The Resurrected Compendium (8 page)

When the bed dipped, Marnie woke. She knew that shift and shuffle of bedclothes, the press of a weight on the mattress. She knew that soft sigh, of a man trying hard not to wake her but not trying hard enough.

The smell was all wrong, though. Tony came to bed smelling of soap and sometimes the aftershave she’d once adored but now could barely stand. Not this time. Now her nose caught hints of copper, of turned earth. Brick dust. Sweat. And under it all, that sweet, light fragrance that had so tantalized her the day before.

It was delicious.
 

Her sleepy eyes wouldn’t open — was this a dream? It had to be, because for the past nine months, since the day she’d looked down at that plastic stick with its two pink lines, and truthfully even before that, everything about Tony had begun to disgust her. The way he chewed his food, the hairs he left in the bathroom sink, the clickety-snip of his toenails when he clipped them. The smile that once turned her inside out now only turned her stomach.
 

But this, the familiar stroke of his fingers over her thigh, the warmth of his belly and chest against her back, these sensations sent slow, curling heat all through her. When his hand moved up to cup her breast, she breathed out a moan and pressed against him. The pillow she used between her legs to keep her back from aching became a sweet pressure against her. Her hips rocked. His hand slipped down the giant mound of her belly, found the edge of her nightgown, tugged it up. His fingers slipped inside her panties, found her heat.
 

Stroked.

Sex had become a cumbersome thing the bigger she grew. As if it wasn’t bad enough that his every touch felt wrong on her skin, she wasn’t even able to lie beneath him and let him pump away without doing anything else. No, she had to heave her weight around and bend herself into positions that let him push inside her without pressing on the baby. She had to deal with the constant urge to pee, Braxton-Hicks contractions, the looseness of joints that meant almost every part of her ached.

But oh, how good it felt to have him touch her now. By the time he entered her from behind, she was so ready for him she thought she might spiral into climax at the first thrust. With his arm beneath her leg to hold it up so she didn’t have to make the effort, his fingers tapped right where she needed them to. He moved, slowly, so slowly inside her. The pleasure made her shake.
 

And then, Marnie woke up.

All the way, eyes wide, breath catching in her throat. Her body arched, but she was like a turtle on its back. Imprisoned with him pressing against her from behind, his body linked to hers and her belly in front of her keeping her from rolling forward, all she could do was swim in the sheets and let out a startled cry.

Something was very, very wrong, but though her mind knew it, her body hadn’t yet figured it out. Even as she struggled, pushing at the pillows, the inexorable slide into orgasm had begun and wasn’t stopping. It ripped at her, left her gasping, her vision bright with stars and the hazy red edges of possible unconsciousness. He thrust harder, the bed rocking. He moaned her name, and something familiar in it sent her over the edge again even as she fought against the pleasure with a silent “no, no, oh, God…no.”

He spent himself inside her with a low shout and stopped moving. Marnie panted, frozen. Tony stroked her hair from the back of her neck; his lips pressed her there in the place that not so long ago she’d loved to have him lick and bite and kiss. Then he withdrew. The bed shifted. She heard the pad of his bare feet on the floor, down the hall and into the bathroom. She heard the shower start, the water pattering on the porcelain and the rattle of the shower curtain rings on the curved metal rod he’d installed just for her so she’d have more room in the old-fashioned shower.

She heard him start to sing.

Tony had a surprisingly sweet baritone voice, always on key though he only ever sang in the shower or along with the car radio. His voice was grit and gravel now, nothing sweet about it except when it sputtered into silence. Marnie pushed herself up from the bed, anticipating the slow, warm gush of him on her thighs, but there was nothing. She shook, her knees weak for a moment, and she gripped the nightstand.

What the holy fuck was happening?

The shower shut off. The bathroom door squeaked, then the hall. The stairs. All normal, familiar sounds made shocking and terrible by the fact she should be the only person in this house and was not.
 

She heard the back door open and close.
 

Only then could she move. Marnie went downstairs, found the orange juice carton on the counter instead of in the fridge, just as she had so many times before. It had made her angry and angrier all those other mornings when Tony had gone off to work, leaving her with the mess. This time, all she did was close the carton, open the fridge and tuck it inside. Her fingers shook; she was light-headed and woozy the way she got when she didn’t eat enough or it was time for the daily liquid shot of the heavy duty iron supplement she had to take to counter the anemia this baby’d created. She went to the cupboard to get the bottle, every movement an effort she was afraid she’d be unable to make but forced herself to do anyway because only be pretending she might possibly still be normal, that all of this was normal, could she hope to function.

She stopped in front of the electric calendar that had been on the kitchen counter since her grandparents had owned the house. Like an old clock radio, it had flipping numbers, black on white, to keep track of the
 
month and date. She looked at it every day.
 

Yesterday had been the eighth, she was sure of it because that was bill-paying day and she’d spent the morning at her desk, calculating the bank balance. It had put her in a bad mood, which had led to the frank-n-beans argument, and that had led to her throwing them on the floor…and then the storm had come. Yesterday had been the eighth, the day after had been the ninth, today should be the tenth, that’s how time fucking worked, it went forward twenty-four hours at a time, but the calendar said it was the twelfth.
 

Marnie gripped the counter, her breath short. The baby moved and squirmed, kicked once and settled. She looked at the microwave clock, which should be blinking if the power went out, but it was the same steady green as always. Besides, if the power’d gone out the calendar would be showing a date from the past, not the future.

The fuck?

She looked out the window over the sink, across the yard, toward the wreckage of the Mustang. A man stood there, his back to her, but she knew the slope of those shoulders, the length of those legs, the tilt of that head, even though part of that skull appeared to be missing. Gone. Dented on one side so deeply the difference in his profile was clear even from this distance.

Inside out. Upside down. That’s how she felt, her stomach all at once gnawingly hungry and red clouds threatening the corners of her vision. She knew that feeling; she’d passed out a number of times before the midwife she was seeing had figured out Marnie needed to be on the high extra doses of iron.
 

She was not going to pass out. No. She refused. Her fingers gripped the counter hard enough to dent the remaining pieces of her fingernails back, but she fought off the urge to slowly crumple to the ground.

She’d been asleep for three days. She’d killed her lover, the father of her child, and he was out there walking around. He’d fucked her in their bed an hour ago.

She went outside and found the place where she’d put him to what had apparently not been any sort of rest. The debris was there, some spattered with blood and bits of hair. The sight pushed bile into her throat, but she forced herself to keep looking.

From his place inspecting the Mustang, Tony turned. His voice was thick and rough, but his words were soft. “Babe? You okay?”

Shit and damn and fuck, he was crossing the yard to her. She backed up, going in the house, closing the door, but he wouldn’t be kept out. He couldn’t be. She’d invited him into her body, her life and her house, and he was there to stay.

She watched him through the four panes of glass, hoping he’d stop. Turn around. Tinker with his car. Leave her alone. Oh God, if only he’d leave her alone. At the counter, her shaking hands slipped a knife from the block.

Inside her, the child stirred.

10

Abbie had fallen asleep in one of the hard plastic chairs in the nurse’s lounge, her dark hair swept to cover her face and one hand curled under her chin. She looked softer in sleep. Or maybe it was just that his eyes gone blurred and out-of-focus from exhaustion.
 

They’d spent the last three days at the hospital, which had been overrun with the dead and injured after the series of tornados that had swept the region. Four different twisters had been confirmed, and though he hadn’t heard this himself, Cal’d overheard two of the doctors talking about how yesterday another part of the state had been hit along with several other towns. Cal could never’ve claimed to be a doctor, but he’d had emergency medical training. Both of them had found themselves helping out in the emergency room, him mostly doing triage while she took care of the more practical things, the food and drink. They hadn’t left even to eat or sleep, but things had started to get back under control and it was time for Cal to get out of here.

He considered leaving Abbie there, if only so he didn’t have to wake her. Probably would’ve if he’d had his own car and didn’t need to use hers. Might even have left her there anyway, except something about her wouldn’t let him. It wasn’t the way she’d fucked him — Cal had been with lots of women for one-night stands. Preferred it that way, mostly, since Marnie had up and left him for that fella with the dopey grin and the piece-of-shit Mustang. No, there was something else about Abbie that had spoken to him in some crazy kind of whisper. Something like a secret, only Cal thought she didn’t even know it.

Hell. He wasn’t sure what that even meant, just that he didn’t leave her sleeping when he could’ve. Instead, he reached over to shake her gently awake, murmuring her name.

She came awake suddenly, without startling, but her body went instantly tense beneath his touch. Her eyes came open, hands fisted. She was on her feet before he even had time to get out of the way. It took her a few seconds to know who he was, but when she did, her smile was rueful.

“Dreaming,” she said in explanation, then looked around the lounge. “Guess it wasn’t a nightmare.”

“No. Sorry.”

She tilted her head and her smile softened. “It’s okay. You want to go see your wife now?”

“Ex-wife,” he made sure to emphasize. “We’ve been divorced for over a year. I just —”

She held up a hand. “I told you before. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

He hadn’t wondered before if she had a family. Husband, kids. She didn’t wear a ring, but there’d been signs of a family in her car. A few of those plastic toys kids got from fast-food meals, a package of infant wipes that told him she was used to cleaning up messes.
 

“You still want to come along?”

She blinked slowly. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s go.”

He took the wheel, thinking only after he’d turned the key in the ignition that she might expect to drive, but Abbie just looked out the window and chewed on her thumbnail. Her hair had fallen across her face again. He liked that she didn’t feel she needed to talk.

The drive to Marnie’s grandparents’ house took twice as long because of the wreckage still on the streets. Downed trees, emergency vehicles. He took a few back roads and wished for his pickup truck to go cross-country. Shit. He’d probably never get it back, at least not in one piece.

“This was a bad one, huh?” Her quiet voice from the passenger seat startled him a little.
 

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never been in a tornado before. It wasn’t like I thought it would be.”

“Me neither. Seen places where they went through, but wasn’t ever in one myself. But they said at the hospital it was one of the worst they’d seen in a long time.”

She looked at him then, the pale skin of her face traced lightly here and there with faint red scratches and the outlines of a few bruises. He’d done that when he shoved her into the bathtub. Her smile tipped just on one side. “But we made it through.”

She looked out the window again. “I didn’t know they bounced. Tornados, I mean. Apparently, they can bounce.”
 

She pointed into the distance, where the wind had ripped apart what had once been a cornfield but left the surrounding fields untouched. She leaned forward to click on the radio, found static and the blurt of some loud music, then the softer tones of a newscaster. A woman’s voice, some clipped accent he didn’t recognize. She was talking about the storms, what towns had been hit. The damage that had been done. How unusual the past few days had been, with not just the strength of the storms, but the locations.

“Wait a minute,” Abbie said. “What? New York state? Glen Wild? What? Oh my God.”

But the story had ended, replaced by a song Cal didn’t know and didn’t like. Abbie flicked the radio with her fingers to turn it off. She let out a series of slow, hitching breaths, like she was trying hard not to cry.
 

“Oh God,” she said. “I have to get home. I have to get home.”

They’d just pulled into the end of Marnie’s driveway, but at the sound of Abbie’s despair Cal stopped the car. She twisted in her seat to look at him; she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. Her dark eyes were narrowed, her mouth grim. She reached to curl her fingers in his shirt sleeve.

“I lost my phone,” she said. “I can’t call. I mean…I’m sure…tell me they’re okay, Cal. They’re okay, right?”

He didn’t have to ask who. He could guess she meant her kids, maybe a husband, even though he it seemed more than likely he’d be an ex. Cal understood. He leaned to put his hand on the back of her neck, and the weight of her hair tickled his knuckles.

“I’m sure they’re fine. We’ll find you a phone, so you can call. Okay? Marnie has a phone, if she hasn’t lost power you can use hers. Or she’ll have a cell phone.”