The Two That Remained

by Mauldin, J Fitzpatrick

  He passed a red Dodge truck with the window rolled down. The driver had a crooked jaw that hung low, and wore a ten-gallon cowboy hat.

  Ryan stumbled back, nearly flattened Emily, and heard the crunch of bone beneath his feet. They were not human.

  The longer he focused on the human skeletal remains, the more he felt as if they were smiling back, either in welcome, relief, or envy that there was a flesh bag in their presence which still clung foolishly to life.

  About the time they’d passed five out of the fifteen houses on the path to Mr. Jones’s, Ryan heard something rustle in the bushes to their right. He clutched Emily’s tether, pulled her close, though she resisted. He tugged gently on the line and she walked the opposite direction. He tested the weight of the baseball bat, tried his ankle for pain, and spun, getting a good look at their surroundings.

  “’Mon. Dada. ‘Mon.” Emily pulled against the tether with surprising torque. “Flowies goco, ‘mon.” She pointed at the house ahead of them and to the right.

  Ryan peered over his shoulder, around his massive pack to their driveway. It was closer than Mr. Jones’s house, but not by much. He tested his ankle once more and felt sweat bead upon his brows.

  “Doggy! Dada, doggy!” Emily said, and an emaciated, shaggy brown mutt, the size of a small car appeared in the alley of an all-brick house.

  If he turned tail and ran now, they’d face the rest of the day with nothing to eat. Emily was being stubborn and he was injured. He’d been kidding himself thinking his ankle was recovered enough for this. The dog panted and heaved, eyes on them.

  “Stay close to Daddy,” he said and sauntered to the other side of the road as if totally calm, keeping Emily near. He shortened the length of her tether each time her proximity increased, silently thanking God that the carabiner loop on her backpack was holding up well.

  The dog matched their speed, pacing on the other side of the street, its milky gaze fixed on their every move. Its right leg twitched, its matted fur gleamed. It didn’t growl at them, not yet, but its lips peeled back, revealing yellowish teeth sharp as razors.

  As they neared the next house, moving ever farther from the safety of home, the dog dipped deeper and deeper into the weed-choked street, following in a pattern of circles, maintaining its uncomfortable distance.

  “Think strong thoughts,” Ryan growled.

  Emily shouted, “Doggy! Hey, doggy!” And waved.

  The dog inched towards them, its maw looking a bit too much like a smile. Emily reached for the dog but Ryan yanked her in the opposite direction. At this small, almost insignificant action, the dog picked up speed and took off after them, thick shoulders and malnourished sinews rippling beneath matted fur, like an alien worm trying to escape fleshy bonds.

  Ryan pushed their pace, trying not to hurt his ankle and be unable to run. He swung his bat in the dog’s direction, hoping to ward it off, but the wild cur moved in with murderous intent brightening in its eyes. It growled a band saw rumble, licked its teeth, and shifted its path.

  It was bolting right for them.

  “Go away! Away! Go! Get!” Ryan shouted, swinging the bat one-handed. It clipped the dog’s snout. It wasn’t perturbed in the least.

  A porch drew up on their left and they made for it. The dog, or as Ryan began to think of it, Cerberus, the three-headed defender of Hades, the land of the dead, came at them again. Ryan edged backwards, shoving Emily behind him. He let go of her tether for a moment, heart constricting, to take hold of the bat in both hands.

  He swung like Babe Ruth in need of a home run.

  The bat missed by a hair and the dog shot past him, straight for the easier prey. For Emily.

  She fell on the ground screaming, the dog’s paws planted on her chest, pinning her in place. Her tiny arms flailed as she futilely resisted.

  “Emily!” Ryan dropped the bat and moved in, yanking the dog off of her and throwing it to the side like he had one of the garbage cans. Cerberus rolled on its back and came again, teeth snapping, throat barking and roaring.

  Emily’s sundress and face were covered in scarlet. Mirrored sunglasses were broken on the ground beside her. Eyes were shut tight. She was screaming bloody murder.

  Ryan kicked out with a boot and caught the dog in the face. He kicked again and crunched into its throat. Before the Defender of Hades could recover, he scooped Emily up, stumbled forward and recovered the bat, then limped into the yard of the closest house. If they could just get inside—

  The beast came at them again, tenaciously pursuing its meal ticket, and sunk its teeth into Ryan’s bad ankle.

  Ryan crashed to one knee, reached back and stabbed the dog in the eye with his thumb. It yelped and twisted as jelly squeezed around its socket, let go of Ryan’s ankle and backed off. Ryan lifted the bat and cracked it in its left flank, making a solid thumping sound. He struck it again, weaker this time, and then sprang to his feet, hobbling up the steps. Emily had gone silent in his arms. Her blood stained his sleeve.

  With his pack still on, he rammed his shoulder into the front door of a brick home with blue shutters. A “For Sale by Owner” sign was in the front yard.

  After three attempts the door frame splintered and they tumbled inside. He dragged them across the foyer, biting back the pain in his leg, and kicked the door shut. The dog threw itself against the portal several times, barks growing louder and more desperate.

  Ryan laid Emily down and tore himself away from her still body to secured the chain lock, praying it would hold. The door shook but it didn’t open.

  He turned back to Emily and felt sick at what he saw. She wasn’t breathing.

  Chapter 10

  “You son of a bitch! Don’t tell me how I should feel right now! You can cram a broomstick up your fucking ass for all I care! Do it bristles first! This is your fault. You hear me? Your fault. You did this to me, you bastard. You!”

  Ryan’s face blanched as the words washed over him. His chest and back were covered in sweat, his wife’s left leg clutched in slick, tired hands, drawing her knee up and back towards her left shoulder. The woman on the other side of his wife, doing exactly the same thing he was but opposite, bit back a peel of laughter. This wasn’t funny. None of this was funny.

  “Just a few more pushes. That’s it,” the doctor said in a calm, practiced tone. “You’re doing great, Mrs. Sharpe. Good work. Just keep at it. Here comes another. Push with it.”

  Ryan wanted to tell this man with collected demeanor to keep his fat mouth shut, but Lillian beat him to it.

  “I am fucking pushing, asshole!”

  Andre Tidmore M.D., seemed unaffected by her common insult. Tidmore knew he could be an asshole from time to time, he’d said as much once, and so Ryan supposed he’d heard much worse than this, and within the last twenty-four hours. This was his second one today that they knew of.

  “Almost.”

  Lillian screamed a scream that came all the way from her pink painted toenails which could have made a stone pillar cry diamonds. “Ahh! Ahh!”

  “Almost.”

  “Agghhhh!”

  “There’s the head.”

  “Ahhh! Fucking fucking fuck! When I’m done with the asshole that did this to me you’re next! You hear me, Andre?”

  “There we are. Just one more time.”

  And Ryan heard the sound of something wet and gross, like a sausage pulled through a pipe of blood yogurt. The room suddenly had a smell to it, one he could only attribute with new beginnings.

  The fleshy object now in Andre Tidmore’s arms wiggled and began to scream. From its round belly, came a dark cord of human rubber which led away and back inside of Lillian.

  “It’s a girl,” Andre said, his voice excited yet neutral. “A healthy baby girl, just like we thought.”

  “Hope you weren’t expecting an alien,” one of the nurses mused, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, doctor.”

  Lillian took Emily, sweet Emily, from her doctor and wept, wept so ha
rd that the angels parted the sky to peer down at them and see what all the fuss was about. Ryan found himself out of breath and unable to see. His vision swam and he wanted to scream with a quantity of joy he had never known. Lillian looked at him and he looked at her, and their daughter—their daughter! He leaned in and hugged them both, gently kissing Emily and Lillian on the forehead. They would be a family from here until forever.

  Doctor Tidmore put a hand on his shoulder and extended a pair of surgical scissors. “Want to cut the cord, new daddy?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Ryan took the scissors and smiled until his face hurt. A random thought hit him. He looked back at the doctor, a serious expression crumpling his elation with new found worry. “Do we get to keep her?”

  Lillian roared with laughter.

  Chapter 11

  Ryan didn’t know what to do. He was always prepared. Always had what he needed when going into any given situation. He was in control of his life, had it clasped by the balls, not the other way around. That was what school had taught him to do, taught him to be. In fact, that was what had held him back for so long taking the plunge into parenthood, even though Lillian and he had known they were ready. Surely they couldn’t screw a kid up as bad as most do. Right?

  He would never forgive himself for this.

  Unlike his work in computer programming, which was predictable to the point that if something went wrong you knew it was human error and just a matter of finding the bug, being a parent was like pissing into a tornado and hoping for Crème Brulee. There was no telling if the uninterrupted stream of nannie-tinted urine would end up back in your face like a spring shower, or be sprinkled over a corn field one state over, saving a lottery winning plant from drought. Neither situation resulted in a tasty dessert. You did your best and hoped for the best in turn. There were just too many factors to be prepared for everything. And so, you covered the basics. Baby proofing. SIDs. Choking hazards. Scrapes and falls. Unsafe foods. Monitoring fevers and knowing when to go to the doctor or wait it out. Anything else, you called 911 or Poison Control.

  Nothing he’d ever done had prepared him for this.

  Emily’s sundress was soaked in blood, the yellow and red of its floral pattern blending together from blossoming epicenters of scarlet. He threw off his pack, letting it crash to the floor and put his ear to her mouth. She wasn’t breathing. He felt her chest with trembling hands for movement.

  “Oh, God. No, please no.” He needed a doctor, an ambulance, someone more qualified than he. This was not his field of study. Instinct forced him to reach for his useless cellphone. He tossed it across the foyer in a fit of rage and heard its screen crack. He drew Emily into his arms and shook her softly.

  “Emme. Come on baby, wake up.” He patted her on the back and tried again. “Please. Don’t’ leave me. Don’t leave me.”

  He laid her down and inspected the primary sources of blood loss. It had been less than a couple minutes since the attack.

  When the dog had pushed her down it dug its claws into the tender skin of her chest. There were several long swipes near her sternum, leading down to the top of her belly. Somehow it hadn’t torn her dress, though it had her skin. Bruises were starting to appear on her right arm. Shallow scratches on her legs bled thinly. Her head seemed fine other than a couple spots on her skin. She had thankfully fallen onto soft soil and decaying leaves, not concrete.

  The worst of it, however, was a pair of deep puncture wounds in her left shoulder, front and back, too close to the throat for comfort. Blood oozed out of the raised openings, tiny flesh volcanos leaking sticky fire. Cerberus’s teeth hadn’t hit an artery, that much Ryan could tell.

  “Emme,” he whispered, putting his palms on either side of her face. “Please come back to me.” He’d failed her. He’d failed to protect her from a known threat. He was better than this, smarter than this. He’d failed. What was he to do? She was all he had left.

  He would never forgive himself for this.

  “Dada?” a soft voice tickled his ears.

  Ryan started. “Emme?” He drew her into an embrace, salty rivers spewing from his eyes. She was alive. Alive. When Cerberus had pushed her down he’d knocked the wind out of her. She was injured, but breathing.

  “Dada,” she said again, voice weak.

  He held her out and grinned. “Emme. You okay?”

  She shook her head and tapped her chest three times. “Star. Gone.”

  He chuckled madly. “Yeah. Star is gone. We’ll find it.” He went to his backpack and removed a diaper, cutting it in half with his pocket knife. He dribbled some water over her shoulder wound, then wrapped it in the diaper, using the sticky ends to seal it tight like a makeshift bandage. Emily cried all the while, whines growing worse with each twitch of his fingers.

  “Shh. Shh, it’s okay, love.”

  “Lany no like.”

  “Lany no like,” he agreed, though Cerberus was nothing like Karen Manford, sixth grade teacher extraordinaire’s, tan cocker next door.

  Cerberus barked from outside. It made both Ryan and Emily flinch, and it forced Emily to cry. Ryan’s forehead broiled.

  “I’m going to kill that fucking dog,” he decided, and hefted the bat over his shoulder. His ankle twisted and he fell to his knees.

  A gun could end this.

  He left his backpack by the stairwell of the vacant home, carrying Emily with him as they took a look around, carefully hopping and stomping and dragging his bum ankle. He hoped the previous owner had left behind antiseptic so he could clean her wounds properly.

  He hoped that creature hadn’t been infected with a virulent strain of rabies that would drive his daughter mad.

  He went through the kitchen first, checking under the sink—empty—then all three bathrooms’ cabinets, including the half-bath—also empty—and came up with no more than a clear plastic bottle of toothpicks and a half dozen used bobby pins. Whoever had lived here was due the moving-out equivalent of an Emmy, for “Best Clean Up Before Moving On with Your Life.”

  Ryan peered out the upstairs front window and could see the house across the street. Mr. Jones’s. It was just two houses over. Surely, an old man like Mr. Jones, former military, would have first aid supplies on hand.

  “Shh. Shh. Daddy has you.”

  Emily began to babble, sniffling between sentences. “No like but the ball has Lany. Gone. Gone. Lany star Mama’s gone. No like. Shew shew.”

  He kissed her on the forehead and pressed his cheek against her. She was warm to the touch. He felt his ankle burning and checked the wound, a distant memory. He cleaned the double half-moon of bite marks with bottled water and dressed it with another diaper bandage.

  After he was done, he hobbled to the back of the house and looked at the rear fence. He could hear Cerberus barking out front. The fence of the vacant house had been knocked flat by a fallen tree that was tall enough to also flatten the fence of the house next door. Ryan could see the back door of the neighbor’s house and a path, mostly clear. They couldn’t wait here, Emily needed her wounds cleaned and her fever dealt with.

  He saddled up his backpack and gave them both a drink of water. Clasping the baseball bat, he went to the back door, and quietly unlatched the deadbolt. He rocked Emily in one arm, her body against him, until she’d gone silent, having cried herself out. This was for the best. He had to tell himself she didn’t have a concussion and that she’d be okay half-sleeping. They needed her silence.

  Ryan stumbled his way through the tall grass of the vacant home’s lot. Where the former homeowners might have done well in emptying the house, the yard was a minefield of old grills, random bits of twisted metal, orange plastic buckets, and grimy, five-gallon water jugs meant for an office. He worked his way through the senseless maze, careful where he stepped, listening for Cerberus. His ankle buckled several times.

  The air was so still he could hear that fucking dog pacing from in front of the house over the gentle swishing of leaves.
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  Ryan reached the fallen fence, tested it with a press of his foot, and stepped onto its uneven surface, balance twice as challenging with a bad ankle. Emily moaned but he tried not to think too hard. He jumped down into the easement, landing flat-footed on his good foot, and moved to the next broken section of fence.

  After he’d cleared the second fence, with only minimal noise and moderate pain, he could see Mr. Jones’s house from the back. Too bad two fences were in the way and there was no gate that Ryan could see. He used the Cardinals’ bat to crack a hole in the back window of the next house, an all brick English revival, then reached inside, careful not to slit his wrist on broken glass. He unlatched the deadbolt and opened the door, closing and locking it behind them. He dropped the pack and sagged into the single wood chair left in the breakfast nook. His ankle throbbed.

  “Mama,” Emily moaned in her fitful slumber, and Ryan couldn’t have agreed more.

  He rested for a couple moments before resuming their search for antiseptic. Despite the fact that this house was well-decorated, a quasi-mid-century modern look that clashed with this style of English construction, Ryan could tell a single man had been living here. The fridge had only beers and soda, along with random condiments—ketchup, dill relish, butter and olives—and a few boxes of once-frozen pizza in the bottom drawer. Plain white dishes were stacked high in the sink, long-abandoned stains of dinner now fossilized and prepped for taxonomy. The living room, though well-appointed with leather furniture and an eighty inch flat screen TV, was littered with a tour of Midwest fast food detritus. On the coffee table was an ashtray full of Marlboro butts and spent marijuana roaches held by paperclips. An empty bottle of vodka and dusty martini glass were on the side table, a toothpick and black ball which might have once been an olive, within.