Authors: Sarah Langan
The Missing (41 page)
W
here did I go wrong?
Meg heard Fenstad’s car pull out of the drive
Monday morning. Maddie had been quiet for hours,
which was a bad sign. She didn’t want to think the worst. If Maddie was hurt, her intuition would tell her so. Problem was, her intuition
was
telling her some- thing. She was afraid that Maddie was dead.
She’d been lying in the same position for hours. Her arms were numb, she couldn’t wiggle her fingers, and long ago she’d given up fighting her way out of these bindings. The knots were impossibly tight. Still, some- thing was wrong with Maddie. She could feel it. And there was the other thing she didn’t want to think about. This might be her last chance to get away before Fenstad came home and killed them both.
He’d stuck a wad of something in her mouth before tying the gag, and though she hadn’t seen it, she was fairly certain that it was one of his dirty tube socks. It tasted . . .
bad
. The cotton had expanded with her sa- liva and was now working its way down her throat. She was beginning to have trouble breathing. She’d lost feel- ing in her arms and couldn’t move them, so she leaned
forward, hoping the extra weight might eventually rip the sheets and set her free.
She thought about her dad on her wedding day, and the thing he’d said. He’d summoned her to the formal dining room, and even though it was a rainy day, he’d sat with the lights out, in the dark. He was supposed to be her official witness, but at the last minute he’d re- fused to drive her to the justice of the peace. The rest of her family, afraid to defy him, hadn’t come, either.
They’ll never accept you
, he told her the day she’d announced her engagement.
They might be polite, but behind your back they’ll call you the shiksa. I’ll pay for your wedding, but only a proper one, in a church. Trust me, Meg. I love you more than anyone else. I know what’s best. Break it off.
But she hadn’t trusted him. Her first act of rebellion against Frank Bonelli had been the only one. Wearing a smart white suit, she drove herself to the justice of the peace that day, and he never spoke to her again. Now, twenty years later, here she was tied to a bed, trying to decide whether she had the strength to attack her hus- band, and if so which weapon—a pair of fabric scissors or a blunt object—she should use.
Where did I go wrong?
her father’s memory asked, and she shrugged, and wondered that, too.
That’s when she saw Albert Sanguine. He smashed the window with his fist and crawled inside. His gown was open to reveal skin so pale it was blue. He was a large man, and with each step he took toward her, he got bigger. By the time he got to her bedside, he was towering over her.
She tried to scream. Cotton slid further down her throat. She gasped but couldn’t get any air. Suddenly she was choking on a dirty sock. He leaned over her, and
she remembered the way he’d sent her flying into the plastic wall. She remembered the sound it had made, and the crack of her ankle. She would have struggled more if she hadn’t been trying so hard to breathe.
His hands were gentle, but not deft. She didn’t know what he’d done until she saw the necktie that had held the sock in place in his hand. Still, she wasn’t quite sure. She was gasping, but nothing was happening, and the harder she tried to breathe, the farther the sock slid. There was a weight on her hips suddenly, but she didn’t know why. Her eyes were closed, but even if they’d been open, she would have been too panicked to realize that he was sitting on her to hold her still.
He squeezed her jaw until it opened. Then his hand was in her mouth. She tried to bite him. She couldn’t breathe! He held her chin with one hand, and with the other stuck his meaty fingers down her throat. She tasted salt. Sweat. She dry-heaved, and out came some- thing long and wet. Cold air burned her throat. She gasped, and this time was greeted by air. It rushed her lungs and filled them.
Albert dropped the sock in front of her so she could see it. Her saliva over the long night had expanded it into a foot-long snake.
“Stop fighting!” he hissed. Then he coughed a full, watery cough, and began untying the knot at her left wrist. His fingers worked slowly. He was different now. His Tourette’s was gone, and his eyes were black. He was infected, clearly. But it was daytime. Why wasn’t he sensitive to light like the rest of them?
“They’re sleeping, but she knows I’m here. She’s watching through my eyes. I can feel it,” he said. He turned his head and coughed. A ream of phlegm splat- ted against her sheet.
“She’s after the survivors. She’ll come for you tonight.”
Meg’s right wrist came loose. Numb, it fell from the bedpost. She tried to pick it up and place it in her lap, but she couldn’t even rotate her shoulder. Her hand was purple and swollen, like something that has been under water for days.
Like a gentleman, he gestured at her other wrist. She nodded her permission, and he began loosening the knot. He smelled like the others, like rot. “What are you?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse.
He didn’t answer for a second, and stopped work on her wrist. She wondered if she’d made a mistake. If, like Fenstad, she’d said the wrong word and flicked a switch inside him, and now he would pounce. She flinched, in expectation. It occurred to her that among her laundry list of problems, she was officially a bat- tered woman.
“When I was little I heard it in the woods,” he said. “My brain, the way it works, and the way the virus works, they match. More than Lois, or anyone else. So it called to me. I could hear it, even though nobody else could. It got stronger when the sulfur fed it after the mill fire. It wanted me to dig it up but I wouldn’t. But then a little boy found it, and brought it back.”
He looked at her, and she nodded. Her throat was too raw to speak.
“I drank it away. I filled the spaces in my mind that it wanted to live with bread pudding so it couldn’t have me, not completely. It healed me,” he said, pointing at his wound, which was open, but not bleeding, “but only a little. I drink too much to let it change me. I’m always hungry. It waits for me to get tired of fighting.” He smiled at her like the sweet Albert she used to know. “It’s strongest inside Lois Larkin now. She’s using it to hurt everyone, because she’s so angry. I help her, even though I don’t want to. I can’t get free.”
Meg’s wrist finally dropped. He picked it up and be- gan to rub her forearm between his massive hands. She couldn’t feel it, only saw him do it. “I never eat the kills. Only rats,” he said. She nodded, like this was a huge distinction, and maybe it was.
“Are there others like you? Partially immune?” she asked. The feeling slowly returned to her hands. At first it was pins and needles, and then burning pain, and then, finally, she could wiggle her fingers. She smiled. Thank God for small favors.
He shook his head. “Maybe. But who would want to be? My mind and my body, they live together, and they hate each other.”
“Oh, Albert . . .” she said. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for him, but she didn’t know where to start. He’d been dealt a far worse hand than she had ever imagined, and yet he’d managed. It gave her hope that her family might manage, too.
He seemed to understand, and he nodded. “You have to leave town before dark. I came here to tell you that.”
Meg tried to lift her arms, but they were still too weak, so she sat back in the bed, and waited for her strength to return. “Why are you doing this?”
He smiled, like the answer was obvious. “Because you were nice to me.”
“Thank . . .” she started, and then stopped, because she didn’t want to cry in front of him, and she knew that if she thanked him she would weep. “What will happen when she finds out you came here?”
He smiled bitterly, and she caught a glimpse of the man he could have been. “She’ll kill me. But I want that.”
“You’ll come with us. We’ll leave together.”
Albert shook his head. “I have to go now, Ms. Win- trob,” he said. Then his voice got husky. “The hunger is never quiet. If I stay I’ll hurt you.”
She knew it didn’t make sense, but she felt ashamed suddenly, that there was something so hard inside her, that from the men in her life she inspired violence.
He spread his bloody arms, and his gown opened far- ther. Perhaps he did not remember that he was naked underneath. “Get out. Go far away. It’ll make my life worth something, if you get out,” he said, and even as he spoke she could see a mean thing inside him. His up- per lip was curled, and his black eyes showed her reflec- tion, the way she imagined a spider might look, when it gets close to its prey.
“Yes,” she promised. How could she not?
He backed out of the room and gave her one final nod. The porch creaked as he descended. She under- stood then, what it might feel like, to straddle the mouth of hell.
T
he inevitable didn’t happen. The infected didn’t come. As soon as the sun rose, Danny Walker packed
a bag. Later he would remember packing, and wish he’d chosen better shoes or a warm coat. But instead he stacked chewing tobacco and a pile of socks into a red duffel bag. He didn’t bring any photos, or food, but he wanted some kind of memory of them, so he pulled the to-do list off the refrigerator and crinkled it into his back pocket. On it was written, “Buy ice cream.”
He got into Felice’s car. His car, now. A quarter tank left of gas. It might carry him as far as Portland. He turned the engine and searched for a radio station. Not even the emergency broadcast system was beeping. The entire spectrum was dead air.
He leaned against the wheel and took as deep a breath as he knew how. Yes, okay. Maybe they were all dead. Maybe the whole world was gone, and he was the last kid left, but he still had to leave this place. He still had to try. He just wished someone was with him. He wished he wasn’t alone, and that in the backseat of the car, Fe- lice, Miller, and James weren’t watching him with dead eyes.
He pulled from the driveway. Across the street he saw
movement behind the curtains. Alive! Someone was still alive! Screaming Maddie Wintrob. He’d kiss her feet if she got in this car with him. But then his stomach sank. He didn’t want to ring Dr. Wintrob’s bell. The guy had gone nuts. Besides, he’d said that his wife and daughter were infected, and that part might have been true.
Danny put the car in drive and started toward Bed- ford, where he would enter I–95 at a place that he hoped wasn’t guarded. His windows were rolled up, so he didn’t hear Meg Wintrob’s hoarse voice shouting, “Stop!”
“S
top!” Meg shouted out her bedroom window, but Danny Walker’s dust red Mercedes chugged to
the corner, and then up the hill. She leaned against the sill, and even though she knew he couldn’t hear, she kept shouting. “Come back! Please! Come back!”
She hadn’t eaten in a long while. She was weak, and so hungry that her stomach had stopped growling long ago. Her hands were better, but the deep skin ached, and the outer layers of her wrists were still numb. She was balanced on one leg while she stood at the window, because the other one couldn’t bear any weight.
She tried to walk to the hall, but her leg hurt too much, so she got down on her knees. As she headed for Maddie’s room, she came up with a half-baked idea, and decided it would have to do. She would untie Mad- die before Fenstad got home, and hide her in the Esca- lade. Then she’d slug Fenstad over the back of the head, tie him up, and take him with them out of town.
She tried not to disturb her ankle, and instead put her weight on her hips, which made her bursitis flare. If she and her husband survived this, would they laugh?
Remember that time you had to crawl to your daugh- ter’s rescue? Remember that time that stinky sock in your throat almost killed you? Remember when you found out everything you’d ever believed about your marriage was a lie? Wasn’t that funny?
One leg after the other. She crawled. Just a few more feet. Soon she’d be with Maddie. Maddie would be her legs, and together they’d build a splint. Maddie would help her fix dinner, so this pain in her stomach would go away.
She reached up and turned the knob. The smell of infection was overwhelming. She let out a shriek of re- lief when she saw Maddie sleeping like a cherub in her bed, and the body draped in a bloodstained sheet and pile of wool sweaters on the floor. There’d been a scuf- fle here last night. Fenstad, God bless him, had fought something off.
The light shone across Maddie’s pale face. Her snores were loud, and wet with fluid. Meg didn’t say anything for a long time. Didn’t touch Maddie’s cheek. She didn’t want to know for sure. Instead she looked at her sleep- ing, purple-haired angel. She imagined climbing into the bed with her, and holding her. Curing her by force of will and strength of love.
“Maddie?” she whispered.
Maddie opened her pretty green eyes. Her mouth was gagged with a red bandana. Meg hoisted herself up to the bed. Maddie didn’t lift her head or move her legs to help her sit. Instead she watched, and because of that, Meg knew for sure. But still, she hoped.
She untied the gag. It was double knotted, and nearly covered not just her mouth, but her nose. She cursed Fen- stad for that. Yes, he was allowed a breakdown, but ac- cidentally suffocating his wife and daughter was just
plain stupid. Wedged in her mouth was a pair of wet white underpants. Clean, at least. Maddie nodded and she waited. She was too frightened to speak.
A large strip of gauze covered Maddie’s shoulder. The skin along its edges looked burned, as if Fenstad had tried to cauterize it. At first she was furious, but then she understood; he’d been trying to burn out the infec- tion. Maddie was infected.
Meg’s eyes filled with tears. She felt Maddie’s fore- head. She wanted this to be a temperature. A fever that would break. “Who did this to you?” she asked.
“Can’t you guess?” Maddie smiled. “Enrique,” Meg moaned.