Cruel World(58)

Quinn let her go, grimacing before jerking his head. They set after the man at a quick walk, his laughter bouncing off the tile floor and walls. He waited for them at the end of the hall, his back against the wall as he pushed off of it with his buttocks, letting himself slam against it before pushing off again.

“Stop that,” Alice said, spearing him with her light. “You gotta be quiet.”

He began to chew on his pinkie again, his upper teeth becoming red with blood.

“You said you knew where Marie was,” Quinn said in as calm of voice as he could muster, the sight of the man gnawing through his own finger making his stomach flip.

“In there, in there, always in there,” the man said, snapping his bald head toward the door on their right. “Go in, go see, go see, go see.”

They kept Ty in between them as they moved past him. As Quinn came close to him, he realized the uniform the man wore wasn’t only dirty but wet also, and the smell that came off him was palpable. He’d been soaking in what the disease had left behind.

Alice pushed the door open and stepped inside. Immediately she moved Ty to one side and stood him against the wall. When Quinn entered the room, he saw why.

A police officer lay facedown in a pool of dried blood. His face was bone white, a partial beard spattered with gore covered his cheeks. His mouth gaped open, eyes sunken and dried to crusts. His pants were pulled up above his boots and something had been at his legs, the teeth marks prominent in the bloodless flesh. Quinn ripped his eyes away from the body on the floor to the bed occupying the room that was stripped of everything but a thin sheet. A stained outline rested in its center, a pool of viscous jelly desiccating along its borders.

The man giggled behind them, and Quinn only had time to glance at the officer’s body, the empty holster on his duty belt, before he spun and brought up his rifle.

The man had the cop’s handgun trained on Ty who stood motionless against the wall, his lips moving soundlessly again, completely unaware.

“Here, we’re here, come, come, come, inside, quick!” The man yelled at the top of his lungs, glee pulling his lips back from bloodied teeth.

Quinn tried to aim, but the concussion of a shot made him flinch, his sights losing the man’s grinning head. There was a mist of red hanging in the air, and it coated his face like a spray of surf when he would climb the cliffs by the ocean. His right ear buzzed and his head felt lopsided, heavy with the deafness that plagued half of it. The man was gone from the doorway, and Ty still stood against the wall, covered in blood.

“Oh God,” Quinn said, rushing forward. He set his gun down and gripped the boy by the shoulders, beginning to wipe the blood from his face.

“Quinn?”

“Yeah, buddy. Are you hurt?”

“I don’t… don’t think so. What’s on me? Momma?”

Quinn glanced at the doorway and saw the man’s bare feet there, splayed out, pinkie toes touching the tile. Alice stepped forward and kicked the bottom of one sole. It jumped lifelessly and laid still. She then knelt beside them both, half elbowing Quinn out of the way, and hugged Ty to her chest.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” she chanted into the side of Ty’s neck. Quinn rose and retrieved his rifle before shining his light on the fallen patient.

The man’s head was mostly gone from the eyebrow’s up. One eye had exploded and hung to the side by a strand of nerve. His mouth hung open, still grinning, a lake of blood within even with his teeth.

Quinn doubled at the waist and was quietly sick in the hall, gagging on the rotted smell of disintegrated bodies, on the blood, for what had almost happened. He wiped at his mouth and spit once before straightening. Alice moved into the hall carrying Ty. She stepped over the corpse and set her son down, rubbing his arm and hugging him to her side.

“Great shot,” Quinn said.

“Thanks. Are you okay? The barrel was pretty close to your head when I fired, but I couldn’t…”

“I’m fine. It’s just some buzzing on that side. It’s already a little better.”

“Crazy f*ck,” Alice said, baring her teeth at the dead man. “Should’ve known.”

“He must’ve killed the cop. If it were stilts, there’d be nothing left.”

Alice kept running her fingers through Ty’s blood-matted hair. “We can go,” she said after a moment of silence. Her eyes passed over his, and Quinn glanced past the dead man to the bed. The person who had lain there and died had been small. He gave the body on the floor another look, and a chill slid from the nape of his neck to his buttocks, an icy finger tracing a path.