dark. It feels like it might be his face. A palm collides with my cheek. Teeth rattle in my head. A sob claws its way through the miserable lump in my throat.
“You bastard. She was just a damn kid.”
“A stupid girl, outside in the dark alone. You should have raised her better than that.”
“She’s not mine. Just my responsibility.”
“Well, then she’s a fucking stupid child. A stupid dead child now.”
“What did you do?”
He shoves me to the window, points. “Do you see that light?”
The light is still there. Steady. Constant. “I see it.”
“Your idiot friend is there. What is left of her.”
“I want to see her.”
“Not yet. First you must answer my questions.”
“I want answers, too.”
“No. You have no choices now.”
The accent, I still can’t pinpoint it. Somewhere European. German, Austrian, Swiss maybe. I can’t tell the difference, which makes my stomach squeeze with shame. How little of the world I knew before it was almost all gone.
Lisa is dead. It’s just me now. Me and this guy.
“I’m nobody. A cleaner at a drug company.”
His laugh is tight and bitter. “A cleaner. You are telling me a janitor made it this far?”
“Why not?”
“You’re as stupid as your friend. Come with me.”
Like I have a choice. He loops the rope around my hands so I’m forced to follow him back down the steps. The wind has flatlined. There’s no sign of rain. It’s cloudy with a good chance of death.
I see his shape in the dark. There’s not much to him, although whatthere is of his physique is hard. He’s made of wire, not bulk. My height, in heels. I can take him. If I wait, I can take him. I hope. For Lisa’s sake. For mine. Because nothing will stop me from meeting that boat.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and hope that Lisa can forgive me.
“I am going to show you something. But if you make a noise, I will snap your stupid neck. Nod if you understand.”
I nod, show I understand, although in truth I’m more ignorant than I ever was.
The stone behemoth squats in a field past the village’s rim, malevolent in the dark with its single glowing eye. It’s a half-blinded beast from a world that came to a different end to ours.
My captor creeps now, each step deliberately pressed into the damp grass. He pulls me with him and I see no good reason not to obey. He has all the information and all I have is a sense of foreboding that fills me with frosty dread.
When we reach the window, he shoves me into the shadows, holds a finger to his lips, lifts his face to the glass.
I want to see, too. I need to. Even if all the horrors in all the world are collected in this barn, I need to look inside.
He senses my urgency, the fair-haired man with cheekbones high enough and sharp enough to slice cold cuts, and indulges my desire.
From beams thicker than my thigh, hooks dangle, Spanish question marks that ask a question for which I wish I had no answer. But I do; I know what happens in this place and I wish so hard I didn’t. I’m a city girl, born and raised. My meat used to come with price tags and a dose of carbon monoxide to keep it red. But here, meat moved in herds.
The village has survivors and they’ve gathered, the half dozen of them wrapped in clothes that will never know good days. My gaze zooms in. Pans and scans. Breaks everything into can-deal chunks. Takes in the nest these once-people have created. Bones and rust-colored straw litter the barn. Decaying gore. Old bones, judging from the meatless sheen, from chickens and other livestock. They’ve been picked clean, snapped in two, the marrow slurped from their centers. Heaps of cans rust in the corners. Empty food wrappers form a carpet that will never rot.Tools hang on the walls, abandoned. No more harvests under a bulging autumn moon.
One of the villagers breaks away, crawls across the floor to a wooden bucket jerked from a well, but his pose is anything but penitent. A row of jagged bones forms
“You bastard. She was just a damn kid.”
“A stupid girl, outside in the dark alone. You should have raised her better than that.”
“She’s not mine. Just my responsibility.”
“Well, then she’s a fucking stupid child. A stupid dead child now.”
“What did you do?”
He shoves me to the window, points. “Do you see that light?”
The light is still there. Steady. Constant. “I see it.”
“Your idiot friend is there. What is left of her.”
“I want to see her.”
“Not yet. First you must answer my questions.”
“I want answers, too.”
“No. You have no choices now.”
The accent, I still can’t pinpoint it. Somewhere European. German, Austrian, Swiss maybe. I can’t tell the difference, which makes my stomach squeeze with shame. How little of the world I knew before it was almost all gone.
Lisa is dead. It’s just me now. Me and this guy.
“I’m nobody. A cleaner at a drug company.”
His laugh is tight and bitter. “A cleaner. You are telling me a janitor made it this far?”
“Why not?”
“You’re as stupid as your friend. Come with me.”
Like I have a choice. He loops the rope around my hands so I’m forced to follow him back down the steps. The wind has flatlined. There’s no sign of rain. It’s cloudy with a good chance of death.
I see his shape in the dark. There’s not much to him, although whatthere is of his physique is hard. He’s made of wire, not bulk. My height, in heels. I can take him. If I wait, I can take him. I hope. For Lisa’s sake. For mine. Because nothing will stop me from meeting that boat.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and hope that Lisa can forgive me.
“I am going to show you something. But if you make a noise, I will snap your stupid neck. Nod if you understand.”
I nod, show I understand, although in truth I’m more ignorant than I ever was.
The stone behemoth squats in a field past the village’s rim, malevolent in the dark with its single glowing eye. It’s a half-blinded beast from a world that came to a different end to ours.
My captor creeps now, each step deliberately pressed into the damp grass. He pulls me with him and I see no good reason not to obey. He has all the information and all I have is a sense of foreboding that fills me with frosty dread.
When we reach the window, he shoves me into the shadows, holds a finger to his lips, lifts his face to the glass.
I want to see, too. I need to. Even if all the horrors in all the world are collected in this barn, I need to look inside.
He senses my urgency, the fair-haired man with cheekbones high enough and sharp enough to slice cold cuts, and indulges my desire.
From beams thicker than my thigh, hooks dangle, Spanish question marks that ask a question for which I wish I had no answer. But I do; I know what happens in this place and I wish so hard I didn’t. I’m a city girl, born and raised. My meat used to come with price tags and a dose of carbon monoxide to keep it red. But here, meat moved in herds.
The village has survivors and they’ve gathered, the half dozen of them wrapped in clothes that will never know good days. My gaze zooms in. Pans and scans. Breaks everything into can-deal chunks. Takes in the nest these once-people have created. Bones and rust-colored straw litter the barn. Decaying gore. Old bones, judging from the meatless sheen, from chickens and other livestock. They’ve been picked clean, snapped in two, the marrow slurped from their centers. Heaps of cans rust in the corners. Empty food wrappers form a carpet that will never rot.Tools hang on the walls, abandoned. No more harvests under a bulging autumn moon.
One of the villagers breaks away, crawls across the floor to a wooden bucket jerked from a well, but his pose is anything but penitent. A row of jagged bones forms
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