Cruel World(116)

Quinn took the lead, finding a side hill less steep than others that took them back up into a bramble before disgorging them onto a gigantic field. Its openness staggered him for a moment, and he stopped, each breath full of daggers.

“There,” Alice said, pointing to a tall, curved shape at the field’s far end. They ran toward it. As they closed in, it was revealed as a spine-broken barn, its sideboards hanging like loosened teeth.

The odor of old hay and decaying wood met them as they stepped through the open doorway on its closest end. The barn was mostly empty, an ancient tractor pinned beneath its roof near the center, leaning lumber at its sides, hay bales released of their bindings everywhere on the ground. They moved to the middle of the structure where a split door opened off to the field, its upper half swung wide. Quinn stopped and surveyed the expanse, no movement from the opposite tree line. He counted to five hundred and then turned away, sitting down on a rusted bucket near the others.

Ty curled next to Denver who sat rigid, head upright and watching. Alice rested beside her son, her hand stroking his hair.

“Everyone okay?” Quinn asked.

Alice huffed a laugh. “Peachy.”

“I don’t want to go back there,” Ty murmured. “That man was scary even though he was pretending to be nice.”

“We won’t go back,” Quinn said.

“I threw away his puzzle,” Ty said, and nuzzled closer to Denver’s dark coat. In less than a minute, he was asleep.

“It was an anchor for the chains,” Quinn said after a time.

“What?” Alice said.

“The hole in the block near Hilton’s cot. He unscrewed something out of it when we first got down there. It was an anchor to secure the chains to the wall.”

Alice shuddered. “What a sick f*ck.”

“It’s like the damned were spared in all this,” Quinn said, gazing out through the open door to where the moon hovered. “We’ve only met a couple decent people, and they died almost immediately. It’s almost like God left them here to suffer.”

“We’re suffering,” Alice hissed. “My son is suffering, and he doesn’t deserve it.” She brushed Ty’s hair back again. “There is no God,” she said after a long time.

Quinn stared at the floor until Alice rolled onto her side, hugging Ty to her. He rose from the bucket and stood near the door again, watching the night rotate toward dawn.

Hours later, when the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, he noticed a quiet sound coming from inside the barn. It was a stuttering wheeze, like a light wind teasing the eaves of a house. It took him over a minute to realize Alice was crying.

He went to her and knelt down, placing a hand on her shoulder. She resisted for a moment but finally rolled toward him. Her face was streaked with tears, and she wiped her nose before shaking her head.

“I’m fine.”

“You always cry when you’re fine?”

She swallowed, letting out a long sigh as more tears coursed down her cheeks.

“I would’ve picked Ty,” she said.

“For what?”

“For that bastard to shoot first. Knowing what was coming, I would’ve rather seen him die quickly, and I feel inhuman for even having that thought.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that. Anyone would’ve made that choice in your position.”

“No. They would’ve found a way to get free. They would’ve bided time until they could escape. But my mind was blank, and my head hurt so much I couldn’t think of anything. All I could see was my beautiful boy being tortured by that madman, and I couldn’t stand the thought of it.”

Beautiful boy. Alice saying his father’s words was almost too much for him. He rubbed her shoulder as she continued, her voice uneven.

“All my life I tried to be strong, to shove everything and everyone away that got too close. I let my guard down once and got burned. But when Ty was born, that was it. The wall I’d built crumbled, and even though I patched it, it was never as strong again.” She looked at the boy’s sleeping form. “I can’t lose him, Quinn, I can’t, and I feel like he could slip away at any time.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You can say that.” Her tone was suddenly venomous. “There’s nothing for you to lose.”

Quinn’s brow furrowed, and he looked down. “My father told me once that the greatest evil in the world was indifference, that until we sloughed off our apathy and replaced it with empathy, none of us were safe.” He looked up at her, lowering his voice further. “We’re not damned and we’re not dead and I still have a lot to lose.”