After (61 page)

“Come on,” she said. “Come to bed.”

Through the dark, she heard him come to her, felt his body near hers, but not touching. When he'd settled and stilled, she felt her way and nestled into the crook of his arm, laid her head on his bare chest. He put his arms around her, so carefully she could hardly feel their weight. He was trying to be quiet, but a few minutes later she felt that particular shudder ripple through his chest and belly. Heard that catch and quiver in his breath. When she touched, his temple was wet.

She said, “I'm alright. Don't lie there worrying about me. Something like that happens, it just reminds me how lucky I am. Not to be locked in a room at the hotel, going through that five times a day.”

In the dark, for a long time there was just the strained flexing of his belly and chest, his uneven breath catching and breaking free. Then Gareth spoke, his raspy voice quiet, even with his lips so close to her ear.

“I understand the sex. I even understand the drive to take it. But I don't understand the hate. The cruelty. Why they would hurt you the way they did. Why they would...”

He couldn't even say it.

“They see a woman free, maybe they blame me for the scarce supply. It's my fault they've never had a chance at a wife. My fault they only qualify for the sex hotel twice a year. So they wanted to punish me.”

She couldn't stop smelling their piss. It was probably just in her head, but even telling herself that, she smelled it in everything. Even in the blankets that had been tucked away in their packs on the other side of the room.

“Or maybe they're just filled up with hate, with rage, and I just made a convenient target. Like you said, how you grew up, never hearing a woman speak for herself. We're not really human, not to the people who grow up, who live their lives every day in the towns. We're just things that some people get to use more than others. Hurting me, maybe it's just their way of screaming so they get heard. Because it takes something away from the men who treat them like shit.”

It was a long time, but somewhere in the deep dark Gareth stopped crying and fell asleep, still holding her in his arms, cradling her head against his chest. There in that deep dark, she stayed awake. Even now she liked the smell of him, his skin, his sweat, his breath. His smell calmed her. Lulled her. But underneath, sticking with her, fucking with her, their smell. Subtle, elusive, sneaking away just to ambush her again a few seconds or a few hours later, the faint reek of piss.

There was another smell, the stench of lack, of rot. Eating away at everything, hour after hour in the dark, in the light, in the sun and wind, in the rain, in the cold, in the endless humid heat summer after summer after summer. Under her fingertips the wooden floor was smooth by the blanket. But when she spread her arm straight, made half a snow angel in the dust, she found a wound, a soft seeping sore in the wood. She poked her finger into it, into the mossy moist of that oozing slit of decay.

Once the wood, the house, the world had been whole. Rooting, scraping her nail over that festering sore, she picked a bit of scab away. Looking for the hard, healthy flesh. The solid wood from when the world was whole. Scraping, digging, scratching at the mushy rot until a splinter pierced her finger and embedded itself under her nail.

Proof there was something solid, something whole, still, in all the decay and rot.

Crawling from the bed she settled over that soft, moist hole, clawed at the diseased flesh, the gangrenous rot that would eat and eat and eat away at the wood, plank after plank until the whole floor gave way and the sickness spread to the skeleton of that house, until the walls and the roof and the frame were all devoured and it would spread, spread to every house, swallow up the fields and forests and nothing would be whole and firm, anymore.

If she could get it all, scrape away every bit of blackened ooze, the furry growth digesting the strength, the smooth beauty of that old wood someone had sawed and planed and laid and polished, that someone had swept and mopped, where children had crawled and had tantrums and played, she'd know, she'd know, it could happen, it could.

“Nix.”

They wanted to stop her, but fuck them; she'd dig, she'd claw, she'd scrape until it was done, until the festering rot had been torn out, until there was nothing left but the firm, the real, even if the edges were rough and splintered, even if they were all splintered and scarred, she'd get it all.

“Nix.”

Hurry, hurry, before they come. It's not ready yet. Still moist and soft, here.

They were coming. There was a torch, big hot flame and the smell of sulphur.

“Nix, stop it. You're hurting yourself.”

But she had to finish. Even if they'd beat her on top of everything else. Even if they'd press the red-hot metal against her skin again and hold it there until she could smell her own flesh cooking.

They grabbed her and dragged her off but she screamed and kicked and clawed and got back to the hole, the seeping soft black hole and dug and scraped.

Big rough hands clamped on her wrists and pulled her away again. Voices said things and she tried to get away but they held her wrists against her belly and she couldn't kick, couldn't shrug off the man on her back.

“You're okay, you're okay. God, Nix, what have you done?”

He was sad and her nails were all broken and her fingers were bloody, and they don't sound sad, and when she said, “Let me go,” he let her go, and they don't do that either. She crawled away from him, away from her soft, rotting hole, curled up in the corner.

There was no torch. No brand. No pack of men. Just a candle, and Gareth. For a minute, he didn't do anything. Then he said, “You're shaking.” He pulled a blanket from the bed and came toward her. When he was still a few feet away, he stopped and in a soft voice he said, “I'm not going to hurt you.” He came the rest of the way and put the blanket around her. Then he backed off.

A few minutes later, still with his careful voice, he asked her, “What were you doing?”

She held her fingers up and looked at her torn nails, at the blood.

“Going crazy, I guess.”

He found some water somewhere and dug an old cotton t-shirt from one of the dressers. When he squatted down and reached for her hand, though, she cringed and shrank away from him. Hid her chewed up hands from him.

“Nix?”

It was good that he was so hard-looking. That he was scarred and big, with that large straight nose and that wide, stoic mouth. Even now she could almost trick herself, believe that his gray eyes were cold and blank. That his graveled voice wasn't full of feeling.

“Will you let me help you with your hands?”

“I can't fix it.”

He looked over his shoulder at the splintered hole in the floor. When he turned back to face her, she put her hand out, let him touch and examine it by the candle's light. He started washing away the blood and the fetid ooze crusting her fingers, caked under her torn-up nails. Then he started to digging splinters from her fingertips. When he'd finished, he carried the candle off and came back with an old tin of bandages. One by one he peeled them from their yellowed wrappers. Translucent strings like saliva stretched in the candlelight as he picked the waxy backings from tan-colored membranes. The adhesive had gone thick and gooey and seeped through the backs of the strips, but they worked well enough.

“I told you.”

“What?”

“I told you I wouldn't be able to love you.”

A veil of tears rose up, shimmering yellow with the candle's light over his gray irises, and when he put his arms around her, gently pulled her to him, it felt good to feel tears spill and wet her cheeks, even if they weren't her own.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

In the morning they started off, just as they had each morning since they'd abandoned the ghost town hotel. The sun's light dug into her eyes; it struck every drop of dew on every blade of grass, every twig and branch, shattered, and all the shards cut into her. That, plus the high whine hovering around her, an endless, nagging screech, had Nix sore and raw. Telling herself it was just a concussion, that the crushing pain in her head would fade was barely a comfort.

Something—dogs or coyotes—had already been at the corpses in the yard.

Seeing those men gray and gnawed, a softening, an easing, went through her. Not glee.

Not a sense of justice. Just a vague relief. She was their last. Their ruined corpses were odds in someone's favor.

Even though she had woken up in Gareth's arms, today she couldn't bear to have him near her. Hated the sight of him. The sound of his voice. Something heavy and cold churned in her gut, and she kept feeling the urge to hit him. To lift a heavy length of iron—an old pipe, a lug wrench—and swing with all her strength.

She remembered the rope. That was why her neck and wrists were so tender, why they were bandaged. She wasn't sure what had happened to her fingers. But she knew there was something wrong with her.

* * * *

It was cold, sleeping alone. Without him there, the warm scent of him coming into her with each breath, she smelled the decay of the old house, of all the old houses and barns and shops and cellars she'd hidden in night after night after night for all those years. The clammy rot of sweating wood, the moldering of musty mattresses and sofa cushions, pillows and blankets and clothes. Women's clothes and men's clothes and children's clothes. The rotting clothes of three hundred million corpses.

* * * *

Another night. Another dead house in a dead village ten or twelve miles outside the nearest town. In the dark, she stared out the window, scanned the landscape for flickers of lights through the naked branches of trees.

“Nix.”

He was so far away—all the way across the room—and he'd spoken so softly she'd hardly heard him.

“I'm sorry.” Even though he was so quiet and so far away she heard the bump in his voice. “I'm sorry I wasn't there.”

Her throat started to close, but she forced herself to answer.

“I'm not. Odds are, if you'd been there, we'd both be dead. Instead, we're here, and they're meat for the coyotes.”

“If I'd gotten back sooner—“

“What? You could have protected me? Saved me? You're not my fucking chaperon. My watcher. My husband.”

“No. I know that. I'm just sorry. Sorry they did that to you.”

Hadn't they done this already? She'd let him bathe her, cradle her, hold her through the night. She didn't have the strength, now, to walk across the room, take his hand, look into his eyes. Reassure him. She wanted him over there. Far enough away that she didn't have to breathe him in. Feel his warmth. And the thought of touching him, of feeling his arms around her, made her want to scream. Made her wonder if there was a baseball bat or a cane around somewhere, something that would leave bruises. Break bones.

“I think it's hurting you. My being here.” He asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

Yes. Go. Get the fuck away from me. Fucking gentle eyes. Gray velvet eyes, always worried and sad and watching.

She made herself say, “No.”

* * * *

“Gareth.”

He met her eyes.

“I want you to memorize the plan.”

“Alright.” His voice was just a gritty whisper.

She told him everything she'd kept to herself all this time. The place and time of the rendezvous. The signals and passwords. The diversion. What would be coming from the west. What they would find in the east. What was at stake. The cargo.

His gray eyes, clouded with fear and hurt all morning, sharpened and flashed.

The promise of her words rippled through him. Now he looked less wrung out, worn down. Taller. Stronger.

“Really?” he breathed. There was something close to a smile animating his mouth. “I knew, I mean, I had an idea it was something big. But that's...amazing.”

It was. She'd thought it, too. But now she didn't feel it. She just felt like her whole, long march east, like every step she took now, she was walking into a fading mirage.

“It's important,” she said. “I'm...” What? What was she? “My head isn't clear. Don't let me do anything...anything to jeopardize the mission.”

He gave her a smile. “Don't worry. I'll keep an eye on you.”

* * * *

“You've never been there,” he said when they'd settled into a basement to escape the rain that was coming through the roof and the first floor of the house they'd picked for the night.

“Where?”

“East. The place we're going.”

“No.”

“I wonder what it's like.”

He had that look again. Like a child, the way he'd looked with the guitar. Except there was a shadow on that boyish exuberance. Worry.

“Yeah. Me too.” She was trying not to show how much his nearness, his voice grated.

He was quiet for a while, and she could tell there was something he wanted to say. Finally he asked her, the way he asked things without questions: “You're worried. It could be a trick.”

She just looked at him, and watched how whatever look she had on her face wiped that boyish exuberance away.

* * * *

As they neared the rendezvous, they were forced to emerge from the safety of the woods and sneak alongside the highway to get their bearings and find their way to the designated spot. Soaring through the sinking mists, piercing the belly of the somber sky, the blackening spire of a gray stone church beckoned from the corner of the graveyard. They waited for the night to blacken, to keep them hidden, and crept between the headstones, running their hands over the damp, moss-coated grave markers when clouds dimmed the moon's light.

“Here.”

Picking gray from black, her eyes had brought her close, then, like a blind person she traced over eyes and nose and lips with her fingers, found the stone infant in the stone arms. Together they rotated the marble slab atop the marker behind the statue and retrieved the pouch hidden beneath. Crouching down against the gravestone, shielding the message with their bodies, they risked a moment of light to read it, then slipped it back into the pouch and hid it again where they'd found it, and set off.