Any Given Doomsday (12 page)

“Don’t worry; I’ve done it before.”

A quick trip to the Hummer produced gasoline and a few sticks of dynamite.

“Isn’t that going to seem suspicious?”

“People see what they want to see. No one left in town to say otherwise, it’ll look like an accident. I’ll make it look like one.”

Ten minutes later, flames shot toward the neon-blue sky. Jimmy turned, but instead of heading toward the car, he went toward town. “We need to make sure there isn’t anyone left.”

“You think there might be?”

“No. Werewolves are pretty thorough. But we’ll look.”

He didn’t have to say we were searching for both human and non. When we’d returned to the Hummer for the gas, we’d also restocked our supply of silver bullets.

Noon had come and gone before we’d searched every house and business. We didn’t find anyone else, dead, alive, or anything in between. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. I decided not to think about it at all. Yep. I was definitely starting to catch on to this job.

“We’ll clean up, grab some fresh clothes and food, then get on the road,” Jimmy said.

I didn’t like the idea of using dead people’s things, but what choice did we have? We couldn’t ride around Kansas, or any other state for that matter, covered in blood and ashes. That was bound to raise some eyebrows.

“This one.” Jimmy flicked a finger at a three-story clapboard, painted a soothing robin’s-egg blue. The shutters were white; spring flowers sprouted all over the yard, mocking the scent of death and smoke that hung over Hardeyville.

He climbed the porch steps and walked right in. No one locked their doors here. I’d discovered that for myself as we’d meandered through the town searching for survivors and werewolves.

The house was shadowed and cool, all the shades still drawn. The inhabitants hadn’t woken up this morning. They’d been a little dead.

I rubbed my forehead, wishing my mind would stop talking.

“Why this one?” I asked.

“Young couple, near our age and size,” he answered shortly. “I’m gonna shower first.” He started upstairs.

I opened my mouth to argue, then snapped it shut as a picture in the living room caught my gaze. I forgot all about Jimmy and his selfish, rude, typical behavior, drawn inexorably toward the photograph.

They could have been us. Or the us Jimmy and I might have become if we were different people. Hell—

“If one of us
was
people,” I muttered.

In a different world.

The husband was dark-haired, but the wife was blond. From the photo, they’d been married in springtime, perhaps only the last one, perhaps this one. Hard to say.

He was tall and rangy, his dark tux a perfect accent for his coloring. She shone with joy in an ivory sheath. No veil, her hair tumbling in curls around her bare shoulders. They’d had their whole lives ahead of them.

And now they didn’t.

I wandered around the room, peering at other pictures. The happy couple skiing. Dancing. The wife and her parents. The husband and his. They’d both had siblings. I thought I recognized a few from the gymnasium. By the time I’d made the circuit, I was shivering again.

The water still ran upstairs. I hunted around for a second bathroom, found one on the first floor that only housed a sink and toilet, then stomped upward, intent on kicking Jimmy out before all the hot water disappeared.

Not that I couldn’t just stroll to the next house on the block and use their hot water, but right now I wanted to argue. I needed to. I was mad. I was scared. I wanted to punch someone. Jimmy would let me punch him.

On the second floor, I took inventory—master bedroom, guest room, office—

“Son of a—” I muttered, staling at the pastel green walls with a border of giraffes and elephants. There wasn’t any furniture. Yet.

Had she been pregnant, or just hoping?

I didn’t know, would probably never know. Right now, I couldn’t bear to know.

I crossed the hall to the bathroom, planning to rattle the door, shout for Jimmy to hurry up. But when my hand touched the knob, the door swung open. Steam flowed out. The water still ran, but other than that the room was eerily silent.

The chill came back. I shoved the door wider with my foot, drawing my gun, bracing for a wash of red across the white shower curtain, another body, the end of a life with Jimmy in it.

I tried to breathe. Couldn’t. No blood. No body either.

Not a shadow beyond that white curtain. His gun lay on the toilet seat, but where was he?

“Jimmy?”

No response. I inched inside; my own gun lifted, finger on the trigger.

The room was small. I could see all of it in my peripheral vision. 1 reached for the shower curtain and yanked it back; the rungs thundered across the steel rod. I flinched; Jimmy didn’t.

He sat in the tub fully clothed. But that wasn’t what worried me the most. He didn’t look up. Didn’t move. Didn’t react. Just sat there as the water pounded on his head, cascading down his face like rain.

Or tears.

“Jimmy?” I tried again, got no response. Again. I was going to have to do something.

I laid my gun next to his and locked the door. If anyone showed up, at least we’d have advance warning. Then I lost my shoes, considered my clothes and decided I didn’t have the time before stepping right in with them on, just as he had. Then I pulled the curtain around us, cranked the hot water hotter and sank down next to him in the tub.

I wasn’t a nurturer, hadn’t even known what nurturing was until Ruthie. She’d been good at touching, cuddling. Only problem was most of the kids she took in weren’t good at being touched or cuddled, me included. Eventually I’d settled down, trusted her enough to let her hug me once in a while. But hold me? Rock me? Pet me? I’d never settled down that much.

Because the things I heard, felt, knew were true, touching people was something I tried to avoid. Most often what I saw wasn’t something that I wanted to.

As a result, my movements were stiff. We bumped heads, shoulders, I think I smacked him in the nose when I tried to put my arm around him. But I got Jimmy to lean on me for a second, before he slid lower and laid his head in my lap.

1 waited for a jolt, some knowledge I didn’t want, but nothing came and I relaxed. Sometimes I got something, sometimes I didn’t, and I’d learned to shield myself more and more as the years had passed. I couldn’t have survived otherwise.

The water pounded on Jimmy’s head. He didn’t react. I shifted my shoulders to block it, ran my fingertips over his face. His eyelids fluttered closed. At least it was movement.

The tub was large, one of those old-time ceramic deals with legs. We were still packed pretty tight. I wondered how long the hot water would last. I wondered what in hell I was supposed to do with a catatonic DK.

I continued to stroke Jimmy’s face; he seemed to be relaxing against me, not so rigid anymore. 1 let my fingers drift to his hair, tangled the tips in the lightly curling strands, kneading his scalp.

Talk to him.

That hadn’t been Ruthie’s voice. I’m not sure whose it was, maybe my own. Hopefully. I didn’t need any more voices than I already had telling me what to do.

What should I talk to him about?

Memories. Good ones.

Did we have any? I let my mind drift back.

I thought of the time Ruthie had let us have a dog, a stray that had wandered up the road and refused to leave, then reconsidered. Dog stories, or near enough, were what had gotten us into this mess in the first place.

“Remember when we were invited to that house on Big Cedar Lake for the day? Half of us had never seen a lake beyond Michigan, and you certainly don’t swim in that.”

Any time before August the big lake was icy, not to mention all the dead fish and floating gypsum.

“So Ruthie stuffed us all in the van and off we went.”

The day had been perfect. Eighty-four degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The air had been filled with the laughter of children, the scent of hot dogs on the grill, lemonade, cookies.

“We were fourteen,” I continued.

I’d worn a hand-me-down—what wasn’t a hand-me-down at Ruthie’s?—Green Bay Packers T-shirt over my swimming suit. There was no way I was going to let anyone, especially Sanducci, see my chest. But, oh, how I’d wanted to dive into that smooth clear water.

“Ruthie coaxed me to do it.” I leaned against the side of the tub, ignoring the heavy weight of my soaked clothes, concentrating on the memory, the joy of it, and the rhythmic movement of my fingers through Jimmy’s hair.

“She put on a swimming suit.” My lips curved. “And dived right in.”

Ruthie’s suit had bagged off her bony behind. Her skinny arms had appeared chickenlike framed by the straps of the tank. But no one had dared laugh. Maybe no one had noticed. To every single one of us, Ruthie was the most beautiful being on this earth, and that had nothing to do with her appearance.

Since Ruthie had done it, I did too. The water, not icy but cool enough to shock at first, had become welcoming, refreshing, revitalizing.

I hadn’t been the best swimmer. No lessons. I’d learned because I’d had to or drown. But the water hadn’t been deep. We’d played games. Gotten sunburned. Eaten too much.

“You made s’mores.”

My gaze flicked to Jimmy’s face. His eyes were open and someone was home.

I let my thumb stroke his cheek. “You ate five and got a gut ache.”

“It was the best day.” Our voices sounded in unison.

I smiled into his face. He reached up and cupped my cheek. For an instant our shared past was right there with us, something that made us stronger, better, saner.

“Jimmy, I—”

He sat up, pulling away from my stroking fingers, from me. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t seem okay.”

“You don’t know what I seem.”

Standing, he didn’t waver; his face had gone hard again.

I tried not to feel rejected and failed. The sweet memory we’d shared soured, crowded out by other memories of unhappier times.

He’d taken me and discarded me. He’d told me he loved me, then fucked someone else. He’d disappeared without a trace and he hadn’t come back. Those were the things I needed to remember about Jimmy Sanducci.

He stuck his head under the shower stream, scrubbed the blood from his hair and hands, then stepped out, dripping water all over the floor. Pig.

“Finish up,” he ordered without even looking at me. “We’re back on the road in fifteen.”

The door closed seconds later.

“Asswipe,” I muttered.

It didn’t help.

Chapter 16

We were back on the road in thirty. I doubted the extra fifteen made much difference.

By the time I’d finished in the shower, Jimmy was downstairs dressed in dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and he’d even managed to find black shoes. I found it a bit creepy that he could fit into the dead man’s clothes so well, right down to the footwear.

He’d made eggs, toast, coffee. I slurped mine without comment. What was there to say?

We’d done what we had to. We’d do it again, of that I had no doubt. Jimmy had lost it for a minute, but he’d gotten it back without too much trouble, then he’d pushed me away, both physically and emotionally. Nothing new there.

I’d also chosen jeans, but my shirt was hot pink with tiny green and white flowers; my shoes were also pink and at least half a size too large.

The outfit had been the least of all the evils stored in the closet and drawers. The dead woman had had a thing for pastels, which were definitely not
my
thing. Despite my light eyes, I was too dark everywhere else to pull off pink.

We each left the house with a carry-on bag stuffed with more clothes. When I’d gone searching for our bloody discards, I hadn’t found them. When I’d asked where they were, Jimmy had pointed to the still burning school. I took that to mean he’d tossed them into the inferno, which solved the problem nicely. If we wanted this to look like a tragic accident, leaving blood-splattered clothing anywhere in the vicinity would be a bad idea.

Taking it along in the car would be a worse one. Can you imagine a deputy finding that on a routine traffic stop? We’d be locked up until the next millennium and any explanations of a werewolf attack would only add to our chances of incarceration. We’d look and sound like lunatics.

Jimmy continued to drive. He still didn’t trust me not to make a U-turn while he was sleeping and race as far away from Sawyer as I could get. Being an ass hadn’t decreased his intelligence one iota.

The day was half over. We’d lost time by stopping in Hardeyville, but since no one was expecting us, it didn’t matter. Besides, I wasn’t in any hurry to arrive.

“Shouldn’t we be meeting with Ruthie’s DKs?” I asked.

“It’ll have to wait.” Jimmy kept his eyes on the road.

“I really think I should meet them.”

“Not yet.”

“But—”

“No, Lizzy. You need to be trained. Now. Every day we aren’t on the job makes them another day stronger. We can’t afford that.”

I stared out over the flat Kansas landscape, and I knew that he was right, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it.

“So we’re going to Sawyer’s, and you’re going to learn whatever you have to, and fast, or we’re going to see a lot more towns like Hardeyville.”

Since I never wanted to see another town like Hard-eyville again, I silently gave in to the inevitable. A visit with Sawyer. More training. I’d have to be near him, listen to him, touch him.

Around Sawyer there was always an air of barely suppressed violence. He was a wild, unpredictable animal. I’d never known what he would do. It had taken me weeks to stop flinching whenever he moved fast. Since I hadn’t seen him, in person, for nearly ten years, I had no doubt I’d be flinching again soon. 1 hated it.

“You okay?” Jimmy asked.

“No.” I turned my face to the window and took in the scenery. Wisely, he left me alone.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. Jimmy drove. I didn’t. I slept; he didn’t. I expected a visit from Ruthie; none came. Instead, I dreamed of Hardeyville, and I feared that we would lose every battle to come, because I wasn’t ready for this, and I wasn’t sure I ever could be.