It stuck. Weak and dizzy, he put his shoulder to it, heaved, and the door gave slightly with a moldering crunch. With a grinding, the door, ancient hinges rusted through, tottered, showering him with dirt. It struck him on the head—dull agony—and he tasted fresh blood once more, as the door lodged, leaning against the bending pines, revealing an angled opening of less than a foot in width, a passage into absolute darkness.
With his shoulder and chest halfway through the crack, he nearly recoiled—a sour stench emanated from the hot interior. Pulling himself in, he scraped his legs on the doorframe. With a squelch, his foot went through something on the floor, and instantly the smell rose. He gagged on vomit. Rankness choked the air from his lungs. Dark forms swelled in his brain. Beyond knowing or caring what he shared the hut with, he clung, sobbing, to the walls, their roughness slick with mold.
The moon sank into the pines.
Waves of blackness swept over him, but he didn’t falclass="underline" he was back in his sleeping bag, and then he was home in bed, but there was something, something squishing, and why did his arm hurt so much? Foulness. Squishing?
A wet slithering moved along the outside wall.
He opened his eyes.
He was peering through the door opening when it came under the wall behind him. Powerful arms went around him, gripping.
Hot and dripping at his back, it drooled on his cheek, pressing him. His own screams seemed to draw inward and penetrate his guts as his ears were torn away, and the smooth flesh at the back of his neck was assaulted by sharp teeth and rough tongue.
Tuesday, July 28
“We should keep the lights like this all the time.” Raising his voice above the siren shriek, Larry fumbled about in the half-light. “It seems to have a real good calming effect.”
“On you, maybe,” Athena said as she gazed down at a blood-streaked face. The child had finally stopped gulping and sobbing, had lapsed into a terrible, staring quiet. She checked the pulse. Very faint. When she let go of the wrist, a film of liquid remained on her fingertips. Slowly, she resumed helping Larry to bind the seeping redness.
Outside, the light failed, and inside the rig, one of the fluorescent tubes flickered.
“Did you see those tracks?” He wound bandages around the girl’s arm. “Boy, there must’ve been maybe eight, nine dogs, at least. You see the way her dog’s body was tore up? What probably happened was the wild ones went after her mutt, and the kid tried to save it and got in the middle. Was that about what happened, sweetheart?” The girl just stared up at him, and by the time her mouth began to move, he had already turned away. “You think that sounds right, ’Thena?”
She shrugged, dropping a roll of bandages.
Everything she did today was off the beat, he noticed, watching her grope around on the floor. He supposed it had something to do with the injured child, though he sure wouldn’t have figured her for that type.
She stood up, looking pale and sweaty. “The wounds aren’t too bad,” she muttered. “She’ll need stitches.” One arm was chewed, though not deeply, but the torn flap of the cheek would probably leave a scar. She found herself staring at the velvet blood that spotted the floor around the litter. “There’s worse things than scars.”
“How’s it going back there?”
“Just a second, Doris.” Setting down the bandages, she met Larry’s eyes. “Can you do the rest of this yourself?” Her voice sounded unsteady, but the sympathy in his face only irritated her. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.”
“’Thena-honey?”
Siren faltering, the rig moved down the highway at a good clip.
“I said, just a second.”
“You know, if you wanted to, Mrs. Sims,” Doris suggested, “you could go back and sit with your daughter now.” Slumped in the seat beside her, the woman looked up, wordlessly pathetic as Athena approached. She stood, absently smoothing her shapeless and wrinkled dress, then wobbled with tiny steps toward the rear.
“She’s a prize.”
“You don’t know the half of it, kid. Least she’s quiet now.” Doris spoke softly. “You heard all that screaming a while back? Halfway to the highway, the stupid bitch wants me to turn around.”
“Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.” With an angry sigh, Athena plopped down into the seat. Behind them, the woman’s weepy mumbles drowned out Larry’s low-voiced reassurances.
“You look tired.”
“I’m fine.” She peered through the window into the gathering darkness.
Doris raised an eyebrow. So something had finally gotten to her, she thought. It didn’t take much to figure out what—the kid had to be about the right age. “So how’s Matty doing?”
Her voice was ice. “Matthew’s as well as can be expected.”
Shaking her head, Doris returned her full attention to the road.
“I’m sorry,” Athena said after a long moment. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“I understand, honey.” She nodded toward the rear. “This woman—what makes it almost comical is I had her in here once before. She has another kid that got hurt a couple months ago. She carried on just the same as now. Take him to the hospital. Don’t take him to the hospital.”
“People don’t learn from the past. They live in it.” Her eyes never wavered from the window. “Doris, would you do me a favor? Are you going to the diner to night? If you see Barry, would you tell him I had to go home?”
“Sure thing. Listen, honey, why don’t you take it easy for a couple days? I’ll cover for you. The leg bothering you? I’m telling you, the way you been pushing yourself…”
Athena clenched both hands into tight fists and held them in her lap.
Despairing of ever learning to keep her mouth shut, Doris turned down the high beams and drove quietly a moment. Then something occurred to her. “Matty was bit by a dog once, wasn’t he?”
Finally alone, Athena drove like a madwoman. What’s wrong with me? Everyone had noticed, she felt sure. She wondered why she’d become so agitated, couldn’t even understand her own decision not to meet Barry. She hadn’t been home this early in months. Too early to go right to bed.
Through the dark blue lens of the sky, the stars looked enormous. No traffic to night. Ahead, a few red taillights, small and faraway, kept distant company, smugly hurrying home. Back to the city, probably. Home from the shore. For one aching moment, she longed to be going with them. They don’t even know I’m here. Her headlights flashed off a discarded beer can. They drive through the wilderness and don’t realize it. It seemed she’d almost spoken aloud, and her mother’s face rose in her mind. Me, my whole life, I don’t exist for them. She gripped the wheel tighter—it grew slippery with sweat.
She reached her turnoff. At the mouth of the dirt road, the night seemed to thicken. Tree shapes flowed on either side, and she imagined herself to be piloting a one-woman submarine. Headlights sank only a little ways, twin bars of cold white, swirling across thick bracken.
Her house stood solid, an ugly thing in the night, but bright points leaked through a hundred chinks in the lower story. Pamela’s still here. Quickly, she suppressed the wave of gratitude.
The car rattled to a stop. Picking up the scanner, she pushed open the door, and the car’s interior light surprised her. That hasn’t worked in months. The dim glow spilled onto the ground. Crickets surrounded the house. Her footsteps on the gravel—first the proud, crunching step, then the grating hiss of the lame foot—sounded humiliatingly loud.