Cruel World(32)

~

He spent the rest of the morning burying the body. He dug a long trench beside Teresa’s grave and pulled the thing that Graham had become into it. Dragging the corpse across the grass was like moving a pallid marionette; rigor mortis hadn’t set into the muscles and joints, and its head flopped on a limp neck. It was much heavier than he’d expected. When he’d covered the last of it, he began to speak. But no words would come, so he settled for cutting three rough crosses from a stand of slender willow. When the crosses stood at the head of each grave, he waited for the tears. The crosses were so fragile and sad. But he couldn’t cry. After the wind had chilled his face to the point of burning, he turned away.

~

The gate’s lock at the end of the driveway was ruined. The brothers’ hammer strikes had bent and twisted the box that housed the mechanism. Quinn started back for a length of rope to tie the gate shut but instead left it partially open. Maybe it was better to leave things broken now.

He found an old duffel bag in Foster’s house and filled it with what food the groundskeeper had in his pantry, which wasn’t much. Graham and Mallory’s homes didn’t yield any better since most of the food was stored in the main house. All told, he came away with a can of clam chowder, four bottles of water, two bags of salt and vinegar chips, three cans of stew, a bag of apples that hadn’t turned yet, some half dried marshmallows, and a package of Norwegian chocolates hidden in the back of Graham’s closet. He almost left these but at the last moment took them. Life, more so now than ever, wasn’t so sure that you could leave chocolate behind.

Quinn brought the bag back to the main house and then inspected the front door. There would be no fixing it from where Rick had kicked it in. In the garage he found an ice chisel that Foster had used on the sidewalks around the house in the winter. He brought it back to the front door, measuring its length while leaning it beneath the knob. After making a mark on the wood floor, he hammered the chisel into it, breaking through the gorgeous teak until he’d created a hole to the sub-floor. He left the sharp edge jammed there and then wedged the other end beneath the kitchen doorknob. It fit tight, and after yanking on the door several times, he nodded to himself and drank down half a bottle of water.

He cleaned the solarium the best he could, sweeping glass and piling the fallen framework in one corner. The pools of blood that hadn’t been touched by the rain had dried to a crusted black at the centers, fading to a deep maroon near the fringes. The rest of it had run like a monochrome painting doused with turpentine. The whole room stank of death. It smelled like a saltwater brine gone foul. He went to the bathroom to gather supplies to clean the gore but realized there was still no water. He settled for shutting the solarium door and nailing a length of two-by-four across it.

When the house was fairly secure, he gathered an armload of firewood from the garage and set it beside the hearth in the living room. In fifteen minutes hearty flames danced and sent smoke funneling up the chimney. The chill that settled over the house during the night and day without power receded from the living room, the fire’s heat creeping into the kitchen and hallways.

Quinn warmed a can of chowder beside the coals, waiting until it began to bubble before eating it directly out of the container. He sat staring out the window afterward, taking a sip of water now and then. The day had grayed over as if the sky were molding. The wind continued to blow, sounding like a distant foghorn in the chimney, and it lulled him into a stupor as he gazed into the fire. He set the XDM on the couch beside him and leaned back into the couch’s thick cushions. He would just close his eyes for a second. He couldn’t bear their weight anymore. Every inch of his body hurt, but if he sat still, he was outside of it, outside of the pain. It was someone else’s, and he was empathetic to them. But right now he was tired and needed to rest for a moment. Just a moment.

He awoke at nightfall, consciousness coming with the stiffening of his limbs and an explosion of pain in his ankle as he pushed himself upright. He blinked into the dimness of the room, the fire long since burned out.

There was something outside the kitchen door.

Awareness washed over him like a wave of ice water, his senses sharpening to needle points. The rasp of a footstep. The kitchen door shook gently and then harder before going quiet. Quinn snagged the pistol from the cushion beside him as he rose from the couch and almost sprawled in the midst of concussive pain. Every joint in his body was full of acid, but adrenaline was washing away everything but the hammering of his heart. He kept low and entered the kitchen, the XDM trained on the door. It was silent now, everything still save the wind. He moved to the window and peered out.