Cruel World(19)

“Graham?” Silence chased his voice from the house, and he listened for the rustle of sheets, a squeaking floorboard, something, but there was nothing, only the same quiet that filled his own home.

He moved across the wide living room and into a hallway. The smell was stronger here, choking out the aromas of food with its stench. It hung in the hall like something alive, festooning the air with a message that couldn’t be denied. Only death lives here now.

Quinn shivered and stopped before Graham’s bedroom door. It stood partially open, a slash of afternoon sunshine beating through the window and ending near his feet.

“Graham?”

He braced himself and pushed the door all the way open.

The room was in shambles.

A heavy oak dresser lay on its side, the mirror at its top shattered and reflecting the ceiling in its shards. Sets of clothes were piled and scattered everywhere as if Graham had been trying them on and discarding them in haste. Blankets and pillows were strewn across floor and beneath the bed. The bed itself was stripped bare and there were several puffs of fabric pulled up at its center.

Quinn moved into the room, stepping around the broken mirror until he stood beside the bed. The smell of putrescent fish was so thick here he could barely breathe. He placed a hand to his nose, but it did no good so he dropped it away. The mattress was partly discolored; its deep red fabric stained a darker brown in some places. When he reached out to touch it, he found that it was wet, soaking almost. A clear fluid dripped from the bedframe and added to a puddle on the floor he hadn’t noticed at first. The tufts of material near the center of the bed had long scratches at their edges along with trails of red that could only be blood.

He swallowed the gorge rising up from his stomach and stepped back, stumbling over on overturned chair. The puddle on the floor, it was Graham, it had to be. He had succumbed faster to the sickness and completely disintegrated into the foul-smelling fluid. This was what was happening to his father and Teresa right now, down in the damp ground where he’d buried them.

Quinn turned and half walked, half ran from the room, sucking in great lungfuls of stinking air that only choked him. He stopped in the living room, knowing he would be sick but trying to hold it at bay. The back of the sofa was under his hand and he swayed there, drunk with the knowledge that he was now truly alone. A sound along with movement came from the rear of the house, startling him. He swung his head to the left, a cold hand clamping down in the center of his chest.

The back door eased open and then closed, banging against the frame beneath the wind’s insistence.

Quinn watched it for a moment and then moved to the front door, leaving the broth on the counter.

~

He cleaned for the remainder of the afternoon, scrubbing the carpets upstairs in both his father’s and Teresa’s rooms, but nothing would take the smell away. Eventually he resorted to hauling the mattresses out to the backyard, stacking them near the tree line to burn in the morning. When dusk came, he showered, standing under the hot spray until it scalded his skin, his fingers rubbed raw from the brush and soap he used to clean his hands and nails.

The fridge held nothing that interested him, so he settled for a cup of tea, stirring in sugar as the last holdings of light faded from the sky. When he finally turned the TV on, the news stations were down, their logos filling up the screen. He flipped through the rest of the channels finding only re-runs of sitcoms and reality TV. He went through all of them again just to be sure and then turned the set off. The stillness of the house settled around him, and he went to the kitchen window to look out at the giant pine and the two mounds of dirt beneath it. They were only blurs of shadow now, simply another part of the landscape that would grow grass and become indistinguishable in the years ahead.

Quinn poured his tea down the drain and looked in the direction of his father’s office. The internet might still be a resource, perhaps it would give him a better idea if there was anything left of the world outside the gates.

As he moved toward the hall, a humming began to fill the air and he paused, listening to the growing buzz that became a static hiss. The last nor’easter that had howled down upon them in February had sounded something like this with its relentless wind and rushing snow. The sound grew and grew until he began to crouch out of reflex, his hands coming to the sides of his head. A glass sitting on the edge of the counter pitched to the floor, exploding into a thousand pieces. The roar built, vibrating his teeth in their sockets as he realized what it was. He hurried to the front door, throwing it open to the night as the commercial airliner cruised past, its running lights blinking barely a hundred feet over the trees. It was like being underwater and seeing a giant predatory fish swim by, gliding past in search of food. The massive plane disappeared into the night, engines whining against gravity and he waited, staring after it until the concussion boomed in the distance and a glow lit the horizon in a sickly, licking orange.