Quite Contrary (39 page)

He didn’t like it. Maybe I’d learned to read rat expressions. He crouched on my shoulder with a pinched stare and didn’t answer.

I could see past the end of the trees now. Somewhere in the American Southwest? On either side of the black strip of road stretched dead grass and pale dirt, and not much else. Looming mesas in the distance. I stepped across the line, and was now lost in a desert where I’d been lost in a forest.

Maybe there was something way, way down the road? Was that a building, or a shadow playing tricks on me? “Still in the middle of nowhere. I guess we keep walking.”

“Couldn’t we do that thing? With the thumb?” Scarecrow asked from behind me, then answered herself with a doubtful, “I guess there’s no cars.”

“There would be, if you tried to hitchhike, but it would be—” Rat started.

“Suicide,” he and I finished together.

A hitchhiking story. No thanks, wasn’t going to star in one of those.

The back of my neck itched more and more. It felt tight. Not exhaustion. I’d been trying to avoid this, and now it was getting me even more nervous. I looked back over my shoulder. No sign of my Wolf, not between us and the trees, not along the road inside the forest, not anywhere. That made my breathing relax—slightly. Not enough.

I kept walking. I peeked back again. Nothing.

I kept on walking. I peeked back yet again. No forest. The road ran on through the desert unbroken. A door had closed behind us. Maybe I would actually get a little break. A full day would be nice.

There really was a building down there. Maybe more than one. The black box on the horizon squatted low and flat, suggesting more than a house. At least I could see where we were going. I glanced back at the empty road stretching behind me in time to see Scarecrow wander out into the middle.

“Scarecrow! That’s not safe! Don’t stand in the road!” I hissed.

“Why? There aren’t any cars,” she answered. It could hardly be called arguing, as cheerfully unconcerned as she sounded. Bending down, she picked up a little rock from between the yellow lines.

What a time for her to learn rebellion. I let that first rush of irritation pass over me. “Because there won’t be any cars right up until the car you don’t notice smashes you into toothpicks. Come on, out of the road.”

She obeyed, each step on the way back accompanied by a bounce and a leg kicked forward. She tossed the rock into the air, and with the sun glinting off it I saw it was a bottle cap. She’d flicked it up with her thumb, but had to stumble forward, throwing both hands out to catch it.

It was a break in the tedium, and I resumed with the sound of Scarecrow’s skipping to keep the walk from being so dully flat. Jealousy prodded me. I wished a bottle cap was all I needed to be happy. Not even music would help now.

The building up ahead was pretty big after all. I could make out the shape now, low, gray, and sprawling. By the road, a roof held up on columns—oh, it was a gas station. A really big gas station. A trucker rest stop.

We were sure closer to civilization. I risked another peek backwards. No forest, no Wolf, and I could see way down the road in this bright sunlight. Getting into the shade of the rest stop would be nice, although the place wouldn’t be safe. Zombies? Yeah, I figured zombies.

Or, you know, it might be some old guy who climbed up out of a rocking chair and yelled, “What’s a little girl doing walking down the road way out here?”

“We’re lost! Can’t you tell?” I shouted back.

We closed the distance between us. Mostly I closed the distance. He dawdled, and I wanted to get out of the sun. He really wasn’t that old. He had a few spots of gray in his black mustache, but that was it. The little round glasses looked like he wore them for show, to keep his black suit, white shirt, and black tie from being too stiff. He was way older than me, anyway.

“It’s a good thing I came out here today. You’re good and lost. I see strangers about once a month out here,” he said when we got close enough he didn’t have to do it at the top of his voice.

The rest stop behind him was dark. No lights, dust on the windows and the pumps, most of the signs faded to invisibility. “Was this your place?” Scarecrow chirped.

“My name’s Joseph. What’s yours?” he asked, holding out his hand as I walked up to him. I didn’t want to take it, but I couldn’t afford another enemy right now. I shook hands and withdrew mine as fast as possible.

“Mary Stuart. You hang around abandoned gas stations often?”

“More than I should. Since the stop closed down, I like to wander out and take a peek that no squatters or vandals have moved in. I don’t know why I bother. Nobody comes out here. That’s why it closed.” For a guy who sounded so good humored, his smile had the zest of a squashed caterpillar.

I stepped under the shade of the pumping station’s roof, and looked pointedly at the wooden rocking chair out front. “Sounds to me like it’s the road you’re really watching.”

“You might be right,” he said. “We get visitors out here so rarely, I wouldn’t want to miss one.”

“‘We?’“ I pressed. Try to sound curious rather than suspicious, okay, Mary?

“My daughter and I. I hope I’ll get to introduce you to her. You actually remind me of her. It’s the shape of the lips.” He said it so nonchalantly, as if he weren’t multiplying his already impressive creepiness score by ten right there.

“So everyone left because there wasn’t any business? That’s it?” I asked as I wandered over towards the building. Dust smeared the windows, but the glass doors stood open. Inside, the place looked like a giant convenience store with rows of empty racks and freezers.

“That’s it. Nobody drives this road, pretty much. My daughter and I are the only people who even live out here now. I wanted to move out and be a country doctor, and now I’m not even sure where we are.” He gave me that faint, wry smile again.

“One sec,” I said. I poked my head through the open doors. This place was big. A side area had lots of chairs and booths and looked like a restaurant. This wasn’t the only door, either—doors stood open at either end. The light shining through them was the only way to see anything in that deep shadow.

I nudged Scarecrow with my elbow. “Go wait for me at the door on that end. Make sure it stays open, okay?”

“Miss Mary, what are you doing?” Rat asked.

“What are you doing?” echoed Joseph.

“I’m setting a trap,” I said, and leaped into the building.

Nothing fancy. I aimed at the door on the far end, and circled around benches and rows of empty shelves. I had a clear path, and my feet pounded against the tile floor as I ran. As fast as you can, Mary. There’s no way this place is just an empty building.

“Don’t look around. Don’t look at anything but the exit,” Rat whispered from behind my ear.

I wasn’t stupid enough to argue. I was going to be the lucky first person who never noticed anything wrong, and let my Wolf be the one who stumbled over this building’s horrible secret as he followed my trail through.

That was assuming I’d get out of here without triggering the story. I kept my eyes locked on the bright rectangle of an open door getting closer as I sprinted towards it. Come on, legs, run a little faster. And door, PLEASE stay open!

Something moved in the doorway. Scarecrow’s shoe, sticking itself over the edge so it couldn’t slam shut. With less junk to run around, she’d gotten there before me. Good girl!

I plunged out through the door into the sunlight again, staggering to a halt and breathing heavily. Now I could risk a peek back over my shoulder. Everything inside that door looked as dim and motionless and harmless as ever. Yeah, right.

I risked a different peek down the road. Still nothing. Now if only I could be out of sight before my Wolf got here, he might be stupid enough to walk right into that place.

“Thanks,” I wheezed.

“Whatever I did, you’re welcome!” chirped Scarecrow.

“Quite a toy you’ve got here. What’s going on?” Joseph asked, strolling around at a more sedate pace. “And I don’t mean about the toy. You’re afraid of something. In some kind of trouble.”

“There’s a Wolf following me.” I panted as my breath came back. “A big one. I don’t think he’s far behind.”

“I’ve got a shotgun at home. He won’t be following you much longer. Come on,” Joseph offered. He stepped past us, and I looked to see where he was going. The ground sloped down subtly beyond the gas station. A gravel path that I wouldn’t quite call a real road ran out the back, and down a ways, it branched out to web together half a dozen scattered buildings. Once upon a time, people had lived here. Never very many.

“I don’t think you understand how big my Wolf is, Mister.”

“Not too big for a couple of shotgun shells. At least let me offer you a meal. If you’ve got any food in that bag, it can’t be enough.” He was dead wrong about the shotgun, but the food …

I looked inside my satchel, and lifted out a still squelchy loaf of bread. With mold on it. My little underwater adventure had not been kind. Everything that hadn’t been sealed in a bottle or can was now a spongy mess, and one by one, I tossed them out and stared at a can of beans I couldn’t heat.

Joseph’s eyebrows lowered over his little round glasses, and he watched me sympathetically. “Let me give you a meal, and if you want, you can make a phone call. Whatever you’ll accept. I just don’t want you to leave until you’ve had a chance to meet my daughter. Something makes me think you two will take to each other.”

“We should keep running, Miss Mary,” Rat whispered from behind my shoulder. “We might be able to make distance faster than the Wolf can track you here.”

My stomach put in its own argument. I hadn’t eaten yet today. “Yeah, okay, a meal. I can’t stay the night or anything.”

alf a dozen buildings did not a town make. It didn’t even make a village. Two were houses, two were big houses that were really fancy apartment buildings, and two were wide and blocky and dull enough looking that they must have been businesses. Neither looked like a store. The rest stop had been the only reason people lived here. A large, fenced vegetable garden behind one of the businesses told me where we were going.

The scratched and faded sign next to the front door read ‘Jigsaw Medical’ and had a crude, blocky, and adorable picture of a little girl putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a stethoscope. Like most doctor’s offices, I guess, it was a flat, single story building with little windows. The concrete brickwork was featurelessly dingy, and the windows might be clean with pleasant curtains visible through them, but they were also covered in iron bars.

The front door wasn’t locked. Joseph pulled it open, making a little bell jingle, then stopped and gave the windows the same uncomfortable look I did. “Barred windows. The man who built this building had a paranoid streak. There’s no crime out here, and never was. If a stranger broke into our home, we made them dinner and welcomed the company.” He accompanied this explanation with a single, wistful chuckle.

He flipped the light switch by the door, and we followed him into a perfectly ordinary doctor’s office. Semi-comfortable chairs in the waiting room, counter for the nurse, box of toys, little table with wooden beads on wires. Nobody around, but I couldn’t see any reason it couldn’t reopen at a moment’s notice. Joseph didn’t stop, and we walked into the back section. The exam room I glanced into looked a little sterile. The next one looked a lot sterile, with its featureless tile walls and flat bed under a light and mobile table covered in little medical tools. Somebody had his own miniature surgery. Imagine that.