all go.
The pantry is a shockingly large, cool room with shelves and shelves
of goodies. Well, some goodies and then an awful lot of weird stuff in
jars and tins that people from the War probably ate. Pickled pig’s feet,
goose fat, things suspended in jelly. But there are cookies and crisps-not-chips and reasonably fresh bread, and in the fridge, cheese and slices of cold meat and chocolate mousse with cream on top! We crowd together
excitedly, cramming food in, not pausing to find plates or cutlery or
somewhere to sit.
There are sodas in one of the fridges, and I make a grab for one.
“Pass me the juice,” Alice says, pointing to a carton in the fridge. I pick it up and hold it out. She’s about to take it when we both see the label.
Carrot Man Veggie Juice! Put some fire in your belly!
Alice screams and I scream. I drop the carton like it’s hot.
“What gives?” says Smitty. “Whoa . . .” He sees what gives.
We back off the carton like it’s a ticking bomb . . . or a poisonous
snake . . . or a carton of zombie juice.
“Is it open?”
“Is it leaking?”
“What’s it doing here?”
“Get rid of it!”
“What’s the problem?” Lily is staring at us like we’re crazy. Of course.
She doesn’t know.
“You drink the juice, it makes you into one of them,” I summarize.
We stare at the carton. It lies there, a little cartoon Carrot Man
waving to us from the packaging.
“Bad juice.” Cam shakes a finger at it.
“That’s right, Cam,” Lily says, pulling him closer to her. “We don’t
touch the bad juice.”
“Somebody’s going to have to!” Alice shouts.
It’s Pete who finds the rubber gloves. He looks at home in them. We
disappear into the kitchen while he wets a towel and wraps it around his
face, finds three plastic bags, and triple-wraps the carton, tying the bags in a double knot. He carries his deadly package at arm’s length through the kitchen, steps onto a chair, unlatches a leaded window. A blast of
cold air blows in. Pete lobs the carton through the air and out into the
snow. Then he unties the towel and unpeels the gloves, and chucks them
out, too.
“That wasn’t very environmentally friendly, was it?” says Smitty.
“What if an animal finds it?” I say. “We don’t know how it could affect
them.”
“Ooh, killer bunnies and zombie hedgehogs,” quips Smitty.
“Can’t wait.”
“Killa bunneez!” says Cam, and claps his hands.
“Would you like me to go and get it back, then?” Pete says, deadpan.
“Because I can absolutely do that if you would like. It didn’t leak, by the way. And I don’t think the seal was open. Whoever put it in that fridge hadn’t sampled any yet.”
“Let’s just hope that wasn’t the second carton.” Lily gathers Cam up
and heads for the door. “We need to get settled for the night. It’s been a long day.”
We explore the rest of the castle. Well, explore is not really the right word.
Explore makes it sound fun. It also makes it sound like we do a thorough job, and we don’t. We ignore the locked tower next to the kitchen. There is a big keyhole without a key. We’re not going in, and if there’s anything in there, it’s not getting out. At least not tonight. We move the kitchen table in front of the door just to be sure.
Same with the basement, except this door has a key. Smitty opens it
up and looks down the stairs. All is quiet. He relocks the door and we
shuffle a large wooden chest in front of it to make ourselves feel better.
On the ground floor, as well as the rooms we’ve already checked
out, there’s a mudroom next to the kitchen, a library, a bathroom, and
a room with a pool table. And then there’s the room with the dog. It’s
also the room that looks the most comfortable. There are three bashed-up couches and a stone fireplace big enough for us all to stand in. It’s
obvious that this is where we should stay tonight, all together in one
room. Smitty coaxes the dog into the kitchen with some slices of ham
and moves the dog’s bed beside the oven, where he’ll be warm. As long
as Smitty does the snack runs, we should be OK.
Lily stays in the living room with Cam and Alice, who has already
bagged the plushest of the couches. Smitty, Pete, and I do recon
upstairs.
Upstairs is spooky and dark, but it’s just bedrooms. I count twelve.
And two bathrooms. So we can totally have friends over, but we’re still
going to be fighting over who gets to shower first. The water that creaks
out of the faucet is icy cold, but I take the opportunity to wash the dried blood off my face and inspect my rapidly bruising nose in the mirror above the sink. Good thing we’re in Scotland and not Las Vegas, because
I won’t be winning any beauty contests anytime soon.
We check under the beds and in the wardrobes. The dark corners
and behind the curtains. Your basic child’s how-to in monster hunting.
A few of the rooms have unmade beds, clothes on chairs, personal stuff
on dressers. It’s tempting to play detective and try to guess who lives (or lived) here, but not so tempting that it’s going to keep us from our beds, er, couches, for too long. There’ll be time for all that tomorrow.
So, main floor: check. Basement: um, half check. Spooky tower: x.
Upstairs: check. But not a phone in sight.
After recon, we gather up some bedding and throw it over the ban—
isters then run down, trying not to openly shudder at the relief of being
downstairs again.
In the living room, Cam and Alice are already asleep, and Lily is raking the fire. She helps us with the bedding and tucks a blanket around
her brother, then another around Alice. She’s a nice girl. A couple of years older than us, but in some ways it makes no difference. I guess it’s just what you go through that ages you. Lord knows the last thirty-six hours
have been enough to turn us all into senior citizens.
We move a chest of drawers against one door, a sideboard against
the other, and check that the windows are latched. I pray I don’t need to
pee in the middle of the night. Outside is quiet; the snow is falling faster now, relentlessly. All good efforts made, we get ourselves comfortable while Lily builds up a fire big enough to last the night.
“The embers . . . ,” she says. “When I was raking the fire, they were
still warm.”
“Someone was here recently?” I ask, thinking again about the light in
the window. The clothes in the bedrooms. The fully stocked fridge.
“No doubt,” she says. “With our fire at home, we go to bed and the ash
is still warm in the morning.” She thinks about it. “Maybe ten or twelve
hours later?”
“So that means someone lit a fire and left here this morning,”
Smitty says.
“They saw our smoke,” I say. “The black smoke from the gas station.
They probably set out to see what had happened.”
“How? On foot?” Pete says. “We didn’t see them. They obviously didn’t
make it.”
“Where were you, Lily?” Smitty leans back into a beaten-up leather
armchair. “When it all kicked off. You and Cam were in the café, we saw
you on the security camera playback. We were outside on the bus, but we
didn’t see you run out. Next thing we know, you
’re playing stowaway.”
“I told them already.” She nods to me. “We were in the car at first,
then hiding in the café, then back in the car.” Lily pulls a blanket around her shoulders and shudders. “Don’t want to talk about it just now.”
“Why not?” Smitty appears relaxed, but I’m sensing he won’t let this
one go without a fight.
“Because I don’t.” She leans over toward him, her eyes wide and blue,
a tendril of blond hair hanging artfully over her face. For the first time I realize how attractive she is. Not pep-squad pretty, like Alice, but grown-up good-looking, full-lipped and heavy-lidded. Kind of sultry. I think Smitty realizes it, too. He shrugs.
“I think you have a responsibility to tell us all of it in detail,” starts Pete, and I’m glad he does because I want to know. But Smitty cuts him off.
“We can swap war stories tomorrow,” he says. “Who knows how long
we’ll be here? We might need some entertainment.”
Alice is making snuffling noises on the couch next to mine. Someone
really should have checked her head before now. I chuckle to myself
quietly. Alice has needed her head checking way before now. The warmth of the fire is so comforting, and I have a feather-filled duvet all to myself.
Whichever way you slice it, we’re oh so better off here in a castle than on a bus. For the first time since what feels like forever, I allow my shoulders to lower, my jaw to unclench, and my hands to relax from the fists they’ve been making for the last two days. A wave of tired descends, like
a wonderful soft blanket of dark.
“Should we take turns keeping guard?” Pete’s voice sounds far away.
Let ’em work it out between ’em, for once. I surrender to the tired.
1 7
There’s a dog barking, and I’m cold.
I open my eyes; daylight is streaming through the windows. The reason I’m cold is quickly clear. Cam has gathered all the bedding together
and is making a giant bed in the middle of the floor. My duvet forms part
of his cocoon. He wiggles around inside, then a shamble of blond hair
and an eye peep over the top.
“’Lo,” he says.
“Morning, Cam.”
I sit up on the couch. Everyone’s gone. The chest of drawers has been
moved away from the door that leads to the kitchen. I leap to my feet and
rush to the window. It’s still snowing, the whiteness so fine it’s almost
like a fog. I can’t see a thing. Somewhere, the dog is still barking.
“Where did everyone go, Cam?” I ask him, but he’s pupating under the
blankets again and doesn’t answer. I reach for the handle of the rear door and turn it. “Back in a moment, OK?”
But the door refuses to budge. The handle is turning, but it won’t
open. Someone has barricaded me in.
“Yo!” I shout. “Can someone come let me out?”
Silence. Even the dog has shut up.
“Hey!” I try again, thumping the door with my fist. “We’re stuck
in here!”
Still silence. I head across the room to the other door. The sideboard
is still in place, but after a few attempts I manage to ease it away from
the door slightly.
“Smitty!” I shout through the gap. “Pete! Lily! Where are you! Cam
and I are trapped in here!” There’s no response. I try one last-ditch
effort. “Alice!”
At the mention of his name, Cam has reappeared out of his big bed,
for the first time looking a little more clued in to our situation. I calm my voice. “It’s OK, buddy,” I reassure him. “I’ll get us out of here in a moment.”
Crappy older sis I’d make. Cam does not believe me for one minute.
His face collapses into a wail. He crawls toward me and a little stubby
hand reaches pathetically up toward me.
“Need poo-poo,” he cries.
Fantastic. Raise the stakes, why don’t you? I force a smile.
“It’s fine. I’ll get us out in a jiffy.” My mother’s voice echoes back at
me. Empty promises. Cam doesn’t buy it, either. He waddles back to the
floor-bed and buries his head in a blanket, like it’s all too much to bear.
Which it almost is.
But it’s given me an idea. I leap off the sideboard and go to Cam.
I stroke his head and he looks at me with suspicious wet eyes.
“I just need to borrow your blankie for a moment, Cam.”
He shakes his little head and holds the blanket tighter.
“Come on, Cam. I need to take it, but I promise I’ll give it right back.
Why don’t you have one of these fluffy ones instead? They’re nicer than
the stringy one anyway.”
He won’t be budged and I’ve got no choice but to pry the stringy
blanket out of the hands of a three-year-old. He is incensed, and screams
like I am cutting off said hands at the wrists with a hacksaw. The noise
is so extreme I look around nervously, almost dreading that Lily will
materialize and find me assaulting her little brother. But even with this
cacophony, no one comes to my (or Cam’s) rescue.
I win the blankie tug-of-war, and Cam throws himself on the floor,
kicking and screaming. I’m evil, but I don’t care. I wrap the blanket
around one end of the sideboard and the other around my hands, then
lean my whole body weight away from the huge piece of furniture and
dig in my heels. Slowly it moves a little, then a little more, and then with a last heft, a little more still. It’s just enough. I breathe in and squeeze through the door. I’m about to go, then I look back at Cam. Darn. Can’t really leave him here when he can probably find a dozen ways to break
himself. Plus there’s that whole business of the “poo-poo.”
I squeeze back, scoop him up, and manage to get the two of us back
out again, somehow.
In the hall, I notice with huge relief that the front door is still shut
and bolted. Good. So we haven’t been overwhelmed in the night, at least
not through that door.
Now to find everyone. The obvious place is the kitchen. I’m about to
call out again, but something stops me. The hall is cold and shadowy,
like a cathedral. It almost doesn’t seem right to be hollering away in
such a place. I didn’t notice last night — probably because of the dark and the exhaustion and the post-traumatic stress disorder — but there is an immense stained-glass window above the sweep of the stairs. The weak
sun manages to light the colored glass, casting rays of red and blue and
green into the room. It’s really pretty beautiful. On a really sunny day it would be awesome. That’s presuming the sun ever shines in Scotland.
“Poo-poo,” says Cam in my arms, softly. He punctuates this with a
short, sharp fart, in case I ever doubted his intentions. I fight back
a giggle and move away before the smell can catch up with us.
I remember where the downstairs bathroom is, and we both do what
we need to do. He’s a little unclear of what’s required after he’s finished, and I realize in horror he expects me to lend a hand. Quite literally.
I wrap a load of toilet paper around my hand and try not to visibly wince
when I wipe away. Of all the stuff I’ve experienced over the past couple
of days, I can’t help thinking this is the grossest. Then I feel really bad about thinking the thought. But it’s no good, it’s thunk. We both wash our hands in gallons of freezing water and frothy oceans of liquid soap,
and only then can I stop the grossness and the g
uilt.
Cam has a personality overhaul as a result of his über-poop. Now he’s
bubbly and full of generous vigor. He runs though each room en route
to the kitchen, with me struggling to keep up. We arrive at the kitchen
door and it’s only the unwieldy handle that holds him back. I grasp him
with one hand, and the handle with the other, and open the door slowly
and carefully.
The smell hits me first. And then the frightening scene assaults
my eyes.
Smitty, wearing an apron. Frying eggs and bacon.
“Wassup, Bob. Thought you were sleeping for England.” He flutters
the eyelashes at me. “Or Scotland.” He shrugs. “Or the good ol’ US of A,
wherever you come from.”
Pete and Alice are at the large kitchen table, eating. Lily is behind
Smitty, making toast. Cam sees her and makes a run for it. Instantly,
I hear a snarl and instinctively reach toward Cam and snatch him up,
stepping back from the doorway. The door is slammed in our faces and
Cam starts to cry. There’s a scuffle from behind the door, I can hear
Smitty’s voice making coaxing noises, and after a minute or so Lily opens
the door.
“Cammy!” she coos and takes him out of my arms. “Stupid crazy dog’s
gone now, hinny.” She winks at me. “Want some dippy eggs?”
Cam nods and she leads us back into the kitchen. Pete and Alice are
still wolfing down breakfast. Smitty is flipping bacon like nothing bad
happened. I sidle up to him.
“Where’s the dog?” I whisper.
“In the library with a plate of bacon,” he replies. “He was being all
friendly with us until Cam turned up.” He lowers his voice and leans over
the bacon. “He really doesn’t like that kid.”
“So why didn’t you wake me?” I try to keep nonchalant, but my voice
is shaking. “And why did you trap me in the living room?”
“Lily didn’t want Cam wandering off,” he says, cracking an egg. “And
you were dead to the world.” His mouth curls into a smile. “Besides,
I thought you’d like breakfast in bed.”
I flush as pink as the pig fat in the pan.
“Sunny-side up?” He looks at me intently. When I don’t respond, he
slides the food onto a clean white plate and hands it to me. It smells so
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