The Witch of the Wood (19 page)

“And who might these ‘opposers’ be exactly?” Rudy said.

“Conservatives to start. Those who might not feel quite right about new religions and shape-shifting witches entering the bloodline.” She made a sign to push, and they started to move the sofa across the floor, more of an effort than it had seemed it would be. Rudy suddenly felt older than dirt.

“Conservatives, huh?” he said when they’d uncovered the trapdoor completely. “They sound like a pleasant squad.”

She grinned ruefully.

“They’re not your main problem, Rudy. Old bluebloods preaching family values in the Bible Belt won’t matter as much as the ones who would prefer living in the wild, feeding on the chaos, and finding they have new purpose in a world that had shunned them.”

“Yeah . . . the scary warlord rising from the ashes, huh?”

“Not so cute, Rudy. There are those who never understood the idea of sitting at a desk for twelve years, then withering in a cubicle for forty more. In a profound way, this new world will make a lot of sense, a ravaged war zone where one can lead by raw strength and fear, as long as there’s a way to keep the engines running.”

She stopped suddenly. Rudy tried to say something, and she put the finger across the throat, like silence, like now.

There were noises, muted but hurried. Footsteps from overhead.

A lot of them.

Brian Duffey was not stunned nor saddened. There was no time for that shit. He pushed open the back door, stepped out, and saw that Mr. Nardo had been out checking his laundry line, as usual, thinking he’d be so quick that none of his neighbors would notice he was just wearing boxers. He was pinned beneath a tree, face-up, squirming, eyes rolling. Duffey ignored him. To the left, the Valentines’ place had been hit with three massive trees from the street side, and through all the branches and leaves there was a thick black smoke gaining momentum.

A cold voice inside Brian Duffey’s head checked off the Valentines in the same way it had dismissed Mr. Nardo. They were all over retirement age. Expendable. Lying at the foot of the steps in the yellowed grass was the game ball from states last year, signed by all the players and coaches in white-out because they’d been so excited they hadn’t taken the time to hunt around for a Sharpie. Dad, the drunken prick, had taken it off the mantel to fuck with again last night and left it out here. Duffey jumped down to grab it, and when he turned back to the kitchen doorway, there was a figure standing in it.

A pale naked figure spotted with filth.

Brian Duffey didn’t understand it, but he didn’t fear it either. He dropped the football. He met her stare and waited, watching her change. He also remained cold and emotionless when she was transformed into a quite dirty and naked version of Linda Birch, shyly pushing one knee against the other, looking at him sideways, and playfully hooking her index fingernail on one of her bottom teeth.

“Hi, Brian,” she said in a voice of grit.

He went to her then, mounting the short steps, arms reaching out, eyes cold flint. He took her head in his hands, and just as she was beginning to mew and rub her cheek against his palm, he gripped hard and snapped her neck with an audible “pop.” She went ragdoll and he dropped her, stood over her, heart pumping, fists balled up tight. His breath was heavy now, and he only wished he could kill this stuck-up bitch one more time.

Another pale figure appeared in the doorway.

And it was at that moment that Brian Duffey knew the world had changed just for him.

Set in motion by the noises upstairs, Caroline strode to the far side of the basement and pulled across what looked like a set of thick vinyl shower curtains one might use to mask the more deteriorated area of the space or the corner with the French drain. Revealed was a set of green storage lockers, and she snapped open the doors.

Guns.

Hundreds of them.

“You’re kidding, right?” Rudy breathed.

“No need to whisper,” she said. “The bottom of the fake floor up there is made of a soundproofing material like one of those police interrogation mirrors; we hear them, they can’t hear us. Ignore them.” There was the sound of something heavy falling over up there, the faintest tinkle of shattering glass. Rudy was the one who flinched, shoulders coming up like a frightened little turtle.

“Who is it?” Rudy whispered, not able to help himself.

“Neighbors,” she said. “Probably looking for medical supplies, food, water, weapons. Too much racket to be do-gooders checking for those in need, and too feeble for the out-of-towners who will ultimately decide to become looters for a living.”

“And we’re going to confront them with guns?” Rudy said.

“No, of course not.” She turned toward the stockpile. “But the breach up there is a time check of sorts, and I’m due to introduce you to your birth-trove, like your son’s ‘Coming of Dreams.’ It’s owed to you for gaining the title of ‘Father.’” She let her hand go across, palm up, in ceremonious presentation. “I’ve spent a lifetime collecting for you. The first section is hand guns, the middle compartment a battery of rifles, and to the left over there are the shotguns. There are divisions of breech- and muzzle-loaded weapons, and more trivial subcategories, especially in the pistol area. Below each storage section you’ll note the ammo container, and to the far left are the straps, shoulder holsters, and ankle bands, anything you think you might need.” She looked down bashfully. “There’s also fireworks in that black footlocker at the end there. Nothing in my storybook about them, I’m just a real Fourth of July kind of girl. I like the colors. They’re pretty.”

Rudy nodded off this last odd detail and gazed at the arsenal in amazement. The weapons were arranged by size, manufacturer, and style, all the marquis players standing in their slots like silent merchants of doom—Beretta, Colt, Glock, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Winchester. But then there was what seemed the specialty talent, the ones that made Rudy know he was not deserving, let alone savvy enough to pick up, load, and fire one of these bad boys: Benelli, Browning, Bushmaster, Ithaca, O. F. Mossberg & Sons, Stoeger, and a slew of them he just couldn’t process on the first sweep.

Something fell overhead with a muted crash followed by a skidding sound; china bureau, had to be. Both of them cowered at that one, and Rudy moved away from the cabinets.

“How about the possibility that someone might notice it’s strange there’s no basement entrance?”

“Smartass,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s the deconstructionist in me, always looking for logic errors in the plotline.” She came over to join him at the base of the stairway and looked up at the doorway with him.

“It goes by the principle that in this kind of emergency no one will be looking that hard or staying that long,” she said. “We’re trying for an illusion that would survive a passing glance.” She put her hands on her hips. “Besides, if you did want to get through from up there, you’d need pneumatic breaker tools, Rudy, and I doubt anyone would be interested enough to go dragging in those kind of heavy hammers to get into my little old basement. Unless they knew who I was hiding, that is.”

“Thanks for making me feel so safe.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Rudy backed off and walked over toward the lockers, shutting a door or two, pausing to slide his index finger along the barrel insignia of a Taurus Tracker revolver.

“Hey,” he said. “What about the storybook up there as evidence? Isn’t it like a blinking road arrow board pointing to your little compound down here?”

“Burned it. Checked the cinders too.”

“You got any family out there?”

She paused. He turned; he’d hit a chord.

“Funny you mention it,” She said. She approached and took over closing all the doors that were left standing open, slowly, methodically. Then, to Rudy’s amazement, she came and took both his hands in hers. She was close enough that he could feel the warmth of her breath.

“I’m . . . uh . . . not good at making bargains, Rudy.” She looked at the ceiling, and it seemed she was going to cry. “I was never good at advocating for myself during job interviews where you tried to enter at the highest pay rate, and asking for raises always terrified me. I’m the one who would inevitably settle for a title instead of a bonus.” She met his eyes. “But in this case I want to make a deal. And it’s not negotiable.”

He wanted to kiss her for some reason, quite badly in fact, but he didn’t. Of course not. He was the polite guy at the edge of the picture, the wallflower, the one who would never dream of playing off a girl’s clear vulnerability. And it was a cold reality check to be sure. He was back to true form, the puritanical patriarch who didn’t have a warlock conveniently providing him “gifts” anymore.

“What kind of a deal?” he said.

“The kind of deal that will save a life.”

“Whose?”

“My mother’s.”

“Is she upstairs?” he said. She laughed, and he gave a stupid grin. It was a good tension-breaker. She let go his hands, and walked off a step.

“No, Rudy, she’s not upstairs. If Ma was here she’d be with us.”

“Where is she then?”

“At St. Elizabeth’s, in the cancer ward. And she’s got it bad, metastatic, terminal, spread all through the pancreas, liver, and lungs.”

Rudy nodded. This was an easy one.

“No problem. When do you want to go get her? St. Elizabeth’s is at the top of a rise at the end of Everett Street, right around the corner.” He stopped himself and smiled stupidly once more. Was this one of the trade-offs in the new reality? He was “God,” but told his compatriots things they already knew like some doting grandmother? He coughed into his fist, and said, “What I mean is . . . hospitals have generators, right? I’ll bet with its position on the vista, the damage from the ‘great fall of timber’ was minimal.”

She shook her head.

“No. She stays where she is for now, but you’re right, we need to risk venturing out to her as soon as our business allows.”

“So your price is an abduction no one would really care about in these circumstances?”

“No. It’s what we bring with us.” She went over to the area to the far left of the gun cabinets where there was a small end table with a carton sporting the “St. Elizabeth’s” insignia stamped on an angle.

“What’s in the box?” Rudy said, almost bursting out in crazy laughter from actually speaking aloud his favorite line from his favorite film,
Seven.

“It’s filled with plastic bags,” she said flatly. “Tubes, rubber straps, a big pair of scissors in a sheath, syringes, needles.”

“I’m going to give her my blood?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And why?”

“Trade-off for my services, Rudy. In this ‘new reality’ you gain a power called ‘The Healing Blood.’ It not only puts disease in a holding pattern, but enlivens the senses. The problem is that it’s temporary. The good news is that it’s potent. She’s in stage four, and a full donation buys her three years.”

“And when I’ve rejuvenated enough to give again?”

“Another dose for another three years and so on, for as long as I assist you.”

“Right,” he said thoughtfully. “It potentially adds up to so many doses that it basically assures she’ll die of old age before the disease gets her. It’s a noble thing, a good thing, and I’ll give you all that I have.”

“No, Rudy. I’m afraid that you won’t.” She was staring at the table with the box on it, running her finger along one of the creases. Her eyes were fluttering. “It’s in the book I burned, Rudy . . . part of the story I didn’t tell you.” She looked at him, bottom lip trembling. “It’s prophecy that ‘The Provider’ isn’t supposed to live very long.”

Duffey had had to make himself stop. It’s not that he’d gotten tired of killing the monster-bitches; in fact, the hunger had grown with each slaughter. It’s that he needed his strength for what was to come. After tossing aside the eighth dirty corpse, he’d made his way through the back yard and paused to look down the cliff to the Interstate. It was a total clusterfuck; God had ripped open the world for him. Instinctively, he knew he had to get out of the neighborhood, and he saw store-raids in his near future: lanterns, camp gear, wilderness clothing and generators, not to mention fishing equipment, hunting knives, and firearms.

Back in the house he said a small prayer by the body of his mother and gave the finger to his dead father as he straddled the great trunk, making his way to the street, to the circus. There was wailing, screaming, sirens in the distance, people running past, a flock of wildlife bursting into the road and flooding across the fallen timber in two sets of rolling waves.

Duffey worked his way down the block, busting windows and screen doors to hunt through the rubble, helping men lift fallen ceiling joists off the dead and wounded, rolling tree trunks out of their landing grooves to get to the crushed and the trapped, finding children caught in small spaces with broken legs, broken heads, broken backs, broken arms. He pushed a heavy bedroom cabinet off a ten-year-old girl who had lost an eye and three toes when the back yard pine had smashed through the wall, and he yanked the door clean off a pickup with a crushed cab, tree laid across in diagonal, the driver inside pressing his nose to the horn over and over. He peeled back twists of siding and dug through piles of crushed stone and brick. He saw a man abandon an infant in a car seat left on the hood of a black Acura when one of the monster-bitches started to change for him. Duffey grabbed the dirty thing and snapped her neck, cutting off her inhuman wail as if he were throwing a switch. He turned in disgust, and the man was pointing, jabbering wordlessly. Duffey punched him in the face, breaking his nose. One of the men with Duffey called out that the guy was a “sympathizer.” Duffey liked that word. It sounded like “sympathy,” or “empathy,” or one of those other pathetic terms that usually went along with fat ugly girls with allergies and issues. But there’d be no more of that noise. No more “talking,” no lame excuses, no
weakness
. The man with the broken nose sat on the curb for a second, using the tail of his dress shirt to pad up the wound.