by Angie West
I considered this and more, hoisting one leg through the window and swinging easily over the sill, paying little attention to the smears of dirt that rubbed off onto the thighs of my snug jeans and the palms of my hands. Gun held steadily forward, I swung into the room, immediately dropping into a crouch below the window. Keeping perfectly still and poised on one knee, elbows down and gun held firmly in both hands, I let my eyes do a couple of sweeps of the dark room. Only when satisfied that I was alone in the musty-smelling space did I allow myself to relax and do a more thorough inspection of my surroundings.
The room was bathed in shadow and full of plump, artfully placed furniture. Plastic coverings protected the living room set. It was next to impossible to discern much beyond the general shapes of the pieces; a couch, an overstuffed love seat, two recliners, and a couple of coffee tables complete with high back chairs. I imagined the set was some sort of Victorian style; one elegantly-patterned sofa arm stuck out from under the plastic. A row of tiny polished brass buttons marched up the front edge of the piece of furniture.
The strong odor of mildew clung to the stale air; I leaned out the open window I’d just entered through and took a deep, cleansing breath before continuing through the silent house. Each filmy window I passed was a grim reminder that the sun was setting and would soon relinquish its position to the moon. I had to hurry. Time was running out and we couldn’t afford to get caught on the streets after dark. Not here in this ruined place. Even one weakened beast would be deadly, and that wasn’t taking into account the other...things...that we had the potential to encounter.
Moving swiftly into the kitchen, I made quick work of locating several plastic grocery sacks, mentally berating myself when, out of habit, I reached out to flip on the switch for the overhead light.
Silly. The electricity in this house was long gone. That much was appallingly obvious when I opened the stainless steel refrigerator that sat in a little alcove in the far corner of the kitchen. What possessed me to open the fridge door, I can’t say. Of course, I knew that any perishable food left behind would be beyond spoiled, and how many people stored non-perishable items in a refrigerator? Even if the owners of this house did store such items in the icebox, the dry food would have been contaminated by mold by now, if the fuzzy lumps on the shelves that used to be food were anything to go by. The space was a breeding ground for a bacterial infection. I shuddered, closing the door and trying the freezer with trepidation.
Nothing but spoiled meat and the congealed remains of what probably used to be ice cream. I sighed.
A thin shaft of light from the kitchen’s large bay window caught the glint of silver a split second before the freezer door closed. Silver? Pulling the door wide open, I stood on the edge of my toes for a closer look. A pile of slender silver cards was stacked in the left hand corner of the freezer. Razor thin and plated in one hundred percent genuine silver, I immediately recognized what the cards were; besides the answer to my prayers, the cards were the equivalent of credit in Terlain. The silver could be scanned by the machines in most stores and restaurants around the territories in exchange for goods and services.
Unlike a traditional credit card, however, these cards bore no name across the front, only a thin blue strip on the bottom and the official round emblem of Terlain in the upper right corner; they came pre-loaded with whatever amount of money one had added to the card, and thus were fully transferable. Ashley and I could use the cards.
I closed my eyes and squeezed the pile of cards until my fingers ached. “Thank you,” I whispered to the empty room. We could buy clothes. We could buy fuel and anything else we needed. The minuscule amount of gold we had brought with us from Africa would have seen us through our journey—barely. But the rules had changed. Compared to the cost of buying our own fuel as opposed to paying for a buggy ride or a chauffeured vehicle, the small pile of gold in my backpack seemed a paltry amount. We would be hard pressed to handle any financial emergencies or anything beyond the short term with my provisions alone.
With the silver cards, however... I did a little two-step around the kitchen counter and began to root around the glossy oak cabinets for food and anything else useful. Maybe the celebration was a bit premature; after all, I was not even sure there was money loaded onto the cards, but was ninety-nine percent sure there would be at least a little currency left on them. Why else would they have been tucked away in the back of a freezer? They had probably been some sort of emergency fund for the family that had owned this house. I felt the pang of an emotion that was part sympathy, part guilt when I thought of the people who used to live here. Despite what I’d told Ashley about our actions being socially acceptable for the circumstance we found ourselves in, I had misgivings about taking the cards. What if the family returned to their home at some point? Sure, this was probably not going to happen; they wouldn’t have fled to safety without their vehicle. Bottom line, they were not coming back. So why did this feel like I was looting? I supposed that, in a way, I was.
A howl in the distance brought my attention back to the present and more pressing matters. The fierce sound echoed in the distance, closer now. I froze, the blood in my veins turning to ice. I had heard that sound before. The Retrievers were coming. I hastily shoved a few more packets of granola into my bag, wiped my hands across my jeans, and made a mad dash for the front door. The sense of panic didn’t stop me from making a careful perusal of the street, no matter how bad I wanted to rush onto the porch, grab my daughter, and run. I knew that she must be frantic after hearing the animals—if one could call Retriever wolves “animals.” I shuddered.
Seeing that nothing obvious lurked beyond the porch, I scurried out the door and down the steps, frantically whispering to Ashley even as I hauled her from the bushes and down the walk to the car. The keys. Shit. Hell. Damn.
“I forgot the keys,” I uttered, closing my eyes, feeling the cool exterior of the SUV press against my forehead.
“That’s not good, is it?” Ashley bit her lip, peering around the vehicle to the street beyond.
“It’s fine. I remember seeing them on a peg in the kitchen.” At least I hoped the set of keys I’d seen had at least one belonging to the car. If not… I swallowed audibly as I watched the shadows continue to deepen around us, day turning inexorably to night. If not, I was pretty sure I would be the one in hysterics.
“Come on, you can come with me this time.”
“It’s getting dark.”
“I know, we’ll be out of here in two minutes. The kitchen is at the back of the house,” I whispered as we hurried across the threshold.
Luck had graced us for a second time that day because, after dashing back to the SUV, heavy key ring in hand, we found that one of the keys did in fact belong to the midnight blue set of wheels. We sped through Twelfth Street a moment later, bags tossed into the back seat, the last rays of the sun disappearing in the rearview mirror.
Chapter Seven
To Find a Warrior
The forest beckoned, trees thick on either side of the narrow path, their long, spindly branches reaching out like gnarled fingers. I thought about turning around, giving serious consideration to finding another way to get to Grandview. It was a tough call to make. The last thing in the world I wanted to do at the moment was get lost and wander aimlessly on some dark treacherous back road. On the other hand, I didn’t particularly relish the thought of going into labyrinth Muerta either. I could only imagine why it was so named.
Letting the engine idle for a full two minutes, I chewed on a fingernail, hoping to gain some sudden insight on the best course of action. I had never taken this road before and really had no idea what to expect, although if the name and appearance were any indication, the smart thing to do would be to whip the car around and speed off into the night—in any direction but forward! But where would we go? This was the only road that I knew for certain would take us to Grandview.
I tightened my fingers around the leathery material that covered th
e steering wheel and sighed. We would have to take the path. The alternative was to double back around and take the left fork in the road back toward civilization, if you could call the demolished cities that made up the county “civilization.”
The further away from Lerna we had driven, the more distant the Retrievers howling had become, so going back would be risking a run-in with the devil dogs and quite possibly the Scavengers as well, for one creature was never very far from the other. The Scavengers were usually the first to be seen. They used their paralyzing venom to incapacitate their prey before the Retrievers stepped in and either took the unfortunate soul to Kahn or disposed of the body on their own. It was not a risk I felt willing to take, not with Ashley and not with myself. I hadn’t forgotten my last encounter with the Scavengers and Retrievers, and probably never would. Underestimating them was another sin I vowed to avoid repeating, for I knew firsthand how quickly they could team up and put a person out of commission. No, I decided, we would continue forward and hope that anything out there in this godforsaken forest was either sleeping or otherwise occupied.
I knew that it was probably too much to hope for, but I prayed Ashley would remain asleep until we were well out of the woods, especially if we were unlucky enough to encounter trouble along the way.
The tapping sound on the window had me jerking around in the driver’s seat, startled. A scream rose in my throat when I came face to face with the ghastly white thing pressed close to the window only inches from me. Heavily pitted skin the color of bleached flour stretched over teeth that were bared in an obscene grin, sharp teeth and round bulging eyes making a perverted mockery of the expression of joy. I knew immediately what I was staring at, its name suddenly crystal clear in my mind—Coatyl.
I sat transfixed and unmoving, not daring to do so much as breathe, even though every fiber of my being cried out for me to flee. Time froze in a sick sort of suspended animation. The beast raised one hand, his long fingernails catching the moon’s rays and reflecting them like light on a steel blade before slowly, deliberately bringing the knobby fingers down and scraping them along the side of the SUV. The screech of metal being sliced away broke the terrified spell I seemed to have been trapped in, my breath caught on a sob. I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal without further delay and shot down the road, a spray of dust obliterating the view of the road behind us. Slow, I mentally cautioned about a mile down the pitch dark road, abruptly discovering why a dirt road would be called a labyrinth as the path cut sharply to the right. The car’s wheels spun out wildly for a heart-stopping moment, tires struggling to regain traction while I wrestled with the steering wheel for control. I narrowly avoided ramming the vehicle into a thick groves of trees and half dead vegetation several more times before the harrowing journey was over and done with, but finally, we reached the end of the path. Surprisingly, nothing else materialized out of the darkness, although I imagined I saw menacing creatures around every corner.
I peered from the inky black forest that surrounded us. In my head they were always only a hair away from leaping out at us and I remained on edge until, at long last, we emerged from labyrinth Muerta, frightened but otherwise unscathed. Rather, I was rattled. Ashley had somehow managed to sleep through the horrifying midnight ride, and for that I was profoundly grateful. The relief intensified ten-fold when I spotted the telltale shimmer in the distance. “Oh thank you, Lord.” The lights of Grandview burned low but bright in the dark, the gentle glow of the fence bathing the town in a halo of liquid gold. “We’re safe now. We’re safe,” I whispered to a sleeping Ashley, needing to speak the words aloud, seeking to reassure myself more than anything else that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out all right after all.
I drove around town for several minutes, letting the gentle illumination of people and life and normalcy wash over me. So acutely aware was I of my stress dissipating, evaporating into the night, that I was hesitant to put the moment to an end. I knew that the minute I did, my sense of peace and solitude would end. Maybe it wouldn’t be tonight or tomorrow, or even the night after that, but at some point, a whole new set of problems would inevitably present themselves, and when that happened, I knew my hard won peace would come crashing down like a house of cards in a hurricane.
There was another reason why my hands went cool and clammy as I deftly turned the SUV down the long, winding tree-lined lane that led to Bob and Marta’s sprawling estate. I was about to see Mark for the first time in a year. The slender trees that rolled past on the ascent up the paved road would have, under normal circumstances, captivated my attention, their dome-shaped tops swaying in the light breeze.
Pale pink blossoms fluttered lazily to the ground, a few buttery-looking petals coming to rest on the hood of the car, their pastel hue providing a sharp contrast to the deep blue of the SUV’s hood.
Tonight, however, the beauty of the scene was a pale imitation of the real thing. My mind was on other, more imminent matters, such as what I would say to the three unsuspecting residents of the house that came into view as we crested the hill. What would they say to me? It was hard not to be nervous about our upcoming meeting; after all, I was about to spring not only myself, but a six-year-old child upon them in the middle of the night.
A year had passed since I had vanished from their lives without so much as a goodbye, see you later, and it was impossible not to worry about their reaction. They probably assumed that I was dead, I thought with a cringe.
Ashley began to stir almost immediately once the car stopped its forward motion, coming to a smooth stop on the gravel driveway that lined the side of the immense house. The porch light was every bit as bright as I remembered it to be, coming awfully close to turning night into day. Memories of sitting with Mark on those wide porch steps in the calm, quiet evenings long after the rest of the house had retired to their rooms brought a smile to my lips as I gently rousted Ashley. During those long ago nights, we had sat side by side and made fun of the intense glare of the double fixture porch lights, calling them floodlights and attributing their lighthouse-like beacon to Marta’s fear of “varmints.” Oh, how I treasured those nights. I could still remember feeling like nothing could touch us, not here, so long as we stood together, daring fear and uncertainty to try and do its worst because, together, we were solid, and for the most part—unshakeable.
I snorted. “Shows how much I know,” I muttered, shifting Ashley’s weight higher onto my hip. She had fallen asleep once again somewhere between exiting the car and being carried up the stairs. That was probably a blessing, I decided, taking one last look around the enormous whitewashed porch and drawing strength from its gleaming brilliance. Taking a deep breath, I exhaled and stabbed a finger against the brass doorbell before I could lose my courage and do something foolish, like hop back into the car and bolt.
The five-minute wait for someone to answer the door was almost more than my nerves could take; when Marta answered the door and said, deadpan, “Oh it’s you,” it was almost anti-climactic.
“Hi,” I mumbled, for lack of anything better to say. “Uh. Can we come in?” I asked, wishing she would stop looking at me as though I were something that even the cat wouldn’t have dragged in; no matter that, at the moment, I did look the part. Long moments passed while we stared each other down, facing one another like gun fighters in the street. But finally, the older woman’s shrewd eyes shifted to the sleeping child cradled in my arms. “Well, I suppose you might as well come inside.”
I murmured a thank you at her retreating form, although it was doubtful that she heard the quiet words. Understandable. I had given her quite the shock and she hadn’t slammed the door on us; Ash and I would have a clean, comfortable place to sleep for the night, and we were safe for the moment. When I would have been tempted to bristle under Marta’s less than gracious treatment, I reminded myself that the present outcome was more than I had hoped for only a few short hours earlier.
“You can sleep in your old room. The one you used the
last time you were here,” she spoke crossly, leading the way past the formal parlor, beyond the floor-to-ceiling stone hearth, and up the curved staircase to the second floor.
“I remember the room.”
“Here it is,” she announced, flipping the light switch. “Lay the child down on the bed and I’ll help bring in your luggage.”
A single light burned in the foyer by the time I descended the stairway to join a neutral-faced Marta. I stumbled into the room to greet her, courtesy of missing the last step. Way to make an entrance, Claire, I mentally chastised.
“You been drunk driving tonight?” Marta demanded, eyeing me warily from across the room.
“No,” I groaned, righting myself and then taking a seat on the stair tread that had just tried to kill me.
“I have not been drinking. I almost wish I had been. But I’m just tired, Marta. It’s been a while since I’ve slept.”
“Well, you looked like you might be drunk.” She shrugged.
“Well, I’m not.” I frowned.
“You show up here in the middle of the night with bloodshot eyes and you nearly fall down the stairs, and you take offense that I think you’re drunk.” The cross woman shook her head, as though she didn’t know what to make of the situation.