Cruel World(77)

“What are yours?”

He stumbled on his answer. Licking his lips, he saw her looking at him through the dim distance between them, her eyes the brightest thing in the room.

“That I didn’t see more of the world before it was gone.”

“It’s still out there.”

“But not what makes it special.”

Alice huffed another laugh. “People aren’t special. They never were. We’re the biggest mistake in the universe. You don’t think for a second this plague was natural, do you? We did this.” She gestured to the quiet house. “We did all this. We’re the disease, not the virus that took us out.”

Quinn waited a long moment and then stood, placing his bottle in the trash near the doorway before facing her again.

“The people I knew were special, and all I can do is hope there’s others like them somewhere out there. But I guess that’s what separates you and I.”

He turned away, snagging his rifle as he went to start the first watch.

~

The night passed in an onyx haze. He sat outside on the front stoop with his back against the door. The sky continued to cloud over, clamping down the darkness like a lid being put on the world. The wind picked up and tossed leaves into the air, their passage heard and felt but not seen. He retrieved a jacket from the Tahoe and shrugged himself into it, the burn on his shoulder still flaring up whenever he moved too drastically. When the time came for him to switch with Alice, he remained where he was, stolid and unmoving, senses seeking anything besides the stirring wind.

Hours later, dawn crept across the horizon like smoke from a fire that was beginning to burn there. The clouds were lower, and as the first drops of rain began to fall, he made his way inside, locking the door behind him.

Alice lay on her side next to the loveseat, one arm stretched up, her fingers holding onto Ty’s small hand. He watched them sleep for a moment before continuing down the hall to the kitchen. In the pantry, he found some ground coffee and a filter for the coffeemaker on the counter. As the machine began its quiet chuckling, a thump came from overhead, and he tipped his face to the ceiling.

The woman was moving upstairs.

He waited, ready to spring to the stairs if there was further commotion, but soon her movements slowed and then ceased. A dream or nightmare. Nothing more. He refocused on the dark liquid rising in the pot and poured a steaming cup when the coffeemaker had finished its work. The smell that filled the room was so redolent of the mornings at home, his throat closed when he tried to take a sip of coffee. His father sitting at his desk going over paperwork, Graham and Foster bickering at one another in the kitchen, Mallory reading the paper before she began her cleaning for the day, and Teresa, standing at the eastern windows of the solarium watching the ocean.

“You didn’t wake me.”

Quinn flinched as if coming out of a dream and slopped some coffee over the rim of his cup. Alice stood in the doorway, her hair curled at the ends from sleep, face puffy but somehow alluring.

“No. I couldn’t have slept.” She looked down at the floor, tracing a design in the linoleum with one toe. “Do you want some coffee?” he asked.

“God yes.”

She sat at the table, and he brought a cup to her, the steam rising in white tendrils. The rain abandoned its pattering and began to pound the roof. Thunder grumbled somewhere to the west. The woods around the house blurred behind silver sheets of water.

“I don’t want him getting attached to you,” Alice said.

“I know.”

“But it’s not right to deny him someone to care about.”

“He’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“I see a lot of parallels between you two.”

His eyes widened. “You do?”

“Yes. You both deal with things that you never asked for and people judge you before they know you.” She fingered the handle of her cup. “Myself included.”

“I understand why you’d be hesitant, I mean,” he gestured at his face. “Believe me.”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not it, I—”

Her words were cut off by a succession of thumps and then a hard bang from overhead. They both raised their heads. A trail of dust filtered down to the floor in a thin line.

“Something’s wrong,” Alice said, standing up.

They hurried down the hallway, and Quinn threw a glance into the sitting room. Ty slept on beneath the blanket. They mounted the steps and were halfway up them when there was another bang and the tinkling of glass. Quinn doubled his pace and fumbled for an excruciating second with the lock before shoving the door inward.