Running Red (11 page)

Even in my sleep, I am haunted.

Nine

There is a little bit of sunlight shining in through the window. Matt shifts under me and I crawl off of him. I can only imagine how his arms must feel. Tingly? Numb? They have been stretched out to either side all night. Thinking I might make him feel better, I rub them for a few minutes.

“They’ll be coming in soon,” he says. “Go sit over there.”

In the dim light of morning I can see what a craphole we are in. The foundation is a little deeper than a crawl space beneath the house. I can walk if I stoop way over. Matt wants me to sit on some old burlap sacks piled in a corner. They are a bit lumpy. I don’t really want to know what’s beneath them. When I sit down, I see the carcass of a dead field mouse. It has a chute growing out of its head. A tangle of roots hangs at the end of the stalk. When the zombie ants were first spotted, they also had some sort of growth jutting out of their skulls.

I pinch the tail of the mouse and hold it up. I show it to Matt.

“Ever wonder why runners didn’t get the spore stalk like the other animals?” I ask.

“I always thought it was because our brains were bigger,” Matt says. “The fungus gets in, but there’s so much to explore in our heads that maybe it grows inside of our heads instead of growing out like a periscope.”

It wasn’t such an outlandish theory. “What do you think it would find in Denny’s head?” I toss the mouse off to the side.

“Nightmares,” Matt says. We laugh. “But what do I know, right? I was using the online high school to get my GED.”

“I was going to night school to get my prerequisites out of the way.”

“What were you going to be?” he asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. A year ago I thought I could take my time and let school kind of figure it out for me.”

“Woulda-shoulda-coulda,” Matt says. “Me? I was going to work down at Sal’s Collision.”

“Grease monkey?”

“Nah. Detailer. Customizer. Like that guy the pawnshop dudes take the junkers they get to so he can fix them up. I always wanted to get an El Camino and fix it up. Sparkly green, spinners, top-of-the-line sound system. Then I’d drive it in the Dream Cruise. Show it off. Pretty solid, huh?”

I shake my head. “What’s an El Camino?”

Matt laughs. “You don’t know what an El Camino is? Man, you girls.”

“Educate me, professor.”

“The El Camino was a Chevy. Kind of looked like a Malibu.” I shake my head again and give Matt a blank, doe-eyed stare. “Man, you’re making this difficult. Think of a pickup truck. Now drop it down to look like a car with only a front seat and a long bed in the back.”

“That’s your dream car?”

“One of them. I wanted a ’72 Turbo 396 with a 350-horsepower block. Man, that would have been sweet.” Matt thinks about it for a second. I can tell by the look on his face he wants me to appreciate it.

“Sounds great,” I say. I’m trying to generate the kind of enthusiasm a guy wants to hear.

“What about you, Robbie?”

“What about me?”

He shrugs. There’s a little wince of pain in his eyes. I wish I could take his arms down from their shackles. “What were your dreams?”

“I wanted to be on my own,” I say. “Be careful of what you wish for.”

The cellar door opens and a pair of skinny legs descends. It’s Leslie. She has a tray of food. Behind her comes Tessa. She remains on the lower step so she doesn’t have to stoop. Leslie stops in front of me and offers me a bowl of some kind of broth. It smells awful, but I can’t afford not to eat. I take one. She offers the second bowl to Matt.

“Now how am I going to eat that, Les?” he asks her.

“Set it on the ground,” Tessa says. “That bitch can feed it to him.”

Ever obedient, Leslie does as she is told. She leaves without saying anything to either of us, or to Tessa. Tessa remains for a moment staring at me. I can tell that if I were chained up like Matt, she might come over and kick the bowl of smelly broth out of my hands. Not that I would fight her in this circumstance. She’d almost be saving me.

Tessa goes up and drops the door. It slams into place. The chain is pulled back through the handles. The lock clicks into place.

“So how long are we condemned to this circle of hell?” I ask. I decide the best way to get the gruel into my stomach is to pound it down in as few swallows as possible. I drink quickly. It’s fishy. There are crunchy things in the soup.

“Got another night down here with me. Can you handle it?”

I smile. “Only if there’s no more talk about cars,” I say. I crawl over and hold the bowl to Matt’s lips.

Leslie returns two more times. Lunch is a little better. We are given muffins pre-smeared with jam. There are two bottles of water. Tessa drops them at my feet. When Leslie returns at dinnertime, she brings Aubrey. Like Tessa before him, he stands on the lower step as Leslie serves us fresh bowls of what appears to be straight-up, warmed tomato sauce. Aubrey wraps his hands around a pipe running under the floor joists. He leans forward and flexes his arms. “Look at me,” he seems to be saying.

“How you two doing?” he asks.

“Be better if I could take my arms down for a bit,” Matt says.

“Why? Your fingers getting tingly?” Aubrey laughs. When no one else does, he spits into the dirt floor.

“Just let him out of the chains for a while,” I say.

“Can’t,” Aubrey says. “I don’t have the key. But if you want to come out and stretch, I can let you do that.”

“No thanks,” I say. “I’m doing fine.”

Leslie has been stooped over in front of me the whole time. She’s staring at me.

“You ready to go, freak?” Aubrey asks.

Leslie looks at my bowl. She takes her tray out of the cellar. Now it’s Aubrey who stares at me. His eyes are sad. He checks to see if Leslie or anyone is nearby before he leans as far in as he can and says, “I’m covering my own ass,” he says.

“Because you don’t want to end up like Matt?” I ask.

“Or worse,” Aubrey says. If it can get worse than what Matt is experiencing, it’s time for me to leave. I will have to wait for the opportunity to escape.

Outside, Leslie calls for him. Aubrey leaves the cellar. The shadows are blending in with the night. I drink down my tomato sauce the same way I drank the fish broth earlier.

“What’s on the bottom of your bowl?” Matt asks.

I lift it over my head. There’s a piece of folded paper taped to the bottom. I unfold it and read the note. “Gumm tomorrow be reddy” is all it says. It doesn’t make any sense, and not just because the writer can’t spell. It must be from Leslie, I think.

“What’s it say?” Matt asks.

“Is Leslie a little slow?”

“I don’t really know her. Why?”

“I think she’s sneaking us a treat tomorrow.”

I don’t recall having dreams, but when I’m awakened in the morning, I am thinking of Lane. I don’t have much time to put it together though, because Aubrey is shaking me. I open my eyes. Behind Aubrey there is a thin line of blue and a thinner one of pinkish-orange in the sky. A few stars continue to twinkle. The sun hasn’t completely risen.

“Come on. Come on,” Aubrey says. He’s pulling me by the arm.

“What about Matt?”

“I don’t have the key. Come on.”

But I don’t want to leave Matt. “No. I’m staying here with him.”

“You can’t,” Aubrey says.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s Race Day,” Matt says.

“Race Day?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Matt says. “And I’m the rabbit.”

Ten

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

Aubrey has me by the arm. He’s basically pulling me around the side of the house. Dirks, the guitar guy, is sitting on his upside down milk crate. He looks like he hasn’t slept all night. His guitar lies across his lap, string side down. He drums his fingers on the back. His tent neighbors stare at him and whisper amongst themselves.

“Aubrey, stop.” I yank my arm away.

“Denny wants to see you,” Aubrey says. “Now.”

I take a step towards Dirks. Aubrey tells me not to, but I ignore him. I know what happened to Cage. I can see that it’s tearing Dirks apart. I want him to stop worrying. When I get close to him, Dirks looks up and sneers at me.

“You stay away from me,” he says.

“I know what happened to your friend,” I say.

“I know you do. You just stay away from me.”

“But Dirks—”

Gripping the guitar by the neck, Dirks jumps to his feet. He holds the guitar like he might swing it at me. He points a finger at me. “You know my name. You know what happened to Cage. What else do you know about us? How much does the Guard know about us?”

Dirks’ rant shakes me. I look around at the pained faces full of fear and suspicion. Sledge leans against his trunk in the tree house. Scarecrow sits with his legs dangling over the edge; his right hand is bandaged and in a sling. A withered looking woman holds a fussy baby in her arms. I wonder when it was born.

Dirks is breathing heavily. He still holds his guitar defensively. The woman with the baby tries to calm Dirks. He waves her away and carries his guitar to the rear of the yard. He smashes it on the corner of the detached garage. It takes a couple of hefty swings to break it.

These people are all bat-house crazy. I can’t survive here. The urge to run is filling me to the point that I wonder if I am infected. Is this the first stage? The unbearable desire to flee?

And then I realize I probably can’t survive anywhere.

Aubrey whispers in my ear. “Come on.” He takes my hand. I barely try to pull away.

The inside of the house smells like fresh coffee. Aubrey takes me into the kitchen. Auntie Alice, Denny, Leslie, and Tessa sit at a round table. Denny sits with his back to me. They each have a mug of steaming coffee and a place setting consisting of a red plastic plate and clear, plastic flatware. There is a plate of biscuits, a jar of jam. My stomach rumbles.

Denny is in the middle of sipping his coffee when he realizes the women at the table are looking at me. He finishes his drink, sets the mug down, and stares at the wall behind Leslie.

“Sleep well, Sunshine?” Denny asks. He doesn’t look at me.

I don’t say anything.

“All right, ladies,” Auntie Alice says. “Take her upstairs and get her ready.”

“Ready for what?” I ask.

“Big day, Sunshine,” Denny says. He turns around and drapes an arm over the back of his chair. “Think you might enjoy it.”

Tessa leaves the room, but not before making sure I see how angry she is at me for the other night. Leslie looks at me, lowers her eyes, and kind of indicates that I should follow her by giving me a wrinkled nose sniff.

Upstairs, I’m taken to the hall bath.

Leslie waits for me at the door. Tessa goes off to a room.

“You need a shower,” Leslie says. “You’ll find some hotel soaps and shampoos on the bath ledge. Water will be lukewarm. Denny doesn’t like to waste propane on showers and baths.”

I can tell, I think, but don’t say.

Leslie steps back near the wall. “Don’t be long,” she says. “The others will be here soon.”

“What others?” I ask. Leslie doesn’t answer me. She closes the bathroom door.

Lukewarm or not, the feel of water and soap on my skin almost makes me think I’m back in my sister’s apartment. I could stand under the spigot all morning and never feel any cleaner. It’s just so refreshing to do something normal.

The old world hasn’t completely disappeared yet. I’m living in what the heirs to these days will call a Golden Age, when you could have biscuits and jam, before it was all gone. Before these golden days faded away.

When I finish, I towel dry. My clothes are gone. A white, cotton sundress hangs on the back of the door. A narrow length of green fabric is draped over the shoulders. There’s a pair of fresh underpants, and the sight of these alone make me smile. I dress and I take a look at myself in the medicine cabinet mirror. I barely recognize me. Where is the girl with the pink streaks in her hair? With the nose piercing? With the weekly henna tattoos?

There’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I say.

It’s Leslie. She’s dressed in an identical white dress. The green fabric is tied around her waist and into a large bow in the back. She takes my belt and fits it around me. She’s also brought a pair of flip-flop sandals that match the ones she’s wearing.

“Denny’s waiting,” she says. She holds my hand and we walk down the stairs together. Tessa is already there. Her disdain for me is instantly apparent as I step into the entrance hall. Aubrey, Auntie Alice, and Denny sit quietly in the living room.

“We’re here,” Leslie says.

Aubrey looks up at me and I see the twinkle in his clear, blue eyes. I blush.

Denny leans forward in his chair. His eyes dance over me. I know he wants to say something, but before he can, there is the blare of a trumpet out front. It is so sudden, the three of us girls jump. Denny breaks open a wide smile.

“Let the festivities begin,” Denny says.