Cruel World(124)

“Damn it,” Quinn said, checking his pulse. Nothing. He put his hands on the man’s chest in the CPR position but then sat back. He was resting now. How cruel would it be to bring him back?

He stood and found a dusty sheet draped over a stack of whisky cases. He shook it out and gently spread it over the man’s body.

Royal.

Quinn retrieved the rifle and moved past Ty and Alice toward the front offices. Denver’s dark head rose, and after a moment, the Shepherd padded silently after him.

In the office with the supplies, Quinn sat down and began to open the heavy pack leaning against the wall. There were fire-starting materials, extra clothes, emergency blankets, spare magazines for the two pistols and four rifles that sat on the floor, along with a bladder filled with water. All of the pockets contained similar survival items, except for the topmost. When he opened it, he first thought that the man had packed sheaves of paper for more fire-starting fuel, but after a moment of inspecting them, he saw he was wrong.

He studied the pages after settling to the floor, Denver dropping onto his side next to him. Absently, he scratched the dog’s ears as he read, page after page of information, facts, numbers, first-hand accounts, surveys, and data. As he unfolded another page, a plastic ID card slid free and fell to the floor. He picked it up, studying the dead man’s face along with the words beneath it. He frowned, flipping the card over, but there was nothing on the back except an imbedded row of numbers with a bar code below them. He set the ID aside and scanned the folded document, eyes flickering across meaningless tangles of numbers and terms. At the very bottom were two signatures. The first was strangely familiar, as if it were the name of a character from a book he’d read years ago.

The other signature stopped his heart between beats.

He stared at the name, and time seemed to slow. Denver grunted beside him, and the page began to tremble in his hand. It couldn’t be. There was no possible way.

Footsteps came from the warehouse and neared the office as Alice materialized out of the darkness and stopped in the doorway, her eyes still bleary with sleep.

“What are you doing?”

Quinn folded the paper, tucking the ID card inside it once again.

“Going through his things,” he said, his voice hoarse and shaky. “He’s—”

“Dead. I saw.”

Quinn gathered up the rest of the papers, replacing all of them in the pack, save for the one holding the ID, which he jammed in his pocket.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked as he rose and stretched his aching spine.

“A little. Not much. Is it daylight yet?”

“Just before dawn.”

“We need to go. We need to find the army, now.” He grabbed the pack and the rifle, handing the latter to Alice as he moved past her into the dark of the warehouse.

“Okay. Any reason you’re so raring to go?”

“We just need to get there,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way through the sections of alcohol.

“Quinn, slow down. Let’s take a second—”

“No, damnit! We’re going now!” His voice rang throughout the open space and came back to him. Hearing the frantic sound of his words along with the stricken look on Alice’s face was enough to sober the racing anxiety burning a hole in his chest.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “You’re starting to scare me.” Ty sat up from his bed and called to Denver quietly before walking beside the dog to stand near his mother.

Quinn’s legs grew weaker and weaker as he pulled the paper from his pocket and flipped it open, catching the ID as it slid out. He held it before him as if it were something foul that he couldn’t stand to touch.

“We need to find the army because my father’s signature is on this piece of paper the dead man was carrying.”





Chapter 25



The Army



They drove through the gray dawn, its light choked with bruised clouds that hung low and heavy with rain.

They’d spent an hour packing the Challenger with supplies that the man in the warehouse had accumulated, their talk limited to the necessities since Quinn had shown Alice the signed page. There was no mistaking his father’s writing, the loop of his e’s and the long tail of the y were all Quinn needed to know it wasn’t simply someone with the same name or an attempt at a forgery. The paragraphs above his father’s hand gave them no clues as to what the document signified. The language was unmistakably medical in origin, but other than that, the page was a shard of a sculpture without any definable shape.