“Leave it to me to think of something gloomy.” She fell silent and gazed at the fire before glancing at him again. “By the way, are you some kind of math whiz or something?”
“No. I was homeschooled and—” He almost blurted out everything to her but managed to stifle it at the last second. “We reached fairly high levels in most of the subjects.”
“I guess. I’m terrible at math, always preferred art and English to algebra.”
“Right brained.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything right about it.”
They sat in silence for a while, the fire crackling in the hearth, the quiet chirp of frogs somewhere off in the night. It could have been any night, any normal night. They could’ve been here as a family on holiday.
He shook his head, casting the thoughts away as Alice spoke again.
“There’s nothing left of them, is there? The people they once were,” she said.
Quinn remembered the stilts’ cold stare of hatred, the hunger in their gazes as they pursued them down the street, how the thing Graham had become lifted him toward its waiting mouth.
“No, I don’t think there is,” he replied.
“How tall do you think they get?” Alice asked in almost a whisper. “I mean, really? The tallest one I saw was when we were leaving the apartment. It was walking along the next street, and its head was only a few feet under the stop light when it passed.”
“You saw a taller one,” he said, readjusting himself on the floor. “We both did.”
“Where?”
“On the internet.”
Her eyes widened a little and then she blinked. “How far away do you think that one was from the car?”
“Not sure, but a pretty good distance since at first I thought it was a tree standing there.”
“So did I.”
“I would say it was way taller than the one you saw in your town.” Now they were both whispering.
A knot popped in the fire like a gunshot and they jumped.
Alice laughed under her breath. “Sitting around telling scary stories in the dark like kids.”
“But now the stories are real,” Quinn said, dropping his gaze to his hands.
They both fell quiet, and after a time, Alice volunteered for the first watch. Quinn curled up beside the couch on his sleeping bag, his rifle within easy reach. Ty’s small snores were the only sound besides the fire chewing the oak to cinders, and the tension from the day began to uncoil inside him like a rusted length of wire. His muscles slackened, their strains relaxing to dull aches. The burn on his shoulder still flared with each heartbeat, but it was muted somewhat by the lingering touch of Alice’s fingers. He imagined them there again and then pushed the thought away. There had never been room in his life for useless fantasy and there was even less in the world around him now.
Their little visitor had retreated with a small piece of bread and was gnawing on it in the corner of the room. He watched it as sleep began to draw his eyes shut, and the last thing he saw was its tail disappearing through a gap in the floor.
He awoke hours later to the feeling of fingers touching his face.
With a start, he began to sit up, his hand reaching for the AR-15, but then he made out Ty’s small form kneeling beside him, only a shadow in the low light of the fire. The boy’s hands traced the humped curve of his cheekbones, the incongruence of his left eye socket, the jutting point of his jaw. The urge to pull back ebbed as Ty’s fingers ran down his nose and then fluttered across his forehead before falling away. Quinn lay there, frozen, waiting for Ty to begin crying or call out for his mother, but the boy simply sat beside him, looking down with eyes unseeing.
“You’re different,” Ty finally said. “Like me.”
Quinn struggled for words, but nothing would come. Ty smiled and rose from his knees to lie back down on the couch. Within minutes his breathing was deep and rhythmic once more.
Chapter 15
Forks in the Road