Jamb (The Cornerstone Series)

by Misty Provencher

  “Don’t watch,” Milo tells me. I’m letting him drag me along so I can keep my eyes over my shoulder. He warns me too late. The woman fires and the man stumbles backward, dropping both bags. After he drops, the woman grabs both bags and disappears over the edge of the berm.

  Mark was trying to protect us after all.

  The North exit is probably going to get us killed.

  As we jog down the street, past the three burning houses that are already trying to lick at the fourth, I realize that the one thing that’s missing is people, even though it looks like a lot of people have already been here and left.

  This subdivision is the kind that would usually have manicured bushes, nice cars in the driveway and matching curtains in all the windows. But as I look around, what I see are doors hanging open, ruts of car tracks cutting across the manicured lawns, open garages without any cars in them. And then I spot a woman’s face, peeking from behind a curtain, but it disappears before I can point it out to Milo. Not that he is interested.

  “It’s not like this everywhere…” I say, but I know the answer. I saw it when Garrett and I first got to the Hotel Celare and we watched all the news channels scramble to keep up with how the world had gone insane. Robbery and rape, accidents and shootings. Beatings in the streets. Looting. And now I’m a part of it.

  “We’ve got to move fast,” Milo says. “Let’s pick a house and hope they’ve got some food we can take with us and that everybody’s left already.”

  “What if there are people there?”

  “What do you think?” he says. I think this isn’t right. I think the world’s gone upside down. I think I’m hungry enough that I’ll steal from someone else’s house and fight them for it, if I have to.

  Milo motions to a driveway—I guess he’s doing the picking—and we go up to the front door. I halt on the steps, but Milo walks right in. “Come on. Get in and out. What are you waiting for?”

  It’s too weird, just walking into a stranger’s house and the inside is worse than the outside. Things are smashed, overturned. Bits of glass from broken photo frames crunch under my feet. A baseball bat, with a smear of red paint on the end, lays on the floor near a busted-up entertainment center. Wires hang loose from where stuff was ripped away.

  Milo walks stops off in the bathroom first and then he walks into the kitchen, like he lives here. I finally move past the living room and around the corner. Milo’s dumped some bathroom stuff into a fabric grocery bag before he starts banging through the cabinets.

  “There’s not much,” he says. “But I can’t believe there’s really anything this close to the Cache.”

  “Cache. Is that what you call a stolen Veritas house?”

  “When we confiscate a Veritas structure,” he corrects me, his eyes flashing around the space as if The Fury could pop up from behind the overturned table. I peek behind it to be sure no one is actually there. And I am already starting to feel crazy, having to pretend that we are part of this insanity without ever taking a break, even when we are alone.

  “There’s nobody here,” I grumble to him, but he narrows his eyes at me like I’m being childish. I turn away and start flipping open cabinets too. Might as well bring back something I want to eat, if there’s anything.

  “Jackpot,” I say, opening a broom closet and finding it loaded with four boxes of microwave popcorn. Milo throws me a fabric bag. I begin loading it up as I say, as lightly as I can, “You know a lot about the procedures.”

  “Yup,” Milo says. He’s adding silverware, a couple bags of dry beans, cans of tuna, a bottle of mustard to his own bag.

  “You’ve been doing stuff with them for a while then?” I needle.

  “Yup,” he says again and then, gathering the top of the bag in his fist, he says, “Let’s get out of here.”

  I grab my bag too, glance around. Standing in a stranger’s house, the hair on my neck isn’t going to lay down, but I still don’t want to leave without getting answers out of him. I think this is the most private place we’ve been in and maybe he’ll answer.

  But I thought wrong.

  It’s not private at all and it’s the baseball bat sailing at my head that clues me in.

  ***

  “Get out of here!” a boy shouts. I duck and catch the bat with one hand. It stings as it hits my open palm, but my field blows open and I move so quickly, the boy doesn’t have a chance. I wrestle the bat away from him and the kid scuttles backward, up against the kitchen wall, his eyes wide and terrified. He can’t be more than ten years old.

  “Are you nuts?” I say. “You could’ve killed me!”

  “This is my house! Get out of here!”

  In a regular world, this kid would be in school today. Learning how to do division, dazing off in history class. This kid would not be trying to defend his house with a baseball bat that’s too heavy for him to swing effectively.

  “Tommy…” a tinier voice comes from behind me. Milo disarms the little red-haired girl behind him, who was holding a shaking gun, trained at his rear end. Both kids are too small for their weapons.

  “I told you to shoot!” Tommy yells at her and she breaks into tears. Tommy shushes her, “Shut up, Anabelle! More’s gonna come if you keep crying like that!”

  Anabelle clamps her mouth shut with a quivering lip.

  “Oh my God,” I gasp, looking back and forth between the kids. “You’re here alone?”

  “Run!” Tommy yells and he disappears around the corner from where he came at the same time that Anabelle takes off from her end of the kitchen.

  “Let’s go!” Milo says, but it’s impulse that sends me after the two kids. I don’t know why, but I need to know where they’re going. I catch right up to them, in what I bet is Anabelle’s princess-themed bedroom. I watch Tommy’s behind as he climbs the shelves in her closet, disappearing into the opening for the attic. He drops a piece of plywood over the opening, but they don’t even bother to sit on it or block it, so when I scramble up the shelves, I just push the plywood to the side and Anabelle screams.

  “Kick her in the face!” Anabelle shrieks and I duck as Tommy tries to do it.

  “Stop it!” I shout, grabbing his foot and pushing him backward onto his rear. I climb into the attic with them. “I’m not here to hurt you,” I say.

  “Ya already did,” Tommy groans, rubbing his back. I grab his wrist and pull him up.

  “You’re fine,” I say, making sure he didn’t land on any nails or anything. The attic isn’t too bad. It’s got a wood floor and a couple windows. It’s hot, but a fan churns in the ceiling that cools it off. It looks like Tommy and Anabelle’s parents may have used the attic for storage. There is a nest of blankets in one corner and a pile of canned goods, boxes of crackers, load of juice boxes and a few milk jugs of water in another. There is garbage all over the place, along with a few dolls, some Legos and some coloring books. It’s pretty obvious that these kids have been living up here a little while.

  “Where’s your parents?” I ask.

  “None of your business,” Tommy says, but Anabelle chirps, “At the store.”

  My broken heart breaks again. At least the fire down the street is on the opposite side.

  “Okay, listen,” I say quickly. “You guys know it’s pretty bad outside…”

  “No duh,” Tommy says.

  “I’m one of the good guys,” I say and just like children, they both seem to exhale and believe me instantly. “Tommy, I don’t want you two to ever go downstairs again if you hear anybody in the house, understand? It’s safer for you to stay up here. Put some of those boxes over the entrance hole after I leave too. If you hear anyone downstairs, stay super quiet and sit on the boxes, so no one comes up here. If they do, then you hit them with the baseball bat and if they keep coming, you shoot them, okay?”

  “Okay,” Tommy says. I can hardly look him in the face. With his little chest out, he looks like a little boy trying to be a soldier. His solemn expression is full of a world that shoul
d never even exist.

  “There’s a house fire down the street,” I say. “If it burns all the way down here, you two have to leave. Watch it, so you know. If you have to leave, you know how to play hide-and-seek. Hide from everybody, okay? And when you think you find some people that are okay, spy on them until you’re sure.”

  This time, it’s Anabelle who answers in her soft little girl voice, “Okay.”

  “Who thought to bring up the food?” I ask.

  “Me,” Tommy says.

  “That was really smart,” I say and Tommy beams. He’s missing a tooth and the permanent one is just starting to sink down into the space. Milo calls up through the opening, “C’mon Nali! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Alright,” I say as I walk to the attic opening and slide through, finding my footing on the shelves.

  “Your name is Nali?” Tommy asks.

  “Nalena,” I nod. Tommy fidgets with the edge of his shirt.

  “When are you coming back?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But I’ll try to come, okay?”

  “Okay,” Tommy says, but his eyes get glassy, as if he’s trying not to cry. To take them into the Cache would be to set them up for a life there and I won’t do that to them. But I don’t know if leaving them out here is really any better.

  “I’m gonna name a doll after you,” Anabelle says. “So you gotta come back and see her.”

  “I’ll try,” I say as I hop down into the bedroom closet. The kids faces hang over the opening. “Put that wood in place and set the boxes on top, like I told you.”

  “Okay,” Tommy says and Anabelle squeaks, “Come back!” right before Tommy drops the board in place.

  ***

  It’s raining hard when we leave. Maybe it will put out the house fires, but it’s still burning when we pass them. My heart is stuck square in my chest, so I can’t breathe, can’t swallow. This whole world has gone insane. The man that the woman gunned down is lying on the service drive as we pass. I look away and we make another wide arc back around him. He doesn’t call out.

  We slide down the embankment on the wet grass, but hang onto our bags. At the bottom, I try not to look at all the cars and Milo walks so quickly, it’s a struggle to keep up with him. We climb the bricks beneath the overpass and we crawl back to the North door. He feels around to pop the hatch.

  “Don’t turn around, or I will blow your brains all over your boyfriend,” say a dark and angry voice right behind me. It’s not the hollow tone, but the barrel of the gun pressing against my head that blows out my field. I peek sideways and recognize her instantly. It’s the woman with the pillowcase.

  “Victor!” she shouts and a man laughs as he ducks down beneath the edge of the overhang. He wasn’t shot after all. There’s not a speck of blood on him.

  “Thought I was dead, didn’t ya?” Victor giggles and then I recognize him. He’s the man who was sitting across from me in the truck. The one who kept rubbing his leg. My insides feel kicked in, like a mushy pumpkin after Halloween. And then, I get angry.

  “Oh, she’s burning red now,” the woman says. “Lookit that field! It’s on fire!”

  Red. I vaguely remember Zane saying a red aura is dangerous. Good.

  “Give Victor your bags,” the woman says. “And if you move one inch more than I think you should, I’ll blow a hole in you.”

  Milo tosses his bag to Victor, but I am still calculating where the bullet will go once it’s fired. Even if I can get out of the way, it could still hit Milo.

  “Gimme your bag, sweetheart,” the man says.

  “Don’t butter-talk her,” the woman snaps. “Or I’ll pop her right here and you can take her head home in that bag with you.”

  “You know I don’t butter-talk anybody but you,” the man says, but when he reaches for the bag, his finger slides into the leg of my shorts. I stay perfectly still.

  “Get your finger out of my shorts,” I say. That’s exactly what it takes.

  “What the hellfire are you trying to pull on me, Victor?” The barrel moves off my head an instant and that’s all I need. I grab her arm and swing it in the opposite direction, both our hands on the gun. Victor lunges, but so does Milo. We tumble down the bricks and the gun goes off, firing down the expressway.

  The woman bites me and I bite her back. Her field springs up too and her Cavis bobs at her jaw, unguarded. I guess she thought a gun was all she needed. I roll on top of her, yank my hand free, and sink two fingers into the dark mush of her Cavis. The woman flops up off the cement once, but then she shudders out.

  Dead.

  I jump up and see Milo squatted over Victor, taking his pulse. I want to run, but I spin in circles with nowhere to go.

  “You okay?” Milo asks. I just killed a person. Killed. And erasing a life, an entire creation—even if it’s one that’s gone haywire—doesn’t feel anywhere near okay. With Addo Chad, I felt justified, but it still didn’t feel okay. My whole body starts shaking, as if it’s trying to run away from me and what I just did.

  “I meant…I meant to subdue her,” I say. It’s a lie. I meant to kill her.

  “She would’ve killed you. I knew her. That was Peggy,” Milo says. His voice is low, sturdy, disappointed. “She deserved it.”

  “He’s alive?” I ask, jabbing a finger in Victor’s direction. Milo walks over and takes Peggy’s gun. “A little,” he says. “Let’s get out of here before he comes to.”

  We slip back through the North door. I don’t bother to fight him when he takes my hand. I’m thinking of what I’ve become. I’m thinking of the degrees of insanity that I’ve seen in The Fury and how close I am to losing it myself. Peggy wasn’t totally insane, like Milo’s Aunt Ignatia, but she was dangerous. She would have killed me, if I hadn’t killed her first. I hope.

  We finally get back to the room and the little guy with the comb-over is still slumped in front of the door. He jumps to his feet the second he sees us.

  “I put my blanket beside the bed. I didn’t expect to have the bed, unless you didn’t want it. Or her. If you don’t want her, I could sleep with her.”

  Milo opens the door, holding it so that I can go inside. He walks in behind me and slams the door in the little man’s face. Then he strides across the room, picks up the blanket and takes it back to the door, throwing the it into the hall before slamming the door shut again.

  ***

  We are lucky enough to have a bathroom in the room and not lucky enough to have a microwave to pop the popcorn. We just eat the tuna, right out of the cans, and then Milo tries to make a tiny popper out of one of the cans, a coat hanger, and a candle stub. It fails miserably. He has to snuff out the flaming science experiment in the toilet.

  In three days of guarding the room, Milo’s tried to get a lock for the door, so we don’t have to stay inside, but has come up with nothing. The peanut butter and the tuna are all gone and every possible way of popping the popcorn in a tuna can has ended in disaster. We don’t have any way to cook the beans.

  All I’ve done the last three days is have nightmares. It took one fast second to kill Peggy, one stab of my finger. And now I know that killing isn’t the hard part. The hard part is how much it comes back and keeps trying to kill me in more terrifying ways. Thinking of it while I’m awake and haunting me in my dreams. I have one nightmare after another and when Milo climbs into bed beside me, folding his arms around me and whispering how it wasn’t my fault, it was self defense, it was the right thing to do…I am grateful to him. But then I fall asleep in his arms and dream of Garrett seeing me lying there with Milo or I dream of Anabelle and Tommy, stuck in their attic forever. Milo wakes me up, my face wet. Then, I have to get out of bed and pace the floor, back and forth, back and forth, until I am too exhausted to stand. I crawl back into bed and it starts all over again.

  On the fourth morning, Milo rubs his face as he watches me pace.

  “You’ve got to get your mind off everything. We’ll go into the hub today an
d trade for a lock.”

  I pause to chew my thumbnail and remember how my mom used to do that. It’s oddly comforting and it’s hard to pretend that I’m not going crackers in this room. “Trade what? We don’t have anything left but beans.”

  “There’s always something.” He dumps his pillowcase on the bed. Besides the stuff he looted from the kitchen, he’s got a bunch of make-up in there. A small palette of eye shadow, with one tub so used up that the silver pan shows in the bottom. A couple half-sticks of eyeliner and a tube of mascara with smudges of the stuff on it. A tiny pair of nail scissors. Dental floss. Toothpaste. Toothbrushes that aren’t even new. Four tubes of lipstick, all in dark, Goth shades.

  I look at the small pile of cosmetics. He’s obviously not going to wear them. And then I start wondering exactly what he’s planning on trading, as he shoves the food into a plastic bag and pushes that bag down into the bottom of the trash bag.

  “What are we trading?” I finally ask, narrowing my eyes. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he slides the eye shadow palette into his pocket, along with the liner and mascara. The lipstick goes in his front pockets and the toothpaste and brushes go in his sock, like he’s holstering concealed weapons.

  “Come on.” He crosses the room to the door. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Outside the door, the little guy is still sitting there, his blanket wrapped around him. Milo pulls a tube of deep red lipstick from his pocket and waves it in front of Comb Over.

  “You can sleep on the floor in there until we get back,” Milo says. “And I’ll give you this, if you can keep everyone else out of the room.”

  Comb Over’s eyes light up as he reaches for the lipstick, but Milo pulls it back.

  “If there’s no one in my room when I get back, you can have it.”

  We leave Comb Over, still nodding vigorously, as he gathers up his blanket and goes into our room. I hope he doesn’t find our food, but even worse, I cringe at the idea of him lying on our bed. Not our bed. The bed. That’s what I meant.