“Sure.”
As quietly as I could, I rummaged through our bags looking for a bottle of water. Apparently, we had drunk it all. Damn.
“I’ll be back in second. I’ll grab some from the kitchen.”
I hoped there would be water in the kitchen. I pulled aside the blankets that hung in the doorway and entered. I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the woman at the table. For the first time since everything started, I felt like we were quickly losing our way. Seeing that woman sitting there at the table with masking tape wrapped around her mouth caused a huge lump to form in my throat. I couldn’t believe Tish had done that. I didn’t take it off.
Luckily, there was a pitcher of water in the fridge. I grabbed a cup that was in the drainer, and I proceeded to fill it with water, cursing the Gods for every extra second I spent in there.
Tom sat up. He took several long drafts of the water I gave him before lying back down. He fiddled with the bandage on the side of his neck.
“Hurts like hell,” he said.
Tish said whoever cut him had used a really dull knife. The wound was not a straight, quick cut. It was more a tear than anything. If the person had used a sharp knife, he would’ve almost certainly killed him. He didn’t need to know the details. “I bet.”
“What the hell happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Obviously, some asshole cut me, but I don’t remember much after that.”
“We don’t know what happened either. Whoever did it ran away. Didn’t even steal anything from you.”
“Didn’t have much to steal.” Tom looked around the room, and then at me; befuddled, he asked, “Where the hell are we?”
“Good question. We’re currently in someone’s house who we don’t know from Adam.”
“Keeps getting better.”
He lay back down for a while because he said he felt like he was going to throw up. After his queasiness had passed, he proceeded to tell me some of what he was beginning to remember. He said he had fallen behind a bit, after crossing over the sea wall, because he had noticed a house with its front door open. Out of curiosity, he walked over to check things out. “Who leaves the door open in the arctic in December?” He asked. “Something wasn’t right about it.”
Shaking his head, he said, “I heard thumping inside, and a lot of it. It sounded like there were people wrestling.” Against his better judgement, he said he was going to call inside to see if everything was okay, but before he could do so, he heard sniffing just inside the open door. “First thing that came to my mind was dogs – big ones. I don’t know what was going on in there, but I do know you don’t go messing with dogs like that.”
He began to cough. I thought he had awoken Tish with the last bout of coughing, but she settled back into a light snore. He lowered his voice. “You think I can get some more water? My throat is fucked.”
Damn. I walked quickly by her without venturing even the slightest glimpse. I refilled the glass and hauled ass back to Tom. I handed him the glass, and he gulped it down. He coughed a few more times, shook his head, and told me that he didn’t feel well.
“Maybe it’s time to get some more rest,” I told him.
He shook his head letting me know that he wanted to continue. “I had begun to catch up with you guys when I heard something behind me. I raised my lamp, but didn’t see anything. As I turned back around, though, I saw a guy charging me from down the street. I dropped the lamp…”
Tom got quiet for a few moments. He put his hand on his face, and he lay back resting on his elbow. “I’m dizzy as hell, man.”
“We’ll talk about this crap later. You need rest.”
Still resting on his elbow, he said, “I got a good look at him before he attacked me.” He shook his head, and then swallowed deeply. “Yeah, I don’t feel good, William. I’m going to take a breather.”
Tom never complained. “Yeah, you do that. Need anything else?”
“No.”
He tossed and turned a couple times before going completely quiet. He didn’t even snore, which was odd because he was notorious for his snoring. So much so that he was the only person at the nest who didn’t have to share a room. Everyone to a man refused to be his bunkmate. Sam said, “The bastard had ta be fakin ’em noises, cause no human can make ’em on accident. Bastard wanted his own room. ’At’s all it was.”
I was sore all over, but my legs especially were killing me. I stood up for a moment to stretch. After deciding the pain of stretching my legs was greater than not stretching them, I sat back down hard in the uncomfortable chair and tried in vain to rub the pain out.
It might seem weird, but we had been in that house for hours, and it was in that moment, as I kneaded my sore muscles, that I took the time to look around. I was struck by just how barren the living room was. The place looked like it wasn’t lived in. It was weirdly clean and devoid of anything that made a house a home. There were no pictures or knickknacks or anything you might expect. There was a small television, the grandfather clock, a small love seat, and two beaten, uncomfortable chairs. One of which I sat in and wasn’t exactly doing my back any favors.
Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw movement outside. Out by the broken down car was a man. “What the hell?” He sat on his hunches, his nose pointed towards the moonlit sky. He was shirtless. He might not have been wearing shoes, either, but it was hard to tell because of the snow.
My first inclination was that the poor guy had to be freezing to death. I began to stand and move towards the door, but that was also when he turned his face towards the window, and when I took a hard look at Avery’s jerry-rigged door, and prayed to the Gods it would hold.
His skin was gray just like the woman’s in the kitchen. He had the same inhumanly large eyes. The only discernable difference was he was mobile. He sniffed so loud I was sure I heard it from inside the house. His head jerked back towards the street. He bellowed out a terrible guttural sound. After maybe a minute, several other gray things joined him.
My mind raced. What the hell were they doing out there? Had it been one of those things who attacked Tom? And why? What the hell had happened to them? It was contemplations like those that allowed me to recognize just how abnormal things were. It wasn’t just a weird power outage. It was much more dire and inexplicable than that. Of course, there were other clear signs that I missed. My mind was still stuck in the old ways of thinking. The rational days where up was up and down was down. Even missing those clear warnings, I knew enough at that moment to know that my world had changed in a catastrophic way.
I was so absorbed with the gathering outside that I hadn’t even noticed Sam coming to stand beside me. “Jesus, son, ’is ain’t good.”
“No. It’s not.”
Chapter 6
“We’re sitting ducks in here, William,” Titouan said.
I sucked in a breath and sighed, thinking about what not to say, before deciding on, “I’m open to reasonable ideas.”
“Run out the back door and get our asses to Miley’s as fast as we can.”
“Reasonable, I said. What happens to Tom in your little plan?”
“The greater good,” he replied, stumbling slightly over his words.
“Don’t give me that greater good bullshit. There’s nothing great or good about it.”
“Tit, me and you disagree on ’bout everythang, and ’is sure as hell ain’t no different. I can’t believe ’at even you thanks ’at’s a option,” Sam said, rubbing his hands together next to the heater. “Tom’s a good man. We can’t just leave ’im here like a pile of trash.”
“It’s not about what’s best for me. It’s about what’s best for all of us,” he said.