Cruel World(79)

Quinn slid backwards, hand scrabbling for the gun. The stilt rose to its full height, skeletal length unfurling. Blood dropped from its ruined arm as it lunged forward, ragged fingernails tearing through his shirt and into his skin. Quinn cried out and stretched for the gun, but the monster’s long fingers closed over his throat, easily encircling his neck with one hand.

It drew him up toward its waiting mouth.

The world dimmed at the edges as his feet left the ground, his hands gripping its bony wrist. He swung a foot up, connecting with the thing’s face as it pulled him closer. He kicked again, this time hitting its eye. The pressure on his throat diminished, and he fell, landing hard, knees buckling as the stilt batted him with the back of its good hand. He left the ground and crumpled into a heap when he skidded to a stop, every bone crying out inside him. The gun was somewhere to the left, but he couldn’t see it. The monster loomed above, dropping toward him. He found the knife on his belt, fumbled with the strap, yanked it free as he tasted the stink of its breath.

He slashed with the blade, a last, swinging movement, his strength gone.

The stilt hovered above him, its good arm planted in the ground beside his head, eyes bulging.

Its throat was a bloody grin.

It toppled forward, more gore flowing from its neck, dropping on him like boiling rain.

He tried rolling to the side, his body full of lead, skin numb with cold. A weight fell on him, pinning him to the ground, and he gasped, heaving in a mouthful of water.

The day darkened further and then became full night as he closed his eyes.

~

Quinn came to on the loveseat in the sitting room. It was dark. A thick blanket hung over the broken window blocking out the day beyond. He sat up, wincing at the highways of pain running across his body. His head was a drum being beat from the inside with a rusty claw hammer. He put a hand to his forehead, more or less to keep it from falling apart.

“You gonna make it?”

He turned his head to where Alice sat in the corner of the room, her legs crossed, an index finger marking a page in a paperback.

“I think so.”

“I’m guessing you’ve got a concussion. And if you tear out the stitches on your thigh again, you’re just going to have to bleed. There’s nothing left to stitch to.”

Quinn exhaled, the teeter-totter of nausea in his stomach slowly stilling.

“How long was I out?”

“About three hours, give or take. I never wore a watch and my phone died.”

“Ty?” he asked, the fog of the morning’s events drawing away.

“Fine. Shook up but okay. He’s eating in the kitchen.”

“God.” Quinn leaned back into the pillows and stared at the ceiling.

“What the hell happened, Quinn?”

“I don’t know. She must’ve been…must’ve been—”

“Must’ve been what? That bitch turned into one of them and almost ate my son.”

“She must’ve been sheltered. Couldn’t have been exposed to the disease. She caught it here, from what was left of the bodies.” His head spun, and he swallowed bile.

“Sheltered? Like hidden from the outside world.” Alice stood and approached the loveseat. “Just like you, right?” Her voice was diamond-hard. Cutting. “Because of your f*cking righteousness, my son almost died! We all almost died!”

He closed his eyes, letting her words lash at him. “I know.”

“No, you don’t. No, you don’t,” Alice said, coming closer. She loomed over him now just as the stilt had, hatred to match. “Your na?ve view of the world is equal to poison now. Were you raised by nuns? Was that a convent we found you at?”

“No.”

“Then how are you so f*cking stupid?”

“I’d never left there, okay!” he burst out. His voice was too loud in his ears. “The day we drove away was the first time I’d ever been outside those grounds.”

Alice stared at him, her mouth partially open, eyes prodding, probing.

“You’re shitting me.”

“I’m not.”

“How?”

“My father was James Kelly.”

She laughed. “The movie star?”

“Yes.”

She laughed again and then sobered when she saw the look on his face.

“You’re kidding.”

“I was born like this. And instead of raising me in the limelight, he hid me away.”