Cruel World

by Joe Hart

  “Ty!” Alice said.

  “Excuse me. That was really good.”

  “Do you want more?” Quinn asked, rising from his chair across the room. Ty nodded.

  “You can have the rest of mine,” Alice said, beginning to empty the last of her bowl into his.

  “No, there’s plenty more. Here,” Quinn said, picking up the pan and pouring the remainder into their bowls. Alice looked up at him for a brief second as he scraped the stew out and moved back to his chair.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Thank you!” Ty trilled, his mouth full.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Honestly, this is the first hot meal we’ve had in two days.”

  “Where did you guys come from?”

  Alice hesitated, running her eyes over his face before continuing.

  “Up north in Woodland Mills.”

  “Was it…bad up there?”

  Alice shot a glance at Ty who had finished his meal and was holding the bowl politely in his lap, listening to the conversation. Alice gave a small shake of her head. Quinn rose and crossed the room.

  “All done with your stew, Ty?”

  “Yes, thank you. It was really good.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Quinn retrieved Alice’s bowl as well and brought them to the kitchen, setting them in the sink. He flipped the water on and shook his head when nothing came out of the faucet. He made a circuit of the house in the darkness, opting not to bring the flashlight. In his father’s office, he moved to the window facing the drive. The night was a blanket beyond the glass, the sky without the faintest hint of starshine. He waited, peering into the dark. There was no movement, no tall, pale shapes striding through the layers of shadow, but that didn’t mean nothing looked back at him, watching and waiting for the right moment to strike.

  There was a sliding rasp behind him and he spun, grabbing for the XDM.

  Alice stood in the doorway, her hands raised before her.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

  He let the burning air escape his lungs and released the gun’s grip.

  “It’s okay. I’m jumpy.”

  “I don’t blame you. Must’ve been creepy here by yourself.”

  “It’s my home.”

  “Really big place. Was your dad rich or something?”

  Quinn moved to the large desk and touched the dragon paperweight, only a shape in the dark.

  “You could say that.”

  The silence stretched between them and broke when Alice motioned toward the living room.

  “He’s asleep. I made him a bed on the couch. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. There’s an inflatable mattress upstairs. I’ll go get it for you.”

  “Actually some blankets and a pillow would work. I don’t need a mattress.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. But I could use a drink. You wouldn’t have anything, would you?”

  “I think I do,” Quinn said, moving behind the desk to the small liquor cabinet. Inside he located a long, slender bottle that sloshed when he shook it. After stopping in the kitchen to retrieve two glasses, they settled into the chairs across from the sofa. Ty rested beneath the comforter, his head propped on one of the pillows. The fire’s glow played across his face, making his brown hair seem lighter. When Quinn glanced at Alice, the dried blood on her head looked like a black scar, marring her white skin.

  “You should clean that cut on your forehead, make sure it doesn’t get infected,” Quinn said. “I could heat some bottled water over the fire.”

  “Tomorrow. It’s not bleeding, so I’ll deal with it in the light,” Alice said, grasping the bottle he’d set on the table between them. “Belvedere, wow. Top shelf.” She poured her glass half full.

  “Do you want me to try and find something to mix…” His voice trailed off as she took a long drink of the clear liquid.

  She shook her head and her eyes slid shut as she swallowed. “Ahh.”

  Quinn appraised the bottle for a moment before pouring only enough to cover the bottom of his glass. The vodka stung more than the whisky going down and brought tears to his eyes, but the warmth that bloomed in his stomach felt good.

  “To answer your question, yeah, it was really bad where we came from,” Alice said in a hushed voice, sitting forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ty.” She laughed again, the same callus way she had before. It wasn’t so much unkind as hollow. “When all this started happening, it was the first time I was ever thankful that he’s blind. But he heard enough without actually seeing it.”

  “We watched some on the news when it started. It looked horrible.”

  “It was worse—is worse. I don’t know if it’s still going on or not. Everyone was dead when we left town.”

  Quinn paused with his drink partway to his mouth. “Everyone?”

  “Everyone. Except for the stilts. There were a few of them wandering around, eating things.”

  Alice shivered and took another long sip of vodka.

  “How did they…turn? Was there anything on TV?”

  Alice shook her head. “Nothing. By the time they started showing up, almost everyone was sick. The only thing I saw was the video that someone uploaded to Yahoo.”

  “I saw it too,” Quinn said.

  “Super creepy. They’re mutations of some kind. That’s all I know. The disease must’ve affected certain people somehow and did that to them.”

  “Our cook, my friend, Graham, turned into one of them. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. He was still wearing the earring he always wore.”

  “Oh yeah, you can tell sometimes who they were before. Once in a while there’s still a remnant of clothing on them, but most of them grew way too much to have anything on. Tattoos are still there, scars, birthmarks, some jewelry. The first one we saw was my neighbor, Mrs. Wilhelm. God, she was a pain in the ass while she was human. It was a day or so after everything went down and the media was going nuts. We live—lived—in a shitty apartment building on the north side of town and the bat was across the hall from us. She was a stinky old cat lady, but she had money. I don’t know why she retired in that apartment. I know she’d always been there and her husband died a few years before we moved in. Rumor was she got paid a huge life insurance sum after her old man kicked it and she lived off of that, but she really only spent money on those cats.”

  Alice rolled her tongue around in her mouth as if she’d tasted something bad and then took another drink if vodka.

  “She’d just gotten back from vacation, somewhere in California I think, heard her mention it to the building manager after she finished complaining about the heat not working for the hundredth time, and those cats had already started yowling again. She’d brought them somewhere while she was gone, and it was awesome not to hear them scratching and clawing on the door at all hours of the night and day. That night I’d just gotten back from The Cabinet, it’s a liquor store where I work—worked—anyway, I was coming up the stairs, and there’s this pale, scrawny thing crouched half in and half out of the old bat’s apartment. I remember thinking that somehow one of her chairs had mildewed and she was trying to shove it out through the door. I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what I was seeing. She heard me and stepped out of her apartment all hunkered down because Mrs. Wilhelm was about five foot nothing and this thing was over eight feet tall. It had a cat in its mouth, one of the tabbys. I remember the orange and white stripes on its tail and ass that hadn’t been chewed up yet. Its fur was all matted down with saliva and blood. The thing just looked at me for a minute. It had pieces of gut on its chin, and it just stared at me with Mrs. Wilhelm’s eyes.”

  Alice set her empty glass down and swallowed. She gazed into the fire not saying anything. After she’d been quiet for over a minute, Quinn cleared his throat.

  “You don’t have to finish; I get the picture.”


  “She came for me,” Alice said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “She spit the chewed cat out and started toward me, her long skinny legs pumping and hands touching the floor like some sort of hairless monkey. I grabbed the closest thing to me, which was one of the old fire extinguishers hanging on the wall—they were everywhere in the building—and I swung it up right as she lunged for me. It hit her in the side of the face and her head bounced off the wall as she grabbed at me. I fell on the stairs and managed to snag the bannister on the way down, but the old bat wasn’t so lucky. The stairway was one of the old ones with a landing for the second floor and then for the third but it didn’t turn at all. You could look down from the third floor and see the first floor landing. I was always terrified Ty would trip down them. We would’ve never moved into that damn place if we could’ve afforded somewhere else.”

  Alice seemed to come back to herself and looked around the room. Ty turned in his sleep and sighed. The fire cracked, and a couple of embers flew out of the hearth, fading away in midair.

  “She fell and I heard her neck snap on the second landing. By the time she hit the first floor, there were bones sticking out of her skin and blood running along the treads. All I could think of was, had she gone across the hallway and visited Ty and his babysitter while I’d been gone?”

  The fire eating at the dry wood became the loudest sound in the room again. Alice turned her empty glass slowly on the table.

  “But they were okay.”

  “They were fine. His babysitter was freaked after hearing the commotion outside the door, but I was so thankful she hadn’t opened it. If she had…”

  “Did you leave right away?” Quinn asked, trying to keep her from focusing too much on the memory.

  “Pretty much, if you don’t count the time it took to put some clothes and food together. My car’s a shitty Pontiac Grand Prix, but it never gave me any trouble. It would still be going if those assholes hadn’t run us off the road.” Her eyes swam with tears and she blinked once, long, and when she opened them again, the tears were gone. “They even took his walking cane. I don’t know why or what they’d use it for, but they took it anyway. I looked in the ditches hoping they’d tossed it out after realizing they had no use for it, but it wasn’t there.” She sniffed once and swallowed.

  “I can make him one, I’m sure. Something around here would work,” Quinn offered.

  “No. I’ll find him one when we get going again. There’ll be a medical supply store in Portland.”

  “That’s where you’re headed?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a stop anyway.”

  “Why Portland?”

  She looked at him again, tracing his face with her eyes so that it seemed like fingers were probing his features. He nearly shivered.

  “My mother. She’s in a home there. She’s got early onset dementia.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Alice gripped the vodka bottle and poured one more small shot into her glass, downing it with a toss of her head. “I’m still weighing whether to go or not. I’m sure Portland will be bad, and it’s the last place I want to bring Ty, but I have to know. I couldn’t live without knowing.”

  “And if you find her, where then?”

  “Iowa.”

  “Iowa?”

  “There’s a command center there. It was on the news before most of the stations went down. The government set up a huge compound inside some park or mine in Fort Dodge. They were telling everyone it was a safe haven.”

  “Why Iowa?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with being centralized in the country. I’m thinking I would have set up a safe zone somewhere better than Iowa. Somewhere warmer, like Florida.”

  “Iowa’s not nice?”

  “You’ve never been there?”

  He hesitated, almost saying, I’ve never been anywhere.

  “No.”

  She watched him for a long moment and returned to spinning her glass again.

  “I’m guessing it’s the safest place in the country, if you can get there.”

  “If you can get there.”

  They both fell silent, watching the fire. Ty turned in his sleep again and murmured something. Alice rose from her chair and moved to his side, stroking his brow and smoothing his hair back. Quinn took advantage of the gap in conversation to gather the blankets and pillows from the upstairs closet. He brought them back to the living room and spread them out a makeshift bed on the floor beside the couch. Ty was quiet, and Alice had brought their glasses and the mostly empty bottle of vodka to the kitchen. When she returned and saw the blankets and pillows, she gave him half a smile as she knelt to arrange them further.

  “Haven’t slept in a fort bed since I was fourteen. My dad used to make them when I’d have sleepovers.”

  “Where’s your dad now?”

  Alice paused in smoothing out the comforter on the floor and then resumed.

  “Thank you for everything, for taking us in. You’ve been great. Sorry I freaked out on you earlier. It’s been one of those days.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “The last week has been one of those days.”

  She stood and they looked at one another for a beat before he motioned to the hallway.

  “There’s a bathroom next to the office if you or Ty need to use it. The water’s off, but we’ll deal with it in the morning if need be.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll sleep in the office tonight if you need me.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  He stoked the fire one last time and left the room as Alice settled in beside the couch. He found a sleeping bag in the upstairs closet and unrolled it on the office floor in front of the desk. From there he could see the window and down the hallway. He set the XDM on the floor and positioned himself so that one hand rested on it and closed his eyes. The wind caressed the glass, and several times he nearly sat up to investigate a noise. But when nothing further came, he drifted off into a shallow sleep, dreaming of eyes that watched him from the darkness, unblinking and filled with hunger.

  Chapter 10

  Limbo

  He woke to laughter.

  Quinn sat up in his sleeping bag, the pistol rising with him. There was a span of seconds in which the sounds coming from the living room were completely wrong; they shouldn’t be there in his house. But the prior night’s events came back to him, and he relaxed, wiping away the scratching sleep in his eyes.

  He climbed free of the sleeping bag, his injuries protesting, but not near as loudly as the day before. The ankle was the sorest, and he rotated it clockwise then counterclockwise, standing on the other foot. It creaked and cracked, but there was very little impingement, and the joint didn’t seem to be damaged beyond a strain. After testing it with his weight once more and finding it was definitely better than yesterday, he moved down the hall.

  Alice and Ty were both awake, Alice sitting at the far end of the couch from Ty, gently pinching his wriggling toes that poked from beneath the blanket as she recited a quiet rhyme. He laughed each time she gripped his feet, his face lighting with a smile that exposed his small, even teeth.

  “Snapping turtle dives, under the pond, up he comes, and chomp, he’s gone. Little froggy says, where did he go? Fish swims past saying look out below.” Alice’s voice was soft and smooth as she sang the rhyme. She recited it once more beneath Ty’s giggles before she noticed Quinn standing in the doorway.

  “Morning,” she said, turning toward him.

  “Good morning.”

  “Hi Quinn,” Ty said, still smiling and wiggling his toes.

  “Hi. Are you guys playing a game?”

  “An old rhyme,” Alice said, rising from the sofa.

  “It’s Grandpa Fischer’s. He made it up,” Ty said.

  “Yeah. Okay, Ty, get dressed now.”

  Without protest, the little boy swung his legs free of the blanket and began to grope on the floor for his pair of jeans.

>   “They’re to your left,” Alice said. Ty adjusted his reach and snagged the pants and began to put them on.

  “How did you sleep?” Quinn asked, moving toward the kitchen. Alice followed him, pausing in the doorway.

  “Okay. I think I may’ve gotten a concussion yesterday. It felt like I was lying on a boat last night.”

  “How do you feel this morning?”

  “Better. A little weak, but that might be the vodka.”

  Quinn poured two bottles of water into a pan and brought it to the fireplace. In a matter of minutes, he had the few leftover coals stoked into a blaze, the pan heating beside it.

  “When that water’s hot, you can bring it to the bathroom down the hall and clean your forehead. There’s washcloths in the closet beside the door along with hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet.”

  Alice blinked at him, her mouth opening and then shutting again. Her eyes roamed his face, and after a moment, he glanced away. No one had ever looked at him the way she did. Not unkind, but curious, probing. He was onstage and she the only audience.

  “Sorry,” Alice said, noticing his discomfort. “I—”

  “It’s okay. I know how I look.”

  “It’s not that, I just—”

  “I’ll find something for us to eat,” Quinn said, turning away. He rummaged in the food bag with his head down until Alice retreated from the room. After a few minutes, she passed on the way to the bathroom carrying the pan of water. Quinn cut four apples into sections and put them on plates, then opened a bag of chips, placing a handful beside the apples for each of them. He brought the food into the living room and found Ty sitting beside the glowing hearth.

  “Are you hungry, Ty?”

  “Yeah, really hungry.”

  “Okay, here you go. There’s apple slices there along with some chips.”

  Ty took the plate from his hands and lowered it to his lap.

  “What kind of chips?”

  “Salt and vinegar.”

  “Oh, that’s my favorite.”

  A smile tugged at Quinn’s lips. “Mine too.”

  “Mom might be mad that I’m eating chips for breakfast,” Ty whispered.

  “You can blame me,” Quinn whispered back. Ty grinned and began to eat.