by Joe Hart
She is covered in the bugs from the shower drain.
They move over her in waves, breaking apart momentarily so that she can see. Their legs scratch against her skin for purchase, antennae fluttering in feathery violation. She opens her mouth to cry out and their legions flood inside her like a black tide.
Zoey sits straight up and releases the scream.
She gags, the feeling of a million segmented legs trundling down her throat so vivid she almost doesn’t see her surroundings.
Almost.
The room she’s in is small, with a single window in the right wall. It is daytime, and a clouded light shines in, landing in a crooked rectangle upon the clean floor beside the bed she rests in. The room is bare save for a wooden chair a few feet away, one of the thin spindles in its back missing. On the wall opposite her is a picture framed in amber wood of a boat caught in a gale, resting upon a heaving wave crowned with foam. A glimpse of dawn streams from a distant horizon and a dark figure is at the ship’s wheel, steering toward the light. Beside the picture is an ebony stained door that is partially open to what looks like a hallway.
Zoey gazes at her surroundings with something that borders on shock. Her mouth is parched but her bladder bulges painfully. She places a hand to her forehead. Cool and dry.
The fever is gone.
Slowly, memories come creeping into the light: her flight from the broken house across the plains, the great fire, the field of giants, and finally the meadow of flowers that weren’t flowers at all, then the man and his dog. Even as she thinks of the animal a steady clicking comes from the hall, growing louder until the door to her room is pushed open from the other side, revealing the large mass of dark fur and two deep brown eyes that study her with uncanny intelligence.
“Uh, hello,” Zoey says. The dog watches her for a long moment and glances around the room before disappearing back down the hallway. There is a deep grunt and the sound of its considerable weight dropping to the floor.
She stares at the empty doorway for several seconds before taking inventory of herself. Her face feels clean, as does her hair, but her body is a different story. There is another layer of sweat and grime beneath her clothing, which she inspects. She is wearing a type of dress, long and softer than any of the clothes she’s ever worn. A lace filigree rings the neck and cuffs as well as the bottom hem. There is a six-inch slit in the fabric over her stomach and she looks at it for a beat before pulling it open.
The wound on her stomach is still bright red, but now a colorless thread has been stitched through it, holding it shut. The skin around it is a mottled blue-black, but the injury itself doesn’t throb anymore.
Zoey swings her feet over the edge of the bed, the movement causing a ripple of dizziness in the back of her skull. She waits for it to pass before standing up. Her legs hold her, though the weakness in them frightens her for more than one reason. The wood floor is cool but very clean and the air is full of a sharp chill that’s not unpleasant.
She makes it to the door without falling and peers into the hallway. It is short with only two other rooms branching from it. One door is shut while the other is ajar. Beyond the hall is a wider room she can see only part of, but it resembles a kitchen. The dog lies at the foot of a counter on a brown sack. Its head is up and it watches her as she emerges from the room.
She tries the door that is closed but the knob stays unmoving in her hand. The other room holds a sort of low toilet and shower stall so confined she’s not sure if she could turn around within its borders. She relieves herself and notices there is no flushing device, only a blue sand that fizzes a little at the touch of her urine. Beside the door is a simple sink with only one handle attached to a nozzle. The water that comes out is warm but not hot.
Zoey makes her way out through the hall and into the rest of the house. A compact kitchen takes up half of the space, the front wall broken by a solid wooden door and two windows looking out into a small clearing lined with immense trees. The other half of the room is dedicated to a set of overstuffed chairs, a stone alcove with a steel tube extending from its top, and a rickety table in one corner holding some sort of lamp with dark liquid inside its base. But these adornments only warrant the briefest scrutiny, for the wall behind them makes her forget to breathe.
Shelves and shelves of books stretch from the floor to the ceiling.
They are all sizes and colors, stacked haphazardly atop one another and lined neatly in a row. Some of their spines are wider than her hand while others are only the breadth of a fingernail. Covers that look solid, covers that curl almost in a circle, titles in bold and scrawling script. So many. She never dreamed there were this many books in the world.
Zoey steps forward and stretches out a hand, hesitant but unable to stop herself. Her fingers graze the first row of tomes, large, leather bound with gold writing on the spines. Encyclopedia, she reads, mouthing the word. She moves down the stacks, eyes spilling over authors’ names as well as titles. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Cervantes. They are like a foreign language. Two shelves down she reads King, Koontz, McCammon, Matheson. Below that Hawking, Einstein, Nietzsche. So many names, so many, too many.
She sinks into one of the chairs, unable to take her eyes from the books. There is more than anyone could read in a lifetime, ten lifetimes. The words and stories from so many minds, all here, contained in one place. She runs her gaze across them again, a fluttery faintness washing over her. This is only some of what had been in the world. Maybe even a very, very small fraction of the work produced. She remembers first stepping from the overturned helicopter into the world, marveling at its size, but seeing the shelves of books rivals it. The sheer mass of knowledge, of creation, of life before, all of it gone now. She had no idea.
Her vision fractures with tears, and she blinks them away. She didn’t know because they kept it from her, kept it from all of them. She wonders how large the stash of books was that the guards and clerics were allowed to read, and anger stokes within her from the constant glowing ember to an all-encompassing firestorm.
She needs to find her clothes and get out of here. Now that she is well again, she can start planning for her next move. She has no idea who the man is who took her in, though his intentions seem good enough judging by the care he’s given her. He could have done something to her while she was unconscious, but she doesn’t feel he did. Regardless, she can’t stay here.
Zoey makes to rise from her seat when a book lying flat atop two others catches her eye.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
She reads the title over and over as if she’s never seen it before, her jaw beginning to tremble. She reaches out and gently lifts it from its place, turning it in her hands. This copy is tattered, much older than the one she used to have, and it is heavier, thicker. With a held breath she opens the cover and begins to page through it, the words igniting a bittersweet ache in her chest.
The dog shifts on the sack across the room, raising its head, ears up. She follows its gaze to the door leading outside but it is several seconds before she hears it.
Footsteps.
Zoey starts to rise but before she can, the door swings open, revealing the gray-haired man standing there. He wears dark pants and a green, threadbare jacket with many pockets. A bag is slung over one shoulder, and he holds a long rifle in his hands. He doesn’t move except for his eyes, which travel across her and around the room before coming to rest upon the book in her hands. He lets the satchel slide from his shoulder before moving his thumb to the rifle’s safety, and flicks it off.
26
Zoey has a split second to register that she’s going to die before the man brings the gun up and spins in the doorway.
The rifle booms, filling the house with a thunderclap before the report echoes throughout the forest. Zoey drops the book and a bird cries out in a strangled voice somewhere outside, then all is quiet again.
The dog is at the man’s side in a black flash, but stops short of the doorway, muscles tau
t and flaring beneath its coat. The man is still sighting down the long barrel, both eyes open and staring. Slowly he lowers the weapon, makes a quiet nicking sound in the back of his throat, and strides out of the house, leaving the door wide open. The dog follows.
Zoey closes her mouth, unable to process what just happened. She manages to stand, her legs holding a bit more strength than when she first woke, and crosses the room to the door.
The yard outside is small, spanning perhaps forty yards in a semicircle. Beyond it, giant pines grow sixty feet or more into the air and form a canopy of branches. The ground is a carpet of fallen needles and moss. Everything is a light shade of green. The man is walking straight across the clearing, the dog at his right heel. The rifle is still pointed into the woods but he no longer holds it at his shoulder.
Zoey steps outside onto a narrow deck shaded by a slight overhang. She moves down two carved chunks of wood to the ground, unsure if she should try to run into the forest or follow the man. She scans the thick blending of trees to either side before glancing down at her feet. She has no shoes and nothing on under the thin garment. The air holds a clean, biting edge to it that she’s sure will become much colder once the sun falls below the horizon. Without thinking anymore she moves away from the house and trails the man and the dog.
They enter the forest in earnest fifty yards from the house, the trees closing in in an almost claustrophobic way, their trunks blending together, branches shielding all sight of the sky. Zoey hangs back several steps behind the man, watching the way his long hair swings from the band at the back of his skull. Neither man nor beast acknowledges her as they move and she’s about to speak when they both come to a halt.
Zoey glances down to where they’re looking and stifles a short cry.
A dead man lies slumped on his side behind a large pine tree. His face is mostly gone above the bridge of his nose, the too-white glare of bone mingled with congealing blood all that is left of his forehead. He is dressed in ragged clothes that look oily in the low light. Several feet away from his outstretched hand is a pistol.
The dog approaches the corpse, sniffs once and huffs a sneeze. The man stares down at the body for a long minute before glancing over his shoulder at her.
“Go inside,” he says, the words guttural.
Zoey gives the dead man one last look and backs away before turning to hurry to the house, which she now sees is mostly built into the side of the hill they’re on. It has an aged look and blends with the cascade of greens and browns that make up the forest and its floor.
She rushes inside and moves to the room she awoke in. Her clothes have to be here somewhere. She will get dressed and climb out the window of her room, get away from the man before he decides to use the rifle on her as well.
She finds her clothes folded neatly beneath the bed. The tears have been sewn with what looks like the same thread that holds her wound shut. She hesitates only a moment before stripping off the dress and pulling on her pants and shirt. Her shoes are nowhere to be found, but she can’t worry about that now—there is no time.
Zoey pulls the quilt from the bed, folding it as tightly as she can beneath her arm before moving to the window. When she looks outside, expecting the slope of the hill dotted with trees, she finds herself staring up a tunnel of dirt and rock that opens to the tree canopy beyond. She curses silently, having forgotten the house is mostly buried. Even if she could get the window open, she’s sure she couldn’t squeeze out through the narrow tunnel.
Zoey spins to exit out the front and stops dead seeing the man blocking the doorway. She didn’t hear his approach or the door opening, and the sight of him there makes her jerk.
“Leaving so soon?” he says.
Her mouth works for a moment before she’s able to speak. “What do you want?”
He watches her before glancing down the hallway. “I think I’d like a cup of tea.”
The man leaves the doorway and a few seconds later she hears him moving things around in the kitchen. Zoey wavers in place and glances at the window before dropping the quilt back to the bed. She leans into the hallway and sees the man standing with his back to her, busy with something on the counter. The dog, in its customary place on the floor, raises its head as she enters the room. She looks at the door leading outside before glancing at her host.
The man shuffles to a cupboard and brings down two cups with small handles on them. He doesn’t move like he did outside when approaching his kill. Instead he looks all of his years, which Zoey judges are many.
A steel kettle begins to hiss, and he pulls it from the top of some kind of appliance with dials before pouring a brownish liquid from it into both cups. There are two chairs on either side of the counter, and he motions to the one closer to her as he sets the cups down.
“Have a seat.”
Zoey hesitates, searching his clothes and hands for weapons. Slowly she slides into the chair opposite him. The man picks up his cup, blowing steam from its top as he studies her. His face is lined around the mouth and eyes. Faint stubble that matches his hair flecks his cheeks, but his nose draws her attention the most. It is crooked and smashed to one side, almost to the point where she wonders how he can breathe through it.
He motions to her cup. “It’s willow tea with a little honey. It’s quite good, though you always have to watch out for a few bits of bark.” When she doesn’t move to pick up the tea he tilts his head. “You’ve drank about two gallons of the stuff since you’ve been here. It’s not going to hurt you.”
Zoey keeps her eyes fastened on him, but picks up the cup and sips from it. Immediately she remembers the taste from her fever dreams. The bitterness is less now, dulled by a hint of sweetness, but there’s no mistaking that she’s had it before. She swallows and sets the cup down. “Who are you?” she asks.
The man closes his eyes and sips his tea before cupping it between his hands as if he’s chilled. “My name is Ian, but I suppose you’re asking for a little more than what to call me.” A twinkle shimmers in his eyes, there and gone in an instant. “This is my home, and that is my friend, Seamus,” he says, pointing at the dog. At the mention of his name, Seamus raises his head, licks his chops and huffs. “I guess you could say I’m an old man living in the mountains. May I have the pleasure of your name?”
She feels her brow furrow, indecision rising within her. “Zoey,” she says finally.
“Zoey,” he says, tasting her name. “Why, that’s beautiful, if I may say so.”
“Why did you help me?” The first drink of tea soothed her throat and she wants another, but doesn’t reach for the cup.
“Because you needed help.” He glances out the closest window before returning his gaze to her.
“Who was the man you killed?”
“I don’t know. Someone who followed me here. Someone who was foolish enough to think I couldn’t hear him trailing me. Someone who wanted to take away what I have.”
“Do you mean me?” she asks.
Ian chuckles. “No. I mean my home, my possessions, as meager as they are. You are not mine, nor would I guess are you anyone’s.”
She blinks. “How long have I been here?”
“About a week. It took me two days to get you back here after you passed out. Didn’t know if you’d live or die. To be honest, I figured you’d die. That wound was septic, and I don’t have much in the way of antibiotics. I fed you willow tea day in and day out, along with a few other herbs that are good for fighting fever and infection.” Ian sits back from the counter, appraising her with unblinking eyes. “You’re a tough one. Most wouldn’t have pulled through.”
Zoey takes another sip of tea, the bitterness almost addictive in a way. She looks out the window at the yard and the trees beyond. “Where are we?”
“Well, that depends on whether we’re speaking of now or what was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Right now we’re simply in a little house built on a hill. If we’re speaking of before,
then I’d tell you we’re in the Pacific Northwest, Washington State to be exact, in the foothills that border the Cascade Mountains.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Ian nods. “Of course you don’t.”
They stare at one another for a time before Ian glances out the window again as if he’s looking for something.
“What did you do with him?” Zoey asks.
“Who? The man I killed? Dragged him off the path for now. I’ll bury him later so he doesn’t attract any wildlife. Isn’t that right, Seamus? Don’t want any of your kind coming to visit.” The dog sighs but doesn’t raise his head. “He’s part wolf, you know. I found him when he was little older than a pup. He didn’t trust me for a time, but slowly he realized I meant him no harm.” Ian pins her with his gaze as he speaks.
Zoey finishes her tea and sets the cup down. “Thank you for the tea.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Where are my shoes?”
“I’m afraid I had to dispose of them. They were falling apart. They seemed not to be designed for cross-country travel. I should be able to get another pair for you, though.”
“I appreciate you helping me, but why did you?”
“Because there was nothing else I could do,” he says simply.
“I think I would have died if you hadn’t.”
“I think you chose to live. I wouldn’t have known you were there if you’d kept quiet.” Ian purses his lips. “May I ask you a question?”
“Okay.”
“How is it that you came to be miles and miles out in the middle of nowhere?”
She looks down at the countertop, which is scuffed and pitted. She finds a smooth portion and runs her fingertip over it. Ian’s eyes press upon her, his waiting a physical presence in the room. When she doesn’t answer he stands from his seat and retrieves her empty cup. He places both cups into the shallow sink and walks out of the kitchen, stopping by the chair she was sitting in when he appeared in the doorway.