He cleaned for the remainder of the afternoon, scrubbing the carpets upstairs in both his father’s and Teresa’s rooms, but nothing would take the smell away. Eventually he resorted to hauling the mattresses out to the backyard, stacking them near the tree line to burn in the morning. When dusk came, he showered, standing under the hot spray until it scalded his skin, his fingers rubbed raw from the brush and soap he used to clean his hands and nails.
The fridge held nothing that interested him, so he settled for a cup of tea, stirring in sugar as the last holdings of light faded from the sky. When he finally turned the TV on, the news stations were down, their logos filling up the screen. He flipped through the rest of the channels finding only re-runs of sitcoms and reality TV. He went through all of them again just to be sure and then turned the set off. The stillness of the house settled around him, and he went to the kitchen window to look out at the giant pine and the two mounds of dirt beneath it. They were only blurs of shadow now, simply another part of the landscape that would grow grass and become indistinguishable in the years ahead.
Quinn poured his tea down the drain and looked in the direction of his father’s office. The internet might still be a resource, perhaps it would give him a better idea if there was anything left of the world outside the gates.
As he moved toward the hall, a humming began to fill the air and he paused, listening to the growing buzz that became a static hiss. The last nor’easter that had howled down upon them in February had sounded something like this with its relentless wind and rushing snow. The sound grew and grew until he began to crouch out of reflex, his hands coming to the sides of his head. A glass sitting on the edge of the counter pitched to the floor, exploding into a thousand pieces. The roar built, vibrating his teeth in their sockets as he realized what it was. He hurried to the front door, throwing it open to the night as the commercial airliner cruised past, its running lights blinking barely a hundred feet over the trees. It was like being underwater and seeing a giant predatory fish swim by, gliding past in search of food. The massive plane disappeared into the night, engines whining against gravity and he waited, staring after it until the concussion boomed in the distance and a glow lit the horizon in a sickly, licking orange.
The flames climbed for a long time, burning high into the dark heavens before relenting and falling into a somber radiance that would’ve seemed peaceful had he not known its source.
Quinn shut the door and paused at the juncture in the hallway, staring down its darkened length to the office before continuing on into the conservatory. He laid on the daybed, tucking one arm beneath his head and knew that sleep would not come, there would be no way it could. Not after today.
But after he gave the brightening stars a last look through the room’s curved glass, he closed his eyes and drifted off within seconds.
~
A keening scream woke him hours later in the dead of night. He bolted upward at the sound, almost sprawling to the floor as vertigo swept over him, the embrace of sleep still strong in his limbs. The cries were high and short, screeching across the grounds in blasts that curled his guts in on themselves like coiling snakes. It was a rabbit in distress, there was no mistaking it. He’d heard it once before when a female had given birth to a litter beneath Mallory’s back porch. Foster had live trapped them but one of the young had gotten pinned beneath the trap’s spring-loaded door. Its cries had echoed all the way to the main house. Foster had tried to save it but it had died a day later, its spine crushed, its hind legs limp and useless.