Heartland Junk (Part II): Sanctuary (2 page)

              Despite the warm evening, a tiny chill worked its way into the pit of my stomach and crawled up my spine.

Chapter 2

              ABBY AND Theo showed up on our doorstep Tuesday morning, our eighth day at River House.

              I was asleep on the third floor when I heard the knock on the front door, a light
rat-a-tat
that crept into my dreams and carried me gently into consciousness. I lay for a moment on the floor, cozy under a single sheet with the warm sun drifting through the eastern window, wondering what had woken me up, when I heard it again.

              Even then, I didn't bolt out of bed.
Someone's here
, I thought. It didn't seem odd in the least. That's what people did. They knocked. Then the waking stupor washed away and I was on my feet.

              People didn't knock anymore.

              I was down both flights of stairs faster than a jackrabbit in a brushfire, but even then Jennie beat me to the door. My socked feet slid on the hardwood floor as I stopped, and Jennie and I gave each other a simultaneous look that said,
Is this real?
"

             
Ratta-tat-tat.
"Hello?" I jumped at the voice.

              "Jesus, it's a kid," Jennie whispered. She reached to open the door and Rivet's pounding feet came down the stairs behind us.

              "Don't!" he called.

              "It's a kid, Rivet."

              We'd hammered boards over the tall windows that flanked the door, so there was no way to look outside. I was torn. Visions of freaks—human freaks—flashed through my head. One on either side of the door, using the kid as bait. Ready to murder us the second we cracked the door.

              "We need help," called the small, reedy voice beyond the door. It was definitely a child, but at the age where you couldn't tell immediately if it was a boy or girl. "Please."

              "Who's out there?" I said loudly.

              "My name is Theo and this is Ms. Abby. We saw lights on last night."

              "You've been watching us?" Rivet asked sharply, interrogating.

              "We weren't sure if you were good people, so we waited all night. We came from a bad place. Are you good people?"

              "What bad place?" Rivet asked.

              "Just let them in," Jennie whispered.

              "I don't know. Somewhere a long ways away," said the kid. "We've been walking. We passed railroad tracks."

              "Why isn't Ms. Abby saying anything?" I asked. I felt foolish, hiding from a child like this. But I couldn't shake the feeling. These people were bad news.

              "She don't talk. She never did. Please, sir. We're hungry."

              "This is bullshit," said Jennie. "I'm letting them in."

              "Wait," I said.

              "Not you, Ray," Jennie pleaded with me. "It's just a god damn boy."

              "Just wait." I left them there and raced to the kitchen, down the porch stairs, and around the house. I was still shirtless and shoeless in my socks, and the tough grass bit through the fabric and into the soles of my feet. I fetched up at the corner of the house's front face, took a breath, and peeked around.

              I could see the open porch over a low, dusty line of shrubs, and it seemed to be like the kid said. Just a boy and an older woman, maybe in her forties. The boy was maybe nine or ten—I never could tell ages—and he was thinner than my wrist at the waist. He had short, straight black hair, an oval face, and clothes so dirty I couldn't tell what color they were.

              The woman was taller, sandy-blonde and just as thin and dirt-streaked. Her cheeks and forehead had a dusting of dried mud over them, making it difficult to see what she really looked like. She swayed slightly as she watched the door, as if she might topple over at any moment.

              There was nobody hiding, nobody else in sight. Just them, gaunt, haunted, barely able to hold their feet.

              Shit.

              I stepped around the corner and walked up to the porch. The woman heard me first and jerked around, her eyes terrified. I held up my hands, I come in peace. The boy pressed his back to the door and felt for the woman's hand. He found it and gripped it tightly.

              "Sorry about that," I said. "We haven't seen anyone else since the...you know."

              "Vitala?" the boy said with a quaver as I ascended the steps to the rickety porch. I paused at the top. Christ, and I thought we were scared shitless. What had this kid been through?

              "Yeah. That. Hey!" I called out. "It's me. Let us in, Rivet."

              Both of them backed up to me as the door swung open. The kid bumped into my hip and...fuck...he grabbed my hand! I shook him free, wanting to yell at him for trusting someone too quickly. My earlier visions reversed. What if
I
had been the killer? Stupid kid.

              Jennie saw the whole thing. She giggled and said, "Welcome to River House. I'm Jennie, this is Rivet."

              "I'm Theo," the skinny boy told us again, "and my friend, Ms. Abby."

              "Come on in," said Jennie. "You guys hungry?"

              I followed the newcomers into the house, but Jennie stopped me on the threshhold with a hand on my chest. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't get your name."

              "It's step aside, lady," I said, mustering a cowboy drawl. " 'Fore I call my posse and have you hauled behind bars."

              Jennie giggled. I looked over her shoulder and saw that Rivet had gone with the woman and the boy into the kitchen. "And are they as handsome as you, Sheriff?"

              "Not by half, ma'am, but they can darn a sock with a shooting iron from fitty yards, and I reckon that's good enough." I broke character and grinned. This was fucking silly. I tried to step around Jennie, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me up to her.

              "Are you okay, Ray? It's not us, is it?"

              "Us?" We were so close our shirts touched, and her hand was still on my arm.

              "Me and Rivet," she said.
Oh.
"He's upset. It's about you. You kind of..." she laughed coldly. "You kind of left us for awhile there."

              "Of course it's not you. It's...well, it's all of this. Still in shock I guess." I smiled weakly. Something passed over Jennie's face like a shadow and then was gone. Disappointment?
Don't think about it, Ray.

              "I don't want anything to come between us." Her touch on my arm was soft, barely there, making my arm hairs tingle. Suddenly, she stepped closer and hugged me, exhaling hotly onto my neck. I hesitated, then wrapped my arms around her back. There was nothing wrong with this, I told myself. Just friends at the end of the world. "Nothing," Jennie whispered near my ear, almost to herself.

              I heard footsteps in the living room and pulled away quickly, already thinking of how to explain the hug to Rivet, but it was just the little boy, Theo. He stopped in the center of the archway between the foyer and the living room, facing us.

              "Hey, kid," I said.

              "She won't last long," said Theo, pointing to Jennie. My heart skipped a beat.

              "Excuse me?" Jennie said.

              "You won't last long," he repeated. "Ms. Abby told me."

Chapter 3

              "HOW THE hell am I supposed to know what he meant? The kid is traumatized. He's probably missing a few screws up in his gearbox."

              "Shh," Jennie cautioned. "Keep your voice down."

              "I don't mean anything bad by it," I clarified. "We're all going a little crazy here. The world is crazy. Who can blame him?"

              "Were you listening to him talk to Abby?" Rivet asked. "Creepy shit. I think
I
went a little crazier, just hearing it. Kid's been knocked around, Jennie, and he's probably more loopy than any of us from the drugs. I mean Jesus, he's like ten. What a way to end your childhood."

              "And Abby," Jennie said. "What's her deal? She hasn't said a single word since they showed up this morning."

              "Probably just shock," I said.

              "No," said Rivet. "No, I don't think so. It's more than that. The bitch is catatonic."

              I looked around the room, eyeing the open stairway door, listening for footsteps, breathing. A little paranoid, I'll admit. We'd come up to my third-floor hideout after breakfast with the newcomers, and we were sitting in a circle on the floor in the center of the room, whispering.

              "Well whatever it is," I tried to conclude. I felt like a goddamn conspirator. "
Whatever
it is," looking at Rivet, "they're harmless. Skinny as rails, both of them. They couldn't hurt a fly right now, let alone us."

              "Doesn't take much strength to drive a knife into a sleeping man's throat," said Rivet.

              "Christ!" Jennie exclaimed. "Why do you have to say shit like that?"

              "Just saying."

              "Well just don't say it. My God, I'm freaked out already. I don't need a fucking visual!"

              "We're all freaking out," I said. "But there's nothing to worry about. Trust me on this. I have a good feeling about them. They'll normal up eventually. Okay, are we good here? Let's go down and be good hosts. They probably think
we're
up here plotting to kill
them
."

              "We don't," said a small voice from the stairway. Jennie cried out and leaped to her feet. Theo's face appeared to hover in the shadows over the stairs.

              "Holy shit, kid!" Rivet yelled as Theo stepped into the light of the room.

              "I didn't mean to startle you," Theo said, "but I couldn't help but overhear. Ms. Abby was worried about it, but I told her you wouldn't hurt us. She wants to thank you for letting us in."

              "Anybody else getting a vampire kid vibe here?" Rivet asked.

              "Shut up," I told him. To Theo I said, "I guess it's hard to trust anybody right now. We'll all be down in a moment, buddy. Go ahead, we'll meet you down there."

              "You won't make us go back, will you? I don't want to go back. I like it here."

              "Go back where?" Jennie asked.

              "The bad place," said Theo. He wrapped his thin arms over his chest and shivered.

              "We're not making you go anywhere," I assured the boy. "Go on down, we'll catch up in a minute."

              "Let's go now," said Jennie, standing up and brushing off her knees. Theo started back down the stairs, and Jennie disappeared into the stairwell after him. I was about to follow when Rivet said, "Hold on a minute, Ray."

              "If this is about the—" I started, but Rivet waved his hand. He stood and went to the front window, looking out over River Street.

              "I've been thinking," he said slowly. "We don't know anything about what's going on, and that's starting to piss me off. It's been a week, and we don't know what made people turn into zombies, we don't know how long they last, we don't know how long the drugs work. We don't know shit, Ray. Doesn't that bother you?"

              "Sure," I said. "Of course it does. But what are we supposed to do about that? No TV, no Internet. We're kind of cut off here."

              "Still relying on the old world," said Rivet, turning away from the window. "That's your problem. We have to start thinking different now, coming up with our own way of doing things."

              "Something tells me that in this new world of yours, a week isn't really all that long. Give it time, Rivet. We need to figure out our own survival before we go off looking for answers. Long-term survival, I mean. There's only one pharmacy in Joshuah Hill. We can probably make one more trip back to get whatever we missed, but after that, well, Fortuna's a thirty-minute drive. And then Breckenridge is the next city, and who knows what we'll run into when we start hitting population centers."

              "So what do you have in mind? Long-term, I mean. Stay here in River House?"

              "Why not? It's big enough, and I have a few ideas."

              "Like what?" Rivet asked.

              "I need to make another trip to the supermarket," I said. "And the library. And I'll need your help."

              Rivet made a show of considering. "Okay," he finally said. "I can hang out in Joshuah Hill awhile longer. This fucking town..." He laughed with just a trace of bitterness, and so did I. Still trapped in America's asshole. "But on one condition," he added.

              "Come on, what you mean one condition. You say it like we have any other choice."

              "Okay then, humor me. Help
me
out. Now listen..." He explained his idea. I didn't even have to consider.

              "No fucking way," I said. "That's too dangerous. Not with everyone here."

              "Then we'll do it in the next house over," Rivet pressed. "Come on, Rayman. Tit for tat. I help you read your books, and you help me."

              "What happened to just being friends?" I asked.

              "Yeah, what happened to it?" Rivet said softly. Dammit. The son of a bitch just had to reverse
everything
. I'm rubber, you're glue.

              "Fuck. Okay. Fine. Fuck. Where, though? There aren't any. You've been out there."

              Rivet clapped me on the back. "Not during the day, but they're out there at night. I know you've seen them."

              Firefly rivers, pink will-o'-the-wisps, streaming in the distance, always heading the same direction. Northward bound. I'd seen them.

              "Fine," I said. "You win. But we're doing my thing first. This afternoon."

              Rivet winked, then started down the stairs. I gazed out the window a few more minutes, then followed. Everyone was in the kitchen.