Slowly We Rot (3 page)

Nothing happened.

          Noah got antsy after
sitting as close to completely still as possible for well over an hour.  New
doubts about what he had heard began to seep in as the minutes crept by with
excruciating slowness.  He began to toy with the idea of poking his head back
outside to take another look around, only this time he would take the rifle
with him.  If anyone really was out there, maybe seeing the weapon would make
whoever it was think twice about bothering him.  Despite his fear, the idea was
not without allure.  He was tired of sitting here in the dark.

          But Noah stayed where
he was.

          He sat there and
thought intently about the situation, those new doubts festering and growing
stronger the longer the silence stretched out.  He had been certain of what
he’d heard prior to locking himself in the cabin, but now he was revisiting the
idea that the sound had been produced by an animal or perhaps even some kind of
insect.  Maybe his perceptions had still been off a bit after all the weed he’d
smoked before his long nap.  He seized on this idea with fervent intensity the
moment it occurred to him.  It was much more comforting than the notion that
some mystery person had been observing him from the woods, presumably even
before he’d regained consciousness.

          But the idea didn’t
really hold water.  His weed was potent stuff, but there was no way the buzz
would have lingered so long after his last inhalation.  He had to grudgingly
admit the sound had been no pot-induced aural hallucination.  But he remained
unwilling to let go of the resurgent idea that he’d misinterpreted an animal
sound.  There were animals capable of mimicking sounds made by humans.  Hell, maybe
someone’s pet parakeet had flown the coop years ago, back sometime around when
everything went to hell, and had only just now made its way to Noah’s part of
the world.

          Noah nodded.

          This was an actually
plausible explanation for what he’d heard.  It certainly seemed more rational than
the idea that some crazy person was out there in the woods.  There was just one
problem—Noah didn’t really believe he’d heard a parakeet, or any other kind of
animal, for that matter.

          There was a girl out
there in the woods.

          A laughing, mentally
unhinged girl.  How or why she’d come to be out there didn’t matter.  And he
was definitely right to fear her.  No normal person would announce their
presence that way.  Years after the end of the world, “normal” was a more
relative term than ever, but there was no way that taunting laughter had come
from someone who wasn’t mentally bent in some way.  The girl might yet turn out
to be harmless, but Noah thought it wise to assume otherwise until he was
proven wrong.

          More time passed, maybe
another full hour, in absolute silence.

          Noah’s restlessness
deepened.

          At last, unable to take
sitting there any longer, he slipped off his boots and rose from the chair to
creep slowly across the hardwood floor to the window by the door.  In the event
whoever was out there had come closer to the cabin, Noah didn’t want her
hearing his footsteps.  Letting out a breath, he slipped some fingers between
slats of the window blind and parted them wide enough to peek outside.

          There was no one on the
porch, and the light from the moon was bright enough to see that the clearing
was empty.  He turned his head side to side, taking in as much as he could see
of the surrounding area.  Carrying the rifle with him, he made a circuit of the
entire cabin, peeking out every window until he was certain his visitor had not
come out of the woods.  There was no one in the garden out back, nor was anyone
visible in the vicinity of the well or the log pile.  He supposed it was
possible a lurker might be crouching behind the pile, but he opted not to
investigate further.  The survey of his surroundings had turned up no signs of
impending threat.  That was good enough for now.

          He returned to the
chair in front of the fireplace and sat down again.

          After a while, his
eyelids began to droop.  He fought a losing battle against fatigue a bit
longer, but he eventually surrendered and stretched out on the floor, sleeping
with one hand gripped loosely around the stock of the rifle.

          When Noah opened his
eyes again, he was surprised to find he’d slept through the night.  The oil
lamp had gone out, but faint morning light filtered in through the window blinds,
pushing back the fading semi-darkness in the cabin’s outer room.  Having slept
on his side, Noah stared blearily at the front door a few moments, his head
fuzzy and focused on nothing other than how dry his mouth felt.  Upon realizing
how many hours he must have been unconscious, he sat bolt upright and grabbed
the rifle.  He got to his feet and did a quick sweep of the cabin, heaving a
sigh of immense relief when he determined that no one had gotten in during the
night.

          His heart still racing,
he sat down long enough to pull on his boots.

          Then he went outside.

          The laughing girl was
waiting for him out on the porch.

Noah was all the way through the
door by the time he noticed the girl in the rocking chair.  He immediately cursed
himself for his stupidity and shortsightedness.  He’d failed to do a
preliminary check of the area around the cabin before stepping outside.  It was
the kind of dumb mistake that could have meant the end of his life.

          However, unless she had
something concealed, the girl didn’t appear to be in possession of a weapon. 
Also, her slight build and stature strongly suggested she was no immediate
physical threat.  And a quick glance around the clearing appeared to confirm
she was alone.  These things didn’t excuse letting his guard down, but the
shock of suddenly finding himself in the presence of another living person
after so long allowed him to shrug off the oversight.

          The girl had moved the
chair to the edge of the porch and was rocking back and forth very slowly in
it.  Though he couldn’t see her face, he had a strong sense that she wasn’t
very old.  Her hair was long and black without a single thread of gray in it. 
It was perfectly straight and fell well past her slender shoulders.  She
continued to rock in the chair as the moments stretched out, giving no
indication of being aware of his presence, though she had to have heard the
creak of the door opening behind her as well as the heavy tread of his boots.

          The shock of seeing her
there failed to ebb even after several minutes of silent observation.  He was
having a hard time convincing himself she was real and kept expecting her to
disappear, to maybe turn translucent and fade away like a ghost in some old
movie.  But that didn’t happen and his brow furrowed as something he couldn’t
quite pinpoint initially began to trouble him.

          Then his eyes widened.

          That hair…there was
something familiar about it.

          He shook his head.

         
No.  It can’t be.

          He swallowed hard and
struggled for a moment to find his voice, finally managing to utter a single,
almost inaudible word:  “Aubrey?”

          A small laugh was the
girl’s only response to this query.  It was identical to the one he’d heard
last night.

          Gathering his courage,
Noah stepped away from the door and joined her at the front of the porch.  He
stood a few feet to her right as he peered down into her face, his heart
hammering faster when he saw that his guess had been right.

          His sister had come
home at last.

          “Aubrey…I…”

          She shook her head and
stared straight ahead, apparently not interested in looking at her brother.  “Yes,
it’s me, your sweet sister.  Surprised?”

          Noah couldn’t imagine a
bigger understatement.  He didn’t know what to say and figured it was a
rhetorical question anyway.

          “You’re probably
wondering where I’ve been all this time, what I’ve been doing.”

          Noah again found
himself incapable of response.  He was having a hard time getting a handle on
his feelings.  After giving her up for dead so long ago, he should be happy
about this unexpected reunion, overjoyed, even.  He should be drawing her into
his arms and hugging her so tight she could barely breathe.  In reality, he
felt only trepidation and had no desire to touch her.

          She laughed again.  This
time there was a nastier edge to it.  “You never came looking for daddy and
me.”

          “That’s not fair,
Aubrey.  I had no idea where to look, no fucking clue where dad took you. 
Until just now, I was sure you were both dead.”

          She grunted.  “These
are the things you tell yourself so you can sleep at night.”

          “They’re the truth.”

          She finally looked at
him.  There was a hollow look around her pale blue eyes and her sickly pallor
suggested a prolonged lack of exposure to sunlight.  She was wearing a black
dress and a pair of grimy old running shoes.  The dress had seen better days,
too.  It was badly frayed, with many loose threads at the seams.

          “I don’t care, and I’m
not here to argue with you.  I just wanted to come back and see if you were
still here, because if you’d died or something, I could have forgiven you.  But
you look very healthy, Noah.”

          Noah felt a tear
sliding down his cheek.  “Aubrey…”

          “Your tears are wasted
on me, brother.  Now that I know you’re alive, I’ll be moving along.  Maybe
we’ll see each other again, maybe we won’t.”  Her gaze shifted back to the
empty clearing.  “Probably not, though.”

          “You should stay with
me.”

          Aubrey shook her head. 
“No.  You don’t want me here, trust me.  I’d probably kill you in your sleep
some night.”

          Neither of them said
anything else for several minutes.  They both watched as the light of the rising
sun filled the valley below, Aubrey remaining in the chair despite her stated
intention to move along.  But the splendor of nature was lost on Noah this
morning.  His sister’s bitter words had swept aside his earlier trepidation.  Tears
continued to flow, old emotions reawakening and tearing at his heart.

          “I’m sorry.  You’re
right.  I should have looked for you.”

          She nodded.  “Yes.  You
should have.”

          “At least tell me what
happened to you.  Is dad…”

          He trailed off, unable
to say it.

          “Yes, he is.  He was
dead barely more than an hour after you last saw him.”

          She said this in a
flat, strangely emotionless tone.  Her eyes looked unfocused, like those of
someone far away from here in her head.  For the first time, Noah had an urge to
reach out and touch her, to comfort her somehow.  But he made no move to do
that, knowing the gesture would be unwelcome.

          “We made it out of the
mountains fast.  The road out of here was empty and dad drove like a maniac. 
The highway between here and Knoxville was another story.  It was chaos.  Stalled
traffic as far as the eye could see, wrecked cars everywhere.  Hordes of those
fucking dead things.”

          Noah shook his head,
picturing it.  It was pretty much as he’d always imagined.

          “You should have come
back.”

          “We never should have
left, but daddy was determined.  He would have done anything, whatever it took
so I could get well again.”  A very faint smile touched the edges of her mouth
and then disappeared.  “We’d made it a few miles through all that madness
before a man in a highway patrol car blocked our way.  We thought he was gonna help
us, but he really just wanted to get to me.”

          A deep dread took root
in Noah then.  “You don’t have to talk about this.”

          “But I want to talk
about it.  I want you to know what’s been happening to me all these years while
you’ve been enjoying the good life up here on the mountain.”

          Thinking of those years
of crushing loneliness, Noah just managed to hold back a burst of bitter
laughter.  He wondered what Aubrey would think if he tried to tell her about
his life of hopelessness and isolation.  Would she finally feel something for
him other than anger and hatred?  And what if he told her about all the times
he’d come so close to taking his own life?  Maybe then she’d feel some level of
empathy.  But Noah restrained the impulse to argue with her.  It was clear her
bitterness ran too deep to counter effectively with logic.

          Noah waited for her to
continue, but she had fallen silent.  He glanced at her and saw she was looking
at him with an expectant expression, as if she’d been hoping for the argument
he’d opted not to pursue.  The look on her face hardened as their eyes met. 
“Don’t have anything to say for yourself?”

          “There’s plenty I could
say, but you wouldn’t listen.”

          “You’re right.  I
wouldn’t.  I lost any interest in hearing your side of things after years of
being held prisoner in a pervert’s basement.”

          Noah looked out at the
clearing, unable to hold her gaze any longer as his eyes misted again.

          “That’s right, look
away.  You shouldn’t be able to look at me, if you’ve got any kind of
conscience left at all.  The pervert was a cop before the end of the world,
which was how he was able to fool daddy into getting out of the SUV.  The sick
fuck was wearing his uniform, made us think he was still on the job.  He killed
daddy and he took me.  I was too weak to resist.  Once he had me locked up in
his basement, he fed me a bunch of antibiotics and I got better.  It wasn’t
long before I was wishing he’d just let me die.”

          Noah let out a breath
and uttered two barely audible words:   “I’m sorry.”

          Aubrey snorted. 
“Apology not accepted.  He raped me, of course.  More times than I could ever
count.  And he got me pregnant.  I had the baby.  He killed it moments after it
came out of me, while I was crying on that filthy fucking floor and begging to
hold a goddamned rape baby because that’s what my instincts told me I should
do.  He laughed at my tears and tossed the thing out in the woods.” 

          Noah grimaced. 
“Jesus.”

          “Jesus doesn’t have
shit to do with it.”

          Aubrey got up from the
rocking chair and stepped off the porch, positioning herself in front of Noah
with her hands on her hips.  “All that time I had one hope, one idea keeping me
barely sane, and that was the belief that you were out there hunting for me,
that one day you’d find me and set me free.”  The sharp twist of her mouth
betrayed a deeply entrenched, malignant bitterness.  “But, of course, you
weren’t doing any such thing, were you?”

          Noah at last summoned
the will to defend himself.  “I couldn’t possibly have known what you were
going through or where to even start looking for you.  You must know that.  You
could have been anywhere in the world.”

          Aubrey’s sneer deepened. 
“I don’t give a fuck about your excuses, brother.  I was depending on you and
you let me down, bottom line.  But guess what?  Mr. Rapist died a few months
ago.  Heart attack or something.  But I was still chained up in the basement
with no way out.  I might have died down there, too, if Nick hadn’t come along
and saved me.”

          Noah frowned.  “Who’s
Nick?”

          “He’s the friend who
has you in the crosshairs of his rifle as we speak.”

          Noah gaped at her in
astonishment.  “What?”

          “You heard me.”

          Noah’s head snapped to
the right, his eyes scanning the line of trees at the edge of the clearing. 
The laughter he’d heard last night had come from that direction.  Assuming this
Nick person wasn’t some figment of Aubrey’s imagination, he was probably
somewhere out there.

          “You look scared. 
Good.”

          Noah swallowed a lump
in his throat and forced his gaze back to his sister.  “So you’re here to kill
me, after all.”

          Aubrey shrugged.  “Nick’s
just protecting me.  For now.  I had him hang back because this needed to be
between just you and me.”

          “How do I even know this
Nick person is real?”

          Aubrey lifted an index
finger, pointing toward the sky.  The loud crack of a rifle made Noah flinch. 
A high caliber bullet hit a corner of a support beam at the end of the porch,
resulting in a spray of splinters.

          Noah gasped.  “Holy
shit.”

          “That was my signal for
a warning shot, in case you couldn’t guess.”  Aubrey lowered her hand and smiled. 
“I’ll be on my way now, Noah.  I’ve done what I came here to do, which was to
make you face up to the damage you’ve done.  I hope we never see each other
again, because if we do, I can’t guarantee I won’t have Nick kill you.  My
advice?  Stay in your little area here and don’t ever leave.”

          Before Noah could say
anything to that, she turned away from him and headed for the woods.  In a few
moments, she had disappeared through the tree line.  Noah stared in that
direction for a long time, his thoughts a confused jumble and his emotions in
turmoil.  Now that Aubrey was out of sight, her reappearance seemed like
something out of a dream, like something that couldn’t possibly have actually
happened.

          The impression was
compounded by the memory of how his sleep had been plagued by troubling, often
gruesome lucid dreams for many months after his sister and father disappeared. 
These dreams were always full of foreboding and usually focused on their
unexpected return.  Sometimes his family members came back as zombies, other
times as ghosts.  Still other times they would initially seem normal, but the
illusion would crumble as the dreams took a horrific twist.  Noah had spent
that time feeling like he was being tortured by his brain.

          And now he found
himself wishing this morning’s revelations really had been nothing more than
just another resurrection dream and that, as he’d always assumed, Aubrey had died
somewhere out there in the world years ago.