Wormwood (24 page)

“It was a dog,” Rudy told him.  “I caught it foraging in the fire.”

Shane nodded, the rifle relaxing as he started to turn back inside.

“How’s Mike?” Rudy inquired.

Shane shrugged.  “About the same.”

“Are you still planning to go to town?”

A bleary nod, as if he hadn’t gotten much sleep thinking about it.  “I was just getting dressed when I heard the shot.”

“I’ll help you get the motorcycle,” Rudy offered, moving closer so they wouldn’t have to shout.

“All right.  Let me get my shoes on.”

As Shane ducked inside the gloomy interior of his house, Rudy glanced across the cul-de-sac, expecting to see the collie in the faint shadows between the houses, waiting to get at the bones again.

There was nothing there; apparently the dog had decided to move on.  Rudy guessed it would find what it wanted, if not on this street then another.

He found himself wondering what effect Wormwood might have on animals… dogs and cats, or
birds
for that matter.

His eyes rose toward the treetops and telephone wires, scanning.

Now wouldn’t
that
be something…

He wondered if he would be able to tell the difference between a live bird and an infected one?  Would they lose the ability to fly, or come diving down like flocks of kamikazes, attracted to anything with a warm pulse?

God help us if that happens,
Rudy thought, his gaze dropping until he found himself looking at Larry’s front door.  He supposed he ought to go knock, see if the Hannas were up yet.  If Larry and Shane were going into town, it would be best for them to start as early as possible, just in case they ran into trouble.

Rudy shook his head. 
Just in case…
  He almost laughed.

In a city of almost 50,000 souls, of course they were going to run into trouble.  If Quail Street were any indication, then
half
of them would already be infected.  Predators roaming the streets, trying desperately to get at the other half, the numbers gradually tipping…

The real question — antibiotics notwithstanding — was would they make it back at all?

And if so, what might come following?

3

Larry was a long time answering his door; so long, in fact, Rudy feared he might have changed his mind and gone back to his old isolationism.  Then the sound of disengaging locks issued through the heavy oak and the door creaked open, just an inch or two.

Larry Hanna looked out at him like a man already dead.  A man who supposes things can’t possibly get any worse and then finds out he’s wrong.

A long sigh seemed to come out of him, blowing sourly through the crack.

Rudy wondered if he even recognized him.

“I thought I should check on you, Larry.  Shane and I were about to go to the Sturling’s to get the motorcycle.”

Larry let the door swing wider.  “Come in,” he invited, his face slack, expressionless.  “I want to show you something.”

Rudy felt a chill at the flat sound of his neighbor’s voice.  He glanced over his shoulder, for the dog or for Shane; any excuse to keep from going inside.  The street, however, conspired quietly against him.

“Downstairs,” Larry said, turning toward the darkness, his target rifle carelessly in hand, the heavy stock knocking against the risers as he descended.

Rudy found he had little choice but to follow.

“Those damn junipers,” Larry swore, moving slowly ahead of him, the light in the stairwell turning from blue to gray, threatening to disappear altogether at the bend.  “Every year I think about tearing them out.  The whole damn lot of them.  Ugly, shaggy bushes.”  He turned to look at Rudy.  “Mark climbed out of them yesterday; did I tell you that?”

“Yes, you did,” Rudy answered, wondering where this was leading.

“And the scratches?” Larry wondered.  “I told you about the scratches on his back?”

“I think you may have mentioned it,” Rudy agreed, not certain if he had or hadn’t.  A tingling feeling floated down the center of his back, like a premonition.  They had come to a halt outside the shelter: Larry on the brief landing while Rudy stood two steps above him, looking down on the pale oval of his face.  The dark, haunted eyes…

“Well I thought Mark got those scratches from hiding in the junipers,” Larry explained, the point coming slowly, as if he were telling Rudy why he’d always preferred Sprite to 7-Up.  “They’re hell to crawl through, you know.  You lose a ball in bunch of junipers, you may as well kiss it goodbye.”  His attention seemed to waver, drifting down the wall from Rudy to the door.

Rudy watched him, uncertain.  “Larry?  What are we doing here?”

The door to the vault clicked open.  It was an impressive click: solid and secure, like something you’d hear in the back of a bank.  Larry’s eyes found Rudy again.

“Like I said, I want to show you something.”

A soft fan of light opened with the door, spreading with it a thick odor, one which Rudy had become well acquainted with over the last twenty-four hours.  It was blood.  He felt like he’d waded through oceans of it.  Now here was another.

Larry stepped over the threshold, the rifle knocking squarely against the dark steel lip.  His shadow grew stilted and monstrous on the painted blocks of the interior wall then stopped, turning back to Rudy.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Rudy stepped inside.

4

“I wanted to clean up those scratches,” Larry said, pointing, “but Jan wouldn’t let me.  She
absolutely
wouldn’t let go of the boy.”  He squatted down beside his son and lifted the back of his shirt.  “See there,” he said, tracing a group of deep gouges with his finger, looking up at Rudy.  “Those aren’t junipers, they’re fingernails.”

Jan Hanna was gazing at Rudy above Mark’s left shoulder.  He met her eyes, looked away, but found himself being drawn back to her eyes and the bullethole in the center of her forehead, which was neat enough to have been placed there by God.

Larry let his son’s shirt drop and rose to his feet.  He gazed openly at Rudy.

“What do you think?”

“I think,” Rudy had trouble finding his voice, “I think I need to go back outside, Larry.”

Larry shook his head, not denying him passage but confounded, as if for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what had happened.  “The scratches aren’t that
deep
!” he insisted, reaching for the shirt again so Rudy could see.  “Look here,” he said, tracing another.  “There’s hardly any blood!”

Rudy wasn’t sure what was worse: the sight of Mark’s raw back or the small, glistening hole in the back of his head.  When Larry lifted the shirt to show him one, the other disappeared.

“How could those scratches
kill
him?” Larry demanded, his voice rising now.  Indignant.  Angry.

“Germs, infection…” Rudy suggested, shaking his head, taking an unsteady step toward the door.  “I don’t know.  He went through a great deal yesterday.  Perhaps it was simply shock.”

“Shock,”
Larry whispered, his eyes drifting again, as if this were something he hadn’t considered.  A stone he hadn’t turned during the night.  His expression narrowed.  “Is that possible?  He’s just a
boy
.  Not even eight.”

Rudy nodded.  From his new position, Jan was no longer staring at him.  He could see, however, the terrible damage that Mark had done to her.  Several savage bites had been taken before Larry shot him.  Her throat opened from jaw to breastbone; the last bloody lump was still in Mark’s mouth.

From the neatness and accuracy of her final wound, Rudy guessed that Larry had put the muzzle to his wife’s forehead and fired before she had a chance to come back; tenderly, as a parting gift from a husband to his wife.

“Do you think it was painful?” Larry asked, looking down at the two of them.  “Do you think he suffered?”

“I don’t know,” Rudy replied, staring at Mark’s rabid expression, thinking it certainly hadn’t been very easy on his mother.  “If it was shock, he might have been unconscious when he died.”

Larry nodded, satisfied.  He turned and set his rifle aside, then picked up a thick woolen blanket.  When he turned back to the light there were tears in his eyes, as if his mind hadn’t allowed him to grieve until he understood what killed them.  He leaned down and kissed his wife and then his son.  An awful sound caught and tore itself from his throat, a sound as close to the end of the world as Rudy could imagine.  He found tears on his own face as Larry whispered a husky goodbye and covered his family with the thick gray blanket.

“Even if I make it back from town,” Larry vowed, “I won’t come back to this room.  I’ll put a bullet through my head first.”  He wiped his face and pointed to a corner of the shelter piled with brown cardboard boxes.  “Something crept in and squatted in the shadows over there during the night.  I don’t know what it was; a dream, maybe: but it crouched on top of that box and watched me for the longest time… hardly moving, like one of those tree sloths.”  Larry looked soberly at Rudy.  “I was thinking about killing myself then.  What do you suppose that means?”

Rudy shook his head, his eyes moving from Larry to the corner.  The top of the highest box looked slightly crushed, dented inward, as if something the size of a bulldog had perched there.  “I don’t know,” he heard himself say, imagining what Larry must have gone through during the night, sitting in the shelter with the bodies of his wife and son, their deaths a sudden and violent nightmare.  Like nothing a man could prepare himself for… then to have to shoot them on top of that.

Who was to say what he might imagine in a shadowy corner, urging him toward suicide?

“I want you to do a favor for me,” Larry said, picking up his rifle.

For a dreadful moment Rudy was certain he was going to ask him to shoot him, right then and there.  To take the terrible burden of life from his shoulders and set him free.  Larry had always been a faithful Christian; perhaps the sin of self-destruction terrified him more than Wormwood.

“If I don’t come back tonight, will you burn them like Brian and the others?  I know it’s an awful thing to ask, but you’ve always been a good friend and neighbor to us… better than I’ve deserved lately… and I know I can trust you to do it, if you say you will.”  Larry glanced around the bloodied clutter of the shelter and sighed.  “I hate to think of this as their final resting place.”  His eyes came to rest on the blanket and the tears were back, bitter with failure.

“They deserved so much better.”

5

Shane was waiting for them, his father’s shotgun propped between his knees as he sat on the curb opposite the Hanna’s.  When he saw them, he got to his feet, crossed the cul-de-sac and met them at the end of the drive.  Rudy told him that Jan and Mark had died during the night.  Shane glanced briefly at Larry before directing his eyes toward the asphalt at his feet.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hanna,” he said softly, his voice so low it might have been the wind.  He glanced up at Larry again.  “Does that mean you won’t be going to town?”

There was no anger or sullen protest this time, only a quiet curiosity and determination, as if he planned on going whether Larry drove him or not.  He’d simply learn to drive the motorbike along the way.