White Horse (10 page)

There’s the scraping of the doors closing and locking as the rusted parts rub together.

I run to the doors.

“No,” I whisper as loud as I dare. “Don’t do this.”

His voice is as cold as winter in his homeland. “They’re an abomination. I warned you.”

“You prick.”

“If you can survive this, maybe your life is worth saving.”

“Your logic is flawed.”

“Is it?” He sounds surprised.

“I’m going to Brindisi, and I’ll be damned if some cheese maker is going to lock me in a barn and blow me off the planet. I haven’t come all that way for this.”

“Have you heard of Charles Darwin?”

“
Origin of Species
. Natural selection. I picked up that bit of trivia
before
I went to work for Pope Pharmaceuticals.” Sarcasm is my intention, but it sounds like desperation.

He falls quiet.

“Hello?”

The locks scrape. The sound is an alarm clock for the sleeping beasts. Sleep falls from them in ragged sheets. Enough of their stuffing is still human that they wake in a fog, clawing at their eyes, trying to figure why they woke prematurely. Who knows if they’ve conquered caffeine addiction yet?

“Lisa?” I scan the barn, search the seams for a way up. “How did you get up there?” But then I spot the heap of rotting sticks on the ground. Leftover ladder parts.

Think, Zoe. Harder
.

Being quiet won’t save us now—only being fast.

“Lisa, you’re going to have to jump.”

Her head and body shake with the idea.

A slit appears between the door and jam. The Swiss stares at me, eyes devoid of warmth. “
On the Origin of Species
, to be precise. I am Swiss. People rely on our watches for their accuracy.”

I risk it all in one harsh breath. “Lisa!”

Her head jerks up. Her mind engages long enough to understand my demand. I snap my fingers, give her an aural goal.
Move toward me, not them
. That way lies madness; she’s known enough of that for all the lifetimes of all the people left in the world.

Three sets of eyes swivel toward me. Two more don’t. The largest male, a man maybe forty years old before White Horse, pins one of the females to the floor facedown, mounts her like a four-legged creature. She squirms beneath him, but only until he bangs her face on the shit-crusted planks. The others crawl towards me, their backs hunched and tense. The sixth villager staggers to her feet. She spasms like a puppet tied to strings, then her joints seem to melt and her bones no longer hold her upright.

White Horse kills a hostage. The once-woman’s body seizes, flinging straw with dying fingers. For a moment, the scene reminds me of macaroni art. A second woman scrambles to her side. She pulls the other close, smoothes the snarled hair with a ruined hand, cradles her until Death rides away with his prize.

“Now!”

For a moment Lisa hangs in the balance, until gravity tucks a finger in her shirt pocket and pulls. Then she’s falling like a pretty pebble.

I collapse under the weight of her, but refuse to stay down. My will to survive is our trebuchet. I shove her ahead of me, squeeze her through the door’s gap into the light, thrust myself into what’s left of the space.

It’s the still-human sobbing that jerks me still. The world is filled with tears; these should be drips in an overflowing bucket. I should be immune. But I still have a heart, and it rushes to sympathize.

I taste their grief when I bite down on my lip. It’s salt with a hint of winter.

The Swiss snatches a fistful of my shirt, drags me backwards.

“Don’t be a fool,” he says. He locks the doors in silence, although the silence is only his. There’s Lisa’s crying. Then there’s me.

“They’re still people.”

“They’re an abomination,” he says. “Unnaturally selected because of a disease we made.”

I don’t ask how he knows about the disease’s origins or how much. Not now. Later, maybe. Right now I want to check on Lisa and get us moving again.

We go as far as the tree where I left my backpack, she and I. Pink rivers take the southern course down her youthful skin, more rain than blood. Her chin is awash with strawberry fluids. The cuts on her head don’t appear to be serious, although there is no way of knowing how deep the damage goes. Could be she’s a time bomb, the seconds ticking away until the pressure inside her skull squeezes the delicate pink hemispheres and …
pop
.

“Hurry,” the Swiss says. He’s sneaked up on us. “The doors are locked, but they might find another way.” He nods at Lisa. “She will recover.”

“What are you, a doctor?”

“Yes.” Equally blunt. He grabs her chin, tilts it up. “As I said, she will be fine.”

“Are you okay?” I ask.

Lisa’s nod blurs into a shake.

“How did they get you?”

Another shake.

“Her eye is gone.” He shoves up her eyelid, revealing a bleeding hole
where there used to be a whitish orb with a pretty gray-green center. “Perhaps they popped it out like a grape. The soft bits are a delicacy.”

“Lisa, baby girl, how did it happen?”

She lifts her head from the Swiss’s hands. In her lap, her fingers curl like dying leaves. They’re wet with tears. “I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Beneath the worn cotton, her shoulders tremble.

The Swiss isn’t done speculating. “The stupid child did this to herself.”

I stand, pull on my backpack, help Lisa to her feet. I need to get her fed and cleaned, then get her away from here before the once-humans find that way out.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask him.

“She’s blind.”

“She always was.”

“And yet, she wanders out here unsupervised. She’s a fool and a liability. You should not trust anyone,” he says. “Not even her.”

“Shut up,” I say. “Just shut up.” But he’s planted a seed and now the vines of it are creeping through my mind.

DATE: THEN

“Have you looked inside the
jar yet, Zoe?”

“No. I know I have to.”

Dr. Rose’s voice gives me confidence. He washes me in calm.

“If you’re going to move past this, you have to look inside.”

“I know.”

“I know that you know.” Our smiles meet and touch in the center of the room, the way our bodies never will.

By the time I reach my apartment my mettle has melted, leaving only fear.

DATE: NOW

“He’s going to blow up
the barn,” I tell Lisa. “I can’t stop him.”

The bicycle is heavy with food again, all of it canned, from the village’s
pantries. I found bandages and antibiotic cream that she now keeps in the waterproof pocket of her rain jacket.

We stand on the road we crossed just yesterday, the world still and damp around us. Then it explodes and fire fills the sky. We don’t fall to the ground this time. We stand and watch and I am not glad the barn is no more. All I can do now is hope those people found a sort of peace.

“I thought I was going to upchuck again,” Lisa says as we watch that piece of our past burn. Her voice is pale and numb. “I heard the rain stop, so I went out for fresh air. I got lost, couldn’t find the window to climb back in. I heard them coming. Making noises like dogs, they were. I didn’t know they weren’t dogs. Not at first. Not until I woke up in the barn. I was trying to get out when I found a ladder, so I climbed it.”

“What happened to your eye?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“You’ll think I’m stupid. A stupid blind girl.”

“A stupid person wouldn’t have climbed that ladder.”

For a moment she fades away. Shock is still lingering around her edges.

“It wasn’t the dog people. There was something sharp in the wood. A nail, maybe. A big, fat nail. See? I’m so stupid. No one will love me now. Not with one eye.”

An invisible line scratched in the ground between us stops me from crossing the breach. And I’m all out of useful words.

“I was supposed to get a Guide dog, before all this. I always wanted a dog. Dogs love you no matter what.”

“What happened?”

“My dad said we didn’t need another mouth to feed.”

She turns away.

DATE: THEN

I don’t know why I’m
perpetuating the lie. Maybe because it’s like an express train: once the journey’s started, there’s no changing tracks until the end of the line. Or maybe I’m just a bad person. But I don’t really believe that.

“I dreamed about the jar again last night,” I start, and then I stop, spread my fingers wide enough that I can massage both temples with my thumb and middle finger. “Actually, no. No, I didn’t dream about the jar at all.”

He’s wearing his business face: smooth, nonjudgmental, eyes bright with awareness. Nowhere can I catch a glimpse of the man who showed interest in knowing more about who I am when I’m not playing a basket case on this couch. He glances down at the notepad, scribbles, lifts his gaze to meet mine.

“Do you feel like that’s progress?”

“What did you just write?”

He stretches back in the chair and, in a blatantly male move, rubs his hand across his stomach. Through his shirt, I can see it’s hard, flat, lightly defined.

“Does it matter?” he asks.

“Probably not. I’m just curious.”

His laugh is tight.

“What?”

“I can’t convince you to open the jar, but you want to look at what I’m writing.”

“Maybe I want to know what you really think about me.” My legs cross. I lean forward. Give him a look Sam once told me was equal parts trouble and seduction. Guilt flashes like lighting in my mind, then disappears. We’re doctor and patient. No,
client
. That’s what he said. But I can’t help reacting to him any more than he can help sitting there with his legs apart, hand on his stomach, all but pointing the way to his cock. Our bodies do what they do—sometimes without our permission.

“So tell me: Am I crazy?”

He breathes deep through his nose then laughs. “Here.” The pad flies across the short distance. My insides crackle with trepidation and excitement.

Milk
.

Toilet paper
.

Call mom after 7
.

Renew gym membership
.

Oranges
.

The words drip-filter into my brain.

“It’s a shopping list.”

“My secret’s out. I need a shopping list. Otherwise I get to the store and forget what I need. Don’t tell anyone my weakness. My reputation’s on the line.”

“You make shopping lists during our session?”

“Not just yours. And not just shopping lists. Sometimes I doodle. Or I make notes for a research project that’s been floating around in my head since college.”

“So you don’t listen?”

“I listen.” His smile unfurls slowly until I’m awash in its beam, but it’s like sunshine on a winter day, impotent to thaw the growing freeze inside me. “I just don’t take notes. Many psychologists don’t. It’s just that clients feel better if we do.”

“The jar is real,” I blurt. “As real as that chair you’re sitting on.” I rub my face in my hands. “It’s not a dream. It’s never been a dream. It just showed up one day out of nowhere.”

My words tear a hole in our rapport. Like shutters closing, his smile, his warmth, his wanting, flip out of sight, leaving the detached doctor in his place.

“It was never a dream?”

“No.”

Tap, tap, tap. Pen on paper. Not making a list this time.

“Tell me about it.”

We hang in a chilly cocoon of silence. I can’t tell if I’m the only one experiencing the freeze.
Do you feel it?
I want to ask.
Do you feel anything?
But to be fair, he doesn’t yet know the nature or scope of my lie.

I tell him everything. The facts. He already knows how it makes me feel. In return, he watches me with regard so cold I shiver in the patch of afternoon sun creeping across the building.

“Why now?”

“I had to tell you. I couldn’t keep it in anymore.”

“Why lie to begin with?”

“I didn’t want you to think I was crazy. Or worse: stupid. It snowballed from there. I didn’t know how to untangle the web.”

“I was on your side, Zoe.”

Was
.

Tap, tap, plonk. He drops the pen onto the pad, sets it aside.

“I don’t know what I can do for you. You need the police, not a psychologist. Unless you make a habit of lying, in which case I can give you a referral.”

I stand, back ramrod straight, shoulders back, chin up, and tuck my purse up under my arm.

“Not necessary. Thank you for your time, Dr. Rose.”

I’m out in the hall, almost to the elevator, before I remember I’ve forgotten to pay him. Hastily scribbling a check, I try not to care that our time together is over, that I’ve brought this upon myself.

When I slink back into his office, he’s still there, sitting in his chair, forehead furrowed. He doesn’t look at me as I come in. He doesn’t look at me when I stand in front of him. And he doesn’t look at me when I hold out the check and let it flutter to the floor.

He looks at me when I grab the collar of his shirt with both hands and kiss him like I’ll die if I don’t.

And he watches me when I walk away without speaking a word. At least, that’s what I hope as I stride down the hall with my heart in my shoes.

DATE: NOW

The Swiss catches up to
us a mile down the road.

“What’s in Brindisi?”

“A boat.”

“Ah. So there is a man.”

“Sometimes a boat is just a boat.”

“So you’re a doctor?” I
ask, sometime later.

“Yes.”

I wait but he doesn’t offer more. “What’s your specialty?”

“Your people would call me a killer, America.”

It takes a moment, but the penny drops and circles the wishing well before clinking onto the pile. “You’re a …” I flail around searching
for something not made of blunt, crude edges. “Reproductive health specialist.”