Baskerville looked at him just as his troops fired a field flare into the sky. The flare lit Neil’s front yard with a flickering white glow and, as it sank in the direction of the poor neighborhood, gunfire erupted from beside the Morrison fighting vehicles, the age-old music of war, the beat and rhythm of things breaking down.
“We’ll look after her, Dr. Thorndike.”
“Look after her?” he asked. “How?”
In the light of the flare, Baskerville’s face changed, hardened, his eyes narrowing, his lower lip curling a fraction of an inch, a hint of disrespect in his eyes as if he were wondering how Neil could ask such a stupid question. Neil sensed a schism between himself and Baskerville now.
“You know. Deal with her remains.”
Louise gave him a tug. “Neil, let’s go back in the house.”
“You listen to your wife, Dr. Thorndike,” said Baskerville. “Ain’t nothing to see out here.”
15
Glenda got up from her basement floor once the truck drove away.
“Stay here,” she told her children.
She had to argue with them, because kids wouldn’t be kids if they didn’t argue, but at last she left them on the floor next to the refrigerator and moved through the darkness, touching her way along the piles of junk to the foot of the stairs, clutching her rifle in one hand and feeling her way up the steps with the other.
In the kitchen, she listened.
Usually there was the hum of electricity coming from the refrigerator, or the sound of cars out on the highway. But except for the ticking of the battery-powered clock in the dining room and the hush of fresh snow falling against the windows (yes, more snow, just in the last few minutes), all was silent.
She crossed the kitchen floor, now used to navigating in darkness. She veered left around the kitchen table, maneuvered to the right, went through the dining and living rooms, then stopped short, exactly at the front door, and clutched the doorknob.
She went outside.
She saw a light burning in Leigh’s dining room window.
Using it to see her way, she crossed the yard to the hedge separating her lot from Leigh’s. She squeezed her way through, the stiff, dead branches snagging her sweater. She walked down Leigh’s driveway toward his house, pausing often to listen, the snowflakes crash-landing on her face.
Up in the hills she heard gunfire.
She continued down the drive through Leigh’s carport and into his side yard. She heard the snow melting from the roof into the eaves, a steady trickle. Then more gunfire up in the hills.
As she neared the dining room window, she crouched. She double-checked to make sure her safety was off, felt her heart beating more quickly, was afraid that someone was still inside, and that she might have to kill them. She peered in through the dining room window and saw, in the light of a battery-powered lamp sitting on the table, three chairs toppled on their sides. The glass in the china cabinet doors was broken, and three bullet holes punctured the walls. She stared at the destruction and couldn’t help thinking that it was an odd mix—this suburban dining room with its department-store furniture, such an everyday scene, now destroyed like this.
Finally she moved to the rear of the house. She looked through the back door into the kitchen.
The door had been broken open, and the security console smashed. The kitchen table lay on its side—she dimly perceived its outline in the light coming from the dining room. She stepped into the vestibule leading into the kitchen. She saw Leigh’s hiking boots, garden clogs, and sandals sitting neatly side by side on an imitation Navajo mat.
“Leigh?” she called.
She got no reply.
She proceeded into the kitchen.
Her toe hit a can of something. She lifted the can and saw that it was instant milk. She couldn’t help thinking how her kids could use this instant milk. Use anything. She put the can of milk on the table and walked into the dining room. She lifted the lantern, a neat little rechargeable unit that had a rustic look to it, like it came from a sailing ship of yore. She smelled cordite, and saw brass rifle shells on the floor. She lifted a shell, a.303; a good hunting round, deadly enough to down a man in one go.
Taking the little lamp, she checked the whole first floor: Leigh’s bedroom, where everything was tidy and the bed made; the second bedroom, which he had turned into his weight-lifting room; then into the third bedroom, where he had his computer and all his other electronic junk; then the bathroom, where, in the bathtub, behind the shower curtain, she found two fifty-gallon Duratex coolers of fresh spring water.
Jamie, Lars, and Perry must have missed them.
She backtracked into the living room, then the dining room, then the kitchen, and stood at the top of the basement stairs. She held the rechargeable lantern high, but the light wasn’t focused, and permeated only halfway down the steps. Nonetheless, it was strong enough to see footprints in blood on the risers.
She now looked at the kitchen floor. Blood was tracked everywhere. Her sneakers had left their own prints.
“Leigh?” she called again, hoping she would hear a groan, sigh, or cry for help.
She heard nothing. She stood at the top of the stairs for close to a minute as the anxious possibilities tumbled through her mind. She fought with her own conflicting impulses. Run? Investigate? She finally held the lantern up and went downstairs, trying as best she could to miss the blood on the steps.
In the basement, she found an extensive hydroponics installation. Leigh had never brought her down here before, and she was surprised to see all this stuff. She saw tomatoes, zucchini, and carrots growing in long, narrow planters, and an array of grow-lights overhead, all of them now off. She saw a hydrogen-powered generator in the corner. The final third of the basement had been bricked up and turned into a large cold cellar. She walked over and had a look. Thick Styrofoam insulated the inside of it. As she entered, she held the lantern high. Shelves lined every available square inch of wall. The shelves were bare. Jamie, Lars, and Perry had made a considerable haul.
She turned around, and that’s when she saw Leigh. He lay behind the door on his back, head tilted to one side, feet splayed, wearing a camouflage hunting vest that was dark with blood. He looked like he was sleeping. For such a violent death, his final resting position was one of peaceful repose. Blood trickled down the drain in the corner. The blood had been stepped in, and the chaotic footprint pattern reminded Glenda of the finger paintings kindergartners did.
She stood there for several seconds.
Then she heard the sound of a car in the distance—far up the highway, at the top of the east hill.
She immediately bolted.
She switched off her lantern and exited by the back door. Was it Jamie, Lars, and Perry coming back?
She ran all the way to the bottom of Leigh’s backyard, and now felt Leigh’s death coming to her in a blur of tears. The falling snow was cold against her face. She turned around and looked toward the highway. She saw through her tears the blue flash of police lights a quarter mile up the road. A new fear exploded through her chest. It was Maynard Fulton, coming to investigate. He would see her footprints in the blood.
She opened Leigh’s back gate and hurried over to her yard. The flashing police lights now lit up the whole neighborhood, even though the two cars were still a couple of blocks away.