White Horse (5 page)

“Curiosity killed the cat,” James says.

DATE: NOW

On the second morning after
we leave the farmhouse, Lisa vomits. The sky is dim through the thickly leaved canopy that conceals us from the
road and sky. Under here, the weather is mostly dry, with a chance of frigid drips.

For once, I don’t. Cold beans scooped from a can with a jagged edge settle in my stomach in a nourishing gelatinous lump.

Up ahead is a village. Maybe two miles away. It’s a black dot on a map, nameless but present. We should go around, avoid contact if there’s any to be made. I look at Lisa bent at the waist, unleashing her beans onto the ground. Her hair is in my hands. Poor kid. Although I run the risk of making myself sick, I glance at the mess she’s made. No blood. At least not yet.

Vitamins. They might have vitamins in the town. We could both use them.

“I’m sorry.”

The retching travels all the way from her toes.

“Don’t be. You can’t help it.”

Her thin shoulders shake. “Do you think I’ve got White Horse?”

White Horse. The plague that killed the world’s population. Some preacher down south with a too-big mouth and a popular cable TV show heard voices from God telling him these were the end-times. Dying people had nothing better to do, so they watched. It was that or listen to the static that used to be daytime television.

That preacher named the virus White Horse.

“The first seal is opened and the white horse has come with its deadly rider to test us with Satan’s disease. Any man, woman, or child who doesn’t believe and accept Jesus Christ as his or her savior will die from this White Horse. The nonbelievers will burn in the pits of hell, wishing they’d had the courage to accept the Lord. They will writhe and burn, their souls thick with maggots. This plague is the white horse. And the other three are coming. …”

Everyone assumed it would be a flu-like illness that would knock us out of the evolutionary tree, but it wasn’t anything so merciful. White Horse was like nothing in the medical books except maybe late-stage cancer. The CDC and WHO barely had time to react when people began running to their doctors in droves, toting sick bags and buckets, begging for something to stop the nausea. The vomit turned bloody as
the protective cells, designed to stop the stomach acids from burning holes and leaking into the body, sloughed away. Within days the vomiting quit, only to be replaced with nonspecific aches, some more severe than others.

Then a scientist came forward and told us what we had no way of guessing.

“White Horse is not a disease as such. It’s a mutation. Some outside source has flipped switches in our DNA, turning on some genes, turning off others.” He struggled to keep the words simple enough for the public to understand. Speech faded to mumbles when time came for the media to ask their questions. Enlightenment sans illumination.

I could lie and tell her no, or I could lie and tell her yes. So I take the chickenshit truth route.

“I don’t know.”

She speaks through the bile foam. “I don’t want to die.”

I pull a tissue from my pocket so she can wipe her lips.

“We all die sooner or later.”

“Later sounds better.”

“We should make a bucket list,” I say.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a list of everything we want to do before we die at the ripe old age of three digits. Like skydiving. Or swimming in a waterfall.”

“What’s the point?”

The absurdity of our situation fills my eyes with hot tears. Two women standing alone at the end of the world, talking about things we want to do before we die. We’ll be lucky to get one last hot meal.

“Fun,” I tell her. “There’s a village up ahead. I thought maybe we’d check it out. What do you think?”

“What would you do if I wasn’t here?”

“Probably go around.”

“So, why aren’t we?”

“Because they might have medicine.”

“Do you think I’m going to die soon?”

I shake my head, let the rain take my tears where it will.

“I want to get married and have a family,” she says. “I’m going to put that on my list.”

DATE: THEN

“Forget it,” I tell Jenny
.

My sister’s voice is Minnie Mouse with a dash of fingernails down a chalkboard, but only when she wants to bend me to her will.

“But he’s really nice. You’ll love him. Or maybe you’ll just love him a time or two.” I picture her waggling her eyebrows as she encourages me to have casual sex. Our mother would love that.

“Nice,” I say.

“And dreamy gorgeous.”

“I have to wash my hair that night.”

“I already told him about you. You have to come.”

“Then untell him.”

There’s a gap in her chatter. “You almost had me for a second. I can’t. That would be rude. You have to come.”

“I won’t,” I say, and hang up.

My mother rolls out the
guilt parade and slaps my buttons like my psyche is a game of Whac-A-Mole.

“… two years,” she drones on. “That’s how long it felt. You were the stubbornest baby ever. Not like your sister. At least she had the courtesy to come two weeks early. Three hours. She wanted to come out. Not like you. That was the longest thirty-six hours of my life. …”

I have two choices: attend my sister’s dinner party or tie a plastic sack around my mother’s head until she runs out of nagging. I choose the evil that doesn’t come with a felony conviction.

THREE

DATE: NOW

T
he village appears over the road’s hump: Aphrodite rising from the water. She steps through the never-ending drizzle to greet us. There’s no knowing whether she’s friend or foe, but I guess she could say the same about us. In this world everything is a fat question mark. Taxes are no longer certain—only death.

We pass under a stone arch, the reddish brown of clay earth. The whole village is garbed in this same shade: clusters of earthen cottages with shallow porches and roughly shingled roofs; a handful of shops with wares gathering dust behind grimy windows; a church with its windows shuttered and high wooden doors bolted.

There is a calm that feels anything but peaceful.

We stop. Turn. Inspect the deserted street. Nothing moves. Not even a twitch of lace in a window.

“There isn’t anybody here.” Lisa cups her hands, yells through them. “Hello?” Her words ricochet off the deserted buildings.

“Don’t.”

Her hands fall away. “I didn’t think.”

“It’s okay. It’s just best to be quiet, that’s all.”

“Why? What do you think is out there?”

“Desperate people.” And monsters.

“My dad said that’s why we had to stay at the farm. Because at least there we had food and no one was trying to fight us for it.”

“He was right.”

“Do you think we should go back?”

I don’t answer. My attention is on what appears to be a small grocery store. Neat stacks of preserves in ribbon-wrapped jars fill the lower third of the window display. Fruit and sugar. Our bodies could use both.

“Do you hear anything?”

She listens. “No.”

“Wait here,” I say. Someone needs to protect what we’ve already got.

The bell barely trembles as I ease the door open like I’m handling dynamite. I’m standing in what passes for a 7-Eleven in this part of the world. Or maybe it’s a souvenir shop. That would explain all the woven baskets and cross-stitchings clinging to the walls inside cheap frames. I fill two baskets with preserves: strawberry, peach, cherry. The other shops are useless. A butcher and a produce store, both with rotted wares. There’s no medicine here—not even an antacid. The houses are just as selfish: they give me nothing I can use to heal. What these people had is long gone.

Against one wall I find a broom resting, waiting to be of use. So I grant it that wish, twist its head from its neck, assign it a new occupation.

Outside, Lisa is scuffing her boot on the stone steps leading up to the door. Her mouth droops at the edges as though she’s sinking into darker thoughts.

“Jam,” I announce as loud as I dare, and imbue the word with what I hope is a smile rather than a grimace. “Who needs bread? We can pretend we’re kids and eat it straight out of the jar.”

“Can we go? I don’t like it here. It’s too quiet, if that makes sense.”

A year ago this village would have teemed with life. Tourists oohing and ahhing over the postcard-perfect scenery as they spent too much money for a commemorative trinket that would wind up in a drawer the moment their suitcases were unpacked. Locals smiling at their heavier purses, grateful the road through their village was more heavily traveled,
thanks to a popular movie and a spate of wall calendars. Even in her dark world, Lisa would have loved it then. I would have, too. I used to have one of those calendars, and the movie went great with a quart of Ben and Jerry’s.

“Soon.”

I hang the baskets on the handlebars before curling Lisa’s fingers around the broom handle.

“It’s a cane,” she says, lightly tapping the tip on the foot-worn paving stones. “So sticks and stones won’t break my bones. Thanks.”

My gaze fixates on the church at the village’s eastern edge. Doors bolted. To keep something out. Or maybe in? There could be supplies in there, a makeshift sanctuary.

“Did you find medicine?” she says.

I stark walking. “There wasn’t any,” I throw over my shoulder. “I want to check out the church.”

“I’m coming, too.”

“Someone needs to guard the food.”

“I’m blind,” she says. “Not useless.”

“Okay. But if anything happens, run in the quietest direction and hide.”

In. Definitely in. Because a heavy beam has been dropped into brackets attached to the door’s frame. What is this village hiding? Who sealed the doors and where did they go?

I suck in as much air as I can. I already know I’m going to throw them wide, because what we need might be inside, and because I can’t help myself. Knowledge is power. Or maybe it will lead to capitulation. Best-case scenario I get to talk to God. Because we need to have a talk, He and I, though we haven’t done so in some months. And there’s a good reason for that.

Don’t do it, Zoe
.

Do it
.

Remember the jar
.

Coincidence
.

Words written on a bathroom wall: There is no such thing as a coincidence
.

Curiosity killed the cat. Then it killed the world
.

The thoughts swirl until they’re swept away by my determination. I reach for the makeshift lock that reminds me of the Middle Ages. I wasn’t paying attention in class the day they discussed the history of doors.

“Tell me what to do,” Lisa says.

I guide her hand toward the problem.

“We’re going to push up, okay?”

“Okay.”

Constant dampness keeps the wood swollen; it bulges in a mockery of gestation. My fingers pull from above, then push from below to no result. Lisa’s shoving, too, her face screwed up and intense—the same expression I feel on my face.

The beam shifts, groans, shoots straight up like a rocket, and we both stumble in its wake.

“Thanks,” I whisper. Lisa smiles and dusts her hands together, wipes them on her jeans and does a little
Voilà!
move like she’s a gymnast. I can’t help it, I join in. We spin, twirl, pose, like we have an audience of millions. This is Italy and my inner child is at the helm. I want to throw my coins in the fountain, meet my prince, spend my last dime on a villa, lose myself in the grandeur of Brunelleschi’s dome, be kissed between the legs of Titus’s arch. I want to live here, not die.

Then just like that, our performance stops and we’re ground down by the journey once more.

“What do you think is inside?”

Lisa looks flushed from our silliness. I probably do, too. Tugging the elastic band from my hair, I finger comb the damp strands, then smooth everything back into place and fasten the thick bundle.

Decomposition has its own smell. It’s the mugger of scents, slapping your face, kicking you in the gut then bolting with your wallet while you’re busy staggering and recoiling from the stench. Every so often I catch a whiff of that rotting meat smell. But also … something else I can’t define.

“There’s only one way to find out. Could be something, could be nothing.”

“Whatever it is, you have to tell me.”

“I will. I’m going in.”

She backs up fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I wrench the doors open wide.

My mind goes into overload. Acid bubbles up into my mouth and I wrestle to force it down.

Detach or go crazy.

Holiday snapshots from rainy Italy: corpses, mutilation, rotting flesh. Atop the priest’s corpse a rat died nibbling at what was left of his face. DNA gone so far wrong that even the bones are so gnarled, so anomalous, they’ve ripped through his skin from the inside. What looks like a tailbone. Not just the nub people have, but a lengthy ladder of bones that hangs past the knees. Horny protrusions jutting from what used to be faces. Bodies, unrecognizable as human but too similar to be alien. Italy has made grisly art from the Reaper’s work.

There is a wet sucking sound. I know it. I don’t dare close my eyes to think, and I can’t focus on single pieces long enough to isolate its meaning. It’s a cat’s tongue dragging along a meat chunk, keratin hooks stripping away the flesh. It’s the slurping of noodles from a foam bowl. It’s the sucking of marrow from freshly snapped bones.

Something is feeding. A monster who would be man were it not for a madman’s experiment. Its inhuman lapping is both a whisper and deafening, and my eardrums clang with the sound.

Someone shut them in here. Someone locked them in this place before abandoning this living tomb, and I cannot fault them for that decision.

My hands can barely hold the wooden beam steady. With Parkinson’s-esque control I tamp it down into the brackets with my fists so that thing inside can never get out. I walk away, back to Lisa, fists tight at my side.