by G X Todd
Hari had said he got lonely sometimes, and Pilgrim had replied that loneliness could also be peaceful. Now, looking over at the girl and appreciating how the sun bathed her in its golden light, how it bleached the fine hairs on her arms, how the lowered sun visor stamped a strip of shade across her face from mid-nose up, he thought that maybe peace could be found not only in solitude but also in company.
‘When my grammy was gone,’ the girl said, ‘that old farmhouse seemed about three times bigger than usual. I used to wander around the rooms, going in and out, shifting the furniture a little – just by an inch or so – lining it up with the dents in the rugs. Then, the next day, I’d go around again, shifting it all back. I rattled around that house like a lost ball-bearing. You know those puzzle games?’ She looked over at him. ‘The ones where there’s these little holes you have to get the balls into, and you tilt the puzzle and have to be real precise and careful to get those little balls to drop into each slot, holding them there while you fit the next one in?’
He nodded. He knew the kind of game she meant.
‘Well, I felt like one of those balls. Rolling around and around, looking for the place I was supposed to slot into, never able to settle. I realised I had no place any more. Not now Grammy was gone. So I said to myself, “Lace, if you stay here all by yourself, you’ll die here. You’ll die alone and no one will ever know you were even alive in the first place.” And that was . . . well, I didn’t like thinking about that.’
She had gone back to looking out through the windshield, but her gaze seemed to be miles away from the road in front of them. Pilgrim guessed it was all the way back in that farmhouse, in the backyard where he had found her kneeling by the well.
‘To die alone in that place without anyone ever knowing or caring. Like my life wasn’t worth anything. I couldn’t see the point in that, you know?’ She said it quietly, as if not expecting a reply.
They lapsed into silence – well, Lacey lapsed into silence, and Pilgrim remained quiet. He found himself staring out of the side window as the desert swept past, but he barely saw it. He was left with his own thoughts bouncing around his head, whizzing back and forth with no real place to go, much like those ball-bearings in the puzzle Lacey had described. It was unsettling, having nothing to anchor them down with.
They drove past turn-offs, towns beginning to appear, scattered in the distance. More and more highway businesses rolled by: automotive forecourts (boasting lots filled with once-new RVs and trailers, now faded and resting on deflated tyres and rusting trailer jacks), mattress stores, fast-food developments that housed six or seven different chains, every last one of them empty of visitors.
‘Tell me—’ He cleared his throat when the words came out gravelly and too quiet. ‘Tell me something about Alex.’
He felt Lacey look at him, but he didn’t take his eyes from the huge billboard sign approaching. The words were indecipherable to him, but the picture of the pretty woman lying on a fluffy pillow, a soft smile on her face while she slept, drew his gaze and held it captive.
‘Like what?’ she asked.
‘Anything. Doesn’t matter.’
Why do you want to know? he was asked. It sounded like him, this voice – mature, male – but it wasn’t altogether him. Something was off: maybe in the accent, maybe in the preciseness of its diction. The questions and comments came without introspection or pre-thought, as if a smaller, separate version of himself were sitting inside his head, observing everything.
You never wanted to know about her before.
Well, he wanted to know now, that was all. He felt no need to explain it to himself, or find the exact motivation behind the request.
From the corner of his eye, Lacey shrugged.
‘She draws. Pencil drawings, mostly. She had pads full of them, she said, hundreds and hundreds of sketches she’d done, but she lost them all. Said it’s surprising how hard it is to come by good pencils and paper any more. She misses it, though.’
‘You didn’t see any?’
She glanced at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Of her drawings? No. But she has the most amazing hands. You never noticed them?’
Pilgrim shook his head but, even as he shook it, he realised he was lying. There had been bandages, lantern light, and yes, there they were, outside the motel with Alex sitting in the passenger seat of her car, twisted to the side so her feet rested on the ground. Lacey was squeezed in next to her, perched on the door lip. He had been wrapping Alex’s injured wrists and had noticed the strength in her fingers, the calluses on her hands. He’d wondered how those people at the motel had gotten the best of her, as if her predicament had been a singularity in this woman’s history, and yet here she was again, gotten the best of. Pilgrim thought that maybe her bad fortune was brought about by her continued attempts to protect others.
Lacey said, ‘They’re, like, really slim, and her fingers are long. They’re so graceful. I bet her drawings are really beautiful. I’d love to see one.’ She said it so wistfully that Pilgrim started to wish for it, too. He couldn’t recall when he’d last taken the time to appreciate a hand-drawn piece of art.
He was interrupted in his thoughts by Lacey holding her hand up in front of her face, her tone changing to one of distaste as she turned her hand over to study it. ‘Mine are nasty. I have stubby fingers. Look.’ She thrust her hand out to him.
Her fingers weren’t stubby, her hands were just small, the digits short and blunt-fingered.
‘You bite your nails,’ he noted.
‘I know.’ She sighed and put her hand back on the wheel. ‘It’s a bad habit. Grammy told me it’s worse than licking a toilet seat.’
He laughed, the sound rusty and unnatural to his ears. ‘Why the hell would you want to lick a toilet seat?’
She smiled at him, a look in her eye as if to say he’d surprised her again. ‘I wouldn’t. Obviously, I’d rather eat my own fingernails.’
‘Yum.’
‘Shut up. Did you ever notice how the initials for Boy Scout are BS?’ Her smile became a grin. ‘BS is short for Bullsh—’
‘I know what it’s short for,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, for me, it’s not my real name.’
It was an opening for her to ask him what his name actually was, and the old Lacey would have jumped at the chance. This Lacey, however, bit her lip and kept her thoughts to herself. The silence stretched out so long it passed from the heavy, artificial stage and became comfortable once more, settling around Pilgrim like a welcome friend. He didn’t intend to doze again, but soon his head began to nod, his eyelids droop more heavily. The sounds of the engine and the wheels lifted away.
He was standing before a white-fronted hotel, three storeys high, its wrap-around porch fenced with white railings, the balcony above supported by tall, white columns. It was very impressive in a scaled-down sense, like a small town’s attempt at big-city grandeur. The hotel was surrounded by rich garden beds and blooming flowers, a long, lush lawn that ran from the back porch steps all the way down to a rocky shoreline and, beyond that, out to the ocean. The waters stretched as far as the eye could see, the cobalt blue of the sea seamlessly meeting the celeste blue of the sky.
The sea held on to him, called to him, as if sirens floated beneath the cold surface, gazing upwards, hungrily waiting for the next man to stray too near. He could hear their breathing in the waves and on the breeze, whispering through the swaying grasses. On the back porch, a set of wind chimes stirred, emitting a fairy-bell tintinnabulation.
‘The sea.’
He opened his eyes at the sound of his own voice. He wasn’t sure he’d spoken it aloud until Lacey said, ‘The sea?’ She glanced over at him.
He sat up, rubbed a wrist over his eyes.
‘You said something about the sea,’ the girl said.
‘I don’t remember.’ And he didn’t, not really. Already, the image of sea and shoreline and grass and porch and white-columned hotel was fading. ‘I must have been dreaming.’
; Lacey looked at him a moment longer, but they were passing a sign and her head turned to read it. She jabbed her thumb back as it swept by.
‘Williamstown,’ she said. ‘We’re nearly there.’
Pilgrim stayed quiet as Lacey drove them deeper into the maze of residential houses, which soon turned into an urbanised centre filled with blocks of run-down stores and collapsing tenements. He held the shotgun in his lap, leaning forward in his seat, his eyes continuously roaming, picking out every overturned car, every shaded area where someone could be hiding in a doorway or on top of a fire escape or behind a fence, wall, or tipped-over dumpster, checking out every vantage point where a potential attacker might be watching from. It was a mistake being here, he knew. Too many places for ambushes, for traps to be pulled, for disturbed people to run at you with nothing but destruction in their heads. Cities were places scavengers were most likely to converge, with so much ample shelter and the opportunity to rummage for supplies. It drew the mentally ill like flies; they recognised their old lives in the restaurant districts, the shopping malls, the abandoned theatres, the familiar block-by-block geography, and they drew a cold comfort from it.
Lacey had switched on the walkie-talkie, but other than a loud, shrill electronic whistle that had made them both jump, there had been nothing but cricket-like clicks and the odd whoosh of voiceless static.
They stayed far away from the columns of black smoke that billowed up from the skyline before them, not wanting to get near to any fires still ravaging the buildings and cutting off access to streets. On four separate occasions, different figures appeared and drifted out to stand in the middle of the road or on a sidewalk, staring at them as they drove through. Sometimes these figures were alone, sometimes they numbered five or more. Each time, Pilgrim instructed Lacey to take a turn. He half expected them to give chase, but none did. They only stood and watched.
Pilgrim’s eyes passed over the heaped bodies without pause; they resembled a ridge of sediment the winds had pushed up against the taller buildings as an extra support for their foundations. Vehicles had been driven at speed into their concrete walls, front ends crumpled like concertinas, airbags deployed and deflated. Papyrus-skinned bodies in tattered clothes slumped in the front seats with their seatbelts unclasped. Oblivion at 60mph. An overturned ambulance, maybe on its way to help the crash victims, rested upside down on its roof, rear doors flung open, a confetti of disused medical supplies rotting in the gutter.
A short while later, someone dashed across the street far ahead of them, the flash of movement so swift it darted out of sight before Pilgrim could clearly identify it as man, woman or child. He worried the people they had seen were setting a trap for them but, after driving a further ten minutes, and with no further sightings, his suspicions died down a little.
‘This is it,’ Lacey whispered.
He wasn’t sure if she had picked up on his wariness, or if she herself felt the danger of being in such a place, but she seemed jumpy, her eyes flitting back and forth, unable to rest. She steered the truck into a narrow street, hemmed in on both sides by tall apartment blocks. She pulled to a stop at the end, the street curving to the left and dead-ending in four black, squat posts. The vast siding of a mall-type building rose before them. Only a red service door and a large corrugated roller shutter broke its expanse.
‘Stay in the truck,’ he said. ‘Keep the engine running.’
He got out, shut the door on her protests and walked over to the red service door, trying not to wince every time his right foot came down and pain shot through his ribs. He kept his finger curled around the shotgun’s trigger, his head swivelling left and right. He ran his palm over the smooth door; it lay flush against its frame. The lock was a heavy-duty one. When he pulled on the handle, the door didn’t budge. He moved back from it, lifted the shotgun and hammered the stock off the door in three hard raps that echoed in the empty street. He stepped back, shouldered the shotgun and waited.
He slowly counted to ninety-five, the digits of his birthdate added together, missing a few numbers in between when his brain refused to supply them.
No one answered his knock.
He went over to the roller shutter and studied it. Along the bottom ran a strip of black rubber, presumably to cushion the metal when it hit the ground. Resting the shotgun against the wall, Pilgrim crouched and dug his fingers under the rubber runner, scraping his knuckles until he had a grip. He heaved upwards, his pains flashing white-hot, the back of his skull splitting straight down the middle and a blade slicing deep into his side. The roller shutter lifted, though, and a small gap appeared at his feet. Grunting, he let the door go and it clattered shut. He waved Lacey over with the truck.
Within two minutes, the roller shutter was high enough for Lacey to edge the truck forward so Pilgrim could rest the shutter on its hood.
Someone could come in behind us if we leave it open.
He knew that, but he’d much rather have a clear escape route than be held up trying to operate the shutter mechanisms if they had to beat a hasty retreat.
They left the truck wedging the roller shutter open and ducked under it. Even as they stepped inside, a storage container crashed on to its side off to their right, and a man fell out, sprawling across the floor, a clinking of glass bottles rolling after him. He lurched to his feet, shoes skating on a carpet of rotting food packets and inches-thick muck, and made a run for it. Pilgrim heard Lacey gasp, but he was already giving chase. The man had one foot on the bottom step leading up to the loading dock when Pilgrim’s hand snagged the scruff of his neck and a sharp yank dropped him at Pilgrim’s feet, the pleas already running together in their rush to get out.
‘Don’t hurt me! Please God, don’t hurt me!’
‘Stay down!’ Pilgrim snapped, wincing at his creaking ribs as the man twisted on his knees and looked up at him beseechingly, hands held high to show they were empty.
‘I don’t have anything!’
Pilgrim could see that. The man’s face was half encrusted with dried blood, as if one hand had been raised in defence when he was splashed with gore. An eye-wateringly strong stench of alcohol came off him, as if the fumes were seeping from his pores.
‘We just want some answers,’ Pilgrim said.
Lacey had joined them. She held the rifle loosely, but Pilgrim didn’t miss how it was pointed at the man’s chest, her finger a breath away from the trigger.
The collar gripped in Pilgrim’s hand tugged fast with the man’s eager nodding. ‘Yes! Answers! I can do that!’
Pilgrim looked him over: old blood, torn clothes, days-old beard, bloodshot eyes. Underneath the alcohol fumes, he reeked of sweat and death and cough syrup. ‘Whose blood is that?’
The man’s stubbly face crumpled, and Pilgrim clenched his jaw while the man broke down. It took to the count of thirty before the guy gained enough control to force the words out of his gibbering mouth. ‘My . . . my friend’s. Our building, it caught fire. They got us when we came out. They s–slit his throat right in front of me. Jesus, there was so much b–b–blood.’
Pilgrim released the guy’s collar and let him slump over as he sobbed into his hands. As the man wept, Pilgrim glanced at Lacey. The rifle had drooped and was now aimed at a spot in front of the crying man’s knees. Her mouth was downturned at the corners. Pilgrim didn’t like looking at him – he had the lame, scared vibe of a wounded animal left alone to die. He preferred to avert his eyes while the snot and tears leaked out of him.
A number of creeper vines had snaked in through the dry-wall panels and hung down like garlands, their leaves vibrantly green next to the grey drabness of concrete. Places had a feel to them. Lacey’s house had felt lived in, worn, full of memories. The motel owned by the deviant-minded siblings had felt impersonal and somehow misaligned. The library had a welcoming, cultured vibe. This place felt vacant and sterile; not sterile in the sense it had been scrubbed clean, because the leftover trash of people living here was everywhere – there were o
verturned metal barrels which had served as cooking fires and sources of warmth and light, there were empty boxes and cans of food and crumpled bottles, there were even discarded clothes and dirty blankets – but sterile as in empty of life. No one else was here. No one alive, anyway.
‘This place is empty,’ Pilgrim said when the man finally quietened down a little.
A wet sniff, then: ‘They left already.’
‘What’s your name?’ Lacey asked.
‘Jack. Jack Hancock.’
‘Do you know where they went, Jack?’
The man didn’t lift his gaze, his head weaving a little as if he couldn’t quite hold it steady. ‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Wish I did.’
‘No good will to come from following these people,’ Pilgrim told him, suspecting he was telling Lacey, too. ‘They’re dangerous.’
‘They killed my friend.’ For the first time, something other than defeat and insobriety coloured the man’s words. ‘They . . . they can’t just do that.’
‘Of course they can. Don’t be naïve.’
The bloodied man scowled up at him so hard some of the dried blood on his face cracked and flaked off, and for a second Pilgrim wondered if there was a little fight left in him, after all.
Before he could do anything stupid, Lacey stepped closer, drawing the man’s attention. ‘Jack, you should get away from here. We saw people on our way in, and they didn’t look friendly. You understand what I mean?’
He scowled at her for a moment, too, but then all the anger seemed to drain out of him and he slumped where he knelt, his expression becoming bleary and lost. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’
‘Here.’ Lacey slid a hand under his elbow and helped him get clumsily up. ‘OK?’ she asked once he was on his feet, hunched over and breathing heavily. Pilgrim hoped he wouldn’t throw up.
The man nodded, keeping his head down.
‘Your friend wouldn’t want you getting hurt,’ Lacey said quietly.