Tom Duggan saw the con’s legs twitching. Kells turned and glanced back once at the church before shutting the door.
He watched until he was confident Kells had raised no alarms, then Tom Duggan turned back to the empty church, moving from the vestibule to the rear pews. He had held out hope that some sense of decency or even superstition would have kept the marauders away from his shop, but as the dogs in the cemetery proved, nothing in Gilchrist was sacred anymore, not faith or death or personal property. They were tearing up his land, they were running through his house.
He needed to see this. He needed to know that there was no going back.
Raucous barking intruded upon his thoughts. He realized he should have been watching the windows. The front door opened behind him, too soon for it to be Kells. Even before Tom Duggan turned, he knew he was in trouble.
The prisoner, hulking and broad-faced, pale with brown hair matted flat on his hatless head, stood holding an automatic weapon on Tom Duggan. He stepped forward smiling like a retarded boy at the entrance to a zoo.
Rebecca had her laptop open on a tray table in the parlor. On the screen was a page from her long-gestating sequel to Last Words. She read the prose again. It was flat and meaningless. Writing had become a safe haven for her, a place she escaped to in order to avoid life’s conflicts, rather than confront them. She had been hiding inside her work just as she had spent the past year hiding in Vermont.
She selected the entire text of her manuscript, beginning to end, blackening the display. The delete button was smooth under her fingertip. She scooped a tiny thread of dust off it, coming within a few pressure-pounds of executing the self-destruct command. She wanted to know what it would feel like. She tested the tension of the key spring, the machine gently whirring beneath her finger. But caution prevailed in the end. She closed her notebook before doing any permanent damage.
She went to the kitchen. The pantry jars held only cookie crumbs and cracker salt, the refrigerator an open liter of ginger ale. She was hungry finally, her stomach so empty it hurt. She took in the kitchen and tried to picture Tom Duggan’s mother puttering around there. There were safety rails in the shower stall upstairs and handlebars around the raised toilet, triggering memories of Rebecca’s own grandmother near the end, and the house in Manchester with the sun porch and the dishwasher that connected to the sink by a hose. She remembered her grandmother’s sweet tooth, and Rebecca pursued this instinct into the dining room, to the buffet table there, but found only table linens and tarnished silverware. She climbed the stairs to the master bedroom, undaunted, zeroing in on the night table at the sunken side of the mattress. The drawer handle was still slick with cream.
Jackpot. An open bag of Brach’s candies and a package of Nestlé Crunch bars.
Rebecca hurried downstairs to share this bounty with the others. They were in the living room, Dr. Rosen watching the TV and Mia sitting with Polk. The old man lay on a brocaded sofa, his potbelly barely rising beneath an unfinished brown-and-orange afghan with crocheting needles still hooked in the corner. His skin was papery and his lips were downturned at the corners, parted as though in whisper. He looked like a thing ravaged by the elements. She thought of a downed tree in the woods, the bark husk rotting away, the wood core brittled and infested.
His eyes opened. He brows knit when he saw her.
Rebecca dropped the candy in the kitchen. She heated up the soup in a microwave oven and took Mia’s place, sitting in the cushioned rocking chair at Polk’s head.
She blew on the first spoonful and touched it to his cracked bottom lip. He swallowed and she fed him a second spoonful and a third. His throat worked sluggishly.
“This is service,” he said hoarsely.
She smiled and shook her head to keep him quiet. A drop escaped to his bristly chin. His eyes lingered on Rebecca’s face, exploring it like a feeding infant.
After a few minutes of patient swallowing his eyes began to drift. She kept feeding him. The soup had cooled enough for her to lift the mug to his lips, and he gazed at the ceiling as he sipped. His interest lagged and she pulled the afghan back up to his neck, then lay her hand over his forehead where fresh beads of sweat glistened. It was like touching a warm ball of cracked leather. She felt the transfer of heat from his fevered head to her palm.
“Oh, boy,” he whispered.
She took the mug and the spoon back into the kitchen. Coe was there. He was supposed to be watching the windows. He could smell the soup’s secret ingredient. Rebecca offered him the rest, but he declined with a sorrowful shake of his head. He wanted a clear mind for whatever was coming. So did she. That surprised her.
She brought out the candy and they sat and ate. The television reported that the prison feed had been terminated at the source. They kept replaying the moment of interruption: cons sprawled out dead or dying in the corridors, languid with dementia, choking on their own blood — suddenly effaced by.static.
Polk had a fit of sleepy mumbling behind them, clutching at his afghan. Coe looked particularly distressed. Rebecca tried to get him talking. She asked him what his plans were after high school.
“Going to Austin, Texas,” he said. “A friend of mine moved down there with his dad two years ago. I went last summer for a visit. He lives on a ranch. Do you ride?”
“Horses?” she said. “Not since I was a girl.”
“I’ve been practicing. His dad’s company does web pages, and he said he could get me work to pay for college. Only, my parents have problems with it being so far away. These are two people who met in South America in the Peace Corps.”
“You should go,” interjected Dr. Rosen.
Coe was surprised by this unlikely source of support. “I’m working on them,” he said.
“My son, when he was about your age, went out to school in California, and it was the best thing for him. You need to do these things young. You never know what time will bring.”
Rebecca was interested. “How do you mean?”
Dr. Rosen had the rocking chair, but he was still. “My son was lost six years ago. An avalanche on his honeymoon. One last run before dark.”
Mia said, “How awful.”
“They say that, if the force of the falling snow doesn’t kill you, it’s a gradual suffocation. The snow freezes and you re-breathe your own carbon dioxide. I just wonder what he thought of at the end. He was completely immobilized, and it was dark. I wonder if he thought of me at all. How did he see me? Waving to him on the first day of school? Cheering him on at some game? Sitting around the kitchen table? But probably it was all just panic, senseless, formless.” He smiled wistfully. “Rhonda and I, we just drifted apart. The tide separated us and we could have fought it, but neither one did. Because who has the strength? We stayed together for Jacob, for his memory. Darla — she was young. She was open to things. Full of life, yet with her own troubles. She needed encouragement and guidance. I know these are just excuses.”
The telephone interrupted him. They others jumped a little at the ring. Polk gasped.
Rebecca stood and went to the kitchen. It scared her at first, but Kells was the only one who knew they were there. He must have brought a cell phone with him.
She picked up the cordless receiver. It smelled faintly of old lady. “Hello?”
“You made me use the phone. I don’t like to use the phone.”
The drawl was slight but distinct. A chill came over Rebecca, a creeping dread, the room becoming smaller.