Atlanta Bound

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Daddy,” Ginny whispered.

  Her father lay on deep navy carpet in front of the bay window.

  Daniel Mills looked so small. An old, white-haired man with grey lingering at the top of his balding head, his eyes closed and his bluish-frozen face oddly peaceful. Below that tranquility a jagged star of flayed flesh, flash-frozen, showed chips of white cervical bone. His ribs were wrenched wide, too, under a yellow polo shirt. Something had torn at his checked golf trousers to get at muscle on his legs. His slippers were knocked off his feet, and the socks were the red merino ones Ginny had bought him last Father’s Day.

  Socks? Most-astonishment on his face, the smell of his aftershave. That’s my girl.

  Open the other one, Dad. The socks were a joke, his real present was the fifth of Macallan.

  He already drinks too much, Mom weighed in, as she always did.

  I’m retired, Esther, Dad replied inside her head, and Ginny’s vision blurred. Scotch and golf are my job now.

  “Ohgod,” someone said in a very small voice.

  His hands were blue, bent arms drawn up as rigor mortis…

  No. Oh no.

  “Ginny.” Lee was in front of her, suddenly, his chest blotting out the horrible sight. “Ginny, darlin, don’t.”

  Think, Ginny. You’ve got to think. “Mom.” Her mother…maybe Dad had sent her and Flo out and waited here for his eldest daughter? “I need to find…”

  “Ginny.” Lee had holstered his gun. He reached for her, but Ginny shied away, almost slipping on ice-crunching carpet. Her eyes burned. She turned, caught in the syrup of a hideous, horrible dream, and set off for the kitchen.

  “Mom?” she called, her voice high, girlish, breaking. “Flo? Mom? Mommy?”

  Icicle Drops

  It was a beautiful place, built to look like an old farmhouse but clean and modern inside, drenched with the subtle scent of well-to-do that might have frozen his guts if the first body hadn’t. The kitchen was all stainless steel and stone countertops, the floor those real slate tiles that no doubt were a bitch to put in and God help you if you dropped an egg. The blackened husks of potted herbs stood in a boxy window over the sink, peering out on a wooden deck festooned with empty birdfeeders.

  Looked like charity ran in the family.

  They found Ginny’s mama in a sort of greenhouse attached to the kitchen—the solarium, Ginny called it later, her favorite place. She’d been thrown through a glass door, and that was when Ginny crumpled. She reached blindly for the edge of the doorway and might have cut herself on clear, jagged teeth if Lee hadn’t caught her, and he had to dig his heels in so both of them didn’t tumble down the two wooden steps. The old woman lay on her side, her graying hair a loose skein with Ginny’s curl to it, her peach twinset and skirt torn and spattered with frozen blood and effluvia. Looked like she’d put up a helluva fight, too—potted plants were smashed to flinders before the cold through broken panes came in to kill them, and it looked like the lady had tried to defend herself with a small wrought-iron table.

  Plain to see where Ginny got her polish and her guts from.

  Somethin’ had been gnawing on the missus’s body too, and Ginny kept saying Mom, Mom please, please Mom, in a broken little voice that hurt him way down deep. The lady’s throat was pulled out and her guts splattered, ribs wrenched wide so critters could get at organs. It was damn obvious these two weren’t gonna be gettin’ up and growlin’.

  At least Ginny was spared that. Juju’s expression set itself hard, and he looked chalky under his melanin. His lips twitched a little—maybe prayin’, or maybe keeping a few cusses locked up in his throat.

  Lee had to use a bit more strength than he liked to turn Ginny away from the sunroom, and she struggled when he closed his arms around her. “Don’t,” he repeated. “Don’t look at that, darlin. Don’t look.”

  “Mommy…” All the fight went out of her; she crumpled. He rested his chin on her braids, trusting Juju to keep an eye on his six.

  “Front door?” Juju said, softly.

  “Maybe. Garage door’s open too.” Lee squeezed her just as tight as he dared. “She got a sister, too. Pregnant.”

  “I know.” Juju’s short inhale was now definitely a curse caught behind his teeth. “Upstairs?”

  “Could be.” Lee was hopin’ the sister wasn’t anywhere in the house, but it was lookin’ like none of them were gonna be lucky today.

  Figured.

  “I’ll check it.” Thurgood cleared his throat, maybe wanting to add something for Ginny’s sake.

  “Be careful.” Lee knew he should cover Juju, but Ginny was shaking, a silent wild tremor that would break as soon as the shock wore off. You couldn’t ever tell what someone would do once they emerged from that deathly daze, and besides, he could no more let go of her now than he could take his own head off.

  His arms just wouldn’t let him.

  “Born that way.” Juju edged away down the hall, after one long mistrustful glance across the kitchen. Another archway—utility room, probably, leading to the garage.

  And right next to it was a white-painted wooden door. Huh.

  Lee stood in a cold, dark, expensive kitchen, and held a shivering woman. Christamighty. He’d been prepared for somethin’ bad, but this…he should never have let her hope. He shouldn’t have let her get near this place, should have dragged her, kicking and screaming, in another direction. Any direction.

  Time ticked by in slow icicle-drops. He kept an ear peeled for the cautious unsound of Juju’s progress, but her silence kept distracting him. Finally, she made a muffled, agonized sound against his coat.

  “Ginny?” He tightened up again, wishing he could pull her into him, carry her through this. Distract her. “Ginny, darlin, this place got a basement?”

  She stiffened. Her baseball bat tapped his calf; he tried to keep her but she pulled away and lifted her chin, her cheeks gleaming wetly. So she was one of the ones who liked to cry quiet-like.

  Oh, darlin.

  She stared at him for a few moments, as if trying to remember who the hell he was and what he was doin’ in this familiar house. As if he’d been caught creepin’ in.

  “Basement?” She wet her lips with a quick flicker, and he was going to hell, because even right now, he wanted to kiss her. It if would make her forget and get her out of here, he would have done it, too. “Uh.” Her chin headed for her shoulder, but he caught her again, holding her at arm’s length.

  “Don’t you look back there,” he said, quietly. “Basement, Ginny. This place got one?”

  “Y-yes.” Now she looked the other direction, at the white-painted door. There was a bloody smear about shoulder-high on it, the fluid dried and crusted. “There. The cellar.” Then, she tried to turn again, and he stopped her.

  “Don’t.”

  “That’s my mother,” she whispered. “Oh, God.” Her pupils were swelling, swallowing her irises. “Lee, that’s my mother.”

  “I know.” He inhaled to say maybe your sister’s hidin’, not because he thought it likely but because he wanted her to have a shred of something, anything—

  “Lee!” Juju’s voice bounced off hardwood stairs, slate tile, and every frost-laced surface. “Lee, up here.”

  He’d found Ginny’s sister.

  Kaddish

  The thing that used to be Flo was handcuffed to Grandma Ruth’s old, heavy iron bedstead in the first guestroom. Stiff hair clung to its livid shoulders, its mouth worked lazily, and a thin thready growl rose from its flayed chest under a cream-colored, lace-edged camisole. Her distended belly moved strangely, peeking between the cami and pajama pants dotted with tiny cornflowers, skin loosened with slippage and the fluid underneath sloshing.

  Like a water balloon.

  Flo’s eyes, filmy and collapsed, rolled weakly. She twitched, rattling the cuffs. Where had those come from? Good God.

  “Looks like they decided to treat her here,” Juju said, softly. There were long muddy streaks in the rose-car
peted hallway and drag-marks on the walls at shoulder height; some of the creatures had come up. Had Flo driven them off somehow?

  Or did they not eat their own until they were dead?

  Pictures marched down the hall—graduations, Mom and Dad’s wedding and anniversary, Flo’s wedding, sepia snapshots of dead relatives, a single picture of Uncle Ezra in Jerusalem before the massive heart attack. None of the carefully framed paper pieces were askew, though the occasional table at the end of the hall had been upended, the crystal vase laying bone-dry with a spill of brown, frost-dried flowers half in its mouth.

  Flo stirred again. Her head turned this way and that as she crouched at the bedside, one arm stretched hideously, tethered to the heavy end of the bedstead. The covers were thrown off, a dent in the blue pillow where her living head had rested. The night-table was smashed, the lamp too, and a bracelet of raw, oozing flesh showed above the silver cuff.

  Where the thing had been chewing.

  Lee stared at Flo, a line between his eyebrows. He glanced at Ginny, a swift movement almost lost in her peripheral vision.

  Flo.

  Her sister’s feet were bare, her toes discolored with cold and necrosis. Each nail held carefully applied peach polish, the exact same color as Mom’s.

  Of course Mom would paint Flo’s toes for her. There would be soft laughter, concentration, Flo remarking that maybe the fumes were bad for the baby and Mom saying it’s toulene-free, and if Ginny had been there she would brush Flo’s hair, her fingers working with soft precision. You always braid it best, her sister might say, and Ginny would know she was forgiven for past sins, just in time to rack up more.

  You always have to ruin everything. Flo yelling, and Ginny’s cheeks scarlet with shame as if she’d been slapped. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything, and Ginny couldn’t deny a sneaking feeling of vindication for never having liked Samuel and his pretentious bullshit.

  Maybe Flo had loved her husband, though. It was, Ginny could admit now, very possible. Maybe Flo had even known about the chippie from the book club, and had closed her eyes to it.

  You overlooked things for the people you loved.

  And maybe, just maybe, Flo had kept overlooking until Ginny had made it impossible. Once Ginny had told Mom, of course Flo couldn’t stay married to Sam. And why hadn’t Ginny gone to Flo first?

  Because I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t! I had to ask Mom for advice, right?

  Oh, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? Hadn’t there been a deep, secret, shameful thought wriggling in her subconscious? Flo the younger, Flo the favorite, Flo the troubled, Flo who had “made a good marriage” while Ginny was a disappointment…human memory was fickle, and it was so easy to think you’d done something for the right reasons. Or at least, for better reasons than creeping low-level jealousy?

  You always have to ruin everything, Flo yelled, and God, was it true?

  Was it? Ginny stared at the thing that had been her sister.

  “Juju.” Lee finally spoke. “Take her downstairs.”

  For a long, strange moment Ginny thought he meant Flo, and wondered how. Of course, she was only moving lethargically. It might be easy to get her downstairs, and then what?

  And the baby. Ginny shuddered, her gaze riveted to that gently sloshing belly. What about the baby?

  Lee shifted a little; Juju took Ginny’s arm. “Come on, Miss Virginia,” he said, softly, and the horrible, sickening knowledge of what had to happen crashed through her.

  “No.” She pulled her arm away, almost toppling over. The thing cocked its head, listening. “No.”

  “Ginny—” Juju looked uneasily at Lee.

  “No, sir.” She drew herself up, and the thing that had been Flo moved restlessly again, its growl turning inquisitive as its head moved, chin swinging back and forth. Hunting by sound. Flo’s earrings, small gold hoops, glittered feverishly. “Thank you, but no.”

  “Ginny.” Lee, this time, his eyes paled to that peculiar almost-yellow. “You don’t want to see this, darlin.”

  There’s a whole list of things I don’t want to see. “No, Lee.” She searched for the words to make him understand, couldn’t find them. She took a deep breath, staring at the tip of Flo’s nose. The shape of her lips, the top lip just like Dad’s, the full underlip Mom’s, both like Ginny’s own mouth. Her cheekbones just like Ginny’s too. “No. I…I need…”

  “You need a moment?”

  God damn it, she couldn’t think with him interrupting her. “No.” Another deep breath. It smelled awful in here. Dark clots painted the inside of Flo’s cotton-clad thighs, and there was a spreading stain underneath her.

  Flo hated to be dirty.

  “No,” Ginny said, finally. There wasn’t enough air in her lungs, but she tried with what she had. “No, Lee. I need your gun.”

  Nice and easy. Take your stance…that’s right.

  A sobbing breath, way down deep to the bottom of her diaphragm. The thing’s belly slip-sloshed as it went back to its lethargic tugging at the handcuffs. Was there something tiny in there, chewing aimlessly as its support system cannibalized other tissues?

  Breathe, darlin.

  Oh, but it was hard.

  Ginny! Her sister’s wide smile, teeth missing or braces glittering. Secrets whispered at night, when one Mills girl couldn’t sleep and crept into a sister’s bedroom. Ginny, look! Arms spread wide, pedaling without holding on, or while drifting lazily on warm lakewater. Look, I’m floating. I’m flying!

  The matching Barbies they received each birthday. Their matching pink bicycles. Flo holding her hand so tight at college dropoff. You’re going to do fine. You’re my super-smart big sister.

  Flo yelling. You never want me to have anything good! Blotches of red on her sister’s cheeks. He’s my husband!

  Ginny, yelling too. Should I just have said nothing?

  Flo’s hands, tight fists, the baby-bump barely visible under her twinset. Soft blue, cashmere, and Mom’s pearls glowing against the knitted weave, the two of them facing each other in the upstairs hall of the townhouse Sam and Flo bought the year after they got married, right after Sam made partner at his firm.

  Samuel, hop-following Ginny as he hastily buckled himself up. Virginia? Virginia, wait! It was a mistake!

  Oh, it had been. For all parties concerned. Now Lee’s voice whispered in memory, a slow-spaced mutter. Hard to hit ’em in the head. Aim for the body.

  Not this time. Ginny’s boots crushed rose-colored carpet. One step forward, another. The closet was half-open, Flo’s clothes hanging in regimented, color-coordinated rows.

  No, Lee. You can’t do this for me.

  The bathroom door was open, too. White tile, towels hanging ready, a frosted window full of dull grey light.

  It growled. Its eyes were shrunken raisins, and it didn’t even have the strength to sit up. It sprawled amid the splinters of the night-table, shards of the lamp pressing into hip, buttock, calf. The stain underneath it spread, fresh seepage.

  Don’t get too close, Ginny.

  Juju and Lee were out in the hall. Waiting. Everyone else was outside, sitting in a truck, a 4x4, an RV, not knowing what the hell was happening inside the house her mother had picked after rejecting at least twelve others, the house she and Dad were supposed to finish their retirement in.

  Well, they had.

  Flo’s smaller hand in hers while they walked up the broad bright pavement to school, chubby and sweating. You leave my sister alone, a younger Ginny yelled on the playground, spreading her arms and afire with injustice. I need you, Ginny whispering into a phone after that terrible party and breaking up with Alec, and coming off the plane from dropping out of college to see Flo in the crowd, her arms folded and that worry-line between her eyebrows. I talked Mom out of coming, Flo had said, by way of hello.

  You’re a saint, Ginny had replied.

  Hardly. Flo had shaken her head, that impatient hair-toss she’d had all her life. Let’s get something to eat. You’re s
taying with me.

  Great ragged breaths, catching in her throat. A choking, swallowed sob.

  “Flo,” Ginny whispered. “I love you, Flo.”

  It growled, and its teeth clicked together, a dead-branch snapping. A single gunshot. A steaming splatter.

  Ginny’s knees hit pale, rosy carpet. The sobs had her in sharp discolored teeth. They shook her mercilessly. She set the gun down, carefully, and rocked back and forth, arms wrapped around her middle and the words tearing at her throat.

  Please. I love you. I love you. Please, oh please God. I love you.

  I love you.

  None of Us

  There weren’t any tracks and the whole place was a mausoleum, but the critters always showed up, sooner or later, followin’ the livin’. Besides, the ground was frozen too hard for buryin’, so the cellar would have to do.

  “You go on downstairs,” Lee told Phyllis and Steph. “Help her. We’ll bring ’em.”

  Ginny told him where the sheets were—a whole closet full of soft, slippery linens, with small drawstring bags of cedar tucked in the stacks. Sashay, she called it, and Lee and Juju’s hands smeared crap on fine-grained cloth. Wrap them up, Ginny said, distractedly, and Phyllis had taken her shoulders.

  Come on, honey. The dark-haired woman, her face set and still, didn’t waste time asking questions. Let’s get the downstairs ready.

  Getting the handcuffs could have been a nasty job, but Juju had a bolt cutter in the back of his four-by.

  “Oh, Lord.” Duncan almost choked when they rolled the sister’s body into wrapping. The belly moved slosh-strange, and Lee was hoping nothing in there was still alive. It wasn’t right for a corpse to look that way, or a woman’s stomach to…to move like that, like a water balloon. “Is there…d’ya think…”