The Cabin at the End of the World(71)
Regathering herself, Sabrina is careful to fold the blanket so that O’Bannon’s torso and head remain veiled. The bloodstains on his jeans have dried into a hardened crust. On her knees, she searches inside each front pocket, grimacing and grunting, and then turning them inside out.
Andrew asks, “Nothing in your hands? Did you palm a key?”
Sabrina holds up her empty hands.
“Check his back pockets.” He’s so desperate for the keys to be there he repeats himself. “Check his back pockets!”
“There’s nothing there—”
“Check them! Now!”
Sabrina lifts O’Bannon onto his side and the smell impossibly becomes more intense, more physical, a thing clawing through membrane and matter. Sabrina’s eyes water and her heavy breaths hiss through clenched teeth. She turns her head away from O’Bannon, gasping for clean air. “There’s nothing in them. I can’t pull these pockets out. You’re going to have to have a look yourself.” She balances the body on one hip.
O’Bannon’s blue jeans have turned inky from an unholy mix of blood and shit. The back pockets appear to be bulgeless and fitting flush against the body, but Andrew can’t know for sure if there isn’t a single key in them. Sabrina drops O’Bannon’s body before Andrew can make up his mind as to whether he was going to stick his hand in either pocket. She twists away from the body and drops to all fours, coughing and dry heaving.
Andrew says, “Maybe he tucked a key inside his socks. Check those, too.”
“The keys aren’t here.”
“Just do it.”
She rolls O’Bannon’s pant cuffs over his thick, mottled calves. She sighs and says, “Look. He has those no-show ankle socks on. They don’t even cover his—”
“Take his shoes off. He could’ve stuffed one key in his shoe. It has to be on him somewhere.”
Sabrina shrugs and says, “Seriously?” She’s losing her calm and I-just-want-to-help composure, which is fine by Andrew. She’ll be more likely to slip up in a lie if she’s frazzled and on edge.
Sabrina unties O’Bannon’s shoes and she works them off his club-thick feet. “Andrew, we hid the keys in the woods. I promise. I’m not lying.” She tumbles the clunky black shoes to Andrew. They clatter and flip and come to rest on their sides. No key comes clinking out. “Go ahead, check them. I haven’t lied to you since I’ve been here. Not once.” She stands up and re-covers the body’s lower half.
Eric calls out from inside the cabin, “I don’t think she’s lying, Andrew. I really don’t.”
Sabrina says, “I’ll show you where the keys are. It’s possible you can find them without me, but I really don’t think you will. I’m not saying that to taunt you. It’s just the truth. But I’ll find them and then you can leave me there on the side of the road, tied to a tree, or put me in the trunk and take me with you to the police, turn me in. Your choice. Whatever it is you want. I swear.”
What Andrew wants is to have Wen back and to have Eric be his Eric and not this brain-bashed proto-zombie. And if he can’t have that, then he wants to sit down and cry and never move again. He wants to cover himself with the blanket, the one that used to belong to us, used to be ours. He wants to tie Sabrina to the deck railing and leave her behind forever. He wants to know what exactly is going on in Eric’s concussed head. He wants to yell and lash out at Eric for defending anything Sabrina says. He wants to take Wen away from Eric; rip her out of his hands.
Andrew says to Sabrina, “All right. Back in the cabin. Be quick.”
Eric asks, “Aren’t we going? Is she coming with us? I think we need—”
“We’re all going!” Andrew yells.
That barking roar spikes through Eric’s head, and he winces and closes his eyes. When he opens them, he looks past Andrew and to the lake, and a thought scurries: Eric could walk into the water with Wen in his arms, and he could walk until the water is over his head. He could walk until his feet sink into the muck and then weave binding chains from the weeds so he would never surface, never be exposed to the light. Then everything would be over; he would’ve made the required sacrifice and the world would be saved. Aren’t those the rules? The rules some growing, metastasizing part of himself believes to be true? There is still doubt, but it has become easier to believe than not. Has it always been easier to believe? Either way, the lake solution doesn’t feel right, and it wouldn’t be fair of him to take Wen with him, take her away from Andrew. Eric drifts over to the couch and sits down. He spreads his legs wide, balances Wen’s body on his thighs, and pulls his arms out from under her to give them a break. He needs the rest if he is going to carry her for the duration of the walk, however long or short it might be. Flies land on his arms and not Wen’s body this time. He doesn’t shoo them away.
Sabrina steps over Adriane and back into the cabin. Andrew follows. He sidesteps into the kitchen and grabs an eight-inch chef’s knife from the cutting block. He tosses the sledgehammer weapon out the slider doors and it lands on O’Bannon. Andrew says, “Good.” With that nightmare stick back with its dead progenitor, the cherry on the top of that refuse pile, Andrew is invigorated and more able to concentrate on what needs to be done to survive the next minute and hopefully more minutes after that.