Wormwood (22 page)

“Could you ride me double?” Shane asked, looking at Larry with a new respect.

Larry smiled weakly.  “I think I could manage.”

Rudy and Pam, however, weren’t as quick to warm to the idea, much less agree.  Larry was aware of the frank, probing looks he was getting and guessed he knew what they were thinking.  He hadn’t after all, distinguished himself very well in the past few weeks.  In fact, he’d behaved like a scared and selfish coward.  He saw this in their eyes and decided to meet it head-on.

“I know I haven’t done much to earn anyone’s trust; you don’t need to remind me of that; but I’d like to do this, if you think it will help.”  He glanced into the fire, at the remains of his son.  “I don’t know what’s waiting out there, no more than any of you, but I can guess.  I’ve had to deal with it in a way that none of you have and I pray to God… well, I just pray that you don’t have to.”  He looked up at them, his eyes rimmed with naked tears and fire.  “It doesn’t seem likely though, does it.”  It wasn’t a question, but a statement of belief.  “After what I saw today, I think we’re all just buying time — minutes and hours; no more, really.”

Rudy stepped forward.  “If you genuinely believe that, Larry, why do you want to do this?  Why do you want to drive Shane into town on the assumption you’ll find a drugstore that still has a stock of antibiotics and — providing you
do
find them and return here safely — that they’ll do Mike or anyone else the slightest bit of good?”

Pam and Shane both objected to this dour supposition, but Rudy waved them aside, interested in Larry now and not the niceties of his question.  For the moment, they had ceased to matter.

Larry shifted uncomfortably, reluctant to shine such a searching light on his motivations and emotions.  After a moment’s consideration, however, he admitted that he found his bomb shelter a lonely and sterile place, little better than a prison cell.  He admitted that what they thought of him, how they remembered him, mattered, and what he wanted — more than simple survival — was to rejoin their society.  He also understood that to do that, he had to make some sort of atonement.

“That’s admirable, Larry, but reckless as well.  I can’t speak for anyone except myself, but the fact that you
want
to come back is enough for me.  We don’t need to see you risking your life to prove anything.  It’s not an initiation.”

“I realize that,” Larry nodded, “but there’s also a matter of self-respect.  If you each contribute your strengths and skills as the need arises, why shouldn’t I?  I don’t want to be
carried
; I want to
help
.  If I’m standing here listening to you say you need a motorcycle driver, why shouldn’t I volunteer, since I
can
.”  He paused and looked back at them challengingly.  “Unless you’re lying when you say I don’t need to prove anything?”

“That may have been a poor choice of words,” Rudy admitted.  “To be frank,
blunt
perhaps, Shane’s life may well depend on you and I’ve seen you falter under fire.  We would gladly welcome you back into the fold, but — again, to speak my mind — that doesn’t mean I’m ready to trust you with my life yet, or Shane’s.”

“I guess that’s plain enough,” Larry grimaced, “but at this point, is there a difference?  The issue seems fairly black and white now.  There’s
us
and there’s
them
.  What could be simpler?”

“It’s
always
been us and them, Larry; it’s just a question of where you draw the line.  A month ago we never would have taken up firearms to stop those men at the creek, much less hung them from lampposts and power lines once they were dead; but it came down to an issue of
us against them
.  This morning Keith Sturling was one of us and before the day was half over he was one of
them
.  It happened in a heartbeat.  I’m certain Mike can attest to that; in fact, it cost him two fingers.  One day I might have to draw such a line between your house and mine, or the Dawleys.  It all depends on how things unfold.  I expect we’ll all have to make the same decision… when and where we’ll draw those lines.”

“In other words, it’ll be every man for himself?”

Rudy nodded, though hesitantly, as if Larry had goaded him into revealing a card he wasn’t yet ready to play.

“Yes, I believe that in the end, that’s what it will come down to.”

34

They went to their separate homes soon after, the pyre burned down to smoldering embers and the stars gazing coldly overhead, untouched by their fleeting lives and tragedies.

Pam and Shane came to a tentative agreement.  If the motorcycle in the Sturling’s garage was in good repair and Larry was still willing to take him, then she would let him go.  It was the only hope of keeping her husband alive, though even so, there were no guarantees.  She might lose them both, whether he went to town or not.

No guarantees.

She would let him go as mothers the world over sent their sons off to war.

With bitterness, and a prayer for his safe return.

35

Rudy slipped quietly inside his house and bolted the front door.  The rest of the house was locked and tightly boarded, but he made his rounds anyway, knowing he would lie awake in bed, wondering, if he didn’t.

When he’d satisfied himself that all was in order, just as he’d left it, he climbed the stairs and looked in on his children, feeling a brief chill of apprehension touch him as he grasped each doorknob.  The day had taught him how fragile, how tentative their lives had become.  That an unlucky fall or a prick from a rusty nail might easily snowball into a matter of life or death.

And such long lives stretched ahead of them… lives filled with unending caution and fear.

A bleak notion flitted in and out of his head like a rabid bat.

If he was a real father, if he really cared about their futures, he would take the gun that Keith had left behind and make a quick and merciful end to them, himself and Aimee included, because Larry was right when he said they were just buying time.  Days and hours.

So much better, he thought, his face pinched, for them to die in the comfort of their beds… before something came hobbling up the street with the dark curse of Wormwood.

Horrified, he closed the door on his two daughters and backed away from such thoughts, such dubious mercies.

He prayed to God instead to watch over them and keep them safe throughout the night, discovering it was better to think in short-term horizons, in hours instead of years.  Tomorrow would have to take care of itself; he would concentrate on
tonight
.  Everything else was out of his hands.

The house was securely barricaded; there was fresh water and food in their stomachs; his family was intact and sleeping… these things in themselves were enough reason to give thanks.

He would need sleep himself, and best to get it while the street was quiet, while darkness rolled overhead.

He opened his bedroom and smiled.

Aimee was waiting up for him.

36

Candles were burning on either side of the bed, and by the faint smell of sulfur he guessed that she’d just lit them.  The glow they created was soft and warm, tranquil and welcoming; not at all like the hungry blaze of the pyre.  Here in this room, with her, he found he could almost forget about the world outside.

“How long have you been waiting up?” he asked, pleased with the way the candlelight attached itself to her.  The bedcovers were folded neatly across her lap, her back resting lightly against a pillow and the headboard.  She was wearing a sleek, satin robe the color of ripe plums, the front of it open to the waist, exposing her small and shapely breasts.

“Not long,” she answered, shifting slightly so the shadows across her changed.  “I was getting dressed when I heard you come in.”

“You don’t look very dressed,” he said approvingly, checking the shotgun behind the door and turning back to her.  “You look beautiful.”

She smiled shyly, moving her legs.  “Do you think so?”

He kicked off his shoes and unbuttoned his shirt, his eyes drawn to the dark “V” between her thighs.  “Yes,” he nodded, his voice a low purr.  “I do.”  His shirt dropped behind him and he unbuckled his belt, his penis arched and erect, already imagining himself inside her.

He crawled into bed and sent his imagination elsewhere.  Its services no longer required.

37

In the afterglow, the candles extinguished and the room given back to the starlight, he asked her how the children were coping.

“They each have their own ways,” she answered, her voice soft and forlorn beside him.  “After Helen left I tried to keep them downstairs so they would be safe from bullets and couldn’t see out the windows.  I let Denise go up to her bedroom to get her colored pencils, though, and she looked very pale and upset when she came back down.  She didn’t even have her pencils.  I asked her what was the matter and she acted like she hadn’t even heard me.  She seemed very concerned about
you
… asking when you were going to come inside and if you’d remembered to take your gun.  Every shot that went off afterward made her jump like a cat.  I’m sure she saw something when she went up to her bedroom, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

Rudy frowned at the ceiling, guessing it must have involved Zack or Brian or Larry.  From her side window, standing on her bed, she could oversee portions of the Hanna’s back yard.  Some noise must have caught her attention while she was searching for her pencils.

“Sarah clung to me all afternoon like a frightened shadow,” Aimee went on.  “Every time I turned around I’d stumble over her.  After the fourth or fifth time I lost my temper and she started to cry.”  A deep sigh floated up in the dark.  “John’s the one I’m worried about.  These last few days he’s been sleeping through everything.  I was grateful at first because my hands were full with the girls, but I don’t think it’s a healthy sleep.”

“How so?” Rudy asked.

“It’s too deep.  More like nighttime sleep than a nap, and he’s been sucking his thumb.”

Rudy’s frown deepened.  “He hasn’t done that in months.”

Aimee nodded.  “Almost a year now; a year come July.”

Rudy was silent for a while, so long that Aimee finally asked what he was thinking.

“Nothing,” he lied.  “It just occurred to me that these are very small worries in light of everything that happened today.  I’m certain that Larry and Jan would gladly trade places with us.  Or Helen, or Keith…”

“Shhh,” she hissed, her face cross as she put a finger to his lips.  “Don’t say things like that.  It invites bad luck.”

He laughed softly in the dark.

“I just burned the bodies of ten of our neighbors, burned them down to blackened skeletons.”  He laughed again, more harshly this time.  “Your bad luck is already here.”

She turned away from him.  “I don’t want to hear about it,” she said to the wall, her hands over her ears like a frightened child, wishing the monster away.

He wondered if she thought of
him
as a monster…

The thought sent up a bright flare of anger inside him.  Everything he’d done today he’d done for
her
.  For
them
.  For the survival of his family.  A maddening impulse came over him to pull her hands away and shout at her the horrors he’d seen that day, most especially the thing under the baby blanket in the Navaro’s nursery.  Tell her how the larger pieces had slid down the wall after he’d pulled the trigger.  If he had to live with it, why shouldn’t she?