“But there is somethin’ I may need your help with, though.” I tell him.
He just stands there with his thumbs hooked in his waistband with this thin little smile stretched across that face of his.
And me? I’ve already checked off numbers one through six, man. I’m thinkin’ that maybe I don’t wanna wait around for that seventh sign, ya know? Besides, by then it’d be too late.
“I’m gonna need a gun.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
She must have retreated into the safety of sleep at some point during the night; Ocean remembered squeezing her eyes shut as if she could somehow force the memories of what she’d seen out of her mind. When she opened them again, she was facing the brick wall near the section that served as her bedroom. She could hear Gauge and Levi talking softly, their voices nothing more than a rhythmic lull occasionally punctuated by laughter.
Judging from the crackle and pop of burning wood, they were probably in the kitchen, most likely preparing breakfast. That she hadn’t been yanked from her dreamless slumber by rough hands and furious accusations let her know that Gauge had no clue she’d opened the forbidden door. What she’d seen on the other side was still her little secret, a mystery that she’d have to unravel on her own.
Or just forget about, she thought. You can just pretend it never happened. You didn’t sneak into that room, you didn’t see anything. You couldn’t sleep so you took a walk. Down the south tunnel, yes, but you didn’t stop at that door. You didn’t open it. You took your walk and came right back to bed. Would they be able to tell? Would they see the deception written across her face as clearly as the writing on the metallic signs bolted to the walls in the tunnels? Would they know somehow?
Ocean watched the light from the hearth flicker and dance across the wall, trying to keep her breathing as steady as possible. It was best to pretend she was still asleep, that would buy her a little time, at least. Maybe she could actually convince herself that it really hadn’t been anything more than a bizarre nightmare.
Maybe by the time the great chamber filled with the aromas of cooking food, the events of the previous night would already have started to fade. She’d rub her eyes as if they still felt gritty from sleep, eat her breakfast and go about her daily chores, just like she always did. She’d chew some of the food into a pulpy mush which she’d then feed to Baby. She’d clean any messes the infant may have made during the night, and tidy up her sleeping area. It would be just another day underground.
You can’t just pretend that it never happened, part of her mind insisted. You can’t!
A memory of her father flashed through Ocean’s mind. He’d taken an old piece of rope from the trunk of one of the cars and tied a white piece of cloth in the very center. Then he’d used a charred two-by-four like a pencil, scratching dark lines of soot against the pavement. Her father had made two different lines, each one parallel to the other but spaced far enough apart that she could have laid between them.
Next, he’d told her to take one end of the rope and he took the other. Each of them stood behind one of the lines, facing one other, with the rope taut between them. The white cloth was centered almost directly between the lines. Ocean remembered her mother rolling her eyes from the other side of the clearing.
“This is called tug-o-war,” her father had explained with a smile. “It’s a game I used to play when I was your age, honey.”
To Ocean, a new game was almost as much of a treat as the squares of dark food her father sometimes found, the kind that seemed to melt into sweetness upon her tongue. She’d jumped up and down, and wanted to clap her hands but, since she didn’t know the rules yet, she was afraid that dropping the rope might mean that she would lose. Instead, she chose to nod her head.
“You pull on your end of the rope, and I pull on mine. The first person who gets the flag over their line wins. Got it?”
Her father grunted and groaned as his face screwed up into an exaggerated grimace, and Ocean had pulled on her end of the rope so hard that she would have went tumbling backward if he’d suddenly let go. The heels of her shoes dug into the concrete and, even though she now realized her father hadn’t been pulling with all of his strength, her eyes were focused on that little white flag. She watched it inch toward her father’s line and set her jaw in grim determination as she edged it back toward her own. For close to ten minutes, the white strip of fabric shifted, back and forth, between the two. Finally, he let her win.
Now, so many years later, she knew exactly how that white flag would have felt, if it could. To be pulled in two opposite directions with the fate of the game hanging in the balance; to know that, sooner or later, one side would exert more force, destined to win out over the other. The only difference was, this wasn’t some silly little game her father had taught her. This was real. This was life.
A shuffling sound behind her made Ocean’s breath catch in her throat and, despite her attempts to feign sleep, her body stiffened.
Corduroy, she thought. It’s him.
At first, the burned man had been nothing more than an oddity. The fact that he didn’t eat meat was enough to make him stick out like a human in a pack of rotters. But he also had these fits, which Gauge called seizures. He would collapse to the ground or slump over the table, his eyes would roll back in their sockets so that only the whites were visible. Every muscle in his body would twitch and jerk so violently that his head and shoulders lurched and flopped.
One time, during a particularly violent storm, Ocean had seen one of the undead walk through a pool of water as lightning sizzled through the air and struck the street. The way Corduroy moved when in the grip of these seizures was very similar to the jerky dance that rotter had performed.
Over time, his curiosity had deepened into something far more sinister. Ocean noticed the way his good eye seemed to follow her no matter where she went. If she was rocking Baby, he was watching. When she came out of the bathroom, he was watching—always with a stare that seemed as cold and hard as the brick floor beneath their feet.
Soon, he began trying to approach her… but only when she was alone. He’d glance over his shoulder almost nervously, as if half expecting to see Levi or Gauge creeping up behind him. There was something sneaky and furtive about the way he walked toward her, something that always made her immediately dart away to the company of others, a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
It was natural that her reaction to the sound behind her was the skin on the back of her neck to feel as if it was creeping toward her scalp. Fear even twitched her eyelid, and Ocean chastised herself for behaving like a child. Instinct may have told her that the wariness she felt around Corduroy was justified, but that didn’t mean that every unexplained sound was him sneaking up on her. The noises she heard behind her were much too soft for a large man. Even if he’d slipped off his shoes, he would make more noise than that. Since she could still hear Gauge and Levi in the kitchen, it stood to reason that the shuffling was coming from Pebble.
That was what logic told her, but fear has a way of overriding even the most rational of arguments and Ocean knew she wouldn’t breathe easy until she saw with her own eyes that there was nothing to worry about. At the same time, though, she wasn’t quite ready to give up her ruse. She wanted the others to think she was asleep for as long as she could possibly get away with it. Once she was able to calm that tinge of unease, she’d be able to think more clearly, to figure out exactly what she needed to do or say to ensure Gauge never knew that she’d broken the only real rule he’d set down. She’d have to play this off as carefully as a famished rat approaching a sleeping child.
She smacked her lips several times and mumbled thickly, in what she hoped was a reasonable impersonation of the sounds her mother used to make during the night, and rolled over to her other side, pulling the thin sheet closer around her. She mumbled again, forming nothing more than random words. Slowly, she lifted her eyelids until she could just peek out through the lashes.
Pebble scampered around the room. Ocean could tell by his flaring nostrils and pouting lip that something had upset him. He moved quickly, sorting through mounds of dirty clothes, getting down on his hands and knees to peer beneath the shelves, and even looking into the glass containers that housed the flickering candles. The more he searched, the more frustrated he became. He stamped his foot on the ground and balled his fists as he clenched his teeth in aggravation. The shuffling turned into angry stomps as he spun in a slow circle, his eyes scanning every shadow in the room.
It was funny how often things went missing down there. With everyone living, sleeping, and going about the business of life in one large chamber connected to a handful of small rooms, it would seem like nothing could be misplaced for long. As Ocean had come to discover, that simply wasn’t the case.
The first thing she’d noticed had gone missing were the dirty rags she’d been wearing on the day she’d first been brought here. After Levi had given her some clean clothes and shown her how she could use rope and string to make them fit better, her old garments had simply disappeared. She wanted to look at them one last time, to try to see past the bloodstains that darkened the fabric. To remember a more innocent time, back when her mother had pulled the needle and thread through the cloth, smiling at Ocean as she explained that someday she would learn to sew, and be able to make her own clothes.
When she hadn’t been able to find her things, she assumed one of the others had simply thrown them out. But when she asked, each person claimed not to have seen them, either.
After that, some of her newer clothes went missing as well. Not to mention the random candles, pieces of flint, and even several pairs of her underwear. It happened so often that Gauge had begun to tease Pebble, telling the little boy that their home was haunted by the ghosts of The Butchers of the New Dawn and that, even in death, they couldn’t stop stealing.
Judging from the way the color drained from the boy’s face when he heard this, it was obvious that Pebble didn’t doubt it for one second. And now, it seemed, those same ghosts had spirited away something of his.
Ocean’s eyes followed Pebble as he moved about the room. Each of them had one corner of the room that served as their own, personal area. Ocean’s was just outside the nursery, Gauge and Levi were positioned away from her feet and beside the North tunnel. Directly across the room from them was Pebble’s area and, this morning, his normally neat piles of belongings looked as if a tornado had touched down in the center of them. Clothes and toys were strewn about, his bedroll was in such disarray that it looked like it had been thrown into the air at some point. This didn’t stop the child from rooting through the wreckage again. When this additional search proved fruitless, he marched across the room toward the entrance to the South tunnel.
This was where Corduroy kept his things, and was directly across from Ocean’s sleeping area. As her half-closed eyes followed Pebble’s trajectory, they came to an abrupt stop. She immediately closed her eyelids, feeling as if something in her stomach had just leapt to the side.
He’d been sitting there on his little rectangle of foam, staring directly at her. As motionless as the bricks behind him.
Corduroy.
Even when Pebble passed by, his gaze never faltered. He didn’t glance at the boy, didn’t give any sign that he’d even noticed, in fact. He simply sat with his legs crossed and, in the brief second she’s seen him, it felt as if his eye had shot a dark sliver into the core of Ocean’s soul. Her blood chilled, causing a shiver to tingle her spine.
She tried to remember if she’d gasped. It felt like she had, but she couldn’t clearly remember doing it. If she did, then he’d know that she was faking it, that she was really awake and had caught him staring at her.
But had he really been doing that? Her eyes had only fallen across him for a fraction of a second before panic demanded that she snap them shut, after all, maybe it was just a coincidence. He could have been looking around the room and she might have noticed him at the exact second his gaze turned in her direction. Really, why would he just sit there watching her sleep? It didn’t make any sense. Then again, nothing that man did seemed to make sense. There was something about him that was so different from everyone else that it made her feel exposed and vulnerable, almost as if he could see right through her clothes.
No, she thought, it has to be nothing more than bad timing and I’m getting myself all worked up again for no reason. It was no different than imagining the sounds of Pebble’s search were actually the burnt man creeping toward her. Imagination and fear were getting the best of her, that was all. Still, she had to be sure.
She opened her eyes much more slowly than she had the first time, wanting to ensure that she was peering through the smallest slit possible. Just in case.
And there he was; in the exact same position, he hadn’t moved an inch. Staring across the room… at her. Unblinking, motionless.
Ocean struggled to keep her breathing in check. She wanted to take deep gulps of air to match the rhythm of her galloping heart, knowing if she gave in it would be obvious that she wasn’t sleeping. He’d see the rapid rise and fall of the sheet covering her, and he’d know. And what would happen then? Would he be content to continue watching her silently or would…
Corduroy extended an arm and pointed the gnarled flesh of his index finger in her direction.
He knows… he knows I’m not asleep…
He curled it slowly, beckoning her to rise from her bed and go to him. There was no smile on his face, no expression what-so-ever. Just that blank, cold gaze that made Ocean feel like a frightened animal, cowering in the corner.
When she didn’t immediately respond, he repeated the motion. This time, his movements were more jerky, impatient.
He glanced toward the kitchen as Levi’s giggle echoed through the chamber. There seemed to be something desperate about his actions now. As if there were some pressure building up inside him, seeping through his burnt pores, filling the room with a cloud of ominous foreboding. Scowling, Corduroy repeated the gesture a third time.
Ocean flopped over onto her side so that she was facing the wall again and closed her eyes tightly. Maybe if she continued pretending that she was asleep, he’d begin to think that he was mistaken. Maybe he’d believe that—
She heard him stand and her pulse quivered in her neck. A slight tremor began jiggling the muscles in her calves and it felt as though the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees.
She heard the crackle of the fire, and Gauge’s laughter in response to something Levi had just said. None of it offered any type of warmth as she listened to the shuffle and scrape of his footsteps against the brick floor. Footsteps that were drawing closer with each passing second.
Go away, just go away, I’m sleeping, I’m really sleeping, you think I’m sleeping, right?
She imagined she could feel his shadow fall across her, its weight pressing down like a load of rocks on top of her. At the same time, a tightness gripped her bladder, making it feel as if it had been days since she’d last relieved herself.
Ocean could hear him breathing now, that distinctive rasp and gurgle of air passing through his deformed throat.
Go away! She wanted to scream, to cry out for Gauge so loudly that her voice would echo down every tunnel for miles around. Her throat was as tight as if it were being pinched by an invisible hand… besides, what would she say? Corduroy hadn’t actually done anything, after all. The man could always claim that he was simply coming over to wake her up, and maybe that was all there really was to it. Maybe he was just trying to get her to rise and shine, as Levi always said.
But, if that were the case, why had he silently motioned to her with his finger? Why did he seem nervous and on edge, as if he were up to something? Why was he hovering behind her right now, breathing harshly, but otherwise not making a sound? Not even moving.
She could picture him squatting just behind her back, close enough that she could smell the sour bi
te of body odor.
Then, her eyes still squeezed shut, she felt a hand grab her forearm so roughly it was like a metal band had just cinched around her muscles.
Corduroy jerked Ocean to her feet and spun her around roughly, pulling her tightly to his body, his lips parting, warm breath tickling her ear. At that moment, all doubt vanished… Ocean knew that something wasn’t right.
The scream that tried to work its way through her throat was shoved back down as one burnt hand clamped over her mouth.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Now, Steel told me it would take a few days to get me a piece. Maybe even as long as a week. He also told me to keep cool, lay low, not to do anything stupid like running out to the corner pawn shop and pickin’ up a nine for a couple hundred less than I was payin’ him.
“What I’m getting you,” he told me, “is clean. Un-fucking-traceable. They can run all the ballistics they want and never get so much as a squeak out of that database of theirs. And, if you follow my instructions to the T, they’ll never have a barrel to match ‘em to either.”
So I tried to do just that. I went to work, pecked away at the keyboard in my little cubicle until it felt like my fingertips had been bludgeoned into stubby little nubs. I tried to make like it was just any other day, but the entire time, I had this weird feeling down in the pit of my stomach. Almost like the Chinese I’d picked up for lunch wasn’t quite up to health codes and I was comin’ down with a bad case of the Hong Kong Dog. Only I knew it wasn’t that, ‘cause there wasn’t any cramps or rumbling or any of the usual stuff. Not so much as even a gurgle down in the ‘ole G.I tract.
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