by Scott Mackay
“Get down, sir. They’ve made a flanking move.”
“Who?”
“We’re not sure. Some renegade officers from Miami-Dade, we think. They’ve got military-grade weapons. This whole neighborhood is sitting on a shitload of food, and I guess they want some.”
“Eva’s been shot. She needs a doctor.”
Baskerville crouched and loped over to the gate, his buddies letting go with a sudden and heart-stopping fusillade of gunfire to cover him.
Baskerville forcefully dragged Neil by the shirt back inside the compound. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stay in the house. At least until we get this situation under control.”
“She’s bleeding to death. And the sailors from out back are gone.”
Baskerville looked at Eva. The soldier unclipped a flashlight from his belt.
“I knew they were going to bolt. Put her there.”
Neil put the maid on the ground. As he did so she quivered in pain. Baskerville shone the flashlight down the front of her uniform. He put the flashlight next to his knee and unbuttoned her blouse.
Louise approached from the house, and as she finally reached them she put her hand on Neil’s shoulder.
The sound from Eva’s chest wound grew fainter. At what point did a man lose faith in himself? The sound from her wound stopped. At what point did he realize that the forces ranged against him were far too large to handle? Marblehill. Stock it and lock it. The immense stillness that could only mean the cessation of life crept over Eva the way the shroud had crept over the Earth. At what point did a man come to realize that the concerns of the world at large were of secondary focus, and that his main objective should be his family?
Baskerville looked at him just as his troops fired a field flare into the sky. The flare lit Neil’s front yard with a flickering white glow and, as it sank in the direction of the poor neighborhood, gunfire erupted from beside the Morrison fighting vehicles, the age-old music of war, the beat and rhythm of things breaking down.
“We’ll look after her, Dr. Thorndike.”
“Look after her?” he asked. “How?”
In the light of the flare, Baskerville’s face changed, hardened, his eyes narrowing, his lower lip curling a fraction of an inch, a hint of disrespect in his eyes as if he were wondering how Neil could ask such a stupid question. Neil sensed a schism between himself and Baskerville now.
“You know. Deal with her remains.”
Louise gave him a tug. “Neil, let’s go back in the house.”
“You listen to your wife, Dr. Thorndike,” said Baskerville. “Ain’t nothing to see out here.”
15
Glenda got up from her basement floor once the truck drove away.
“Stay here,” she told her children.
She had to argue with them, because kids wouldn’t be kids if they didn’t argue, but at last she left them on the floor next to the refrigerator and moved through the darkness, touching her way along the piles of junk to the foot of the stairs, clutching her rifle in one hand and feeling her way up the steps with the other.
In the kitchen, she listened.
Usually there was the hum of electricity coming from the refrigerator, or the sound of cars out on the highway. But except for the ticking of the battery-powered clock in the dining room and the hush of fresh snow falling against the windows (yes, more snow, just in the last few minutes), all was silent.
She crossed the kitchen floor, now used to navigating in darkness. She veered left around the kitchen table, maneuvered to the right, went through the dining and living rooms, then stopped short, exactly at the front door, and clutched the doorknob.
She went outside.
She saw a light burning in Leigh’s dining room window.
Using it to see her way, she crossed the yard to the hedge separating her lot from Leigh’s. She squeezed her way through, the stiff, dead branches snagging her sweater. She walked down Leigh’s driveway toward his house, pausing often to listen, the snowflakes crash-landing on her face.
Up in the hills she heard gunfire.
She continued down the drive through Leigh’s carport and into his side yard. She heard the snow melting from the roof into the eaves, a steady trickle. Then more gunfire up in the hills.
As she neared the dining room window, she crouched. She double-checked to make sure her safety was off, felt her heart beating more quickly, was afraid that someone was still inside, and that she might have to kill them. She peered in through the dining room window and saw, in the light of a battery-powered lamp sitting on the table, three chairs toppled on their sides. The glass in the china cabinet doors was broken, and three bullet holes punctured the walls. She stared at the destruction and couldn’t help thinking that it was an odd mix—this suburban dining room with its department-store furniture, such an everyday scene, now destroyed like this.
Finally she moved to the rear of the house. She looked through the back door into the kitchen.
The door had been broken open, and the security console smashed. The kitchen table lay on its side—she dimly perceived its outline in the light coming from the dining room. She stepped into the vestibule leading into the kitchen. She saw Leigh’s hiking boots, garden clogs, and sandals sitting neatly side by side on an imitation Navajo mat.
“Leigh?” she called.
She got no reply.
She proceeded into the kitchen.
Her toe hit a can of something. She lifted the can and saw that it was instant milk. She couldn’t help thinking how her kids could use this instant milk. Use anything. She put the can of milk on the table and walked into the dining room. She lifted the lantern, a neat little rechargeable unit that had a rustic look to it, like it came from a sailing ship of yore. She smelled cordite, and saw brass rifle shells on the floor. She lifted a shell, a.303; a good hunting round, deadly enough to down a man in one go.
Taking the little lamp, she checked the whole first floor: Leigh’s bedroom, where everything was tidy and the bed made; the second bedroom, which he had turned into his weight-lifting room; then into the third bedroom, where he had his computer and all his other electronic junk; then the bathroom, where, in the bathtub, behind the shower curtain, she found two fifty-gallon Duratex coolers of fresh spring water.
Jamie, Lars, and Perry must have missed them.
She backtracked into the living room, then the dining room, then the kitchen, and stood at the top of the basement stairs. She held the rechargeable lantern high, but the light wasn’t focused, and permeated only halfway down the steps. Nonetheless, it was strong enough to see footprints in blood on the risers.
She now looked at the kitchen floor. Blood was tracked everywhere. Her sneakers had left their own prints.
“Leigh?” she called again, hoping she would hear a groan, sigh, or cry for help.
She heard nothing. She stood at the top of the stairs for close to a minute as the anxious possibilities tumbled through her mind. She fought with her own conflicting impulses. Run? Investigate? She finally held the lantern up and went downstairs, trying as best she could to miss the blood on the steps.
In the basement, she found an extensive hydroponics installation. Leigh had never brought her down here before, and she was surprised to see all this stuff. She saw tomatoes, zucchini, and carrots growing in long, narrow planters, and an array of grow-lights overhead, all of them now off. She saw a hydrogen-powered generator in the corner. The final third of the basement had been bricked up and turned into a large cold cellar. She walked over and had a look. Thick Styrofoam insulated the inside of it. As she entered, she held the lantern high. Shelves lined every available square inch of wall. The shelves were bare. Jamie, Lars, and Perry had made a considerable haul.
She turned around, and that’s when she saw Leigh. He lay behind the door on his back, head tilted to one side, feet splayed, wearing a camouflage hunting vest that was dark with blood. He looked like he was sleeping. For such a violent death, his final resting pos
ition was one of peaceful repose. Blood trickled down the drain in the corner. The blood had been stepped in, and the chaotic footprint pattern reminded Glenda of the finger paintings kindergartners did.
She stood there for several seconds.
Then she heard the sound of a car in the distance—far up the highway, at the top of the east hill.
She immediately bolted.
She switched off her lantern and exited by the back door. Was it Jamie, Lars, and Perry coming back?
She ran all the way to the bottom of Leigh’s backyard, and now felt Leigh’s death coming to her in a blur of tears. The falling snow was cold against her face. She turned around and looked toward the highway. She saw through her tears the blue flash of police lights a quarter mile up the road. A new fear exploded through her chest. It was Maynard Fulton, coming to investigate. He would see her footprints in the blood.
She opened Leigh’s back gate and hurried over to her yard. The flashing police lights now lit up the whole neighborhood, even though the two cars were still a couple of blocks away.
She went through her own back gate, ran up the yard and in through her back door. She closed it, locked it, then hurried into Hanna’s bedroom. From the window she saw Leigh’s house, with the angle wide enough for a partial view of the front drive. The two police cars pulled up and came to a stop.
She saw Brennan Little, one of the sheriff’s deputies, get out of one car and walk up the side of the house, shining his flashlight into the dead bushes and along the window casings, his gun drawn. She saw Sheriff Maynard Fulton get out of the second car and walk to the front of the house, quickly disappearing from view behind the carport.
“Mom?” Hanna called from the top of the stairs.
Glenda left Hanna’s bedroom and went into the kitchen. Flashing police lights now partially illuminated the inside of the house.
“Go back downstairs.”
“Is Leigh dead?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Go downstairs. The police are here.”
The new logic: The police are here. Hide.
Glenda followed her downstairs, and the police lights strobed throughout the basement. Jake had taken advantage of the unexpected light to find an old toy, an alien action figure, only this alien was nothing like the aliens up in the TMS. It wore medieval armor and had a big laser gun, and everybody knew real aliens didn’t wear medieval armor and shoot laser guns.
She sat there with her children for a few minutes, Jake playing alien, Hanna starting to wheeze despite the nursing home medication. Too much of the damp basement for her. Glenda heard the muffled chatter of the police radio through the cheap Duratex windows.
A few minutes turned into ten. She thought Fulton might go away. Maybe she wouldn’t have to look into those eyes of his—those mocking blue eyes that constantly undressed her. She hoped that he would simply take what he wanted from Leigh’s house, add it to whatever hoard he was building—because it was all about the building of hoards these days—and never come back.
But…
The knock came at last…
A loud knock.
The knock seemed to squeeze her heart so that the passage of blood through her chest felt painful. The knock came again. She thought she might will Fulton to go away, but knew her own footprints were in the blood, and knew that Fulton wouldn’t go away no matter how hard she willed him to.
“You two stay here.”
She went upstairs, answered the door, and saw Fulton standing there in the dark. He wore his uniform jacket and hat, and he looked cold. The snow behind him was stopping.
“You heard the noise next door?” he said.
He always tried to trap her with his questions, she knew that, but as she didn’t see a trap in this particular question, she answered truthfully.
“I heard it.”
His mistrust deepened. “And you didn’t call? Some local calls are still going through.”
“I’ve been hiding in the basement all this time.”
He shone his flashlight at her shoes. “Is that so?”
She looked down and saw Leigh’s blood. Damn. Trapped. Even though it was snowing outside, her face felt hot. “I went over there to check things out after his killers left.” Because there was no denying it now.
Fulton’s face settled and he contemplated Glenda for close to five seconds. “You see his basement?”
Another trap, because her footprints were on the stairs as well. “I saw it.” She wasn’t going to fall for this one.
He lifted his chin. “What do you suppose he had on all those shelves?”
“Is that a serious question, Maynard?”
He shook his head. “Always the tone, Glenda. In case you didn’t know, I’m here to serve and protect.”
“That’s what your mouth says. But your eyes tell a different story. Please stop looking at me like that.”
He shook his head a second time, but he was grinning, as if he were enjoying this. “And after all the help I gave you with your husband.”
“Leigh didn’t tell me anything, if that’s what you want to know.”
“So you have no idea who his killers are?”
She brushed the hair from her forehead and felt her expression sink, not in fear but in anger, and had the damnedest impulse to order Fulton off her property and tell him never to come back. “Jamie, Lars, and
Perry. Work buddies. That’s all I know.”
“No last names?”
“No.”
“Found your footprints in that basement room, Glenda. Were you looking for food?”
She went all innocent. “Was that what he had in there?”
“Old Leigh wasn’t going to let you starve. Everybody knows about you and Leigh.”
She frowned. “Why don’t you act like a sheriff for a change, Maynard?”
“Leigh didn’t give you any food? Because it looks like he had a lot down there. Then all those vegetables he was growing. He was planning for the long haul, wasn’t he?”
“He never gave us any food.”
His eyes widened. “Is that so?” He shone his flashlight past her shoulder. “Do you mind if I come in and look around?”
He tried to get around her, but she blocked his way.
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
“I think I better,” he said.
“Maynard, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.”
“Seems to me you should be glad to have me around, Glenda, now that Gerry’s gone and run off on you.”
“Gerry hasn’t run off on me.”
“What do you suppose he’s doing up there on the Moon right now?”
“I told you, he doesn’t drink anymore.”
“Glenda, I’ve got to take a look around. Police business.”
“Then show me a warrant.”
“Ever since the…restructuring, we don’t need warrants. We’re streamlining our jurisprudence as we go along, on account of the courts being closed.”
He used his great physical size to push past her.
“Maynard, stay out of my house!”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I’m investigating a murder.”
He walked into the living room, got down on one knee, and looked under the couch. He then went into the dining room and opened the cupboards under the china cabinet.
“You’re looking for food, Maynard. Leigh’s murder has nothing to do with it.”
“Ma’am, if you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to cuff you.”
She followed him around the house, knowing she was powerless to stop him.
He went into the kitchen and opened the cupboards. He walked to the fridge, even though it wasn’t working, and shone his flashlight in there. He shut the door and shone his flashlight directly in her face.
“Where are you hiding it all, Glenda?”
“Will you stop shining that thing in my face?”
“You got it all in the basement, like Leigh did?”
“Got what?”
“Your food cache.”
“Maynard, I don’t have a food cache.”
“You’ve already lied to me once.”
“And you said you were investigating a murder, not looking for food.”
He shook his head. “You’re too smart for your own good, you know that?”
He walked across the kitchen to the cellar door.
“My kids are down there. Please don’t scare them.”
“I’m the sheriff. Why would they be scared of me?”
She followed Fulton down the stairs. “Kids,” she cried. “It’s just the sheriff. He’s coming down. No need to be afraid.”
Fulton got to the bottom and shone his flashlight at all the boxes of junk in the middle, then at the tool bench, then at the washer and dryer, and finally at Jake and Hanna.
Glenda’s rifle leaned against the wall next to Jake.
“You’ve got a rifle?” said Fulton.
She scrambled for the quickest dodge. “It’s just an old thing my Dad gave me.”
“You got a license for that thing? You need a license in Wake County.”
“Somewhere. In all these boxes.”
He walked over and lifted the rifle. “Hate to tell you this, but the Wake County’s Sheriff’s Department is confiscating all firearms at the present time. I’m going to have to relieve you of this firearm for the duration of the emergency. Got any ammunition?”
She couldn’t hide her desperation any longer. “Maynard, please don’t take my rifle. It’s the only thing I’ve got to protect me and my children with.”
“Ma’am, I repeat, got any ammunition?”
“Just what’s in the rifle.”
“That’s twice you’ve lied, Glenda.”
“Please leave the rifle. I hear shooting in the hills. I need my rifle in case any of that comes down here.”
Fulton lifted his chin and contemplated Glenda. “You come over and see me sometime, Glenda.” His implication was clear.
“Maynard, please.”
“You want your rifle back or don’t you?”
“Okay, okay, I’ll come over and see you sometime.”
Just then, Little called from upstairs. “Maynard?”