Cruel World(38)

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” Alice gripped the vodka bottle and poured one more small shot into her glass, downing it with a toss of her head. “I’m still weighing whether to go or not. I’m sure Portland will be bad, and it’s the last place I want to bring Ty, but I have to know. I couldn’t live without knowing.”

“And if you find her, where then?”

“Iowa.”

“Iowa?”

“There’s a command center there. It was on the news before most of the stations went down. The government set up a huge compound inside some park or mine in Fort Dodge. They were telling everyone it was a safe haven.”

“Why Iowa?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with being centralized in the country. I’m thinking I would have set up a safe zone somewhere better than Iowa. Somewhere warmer, like Florida.”

“Iowa’s not nice?”

“You’ve never been there?”

He hesitated, almost saying, I’ve never been anywhere.

“No.”

She watched him for a long moment and returned to spinning her glass again.

“I’m guessing it’s the safest place in the country, if you can get there.”

“If you can get there.”

They both fell silent, watching the fire. Ty turned in his sleep again and murmured something. Alice rose from her chair and moved to his side, stroking his brow and smoothing his hair back. Quinn took advantage of the gap in conversation to gather the blankets and pillows from the upstairs closet. He brought them back to the living room and spread them out a makeshift bed on the floor beside the couch. Ty was quiet, and Alice had brought their glasses and the mostly empty bottle of vodka to the kitchen. When she returned and saw the blankets and pillows, she gave him half a smile as she knelt to arrange them further.

“Haven’t slept in a fort bed since I was fourteen. My dad used to make them when I’d have sleepovers.”

“Where’s your dad now?”

Alice paused in smoothing out the comforter on the floor and then resumed.

“Thank you for everything, for taking us in. You’ve been great. Sorry I freaked out on you earlier. It’s been one of those days.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “The last week has been one of those days.”

She stood and they looked at one another for a beat before he motioned to the hallway.

“There’s a bathroom next to the office if you or Ty need to use it. The water’s off, but we’ll deal with it in the morning if need be.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll sleep in the office tonight if you need me.”

“We’ll be fine.”

He stoked the fire one last time and left the room as Alice settled in beside the couch. He found a sleeping bag in the upstairs closet and unrolled it on the office floor in front of the desk. From there he could see the window and down the hallway. He set the XDM on the floor and positioned himself so that one hand rested on it and closed his eyes. The wind caressed the glass, and several times he nearly sat up to investigate a noise. But when nothing further came, he drifted off into a shallow sleep, dreaming of eyes that watched him from the darkness, unblinking and filled with hunger.





Chapter 10



Limbo



He woke to laughter.

Quinn sat up in his sleeping bag, the pistol rising with him. There was a span of seconds in which the sounds coming from the living room were completely wrong; they shouldn’t be there in his house. But the prior night’s events came back to him, and he relaxed, wiping away the scratching sleep in his eyes.

He climbed free of the sleeping bag, his injuries protesting, but not near as loudly as the day before. The ankle was the sorest, and he rotated it clockwise then counterclockwise, standing on the other foot. It creaked and cracked, but there was very little impingement, and the joint didn’t seem to be damaged beyond a strain. After testing it with his weight once more and finding it was definitely better than yesterday, he moved down the hall.

Alice and Ty were both awake, Alice sitting at the far end of the couch from Ty, gently pinching his wriggling toes that poked from beneath the blanket as she recited a quiet rhyme. He laughed each time she gripped his feet, his face lighting with a smile that exposed his small, even teeth.

“Snapping turtle dives, under the pond, up he comes, and chomp, he’s gone. Little froggy says, where did he go? Fish swims past saying look out below.” Alice’s voice was soft and smooth as she sang the rhyme. She recited it once more beneath Ty’s giggles before she noticed Quinn standing in the doorway.