by Aborn, A. L.
“No.” She seems to be much more relaxed in the house than she was outside.
I realize now that in my close proximity to her, I can smell her body odor. She smells foul. I swallow a gag and wonder how I am going to leave her in here. How will I care for this confused old woman?
A creak from the kitchen. I look up to the doorway leading to the kitchen and see Brad. The old woman is up faster than I would ever have suspected. The shotgun is snugged in tightly to her shoulder and the barrel is only feet from Brad’s chest. “Hey!” I shout, trying to get her attention. She never budges, like she can’t hear me at all. Her face is wild, and I know deep down that she is about to blow Brad away in this hellhole.
It’s like I am watching a movie in slow motion. I don’t even think, just act. Her back is to me now, she has forgotten me. Reaching out with my right hand, I grasp a thick metal knitting needle from the basket. Raising it, I plunge it toward her neck as hard as I can. The sharp needle pierces the thin, papery skin. I know where the carotid artery is; I’ve observed hundreds of carotid endarterectomies in my time in the operating room.
Blood, bright shiny red blood spurts over my hand, arm, and face. An arterial spurt. I’ve seen them plenty of times, but not aimed at my unprotected face. It only takes seconds before her weight drops out from under her and she lands on the floor in a crumpled heap. Her blood continues to pump out on to the floor around her. It will, until her heart stops beating.
The needle is still clutched in my hand. I drop it. The dull thunk it makes as it hits her body snaps me back into reality. I can now hear Ally in the kitchen, frantically asking what is happening as Brad is blocking the doorway and refusing to let her see anything.
What have I done?
The coppery taste of blood is in my mouth. I vomit. The sour taste combined with the blood is making me retch over and over. My stomach hurts with the force of my body expelling what feels like everything I have ever eaten. I realize I am puking on top of… her. I turn to aim it elsewhere. Finally, the wave passes. I stand to look at Brad, now holding Ally against his chest.
My throat feels scratchy as I form the words: “I had to.”
Chapter Seven
The Treasure
Wiping my mouth, I walk to the doorway to join Brad and Ally. He is staring at me intently; I think with surprise and what I suspect to be a hint of… respect.
“What just happened? Why aren’t you letting me in there? Is she throwing up? What is happening?” Ally’s voice is fraught with confusion and hysteria. She sees me over Brad’s shoulder.
“Ally, it’s okay.” I hear myself say.
Is it though?
Yes. I must believe, yes.
“What just happened? Where is that lady?” She is practically screaming in my face. Tears threaten to spill from her dark eyes.
“She… she’s gone.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“She was confused, dementia, I think. She was going to shoot Brad! I swear, I thought she would shoot Brad! I had to do it!”
“What?” Her panic is not allowing her to hear what I am saying. Brad finally lets her go and she pushes past him and finally sees the horror on the floor.
I see her shoulders tighten. She turns back to us and her eyes roll up into her head. Brad and I jump forward together to lower her to the floor. Ally is a fainter; I’ve seen her do it a handful of times. Luckily, we are feet away from the body, so she doesn’t land on it.
In seconds, her eyes open. “Did I faint?”
I fight the urge to giggle.
What kind of person am I to laugh right now?
We help her to her feet. She still looks wobbly. Quickly, we usher her back to the kitchen. “I’m sorry. I had to. She was so confused; how could we leave her here? We can’t care for her. It would be a full-time job; we don’t have time for that. She had the gun; she was going to shoot Brad.” The words are bubbling out of me unbidden. My thoughts are jumbled. I don’t know if I am trying to reassure myself or them.
“Relax!” The first word Brad has spoken since we entered the house. Ally and I are shocked at his ferocity. “Just stop and let me think!”
Brad paces tight circles in the kitchen as we watch stiffly. “Okay. It doesn’t look like anyone else lives here with her. The way that I see it: you saved me. Now all of this stuff is ours.” Ally and I glance at each other. “I think we should go home tonight and come back tomorrow. Okay?”
We nod in unison.
A soft bleating distracts me. In the corner, the little goat is shaking. Ahh, the goat. I had forgotten about him. Without a word, Brad scoops him up and we file out of the house. The cold air slaps me in the face and the darkness blinds me. I follow the sound of the goat and the light from Brad’s flashlight numbly.
We are walking toward the large barn. It’s brown; a dull, weathered brown. But it’s big, huge even. Handing the goat off to Ally, Brad shoulders one of the large doors open. It’s dark, but I can make out the outline of a few stalls. I hear a few noises that sound like the shifting of feet and a snort. There are animals here.
The lights were on in the house, why not try them here? It takes me a few minutes, but I use both hands to feel around on the walls until I find a light switch. It’s a panel of three. I flick the first one and a light above us comes on. The barn is better kept than the house and looks newer. Even with the smell of manure and animal, it’s better than being in the house.
There is a line of four stalls along the left side of the barn. Two of the stalls hold horses; their heads are stretched over the gates of their stalls. They nicker at us impatiently. The right side is organized into bales of hay and a few big pieces of farm equipment. I don’t know what they are. In the far-right corner is a door leading into some sort of room. It’s cold in here, but at least there’s no wind. Walking down the line of stalls, I reach the horses. Horses! I can’t believe they are in here.
The first stall holds a dark chestnut horse with a black mane and tail. The second is a very large white horse, dappled with grey. Upon closer inspection, they don’t look so good. Their ribs are showing. Holding out my hand, the brown horse smells me for a minute before pushing his nose under my hand. The white does the same. Well, at least they are friendly.
I peak over the gates. The sawdust in the stalls is filthy and it’s clear no one has scooped the stalls in weeks. Their hooves are long and starting to curl. My heart hurts for them. Ally’s voice interrupts my thoughts from further down the line of stalls. “Oh no.”
Leaving the horses, I join her. In the third stall, two motionless piglets lie in dirty sawdust. Brad looks on over our shoulders. Ally puts the goat down and opens the gate to the pigs. She strokes the two piglets, looks at us, and shakes her head. They’re dead.
The fourth stall holds a sheep and another goat. They bleat at us weakly as we peer in. I hear a door opening and turn to find Brad going through the door I had seen in the corner. I follow him. Inside is a sort of office slash supply room. There is a desk with various pieces of tack on the scratched service. Above the desk is a shelf with several books. Around the desk are large barrels half-full of different grains. At least there is some food. “They all need water,” Ally calls.
We explore around a little more and find a hand pump outside. In short order, the three of us work to fill the water buckets in each stall, give them each a few scoops of some grain, and a couple armloads of hay. It’s not much, but the rest will have to wait until tomorrow. Before we leave, Brad puts the black and white goat into the stall with the other goat and the sheep. Hopefully, it will hold him tonight. Who knows how he got out earlier.
We leave the house the way we found it. I don’t think any of us want to go in to shut off the lights or anything else. The walk back to the house is silent except for the crunch of our feet in the snow. Looking down, I see the blood has dried on my hand and clothes. Stopping, I grab a handful of snow and roughly scrub at my skin, erasing the splatters.
Reaching our house, I bucket in some water and heat it over the woodstove. When I have enough to fill the bathtub with a few inches of hot water, I shed my clothes and climb in. It’s not quite big enough for me to stretch out, so I lay on my back with my knees bent. The water feels good on my back, but the front of my body is chilly. Using a bar of soap, I scrub at my skin until it’s raw. Still feeling grimy, I think I can still taste blood. Her blood. I shudder.
After my bath, I crawl into bed with Meekah. My friends have already retreated to their bedroom. Pressing my face into her soft fur, my mind spins. I see those poor neglected animals and the house full of dirty boxes. Tomorrow is going to be hard: back to the house. What will we do with those animals? And, how is her power still on? I didn’t see or hear a generator anywhere. What are we going to do with… her? Don’t think of that. Think of… what could be in all those boxes? Hopefully something good.
My thoughts continue to whirl. Through it all, a voice in the back of my mind is chanting. I had to. I had to. I had to.
***
The next morning dawns cold and cloudy. I join Ally and Brad and we venture out for our morning chores. I resist the thought that it is weird between us now. Are they looking at me strangely? No. That’s in my head. I had to. It was her or us. Her or Brad. My memories of last night seem blurry, like they’re from a dream. Firmly, I push my thoughts away. I did what I had to do. Period.
We share a few scrambled eggs that I make on the woodstove. If anything, Brad is more talkative than normal. After breakfast, we wash up and venture out into the cold. I feel naked, walking down the road in the light of day. We walk quickly but wearily. Reaching the gate, we crawl over the fence in the same place we did the night before. Brad decides that we should look around the property before going in. I think he is avoiding going in to deal with the body. That’s fine with me.
It’s slow going in the hard snow around the buildings. There is nothing too exciting around the house but an empty chicken coop. Behind the barn is a different story: what we couldn’t see the night before were the solar panels that cover the entire long side and the sloped roof. No wonder we couldn’t hear a generator. You can’t see a hint of them from the road. Jackpot! Visions of refrigeration in the summer are dancing through my head.
As we admire the solar panels, I continue to walk around the barn. Rounding the corner, I find that the next wall houses a woodshed. It’s more than half full of stacked pieces. About six feet in front of the woodshed is a large stump roughly two feet tall. I assume this is where the wood is chopped before it’s stacked. There’s no way the old woman was out here chopping wood. I can see what looks like the handle of an axe beyond the stump sticking out of the snow. What is that next to it? There’s a mound of snow with tracks and maybe a bit of flannel sticking out.
I pick my way cautiously toward the stump.
Oh, God.
It’s the body of an old man, face down in the snow. “Guys?” I call out. They come around the corner, chatting. “I think we found her husband.”
Their chatter cuts off and they join me. Ally turns around, I hope she doesn’t faint. “What happened to him?” she asks. Her voice sounds steady, so I look away from her back to the old man.
“I’m not sure.”
Brad and I step forward and start scooping some of the snow off him. It’s hard; everything is frozen to him. Finally, clear of enough snow, we turn him over. Ugh. His face is purpled with the blood that settled there. Luckily, it’s too cold for him to smell. I try to look him over objectively. There are no wounds that I can see. “I think that he maybe died from a heart attack. Maybe he was out here chopping wood and he just died.”
“What should we do with him?” Ally asks, her back still to us.
“It’s too cold to bury him. We should put them both… somewhere.” Brad says.
We decide to find some tarps or something to wrap them in and bring them into the woods. We don’t want their bodies to draw in any predators this close to the barn. Better to have them farther away until we can bury them in the spring. For now, we leave him.
First thing’s first: her.
We reluctantly enter the house. I am trying to only breathe through my mouth, but it’s hard. When we reach the living room, I try not to look down directly. There is a hallway off the living room; following it, I find two small bedrooms and a bathroom. The second bedroom is larger and has a queen size bed. Ripping the comforter from the bed, I carry it back to the living room. Ally stays in the kitchen while Brad and I transfer the body into the blanket. Purposefully, Brad turns her face down, so we don’t have to look at her face. We both heave and gag while we move her. Once she is rolled in the blanket and we drag her out of the house, it gets a little easier.
It’s hard work, but we drag her to the back of the barn to join her husband. It’s not hard to release the blanket and walk away. I just want to be away from them.
Back in the house, Ally is opening boxes and cabinets. “Find anything good?” I ask.
“Not yet. Some of these boxes are just full of magazines.”
I open the fridge. Not much in there.
The cabinets yield some moldy bread and several boxes of pasta. I can work with those. There’s also a cabinet full of canned goods and the freezer is full of meat. Score!
“What do you think this means?” Brad calls from the down the hall. Ally and I find him in the bathroom. It’s filthy; everything has a layer of scum over it.
Brad gestures to the mirror. There is a piece of paper taped to the glass. It reads in a clear, neat script:
Joanne, Every morning:
Take your medicine
Feed yourself
Feed the animals
“Who needs a list for these things?” Brad asks incredulously.
“People with Alzheimer’s,” I answer quietly. “She or her husband probably wrote that to remind her.”
“Sad,” says Ally.
Brad tries turning on the faucet in the sink. We are all surprised when it turns on. He tries the hot water.
It’s ice cold and never warms up. “They must have electricity normally, supplemented by the solar panels. The well pump is probably solar, but the water heater runs off electricity. No hot showers for us.”
We head out to the barn next. The horses greet us eagerly. We check their water and give them some more food before I stop to scratch them. The sheep and goats are not quite as interested in our petting, but they do like the food. After they eat their fill, the return to the house feels easier than our initial approach.
The basement turns out to house even more boxes and totes of junk. There is a work bench with tools and random odds and ends. We pick through the boxes half-heartedly. After you open so many boxes of old toys, magazines, and Styrofoam cups, you only stay interested for so long.
Brad gets excited when he finds a shoebox full of whistles. He has to explain their significance to both of us. “We can use them to signal to each other. Like, two short whistles for safety or one long blast for ‘help.’ Get it?” He doesn’t wait for our agreement before slinging one over each of our heads.
Shortly after the whistle discovery, we pack a few backpacks (we found a handful of them in a tote) full of canned goods and walk home. It’s lunch time and the dogs need to be let out. They haven’t been alone this long since this whole thing started. For lunch, I boil up some of our newfound pasta and add a jar of Ally’s moms chili. It’s not bad, it just needs a little cheese. Man, do I miss cheese.
Over lunch, we start making a game plan. Realistically, there is no way that the three of us can adequately defend both houses. The house across the street is easily more defendable: it has the fence, the gate across the driveway, and the huge cleared area around the house allows you to see in every direction. I’m sure we all know this, but none of us even mention moving.
One of the biggest issues is the animals. There’s not enough room for all of them here, so they have to stay in the barn. The electricity ove
r there will allow us to store extra food in the freezer, especially after the snow melts and the weather gets warmer. In the end, we decide to finish getting through everything in the house and use it for storage. Each day, we’ll have to travel across the street to care for the animals. Brad presses upon us not to get attached; eventually we’ll have to eat them. I refuse to think about eating the horses. At least, for now.
After lunch, we head back across the street. There is an old truck in the driveway, which up until now, we’ve largely ignored. Brad finds the keys over the visor in the driver’s seat and starts it up. He loads up the bodies in the bed and drives them to the edge of the property marked by the fence. I’m glad he doesn’t ask for my help. Instead, I spend my time cleaning up the mess in the living room. Someone told me in nursing school that if you hum, it’s physically impossible to gag. I probably sound crazy, humming frantically while scrubbing blood and vomit out of the carpet, but I can’t even spare a thought to be embarrassed. The action consumes me.
When Brad returns from his grizzly task and the living room is clean, the three of us team up to take on the barn. It’s well built; each stall also has a door in the back that leads outside. One by one, we evacuate each stall into the barn. We haven’t checked the fence all the way around, so we don’t want to let them outside. We muck out each stall, spread some new sawdust, and then return the animal. The horses are well behaved and let me put a halter on and lead each out. The white one intimidates me, he’s so big. The goats are far more difficult for us to corral back into a clean stall. Brad took the piglets; he says he’s going to use them as bear bait.
In the back of the goat stall, we find an area that’s weak. If you push in one spot in the corner, you can get one of the boards to lift. This must be how the goat got out. After cleaning the stalls, we put the goats and sheep into the piglet stall since they won’t be using it.
It’s been a long day. We feed everyone again and then head home.
That night, after another meal of chili mac, my back is sore from bending over to shovel out stalls. I feel good though, the way a day of hard manual labor makes you feel. I refuse to think about those two bodies out by the woods and fall asleep much quicker than the night before.