He twitches. “Maybe.”
“Then go,” I burst. “Find yourself some farmer’s daughter who got left behind and is feeling lonely. Don’t worry, if her daddy’s still around, you’ll either win him over or he’ll die. Make sure to find yourself a gun, though, to protect yourself from raiders. Or you can go Medieval retro, use a bow and arrow. I’m sure it’s as easy as it looks. Beware anyone calling himself Chief, or the Governor. And protect that little lady of yours, because evil always has rape on its mind.”
He stares at me, rain pouring over his face. “What are you talking about?”
Every post-apocalypse plot, ever, I think. I turn away. I want to get out of this town, fast. I hear the squish squish of Brennan following.
“This isn’t a movie, Mae,” he says.
I laugh.
He shoves me from behind, hard. Surprised, I fall forward, landing in a sprawl in a puddle. The heels of my hands shriek as I push myself up. They’re shredded from the pavement, dripping red. My right knee pounds.
“Fuck you,” I say, turning to face him. “Fuck. You.” I want to smash in his cloudy face. I’ve never punched a person. I need to know how it feels. I need to see him bleed.
No hitting anyone in the face or genitals.
Let them stop me.
He’s a kid.
He’s old enough.
He’s scared.
So am I.
You have to follow the rules.
He takes a step backward. “Mae, I’m sorry,” he says. He’s crying, again. “I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry.”
My fists are too tight.
“Please,” he says, “I’ll go wherever you want. Just don’t leave me.”
I unfurl my hands. “If you say one more word,” I tell him, “you’re on your own.” He opens his mouth and I raise a finger. “One more word, Brennan, and I’m gone. And if you touch me again, I don’t care what they say, I’ll break your fucking face. Understood?”
He nods, terrified.
Good.
For the rest of the day, he’s quiet. If not for his soggy footsteps and the occasional sniffle, I could forget he’s with me. It’s blissful, in a way, and yet, without his prattling, I’m alone again.
I’m cold now, and my wet pants chafe my skin. Brennan must be miserable. It’ll be night soon and the storm’s only getting worse.
Brennan sneezes.
We’re passing a development of crammed-together McMansions. Billboards announce new construction, leases available. Houses, not homes.
If he gets sick, he’s only going to slow me down more. No matter my earlier threats, I know they won’t let me leave my cameraman behind.
I turn in to the development. The streets are named after trees. Elm, Oak, Poplar. I turn on Birch, because when I was little and a winter storm coated all the trees with ice—half an inch, but it seemed endless—the white birches bent the farthest, rounding their trunks like great humps. When the ice melted, the white birches also sprang most readily back toward the sky. Few were able to straighten entirely—all these years later many are still bowed—but they didn’t snap, and I’ve always liked that about them.
The second house on the left side of Birch Street catches my eye. It looks like all the others, except that there’s a sign out front that reads in blue OPEN HOUSE—and I know I am where I’m meant to be. I try the front door. Locked.
“Wait here,” I tell Brennan. I circle to the backyard. My attempts to jimmy open a kitchen window fail. I’ll need to break it. There’s nothing useful in the back, so I return to the front of the house. The wooden post from which the FOR SALE sign hangs is crooked and loose, like I’m meant to take it. I feel Brennan watching me as I yank the sign out of the ground. When I get back to the window, I smash it with the sign post. The rain’s so loud I barely hear the glass break. I drop the sign, clear away the shards, and crawl through into a pristine kitchen. Leaving a dripping trail through a cathedral-ceilinged foyer to the front door, I let in Brennan and set the deadbolt behind him. Off the foyer, two adjacent rooms are staged with copious seating: long plush couches and deep armchairs. In one, the seating is arranged around a dusty flatscreen television, at least sixty inches. In the other, the focal point is a fireplace. There’s a stack of Duraflame logs along one wall. A sponsor, probably.
I check the ceiling and see only a smoke detector. They don’t need as many mounted cameras now that Brennan’s with me.
The logs have instructions printed on their brown paper wrappers. Even Brennan can’t mess this up; I toss him a book of matches and go to explore upstairs. I hold my breath every time I open a door, but this house is nothing like the blue cabin. It’s huge, anonymous, empty. Stocked but not lived-in. I open a bathroom vanity and pour rubbing alcohol from the top shelf over my palms. The scrapes aren’t bad enough to bother bandaging. In the master bedroom, I open closets and drawers until I find a pair of fleece pajama pants; I shuck my wet pants and pull these on. I find a men’s plaid pajama set for Brennan and then go back downstairs. I toss him the clothing and lay out my pants, boots, and socks by the fire.
“Go change,” I say, “and we’ll dry out your clothes.”
“Are we—” A look of horror crosses his face.
“It’s all right. You can talk. Just not so much, okay?”
He nods rapidly. “Are we stopping here?” he asks. “For the night?”
“Yes.”
It seems the silence has done him good. He pauses for several seconds and then says, “Thanks, Mae.”
“Go change.”
The pantry is stocked with organic vegetarian canned soups and mac and cheese with animal-shaped noodles. I heat up a can of Tuscan bean and rice soup for myself, and then make the mac and cheese for Brennan, substituting a can of condensed milk for the dairy called for by the box. He polishes off the entire pot’s worth and then collapses on a couch with a sigh. Moments later, he’s snoring. The sound isn’t as annoying as it used to be. In fact, it makes the house feel a little less big.
I toss a quilt over him, then wrap myself in another. The couches are too soft; I sit on the rug, facing the fire and holding a cup of herbal tea. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to sleep here. Although, I checked all the rooms, so it should be okay. I hope it will be okay.
And if it’s not, if something happens tonight, it’ll be something new. Maybe they’ll pump locusts down the chimney or toss some timber rattlesnakes through the broken window. Send in remote-controlled bats with exaggerated fangs. Or maybe my marauders will make their debut.
I know it’s useless to try to predict their depravity, but I can’t help trying. It makes sitting here, waiting, in this massive, ghostly house a little easier. I’m confident that whatever they do, they won’t do it until later. They’ll wait until I’m asleep—or nearly asleep—to strike. That’s how they do it; they blur the line between reality and nightmare. They give me bad dreams, and then they make them come true.
The worst was the cabin. The too-blue cabin I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try.