tongue working the roof of his mouth. He stared at the colorful scrap of fabric lying in the palm of her hand.
Bryony hopped off Mimi’s lap and plodded their way. She hung back, her arm wrapped around Aggie’s leg, but her eyes fixated on her hands. “It’s a dolly.”
Aggie tousled Bryony’s head. Normally she’d have been inclined to hand the doll to the child, but her father’s face said no, that wasn’t going to happen.
He stuttered. She couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. She held out the doll. “Is this what you were talking about, Dad?”
“Friendship,” he said.
Petra nodded. “It’s a friendship doll?”
Bill shook his head, te
ars streaming down his frozen face.
Petra raised an eyebrow at her sister. “Any idea what he’s talking about?”
Aggie shook her head, her eyes trained on Bill. He was trying to tell her something. “Friendship?” She mirrored back what he’d said.
He coughed, shook his head, nodded, wiped his hand across his nose, whimpered.
Bryony reached up to touch the doll. She was barely an inch away from it when Bill lunged, screaming, and grabbed the doll out of Aggie’s hand.
Bryony scampered back to Mimi, who scooped her up and allowed her to sob onto her shoulder. “I’m going to take her inside,” Mimi whispered. “You keep talking to your dad. You’re good at this, Aggie. Real good.”
Aggie didn’t feel good at much of anything in that moment. Her favorite person in the universe seemed to have been parted from his senses. He was obsessed with a peg doll wrapped in bright, striped fabric. Since when did that make sense?
Bill had the doll clutched to his chest, though that had to have hurt because his good hand was mashed up against his stump. Then again, he’d had a fair number of pain pills so perhaps they were kicking in. His screams turned to sobs then sputters then silence. He rocked himself in place, but the quiet wasn’t peaceful. It was intercut with coughs and snorts, some teeth grinding and the occasional exclamation. If their house hadn’t burned down she’d have gone right to the gun cabinet, found a bear tranquilizer and jabbed it into his thigh herself. By hand. Right now. She wanted her dad back, not this jabbering nonsensical mess of a man.
Petra was as lost as she was. The two girls looked on, helpless. He had squeezed the doll so tight the scab on the back of his hand had split and started to bleed.
Aggie had never felt so desperate. She’d been counting on him being able to step back up, but that hope was fading. What if he never made sense ever again? What would she do then? A lump rose in her throat. Was that worse? To lose your dad or see him alive with his mind completely gone? Could she bear it? She hunted around the porch, looking for a bandage or some gauze. She shouldn’t leave that wound open to the elements. Petra had killed a woman who’d had a lesser wound. Not that she thought there was any danger of Petra killing Dad. She checked in on her sister to make sure. No, she didn’t look homicidal. Petra was sad, like her.
Bill finally opened his eyes and focused on her.
Aggie had a flash of joy, like a firefly blinking in the dark, but she caught it and kept it close in case she wasn’t seeing what she hoped she was seeing. It might be a millisecond of sense and no more. This might not be Bill Everlee coming back to her. Best not to get her hopes up too high.
“The girl who gave me this was smaller than her…” He pointed at the corner where Bryony had been. He frowned. “Where did she go?”
“She’s in the house, Dad. With Mimi.”
He was back. He sounded like him, looked like him, felt like him. Wave after wave of happiness rode through her; a million lightning bugs blinking and blazing and fluttering across her heart. “Can I take a look at your hand, Dad?”
“She was little more than a toddler. Small. Sweet. Didn’t speak any English.”
Aggie waited. He didn’t sound demented any more, but she had no clue what he was talking about.
“She gave this to me when I was almost to my car. I thought it was an act of friendship.”
Petra cocked her head. She was concentrating really hard. Aggie’d never thought much about the twins and their relationship with Dad. Bill Everlee belonged to her and Midge much more than he belonged to the twins. Not because he played favorites, but the twins had each other. She and Midge didn’t. But with the connection to Paul severed, maybe Petra would have more time for Dad now?
“There was a boy, a bit older than her, who gave me some tiny oranges. I don’t know where they went. I guess I left them in the car. Or Arthur took them later. Who knows?”
She and Petra both jerked to attention at the mention of Arthur’s name. What were the odds of Dad mentioning him? They hadn’t had time to talk him through everything that had happened since he’d been away. Why was Arthur on his mind?
“I think I got a piece of cake in a small handkerchief. I ate it in the car before I went to find him…”
Bill paused for so long Aggie worried that the thread that had tethered him to reality for a few sacred moments had been cut again. He raised his head and looked at her as if he was really, truly seeing her for the first time since she’d found him crouched beside Fran’s body, covered in her brains.
“She was old enough…she was…” He nodded and drifted back into silence, but his eyes weren’t glazed and his face wasn’t slack or pinched or jammed up in twisted knots. He looked like her dad albeit lost in thought. He opened his palm and looked at the doll for what seemed like an eternity. “I didn’t see it happen, but perhaps she gave the little girl the doll to give to me.” He looked between his daughters for confirmation, then back at the doll in his hand. “She would have been old enough. The girl with the cake would have been old enough to be Fran.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Alice had almost made it to Jo’s place. Now she had to take it easy. Not make any sudden moves that might get her killed. She held her hands high above her head, palms flat and facing forward, making it as clear as she could that she was unarmed.
“Christine? Hello? It’s me. Alice. Alice Everlee.” She didn’t want her colleagues to mistake her for an intruder and gun her down. She peered around the tree. No cars or trucks. No signs of life. There couldn’t be lights on in or around the house because the power had been out for at least a day, but she’d expected to see Army vehicles. Fran had said—poor, desperate Fran, she must have had a heavy heart to do what she did—Fran had said they’d hooked up with some “good Army types”, whatever that meant.
There was a bang the other side of the house, light but distinct. A crisp smack of one solid surface hitting another; not a sound that naturally emanated from a wooded area. Alice crouched down as small as she could. It wasn’t a door-slam exactly, but it did sound a lot like wood on wood. Perhaps it was a screen door? A door of any kind meant people and people meant trouble. She tried to pull up an image of the back of Jo’s place, but she hadn’t been around there often enough to draw an accurate mental picture.
If only it had been fall. Then she would have been able to hear their footsteps in the leaves.
Instead there was panting.
So, not a human. Panting and a grunt. There were so many creatures out here. It could be anything. Her darling Bill had taken on a bear while she’d been gone. Please don’t let it be a bear.
Reggie, Jo’s Labrador retriever, came trotting round the side of the house, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his ears flapping to the rhythm of his trot. Like everything around her, he looked different. No longer the slobbery, smelly, intrusive bag of molting fur; he looked like a friend, hell-bent on greeting her. He picked up his trot then barreled towards her and jumped, landing his paws on her chest where they weren’t supposed to be, but she didn’t care. She rubbed his head and told him he was a good boy and asked him where his momma was, because she still hadn’t seen any evidence of humans on site.
“Jo?” she shouted. “Christine?”
Nothing.
“Where are all the people? Where’s your mom? Is she out back?” Alice walked around the house—slowly, carefully, hands still in the air—but saw no signs that anyone was in residence. “Okay, boy. Fran said they were here. I’m anxious to reconnect with them. I need to talk to Professor Baxter.”
Why was talking to a dog so much easier than talking to a human? She should have done it years ago; let the kids have a dog, even if she did have to take care of it; which dodged the real reason they’d never had a dog, but she didn’t have time for those thoughts right now. She was New Alice, who didn’t disappear down the rabbit hole.
“I have a couple of questions only they can answer, Reggiepup. There are no phones, no computers, no internet,
no electronic ways to contact another human anymore. There was a time when I could have picked up a phone and had a conversation with Christine or Jake or Fran…” The back of her throat constricted, her chest was overrun with chemical ants, and her fingers tingled. That wasn’t normal. Grief didn’t make her resonate like that. Or at least it hadn’t before. This was what Petra called, “hitting you right in the feels”. Alice didn’t like it. She shook her hands, determined not to cry. She needed her eyes to be clear, her ears scanning, her mind sharp.
No one was home. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Next step: check to see who’d been there and when. Why would they leave without coming to find her? “We won’t know unless we check it out, will we?”
Reggie panted and paced, always returning to her side.
“If we have to crawl in through the doggie door we will, but let’s see if there’s a window open first.” She pressed the heel of her hand under the wooden frame of the kitchen window. It didn’t give. Same for the living room and downstairs bathroom, though that one would have been a tight squeeze.
“We’re going to work this out, aren’t we boy? You know what I’m talking about.” She tried another window. “We want to save the world, but first we have to work out how it’s broken. To do that, I need to find Christine Baxter…”
Reggie was an excellent listener. He paid close attention to her every move. He made her feel like she was at the center of the universe and everything she said was interesting and important. She scratched him behind the ears by way of thank you. He panted harder. She could smell his breath. That wasn’t normal, was it? Jo took good care of Reggie. Alice had even poked fun at her neighbor for taking him for his doggie dental. He shouldn’t smell so…so…oh, he was like all of them! He was dehydrated. Perhaps all that panting was a need for water rather than dogalicious approval?
