Instead, he found a heavy fold of paper tucked beneath the underside of his wallet. Curious, he tugged it free and held it up to the light.
To Whom It May Concern,
The salutation conjured an image of a city in smoking ruins, and a man gazing out over the destruction from the driver’s seat of his Impala.
Their first stop the previous day, at the overlook atop the ridge.
Larry had stuffed the note in his pocket to keep Shane from reading it, not bothering to read it himself. He unfolded the page and found himself face to face with God.
Lamentations, Chapter 3.
It was a quotation which Larry knew; one he had learned quite recently, in fact, due to its inclusion of the word “wormwood”; which had, of late, taken on some greater significance. In his studies he had found it a slippery word, one with uncertain or multiple meanings.
That, perhaps, had changed.
I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light.
Surely He has turned His hand against me time and time again throughout the day.
He has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones.
He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and woe.
He has set me down in dark places like the dead of long ago.
He has hedged me so I cannot get out; He has made my chain heavy.
Even when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer.
He has blocked my ways with hewn stone; He has made my paths crooked.
He has been to me a bear lying in wait, like a lion in ambush.
He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces; He has made me desolate.
He has bent His bow and set me up as a target for the arrow.
He has caused the arrows of His quiver to pierce my loins.
Larry closed his eyes and let the arm holding the page drop down to his side. His eyes were filled with tears and he spoke the last line of the note from memory, as if had been written especially for him.
“‘He has filled me with bitterness, He has made me drink wormwood.’”
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in darkness. The last candle had guttered out.
“No matter,” he said aloud, folding the note along its well-worn creases. He tucked half the fold inside his shirt pocket and left the other half out, like a badge. Something that God and the world could see.
Given a thousand years, he would never come up with anything better.
Postscript
QUAIL STREET
1
Quail Street had changed while he was away.
It had taken Shane an extra day to get home, but now it seemed that the effort had been for nothing. The west side of the street (including his own home) lay in smoldering ruins, the timbers hissing and steaming in the light rain like old dragon bones.
He let the engine die and found himself unable to get off the motorcycle; unable or unwilling.
He thought he had prepared himself for this.
There was no way to prepare oneself for this. For the complete severance and destruction of one’s past; the thoughtless wiping away of everything that had kept him alive for the past two days. It broke something inside of him and, as the rain continued to fall, he found himself trembling, unable to stop.
“Oh Shane,” a voice whispered, straddling the seat behind him. “I’m so sorry.”
He let go of the bike and reached back, the street in blurs. He found a hand there to hold on to, to lend him strength and support.
He wondered how long before that, too, was stripped away.
2
Alone and short on ammunition, Shane had been forced to play things differently than he and Larry had the day before. When a problem arose — such as the black-clad gang camped alongside the bridge or the spreading kaleidoscope of Summertides — he was forced to wait it out or think of a different way around it, and these things naturally devoured time.
As the warmer, brighter colors began to leach out of the day, leaving shades of blue and gray behind, he turned his eyes to the passing homes and outbuildings, searching for a safe place to spend the night.
Eventually, he settled on one of the farmhouses along the way.
It was impossible to say what made it stand out from all the others he’d passed: that it was well back from the road or perhaps simply the lateness of the hour. Yet at the same time something about it seemed to call out to him in passing (as if it had been sitting there for years, waiting) and the next thing he knew he’d cut the engine, skidded off the pavement, and was pushing the bike up the narrow lick of driveway; veering not toward the house with its wide porch and inviting steps, but toward the brooding silhouette of the barn.
He was a little disappointed at what he found inside. There was no loft or comfortable piles of hay to take refuge in, but rather a sleeping tractor and a dull gray collection of heavy implements to drag behind it. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloomy interior, he saw faded bags of chemical fertilizer, a work bench littered with oily pieces of machinery, a pair of paint-spattered sawhorses, and an old fruit bin filled with tortured lengths of applewood… but nothing more inviting to rest his head upon than the cold, hard ground.
Arriving at this unhappy conclusion, Shane started to turn and heard the unmistakable double-click of a shotgun at his back.
That was how he met Marie Barrow.
3
Surveying Quail Street with a critical (almost detached) eye, Shane guessed the fire had started at the Cheng’s, the prevailing winds sweeping down the hill and spreading it south toward Kennedy. It had devoured everything on the west side of the cul-de-sac while ignoring everything on the east; all except a corner of Larry’s garage, which was withered and blackened but still very much intact.
“Which one was yours?” Marie asked, her hand still in Shane’s as they walked to the smudged remains of the funerary pyre, then came to an uneasy halt.
Shane pointed to a collapsed pile which had fallen gracelessly into its own foundation. He had no desire to get any closer; at least, not yet. Other things might become evident in the wreckage upon closer inspection. Things he wasn’t ready to see.
“I’m sure they made it out,” Marie gently suggested, plucking the image from his mind as if she wished to erase it. She turned slightly on her heel, taking in the houses behind her, the Iverson’s and the Navaro’s. She further suggested that they might have taken shelter in one of the remaining homes.
Shane shook his head. He had grasped at this possibility as well, but now it seemed hollow. “Where are they?” he asked, releasing her hand and spreading his arms. He turned a slow circle along the edge of the pyre. “They would have heard the motorcycle. They would have come out by now.”
She glanced around the cul-de-sac and sighed, agreeing with a reluctant nod, her damp brown hair shifting on the breeze, her cheeks still flushed from the ride.
“Unless…” Shane murmured, his eyes turning, lit with a bright glimmer of hope.