Cruel World (34 page)

“It always creeped me out too,” Collincz said, stepping up beside him. “A week ago this whole lab and three others like it were full of techs and doctors like Holtz. He was in charge, though. He was the brains the military was counting on. When those things started showing up, he had groups go out and harvest samples from the dead ones before the others dragged them away and ate them or whatever they did after dark.”

“What was he doing with the tissue samples?”

“Trying to determine how we became them,” she said, pointing from her chest to the disembodied arm.

“Did he figure it out?”

“Not that I know of. He was making progress, from what I understood, in the days before his wife passed, but then he shut down. That was it for possibly finding a cure. Not that it mattered by then. Everyone was dying or dead.” She looked out the window still drizzling with rain. “We didn’t stand a chance, and the higher-ups seemed to know it too.”

“What do you mean?” Quinn asked.

She appraised him for a moment. “You saw all those tents set up on the way down here, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“They were for the refugees that would undoubtedly show up once the government started broadcasting this location as a central haven. But they served two purposes.” Collincz ticked off her fingers. “One, obviously for shelter; and two, they doubled as body bags. Just pull the stakes and yank on the right edge and the whole thing folds over itself containing whatever’s inside.”

Quinn licked his lips and glanced down at the floor. “What was the reason for setting up the haven around a mine?”

“They said it was for fresh water collection. There’s always groundwater forming in a mine and then there’s the runoff from rainstorms like this one.”

“But’s that not the real reason, was it?” Quinn asked. Collincz shook her head, watching him. “It was for the disposal of bodies.”

She nodded. “We were running one big burial ground. That open mine a hundred yards from here was supposed to be the biggest mass grave in the world. While all the officials ran off to their bunkers, we were supposed to deal with the mess.” She looked away and began to chew on her lower lip. “We hauled thousands of bodies down there before they dissolved completely. That’s what the smell is that hangs over this place.”

“My God,” Quinn said. He leaned against the table. “They never thought there’d be a cure, did they?”

“No. They folded their cards and left the table before we knew what had happened. I think Holtz must have known what was going on all along, but he kept at it. He was sure there was a cure.”

“He’s still alive. He’s immune to the disease. That has to mean something.”

“I thought that too,” Collincz said, taking a deep breath. “I had hope, right up until my fiancée’s unit was taken out by a herd of those things.” She smiled sadly and cleared her throat before turning away. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

~

They spent the evening playing with a set of dominoes they found in a cabinet. Alice helped Ty set up rows of them, guiding his hands through the motions of how to create corners and curves that would fall when the first was pushed over. Soon Ty was creating long, intricate lines, a look of concentration pinching his face.

“I need more of them,” he said after a time.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Alice said. “There’s only the one box.”

“I could make really good ones with a bunch of boxes.”

“I know you could. You’re doing amazing with them.”

Quinn sat a short distance away, staring at the U shape Ty was building on the table, his eyes glazed. Alice pulled her chair closer to him, swatting him on the knee.

“You look like you’re a thousand miles away,” she said.

“I was.”

“Good place?”

“Not really, no.”

“You’re thinking about your father?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

“You’re right. And I need to find out what it is.”

“Quinn, there could be a million reasons why your dad’s signature was on that paper.”

He turned to her. “Roman was a lab technician from Minnesota. Alice, Minnesota was where the plague originated.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves enough for me to…” He caught himself as Ty tipped over the first domino and watched as they all fell in a liquid motion.

“For you to what?” Alice asked. He hesitated.

“For me to go there.”

“What? No, that’s insane. Why would you leave to go back out there? This is the safest place we’ve found. We have multiple layers of protection, trained soldiers with guns, food, shelter. Where else could be safer?”

The images on the documents swam behind Quinn’s eyes, and he opened his mouth then closed it before sighing.

“You’re right; this is the safest place for you and Ty. But I won’t be able to move on until I know.”

“Sometimes knowing isn’t the answer,” Alice said. Her voice was beginning to sharpen, her eyes taking on the hard glint he’d seen so many times over the past days, the determination he so admired. “Sometimes it’s better to let things be.”

“You’re right. But this isn’t one of those times,” he said, and stood from his chair. Ty had stopped playing and was listening, his mouth downturned at the ends. Denver watched from beneath the table and even Collincz had paused from trying to feed Holtz some broth. He moved out of the back room, pushing through the plastic curtain before crossing the front space and out into the open air.

The rain had tapered off and only the lightest of mists fell giving the world a spectral quality. He walked through it, past the side of the building to where the open mine began in earnest.

It looked like an Aztec pyramid in reverse. The hole’s depths were stepped in wide ledges, each signifying a level that the mine had reached and pushed past. The concrete walls erected around its perimeter were dwarfed by distance, but he could still make out their unbroken edges. As the hole deepened, its middle area lessened, but the very bottom of the pit was still immense. He thought that the entire town of Fort Dodge might fit inside the expanse.

He stood there for a long time. Now there was no sea or rocks below him, only a manmade scar in the earth. He could see across to the other side, something he’d never been able to do with the ocean. Across was another barricade he would have to pass. Beyond that was the open land he would have to traverse. And perhaps past that he would find answers.

He waited until all the light had faded from the day before returning to Holtz’s building. Another storm was approaching on the heels of the last. Its angry face of clouds broadened and spit curses of lightning and thunder as it came.

The inside of the building was warmer, and he didn’t realize he was wet and cold until that moment. He paused at the thin divider before turning back and setting up a wide cot in the front portion of the building. The darkness was almost complete. The electric lantern had been turned down to a dull glow, and the windows were lighter shadows in the walls.

Quinn stripped out of his clothing, and hung them to dry on the back of a chair before showering quickly beneath a stream of cool water in the small partition against the wall. After drying off, he slid into the cot, draping one of the heavy blankets over him before curling an arm beneath his head. He closed his eyes to the rippling pulse of lightning and answering thunder in the distance.

He came out of a dream where a field of white tents wrapped around humanesque shapes wriggled and squirmed like an unending plane of maggots. Moans swirled through the air, all of the voices coalescing into a hum of misery that became his name.

“Quinn.”

The whisper wasn’t from his dream. It came from directly beside him.

Alice sat on the edge of his cot, her shape so familiar that he knew it even before the lightning strobed through the windows illuminating her face. She wore a black tank top and matching underwear, her hair a cascade of darkness across the white skin of her back.

“What are you doing?” he asked, beginning to sit up. She placed a cool hand against his chest and stopped him from rising.

“All those times I was looking at you and you thought I was staring at this,” she whispered, letting her hand trail up his neck to cup his face. “I was wondering.”

“Wondering what?” he asked. Heat had blossomed where she’d touched him, spreading outward, downward. His heart was beating so hard he was sure it would rupture at any moment.

“I wondered why you were helping us. I wondered why you were so kind to me and my son. I wondered how you had come by the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen.” She leaned closer to him, only a shadow against the backdrop of darkness. “And I wondered what it would be like to do this.”

She kissed him.

Her lips were soft but strong, moving against his own with gentle pressure. The slick wetness of them was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He reached out, unable to keep from doing so, and put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her closer, feeling the velvety smoothness of her skin. She responded by kissing him harder, her lips more urgent in their movements. Her tongue danced out and slid against his teeth, and he couldn’t help but let out a soft moan.

Alice drew back and pulled the blanket away from him before climbing into the cot. She laid against him, her slender length almost too much to bear. He inhaled deeply, trying to keep control of the heat building in his lower belly.

“I’ve never…” he breathed, her hair brushing his chest and face as she kissed his neck.

“I know,” she murmured. “I’ll be gentle; you’ll survive.” Lightning washed the building again, her eyes dancing in the nimble light.

She peeled her clothing away and then removed his so that they were naked against each other, their skin pressing together as they embraced once again. Her hands moved over his body and then guided his fingers over hers. He explored her, not able to experience enough of her skin. Slowly, she eased herself up and grasped him, before lowering herself down in a settling of pleasure so deep he nearly cried out with it.

“Shhh, not yet,” she said, coming close to him, her breath tickling his ear. She began to move above him, stroking his neck and chest. He clung to her, beginning to shake with a need so great and deep that it became exponential, building upon itself until it was a tower from which he dangled over an infinite drop filled with ecstasy. Alice moaned his name and arched her back before closing the gap between them, their bodies melding into one. There was a tightening inside him that ratcheted up until he thought he would burst. Alice whispered his name and said now, please, please, now, now, now and then he was shuddering with a release so profound all the sound in the world ceased. In the quivering silence, they held each other, spiraling down until he felt like he had returned to the ocean, drifting on his back in gentle waves that rose and fell beneath him.

It seemed like hours before he was able to speak.

“I—”

“Don’t,” she said, putting her fingers to his mouth. “Just hold me.”

“Okay.”

He laid there with Alice pressed against him, aware of every inch of her body, the rising and falling of her chest, the strand of her hair that rested on his temple. He drifted away, the illusion of being on a sun-warmed raft in the middle of the sea carrying him into sleep.

They woke in the early morning hours, both of them moving sinuously against one another, enjoying the heat and closeness. Pallid light streamed in through the window, the day smothered beneath a blanket of hovering clouds.

“Good morning,” Alice said, nuzzling his neck. Quinn smiled, drawing a fingertip up the small of her back.

“Morning. Did that all happen?”

“Every second.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t—” Quinn waved his free hand. “—hold off more.”

“God, Quinn. For your first time, you were, something else…” she trailed off.

“You’re just being nice.”

“Am I ever ‘just being nice’”?

“No, I guess not.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He fell silent for a while, lying still, looking up at the dingy canvas above them.

“You know, I don’t expect anything for helping you and Ty. I hope—”

“That I didn’t pity-fuck you?” she asked, raising herself onto an elbow.” No. I didn’t. And don’t ever ask something like that again.”

“Okay. It’s just hard for me to believe because…” he gestured at his face. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. It was gentle and sweet.

“Believe it.”

They fell silent for a long while, a few raindrops tapping against the roof.

“Alice, I know you’re going to hate me for it, but—”

“You’re leaving anyway, right?”

He shifted, looking her in the eyes. “How’d you know?”

“Because I knew there was no changing your mind last night when you walked out of the room. And because I know I’d do the same thing if it were my father.”

“I would stay, and you don’t know how much I want to, but then it would be like I’m still living behind that fence in Maine. I’d be trapped everyday knowing that he might have had something to do with all this. I’d never be free, not really.”