Cruel World(104)

They were quiet for a time, Quinn watching the firelight on her face, how it clung to every angle.

“Thank you. I mean it,” Alice said, finally. “You are my knight in tattered and torn armor.”

“Sir Getshurtalot at your service,” he said, bowing.

Alice smiled. “Come get warm by the fire.”

He pulled another chair closer to the hearth and steadied the AR-15 against its arm before sitting down. The blankets he’d nailed over the windows respirated with the night air. Ty whispered to his stuffed animals.

“This is a pretty extensive first aid kit. Good pick,” Alice said, placing all the contents back inside the red zippered container.

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Even has a flare gun.”

“I’ll remember that if we get lost at sea.”

“So you didn’t see anyone human,” she said after a time. It wasn’t a question.

“No. No one alive. Just…them.”

“What were they doing?”

“Milling around. Scavenging, I think.”

“But why were there so many? Why are they traveling so close together?”

Quinn sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. I was asking myself the same questions. The only answer is we were way off in our calculations about their population.” He wiped at a dark stain on the thigh of his pants. “Way off.”

“But you said they were moving in the same direction, right?”

“Yeah. They seem to be, give or take a little.”

“Then what’s drawing them?”

“Drawing them?”

“You know. It’s almost like they’re migrating. Like flocks of birds traveling south before winter or returning in the spring.”

The memory of the Geese flying above the highway surfaced in his mind.

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Then what is it? What’s driving them?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said, rising from his chair. “I can’t make any sense of it. I don’t even know what they are.” He went to the window, pulling the heavy blanket aside enough to peer out. The dark was softened by starlight. The trees were gently swaying guards, the pop can trip line clinked quietly. He let the blanket fall into place and returned to the fire.

“They’re people. Just like you and me,” Alice said.

“Not anymore.”

“But they were. The more I think about it the more I realize that maybe the disease that wiped most of us out wasn’t the real plague. Maybe the stilts are. Maybe they’re the end of everything. The very end.”

“I don’t think it matters anymore. Where it came from or who started it. What matters is staying alive.”

“But we need to understand the why in all of this. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” Quinn’s eyelids were beyond heavy, his body a thousand pounds. “I need some sleep before I try to think any more.”

Alice nodded, bringing the rifle closer to her chair. “I’ll take first watch.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I got a bunch of rest while you were messing around in town.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He pulled a cushion off the chair he’d been sitting in and stretched out by the fire, its heat loosening the knots in his muscles, lulling him into a soundless void that he drifted through without a hint of dreams.

~

“Quinn.”

He woke at once, sitting up as reality snapped into focus so hard he blinked against it. The fire had burnt down to embers, only a faint, red glow staining the room. The lodge was silent except for Ty’s even breathing in a nearby chair and the gentle push of the wind in the eaves.

He turned his head toward the figure standing two strides away. Alice limped closer, her dark hair keeping her face in shadow.

“There’s something at the door,” she whispered, handing him her revolver. He took it from her and got to his feet, electricity running through his nerves. He made his way toward the heavy front door as a brief scratching came from its base. He shot a look at Alice, and she nodded, bringing up the rifle as he eased to the building’s closest window. Clouds had moved in while he slept and smothered the stars so that a foot away from the lodge the night became a solid thing that gave nothing to his searching eyes. He sidled to the door as a board creaked on the porch. With a wave of his hand, he signaled Alice by holding up three fingers. Slowly he dropped them into a fist.