Instinct (17 page)

Lisa turned to the other bed. She pulled the blanket and brought it over. Pete helped her stretch it out to cover the man.

“Wait,” Robby said. Before they had settled the blanket down, Robby reached out for the little book that sat on the bed next to the body.
 

Brad sucked in a breath. He was sure somehow that one of the mummy’s brittle hands would shoot out and grab Robby’s wrist as soon as he touched the book. Maybe the boy felt the same thing, because he paused right before he touched it. Then, when his fingers took possession of the little book, he snatched it back. Brad exhaled.

Lisa and Pete settled the blanket down. The smell of moldy garbage puffed out from the body and Brad pulled his shirt up over his nose again.

“I wonder if he did it before or after,” Romie said.

“After,” Pete said. “He must have done it after. Maybe he knew everyone else disappeared, he got depressed, and he decided to check out. It’s understandable.”

“Did you ever think about it?” Romie asked. She still held Lisa’s flashlight. She still pointed it where the blanket was propped up by the mummy’s head.

“No,” Pete said.

“Do we have to talk about this here?” Lisa asked.

Brad swept his light around the living quarters once more. He didn’t see anything more interesting than a chest of drawers. He couldn’t imaging anything in there that he would need. He headed back for the stairs.

When they were all back on the first floor, Lisa kept glancing up towards the hole. Robby took the little book over to the table and sat down. He dragged a candle close to the pages. Robby closed one eye as he flipped through the book.

Pete moved to the window near the door. He looked out into the night before unlocking and opening it. He didn’t keep it open long. He leaned through the window. When he pulled back inside, he closed the shutters and latched them. He locked the window and moved to the next one.

“So we’re staying here during the day?” Romie asked. “Move out when it gets dark again?”

“I guess,” Pete said.

“The liquid is extra aggressive on this side of the river. What makes you think the snatchers won’t be too?” Romie asked.

“I don’t know,” Pete said.

“We need sleep, either way,” Lisa said. “Might as well be here.” Her voice trailed off as her eyes darted back to the upstairs hatch again.

“I haven’t seen a single spider since last year, but somehow I’m guessing this place is full of them,” Romie said.

Everyone turned to Robby when he spoke. His head was hunched over the little book and his voice sounded strange. The angle of his neck gave his tone a strained and strangled quality. He had his left eye squinted shut as he read.

“I saw the claws of the one that took Ursula. They were clear as glass and must have been just as sharp. Blood shot out from her shoulders and then she disappeared into the sky,” Robby said.

“What is that?” Lisa asked.

“His journal,” Robby said. “It ends with his suicide note, but before that he describes seeing a bunch of people get snatched. He talks about the snow, too. I think he was up north of here when it happened.”

“Suicide note?” Lisa asked. She moved away from the stairs, as if she suddenly thought the condition might be contagious.

“He was convinced that there was nobody still alive,” Robby said. He flipped through the pages of the journal.
 

“What was his name?” Lisa asked.

“He doesn’t say,” Robby said.

Pete finished shuttering the windows and he was back at the door. He pulled aside the curtain, looked through the broken glass and then closed it again. “Help me with this,” he said to Brad. He was pointing at the bookshelf.
 

Brad set his light down on one of the desks and moved to the other side of the bookshelf. The books swayed as they lifted. They shuffled the bookcase over in front of the door. It only rose to about halfway up the glass part of the door, but it covered the hole.

“What’s the point?” Romie asked. “They’ll put us in a trance and draw us outside if they want to take us.”

“If you’re in a trance and you try to move this bookcase, I’ll wake up and stop you,” Pete said.

Romie shrugged.

Pete went to the table and picked up the lantern that Robby had been fiddling with. He used a corner of his shirt to get a grip on the rusted nut. He had the cover off after a few seconds.

“Needs a new mantle,” Robby said without looking up from the book. He pointed off to the side. Pete followed the direction of his finger and saw a trunk next to the desk. Brad watched him walk over and flip up the lid. He pulled out a metal can of fuel and a package of wicks. Pete looked over at the boy. Robby hadn’t looked in the trunk before—there hadn’t been time. Pete didn’t ask how he knew where to find the supplies. He just took the things back to the table and set to work.

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The ranger station only contained four chairs, so Brad pulled up the trunk. Even flipping it up sideways, he was shorter than everyone else at the table. Lisa divided up the food. They’d found a sealed container with some snacks and dark green bags labeled “MRE.”
 

“It means meals, ready to eat,” Pete said.

As Brad opened his bag, his wrists were level with the surface of the table.

“It comes with chores,” Brad said. He pulled the white sheet of instructions from the bag. He was instructed to pour water from his canteen into the little envelope and set that under his propped up tray.

“I don’t get it,” Romie said.

“Yours has a chemical heater,” Pete said. “It’s to warm up your beef teriyaki.”

“Gross,” Romie said.

The lantern started to sputter and all eyes turned to it. It threw off way more light than the candles, but the noises it made were somehow disquieting.
 

Robby was already spooning cold rations into his mouth and chewing happily. Brad set aside the pouch of chemicals and decided to follow Robby’s lead. They didn’t have a whole lot of water to waste on warming up a meal anyway.

The dawn light was starting to show through the shutters and curtains. They rushed through their meal. It was easier to make it through the day asleep, and they were all exhausted.
 

“It’s nice to have you back, Robby,” Lisa said.

“It’s nice that we don’t have to drag you around like a mannequin,” Romie said.

From upstairs, they heard a thump followed by a creak. All eyes turned to the steep stairs.
 

“I’m sure it’s just the wind or something,” Brad said.

“It’s the building settling,” Pete said.
 

“That’s what you said last time,” Lisa said. “How comes it only happens when we’re all down here?”

“There’s nothing up there to make any noise,” Pete said. “We’ve checked three times.”

Brad wiped his hands on the little napkin as he chewed and swallowed. “I’ll go,” he said. “I want to steal the blankets and pillows from the spare bed anyway. At least we can make the floor more comfortable.”

“Throw down the whole bed,” Romie said.

“If it will fit,” Brad said.

He grunted when he stood. He walked over to the staircase—so steep it was more like a ladder—and then remembered his flashlight. His knees ached, right near the dimples on the inside of his kneecaps. It was probably from all the twisting. Walking on rocks was hard on old knees.

Brad put the end of the flashlight in his mouth so he could grab the rails on either side. He used his arms to help pull himself up. He barely needed the light upstairs. The sky outside was beginning to brighten, and the shutters up here didn’t cover the entire windows. Light was leaking in from the windows on the ends of the room and through the dormers.
 

Pete and Romie had been upstairs three times, but this was only Brad’s second trip. His attention immediately went to the tented figure on the bed. He remembered how the corpse looked, with his hands framing the giant hole in his chest. He remembered how the gray skin was stretched across the bones of the man’s skull.

The other bed had one folded blanket and two sheets. He took that and the two pillows and dropped them through the hatch. With his outstretched arms, he gauged the width of the mattress. It was thin and might fold, but he didn’t think it would fit through the hatch to get it downstairs. He wondered how it had made it up here. Most of the furniture up here looked too big to fit.
 

Brad opened a couple of drawers and found two more blankets. He turned to…

THUNK.

Brad spun just his head. His hands still held the blankets in the direction of the hatch.

On the bed with the corpse tent, the blanket fluttered where it hung down over the sides of the bed. Brad stared at it. He was frozen in place. He heard the creak of springs. Brad spun on his heels and backed towards the hatch. He was unwilling to take his eyes off the blanket that was tented over the corpse.

Brad’s foot floated over the hatch and he nearly fell backwards. He regained his balance and dropped the blankets behind him.

“Hey!” Romie called from below. “Watch where you’re…”

“Shhh!” Brad said. It sounded strange. He still had the flashlight in his mouth.

As he watched, the angles of the corpse tent changed. The shadows on the right deepened and one of the peaks moved closer to the left edge. Brad wondered if he could get down the stairs fast enough so he wouldn’t have to witness what was going to emerge from under there.

His escape was cut off as he heard someone climbing behind him. Brad’s eyes darted to the hatch and then returned to the corpse tent. It was Romie coming up. That was good. She was pragmatic and strong. No matter what was under that blanket, she would be an asset.

“What are you shushing me about?” she asked. “What’s going on up here?”

Brad reached up and pulled the flashlight from his mouth. He kept the beam trained on the bed. He laid a finger across his lips and then pointed.

“Him? I don’t think he has bothered anyone in quite…”

Romie stopped as she saw what Brad saw. Something was sliding under that blanket. The edge of the blanket rippled a bit. Just when he thought something would pop out from the edge, the shape reversed direction.

“He can’t be moving,” Romie said.

“This wouldn’t be the first moving corpse we’ve seen,” Brad whispered.

“Those were different,” Romie said.
 

She didn’t hesitate any longer. She strode over to the bed. For a moment, she blocked Brad’s view of the corpse tent, and that was okay with him. She reached the side of the bed, rubbed her fingers together and then snatched up the edge of the blanket. She pulled it off and sent it back and to the side.

CHAPTER 11: NEW YORK

J
UDY
PRESSED
THE
TEARS
from her eyes with trembling hands. She looked down and realized that she was sitting in the same chair that the old woman had been sitting in when she died. The part of her that should have been horrified was numb.

“Do you want a cigarette?” a man asked.
 

She looked at his hands. They were empty. Maybe if she had seen one, ready to light, she would have caved. She shook her head.

A rush of people came in through the side door. They wore beards. Luke was in the lead. He crouched down next to her chair and kept his hands a respectful distance as he looked up into her bleary eyes.

“Judy, what happened?” Luke asked.

“I… I don’t know,” she said, stammering.

Luke turned to his right and addressed one of the bearded men standing against the wall. “Get Winslow in here, will you?”

“Judy, they said you were attacked. What attacked you?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

The kitchen shadows danced with candlelight. The candles were everywhere—on the table, on the windowsills, and down the counter. The flames didn’t seem to send out enough light somehow. The kitchen still seemed like it was drowning in soft shadows.

Judy flinched when Luke’s hand came forward. He was reaching for her ankle.

“May I?” he asked, pausing his hand.

She closed her mouth on her lips and nodded.

He gently pushed her jeans up from her ankles. Judy was wearing sneakers and ankle socks. Luke’s fingers touched her bare skin. He was gentle and quick.

“You’re okay. You’re okay,” he said. He seemed to be talking to himself.

A pair of bearded men came through the door. Judy barely looked at them. She was concerned whether Luke’s hands might want to touch her again. She hadn’t been repulsed by his touch, but that’s what concerned her.

“I thought you said she was hurt?” Luke asked one of the men.

“I didn’t say that. Richmond is the one who said that.”

“Well, goddammit, get Richmond in here. What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

Another man pressed through the door and took Winslow’s place. Judy recognized this one.