by L. B. Carter
“I’ll go.” Reed’s leap onto the porch was audible before the creak of the screen announced his departure.
She tried to turn, to summon Reed back, but Buster didn’t let go. Henley attempted to get her breathing under control before she hyperventilated. The faint smell of Buster’s sweat permeated her nose. It wasn’t bad. She had assumed with the amount of grease on his scalp, his glands were overactive in other ways. His hygiene was not as neglected as she’d dismissed. Although, she recalled with rue none of them had cleaned up since the T. The odor of his shirt and of him cleared out the lapping tendrils of candle smoke and tomb-like staleness from her nose, encouraging her to shake off the fright she’d given herself.
A few more tears continued to leak out at the renewed emotions for her dad, but she vowed to his memory to ensure Bromley didn’t follow him too soon.
“Are you okay?” Buster asked, his deep voice so soft it almost emanated directly, rumbling osmotically, from his chest to her cheek.
She nodded against him and straightened away, as she pulled back to run her forearm under her streaming nose, suddenly feeling embarrassed, sniffling back the last lingers of that deathly shadow that had enveloped her, Buster’s hug having replaced it welcomingly.
“Reed!” she called though the door in a vehement stage-whisper. “Don’t.” She paced around. She couldn’t hear anything. Then a startled “Oh!” from inside sent Henley like a jolt to the car door, wrenching it open. “We have to go!” she frantically urged everyone who was still standing bewildered around the house-front. “Now! We’ll have to leave Reed—”
“Now I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing,” Reed drawled, leaning casually against the door frame, a smirk gracing his relaxed face. “Especially when I’m being offered pie.” He stepped back, holding the frame open. “C’mon in. This little lady couldn’t even bite if she wanted to.”
“Wha—?” Henley balked, agog.
“What’s going on?” Nor demanded.
“See for yourself.”
“It’s not dangerous?” Sirena hovered behind Nor, keeping him between her and the porch.
Reed chortled. “If you can’t take a blind and mostly deaf elderly woman, then I have no faith in your boxing coach.” He shook his head. “Suit yourselves. More pie for me.” Then he vanished inside. He was back in a second to gloat, “Told you you should’ve sent me. Unbeatable.” He winked and was gone again.
There was a pause. “What kind of pie?” Jen conceded, intrigued despite Henley’s alarm. “It better not be high in protein.” She also disappeared.
“What did you see?” Buster asked, his focus on Henley. His eyes were open, deep, accepting her opinion readily though he remained aloof on the outside. “Was it an old woman?”
Henley nodded, jerkily. “Y-yes, but—”
Nor ran a hand through his hair, relieved. “Well, we’d better stop Reed from charming any woman. If she’s elderly, her heart might not take it.” He jogged up the steps and through the door, Sirena following.
“But—” Henley gritted out, pausing Sirena at the door.
Her head tilted to the side waiting.
Henley couldn’t very well tell them all that the woman was dead. Clearly that was false. Scientifically.
Merriment and laugher broke out inside the dilapidated structure, and Sirena glanced inside, a contagious smile widening her thin lips. She joined.
Henley reluctantly made eye contact with Buster, who hadn’t moved from where she’d left him in her rush to reach the car, feeling ashamed. She certainly had spooked herself. “I thought she was one of BSTU’s models,” she mumbled an excuse, pathetically, in an attempt to validate her overreaction. It wasn’t all that far-fetched. The woman had moved as stilted and stared as unseeingly as the ballerina at Faneuil. Some of the devices Henley worked with seemed more human than she had.
Henley’s hand flexed.
For once, Buster’s detached nature was appreciated. He exuded no contempt or scorn for the mistake though Reed’s reaction was gleefully coaxing mortification to overpower lingering disquietude in Henley.
“Let’s go in.” Buster persuaded, waiting for her to make the first move. “Facing your fears is the fastest way to rid yourself of them.”
The next spider Henley saw was likely to disprove that hypothesis. Hiding her humiliation, Henley stomped into the huge kitchen in front of Buster. She had to reinstate her female pride—she certainly hadn’t made Jen proud by dissolving into an emotional mess.
◆◆◆
“My little Lindy will be here soon with the keys,” the hunched-over old woman promised again from her seat at the end of the table by the wall.
If the woman were an android, the camera feed would be useless. Her milky eyes stared vaguely in Henley’s direction since Henley hadn’t moved farther into the room than the patch of light at the base of the stairs.
The square on the floor had faded into the pale silver of moonlight. It was another metallic color with which Henley felt comfort. The second advantage to remaining standing at that location was that the door was only two steps away.
“No rush, Mrs. Juarez. I’ll just have another piece of pie.” Reed helped himself. “It’s as sweet as you are to offer it.”
Nor groaned. “There he goes, laying it on.”
“Does that usually work for you?” Jen scoffed.
“Well.” Reed shoveled a bite into his mouth, speaking around the pastry. “She did offer me pie in addition to promising a vehicle, unlike Horror-movie Henley over there, so I think I’ve made clear my superiority.” He swallowed. “What were you saying about women being better than men?”
“A woman made the pie, and a woman is bringing us transportation when yours failed.” Jen swiped the fork from him and stole a massive bite, clacking her teeth together, grinning cruelly through berry-red teeth. It looked like she was bleeding again.
“She gave it to me, willingly. If you’re jealous, you could give me—”
“I just love sinking my teeth through these berries’ flesh.” Jen licked the juice from her lip enticingly.
Reed’s jaw muscle clenched as she reestablished her hint about chomping.
“We can’t wait too long,” Buster hounded.
Nor shot him a look while Mrs. Juarez repeated her prediction.
“Won’t be long, mi niña. She knows not to stay out after dark.” She dissolved into a fit of hacking coughs, pulling a ragged handkerchief from her sleeve and hunching under her shawl until only the balding crown of her head was visible.
“Are you ill?” Nor asked unnecessarily, once she had recovered and leaned back in her chair with Reed’s assistance.
“Thank you,” she acknowledged, and he flashed a triumphant grin at Jen, who retaliated by swapping his plate with her empty one and taking another vengeful bite.
“It’s nothing,” Mrs. Juarez answered Nor, waving the gnarled knuckles wrapped around the scrap. “I just picked it up from—” She gestured toward the stairs with another lung-rattling hack. “Poor soul. He’s getting on in years, mi tio.”
Her uncle? He had to be ancient. Henley accepted that news as further sound reasoning for her wrongful assumption. It was surprising he’d lasted this long. Undoubtedly, he would be the corpse Henley thought he was soon if he was worse off than the frail shell of a woman in front of them. She had clearly lost considerable weight with the way her baggy clothes hung on her skeletal frame and the skin of her cheeks drooped off her skull.
Sirena hummed in sympathy, broken fingernails scratching into the wood of the table. When Nor placed a hand over hers, she yanked hers out from underneath as though he were a live wire, breathed out slowly, and then placed her hand back on his.
“Sirena recently lost her Grandpa,” Nor explained gravely.
“Was he also sick?” The woman’s lilting speech and lengthy pauses made it sound almost like poetry.
“No, it was very sudden. Natural disaster.” Nor’s hand patted Sirena’s, and
she swallowed, her green hair falling around her face. It was a benefit that Mrs. Juarez couldn’t see her bizarre guests, welcoming them in without concern.
“That storm last week?” Jen said interestedly. “Was it the storm surge, or did it—”
“I’m trying to get back to my family,” Henley voiced and blushed when everyone turned to her, even Mrs. Juarez, listening for more.
Sirena gave a grateful little smile.
Henley shifted on her feet. Buster’s mouth had puckered. That was supposed to be a secret. Life was uncertain and fragile. Secrets shouldn’t be held into the grave. “I need—”
A startled peep announced the arrival of “little Lindy” behind Henley, coming in the door without so much as a creak.
Turning, Henley found Lindy was quite little indeed. But when she stepped into that sliver of moonlight, letting the screen door slap lopsided against the frame behind her, the sharp lines creasing her cheeks by her mouth and the lustrous grey strands sporadically streaking her long dark hair belied an age greater than Henley had anticipated.
“Who are you?” she demanded, thick brows lowering over incredibly long lashes. Her voice was a little raspy and grating. “Mama?” If Mrs. Juarez was her mother, it was clear life in the Midwest was incredibly aging. Lindy might not be as old as she appeared.
The arthritic arm jutted out, and Lindy darted over, dropping to a crouch beside her mama. “What are you doing out of bed?” she scolded. “You need to rest.” Her censuring look transferred to the troupe of miscellaneous young adults sitting around her kitchen table. Since the candle had been relocated to the center of the bowl, the shadows of her brows darkened her eye sockets like an unfinished ’bot, so the intended glare was lost yet simultaneously all the more effective.
“Si, si. I was. Until I gave this poor child a fright.” She couldn’t know which, so her gesture waved over all of them. “They’d like to borrow our truck, niña.”
Lindy’s mouth pulled down on either side, accentuating her cheek creases into dark canyons. “I see. And who are they to go around demanding others’ hard-earned possessions?”
“We’re—” Reed began with a smarmy smile, leaning forward over the empty plate, drawing Lindy’s attention.
“And they ate Tio’s birthday pie?” Lindy’s mouth dropped into an O-shape, and she rose slowly to a stand, staring in distress at the half-eaten confection and the culprits sat guiltily around its remains like vultures. “That you made with the last of our berries and flour?”
Reed’s mouth snapped audibly shut, and he slumped.
“They are guests,” Mrs. Juarez justified, too generous for her own good. “I couldn’t not offer them some nourishment while they waited. These are hard times.”
“Yes, they are,” Lindy snapped. “Guests. It seems to me they are intruders.”
Henley winced. It was true, she had broken and entered multiple times now—she was up to thirteen counts on her list. An ominous number. The poor woman had probably gotten as much of a scare as she did upstairs. It was a miracle Mrs. Juarez’s heart hadn’t stopped then. Henley hoped Reed had checked tio’s heart was still pumping.
“Intruders who think they have a right to come in here and eat the last of our supplies and upset you, making your illness worse, and then they dare to ask to take our belongings?”
“I’m sorry about the pie,” Reed mumbled into Jen’s empty plate. Jen had long stopped picking at the crust of his second slice. “We can offer you what supplies we have in return. …And my jeep, which is far superior to your truck. It simply needs distilled water.”
“And where are we going to get that?” Lindy snapped at him, dimming the wattage of his subjugating smile. She nodded at the candle. “We don’t even have electricity.”
“What?” Mrs. Juarez’s chin tilted to her daughter, her condition likely having preserved her from that adjustment.
Lindy’s hands landed akimbo. Her displeasure at revealing the Juarezs’ destitute condition paled in comparison to her mother’s anger. “Well, now that she knows that, I might as well tell you that you can’t have the truck either.”
“Lindy.” Mrs. Juarez’s eyebrows dropped on the outer sides, despair pulling her wrinkles down like she was melting in the warm night air.
No one else spoke.
“Waste of time,” Buster muttered, turning and clomping out the door. They heard his footsteps crunch in the gravel and fade.
That was it. They were out of options. Dead end. Especially if they caught what Mrs. Juarez had.
Henley’s germaphobia was becoming obsessive the longer she went without disinfectant. She eyed the sink. Just how much of a dearth was there? She surreptitiously sniffed her shirt, her nose wrinkling, and pulled away from the pungent mixture of gasoline from Jen’s leaking and destroyed car, her own sweat, and dirt accumulated over several states.
“Well, at least let them rest the night here,” Mrs. Juarez negotiated with her daughter.
Lindy shrugged, “Fine with me.”
Henley was surprised.
“We’ve no air conditioning, blankets or running water. Make yourselves comfortable.”
Oh.
She heaved her mother out of her chair, coming only a few inches above the stooping woman.
Reed also stood, chivalrous even when it was undesired, which Lindy made unmistakable with another scornful look, her shiny hair swinging with a sheen in the grim lighting.
The mother-daughter pair shuffled slowly to the stairs, ignoring Henley as they passed, and began to take them one at a time, Mrs. Juarez’s second foot meeting the first with significant effort and gentle grunting, before the first hiked up the next vertical hurdle.
“Don’t use up our candle. And don’t drink the water in the bucket by the back door if you don’t want what mi familia has. It is for the use of flushing the toilet. Besides, it’s saltwater; it quenches no thirst.”
Reed, put in his place, immediately blew out the candle, plunging them into a darkness that chilled Henley differently than the haunting shadows had previously. The dismissal from Lindy got to Reed’s pride more than the defeat and abhorrence plummeted the rest of their hopes.
Chapter Eight
Ace was crossing into the narrow drive when Henley caught up to him, her footsteps crunching loudly on the gritty pebbles in the otherwise fairly quiet night. He’d known she wasn’t asleep since she’d been tossing and turning on the couch across from him. However, he had hoped for longer alone time on his nighttime walk to organize all the thoughts blurring his mind; they were distracting him from attaining the goal—as were the allergies that were more aggravated in this unclean house than in the faux-clean motel. He rubbed at his eyes.
Their unplanned sleepover wasn’t helping their timeliness.
She pulled up next to him, slowing her jog to keep pace, her every two steps for one of his, louder now that the sound was ricocheting off the walls of grain. Her bobbing shadow appeared, much shorter than his on the moonlit path ahead of them, reminding him of her delicacy. Her sheer panic when she’d come charging out of the house earlier had been a shock—she was always so calm and centered. It was a reminder that she was not infallible, to not rely on her. Unfortunately, however, neither was he.
“It’s so serene out here,” Henley commented after a few moments. “And with no electricity—no BSTU—I almost wish we could stay.”
He glanced at her. Her chin was tilted up, eyes closed, trusting the plod of his footsteps to guide her in the right direction.
He’d had the thought himself. They were isolated, unable to contact his home, true, but that was an advantage in their current situation. But it made him uneasy in such a close-knit group and not completing the mission he’d been working on for years. Incidentally, he doubted their host would approve of the proposition to permit them refuge for longer than a night; that much allowance was solely a result of the respect held for Lindy’s mother and her generosity. Perhaps, if Henley appealed in her persuasive
way, it might be considered.
A torrid breeze fluttered her long strands of hair, tickling his arm, and she frowned, dropping her head level to the horizon. Ace focused forward as her eyes peeled opened.
“But hot.” The backs of her fingers replaced the unintentional faint stroke along his outer arm as she ran her hands up and down hers as though wiping off the warm air. She must be aware that generating friction would only increase the heat. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been outside the air-conditioned confines of BSTU. Four years and—”
“—eleven months,” he finished. He knew she was looking at him but didn’t turn.
“How do you—?”
“We have the same meeting time,” he reminded. That was the truth.
They traipsed further. “How long for you?” she asked.
He smiled to himself briefly. Jen was right. This girl could never run out of questions. She would go so far as to investigate how curiosity killed the cat. He almost regretted removing her from her position; her brain was indubitably that of an academic. “Longer.”
She huffed out an annoyed breath. “Do you ever use more syllables? Or answer questions?”
He glanced over to raise a single brow, keeping lips tight.
“Funny,” she said. He knew her expressions. That one was anything but amused.
She certainly was going to be unamused when she learned all he kept inside. It didn’t bother him. He hadn’t brought her for her approval. She was a means to an end, to rectify a mistake made too many years in wait. He’d had other priorities. Yet, the advantageous opportunity when presented to him, to grab her as a bonus, was too convenient to resist seizing. He was not an idiot—though it certainly seemed like it at the moment.
Careful planning, years of anticipation, a successful escape… yet, there he was, missing the pick-up, with two extras in tow, and involving some civilians as Nor put it.
“There are so many stars.”
Ace realized he’d paced beyond Henley, who’d stopped her amble. He turned. Her chin was back up, pale neck long, but her eyes were wide, the glinting celestial objects reflected in them. Awe was this expression.