‘How did you wind up here?’ she asks him in a bid to change the subject. ‘I mean, with us. The rest of us have told our stories. It’s your turn.’
He doesn’t answer immediately and she doesn’t push. She waits it out until he’s finished his cigarette, dropping it to the gravel and mashing it into the rotting leaves with the heel of his once shiny Italian shoe. Then he starts to talk.
‘I,’ he announces as if this is going to be something big. Then he lets his voice drop off. ‘I was a car salesman.’
She instantly imagines him standing in an out-of-town lot, surrounded by red and white striped bunting and placards announcing amazing deals and offers for the rust buckets parked all around him. But he quickly dismisses that image.
‘I worked at a Ferrari dealership in Hollywood. I sold to actors, directors, rock stars; the whole celebrity range. And I was damn good at it. I loved my job, I loved my life. I had it all worked out, had everything going for me. New Ferrari to tool around in every day, men and women falling at my feet – well, my wheels – expensive apartment in an exclusive area with an excellent bar within stumbling distance. My little slice of Heaven. Before the Powers That Be decided to have their domestic right on the doorstep and spoiled everything.’
He taps out another cigarette from the packet in his hands, shielding the flame of the plastic lighter through habit rather than necessity out here where there’s no movement of the air.
‘There was a man. He came in one Wednesday morning and asked about the cars. He was tall, slim, immaculately dressed in a three thousand dollar suit, black shirt and red tie. Very smart, very rich. He had this smile and I’ll never forget it. He had too many teeth and they were a brilliant white like in the toothpaste ads; that white you can't get without spending thousands on dental bills. His eyes were odd too. Really dark. Huge black pupils and small irises. He might have been on drugs and he wouldn’t have been the first client I had who was high. I thought he might be an actor, although I didn’t recognise him and I tried to keep up to date with the latest who’s who so I was able greet anyone who came in by name. The rich and famous like to be recognised.’ He laughs with a slightly bitter note that doesn't suit him. ‘I guess I should be grateful all this happened to reset my life priorities.’ He lets out a deep breath on a long, nicotine-tinged sigh.
‘So this guy looked at a couple of the cars and when I approached him he said he wanted something red and fast. As if Ferrari makes anything for the sedate driver. They were his only stipulations, which was a little odd in itself because people tended to have a very clear idea of what they wanted when they came in. They’re spending that much money, they’ve thought about it, even if the money’s no object. A Ferrari is a status symbol, it’s going to say something about you when you drive it and it needs to say the right things. Most of my clients thought about it, visualised it. Not so much people who are adding to a collection, but the newly rich: lottery winners, actors cashing in their first major movie check. This guy, he was different. It was as if he didn’t care which model he bought. He just wanted a fast car.’ He shrugs and she can see the regret in the slump of his shoulders. ‘He took a Modena out for a test drive. It was already out on the forecourt, I think that’s the only reason he chose it. Sales consultants didn't usually go out with the clients because they usually weren't alone. Businessmen tended to have a woman on their arm, celebrities had whole entourages trailing after them. Most models of Ferraris are two-seaters and more often than not the client had a friend to take out with them, to show off. But this guy wanted me to go with him, he had no one else and I wasn’t sure I trusted him so I went. He scared the shit out of me, drove like a lunatic. Like the fucking devil. He almost hit a kid on a crossing and narrowly missed ploughing into a van at a red light. I didn’t like him, I thought he was crazy. His smile didn’t slip once.’ He pauses.
‘When we got back to the showroom he said he loved the car and wanted to buy it and that was fine by me. I might not have liked him but his money was the same as everyone else’s and I could book an exotic holiday for every two sales I made. I took him through to the office and started to gather all the paperwork. I asked him how he wanted to pay. Everyone else I ever sold to produced a credit card at that crucial moment; most were gold or platinum, some corporate, didn’t matter. But when I turned around, there was two hundred and forty thousand dollars in cash in a briefcase on the desk.’
Her mouth falls open. ‘What does two hundred and forty grand look like?’
He thinks about it. ‘It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It couldn’t have been more beautiful if it had been gold bullion. I just stared at it because I had no idea how it got there. He couldn't have had it with him when we went out, there was nowhere in the car to put it! But there it was, larger than life. He asked me if the cash covered it and I told him I’d have to count it. So he waited, and I did. It took me the better part of an hour but it was all there in hundred dollar bills. I called in my supervisor. He put some of the notes under our counterfeit currency scanner. It was real. We shouldn’t have accepted it, but we did. I handed the guy the keys to his new car and off he went.
‘I told everyone in the bar about it that night but I had a phenomenal week, made another two sales, one to an A-list actor and one to a movie producer I recognised from watching the Oscars on TV, so the significance faded and I didn’t think much more about it. Odd things happen, the fabric of life and all that. The bank accepted the cash, it wasn't fake, wasn’t laundered as far as I know, there wasn’t anything to worry about. Until the following Monday. I was driving to work which usually took an hour. There is – was, I guess – a school on the edge of town. Every weekday morning I would battle my way through lines of parents dropping their kids off in their urban tanks and streams of school buses. I was used to it. But that morning everything was at a standstill. After going nowhere for a half-hour, I got out and walked the quarter mile to the school gates. There'd been an accident, or that's what people were calling it. A family – mom and three kids – crossing the road had been mown down by a speeding car that just ploughed straight into them. There were medics on the scene and about a hundred cops but there wasn’t anything anyone could do. They were all dead. Kids were crying, people were screaming. The bodies, what was left of them, were all over the road. The cops weren't able to contain it all. One woman who saw it happen said the car had swerved after it hit them, went careening into the metal railings at the front of the school. I went to have a look and when I saw it I thought I was going to be sick. It was a bright red, brand new Ferrari Modena and I knew it hadn't been an accident. I knew the car and I knew who'd been driving it. The cops were saying he fled the scene but I overheard a couple of hysterical witnesses say he’d just vanished from the driver's seat before the car crashed. I doubt the driver’s side door would have opened given the state of it and I knew they were right. Just like I knew the cops would never believe them and would waste their time searching for a driver they would never find. I felt like I was caught in a Poe story.’ She doesn't get the reference but doesn't ask about it either.
‘I didn't go to work. I turned round and went home again. I didn't get changed, I didn’t even pack a case. I left the car I was driving because I didn’t want the cops looking for me. I took my old Volvo out of the garage behind the house and left town.’
‘Jesus.’ At least that explained the suit.
‘I couldn't get the guy's smile out of my head. I guess you know, don't you, when something big is happening? You know, right down in your subconscious, before you see anything. That feeling that something's not right.’
She knows that feeling. She left Malibu, her home, her job, her life, based on the same intuition. They all did. He's reached the end of the cigarette and is staring at the ground.
‘I had this image of myself,’ he confesses, holding onto the glowing butt. ‘Built up around what I did, what I drove, what I wore. I saw myself as this suave, sophisticated guy. I to
ld myself that I was a businessman; better, more intelligent than some of the brainless idiots I sold cars to. Society holds actors in such high regard when all they do is muck about all day pretending to be people they’re not. You do that on the streets you're a lunatic, a fraud. But because these people do it in front of cameras they’re hailed as heroes and treated like royalty. They’re not. Believe me, I’ve sold cars to enough of them. Most can’t even work out how to get into one, never mind how to drive it. Singers, rock stars, they're just as bad. They can't go five feet without seven other people following literally in their footsteps agreeing with everything they say like they need constant validation. I used to tell myself I was better than them. Turns out I was just as bad because when it came to the crunch, I just ran away.’
‘You had no idea what you were running from.’
‘But I knew something was going on. That's why, when I ran across Matt, Luke and Joe at the centre of a standoff in Boulder City, I actually did something about it. Not a lot, I’ll admit. I yelled a lot, ran about and waved my hands in the air, provided that moment of distraction, gave them time to act. But I was proud of myself. Matt and Luke… those guys have been doing this half their lives. They didn’t run away from it, they ran towards it.’
She gives him the moment as he finally drops his second cigarette to the dry ground and stamps on it, staring at the flat stub.
‘That's why you wore the suit, isn't it? To hold on to just a small bit of that old image of you?’ He turns his head to look at her and she can see by his expression that he hasn't given it much conscious thought. He's simply hung onto something out of habit, out of necessity. ‘It's the only part of you you can still recognise.’
He smiles. ‘When did you take psychology?’
‘Final year of medical school.’ She grins and nods. ‘It's the same reason I need to wear a jacket, because it feels like a layer of protection between me and the horror. It isn't, I know. Bullets, blades, even teeth go through leather as easily as they go through skin. Doesn't matter. It's the thought, the need to hold on to something of who we were. I don't know about you, but I've no idea who I am now, who I've been since meeting Luke and Matt.’
He looks at her for a little while longer before dropping his head back and popping his shoulders. ‘I’m grateful to them for what they've done for me, everything they've done for me. They’ve not only kept me safe, just running into them gave me a chance to actually do something worthwhile. But as meaningless and pointless as my life was before all this, I was enjoying it. I could have happily lived and died not knowing any of the shit I know now.’
They all have their stories and each one of them is amazing and sad and terrifying in its own way. They’ve been through a hellish time together and wherever they are now, whatever happens next, she’s confident that they can deal with that too, simply because they don't have much of a choice.
She and Gabe sit for a couple of minutes listening to nothing. All around them is silence, complete and flawless. No birds, no cars, no noise of any kind. It isn’t right. She’s never been anywhere before without noise. There’s life even out in the desert. But here there’s nothing.
‘Where do you think we are?’ she asks him again, more to break the silence than in hope of getting an answer.
‘At the end of the world,’ he breathes, tapping out the last cigarette, emptying another packet. He stares into it. ‘Almost time to quit.’
~..~
Joe’s finishing washing the breakfast dishes, enjoying the simple domesticity of it, when Rick comes in from the hall. Whatever was wrong last night, he seems worse this morning: jumpy and nervous as a virgin on his wedding night. In the short time he’s known the man Rick’s been something of a drama queen, the first to wash the blood off his hands after a fight, the first to change soiled clothes into stolen clean ones the moment the chance has arisen. But that’s not to say he hasn’t pulled his weight and killed things that needed killing. He looks worried but then he always looks worried.
‘Is everything all right?’
Rick’s eyes are wide, lips pale. ‘Can you hear something?’
Joe pauses with his hands in the warm soapy water and listens. ‘No.’
‘Neither can I.’
It’s a peculiar exchange even in these circumstances and the look Joe gives Rick tells him so. But Rick shakes his head.
‘I mean, I can’t hear it in here. But I can hear it in the hall. Come through.’ He seems enough on edge that Joe decides to indulge him, wipes his wet hands on the drying towel and follows him out into the hall where they both stand silently, Rick with his finger at his lips in a ‘hush’ gesture. It takes a second or two, but Joe can hear something; scratching, maybe mice or rats.
‘I think it’s coming from inside the wall.’
Crouching down, they both listen with an ear each pressed to the wall dividing the hall from the room Nancy’s in.
‘What do you think it is?’ Rick looks at him, fear in his expression. Joe resists the urge to roll his eyes.
‘It’s just mice.’
But in the next moment Joe hears something that changes his mind, another sound over the scratching, a sort of incessant chattering like teeth in the cold, but at differing pitches.
‘Gremlins? Elves?’ Given recent events neither suggestion seems too farfetched. Rick looks at him and Joe can see him edging towards panic. ‘Remember those critter things in Hollister?’
Joe isn’t likely to ever forget but he doesn’t think these are critters. They were more the gnashing of teeth type, angry little buggers, biting anything that came within their jump radius which was pretty damn wide. These sounds are more like things communicating with each other, not that he’s about to say that out loud in case it’s the final push that sends Rick hurtling over the edge of reason into full-blown hysteria.
‘Then, what?’
‘I don’t know.’ Experimentally, and with some misgivings, he taps on the wall with his knuckles and immediately the noises stop.
‘Are you sure that’s such a good idea?’
‘No….’ Joe hesitates. ‘But there’s no reason to immediately assume whatever it is means us any harm.’
‘Oh, you mean unlike every other thing we’ve run into?’
He has a point but Joe still thinks he’s overreacting. Nothing in the house has tried to hurt them so far and whatever these things are, they sound small, although that in itself doesn’t mean they’re harmless. The critters were short enough to tread on if you could get one underfoot but they were still vicious little bastards. Gradually the noises start up again, and now he's certain there's more than one of them.
‘Sounds like they’re trying to figure something out.’ He didn’t mean to say that out loud.
‘Like, how to get out of the wall?’
‘If they're in the wall, how did they get there in the first place?’
Suddenly the din moves away from them towards the back of the house, becoming muffled when whatever they are reach the bookcase. Rick and Joe follow, still crouched, edging sideways like aged crabs, listening and watching the wall in case something does start to break through.
‘What do we do if they get out?’
Joe opens his mouth to say something sarcastic then shuts it again. It’s a very good question and he rises and turns to grab a poker that’s been left next to the sooty fireplace.
‘Your answer to everything,’ Rick quips, but there’s no real commitment to it and he grabs the other one.
The noises stop, and it's as if they’re being listened to in return. He shushes Rick and leans closer to the wall just as the front door opens. The sudden noise surprises the already tightly-strung Rick, who loses his balance and drops back, his ass hitting the floorboards.
‘It's just Emilie and Gabe,’ Joe sighs. ‘What's going on with you?’
Rick just glares at him and if something is wrong he isn't going to talk about it.
Emilie’s understandably staring at them. �
�What are you doing?’
Joe glances up. ‘We think there’s something in the walls.’
Gabe comes over to crouch at his side. ‘I thought I heard something last night.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Because it was before I found Nancy and after that I didn’t hear them again.’
‘It sounds like… creatures.’ Rick whispers.
Gabe frowns at him. ‘Last night my first thought was mice. Or rats.’
Joe nods. ‘Mine too. But I think they’re communicating with one another.’
Straightening, Gabe looks thoughtful. ‘We could break into the wall.’
‘I don’t think we need to. I mean, they're not exactly threatening us right now.’
‘You're sure? Remember the critters?’
Not bothering to reply, Joe stands up. ‘I say we leave them alone unless they decide to make something of the fact we’re sharing their place.’
There seems to be a general agreement so Joe starts back towards the kitchen, determined to finish off the dishes, to keep the place clean and tidy. After Babs passed away he kept their house tidy, just as she would have liked it. Thanks to the apocalypse his life's been a mess for months, so while he has the option of order he's going to take it.
He’s stopped by the very last thing he expects to hear; a knock on the front door. They all freeze except Gabe who makes a hasty grab for the poker Joe’s left propped against the arm of the couch. They exchange glances and Gabe murmurs,
‘Expecting someone?’
Given the white-knuckle grip Rick has on his poker, Joe decides Gabe is his best backup. He knows the others will wait for him to make a move before following his lead; it’s the mode of operation they fell into whenever Matt and Luke weren't around to bark out commands. And a few weeks’ worth of habit formed under threat will take a lot longer than twelve hours of assumed safety to break.
Another knock.
The House at the End of the World Page 8